Gillian Smith is the first to point out that she didn't major in marketing, doesn't have an M.B.A., and is not the first person on her block to acquire the newest, hottest technology.

History buff Ted Moon learned how to take on the bigger, better-funded telecom competition from a study of Gettysburg. His hero, Gen. John Buford, held off Confederate soldiers by defending the high ground before the enemy understood the terrain.

Though Mary Bermel is consistently hailed by her peers as a leader in interactive marketing, to hear her tell it, she's as much a follower as a leader.

At a recent get-together, the conversation turned to the many changes that have swept the Internet over the past year. The consensus was that these changes altered the landscape for the better, and now, real money can be made online.

A perception exists among mainstream marketers that Hispanic teenage girls and young women may not be a willing audience for their online pitches.

Online TV is coming. Soon TVS will be hooked up to computers, and online content aggregators such as AOL, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Apple will provide content to larger screens.

Everyone knows that the media landscape is changing very quickly. What is perhaps less accepted is that consumers are changing the way they interact with content faster than we're changing the way they interact with ads. I am not talking about the technology for ad delivery; I'm referring to how users think about ads in the first place.

Financial services companies are among the biggest advertisers on the Internet. In 2005, the industry accounted for 12 percent of all U.S. online advertising - about $1.5 billion of the $12.5 billion total for the year, according to The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Peter Kang has been known to walk into meetings at Saatchi & Saatchi, L.A. with a video game player in his pocket. But Kang, the creative director of interactive and emerging technology, whose sole client is Toyota, isn't just playing -- he's studying.

Hillary Evans was still in college when she landed a freelance gig designing Jolt Cola's first Web site in the early 1990s. "That was the soda that was popular with programmers because it has twice the caffeine of other sodas," she recalls with a laugh.