When I tell people I run an ad agency, they tend to ask the same question: Why would anyone need an ad agency? The answer lies in how people adapt as the marketplace evolves.

Ah, the limelight. The red carpet. The glitz and glamour that attends the entertainment industry.  And above all, the intense public attention.

It was only a dozen years ago that Netscape kicked off the first Internet boom with an initial public offering that sent its stock value up nearly threefold on the first day of trading. Of course, a company can only coast on an IPO for so long. Netscape, now a subsidiary of AOL, has long since lost its leading-browser status.

Big brands are increasingly trying to create marketing campaigns that consumers will not just accept, but actively embrace. But if merely showing users ads will no longer do the trick - and many experts say that's a given - what will?

Just as once obscure innovations such as Ajax, RSS, and social tagging helped define Web 2.0, so a new generation of technologies are emerging that could shape the next stage of the Internet's evolution. Each offers an upgrade of sorts to the online tools that have become second-nature over the last few years.

My 15-year-old daughter Samantha obliterated any line between virtual and real long ago. At age 4, her first action-heroine was Tomb Raider's Lara Croft.

We're still feeling our way around Web 2.0 and all its implications. Who wants to talk about a 3.0 right now?

Eighteen-year-old New Yorker Sophie is not trying to catch up to the accelerating pace of Web change. The Web is trying to catch up to her.

Marketers often view e-mail as a one-size-fits-all proposition, regardless of the product or service being touted.  But not in the entertainment world. In fact, music, film, and TV execs are far more eager to experiment with e-mail than their more staid counterparts in other industries.

My online roots go back to what I'll call Web minus 3.0. I was once business editor for the first interactive foray made by CBS - back when Bill Paley ran the company - and it was called videotex.