A couple weeks ago, I attended the Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB's) MIXX conference in New York, which is billed as "the official interactive conference of Advertising Week." Although I couldn't get to nearly as many sessions or talk to as many people as I would have liked, I thought it would be helpful to share a smattering of my takeaways here.

Despite the innovation and lack of diverse online advertising opportunities, these Web-only entities present a challenge to media buyers: how are we to know they exist, particularly if we and our clients are located outside the region?

Interactive agencies, it seems, still lack the respect traditional companies garner. Our firm recently learned we weren't even part of the RFP process for an existing, extremely satisfied two-year-old client because it "wanted a real, full-service agency" to take over its marketing and advertising. Ironically, the agency it finally chose actually outsources portions of its online marketing work -- to us!

Ah, summer! The official vacation season. Recently, an advertising colleague called to my attention an article about the slow movement, which encourages people to stop being in such a hurry to accomplish more in the same amount of time.

I am seeking input for Part 3 of my ClickZ series, U.S. Women & The Internet. This input would be anonymous and qualitative, not quantitative. If you have answers to all or any of the below questions to share, please email them to me directly: hollis@webadvantage.net. If you need to know more about who I am, please check out my bio. Feel free to introduce yourself at the same time -- I'm always interested in making helpful connections! :-)

Before I begin this week's column, I'd like to bid a very fond farewell to ClickZ's long-time captain of the ship, Rebecca Lieb, a role model, mentor, and friend for many years. Rebecca, it's important I publicly wish you the very best! Speaking of moving on, there's plenty of talk these days about the aging of American's population and the impact the retiring Baby Boomer generation will have on us as a country (so long, Social Security!).