After a year of hype and edgy TV spots amid reports of disappointing subscriber numbers, Amp'd Mobile started getting traction for its youth-oriented wireless media model in last quarter of '06, when 70,000 signed on. It began 2007 with 100,000 subscribers.

With the rush to web ads, radio can feel like a quaint old medium. The time was ripe for change. That's the opportunity SoftWave Media Exchange tuned in to when it debuted its easy tool for purchasing spot radio ads from your desktop.

In-game ads are getting a lot of play. Google became the new owner of in-game ad company Adscape Media in March. This comes after Microsoft acquired Massive for $200 million last summer.

It was inevitable that sooner or later online video would evolve beyond inane soap-boxing and lip-syncing into something more polished. Indeed, two years after three 20-something launched YouTube from their garage, "professionally" produced online video is starting to catch on with both users and the media.

Meet the latest online video star: Adam Schleichkorn, 25, who has become famous for "fence plowing," or jumping into a fence at full speed to knock it down. "A week ago, no one knew who I was - now my name has been on every news and talk show," the Huntington, N.Y., resident told The New York Times. "So I'm known as the fence-plowing kid," he continued. "At least I'm known."

When Bob Coen took the stage in a midtown Manhattan ballroom last December to present his outlook for the advertising business in 2007, his movements were a little frailer and his voice a lot softer than anytime in the past 66 years that he has made his annual predictions. Coen, the octogenarian director of forecasting at Universal McCann and Madison Avenue's de facto scorekeeper, is now older than a lot of the media he tracks, and some think that might be reflected in the way he views the role of a few of the new forms of advertising.

The Bush Administration has always been much better at marketing its ideas than actually making them work, but even the brightest minds who remain within the foundering White House brain trust have had a tough time selling the American people on the need for a "troop surge" in order to turn the tide in Iraq.

We swim in a sea of data. Focus groups, transactions, all sorts of surveys, Web traffic, assorted non-sale responses, TV meters, portable meters, mall intercepts, and contests - and that's just to name a few. But what matters, and what's the value? These are becoming strategic questions for many companies. Answers lie in what metrics can be used to run your business.

In the halcyon days of the dot-com boom I was fond of quoting Charles Darwin, citing him as the original New Media Guru. After all, this was the fellow who, in 1859, wrote: "Many more species are born than can possibly survive."