David Verklin, CEO of Carat Americas, runs the largest independent media services company in North America, sporting six billion in billings annually. David shepherds over 350 clients including Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, RadioShack, Adidas, Hyundai, New Line Cinema, Electronic Arts, Kia, Black & Decker, Marriott and Philips Electronics. RBR/TVBR asked him,

In a nutshell, how are you and your Carat Digital unit seeing the future of advertising in a digital convergence world?

"There's no question that our clients are unbelievably interested in new advertising technologies. Clients are both interested in hearing about it as with the diversion of the budget. We're seeing kind of a movement towards a media plan that is 15 to 20% of the budget being allocated into what would probably currently be called interactive or digital media. It's kind of amazing when right now you're hearing the Internet guys talking about 8% and I'm telling you within the next 36 months we're talking about 15 to 20% of total spending in the digital medium," Verklin said.

Someday we will have Internet built into new cars. That's going to be a big deal-breaker down the road when the Internet becomes completely mobile. Do you look at that at all or is that still a little bit too far in the future?

"We're already starting to look at that and I think in the same view, Carat announced the launching of Carat Arcade, which is our advergaming unit, as well as Carat Mobile Marketing, to help clients look at opportunities within wireless and mobile media. And I think as an example, we believe that the mobile devices including the cell phone are an enormous threat to the iPod as we currently know it. So the vision of being able to download music on your phone and then listen to it with an earpiece doesn't feel that far away to me. We're looking at all these things right now, so no, I don't think what you're saying is far fetched at all and that's one of the interesting things about some of these new technologies - - are some of them are transient? Could the iPod be a bridging technology between what was and what is to be? Just as I think one can argue TiVo is a linking technology between was and what is to be. I mean will the TiVo brand be around a decade from now? Hell no, but certainly embedded PVR devices are going to be here," Verklin explained.