The history of advertising has been one of delegation, trust and evaluation by intermediate metrics. In these areas, advertising's past will not define its future.

A number of people have been asking me lately about the evolution of display media buying. The fact is that when you look at where things were and compare it to where things are going, you see a distinct story that portends the future of advertising very clearly.

It's critical for company leaders to understand and simplify complex problems and then determine long-term goals and plans for addressing them. Long-term context is challenging, though short-term minutiae can be equally daunting. That's why I've adopted a simple framework in which I codify critical goals and milestones for the week ahead. It's really a one-page manifesto for the week, to help prioritize actions and tempo, track progress toward goals and communicate. I publish it weekly in a Google shared doc, and share it with immediate colleagues. Without it, I feel naked. Components include:

The market for salespeople, account managers and engineers is so fierce today that recruiters, startups and established companies are all trying to attract the best talent. How will you retain your top performers in the face of such competition? The key is to build a culture and process that naturally repels your competitors. Here are 10 steps for building a company that can retain its top employees:

Last week, we spoke about the Federal Reserve and the challenges that exist when financial trades are happening in milliseconds. But the financial markets aren't the only arena suffering from an overemphasis on speed. Ever since Oreo won the Super Bowl(well, the advertising aspect of it, anyway), marketers have gotten in a tizzy of excitement over the idea of responding in real time. A fair amount has already been said about how inappropriate, ineffective, and crass real-time marketing -- aka "RTM" -- can be. So I figured, instead of saying we shouldn't do RTM, we should talk about the right …

I had the pleasure of beginning my marketing career pre-Internet. Well, I think floppy disks and 4-color VGA monitors existed back in South Africa circa-1992/1993 (we were a little behind the rest of the world), but for the most part "you've got mail" was still a phrase reserved for the one job that surely would never be under threat: the mailman. Today, the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme, where the word "analog" is essentially verboten and a swear word and the 30-second spot is pretty much dead and buried (but don't go telling that to those still buying …

I love marketing: the ability to develop a story, weave that story through media and watch it resonate with an audience. The chance to follow that story through to a conclusion, potentially resulting in customers: this is a highly engaging activity for me, and one I thoroughly enjoy. It's not unlike watching "Breaking Bad," to be honest. There's a parallel in marketing that echoes the struggle of Walter White, if you know where to look (not that I am in any way comparing advertising to cooking meth in a trailer).

Last week I went to my daughter's kindergarten parent-teacher orientation night. My wife and I met the other parents, and our teacher reviewed the curriculum, customs and rules of the classroom. One of the weekly customs is Sharing Day, when a selected child stands in front of the class and tells a five-minute story about something that happened recently. It can be a story about anything, but preferably one she's passionate about. The only limitation is that she can't use any physical objects or props. The teacher explained that this method makes children accountable for creating and rehearsing their narratives …

Over the past 24 months, I've published 500 articles on the subject of media and technology on my blog, The Makegood. During that time, the site received 100,000 unique visitors and over a quarter million page views. Along the way, I learned a few things about what it takes to create a successful blog, including:

There's a kerfuffle going on. Here's how I understand it: last week, the Federal Reserve announced that it would "not be tapering its bond buying program." This information was released at 2 p.m. precisely, from the Reserve's headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is known as "market-moving information," in that it will have a significant effect on stock and bond markets, and, as such, its release is tightly controlled. Milliseconds after the announcement, trades were initiated in response. But some trades seemed to happen too quickly.