Have you ever been in a dinner conversation with friends and heard someone exclaim about their favorite television commercial? Unfortunately, most advertising is judged by that, its entertainment value, since - as we all know - measuring brand retention is a far less sexy and, well, less entertaining matter. I'm continually impressed by how many times that conversation includes those most vocal not knowing what the ad is for.

Although contextual advertising -- advertising found in or surrounded by content that has affinity with a product or service, such as articles or search results -- has been around for years, suddenly what was once old is new again and the tactic is hotter than that night that the lights went out and the air conditioners stopped humming.

This past week was REALLY strange. First of all, I spent much of this past week reading about, and watching, the newest reality show that has captivated the nation called, "Who Wants To Be A Governor?" The show stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gary Coleman, and Larry Flynt as Sacramento hopefuls as they battle their arch-nemesis Gray Davis as well as all forms of rationale thought!

Our industry has been under consistent pressure over the past few years to make online media fit into traditional planning and buying processes and models. We want this. It makes it easier for clients to treat online media like any other medium in the mix.

What a week it's been. I don't know about where you are, but Boston has been a rainy mess for the past couple of weeks. To top it all off, my modem got blasted by lightening. I spent almost three days on dial up. Sure we online advertising folk boast that almost half the online population has broadband. But what about the other half?

A week or so ago someone posted a question to a discussion list I belong to about an anomaly he noticed in some brand studies that were conducted for a client of his over the course of a year. Basically what this person wanted to know was how is it that brand awareness levels could drop from one season to the next when the exact same media vehicles, media weight, and length of flight were used. The question got me thinking...

Never were truer words spoken as it appears last week's column touched a nerve. I listed off some of my pet peeves about our industry and many of you replied about what you felt your "favorite" issues were. This spurred some more thinking on Sunday afternoon centered on our inabilities to communicate to one another.

What do you think about when you hear about online dating? Well, if you are like me, you probably don't have great things running through your head. But online dating is a serious business. The category represents the highest earned revenue than any other on the Web today. Jupiter predicts 2003 revenues to hit $313 million.

Contextual advertising is taking off in a big way, and the industry is taking steps toward converting chunks of run of the mill ROS or RON inventory into contextually-targeted placements. These contextually relevant placements are orders of magnitude greater from a performance standpoint than ROS or RON, both in terms of clicks and conversions. But how do contextual ads work?

Much has been made recently of the success of the fast growing online dating sector, with Match.com, Yahoo! personals and multiple, other, more demographically-targeted services such as Jdate proliferating. Match.com has been such a revenue producer for Barry Diller's USA Interactive that the company bought Udate.com, which also operates kiss.com, in December....