Is the Web still waiting for its “I Love Lucy” moment, i.e., that single blockbuster content brand that blows the industry wide open? Yes (sorry, sneezing panda), but when it does hit it’s going to be a wakeup call to a lot of people, says Jeff Minsky, Director of Emerging Platforms at Omnicom Media Group. What’s more, when it hits it’s going to take a big, experienced agency -- rather than a single vendor -- to make sense of the show and its advertising potential. So says Chris Pyne, Chief Strategy Officer at MediaCom. “When we approach the marketplace we …

Good question coming from someone sitting on a panel called Video Neutral Planning. It was raised by Jeff Minsky, Director of Emerging Platforms, Omnicom Media Group, during this morning's Re:Vision conference in New York. Minksy's point is that not all video is created equal, and that currently, there may be enough differences in the way consumers experience and use video across platforms – from conventional TV to online, mobile and everything else – that maybe, just maybe, Madison Avenue shouldn't be trying to reduce it to some lowest common denominators – at least not yet. Minsky noted that …

That's the way MediaCom Chief Strategic Officer Chris Pyne described the conversations surrounding "video neutral planning." Speaking on the Media Neutral Planning panel at MediaPost's Re:Vision conference in New York, Pyne said that while the industry can debate whether a "video is a video is a video" across platforms, regardless of whether they are "lean forward" or "laid back" video experiences, it ultimately is the consumer experience that really determines what advertisers and agencies should be doing. He said Madison Avenue has don't a neat job of fitting all media into nice little silos, but that the "consumer …

So, with advances in TV targeting, why aren't marketers going after "high-end" households? "We are," insists Seth Haberman, founder and CEO of Visible World. "Those things are going on." Indeed, Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, said he helped CBS effectively market Hawaii Five-0 last year to, if not exactly high-end households, at least the right homes. Of the 25 million consumers CBS reaches, they determined that Hawaii Five-0's target audience was made up of about 6 million-to-7 million consumers, which they were able to target by their preferred shows. "That's addressable; that's scale; and that's results," said Morgan. More broadly, …

Television ad spending continues to grow, but new wave analytics are troubling for marketers.   "It is getting increasing difficult to keep track of all these entities," says Anne MacDonald, executive vp and chief marketing officer, Travelers, in a keynote address at the Re:Vision conference. "This revolution is probably more of a evolution. Real change in television happens more slowly." MacDonald says she gets hit with new TV research services all the time, promising much. But there is too much to sift through. Here's the good news: eMarketer estimates a $60.9 billion in TV advertising sales in 2011; …

But it will change it. That's what Re:Vision opening keynoter, and Travelers' CMO Anne MacDonald reminded attendees this morning. "New media doesn't kill old media," she pointed out, citing the impact TV had on radio, as an example. "It just changes it."

That's what Re:Vision conference opening keynoter, Anne MacDonald, just pointed out in this morning's remarks. MacDonald, who is CMO of big TV advertiser Travelers, noted that as much as the ad industry obsesses on digital media advertising, TV is still the big Kahuna, and is growing fast. In fact, she cited a recent forecast by her agency team at GroupM that predicted TV ad spending in the U.S. will grow to $68 billion this year, nearly twice the size of the $34.8 billion "digital advertising" marketplace. Her point is that you can't obsess with the latest shiny objects, but have …

In a Metrics panel discussing quantitative research, Rick Bruner, VP, management at Marketing Evolution, likened the online research business to the proverbial "blind men describing an elephant" because it's so broad and constantly changing. But he pointed business intelligence as one of the most in-demand skills right now. That is, figuring out the right questions to ask to guide research and how to compare consumer data coming from social media versus behavioral targeting or other digital marketing approaches. "Trying to synthesize all this is one of the most necessary skills but one in least supply," he said.

In the days first afternoon panel exploring Web site optimization, one of the initial topics was how optimization plays out in the retail space. David Brussin, founder and CEO of Web testing firm Monetate Inc, emphasized that while e-commerce is relatively new, retail has been around for ages. As such, e-commerce systems haven't yet developed to the point where they can replicate the flexibility of brick and mortar stores. It's harder to make changes on the fly the way a company might change around endcaps in a physical store depending on what's selling, he said. As an example, he …

Alex Yoder, CEO of Webtrends, can think of (just) five bad habits of traditional marketers: - Complacency – It’s never one and done. - Conformity – It completely ruins your value proposition as a brand. - Analysis Paralysis – Resist the desire to examine the data for so long that the opportunity you were examining was gone by the time you’re ready to act on it. - Hands-off Management - Yoder still has trouble with the idea that everything can be automated. - Silos of Knowledge – Who knows how the channels of the future are going to be …