To commemorate Advertising Week and one of its top buzzwords--engagement--I'd like to share with you my recent video interview with Dr. Joe Plummer, chief research officer of the Advertising Research Foundation. Beyond a lifetime of contributions to advertising research, Plummer is largely responsible for leading the industry's efforts to make engagement part of the measurement and planning mix.

In the old days of advertising and marketing, people that did branding and people that focused on ROI were polar opposites. They lived on different ends of the world. The former were in the high end of the advertising world, where it was all about sizzle and premium traditional media environments, the latter were in the less glamorous direct marketing world. No more.

It's obvious that Internet spending is continuing to increase, with some reports stating growth as high as 74 percent year over year, but what about the rest of what I call "digital" media? Digital media, in my mind, goes far beyond that of our current online definition and includes the digital extensions of traditional media. Digital outdoor, digital television and mobile are all extensions of another format--and as dollars increase against these formats, where are the dollars accrued?

It's one of the advertising agency executive's classic laments: "The client won't spend in the medium because he doesn't use it himself." Yes, such reasoning is incredibly lame. But we ought not to confuse the "Focus Group of One" situation (as I like to refer to it) with smart business sense and good intuition.

According to the OMMA conference Web site, "The industry is literally re-inventing itself every few months." As a writer and a digital media and marketing exec, I can't help but hone in on the word "re-inventing." I think it's natural evolution, as a high-speed media. Let's face it, those of us who've been in this space since the first online ad was sold in 1994, have had to stay ahead of the curve.

I'm an evangelist of interactive and social media--I have been for over a decade. I've always been an optimist and I remain one today. So it is with mixed feelings that I've decided to privatize a majority of the pictures on my Flickr photo-sharing site . From now on, anyone who ever enjoyed regular, open access to my photos, along with full ability to pass them along and leave comments, will now need to request a password from me. Bummer!

How far will you go to create a rocking viral campaign? How far will you go to spread the word? We are marketers, but we also have friends. Our friends have friends. Would you pimp your friends out to try to spread the word about a new product?

I was reading a book over the weekend called Convergence Culture, by Henry Jenkins. The core element which I took away as I was reading this book is that convergence creates its own culture.

A lot can happen between the time you sign an insertion order to book a media buy and the time you get the bill for it. Many problems can occur--here's how to deal with them.

Someone asked me the other day what it was like in our space now, if things were healthy or if we were struggling as we did back after the Dot-Bust. I don't know what you think, but from where I'm looking, business is great.