I have been in the online industry since its inception (circa 1982) and have seen so much evolution, in the technology (online speed was tied to 300 baud modems), media was simple placements (billboards on Prodigy), and business models were based on subscriptions ("pushing" updated content to browsers and before PPC search existed). In the last 18 months, there has been an overwhelming amount of change...new media platforms, new opportunities to reach niche audiences, new ways to track, evaluate and predict audience behavior, new tools to evaluate campaign objectives, changing ownership of companies, and the unprecedented impact Web2.0 (social media) is having on the media ecosystem. 
 
With all the change, however, I think it is important to highlight some important research that dispels some often quoted, the "banner is dead." It is not. An excellent white paper, The "State of Digital Display", available at http://www.primaryimpact.com/stateofdisplay.php, shows how banners do deliver on objectives, whether branding or response. The paper reinforces what we discuss in our courses...that creative is the greatest variable in determining success. It shows how display improves the performance of search, and how better performance can be achieved by rather simple ideas of limiting ad clutter on a page. This research paper, written by long-time industry participant, Kathryn Koegel, deserves a lot of attention. She uses data from the leading research and ad serving companies to illustrate the points and drive home the arguments that the ad banner is still an important part of the digital media space and why buyers and sellers must understand all the components of how to deliver and measure digital ad units to improve advertising performance.
 
Other important news is on the research front. In our courses, we discuss how dramatic the site measurement data can vary depending on the source of the data, internal site (log-file) data versus syndicated research data. Typically, syndicated research data shows much smaller audience reach for some sites due to the under-counting from populations outside of current home and work locations. comScore, one of the leaders in syndicated research, has announced their Media Metrix 360, panel-centric hybrid solution to digital audience measurement. comScore will now marry site traffic data with panel data, which will help improve their measurement of at work users and enhance coverage of niche audiences and Web 2.0 applications. It also allows publishers to participate if they place comScore web beacons on their web pages, similar to Quantcast's pixel tracking methodology.
 
I also just attended the digiday: NETWORKS and digiday: TARGET on Monday this week. During the sessions I listened to many presentations on how the ad network space is evolving from sellers of remnant inventory, how the selling of "audience" is changing, and the importance of data in determining the value of audience. This is an exciting time for our industry and in future columns I'll be highlighting many of the other essential insights learned at this recent conference and elsewhere.