With the launch of Notional, looks like Ricky will get some (real) experience with Ben Silverman.

…as media and marketing companies continue to be disrupted by the Internet and digital technologies, we will certainly see a lot of “green-shoot” growth at small companies, particularly start-ups. – Dave Morgan (more here)

The report concludes “there is good news and bad news” in the quarters ahead. On the negative side of the balance sheet, IDC said most U.S. advertisers would continue to reduce online ad spending during the third quarter of 2009. On the plus side, the company said “things are not going to get any worse in the Internet ad industry.”- report here

We are in the midst of a major shift in the media landscape that is being fueled by changes in technology, end-user behaviors and the response by brand marketers and communications companies.  We expect these shifts to continue over the next five years, as time and place shifting accelerate while consumers and businesses utilize more digital media alternatives, strengthening the new media pull model at the expense of the traditional media push model.

- James Rutherfurd, Executive Vice President and Managing Director at VSS

Executive Summary here

“According to Pew, 22 percent of American adults say they have cut back or canceled cable in the past year (while only 9 percent have cut back on paying for Internet services). And within that cable-cutting segment, 32 percent say they’ve taken the step of connecting their computers to their TVs to consume Web video, a step that until recently had been intimidating to most Americans.” – article here

“Let’s stop the insanity of trying to make display advertising something it is not….Display advertising has always been aimed above the sales funnel — to attract people into a brand engagement that begins with awareness. Using online search to find a product is seriously down the funnel, and searching for a specific vendor is near the end of the whole process.” – Kevin Mannion (article here)

Brown-Forman’s Southern Comfort brand is taking its entire media buy digital to create better viewer-share, access to programing and stretch $$…story here

“Before today, Blip reached about half of all the video on the Internet.  Today, we probably reach about 80 percent.” – Mike Hudack (article here)

“…according to data from Pubmatic, an ad optimization firm, prices for ad network inventory have increased a whopping 35% since the beginning of the year, signaling perhaps that online advertising’s comeback is already underway.” – AllThingsD

A new study by Cornell researchers shows that traditional (old-media) news outlets lead the blogosphere by 2.5 hours when it comes to breaking news. It’s a sign that the old guard should chill out about blogs and how they’re destroying the news world. – more here