If you believe in your content brand and its place in your user's lives, these steps will help convert your convictions into more ad dollars. If you don't carry that belief with you in the door, nothing can help you.

Most people have the ability to achieve greatness in some area, but their own mental limitations keep them from ever actually getting there. There are two challenges to achieving greatness: sheer will and quantification.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how salespeople fear being replaced by machines. I said they should not worry. I made an analogy with the market for financial investments, where highly compensated salespeople sell "commoditized" financial instruments like stocks and bonds whose price is set on exchanges. This analogy breaks down for many media salespeople because they are armed with so little information of value to their prospects. Too many of these salespeople really have nothing to bring to the client other than price. Media companies need to equip and train their sales staff to sell value, not …

I'm a media buyer at a very large agency and I was recently given two high-profile clients with healthy media budgets. So as you'd expect, I get asked to go out very often by my reps; lunches, drinks, dinners, shows, ball games, etc. I have experienced a bit of that before, but never at this level. I am starting to feel weird about it. I know the people taking me out expect my business in return. Do I have to give it to them -- or should I decline their extravagant offers?

What's your favorite show online? What character from an online show would you love to meet in real life. Beyond repurposed television content and a talking orange no one will be talking about a year from now, there are no "characters" that viewers care about online. So much of the online video content out there is so easily forgettable. So in swoop the "video networks" to hype online video's value when there is very little to speak of.

Will the Web break if we stop invading the privacy of our users? This is the lame argument that has been made repeatedly by executives at industry associations. We keep getting this idea jammed down our throats without any credible data to support it. Nothing is more annoying than the use of repetition to attempt to get a dumb argument to stick.

When the hype around Apple iPad subsides, and the top apps have been reviewed, the big question staring the Internet publishing industry in the face will become apparent: How do we profitably reach the people who don't have an iPad?

I love music and hate the radio. How did those driving the medium let this happen? Save your breath blowing numbers announcing radio is fine. The cleaner a break, the easier to see -- and radio has suffered a clear compound fracture.

t is easier to buy nuclear arms in the former Soviet Union than complete an online display buy. On the other hand, buying search clicks is like buying crack: easy to get into, but hard to stop.