By now you have probably read about the new Forrester report, "Help Wanted: 21st Century Agency," that sheds light on the widening capabilities gap between traditional ad agencies and the smaller, specialized digital shops when it comes to new media marketing. If you haven't yet seen it, the report placed the spotlight on the demand from marketers expecting their agencies to deliver expertise in emerging areas, such as search engine marketing and interactive advertising, and marketers' growing discontent with their agencies.

The flavor of the month seems to be manufactured debate designed to take up polar opposite positions on any given topic. There's nothing like a little dustup online to get the creative juices going and generate a lot of blog activity, and, if the topic of that debate strikes enough nerves, a corresponding bushel of new links. It seems like no matter what someone says, someone else in the blogosphere automatically takes the contradictory viewpoint, sometimes not so much because he or she disagrees -- but just because they want to post a comment on their blog and generate some …

The Search Synergy Report demonstrates that there is indeed a lift in search campaigns that have both a paid and natural search component. These findings support similar studies presented by SEO-PR and Yahoo/Nielsen ReelResearch on the exponential benefits of and lift from holistically managed search campaigns.

The hunt for search engine innovation ends with Kevin Federline.Over the last two weeks, we sifted through a hundred search engines to find glimmers of the future, and last week we came pretty close. As exciting as the semantic web may be, it's got nothing on a new pursuit backed by the former backup dancer for Britney Spears.

Last week, communication services firm Synchronoss Technologies hosted a conference on the question of whether it will be content brokers -- like Google or Viacom -- or device makers -- like Motorola or Samsung -- that will ultimately benefit most from the growth of digital media. It's an interesting question, particularly as an avenue to explore whether it's hardware or content that will provide the greatest push into Media 2.0. (

It seems reasonable to expect that a successful mobile search would involve merely replicating the online search experience -- but on a mobile device. When one examines the vastly different context in which a consumer conducts a Web search and a mobile search, however, the inefficiency of Web search in a mobile context immediately becomes clear.

I've got a question for you: Would you want to do anything with Kevin Federline? Personally, the more Federline-free my world is, the better. But apparently other people don't see it that way. You may have noticed earlier this week that K-Fed is actually launching his own search engine. Well, to be more accurate, he's slapping his face on an existing back end, so to speak.

In my last column, I speculated that a Google acquisition of blinkx could give the search giant a huge boost in video search. In turn, better video search capabilities would improve the current consumer online video experience by providing more relevant and less-interruptive advertising -- thus, helping Google better monetize YouTube without annoying its users.

Google shouldn't rest on its laurels just yet. Last week, we blazed through Charles Knight's Top 100 Alternative Search Engines and found many areas where innovation was lacking. This week, we'll visit some of the high-impact innovation categories and engines.

Last Wednesday, Google announced that it plans to begin erasing personally identifiable information about searchers within 18 to 24 months after it's gathered it. Potentially, this could be a real victory for the cause of online privacy. But I also wonder how much of the move is motivated by Google's PR concerns.