People are installing ad-blockers at an epidemic rate. It's a crisis not only for advertisers but also for the entire economic ecosystem underpinning the Internet. We are semi-unintentionally undermining the entire foundation of the Web world. But of course you know this already. Everyone has heard this. Except, apparently, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which has only just been brought up to speed.

Ask media owners what business they're in, and they'll say the content business -- that they are storytellers, and that their companies are well positioned for the future because "content is king" and there will always be demand for great content. My question for today: Even if the demand for premium video programming continues to grow (and I believe it will), is a content-centric strategy the best one for today's TV media owners?

Online humor company Equals Three has the fair use right to display short viral clips owned by a different company, a federal judge has ruled.

If you're fresh out of school and looking to establish a career path, you should be examining two dimensions when deciding where you want to live. Are you looking at a career in technology - and if so, what category of business feels like a fit for you?

A few columns back, I talked about the most innovative countries in the world, accordingto INSEAD, Johnson School of Management and WIPO. Switzerland, of all places, topped the list. At the time, I mentioned diversity as possibly being one of the factors. But for some reason, I just couldn't let it lie there. Last Friday afternoon I dusted off my Stats 101 prowess and decided to look for correlations. The next thing I knew, three hours had passed and I was earlobe deep in data tables and spreadsheets.

It isn't easy being a marketer today. If it isn't ad fraud, it is a data breach of your CRM system. Or it turns out that your diesel engines aren't clean, your potatoes not organic or your CEO is not the greatest spokesperson on Twitter. Or that guy from digital is getting all the attention in the board room. There are continual distractions from what should matter to you most: your consumers.

There is a temptation among progressive, pro-social entrepreneurs - people like Tony Hsieh of Zappos or Ben Kaufman, (formerly) of Quirky - driven, I believe, by a desire to to do things in a more awesome way. I suspect that most who succumb to this temptation are acting out of goodwill and benevolence of purpose. I'm talking about the temptation to reject the corporate structures of recent decades. I'm talking about the temptation to declare that, just because a certain kind of work environment is meaningless and soul-destroying, it has nothing of value to offer. I'm talking about the temptation …

Is virtual reality the next big thing? If so, what can we do about it now? More than at any other time, our industry needs to navigate a path between the profound opportunities in the world ahead and the distractions. 3D printers could change everything, as could drones, or both could line the storage units of tomorrow, resting next to unused Segways and redundant Google glasses.

Can you believe it's almost Halloween? I see ghouls and goblins and all sorts of things meant to scare me - but the scariest thing I've seen all month is the dramatic rise in discussions about ad blocking. If you aren't scared, at least a little, you should be. That being said, all the talk might just lead us to a better creative format for ads.

Your world is a much different place than the African savanna. But over 100,000 generations of evolution that started on those plains still dictate a remarkable degree of our modern behavior.