Cory Treffiletti wonders "what won't Google offer for free in the next year?" Good question.

With the “r” word looming in the background, Carat has revised its global ad spending outlook downward for 2008, taking its total ad spending estimate down to 6.0% for the year, down from its previous outlook of 6.2%. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s not that big a downgrade. And more importantly, it’s being driven mainly by cuts in old guard media like newspapers. Online ad spending will grow 23.3%, according to Carat. That’s down slightly from 27.2% in 2007, but it’s still far from recessionary.

The OMMA Global Hollywood conference theme is "Welcome to the Machine." It's our playful take on the idea that the Web is chewing up everything in its path -- from TV, to radio to magazines and even mobile.

MediaPost Publisher Ken Fadner got things off on a worrisome note this morning invoking the "r" word. "We had a bank fail over the weekend," Fadner started things off with, suggesting that macro economics might be relevant to the online industry's micro economy.

Hard to believe it's already a year since last year's OMMA Hollywood. I'm guest-blogging the show and have a different perspective this time coming at it from an operator's perspective. Ken's talking about the bank failing over the weekend. Shamless plug: Go check out Minyanville.com to get an informed read all day about the Bear Stearns situation. No doubt there will be more talk over the two days about the effect of the economy on online media and marketing.

We're not talking about international advertising -- we changed the name of our OMMA conference to OMMA Global because we try to tackle the various facets of digital marketing. Everything from search (my favorite, of course!), to video and online publishing, to social media, gaming and even mobile.

Actually, 360i’s acquisition of i33 relates to one of the themes of this year’s OMMA Global Hollywood conference â€" the notion of nomadic media and distributed, or “portable” content.  That’s something 360i has been doing on its own for some pretty big clients such as NBC, Comedy Central and others, and it’s a capability that i33 will be building on. If you want a look at that, check out the new www.adidas.com/baseball microsite the shop just created. Good recent examples of 360i’s distributed content work includes some new widgets and games it just created for …

Got to chat with Jack Feuer this morning. Haven't seen him in ... well, Reagan was president, let's say. Second term, second term! Jack's great. He's so L.A., always has been. Was great shooting the shit with him, remembering the old days at Adweek and here we are, still hanging around with Ken Fadner! Jack tells me it's the media agencies now, not the marketers that make the world go 'round and I gotta agree. It is the medium and not the message, though back when we first worked together, when there weren't so many media, message ruled. I …

Well here we are back in Hollywood, the opening day of OMMA Global, and there's already news breaking, and it's all about the "i" word. Actually, two of them. 360i, the spunky New York digital shop that also happens to be OMMA magazine's Search Agency of the Year (more on that in a minute), has added an I: i33 Communications. i33 is an interactive design agency specializing in online communications design, including social media apps, widgets, rich media, and Web sites.

Media industry behind-the-scenes-string-puller and AAAA Friday morning session moderator Michael Kassan got the final day of the media conference off on a Hollywood note.