It's early in 2008, and yet it's clear that video adverting and monetization will be the problem that either one of the big four (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL), or one of the media powerhouses (NBC, Viacom, CBS, Disney, News Corp.) or some upstart (too many to list) will crack. They have to this year, right? There was even a strike here in Hollywood over how the revenue is going to be split up. There has been a steady increase in media consumed online. Some of the brightest minds in the industry are fully invested in solving this problem. Except 2008 …

f you've followed me for any length of time you've probably found that I'm often dubbed a branding gal. It's one of my biggest passions. Whether I'm pitching new business, servicing existing clients, at a speaking gig or teaching college students, I always ask the question, "Name some top brands." As nebulous as the question sounds, I almost immediately get answers. Think about it for a moment. How would you answer?

Editor's Note: Dave Morgan's Spin column was meant to blast on Thursday, but because of email snafus, did not. We're still sticking with the headline "Today's News." Today has been a big day for news. Not only did the U.S. Navy ship Lake Erie shoot down a dying spy satellite that was falling from orbit, but Microsoft announced that it is going to "open up" its software platforms, Google announced the launch of a CPM-based Web video network, AdSense for Video, and Reed Elsevier announced several major transactions to reduce its exposure to "cyclical" advertising markets by selling magazines like …

Seth Godin recently expressed on his blog dissatisfaction with marketing-centric terms, where a person is defined by the marketer, not the other way around. This includes the words "prospect" and "target". He then asks: "Isn't it interesting that there isn't even a name for someone who doesn't yet have a relationship with the marketer?" So Godin settles on "citizen." I agree with Godin in spirit, and especially with his dislike of the word "target" (which, similar to the common marketing term "penetrate," sounds phallic and motivated by testosterone). But throw out prospect and replace it with citizen? Godin is a …

Your social media campaign is always on -- like it or not. The only question is whether you are paying attention or not. Marketing Daily's Sarah Mahoney does a great job of highlighting the key findings of a study by OneUpWeb in her piece "Social Media Marketing's Disease: No Follow-Through." The finding that social media efforts positively influenced sales, while vastly underappreciated, is not the study's most interesting finding. I would instead direct marketers' attention to the rapid loss of return on social media efforts as those efforts lose support.

Late last year I wrote about the terminology and the lexicon of the advertising industry, and how many of the terms we use on a daily basis are relatively foreign to anyone not directly involved in online advertising. Of course due to the creativity of our industry and the people involved in it, some of the terms in use are actually completely made-up on a case-by-case basis, so it's no surprise that no one else knows what we're talking about! Wouldn't it be great if there was a site where you could go to find terms related to our industry?

Heard of Hulu? If you haven't by now, you should have. That is if you call yourself a digital maven, pundit or masochist. Kidding aside, it's rare that I come across a company when I think, "Wow, this is gonna be big."

We all know the difference between interactions where someone smiles versus when someone does not. When people smile, the experience more often than not is pleasant, if not enjoyable. In circumstances where people don't smile, the experience is often negative or forgettable. Smiling is one of the most powerful methods of conveying thoughts, moods, feelings and emotions. Which begs the question: If smiling is so influential, why isn't it recognized as a fundamental value in every aspect of business and marketing?

Yes. It's true. I'm leaving AOL and heading back to the start-up world. I've had a great time at AOL and am very bullish on its future, but the prospect of starting a new company in this market was just too great. Why? What's so good about the current market? Well, it's pretty simple. While I've been fortunate to have been able to launch two successful start-ups in the online advertising market, Real Media in 1995 and TACODA in 2001, I don't think that, in either of those cases, the same level of opportunity existed that is out there today. …

I write this column week in and week out and have been doing so for seven years now. While I was deciding on a topic for this week's column I was reminded that it was also Valentine's Day tomorrow -- and since this day is all about the heart, I decided I should write about a topic that was also about the heart: sports.