Much was made this week of the predictions made by Jupiter analysts regarding the growth of our industry. I've been paying close attention to the criticism, at least as much as I have to the predictions themselves. This is not only because I've been critical of analysts' predictions before in this space. It's also because I think Jupiter's predictions are on target, as far as these things go.

I've written before about the possibility that man, in his quest for greater and greater control over information and content, threatens to isolate himself from the rest of the world and the role the Internet plays in it.

We've known there is more value to an online impression than the click for several years now. But with all the excitement in the industry over immediate click-to-buy action centered on media venues like paid search and contextually-targeted text links, it doesn't hurt to be reminded.

It's beginning to feel a lot like... July, 1999 with all the news of consolidations and mergers in the ad industry! What does the new wave of consolidation in our space mean for the industry as a whole? Is this a sign of continued consolidation and the eventual landscape evolution mirroring that of the traditional space or is this an anomaly as companies look to "un-bundle" services?

As many of you know, I am in Boston. The city has transformed into a place I've never seen. It's all for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) being held this week. We've got red zones for security purposes, highways and roads shut down, etc. About 15,000 people covering event happenings, along with several bloggers who've been credentialed to cover the event. Roughly 200 applied and 35 were accepted.

We've known there is more value to an online impression than the click for several years now. But with all the excitement in the industry over immediate click-to-buy action centered on media venues like paid search and contextually-targeted text links, it doesn't hurt to be reminded.

By now, some of you may be tired of my quarterly screeds on how misperceived privacy matters are within our industry, and within the media and marketing industries as a whole. It's not that so many readers complain to me that I'm wrong or anything. They just complain that the issue doesn't matter so much.

Is advertising pricing on the rise? Is inventory selling out?

For at least a year, and in the last month in earnest, the trade press has been replete with tirades, polemics, evangelism, and meditations about the blog as a marketing platform.

Last week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Nielsen//Netratings released research showing a definitive lift in brand awareness stemming from search results. Flying in the face of industry convention that text ads do pretty much bupkus for brands, the research study showed that people exposed to search ads were 27 percent more likely than a control group to name the brand listed in the top search spot when asked to name a leading brand within a tested category.