HQ Trivia, a wildly popular app, seems to be an anachronism, going backwards against new technology trends. It tethers us to a schedule. It's essentially a live game-show broadcast (when everything works as it should, which is far from a sure bet) on a tiny screen. So why the hell is it so popular?

When the email came from YouTube notifying me that my Trevor Noah video had been taken down for "copyright violations," I have to admit, I laughed out loud. I was sure it was some robot run amok.

It's no wonder Facebook's efforts at transparency continually fall short of the full story. If people had true transparency, in real time, Facebook's business would fall apart. Outrage! Horror! It's easy to point the finger at Facebook. It's a huge company with a highly visible single leader. But this isn't just a Facebook problem, or a Google one, or a LinkedIn one. It is so so so much bigger than that.

The advertising industry is quickly approaching a future where household-level sales attribution becomes table stakes for all media campaigns and channels. This future sets up digital media companies well, but could be disastrous for TV companies. TV has an attribution problem, and the industry needs to fix it.

I've always believed marketers should be storytellers first, but they need to manage data to make sure their stories are being told to the people who care the most. A solid marketer should put together a strategy based on four steps, and these steps have to be pursued in order.

For a couple of centuries now, we've been refining the process of advertising. The goal has always been to get people to buy stuff. But right now, there's a perfect storm of forces converging that requires industry insiders to do some deep navel-gazing.

Virtual reality has been on the verge of being a real thing for, well, years now. Quietly, skeptics have uttered the phrase that puts a chill in all VR makers: "3d video." That's the fear, that it's a gimmick, not a glimpse into the future - that it will sell a bunch of gear, and then slip away into the tech graveyard. But I'm happy to say VR won't have that ignominious end, thanks to a billion-dollar bet by, of all companies, Facebook.

Here are some takeaways from the ANA Financial Management Conference in Hollywood, Fla., which I attended earlier this week. First of all, a more appropriate name for the event would be the ANA Marketing Procurement Conference. Perhaps equally un-sexy - but a better description of what took place and who was there.

I did a little research to determine if, by looking at my Facebook data, a smart marketer might have predicted my purchases. In short, could they tell if I was the droid they were looking for?

This past weekend, during the NBA playoffs on TNT, I watched something that caught me off-guard. It was Facebook's "Here Together" ad - by and about Facebook - and it was one of the most genuine and articulate ads I have ever seen from a web-based company.