The Internet promises to be a medium in which we can build mass against niche audiences. The problem is, how do we identify niche audiences when they’re so incredibly obscure?

Nielsen//NetRatings reported last week that less than 10% of marketers use pop-ups. The trade press, including MediaPost, iMedia and others seemed to jump on the slant that inferred that pop-ups are turning out to be a smaller factor than initially thought. We disagree with that conclusion.

Forbes.com on Wednesday told the world that it won’t charge advertisers for placements that prove completely ineffective. This is certainly not the first pay-for-performance guarantee in the industry, but it is a new type of guarantee and it's long overdue.

While we continue to try and make the online advertising industry live and breath comfortably, both buyers and sellers of online media find themselves more closely alligned than is usual. The practice of buying and selling has traditionally been one of contest. But now, we hear more and more about "partnership." Buyers and sellers are suddenly playing out their roles on the same side of the table. Just how close is too close when what lies at the heart of the job is negotiating?

At least once per quarter, someone from the sales side asks me, “What makes a good sales rep?” Very, very rarely do any media people I know sit back and think, “What makes a good media buyer?” In our industry, as well as in other facets of our lives, it becomes important to re-evaluate how we do our jobs, and our industry probably doesn’t do this often enough.

There is something that’s been bothering me for quite some time now. No, it isn’t the sound of the war drum that the Bush administration is beating. It isn’t Bloomberg’s proposed smoking ban for bars and restaurants. It isn’t even the irreconcilability of Cartesian dualism or the geopolitical significance of Macedonia. It has to do with pop-up inventory.

I’ve come across two issues recently regarding research, where in one case there was entirely too much transparency, while in the other - a deceptive shell game. Though the fatalist in me voices that “chaos theory” rules supreme, the cynic wonders whether it’s more “Keystone cops” than anything else. Which is more irresponsible?

One of the biggest challenges in this business is getting paid for one's work. If you've been in the media planning and buying business for any length of time, you've witnessed first-hand how financial foul-ups can ruin the best media campaigns.

What is the day in the life of an online media planner/buyer they really like? I’ve been asked this question from time to time when interviewing prospective employees and my usual the answer has been, “There is no routine. Things change from day to day and it totally depends on where in the planning cycle you are.” I just came to a realization that this is not true anymore.

Much has been written about the inefficiencies of buying and selling Internet advertising. But what about the cost of research and resources to the buyers and sellers? This is another factor in the willingness of major agencies and major clients to participate in all that the medium has to offer.