A lot has been said in recent years about the rise of the consumer's role in the creation and use of media. Bloggers are regularly credited with either breaking a story first or developing a story first introduced somewhere else.

Documenting our lives once meant keeping secret diaries. We would typically write in them at night, detailing things that happened during the day. A little later, people began carrying blank books and journals around with them, periodically updating them throughout the day. In the mid-1990s, the Internet helped us keep these diaries online, for our friends to read.

Whether deciding to buy broadband video campaign, run a mobile campaign, or estimate how many viewers will fast-forward past ads on DVRs, executives first need to know how widespread the key platforms are. So here's a look at some of the key numbers driving our industry today.

In the last two months, I've had the opportunity to judge a media plan of the year competition for professionals and a creative media advertising competition for students in the Northeast.

Recently, I was invited to speak at a symposium about alternatives to the traditional 30-second spot. I was joined by an eclectic group of speakers, ranging from game developers and toy makers to designers to people who said they worked for "non-advertising agencies." And there also was an interesting group of clients, creative and new media types.

Online virtual worlds have certainly been growing in popularity in the last 12 to 18 months. Worlds like Linden Lab's Second Life, There.com and even fully branded environments like MTV's Laguna Beach and Nickelodeon's Nicktropolis have all helped legitimize consumer interest in persistent virtual worlds and communities.

Lately I've been listening to a Dallas radio station via the web from my desk in New York. The music is great, but instead of normal commercial breaks the station repeats the same two promotional spots back-to-back for five minutes. Digital rights management issues keep their regular commercials off the Internet, resulting in ad fatigue. This becomes quite annoying, leading me eventually to change the station. If radio really is theater of the mind, then this is theater of the absurd.

Since the last draftee reported for duty in December 1972, Uncle Sam has had to hustle to staff an all-volunteer armed force. In the case of the U.S. Army, that meant recruiting 80,000 new soldiers every year - essentially replacing more than the entire workforce of BellSouth every 12 months.

They had to go ahead and do it, didn't they? They just couldn't resist. Despite the legions of naysayers who questioned the wisdom of extending the saga of the cranky but lovable Geico Cavemen from 30-second ads to a half-hour sitcom, ABC Entertainment honcho Steve McPherson went ahead and flashed the greenlight.

In the last few months, tabloids and gossip magazines have had a field day reporting on who has just checked into rehab, shown signs of an eating disorder, or gotten arrested. The stars of these stories are usually young celebrities who could potentially serve as examples for today's youth, raising the question, what happens when the shining role models in the spotlight are consistently falling apart?