TV Guide certainly has gone through a transformation. The publication — a division of Gemstar-TV Guide International, a leading media company based in New York — has morphed from a journal used by consumers solely to check TV listings into a full-on entertainment publication.

Ask any long-time market-watchers — people who’ve seen economic conditions rise and fall — and most will give you the same advice during a downturn: Stick to the basics. In the investment community, basics might include: remain liquid, shop for value, invest for the long term, look for undervalued opportunities and diversify. Those same basics are easily applied to online marketing.

Ad networks long have been a core component of any media plan. While in the early days of online advertising ad networks struggled to justify their existence, they now are welcomed in every major advertising budget thanks to their reach and scalability. Traditional ad networks can provide immediate results — and working with an ad network facilitates understanding of the marketing challenges, the ever-changing dynamics and the science behind driving greater value from online advertising.

“Today’s marketers are increasingly spreading their budgets across a widening variety of digital specialist firms. A creative shop here, a search marketing firm there, an e-mail services provider somewhere in the middle. Such fragmentation is taking a whole lot of pressure off the traditional agency — or putting a whole lot on, perhaps — as marketers rely less on their agency of record and move toward a more specialist-by-specialist approach.

Melissa: Welcome to eM+C’s third eChat. Today we’re going to be discussing mobile marketing programs. Anyone can comment: What types of mobile marketing campaigns have you executed? Ted: 4INFO has executed a lot on both sides of the fence. We buy a fair bit of mobile media and sell the ad space on our own content. Josh: We have used [short message service] as a call to action, mobile banners, mobile search and some custom applications for our clients. Alex: We have mobile product search campaigns.