Members of Gen Y grew up with the Internet and mobile phones as a given. They see continuous connectivity as their right - there for them any place, anytime. Their media viewing habits are no different: They expect access to content whenever they want it, delivered to any screen they choose.

It feels like you can't watch a commercial this year without seeing a hashtag splashed across the screen at the end of the ad. Hashtags are everywhere, being referenced in ads making fun of Millennials and being thrown out by nearly every brand with a campaign, whether or not it makes much sense. Hashtags are meant to create and foster conversations, and unite people in a joint, sometimes fun, sometimes meaningful, digital experience. But most brand hashtags aren't cutting it.

Millennials. Always connected, yet so elusive. Each spends an average of nearly 18 hours per day on media, according to a recent study by Crowdtap. By 2018, Oracle predicts that their annual spending power will eclipse Boomers at $3.39 trillion. Naturally, marketers are concentrating an increasing portion of their ad budget trying to reach them.

One of the largest differences between Millennials and the generations that came before them is that they are much less loyal. For example, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 50% of Millennials identify themselves as independents politically (though the majority tends to lean Democrat). That's compared with 39% of Generation Xers and 32% of Baby Boomers who identify themselves as independents. According to the study, the same holds true for religion. Twenty-nine percent say that they have no religious affiliation.

Back in ye olden days, circa 1997, a quirky and popular actress named Ellen made national and international news headlines, notably landing on the cover of Time magazine, just for publicly stating what many people kinda sorta already knew. (Yep, she's gay.) Fast-forward 17 years later, and another quirky and popular actress also named Ellen came out as gay to decidedly less fanfare in so-called mainstream media, but garnering lots of love from the Twitterverse.

With the ever-changing landscape and complexity of the healthcare industry, it is crucial that marketers educate today's uber healthy and active Millennials with the right amount of information on the right devices and platforms.

The Millennial Generation is a generation in flux: 17-to-35 year olds make up about 24% of the U.S. population. Some are in college; some are recent grads living with their parents. Others are married professionals caught in the work/family crunch.

Jimmy Fallon is not a Millennial. At 36 years old, he is firmly in the camp of the Gen Xer-but you wouldn't be blamed for mistaking him for a member of the more optimistic, less-cynical generation when watching his takeover of "The Tonight Show."

We all know that Millennials have the ability to interpret a message within a few seconds due to what has been characterized as a decreasing attention span. However, a recent study released by MIT is almost mind-boggling. According to the report, consumers can decipher what an ad or logo is saying in about 13 milliseconds, roughly 10 times faster than the one-tenth of a second the researchers had initially projected.

We've been dancing around this topic for a while, so I'm going to come right out and say it: Hashtags are the new URL. Jack Dorsey & co. have said it since 2011, but nobody's paid much attention. Now it's time for marketers to face the music or get left behind.