Last week, I stuck my neck out with the assertion that there is a preponderance of search engine marketing firms (SEMs) who make specious claims regarding their "proprietary technology." The point was this: If we all "invent" a cool bid management tool, that does not necessarily imply that there are differences among these tools. It also does not imply that open source technology is anything special. What I was trying to stress was that the best SEM firms live and die on the same value proposition that the best agencies live and die on - the relationships they attain …

The cookie has been a subject of debate from the moment of its inception and throughout most of the life of the commercial Web. From the time the first crumb of a cookie allowed for tracking of actions taken by a particular individual surfing the Web, marketers and advertisers grew excited by the prospects. Tracking media consumption at a user level foretold of great things to come in marketing.

Many of you know I read just about everything I can get my hands on. This endless pursuit of information allows me to view the world from the eyes of the average consumer, through the lens of popular culture. Viewing things through this set of eyes allows me to attempt to understand human behavior and how it affects advertising and marketing. Typically, this is rather effective, however one article I read this week threw me for a bit of a loop.

Given a recent Association of National Advertisers (ANA) survey that indicates accountability is the top consideration among senior marketing professionals at large companies, I have to wonder how certain alternative marketing tactics have gained ground recently. Online marketing has striven to make itself as accountable as possible with respect to marketer communication goals. We have the ability to measure both brand metrics and direct response metrics better than any other medium. There are online marketing programs blazing a trail into understanding the effect of online advertising on moving product off the shelves in the packaged goods category.

Everywhere you look someone is talking about search engine marketing (SEM). Sales in the United States from advertiser-paid search results are expected to increase 25 percent this year to $3.2 billion, up from $2.5 billion in 2003, according to eMarketer. I couldn't attend the Search Engine Strategies show recently but my colleagues said it was still clad with clutter. Everyone claimed to have "proprietary" tools, killer services, and the best solution out there. Well that's a lot of crap.

Tough to take this headline seriously, isn't it? That's what all headlines begin to look like, however, when the dozens of search engine marketing (SEM) firms exhibiting at yet another bursting-at-the-seams Search Engine Strategies (SES) event start their PR engines.

For a long time, media folks were not terribly public when it came to what they did for clients. They were the "lesser thans" in an agency, relegated to the nerdery where they would do things with numbers and syndicated research and whatever work they did, made its way to the client via an account executive with a rare outing to see the client. Creative was what it was all about. Creative product was something that could be seen and heard and, to some extent, touched. And it was something that others would see and that would in turn …

No, this is not a sports column. But it invites you to look at something through a different set of eyes. I want to take a moment to congratulate someone. I come to you today as a proud graduate of Syracuse University when I recognize that this past weekend, Jim Boeheim celebrated his 700th win at Syracuse in a game against Providence.

It's a ritual I've been through many times over the years - disconnecting one's old cable boxes and bringing them to the local cable company's office for a trade-in and an upgrade in service. Since moving back to Long Island last fall, I've had to put up with the inferior cable TV service dictated by my old converters and coaxial wiring - inferior in the sense that the service is a far cry from what I was used to in Manhattan. So I spent a Saturday morning recently trading in my old boxes, signing up for a new service offering, …

I was with a group of non-advertising related people this weekend and thought about this. As much as there is to love, there's a lot to hate about the Net. So here goes (in random order): Email scams. This is straight out of the "duh" factor dear readers. No bones about it, spam sucks. The fact that e-mail marketing has become so challenged is a pain. Whether it's acquisition or retention, we need this stuff. At least e-mail clients have spam-filtering software now. Somehow this stuff keeps creeping in. This weekend I got an "FBI" e-mail. Hey, if the …