The annual sales meeting is perhaps the most maligned of interactive industry events. But given the breakneck pace at which the industry is evolving, and the need that everyone in the industry has for current information, provocative perspectives and strategic focus, the annual sales meeting should be playing a more prominent role in publisher sales force management and education.

"Many small details have been included for the sole purpose of creating a familiar reading experience," explains Zabrina Sen, media relations manager at iPagez....

I'm a big believer that consumer media preferences are shaped pan-channel. I think that zipping through ads on TV makes consumers less tolerant of marketers' interruptions online, and that the ability to suppress pop-ups results in further TV commercial impatience. It follows, then, that if a 45-minute show costs $1.99 on iTunes, a 90-minute movie shouldn't cost $10.50 at the theatre, or $19.99 on DVD; it should cost $3.98. All right, it doesn't follow exactly, yet. But specific initiatives are shaping consumer expectations broadly.

I get this inquiry quite a bit, especially from those readers who have jumped into publishing with a whole bunch of passion, but no experience on how to sell the attention they aim to collect.

Online retailers want consumers' money. They create their sites' experience around customer needs almost exclusively. Publishers, on the other hand, want advertisers' money. This sets up a different dynamic than in online retail.

Is online where we really want our video served, or is this a case of the advertising tail wagging the content dog? I have been told on occasion not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so let's see how we can put the horse back in front of this cart.

There were a ton of lessons to come out of OMMA Hollywood last week. As the person who programmed the show, monitored each of 40 sessions, solicited feedback on over 100 speakers, and generally took the pulse of the audience on the show's content, no lessons were more salient to me than this: we're officially in a seller's market.

Calling on Nike was one of the best experiences I collected while selling media....

Earlier this week, Google Finance launched to little more than polite clapping among industry observers. Most noted incremental improvements over existing services, but no step changes. The product is no category killer.

Please allow me to revisit the issues of working with ad networks, a topic I discussed several weeks ago that sparked a debate on MediaPost (and other trade outlets)--only, this time I will offer a solution to the problem ad networks pose for their publishing "partners."