The growth and prevalence of screen-based media in our lives has of course opened up significant new opportunities to reach out and touch consumers in an ever-expanding range of locations. We're all familiar with the increase in the number of TVs in the average home and its impact on viewing patterns; the rise of the computer as a ubiquitous home and workplace medium; and, of course, the emergence of the cell phone and other mobile devices that act both as communications devices and media (not to mention playthings).

Haven't you noticed that nearly everyday another place-based media network materializes in health clubs, gas stations, transportation vehicles and transits, fast food joints, waiting rooms (doesn't matter what for), medical facilities (in and out lifestage), home entertainment locations, amusement parks, airlines, elevators, beauty salons, golf courses, check-out locations, airports, smart carts, babbling wall monitors, talking kiosks, malls (floors and walls), jukes, colleges, hotel rooms, bus shelters, and theatrical exhibitors....

Project Canoe has tremendous potential. Imagine a single sales entity that might allow cable to compete in the national spot market with a variety of new television advertising vehicles. Perhaps Madison Avenue might be interested in on-demand and addressable advertising on a massive scale? Project Canoe may provide the answer. Would CBS be interested in reducing its national inventory by one minute per prime-time hour to sell Canoe-enabled addressable spots during "Survivor" or "Cold Case"? With a unified advertising sales vision across all cable operators, these opportunities and more are possible.

Two action-packed days at the Venice Festival of Media brought us not only wonderful insights and imaginative ideas on the future of commercial communications, but also total confusion and uncertainty in equal measure -- and a lot of laughs.

I was struck Monday and Tuesday by two pieces of news (one confirmed, one rumored) that just may be indicative of something. The first was the announcement that longtime advertising man Alec Gerster (until recently head of Initiative Worldwide) has been announced as CMO of Navic, one of the leading facilitators of interactive TV and addressable advertising applications. Then there's David Verklin's impending departure from Carat, and the reports circulating that he will soon be announced as the head of the cable industry's Project Canoe initiative - a collaborative effort to provide standardized metrics for VOD and related advertising and …

A few weeks ago I sojourned to Chicago and visited La Perla, the luxurious European intimates boutique, shopping for my wife. I must admit I'm never quite comfortable visiting La Perla. In preparation, I tried to fortify myself with all of the intimate details of my wife's lingerie collection -- size, style, palette, and configuration -- prior to debarking from New York. Inevitably, as in prior occasions, the saleswomen will posit questions whose answers I cannot articulate in terms of pure statistics. This visit was no exception.

From the moment I stumbled onto the television audience measurement industry in 1999, what I have found utterly unexplainable is not how Nielsen maintains its stranglehold on the industry -- with that I am well acquainted. No, what has perplexed me is how Nielsen executives manage never to talk about how they do what they do. More than a billion dollars a year in revenue (not to mention the $250 Billion or so spent in Los Angeles and New York chasing Nielsen's approval) and virtually no published analysis concerning changes in data collection technologies, ascription policies, and weighting or stratification …

Just in case you didn't know it, New York Comic Con starts tomorrow. For the initiated, get initiated. I am not going to explain it here. For those who know -- get there. There shouldn't be a brand manager, creative, or television and/or film executive who isn't planning on attending at least one day.

The Olympic movement is the event sponsorship granddaddy of them all. With an audience totaling billions around the world, with a sponsorship entry ticket in the monetary stratosphere and licensing and merchandising among the official sponsors taking just about every form known to man, the Olympics is now more about the media and the marketing than the events themselves.

Last week I participated in the Second City's rendition of Mitch Oscar's Carat Exchange. My minor contribution came courtesy of a panel organized by Charlene Weisler of Rainbow Media. I thought the takeaway from the panel was clear: a number of the purported "issues" surrounding set-top-box data have not only been evaluated but many have been solved by (among others) researchers at TNS and Rentrak. It was then particularly frustrating for me to overhear a comment from an experienced media buyer: "In the end it doesn't really matter because we have to have a single currency and the panel is …