"What do you think of engagement metrics?" asked the advertiser. Ah ... engagement. No one can argue against engagement metrics, can they? In theory, engagement is a great concept. Research vendors often attempt to answer a question like, "Are advertisers creating messages that viewers easily recall?" But in practice, questions like this are often answered using questionable research practices.

I am someone who always seeks to learn from other places; looking for ways to apply scientific constructs to the arts, packaging and distribution efficiencies from manufacturing to video, non-profit marketing tactics to for-profit businesses. So when I first met and spoke with Lisa Holton a few weeks ago, I found it so refreshing to see someone come out of what is perceived as a dying business with a multiplatform, multipronged approach to developing content.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the not-so-distant sound of hysterical agenda-driven pressure groups marshalling the Federal Communications Commission about the perceived dangers of what they are calling "embedded advertising" (read product placement), particularly that which reaches children. More ominously, this is accompanied by the usual signs of the FCC falling into line with the sociopolitical concerns of these groups. Next will come the usual suspects -- in the form of politicians -- seeing an election-year bandwagon to climb aboard, and then all reason can be dispatched to the four winds.

The Federal Communications Commission has determined that telco Verizon had unlawfully utilized private customer information to persuade its phone customers, who were planning to switch their allegiance to a cable operator -- possibly for the quadruple bypass (video, broadband, land line and wireless) -- not to switch to said cable company, Comcast, in this case, through the promise of gifts in the form of discounted services.

While Microsoft's interest in growing its share of the Internet advertising revenue is well known, its foray into television was a surprise to many. Buying Navic shouldn't have been a surprise. Perhaps best-known for their set-top box monitoring and diagnostics service, Navic has spent a great deal of time and energy attempting to navigate the advanced television advertising landscape.

A new multimedia company has launched a Web site that targets ethnic Americans. But where I have a hard time seeing value is in creating audiences that are narrowly defined, but not by an indiscrete variable.

If the media industries have trouble keeping up with developments and in determining new solutions, then even the best-resourced and most pro-active universities with the most gifted faculty will find it even harder. We need a more integrated relationship between industry and academia to position graduates to help solve the challenges of emerging media.

 In the latter years of the 90's, Jack Myers helped usher in the age of cross media marketing platforms (CMMP), whose primary goal was to generate incremental revenue for the parent company as well as to provide its sibling divisions with a multitude of off-channel exposure. In those days, the major media conglomerates were in constant morph by acquiring all kinds of assets - mostly through stock trades - from every conceivable medium, i.e., broadcast, cable, publishing (newspapers, magazines, custom), new media (online), themed venues (retail, sports), place based as well as TV production, brand integration and event marketing. This …

Earlier this week I had lunch with a couple of friends in New York, one of whom happened to be a broadcast client. With the announcement that David Verklin would indeed be the CEO for Canoe Ventures staring at us in the daily press, Canoe's potential effect on research was front and center. While others have discussed the effect addressable advertising will have on the industry, our focus was somewhat more pressing. The question posed to me was: "Given all the promises of more granular data coming out of Canoe, where should local broadcast audience researchers focus their considerable energies?"

Is Hollywood so out of new ideas that we need to bring back old ones with a twist? I am talking about bringing back shows like "Password" and "The Dating Game" and others from my youth. Not that I mind, don't get me wrong. It's just that I would hope that somewhere, out there, in the vast abyss that is the creative genius, that someone, anyone, would be able to come up with something, well, new.