CBS announced their March Madness results and it seems that at least in this contest, the underdog has triumphed. CBS made more per their online viewer than per their offline viewer (let’s say it together, NETWORK TV). Specifically CBS made a $44 CPM online and $42 offline.

A slim margin; but hey this isn’t Vegas we don’t play the spread, this is a real game and when time runs out it’s who is ahead that counts. Online is more valuable media. But we knew that.

As this scenario repeats itself over and over again in the coming year it will be greeted with shock and denial. The denials will be clothed as arguments that each instance is a special exception (there is nothing like March Madness). And the shock, well anyone who is shocked has been in a coma since 2004.

The online audience rates the bigger ticket because of their engagement and their accountability, no matter how imperfect our current metrics. Also and I know this shouldn’t count, but it really does. Consumers, fans, whatever you want to call people, are now reliant to live their lives on the 24/7, moving-in-real time ubiquity of the medium. You can make book on that attraction and it is that attraction that makes most other media irrelevant.

So it costs a little more…get used to it.

From this vantage point it looks like 2008 is going to be a tough one. It is a US election year: critical, stressful and tiring. At best the economy isn’t where we’d like it, at worst it is a disaster edging precariously close to Depression. We are at war. Seriously disturbed individuals are shooting people in malls, churches and of course schools. And still there is no answer for the mess that is Yahoo!

Buckle your seat belts, it’s 2008.

Wait, hold on, we have a couple of weeks. Let’s take time to reflect on 2007. Take time to acknowledge the people who helped us get through this year. They will be the ones who help us find a path to get through the tumult of the year ahead.

To everyone who works with me: it is an honor and privilege to share your lives. Your energy drives me and your work should be seen by everyone: www.sharpe-partners.com/portfolio

To our Clients: thank you for trusting us with your business, letting us be partners and allowing us to enjoy your success.

Much thanks to everyone who listened to, contributed to, or debunked ideas. You made them better or helped make sure they died quiet deaths.

To everyone who brought new ideas and attitudes to “the table”. Your courage will be needed everyday of the year to come. Keep it up.

The list could go on, but it won’t. Enough has been said. Thanks to all and Happy New Year.

So I went to mahalo.com with every expectation of being disappointed and then inspired to write something snarky. Wrong again.

If you haven’t heard about Mahalo the “first human powered search engine,” founded by Jason Calacanis you’ve been paying too much attention to the Facebook belly flop and not enough to new stuff happening. It’s definitely the new stuff happening.

Search engines (pace Google) haven’t been really working for me for a while. They deliver too much stuff with too much variation in quality. I’d just resigned myself to sifting through the pages or inversely, seeing the same less than really relevant links every time.

Mahalo is changing that. I did my favorite test, a search on the word whippet – as in dog. Not only did Mahalo deliver up the goods, they gave me links on health and wellness I’d never seen before. These links would have been really useful to me 2 weeks ago, when one of our whippets was fighting pneumonia. (He’s fine now, thanks)

So I got the Mahalo value proposition within the first 2 minutes. It delivers better quality results- because humans read, judge and reflect and algorithms calculate. The difference is incalculable.

Right now as online ad sales rise to new heights and social networking and video sites see double digit monthly visitor growth, the pre-eminence of the Web site as social/commerce/advertising hub appears unassailable. Would-be web entrepreneurs amass eyeballs that can be transformed into impressions and the Holy Grail of advertising dollars.

The metaphor is simple- web sites as destinations with the visitors traveling around, picking favorites but always seeking outward and onward. After all, that is why the software that facilitates this activity is called a BROWSER.

There is however another force at play on the Internet. Diametrically opposite to browsing and all the monetization models it supports. Powered by widgets, RSS feeds and aggregator sites such as digg.com and del.icio.us, they eradicate the need to browse by providing a stream of information to the desktop or in the browser tool bar.

Users configure them as filters to manage the seemingly infinite information the web offers.

Meaning? The value of this whole browsing thing may be overstated. People are busy, people know what they want and, just like in the real world, the fun of searching for it can get a little old. Why not just stay at home and let it come to you?

The geniuses at Google recognize this. Just as they are building out Web Apps, they are creating more Gadgets and increasingly robust tool bars. They have publicly stated that they see both of these tendencies, browsing and staying at home, as peacefully co-existing.

I agree, but with a caveat. People will gradually shift to spending a larger portion of time “at home” supported by better tools and content overload. Exploration will decrease, impacting advertisers, marketers and publishers; requiring new monetization models. It will, when the furor over Facebook dies down, require attention.

From AOL to the smallest blog, the need will arise to deal with a web with diminishing returns of visitors and to develop a model to monetize the desktop.

My friend, who knows me better than I know myself, made some book recommendations that changed my life, in a really good way.

I suffer from what the Zen-savvy people call a “chattering” mind. That is, my mind essentially never rests. Ever. I am always thinking. Thinking about last week, thinking about next month, thinking about retirement, thinking about why my ears sometimes ring for no reason. A chattering mind is a curse, a tiresome curse.

The books she recommended were “The Power of Now, a Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment” by Eckhart Tolle, and “Practicing the Power of Now, Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises from the Power of Now” by the same author.

Eckhart Tolle, the author of these books, suffered from deep anxiety and depression for most of his life. In one particularly dark moment, he remembers thinking, “I cannot live with myself any longer.” In this insightful moment, he was able to step outside himself, and realize that he was indeed an observer - of himself.

He realized, if you can observe yourself thinking, then the observer “you” must be separate from your mind.

Tolle suggests that people are spending most their time thinking about stuff (either in the past, or planning for the future) instead of being in the moment.

One of my personal takeaways from reading the book is that I’m no longer a slave to whatever thoughts come randomly into my head. I can observe them, and even sometimes just tell my brain to “Shut Up”.

So, try it, listen to our own thoughts as a passive, smarter observer. And when you feel like quiet, don’t be afraid to tell your mind to “Shut Up!” It works.

IBM released more solid evidence that people spend at least as much time online as watching TV and that content (like movies and TV shows) will be increasingly platform agnostic. THANK YOU BIG BLUE. Read it all here.

Now perhaps the advertising industry can start re-inventing media revenue models, demand the delivery of more than mere impressions, and even get serious about doing research on consumer behavior patterns to build those models without a bias toward any one box. Or should we wait for HP to get involved?

Yesterday Youtube.com announced they would beginning running ads over some videos; you can get most of the details (spreadsheets with potential income, I do mean details) and a taste of the associated controversy here.

This is just a first step for Youtube.com as it searches for model to monetize consumer generated video. Yes, Britecove and VideoEgg have been using this format, but not at the scale or probably precision of the Youtube effort. Nor were they about to share their results.

With this learning, Youtube.com will move on to the next step. In other words, this is an iterative process; not finished tomorrow. Not standardized in a week, a year or even two. And while Youtube.com is focused on the issue of consumer generated content, their work has implications for the effectiveness of video advertising across the Web.

Their method has just clarified what some of us have known for a while: solving the puzzle of what to do with video online wasn’t going to be solved by a simple transfer of 30-second spots, as pre-roll, to the Internet. The interactive experience online is different (egad I am sick after 15 &%*#@ years of saying this) than watching a TV. Not better or worse, just different. Thus it requires different methods for interacting with the consumer using it.

So start thinking different. Or let the Youtube.coms and Facebook.coms of the world do it for you. I prefer the former position.

Gilbert Arenas didn’t enter the NBA with as much fanfare as LeBron James or Yao Ming, but the Washington Wizards guard is gradually becoming the league’s most popular player – thanks to the Internet. Arenas, otherwise known as Agent Zero, was recently named as a starting All-Star after garnering more than 200,000 votes in a span of 2 weeks to surge ahead of Vince Carter.

Arenas’ notoriety has stemmed from his NBA.com blog, where he has been called the “NBA’s first blog superstar.” His candid blogging has gained attention from fans and fellow sports bloggers with irreverant comments predicting when he’ll score 50 points and how he’d give up one NBA season for the chance to score 85 points against Duke and the coach who cut him from Team USA. Arenas’ candor and playfulness is refreshing compared to athletes who have been media-savvy since high school and rarely reveal their true personality.

Along with the nickname Agent Zero, which was originated by a Washington sports blogger, Arenas speaks of himself in the third person as the “East Coast Assassin” and “The Black President”, which is the name of his myspace page.

While Arenas has built his brand from a grassroots level, other atheletes are using the Internet to reach fans in a new way. Dwyane Wade, Sports Illustrated’s 2006 Sportsman of the Year, is currently negotiating with Google to “revolutionize how athletes are presented online”. Google has developed a plan that will make DwyaneWade.com fully interactive with sports news feeds, email and user-generated videos.

Athletes are no longer waiting around for Nike and Coca-Cola to approach them with endorsement deals. The Internet has provided a forum for athletes to connect with fans. By doing so, mega-brands will line up to partner with established, hip brands like Agent Zero and Dwyane Wade.