The phenomenon of PayPerPost--the service that connects advertisers with bloggers willing to post product reviews in exchange for dollars--could be on the verge of exploding. OK, let's pause. There is one troubling fact about these pay-to-say schemes: expectations and rules of disclosure are all over the board among the services themselves, as well as the bloggers and advertisers for whom the services play matchmaker.

Late last week, Heather Green of BusinessWeek Online's Blogspotting had a great post about a recent survey conducted by the American Marketing Association on how consumers feel about consumer-generated ads. The AMA's survey compared how people felt about advertising from companies that used only professional advertising creative to those that included consumer-generated creative. Results were surprising.

Internet, radio, and print. Has anyone else noticed what's conspicuously absent in Google's arsenal? Google is fast becoming a cross-media solution unmatched by any other source, but it's only a matter of time before it jumps into TV.

If you want to watch video online, you certainly have no shortage of choices. There is so much content and so many destinations, one could easily come to the conclusion that there are too many options. How long can the market (or more accurately, venture capital) support them all? To handicap the race to online video supremacy, you have to consider the major components of the online video ecosystem; interface, content and monetization.

Today's media offers so many choices, I don't think you'd argue that consumers are more time-starved than ever. True, all things digital have gained in popularity, usage and fluency. So it's only natural that market share shifts. And, yes, the online environment is taking time away from other media. Which is the most vulnerable, you ask? Newspapers seem to be.

YouTube is a terribly addictive game. Well, not exactly. Technically, it's a video-syndication platform, comment-enabled content database, a raging video-sharing portal and, most important, a very satisfying way to channel-surf and find niche programming you really want to watch. But after revisiting a column I wrote back in June at the Supernova confab on disruptive technologies, I realized that YouTube's popularity is thriving, at least in part, through its ability to nail the sweet spot of so-called "game mechanics."

After several years of an ad network landscape dominated largely by Ad.com, 24/7 Real Media and ValueClick and vertical plays like Jumpstart Automotive Media and the Travel Ad Network, we have scores of new ad networks on the scene. Why? Here are some of the reasons.

Welcome to the beginning of Web 3.0--now defined as the "Semantic Web." It's got a long way to go, but it basically refers to the ability to layer technology on top of the existing Web that makes it even easier to guide the user through information and aggregate disparate sources together for ease of use.

I would recommend that anybody in the video advertising or production world watch last week's "Studio 60." Interlaced with the show's plot was a debate between the president of NBS (the fictional NBC) and the producer of "Studio 60" (the fictional "Saturday Night Live") regarding product placement. The great part about the setting for the debate was the layers: the real show's writers having characters, who are writers and producers themselves, discussing the issues of product placement and possible solutions. All the while, there were all sorts of "the right kind" of product placements during the show.

As we all roll back into work today, let's not forget it's Cyber Monday--supposedly one of the biggest shopping days of the year online. But is this hype by marketers?