Formerly, live technology demos would require a consensual gathering around a laptop, or a computer monitor mounted on a desk, or a trade-show booth. But thanks to the iPad, which launched in April, a new, nonconsensual form of demonstration and pitching has emerged. These nonconsensual demonstrations have become especially prevalent at Internet conferences and expositions. It's now impossible to attend one without getting a demo jammed in your face.

One hundred billion dollars and $150 billion; those are the global numbers that Magna Global's Brian Wieser projected this week will be spent annually on online and TV advertising respectively in five years. That's a lot of money, and represents strong growth for both sectors. Like most of you, the projections beg a critical question: who will benefit from that increased spend? Will it be ad agencies? Content creators? Media distributors? Internet and search giants? Consultancies? All of them? None of them? While I am not ready to opine on which of those industry categories will win or lose, I …

If you read that header and it reminded you a little bit of the infamous Allen Iverson rant from years past (when the basketball player went off on the word "practice"), then I did my job as a writer. If you read that line and thought I was going to go on a mild tirade about a somewhat frustrating topic, you might also be a little bit correct.

Shifts in how people consume music, entertainment and news are undermining traditional media business models that currently support the cost of making great content. The irony is that by embracing and taking advantage of the new media landscape that threatens their survival, media companies can not only survive, but actually thrive.

Has it dawned on you that the long-hailed total accountability of digital, while never really 100% true, has also never even yielded to anything approaching meaningful transparency? Whenever I hear "experts" talk about accountability, I wonder if they've ever read a campaign report, let alone executed a buy on a network.

Earlier this week I taught the inaugural session of Online Marketing School. It's a new crash course in marketing organized by nextNY, a social network for young people who have a stake in the future of tech and new media in New York City. Since this was the introductory session, I focused on 11 fundamental marketing principles I've picked up in the past three start-ups I've been involved with, as well as my current one. I avoided specific marketing tactics because they're a dime a dozen. Instead, I sought to share my own unique perspectives, which you probably won't find …

A lot of media companies today are trying to build or grow new fee-related businesses. For example, The New York Times Company has announced that NYTimes.com is going behind a metered pay wall next year. In a perfect world, all of these efforts will be successful. Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world. Most -- or probably a large number -- of these new subscription- or fee-based efforts will fail. Here are some reasons why:

No matter what messaging you attempt to put into the marketplace to try and convert the audience into customers, the promise of the experience has to match the actual experience of the brand, product or service. Simply put, if you say one thing and do another, then you'll fail.

There is a lot of discussion on why advertising spend within digital media has not grown in proportion to the amount of time people spend in digital media. But have a discussion long enough about advertising in digital media, and you are bound to end up in the same place: effective advertising in digital media does not scale efficiently. Simply stated, it is hard to spend a lot of money in digital media.

This week our start-up presented at TechCrunch Disrupt, a conference about how emerging technologies and bootstrapping start-ups are disrupting the media business. It was held at 570 Washington Street, a former Merrill Lynch data center in New York City's far West Village. The place was stodgy and off the beaten path, surrounded by warehouses and Holland Tunnel seediness. But the venue was somehow fitting and played a role key in an engaging experience. It had character and soul, and it stood out. That matters a lot in a successful conference. The whole experience got me thinking more about conference venues....