At Digiday, we report on and examine the big and small ways media and marketing companies are modernizing. For this, our Big Ideas issue, we decided to dream big and identify the big ideas that could fundamentally alter media and marketing -- for better or for worse.

In some cases, we looked at the ideas and people tackling big problems in the digital media ecosystem. Marketing reporter Seb Joseph looks at the promise of blockchain to bring integrity to online advertising. Media reporter Ross Benes imagines what it would take to turn off ad retargeting, that scourge of online advertising, and its implications for consumers (they’re not all good). We profile JavaScript inventor Brendan Eich and entrepreneur Tina Sharkey, who are trying to make the web safe for surfers and take on the “tax” that marketers charge consumers in the form of marketing for packaged goods, respectively.

Amazon figures big in this issue. The retail giant has come a long way from selling books online and is now poised to disrupt multiple big industries, from fashion to entertainment to advertising. We asked what would happen if Amazon went all-in on advertising and entertainment, and what that would mean for publishers, Facebook and Google. Conversely, we look at what it would take for Amazon to be broken up -- and even if that happens, why that wouldn’t solve all retailers’ problems.

This issue, our seventh, is available exclusively to Digiday Plus members. Join by this Thursday, September 28, for only $395 per year to receive a copy.

Lucia Moses
co-executive editor, Digiday