Enfatico's Boone on his six months at the Dell-focused agency.

As we count down the days until 2009, digital marketers are already making their trend predictions. Executive editor Sharon Goldman chats with Adam Turinas, EVP of client development at agency Organic, about his thoughts on interactive marketing for the coming year.

When it comes to properly targeting your marketing mes­sage, understanding your audience — what it wants to know, how it wants to hear what it wants to know — is essential. So the first word that comes to mind when I think of the Motrin/Twitter mayhem of last week is "oy" — the traditional Yiddish term of dismay.

The presidential election is over - finally! - and we can all breathe a sigh of relief after two years of fundraising, debates, attack ads, Saturday Night Live skits and — oh yes — issues. As you may be, I am all electioned-out. But I'm not tired of considering the far-reaching effects of one of the most powerful aspects of the campaign — direct marketing.

This week, my thoughts turned to personalization - a concept that seems to keep gaining fans in the marketing world, who believe that creating offers unique to increasingly targeted audiences can lead to better engagement and ROI.

In a move sure to bring some teens to tears, Hearst Magazines announced it would close down CosmoGirl! with its December issue due to rising costs and shrinking ad page numbers. Founded by Atoosa Rubenstein in 2000, the magazine has fought the tide of teen magazine closures over the past couple of years, including Teen People and ElleGirl in 2006.

You know the feeling: You're sitting in a conference ses­sion or a long meeting and suddenly the voices start sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher, "Wonk-wonk-wonk-wonk-wonk." That's right, "conference coma" happens to the best of us.

As painful and befuddling as it has been to watch, hear and read, it was impossible to ignore the mountain of bad-to-worse news coming out of Washington and Wall Street last week re­garding the financial crisis and proposed economic bailout.

We all love to laugh, but telling a joke takes courage, as anyone who has stood up in front of a group and tried to remember a punch line will agree. The same is true in the world of advertising and marketing.

New interactive and digital capabilities mean a more measurable environment for out-of-home advertisers.