We don't have to go back to the Dutch Tulip Mania in 1636 & '37, or the South Seas Bubble in the early 1700s, to know that markets can be wrong. In my humble business lifetime we have had the Internet stock bubble, and the market gave us a housing bubble. Gas station attendants got mortgages to buy McMansions. Math geniuses made presentations at investment conferences on how data about past default experience proved the default rates would be low and the returns would be high.

Question from a buyer: With viewable impression standards coming as a soon-to-be reality, why would premium sites even have "run of site," as the ROS impressions go into the exchanges for real-time bidding anyway?

For the past several years, I've been fortunate enough to take part in the "Hypertargeting" panel at Digital Hollywood. The session is always well-attended and generates a wide array of perspectives. Even though technology to identify, optimize and deliver to appropriate audiences is constantly improving, the fundamentals have remained largely unchanged for more than a decade. In our panel last Friday, I aimed to provoke discussion about the ways marketers and publishers can leverage smart targeting to obtain a better result.

Newton's third law of physics says that very action has an equal and opposite reaction. It's a principle that can very often be applied in the world of business. One example of how Newton's law impacts the marketing business is how low-display pricing has driven online publishers to focus on custom marketing solutions, "complete solutions" that combine webinar sponsorships, microsites, promotions, social media marketing etc., and simple "native advertising."

Question from a seller: We have a dramatic increase in page views because of the recent hurricane. That caused a spike in impressions, and many campaigns fulfilled earlier than their scheduled end dates. What should I say to those clients?

Recently MediaPost's Online Media Daily ran a story announcing the relaunch of AOL's Project Devil, featuring closer integration with the company's Pictela management platform. It's exciting news for AOL, which promised to "wow the industry" with Devil in late 2010. We're genuinely happy for our colleagues at AOL. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and as one of the larger portals in the industry, AOL can help attract big brand budgets to the online channel with their retooled offering. But in my opinion, the story shouldn't be about the relaunch of Project Devil as an AOL …

One thing I have learned in 18 years of working in digital publishing is that the Internet is so big that every idea will be tried. Many, many bad ideas along with good ideas are launched and fierce market forces will sort out the winners from the losers. Then the winners will immediately face new competition, forcing them to evolve to survive. One example of this evolution is the metamorphosis of advertising networks developed to serve and track advertising, and then to fill unsold inventory for publishers.

Question from a buyer: It seems lately I'm finding it harder to justify buying inventory on premium content sites. So many options exist to buy audiences based on data; I wonder if the content around an ad really matters any more. And the premium sites tell me that they can use data so that is like an endorsement. Is reaching audiences through data the only way to go now?

In news that hasn't happened, Facebook has acquired Twitter. Consumers drove this deal not yet struck between two millennial CEOs who will delete their egos and download uncanny common sense to make this merger happen. The combined company may be renamed "Facetweet."

With the 24/7 ecosystem of information and content available online, it's safe to assume today's readers know most of the top and breaking news stories of the day before they even reach your site. Perhaps they caught the basics in a podcast on the way to work, on Twitter or Facebook, or maybe in a newsletter or an RSS broadcast. In today's world, how people come across news is irrelevant; all that's important is that if they are interested in a certain topic, they are going to want something new the next time they go searching for a subject.