The guys in the neighborhood are throwing their wallets into the online pool. Local online ad spending will grow 48 percent in 2008 to $12.6 billion, driven by a healthy influx of search and local online video dollars, according to a Borrell Associates report.

Next time you log onto Netflix to discreetly order that Showgirls DVD, you can thank the kind researchers at AT&T Labs for suggesting you try fellow guilty pleasures Stiptease, Indecent Proposal, and Coyote Ugly, too.

It seems that marketers will soon be hoping to be invited in for a pot of tea. "Two-way marketing" is an emerging trend where companies hope to get a little more involved in the lives of consumers.

Hispanic-American buying power is going through the roof and marketers are throwing a casa party. By 2011, the segment will overtake African Americans as the ethnic group with the largest disposable income, according to The Selig Center, with spending reaching $1.2 trillion.

When VixenLove was younger, she would stay up late surfing chat rooms, trying to meet as many men as she could. With each conversation, she improved her ability to understand, interpret and respond to each guy's comments.

Ozzy Osbourne might not be the only one whose brain has been affected by a blizzard of chemicals. Advertisers suddenly see the marketing upside in online (though slightly borderline) personalities.

We often talk about "the bar" when we talk about barriers to entry into a certain space. For example, you might say "Google has set the bar very high for any new search engine competitors." I'm mostly interested in how low the bar is to get online in the sense of publishing.

A curtain has been ripped away - and everyone wants a peek. The day Facebook opened its social graph to marketers, unveiling Facebook Ads, it sent a longed-for invitation to view and use its signature high-contrast, ultra-detailed online grid of interlocking social networks.

Last June, mysterious posts began appearing on forums frequented by gamers. They seemed to come from an artificial intelligence, and each was accompanied by a logo of unknown origin.

The M&A game looked like an especially manic round of Hungry, Hungry Hippos in 2007. A good deal of time and money was spent shoring up digital core competencies. More than 141 digital properties were acquired in the first three-quarters last year.