Start-ups, innovation, and brands: which of these three things don't belong? You can guess the answer I have for you. Start-ups and innovation go hand-in-hand, while brands are typically the odd man out.

Confused about the growing eco-system of marketing technologies and how they impact your business? Don't worry, you're not alone. By now you are at least considering, if not already testing, how DSP's, DMP's, dynamic creative optimization, attribution, tag management, and various mobile technologies can help you achieve your marketing objectives. To a degree, even some of the staple technologies like bid management, ESP's and web analytics are in a state of evolution and are being reevaluated in many organizations. The only exclusion is ad serving, which seems to be a fairly stable segment -- for now. As the market …

Whether or not you were on the Eastern seaboard this weekend, you went to bed last night thinking about Irene, what she was or what she could have been, depending on where exactly you live in our region. And, oddly, whether or not you work in digital media, in the aftermath you are reflecting on the place of social media, micro-blogging and photo-sharing, in the coverage of Irene over the past 72 hours.

For something so new, Google+1 isn't doing all that badly. But what's more interesting is how incredibly popular Twitter is when it comes to engaging in this particular type of social-sharing activity.

One of the things that attracted me to television advertising is TV's dominant leadership position among media for delivering massive reach and frequency against consumer audiences in a short period of time. No other medium compare. Thus, imagine my surprise to learn that most TV ad campaigns for mass awareness-focused brand advertisers in the U.S. rarely reach more than 75% of their target audience and typically deliver more than two-thirds of their ad impressions to only one-third of their target audience.

It's taken a while for digital TV to really come of age, and in that time Apple launched the wildly successful iPad and created the tablet market. Consumers have flocked to the idea of watching television either with or on the iPad, and in doing so they have circumvented the need for a more interactive digital television experience. This doesn't mean that digital TV -- or TV in any form, for that matter -- is not still important. It just means that the bells and whistles of an interactive digital experience on your cable box may not be as necessary …

Everybody acknowledges process. It's an unsexy topic, but vital for success -- and few excel at it. Agencies often sell a unique process as a point of differentiation. Some processes are even branded or trademarked. Some are passed on from generation to generation like folklore. Marketing organizations are quicker to admit the need for improvement and are beginning to realize the importance of their own digital processes. In reality, most processes could stand an overhaul.

You'd be hard-pressed today to find a marketer among us who is not enamored of mobile. But, deploying mobile today is not just an act of love; it's a consumer-driven imperative. This is based on two pronounced trends: consumer mobile adoption is booming, and consumers by default now expect cross-platform programming. So what tactics should you be deploying?

I spoke at a school administrators' conference this week about social media. "It's nice to hear some good things about social media," said one of the ladies in the audience. "Especially after all the negative things we've been hearing about how the riots in the U.K. were caused by social media." I know the answer to this one, I thought. I wrote a column on this just last week.

When Google announced Monday that it was buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion and change, virtually every trade and business journalist and blogger in the world opined in one way or another about Google's true motivations for pursuing the deal. I have my own ideas: