Stewardship is the only way to make a good media buy great. Sure, negotiating low CPMs and securing great placements are key to online success. However, in many ways, they are purely theoretical.

Gamification is happening and for the record ... I love it. It has huge potential, but only if we stop trying to make out with it and work to understand it.

Joe Mandese, editor-in-chief of MediaPost here, writing my first-ever one of these typically anonymous Ed:Blogs. Not sure why they've been anonymous up until now, because this whole thing began with OMMA founding editor Tobi Elkin and carried through to the masterful John Capone. But I should've known I'd be writing one of them sooner or later, ever since Capone told us last fall that he was relocating to Napa Valley for eight months while his fiancée, Courtney, completed a sommelier training program at the Culinary Institute of America's annex there. I mean, how could we possibly compete with wine country? …

Airlines, with their on-the-move customers and dependence on fluctuating conditions - like a foot of snow in 12 hours at JFK in New York - have extra incentives to max out their mobile and social media connections with consumers. Spurred on by each other, JetBlue, Delta and Virgin America have upped the ante on marketing and customer service efforts on Facebook, Twitter and mobile apps as air passengers' patience wanes.

In the 20 years since British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee introduced the world's first browser, effectively ushering in the era of the World Wide Web, the simple software application has dominated networked computing as we know it. And even as software giants from Microsoft to Apple to Mozilla and Google continue to battle for dominance in the browser market, a new generation of devices, platforms and services has quietly been changing the way people connect with computer-enabled content, and with each other.

It's been 17 years since DoubleClick served the first ad online - a simple banner for AT&T on hotwire.com - and gazillions of similar ad impressions have been generated in essentially the same way: an ad server sending data to a Web user's browser, which assembled it into little boxes framed on a publisher's page. The dimensions of those boxes have varied over time, and the content contained within has grown richer, as technological advances allowed for animation and full-motion video, giving online advertising the same sight, sound and motion capabilities as the best commercial ever televised. But as visually …

Popular Mechanics calls it "stylish." Autoblog describes it as "seriously attractive," and The Los Angeles Times says its upscale appearance outshines both the "dowdy" Toyota Camry and the "bulbous" Honda Accord.

When Coke Zero entered into a marketing partnership with Disney's Tron: Legacy last fall, the pressure was on to do something spectacular, particularly in the digital and mobile realms given that the film was sure to impress audiences with extraordinary 3-D visuals and computer-generated effects. "It was really important for us within the backdrop of such a breakthrough film to create a cutting-edge marketing plan that allowed for consumers to experience Tron like they haven't experienced it with any other medium," acknowledges Maurice Cooper, senior brand manager of Coke Zero, Coca-Cola North America. "So that was our brief - we …

Clairol's Perfect 10 pairs up with Harper's Bazaar to inspire new hair dos and don'ts

Either you love or hate Farmville. And that's why Farmville, and games like it, are good bets for advertisers - because the users who love social games are also often engaged with the games. And engagement is the magic word these days, because engaged consumers make for good marketing prospects. Brands know this and have taken note of the quick rise in time spent with social games in the last few years.