Since the first online ad was sold in the mid '90s, our industry has made enormous strides and, in my view, is about to pull up a chair at the grown-up table to be served its rightful share of ad dollars. Yet, some things about online never seem to change, such as the debate about whether at the end of the day it is a direct response medium or a branding medium on par (or even better than) TV and print.

Numerous articles have been written about how the "banner" is still, surprisingly enough, alive (and kicking). However, the fact that so many articles have been written about the good old "banner," demonstrates that there probably is a general consensus about the fact that banners will eventually disappear from our marketing landscape, due to Rich Media (RM), of course.

Lately I've been watching an interesting convergence. In relatively short order, the search engines have begun ramping up various rich media indexing capabilities (a.k.a. multimedia search). Consumer demand for multimedia content is partly driving the trend. And with growth in paid search projected to slow from 174 percent in 2003 to 18 percent in 2006, search engines are likewise hungry for new markets. Let's meet the major players.

The book of Ecclesiastes gave us the expression "there is nothing new under the sun." The growing frenzy over product placement in film and TV only confirms what the ancient religious scholars foretold.