On a daily basis, I field a dozen or so calls from eager ad sales execs who want to connect with some of the brands that I oversee (at work). Since my schedule is extremely tight, I can’t take meetings with everyone but generally refer them to my teams responsible for the accounts that they are seeking.

Over the past few months, I’ve witnessed some of our ad network friends who would service our business start to leave and head elsewhere based on the “good bye” emails I receive. Some companies that have seen some form of exodus are: AOL/Platform-A/Tacoda, Specific Media, IAC, FIM/MySpace, and a host of smaller ad networks such as CPX, and others. By making this list, there are more than one person leaving the company in a short period of time.

Why are they leaving these companies? I cannot answer for each individual, but I’m sure it’s a combination of shakeups internally and really good opportunities with startups or other publishers. Having been an entrepreneur in NYC trying to build a sales team, I know how tight the talent pool is for good ad sales folks, so trying to poach from these networks can be helpful.

** Note, I had wrongly listed ad network interClick as I had internal confusion. Apologies!

I’ve been helping my friend Stephanie on this story for a few weeks now and finally, it came to light.  I’m stoked for her [Stephanie] to really break one of the first stories that really disrupt the advertising industry in the past few years, as well, as highlight a friends of mine including Joe Zawadzki (MediaMath) and Zach Weinberg (Invite Media).

I’d like to take the time to expand upon my quotes:

“The exchanges are just a platform to buy and sell media, but you have to layer the measurement and data on top, which could come from different areas: some agencies will build it, some agencies will partner,” said Darren Herman, head of digital media at the Media Kitchen agency.

“We use the analogy of, anybody can trade on the financial markets, anyone can get an eTrade account, but it’s how you’re smart about how you use your eTrade account that determines how well you’re going to do trading,” Mr. Herman said.

In the first paragraph, I mention that exchanges are ‘dumb.’  They essentially are a large pool of available impressions that ultimately lead back to a website (sometimes blind, other times transparent) and potentially back to a certain user.  What I’m stating in the paragraph is that if you match data about a user/audience and overlay that ontop of an impression, it becomes very powerful.  Media agencies, who are buying the bulk of media on behalf of their clients will need to adapt in this new area and it’s going to take a certain type of group/unit/team/company to make this happen due to the parallels it draws from the financial markets with analysts, yield managers, traders, etc.

In the second paragraph, I’m simply stating that with today’s financial markets, anyone can trade.  You, my grandmother, my buddy, my brother, or my wife can get an eTrade/Zecco/etc account and trade on the markets.  Just because you have access to the markets does not guarantee success; it ultimately comes down to the data you have on the instrument (in this case a security) and the market conditions.

Zach has a quote towards the end of the article that I want to highlight as this should spur potentially a dozen new businesses popping up.

“Once there’s a market place where you can buy and sell using your own technology, you can absolutely create financial instruments or media instruments,” said Zachary Weinberg, the chief executive of Invite Media, a start- up in Philadelphia that is working on ad-exchange strategies. “I think what you’ll see is traders come in, and they’ll look to create derivatives on certain packages of media, and resell them to other guys. You’ll see a whole marketplace develop because of this technology shift.”

I’m super excited about this industry, are you?

Related pieces:  I heart data / Advertising to Audiences / Goodbye Media Sales Execs

As I’ve been searching, reading, playing, and harnessing the Internet, I’ve realized that fundamentally, the ‘net is ugly.  Maybe this is because most websites are created in structured markup language and optimized for being indexed, but what about aesthetics?

In product design, there is a balance in form vs. function.  Some products are designed beautifully but have very little utility.  On the web, there are very few beautiful websites.  There are entire universities based on design, you would think that the creative juices would flow onto the net to make it beautiful.  Web Creme and other top-sites have listed beautifully designed websites, but they are few and far between.  I’m part of an online group called nextNY and there are requests constantly for good web designers, just look at Krop.

My friend Noelle hit the nail on the head above… Creativity Mag went to a nextNY meetings and wrote a feature.  The web is generally lead by coders/developers, not designers.

Since the web is being constantly innovated, it’s hard to set design guidelines as what is standard today is going to be extinct tomorrow.  There are technical standards (W3C) but not for design…

What is the future of the web in terms of design?  My friend (somehow we are related too) Grant Lyons is building out GreenerMags, beautifully designed interactive magazines that are environmentally friendly.  These magazines flow nicely and take up more than your available screen size which pulls you into the content and makes it intimate.

Zinio have been taking traditional magazines and transplanting them online - their page turning technology is nifty but other than that, it’s old school. Will the web become fully immersive like Second Life or Google’s Lively?

But what is the future of web design?  The Future of Web Design Conference is coming to New York in November and it looks like there will be some fantastic sessions.  Is it going to be answered in one conference?  No, but it’s the right step

What are your thoughts?  Where is the web going?

As collecting, aggregating, synthesizing, and analyzing data is becoming a very important part of advertising (today on the web, tomorrow across all channels), understanding cookies is a must.   Avinash Kaushik, the Analytics Evangelist at Google has written a fairly comprehensive review of cookies.  You should probably read it.

Apparently, Facebook thinks this:

Each service adds a few more data points about you inside the Facebook brain, which is quite aware of your activities inside the Facebook ecosystem. The brain can then crunch all that information and build a fairly accurate image of who you are, what you like and what might interest you. With all that information at its disposal, Facebook can build a fairly large cash register

Why Facebook Connect Matters and Why It Will Win - GigaOM

I believe it to.  I don’t know if Facebook will win, but the person who can aggregate and synthesize data will be able to target experiences most effectively.  The more targeted the experience is, the more premium the buy becomes.  I heart data.  Remember, every page has different audiences.

As many of you know, I’m down in North Carolina on a little R&R (vacation) and have spent quite a bit of time catching up with family, friends, and my RSS feeds.  There are a few things I’d like to address with this post:

• Contact Form - If you have tried contacting me through the “contact form” on this blog and didn’t get a response, please try submitting again.  I realized that my mail-que was building and we had to delete all contact form responses.  The form has been fully updated and is hosted by a 3rd party so that I will receive all inquiries.
• FutureMeme.org - Last night, I soft launched FutureMeme.org, a project (not a business) to get many thought leaders to participate and write-in their predictions.   There is a wish list of folks we’d like to have participate but YOU should participate as well.  Check it out.
• Outerbanks Pics - I uploaded some of our NC pictures to Flickr.  I love the pic of the BBQ sandwich.  Sherri has been blogging about our trip over on HermanWeb.

Back in NYC on Monday…

I need your help to aggregate the future.  Yes, together, I believe we can help create a global database of thoughts about the future.  I like thinking big.  Imagine putting “futurist” on your resume.  Let’s make it happen.

FutureMeme.org

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful according to it’s Company Information Page.  I don’t want to organize the world’s information, but would rather create an online destination that posts futurist predictions, thoughts, analysis, insights, pictures, charts, etc.  Any of these predictions should bring any of the following:  social, economic or technological impact.

I’d like to have an 8th grader from Pakistan’s technology predictions next to a student at Harvard.  I’d like to read predictions from all over the world talking about alternative energy, technology, social well being, etc.  The future impacts the world, lets give everyone a voice.

Interested to help out?  Click over to FutureMeme.org and join the conversation.  This is a soft launch and I’m looking to get content up on the site.  Please help spread the word…

The image below is based on a recent Forrestor study:

Paul Graham clues all entrepreneurs in regarding different investment areas that they’d like to fund; thus, making his deal flow much more efficient. For entrepreneurs, this is a golden opportunity and for folks who are thinking about jumping into the startup world, these 30 ideas should get you thinking.

One of the ideas that I’d like to talk about is “Fix Advertising” as Paul calls it.

12. Fix advertising. Advertising could be made much better if it tried to please its audience, instead of treating them like victims who deserve x amount of abuse in return for whatever free site they’re getting. It doesn’t work anyway; audiences learn to tune out boring ads, no matter how loud they shout.

What we have now is basically print and TV advertising translated to the web. The right answer will probably look very different. It might not even seem like advertising, by current standards. So the way to approach this problem is probably to start over from scratch: to think what the goal of advertising is, and ask how to do that using the new ingredients technology gives us. Probably the new answers exist already, in some early form that will only later be recognized as the replacement for traditional advertising.

Is advertising broken? In order to fix something, that means it’s broken. Last time I checked, consumers are buying more products than ever. Advertising is certainly not broken. In my eyes, advertising needs to evolve and that’s what “fix advertising” should focus on. I believe that the next iteration of advertising is going to involve a wealth of data. I talk about it here. And here. Moving from assumptions to precise targeting is going to be very fruitful for all involved: the consumer and the advertiser.

Is it time to bring back Seth Goldstein’s startup, Root Markets? Consumer attention has value and should consumers control that?

Most readers of this blog know that Sand Hill Road is hub for many venture capital firms in California. I’m spending the week down at Sand Hill Lane, in North Carolina with family and friends. Blogging may be light during this time, but I’m in the midst of reading a few books that many of us would find interesting and will blog about them.

Here are some pics from the first day.