Forget the Cupertino keynote, if you have missed GQ’s Men of the Year in the Christmas rush, then I recommend everyone download Condé Nast’s new GQ January 2010 app for the iPhone. Why? Because it’s a great example of the future of interactive design.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again; the future for magazines is not in creating browser-based web pages. We’re hopefully past the days of newsletters formatted in MS Word, or experiencing websites with terrible typography, microscopic little pictures and business-card sized videos, not to mention, those tiny little ads embarrassingly hidden in the corners, jumping up and down saying ‘click me, click me!’ It’s all more annoying than the donkey in Shrek.

Despite the amazing advances in functionality on the Internet over the last few years, design in digital channels is a long way from the offline aesthetic renaissance spurred on by desktop design programs like Quark Xpress. One only needs to browse a newsstand and marvel at the freedom of design, where bold, beautiful, creative typography are sensually entwined with stunning imagery. Even the Wall Street Journal runs color photos now! In contrast, type in the URLs of these same publications and prepare yourself for a walk through a design desert.

Yes, templates hold consistency, but like themes variations in classical music, they’re supposed to be deliberately broken to add interest or context. Good design adds value to the communication; it doesn’t just deliver information. It’s exciting and part of entertainment and we all know HTML just can’t do that. Connection speeds wouldn’t even let you send it if you could. Also, Flash is not the saviour and only a mere gimmick that doesn’t even rise to the level of commercial art.

So why am I now as excited as teenage boy who has just discovered a discarded copy of Playboy in a country lane? Well, starters being able to ‘pinch’ and ‘squeeze’ Rhianna… Ok, no that’s not it (lie, lie!).

Consider the fact newspapers close down on a daily basis as they struggle to make ends meet as advertisers abandon them. The ratio of ads to editorial in the print world is 60:40 or higher and online is shamefully a long, long way from anything like that.

Stop and observe the newsstand and notice the ever-shrinking physical magazines to pocketsize away from A4, and that many newspapers have now moved away from broadsheet formats. Next, hold up an Amazon Kindle next to one of those little mags – not too dissimilar is it? Watch how you flick through a magazine, getting to the article you want, taking in the visual fluff from all the pretty pictures including those ads that get you salivating over that latest hot hatch. Ah, so this is what all those rumors of the impending full-colour, networkable 10’ Apple iPad being launched on Joe public was all about.

Look back at the GQ app on your iPhone.

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It’s an exciting time for Eyeblaster.

As digital starts to permeate every media channel out there, the blurs of online have never been seen more clearly as in the case of mobile. It is redefining our concept of the web and communication.

Consider the digital landscape. From humble garage roots over a relatively short time span, Google, Apple and Microsoft have come to be household names all fighting for media dominance – at the very least a huge piece of the global media pie across all channels. Yet the irony is that with all its clever marketing and design, Apple’s iPhone could not be taken seriously until it had GPS integration with Google maps and was hooked up to Microsoft Exchange!

There is indeed a platform war going on out there, and Eyeblaster is ingrained in this conversation. That is why Eyeblaster is proud to be the premium sponsor of OMMA Global Conference 2008 “Platform Wars”. As we find ourselves in the midst of change from a rich media provider to delivering global cross-channel consumer experiences across all digital media; from inBanner to inStream and inGame, from display to search to mobile to IPTV and beyond.

This week’s Eyeblaster sessions in the US have been entitled “Courting the Consumer: Spending quality time with your audience” where I was discussing brand measurement. The industry has to move from impressions to audience targeting, and find new metrics for online brand activity – it is in a pubescent time as it begins to mature. Branding takes time: From creating initial impact as a result of exposure, to an increased time spent with a brand, to a deeper emotional connection as a result of interaction, to the resulting investigation via search or conversational ‘buzz’ within social media.

A click therefore is a tiny aspect, and often a skewed, measurability for today’s digital world – and has no real relevance to brand managers seeking to measure emotional connections; impact simply cannot always be measured immediately. Comparing post-impression to post-click activity this is certainly proving the case as anywhere between 5-10x more conversions happen as result of seeing as opposed to clicking on ads. The click also has no relevance for digital media in terms of TV and out-of-home as they begin to receive digital connections. It is about exposure, not just interaction.

There is hope however, measuring the Dwell time, the number of seconds spent engaging with a brand, offers a consistent point of measurement for diverse creative executions. It shows the shift of a user in wanting to explore a brand in situation. With the average Dwell time being a minute across all rich media creatives – that is 30 seconds longer than the average TV ad - and at a user’s request. It offers a huge confidence for anyone considering digital brand building.

In terms of the after effects, perhaps this can be seen in terms of measuring actual user journeys. Seeing a consumer’s path to conversion; viewing the movement beyond ‘seeing’ something via display advertising, to ‘inquiring’ about further information via a search engine – and ultimately how the resulting targeting could allow further display creative’s to be even more relevant to the consumer purchase funnel.

This is something at the heart of Eyeblaster’s channel connect strategies, breaking down silos between search and display or mass-media and online. We are beginning to help agencies join the dots.

From iMedia Brand Summit in San Diego to OMMA Global Conference in New York this week, the questions and discussions from advertisers and agencies alike certainly seem to agree – how do we build and measure emotional impact with our audiences in a fast-paced digital world…

It really is a time for change.