Well, it's Valentine's Week. For those of you who know me, I'm not a big softie. However, from time to time I could be considered a hopeless romantic. Valentine's Day online and offline is not something to ignore, as the sales predictions may just make your heart skip a beat.

Steve Jobs' open letter to the music industry regarding digital rights management for music files this week has escalated the debate tremendously. In a carefully crafted essay posted to the Apple Web site -- concurrent with growing concern over DRM in many European countries -- Jobs argues that copy protection hinders sales and upsets consumers. Jobs is now calling for the music industry to let Apple and others sell songs without DRM restrictions.

Green is a hot topic these days. It has been virtually impossible to listen, watch, read or browse any national or business news source over the past several weeks without running into stories relating to carbon emissions or the "greening" of popular issues around the world. The cover of the past issue of The Economist was titled, "The Greening of America." Almost every day for the past 15 days there has been a story in The Wall Street Journal about a green issue. And, to top it off, almost every major ad trade over the past three weeks has had …

This week's announcement that Viacom required YouTube to pull down all copyrighted material signals to me that there is still a very short-term view being applied to this burgeoning distribution model for video content. Think about this for one moment: Why can't these publishers find a way to harness the interest and audience for their videos from remote locations and drive them to other copyrighted content? NBC learned its lesson, so you'd think Viacom might as well.

A recent USA Today piece notes that the Federal Communications Commission may soon force cable and wireless networks to unbundle their service offerings from device sales. If this happens, may I be the first to say: thank you, FCC! Given the importance of television and its content in everyday lives, the lack of large-scale innovation in the way we watch and/or interact with television has been more than a little frustrating.

I'm from New England. Yes, I am a Pats fan. Sniff sniff. However, I was still a trouper and geared up for the ads. After all, aren't they the Holy Grail of advertising? Well, to sum it up -- I think they pretty much sucked... again.

Let's face it. If you respond to a survey these days, that makes you an anomaly. Thanks to excessive commercial survey solicitations -- interceptive, disruptive, too long and delivering little in return -- consumers frequently avoid them with as much determination as they do advertising. But some surveys present challenges that are potentially worse than simple reluctance among respondents to cooperate. When surveys intrude, confuse or offend, they can lead to brand erosion, and even brand backlash.

By now, most of you probably know that most of Boston was locked down yesterday in traffic jams and mass transit delays because of a guerilla marketing campaign gone bad....

I was traveling last week just outside of Philadelphia -- and whenever I travel, I make it a point to observe how the local population interacts with media, using this as a gauge of whether what we do on a day-to-day basis is yet relevant to the "average Joe." As it turns out, I had stumbled upon a quaint little town called "Media." What better town to study as a proxy for the "average Joe"!

I would like to discuss what I feel is the key to so-called "next generation" advertising. The goal of advertising will always be to increase sales, but the role of advertising has to evolve. Advertising is changing from the buying and selling of peoples' attention with only implied consent, to a system requiring explicit consent of the people. Sustainable business models throughout the media and advertising value chain will focus on how to seamlessly integrate, and even enhance, content with advertising. These will be sustainable; these will be the superstars.