Until recently, we talked about the distinction between analog and digital as if one was better than the other. Nostalgia for rituals led some to abandon their digital cameras in favor of film and buy albums on vinyl instead of via iTunes. This is changing, though: The generations behind us have never lived in a world without the Internet, so they don't see a distinction between online and offline. Instead of competing, digital and analog channels are beginning to function together seamlessly, complementing and enhancing each other.

Turns out we're not creatures of habit when we watch television shows on the Web. The highest-rated on-air shows don't translate into online popularity, according to Watercooler, which runs the 16 million-strong tvloop.com online community on social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

It might turn out that the most unrealistic and Pollyannish aspect of the fake July 4, 2009, "Iraq War Ends" edition of The New York Times distributed by pranksters last November was that the phony front page contained no display ads. The New York Times had never sullied its front page with display ads, at least not until the fearful economic climate and plummeting ad revenue got the best of them.

Ads can basically pop up anywhere these days - from the newspaper to the phone to the road to the air to the coffee shop. The variety of innovative advertising formats suggests no pre-set limits for imagination. Not so when it comes to underlying strategies; they remain unwaveringly old school. The industry seems to cling to a convention that there are but two distinctive objectives a campaign can pursue: direct response or branding.

Make no mistake: It's clear that a recession, perhaps even a depression, is here. Consumer confidence has plummeted along with the markets. Advertising expenditures are being pulled back. What does this mean for research?

Do you think you are successful? Ambitious? In this era, when our economic ecosystem stares in the face of fabulous failure, our own personal successes and ambitions can become much more powerfully luminous to each of us. My own lens on ambition was profoundly refocused about 15 years ago when I visited India and took the opportunity to meet a spiritual philosopher - a budding Deepak Chopra, if you will.

Are you kidding me? Those words reverberated in my head upon reading a recent column in this magazine. The piece, "Don't Give Up Just Yet" (October 2008), reported on a major study conducted by Yankelovich and Sequent Partners that revealed what was posited as a silver lining amidst the storm clouds facing traditional media today: Despite their rapid migration to new media, consumers like - and are more responsive to - advertising in traditional channels. The author, J. Walker Smith, suggested this finding might be a reason not to lose faith in old-school media quite yet.

When i first heard the premise of mad men it made me, well - mad. Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative amc drama follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell.

In honor of the month that brings us valentine's day, I'm dedicating this column to creating a meaningful connection - between your left brain and your right brain. Though not exactly a tale of romance, you may find your customers showing you some love as a result.

Remember the days when technology belonged to adults? Parents would shop for it, buy it, install it, and caution the kids not to break it. Today, children are the technology experts. They are teaching their parents about new technologies and how to use them. They are the digital natives, and they are leaving the rest of us behind. In some ways, technology is the new generation gap.