It is hard to remember in these days of YouTube videos being discussed in The New York Times and Jesus getting his own MySpace page, that digital media was once a subset of direct marketing, rather than a ú1.4bn industry on the verge of overtaking national press advertising.
For three years now, the online market has grown 60% year on year - a spurt so fast that it has left media agencies struggling to recruit and train the talent they need, especially at the mid-levels and above.
Recruitment consultants say there are currently 255 mid-level open vacancies in the digital field - equivalent to roughly half the jobs at that level.
Wayne Arnold, chairman of IPA Digital and managing director of digital specialist Profero, says it is one of the biggest problems facing the sector.
"You have this double whammy of client budgets increasing, but the agencies not investing at a high enough rate. Very few agencies were taking on graduates in the dotcom bust, so you have this lost generation," he ecplains.
Walker-i chief executive Phil Georgiadis is one of many who have had people "prised away" by the lure of fat pay cheques. "It reminds me of the TV industry 20 years ago, when certain key buyers attracted cult status and could basically name their salaries," he says.
There is a natural premium on expert knowledge in a medium where a new channel seems to spring up every six months, but managers complain that many of the highly-valued digital whizz-kids with a few years' industry experience still have little experience handling clients.
No one will name names, but there are plenty of stories told about accounts being lost or risked due to elementary mistakes by inexperienced planners and buyers. For the most part, the industry now agrees there is a problem with digital talent, but there remain profound disagreements about how to tackle the issue.
Hoping to trade on their wealth of media experience, the mainstream agencies speak of bringing their online and offline teams together to encourage integration and convergence.
Carat has brought its digital managers onto its trading board and restructured the entire agency around multidisciplinary teams, and has been deliberately over-investing in digital for 18 months. "Digital is no longer a bolt-on that you can run under separate teams," says managing director Neil Jones.
Likewise, Carat's parent company Aegis has set up Isobar to incorporate its various digital offerings across the group. Elsewhere, Zed's planning director Kevin Murphy says digital specialists now share space on sister agency ZenithOptimedia's planning groups with offliners.
In contrast, the digital specialists have focused on building new talent through graduate recruitment and cherry-picking digital experts. They cite prestige scalps such as specialist agency I-Level's winning of the BSkyB account from Universal McCann and Profero's capture of Channel 4 to defend their strategy.
I-Level has set up its own eight-week internal training course for its new intake, i-Cademy. It will produce its first eight graduates at the end of this week and managing director Faith Carthy hopes to begin running the course twice yearly.
She argues that the digital sector needs to give more weight to training. "We set up the i-Cademy because there wasn't anything as bespoke as we need.
"I don't think people are really investing in this way," she explained.
And now industry bodies are starting to take action. This summer, the Internet Advertising Bureau set up IAB Progress, a series of five digital training courses polishing up intermediate-level workers' understanding of media planning and sales, site traffic, search and e-mail marketing. Each course can take up to 25 people at a time and chief executive Guy Phillipson is looking at running them up to twice yearly.
Caroline Simpson, of training organisation Media Circle, says she has noticed a marked increase in the number of people coming on its Introduction to Media courses from a digital background.
The company is now considering offering digital and other sector-specific courses after several agencies highlighted the lack of decent digital training.
ISBA is also working on digital-focused workshops and the Institute of Direct Marketing runs a series of diplomas and courses in aspects of online marketing.
Despite the obvious good will to solve the problem, many of the mainstream agencies still question the value of such "chalk and talk" skills development.
"A lot of the stuff in digital is on-the-job training and, while you can learn the principles, it's on the job that you really learn how it works," says Carat's Jones.
Part of the problem will remain the prodigious rate of online growth.
Agencies have little hope of matching staff to billings until the market calms down and they get a chance to catch up with the demand for fresh recruits. But that precipitous surge in digital media is also carrying the seeds of future success.
One of the problems for digital talent has long been the culture war between the online and offline worlds, with seasoned offline experts looking down on their low-paid, low-status counterparts in digital.
I-Level's Carthy believes this snobbery is to blame for the unwillingness of offline planners and buyers to make the leap into digital, exacerbating the talent shortage.
"For a long time there wasn't that hunger to make the move across, because they were worried that it would limit their options," she says.
But money talks and the old prejudices now seem to be vanishing in the face of the huge amounts of money flowing online.
Yahoo!'s UK commercial director, Blake Chandlee, says the broadband boom has opened up the possibilities of the internet as a display advertising platform, rather than merely search marketing, causing offline experts to see the advantages of moving into digital.
"People from traditional backgrounds are just starting to see online as a branding platform, so more and more are saying they need to know about it," he says. "That's changing the perception of the medium. If people don't start understanding digital, they'll get left behind."
TEN TO WATCH
Several rising stars have already started to stand out in the digital sector. But the industry is in such ferment that nominators asked to remain anonymous, rather than jeopardise working relationships or be labelled as headhunters.
Much online media is still focused on classified advertising, meaning standout campaigns are often lacking. We have listed some of the nominees' most notable accounts instead.
1. MATTHEW WYMER, Head of planning, Green Cathedral
Notable accounts: Center Parcs, PC World, Business Link (DTI)
What others say: "He has a vision of integrating paid-for search and search engine optimisation (SEO) that sets him apart from the competition and has invested money in that vision. He's also not afraid to take risks with the newest technological tools."
2. MAURICIO LEON, Online buying director, Zed Media
Notable accounts: British Airways, Qantas, Siemens
What others say: "Mauricio is one of the few people with a vision of how digital media can be traded in five years' time. His reputation with media owners is excellent and his leadership skills and team ethos are second to none."
3. DOM FINNEY, Head of channels and emerging trading, BLM Quantum
Notable accounts: MBNA, T-Mobile, Thomas Cook
What others say: "He's got incredibly focused views and 99 times out of 100 they're right. He really understands digital, but has a vision about where the industry's going. He has a grasp of the bigger picture, as well as having the contacts in the industry to follow it all through."
4. STEVE LEACH, Chief executive, Bigmouthmedia
Notable accounts: Sony, MTV, Starbucks
What others say: "He's got a very clear idea of where he wants the company to belong in the search market and has gone aggressively after some big clients. There's also a nice culture in the company - it's a very relaxed culture to deal with." 5. Joe Mountain
Business development director e-inbusiness
Notable accounts: French Connection, Conran, Bravissimo
What others say: "He's been central to focusing e-inbusiness as a company that provides all the back-end e-communications capacity. He works well with people and knows how to exploit a market niche."
6. AMANDA DAVIE, Head of search, I-Level
Notable accounts: BSkyB, Orange, AA
What others say: "She understands the commercial reality of search and how it fits into a wider campaign. She has a keen eye for value and a real understanding of the offerings of the different media owners."
7. PHIL BURGESS, Group account director, Dare
Notable accounts: Barclays, COI, AA
What others say: "He was working offline in a very comfortable position, but grasped very early on that digital was going to have a future, so he can really bridge that gap between offline and online."
8. PADDY GRIFFITH, Planning director Agency Republic
Notable accounts: BT digital, O2, BBC
What others say: "He's wise beyond his years and really gets how digital fits into the grand scheme of things. He's strong on strategic thinking, understands the consumer and thinks a lot about how different media aspects relate to each other."
9. ANDY COCKER, Head of trading, Isobar
Notable accounts: Dell, Aviva, Coca-Cola
What others say: "He understands how digital media has revolutionised lives, has excellent relationships with media owners and sees the importance of close collaboration in making media work for clients."
10. KATIE EYTON, Head of online buying, OMD Digital
Notable accounts: Virgin, Vodafone, Sony
What others say: "She has a great grasp of where the industry is going, with a real attention to detail and strategic vision. She thinks several steps ahead to what the emerging channels of the future will be."
Overmatter from box on left the software should be a help rather than a hindrance.
"At the moment people are just buying into digital without really understanding it, but over time the rules will become more well-understood," he says. "It'll be more like the TV industry; it can go back to creativity and be more straightforward. But there'll be less opportunity to pull the wool over people's eyes."
MAKING THE MOST OF SEARCH OPTIMISATION
Web analytics has come a long way since the days when it told you little more than how many web pages were being viewed and by how many people.
The main companies, such as Omniture and Webtrends, now offer complex bundles of information telling clients who is viewing their content, which channels consumers are using and where they went previously.
Brands can also use this software to check up on the performance of their agencies. As a result, agencies have responded by offering analytics as part of their packages.
Omniture's Neil Morgan says the new technology will put pressure on traditional media companies to prove their value.
"You can have the customer running this, so they can go to the agencies and say 'what you're doing isn't working'. That puts the agencies in a weaker position," he says.
The biggest threat comes in paid-for search, one of the fastest-growing parts of the digital industry, worth an estimated ú255m in the UK. Advertising on Google's AdWords service can involve monitoring the auction prices of hundreds of thousands of keywords, even if only a handful are being bought at any one time.
Normally these campaigns are bought by having a junior employee trawling through vast spreadsheets of keywords, but Omniture now offers software which will plan and buy the whole campaign. "It's acting as a virtual campaign manager," says Morgan. Nonetheless, he insists analytics won't be a threat to media agencies in the long run, insisting the software should be a help rather than a hindrance.
"At the moment people are just buying into digital without really understanding it, but over time the rules will become more well-understood," he says. "It'll be more like the TV industry; it can go back to creativity and be more straightforward. But there'll be less opportunity to pull the wool over people's eyes."
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