Here's a little secret about media buying. It's one of the secrets that most media buyers don't want you to hear because it could jeopardize the way they do business, but I think it's time to let the cat out of the bag. OK, here goes: Media buying is a relationship business.

Consider the number of brands the average person interacts with in his or her daily life. Now consider how many of those brands a person would be willing to become a fan of. Even if an individual is willing to become a fan of every brand he interacts with, at what point does the amount of communication coming from the brands become too much? Also, in what setting does marketing to your most loyal fans only constitute the whole of your marketing efforts?

Eyes on the grid, fingers on the pulse of the media sphere, most of us like to think we know what business deals mean at a glance, right when they are announced. But occasionally there is a meaningful confluence of suchbig deals in a short period of time, immediately floodlighting the future to come, that we must stop, look and listen. Consider, in the past few weeks, we had Blip.tv's content deal with YouTube, and YouTube's test with FreeWheel.

Recently I examined the ubiquitous problem of electronics: their obnoxious, blinking LEDs and displays. Our assimilation with machines has led to a subtle encroachment of electronics status updates that constantly demand our attention. But there's yet another encroaching violator of our sanity amidst the electronics realm: remote controls.

I'm just finishing Bob Garfield's "The Chaos Scenario" -- the much-anticipated book follow-up to his Advertising Age essays of several years ago of the same title. In those magazine cover stories, he not only predicted the impending collapse of "old media," but controversially proffered that "new media" wasn't ready or able to replace it -- that chaos would reign for some time between the collapse of the old and the development of the new. Garfield was talking about analog media dollars turning into digital pennies long before NBC/Universal's Jeff Zucker adopted the concept. I really liked the Ad Age pieces. …

Have you ever been in this situation: You spend hours, days and weeks developing your client's online strategy, which is about building the brand through awareness and impact, but when that first performance report is delivered and the initial click-through rate is low, the strategy magically transforms immediately from a long-term brand play to a short term "improve the click rate" campaign? If so, you've been a victim of the CTR Ad Crack Addict!

Advances in technology and changes in consumer behavior are affecting marketing across all categories. For entertainment marketing, the impact is double. First, like all other categories, the way in which the entertainment marketing messaging is delivered is changing substantially. Those marketing a television show, for example, must take into account all the changes major consumer brands face, while also factoring in the fact that viewers will be consuming their products very differently (i.e., Hulu, video-on-demand).

As with all relationships, when it comes to the progressive digital mix, there is a lot at play -- and often stuff that is out of our line of sight.

Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk recently shared her firm's updated interactive marketing forecast. I don't pay attention to forecasts, but I thought the directional assertions were correct. Forrester says that advertising budgets, overall, will decline, but investment will pick up in other areas to drive growth.

I generally spend between 10% to -20% of my time talking to folks about their careers -- either giving advice about potential job moves, or talking up opportunities in new media and start-ups generally, or in specifically recruiting folks to Simulmedia. I like doing it. I think that it is important to do. Given the importance of start-ups to the future of our industry, I thought that it might be helpful to share some of the career tips that I give those who are considering joining start-up companies. Here they are....