'm always super-happy when the buzz is something worthwhile. It's even better when I already have a brand affinity. If you haven't heard about Yahoo Buzz then you must have been underwater and news was white noise.

Let's face it. Ad agencies don't get Web 2.0. Nor do they get the so-called "living Web." Not only that, agencies seldom present themselves with any pride. On one hand, you have stale, amateur agency sites that are throwbacks to the late nineties. On the other, you have rich-media, Flash-based clichés - useless caricatures before they even leave the gate. That's partly why my vote for "agency of the year" since 2006 has been a firm nobody.

Yes, another column about ad networks. I know that probably dozens of folks have written or opined on the topic over the last couple of weeks, many reacting to the recent spate of news about networks, from ESPN's announcement to stop working with some networks to Washingtonpost./Newsweek.com's decision to shutter its blog ad network, to the news that Forbes.com has 400 blog affiliates in its new network. All of this against the backdrop of many premium publishers openly questioning whether working with ad networks is undermining their brands and their premium-brand-focused ad sales efforts.

Many media planners use ad networks, and rightfully so, as they're a great tool and provide great services -- but after some personal research I conducted over the last couple of weeks, I've concluded that many planners are using them incorrectly.

So you're a "traditional" media company. You watched as attention shifted toward a more fragmented new-media landscape. The attention shift on its own is not nearly as big a deal as an outsider might think, because you knew a little secret: As long as brand dollars stayed with those media outlets where it felt safe, Google and its algorithm-based ilk could have the direct marketing budgets of the long tail, and you would be just fine. But recently things have started to change....

While at OMMA Hollywood last week, I met a new friend in the business. Turns out we went to the same college and graduated around the same time. As we got to talking, he asked me if I Twitter. Smirkingly, I admitted I haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet.

One of the most prominent narratives in computing and artificial intelligence has been a computer capable of beating the world chess champion. That historical day arrived on May 11, 1997, when IBM's Deep Blue narrowly defeated then-champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match. Yet while the world's infatuation with master-chess-playing computers has leveled off, a similar man-versus-machine debate is likely to become more prominent in our advertising industry.

Online ad money is moving into premium content environments, and the portals and major online ad platforms are probably not going to be the ones selling it.

Last week I was introduced to the idea of visual search. If you haven't heard about it yet, then take special note, because I think this will be important. Visual search is the concept of reorganizing and representing search results in a graphical manner

Consider me shocked. I hadn't heard any official stats on what candidates were spending online this campaign, but I assumed it had to be quite a bit. So imagine my surprise when I hear on talk radio that of the massive amount of money candidates are spending this election, only about 1% will be spent online.