Marketing econometric models are helping marketers find their way through the challenges of a fractured market. For agencies to maintain their strategic relevance and a balanced budget, they must embrace quantitative techniques and experts.

If there were any lingering doubts that scripted producers were open to dressing up a scene with an advertiser's product, a recent episode in which a Buick LaCrosse appears in ABC's "Desperate Housewives" should go a long way in putting that myth to rest.

Last month, we called off the war& the media war, that is. We proposed a more effective method of creating a media strategy, no longer targeting consumers by hitting them with a flurry of advertising at frequent intervals. Believing that no message is delivered unless it is received, we proposed the idea of developing a media strategy from the consumer's point of view. Calling it the media aperture, we identify those moments in which the consumer is most open to receiving a brand's message.

You want to run a national ad campaign in 50 U.S. markets, but you need a hands-on local touch in each one. That's what AllOver Media (AOM) promises.

Health-related segments on TV usually last two-to-three minutes tops, and cover medical topics in the most general of terms. Viewers living with chronic ailments like diabetes, arthritis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis can turn to medical Web sites for more information, but even they don't offer perspectives on what it's like to live with a chronic disease. But that's about to change, as "dLife," a TV talk show about living with diabetes debuts March 20 on CNBC.

Marketing to kids is a touchy subject - how young is too young? What works with teens that already have a distorted image of themselves and who, as a group, don't like being pitched? To answer those questions, The Geppetto Group, a New York-based agency and consultancy specializing in kids' marketing, interviewed more than 100 teenagers for a study entitled, "Creative Teen Advertising That Works: The Sin of Sincerity."

With advertising popping up in the most obscure places, it was just a matter of time before some creative mind realized that commercial trucks actually offered a previously untapped opportunity ? mud flaps.

Mixing domestic fodder with suburban angst has become a dream come true for advertisers with abc's "Desperate Housewives." A recent scene in which Felicity Huffman's character Lynnette Scavo impresses her husband's clients by pitching the use of dry cleaning bags to sell advertising was something of a surprise to Ambient Planet, the New-York based non-traditional media company.

Cruise the Web long enough and you'll run into a banner with candy-colored iPods lined up in a row and the text shouting, "FREE!" Even Web-savvy consumers, including this reporter, are tempted to click and sign up for a credit card or other promotion.

Filter mini, a pocket-sized spin-off of Filter Magazine, has birthed a side project of its own. Launched earlier this year, the petite music/lifestyle publication released the mini mag as a free pdf file for alternative music aficionados. And while advertisers aren't lining up for space yet, the move could potentially goose the circulation ? not to mention the hip quotient and awareness ? of the entire Filter brand.