I find it odd, now that we live in a world in which it’s relatively trivial to ascertain actual performance on the advertiser’s site, that more and more media sellers are shying away from CPA deals and instead falling back on the bad old CPC.

I’ve had more than one discussion with very knowledgeable media and marketing professionals in this space who aren’t convinced that reach/frequency really matters when discussing online advertising. I disagree that reach & frequency have no place in determining values of online marketing. The reason I do believe in R/F as being one of the fundamental pieces missing from the interactive puzzle is this:

Paid Search Results are all the rage in online marketing these days and for very good reason -- they work. That being said, who owns the rights to these search services?

Back in my traditional advertising days, it was not uncommon for me to submit a prototypical plan to my supervisor, and have her say to me, “That’s great. Let me see what reach at the 3+ frequency level looks like if you use six radio networks instead of five.” Think for a second about how much of a headache a similar scenario would be in interactive media.

I believe that clients ought to be evaluating their media services (and other agency services) based on a concept I will call TCS or total cost of service. Here's what I mean.

Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I’m pretty sure the last thing you’ll be looking for in this article is me bringing up things that need to be addressed to improve our industry. Instead I thought I’d have a little fun and recognize some of the things that our industry has brought to me over the years… my own little Industry Thanksgiving.

It seems we’ve gotten to the heart of the issue surrounding the latest round of lawsuits against behavioral marketing company Gator. In my opinion, the issue is one of publisher control over consumer’s desktops. It seems that publishers involved in the suit think they should have ultimate control over how their websites are displayed to consumers. This view makes absolutely no sense to me. Why are these publishers picking on Gator exclusively?

In discussions with senior media and management personnel at top agency and media shops at last week's @dTech, a startling trend came to light. Major advertisers are asking and getting bids on Interactive media efforts at 1-3% commission from major Interactive agencies and media agencies.

Certain types of companies have always been easier to convince to test the online waters. It shouldn’t be surprising that these companies are the ones that were first able to sell their wares online. But there remains a secluded category of IP that spends billions of dollars in advertising, yet fails to allow its wares to be delivered electronically.

Howdy, folks. I’m going to try and be short and sweet this week. @d:Tech has now come and gone. Any of you reading MediaPost publications regularly will have some sense of what it was like based on Masha Geller’s daily coverage. But let me add a bit.