In raising the subject of online creativity yesterday, a few more thoughts occured to me. Apart from recruiting really great, kick-ass talent, creative and media departments need to join forces, as Jim Meskauskas says in today's Online Spin. This is now more imperative than ever as in-stream advertising gains traction.

Creativity online. Online creative. Either way, it's a hot topic and one that is beginning to get some traction within agencies and with marketers.

A Standard & Poor's survey of Internet users found that nearly half of all search engine users choose Google over rival services. The survey, conducted by InsightExpress, found that 48 percent of search engine users go for Google, 20 percent prefer Yahoo!, 14 percent like Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and 7 percent use America Online's AOL. By the way, S&P's initial estimates for Google's market value is $33 billion to $40 billion.

Our 40th president, Ronald Reagan, died June 5 at the age of 93. I went onto the Web trying to find any references he might have made to the Internet while he was president. No luck there, but the Web was mostly used in universities and academic institutions at the time. Remember? The World Wide Web.

As the broadcast upfronts hurtle along their convoluted course, there is more buzz popping up about marketers' willingness to shift dollars from broadcast TV into other media, most notably, Web media.

Yahoo!'s roadshow highlighting research on women and their Web usage habits hit New York City this morning. If you haven't heard about the study, you'll want to get invited to a Yahoo! presentation in your city.

Spin writer Tom Hespos raised an important issue yesterday in his column, "Why Google Won't Kill B2B Magazines (Just Yet)."

We learned about a new group dedicated to advancing word-of-mouth marketing techniques at Ad:Tech; it's a sector that appears to be gaining some traction as marketers aggressively look for new ways to break through traditional advertising clutter. Word-of-mouth marketing also relies on the power of so-called "influentials" to propagate ideas and trends, and also leverages viral methods derived from Web marketing practices.

A lot of people know Claria Corp. as a leading practitioner of online behavioral marketing, but apparently the company is also a pretty good at judging consumer behavior offline. In fact, the Claria folks actually knew American TV viewers would choose Fantasia Barrino over Diana DeGarmo to become Fox's latest "American Idol."

San Francisco-The Ad:Tech show here may have wound down yesterday, but it's not over by a long stretch.