For those of you who have been reading my columns, you know my mantra is building, stewarding and protecting brands online. That being said, when you think of luxury brands online, what comes to mind? Well, I think of a few beautifully designed Web sites like David Yurman's and Rolex's. However, I can't think of many more.

"Why don't my server-log files match up with the comScore Media Metrix or Netratings stats?" When I worked at Media Metrix in the late '90s, and later at comScore following its acquisition of Media Metrix, I heard that question (and plea) thousands of times. In in the aggressive game of chest-beating over reach and audience, publishers couldn't easily ignore the discrepancies between panel-measurement ratings and their own server-log numbers.

By now, I am sure that you are all tired of reading news, analysis and commentaries on Google's announced intention to buy DoubleClick. Don't worry. This is not going to be yet another "Insider baseball" analysis of the likely winners and losers in the deal. It is not going to be yet another "Kremlinologist-like" analysis of what the deal will mean to the market dynamics among Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, independent and vertical publishers. Plenty of that commentary has already been written. Plenty more will be written. I would like to focus instead on if the deal will grow our …

Over the last few days there's been a lot of buzz generated (again) by Google deciding to make a move and purchase DoubleClick. Every journalist and pundit has offered his or her take on this action, creating even more hoopla over a company that is already one of the biggest and most profitable companies in the U.S. What I find interesting, however, is that people are focusing their attention on the obvious rather than the repercussions of these various moves on our immediate industry: media planning and buying.

You can measure the rate of change in an industry by the number of conferences held to address key issues and discuss innovative solutions. In turn you can discern the amount of money at stake by the conference pricing and volume of conference attendance. By these, or any other measurements, Web 2.0 is at the zenith of a rollercoaster ride and VCs have made sure to stuff the cars with cash.

In my typical frenetic Friday hoop-jumping I stopped in my tracks. Within a matter of a few minutes I had 32 email alerts and feeds announcing Google's biggest acquisition to date -- a whopping $3.1 billion dollars for none other than DoubleClick. Google's been trying to get into the display ad space. So think about it, now Google has access to reams of ad campaign data and instant tenured relationships with advertisers and Web publishers at large.

Who cares what you think! How good is customer experience in the eyes of your customers? Julie Katz of Forrester Research this week reported on new research from fellow analyst Cindy Commander that sought to answer this very question. She suggested that "80% of companies believe they're delivering superior experiences to their customers, but only 8% of customers agree."

I was fortunate to hear an extraordinary talk last night at the Interactive Advertising Bureau board dinner by David Kenney, the CEO of Digitas. He spoke about the challenges that online advertising faces. His message was simple, engaging and, in the end, a clear call to action.

Our industry is not slowing down, and one way to stay ahead of the pack and maintain an advantage is to identify the trends behind what's happening and anticipate where they'll take you. I find this the most interesting part of what I do every day. To that end, I wanted to share with you what I've identified as some of the more interesting trends shaping the marketplace.

Prediction markets fascinate me. Who can argue with the idea of creating markets for ideas? The basic premise of predictions markets is to aggregate the opinions of "the many" in a competitive and efficient manner, most commonly representing a stock market. While I definitely want to dedicate an entire Spin to actual advertising prediction markets, for today I want to look at the ideas whose stock should be soaring.