A group of angel investors, including Google India Managing
Director Rajan Anandan, has come together to launch an online mentoring and funding
platform VentureFund.com, with an initial corpus of $100 million. The founding

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VC-backed BabyOye.com has launched another website KidsOye.com,
for kids of age ranging from 0-13 years, reports MediaNama. The store offers
products across various categories including toys,
books & comics, music, movies, clothes, kids’ room, accessories, footwear,
and back to school products.

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Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar has written
to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, asking him to withdraw India's recent
position at the UN proposing governmental control over internet. At the 66th
session of the United Nations, India made a proposal to control the Internet
through a United Nations Committee.

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The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) is of
the view that the set of recommendations are self-contradictory and defeats the
purpose with which the consultation paper was published. Telecom Regulatory
Authority of India (TRAI) had published the recommendations for the Mobile
Value Added Services industry on 14 May 2012. 

read more

Hacker group Anonymous had brought down for a few hours the
websites of The Supreme Court of India (SupremeCourtofIndia.nic.in) and All
India Congress (Aicc.org.in). The Group had earlier attacked government and
corporate websites to protest what the it perceives was injustice. Till the time of filing this report, the Supreme Court site has been restored.

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Travel search engine iXiGO.com announced the appointment of
Abhishek Sharma as Vice President, Operations and Product Platform. In this new
role, Sharma would be responsible for driving the company’s operations, product
platform and content strategy as a part of its management team. iXiGO is also
beta-testing a new multi-city flight search feature and has released a sneak

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Random House India and MSN have launched a writing contest
to find budding Indian women writers and their tales. Random House India and
MSN are inviting women writers in India to pick up the pen and shake loose the
story inside with the 'MSN She: Write a Story' contest.

read more

Google has introduced its ‘Good to Know’ campaign in Hindi
to help Indian users understand and protect their online information. Apart
from Hindi, 'Good To Know' has been launched in other Indian languages like
Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu. This takes it to thirty languages and another thirty
languages will be added in the coming weeks, Google said.

read more

Car rental company Carzonrent (I) Pvt Ltd, has acquired QCABS,
an online car rental service aggregator. Carzonrent has been in the business of
renting cars, Radio Taxi (under the Easycabs brand) and operating lease
business. In 2007, Carzonrent started its radio cabs business - EasyCabs. With

read more

Lok Sabha TV has launched LokSabhaTV.nic.in hoping that the
initiative would bolster the inclusive image of Parliament and reach out to a
wider, younger audience. Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar recalled the efforts of
former Speaker Somnath Chatterjee who envisaged the idea of a dedicated TV
Channel for the Lok Sabha - the first of its kind in the world.

read more

Why aren't serious advertisers dedicating reasonable amounts of budget toward the one medium that moves consumers the most?

The problem Google faces is that, at the end of the day, it's running an auction.

Are you taking advantage of the tablet's explosive growth, features, and unique user mindset?

How an underdog became the market leader in the online marketing space.

Are you prepared for the mobile movement?

A handful of brands that followed the Old Spice model still managed to achieve their goals.

Do you know why someone should sign up for your social media program?

Part two in a two-part interview with Jay Baer.

An effective targeting strategy demonstrates to users that you know them, have anticipated their needs, and have something that will be relevant to them.

Paying attention to the experiences your customers actually have will give you precisely the information you need to succeed on the social web.

Managing Twitter followers can become a time consuming task, taking time away from actually sending messages and growing your influence. Here are a few free and paid tools that will save you time and provide all the important data you need.

Facebook is a different medium than paid search advertising, with entirely unique advantages. Learn ways to restructure your paid social advertising paradigm without over-committing to media spend and track results and ROI on Facebook.

Facebook shares tips for Page managers looking to increase fan engagement with specific types of content posted to drive different types of engagement. Find out what they learned in an internal brand pages study of 23 brands across six industries.

Three new Google Search features are part of their “next generation search” project, Knowledge Graph. Info boxes, segmented results based on query context and suggestions based on popular queries negate the need to even click off the SERP for info.

No matter your approach, the mobile landscape is a tricky, expansive space of uncertainty filled with twists and turns that would give even the most solid minded developer or site owner points to pause. Here’s a guide to help you go mobile.

You don’t have to be a lifestyle-type site to win on Pinterest, you merely need to make your brand fun and create interesting, shareable images. Pinterest offers other benefits, including social links generated from content shared on Pinterest.

Google and the National Security Agency's possibly secret relationship will remain secret. The Federal Appeals Court has upheld the NSA's decision not to release information confirming or denying if they have a relationship with Google.

Automaker tells ClickZ it will continue advertising on the social site. While General Motors may halt Facebook advertising, according to a Wall Street Journal story today, Ford has a different attitude toward paid promotions on the social site.

Don't try too hard to look for dates and names of updates. Rather, look more to the effects as Google’s algorithm evolves so you can adapt accordingly. What really matters is that Google is looking harder at link spam now, so you should be too.

The right Custom Reports can be incredible time savers. Instead of spending time digging around for important metrics, you can find what you need separated neatly into columns for some analysis that will lead to some actionable insight.

While localization is the most popular of the targeting options offered by mobile ad networks, the "dirty secret" is that most can't deliver local impressions more focused than the Designated Market Area or city level.

Larry King his talk show will resume this summer on the new digital network Ora.TV.

Solspot plans to serve up ads and editorial content tied to visitor preferences and geographic location. The company, recently named as the official surf forecaster for the 2012 American Pro-Surfing series, will launch the redesigned site Monday.

Sportskool, the U.S.-based sports training and entertainment television network, has launched YogaSessions.TV a new on-line channel dedicated to daily yoga practitioners.

Consumers who sued Hulu for alleged privacy violations are urging a federal judge to reject the company's argument that it isn't covered by the federal video privacy law. Hulu's contention that the Video Privacy Protection Act only applies to brick-and-mortar stores is "disingenuous at best," the consumers argued in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California.

Is there more to General Motors' decision earlier this week to pull its paid ads from Facebook than meets the eye? Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser thinks so. He postulates that GM was signaling that it's willing "to walk away from any negotiation with any media owner." Another takeaway is that social media is a highly lucrative business for ad agencies.

What do marketers pay for when buying click-to-call mobile ads? Up to 76% of mobile display ad calls are accidental clicks or "pocket calls" that can waste a brand's budget, according to a Marchex study. Only 14% come from existing customers, and 10% from new customers.

A top Nielsen executive said the company's fledgling Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) product is heading toward an industry standard in tracking Internet consumption with metrics similar to TV.

WPP's Possible Worldwide has bought a majority stake in Grape, a Russian digital agency. Like most holding companies, WPP is bulking up on its resources in faster-growing markets like Russia, with predictions of 13% to 14% annual spending growth there through 2014.

By the time you read this, the Zuck and his various expat cronies will have so much money that they can tell GM where to put their ad money for the next 20 years. But one wonders if Facebook's loss of paid advertising from the back-from-the-brink-thank-you-American-taxpayers automaker will encourage other marketers to rethink ads on the social media behemoth.

A private investment company of Aditya Birla Group will make a financial investment of 27.5 per cent in India Today Group’s holding company Living Media India

I am pleased with what we did last year in India, but we need to push harder… because arguably India is going to be the fastest growing market in the next 10 years, says Steve King, Global CEO, ZenithOptimedia

RK Swamy Hansa Group’s Chintamani Rao analyses the scenario of big corporates picking up stakes in media houses

Should we worry about this new trend of Ambanis owning TV18, Birlas trying to own Living Media? There is no reason to lose hope, says Essar’s Shivnath Thukral

Less ads during one’s favourite soap is a welcome move for the viewers, but e4m’s Shanta Saikia wonders how it would impact ad rates and revenues

The explosion of new media touch-points has provided new opportunities to drive advocacy amongst consumers, remarks Shweta Shukla, Country Head – External Relations, P&G India

The objective of including the medium should be clear and then use of innovation at the right focus area should follow in the broad plan, says Mandeep Malhotra, President, DDB MudraMax

Read all the action in the Indian media, advertising and marketing industry in this week’s news roundup

A private investment company of Aditya Birla Group will make a financial investment of 27.5 per cent in India Today Group’s holding company Living Media India

The digitisation process in Delhi could be derailed by shortage of set top boxes & manpower; meeting deadline is difficult but some are hopeful

While localization is the most popular of the targeting options offered by mobile ad networks, the "dirty secret" is that most can't deliver local impressions more focused than the Designated Market Area or city level.

What do marketers pay for when buying click-to-call mobile ads? Up to 76% of mobile display ad calls are accidental clicks or "pocket calls" that can waste a brand's budget, according to a Marchex study. Only 14% come from existing customers, and 10% from new customers.

Mobile is far behind online technologies when it comes to tracking and providing the data sets necessary for an equivalent RTB economy. But mobile also changes some of the terms of ad targeting, promising a rich layer of location data and perhaps different ideas of what constitutes "premium" inventory.

A Exponential Interactive, the global digital advertising company, has appointed SandyA ShanmanA as General Manager, Mobile, to run its newly launchedA AppsnackTM, A advertising division that provides in-app, rich-media brand engagement solutions for brand advertisers.

Popularity in the Apple App Store is relative. According to new calculations from Distimo, it takes takes 25,300 downloads a day for a free iPhone game to crack the top 25 in its category, but only 300 downloads a day in the weather category.

At the IAB Mobile Engage conference in the UK this week, MediaCom Managing Partner for Mobile and Innovation Stefan Bardega said that 18% of the digital ads from the company now are being viewed by consumers on mobile devices. The increase has been staggering, up from only 4% of ads a year ago.

Many mobile ads do still suck because they were never designed to leverage the unique opportunities and situations of the medium. More to the point, the ads were not conceived to deliver value from the mobile channel.

According to reports, both Amazon and news aggregator Pulse are looking for ways to bring novel ad formats to tablet devices. Amazon is pitching a high-priced package for the Kindle Fire, and Pulse is looking for an account executive.

Vodafone India, which is fighting the government on the issue of tax on its acquisition of Hutchison's stake in Hutchison-Essar in 2007, today said preparations are on a for initial public offer but shareholders will take a final call on the public float. The British telecom giant Vodafone had acquired Hutchison stake in Hutchison Essar in 2007. It got mired in a controversy over withholding tax issue . The matter went to court and the Supreme Court had ruled in its favour. The government now is amending the IT Act to bring into tax net Vodafone-like deals with underlying assets in India.

The increasing impact of smartphones on how consumers interact with companies looking to market their products and services is revealed today by a report showing that over one third (36%) of UK consumers now read marketing emails on their mobile devices. This rises significantly to over half (55%) of 18-34 year olds.

What do marketers pay for when buying click-to-call mobile ads? Up to 76% of mobile display ad calls are accidental clicks or "pocket calls" that can waste a brand's budget, according to a Marchex study. Only 14% come from existing customers, and 10% from new customers.

Some 76% of people search in two or more languages, according to a study released this week from digital marketing agency Greenlight. The data, which breaks down into occupation and country, provides insight to be considered when designing paid-search campaigns or Web sites to appeal to a specific audience. This is similarly true when linking to content on Facebook, Google+ or other social sites.

Video search engine blinkx on Friday reported a full-year revenue increase of 73 percent year-over-year, thanks to increased demand for video on smartphones and tablets as well as an increase in advertising streams.

Paid search has proven to be one of the highest ROI channels in digital advertising, but keywords are both the life's blood and bane of an SEM's existence. With an infinite number of keywords that could be associated with any retailer's product catalog, it's damn near impossible to predict and manage all the right keywords that will maximize your revenue and return on ad spend.

As a business owner, coming out on top in search results is something I am always striving for.

Finding the return on investment from Facebook ads is a continuing source of concern for advertisers that are looking for answers on what they get in return for spending millions of dollars to advertise on the site. It has become clear through General Motors' decision to pull ad funds that the industry must stop inventing new metrics and turn toward traditional tools.

Google has developed the next generation of DoubleClick Search, allowing users to optimize ads on platforms across AdWords and adCenter supporting campaigns across Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Chris Schreiber, VP-Marketing at Sharethrough, just unveiled a new, much-needed searchable platform for aggregating branded videos. It's called The Creative Network. Sounds like what AdForum.com did for creating a centralized hub for searching and finding TV commercial campaigns, and the agencies that created them, but for online video.

Long-time Madison Avenue media research guru Jon Swallen has been named chief research officer of WPP's Kantar Media Intelligence North America unit. He previously was senior vice president-research.

Last week I talked about the power of our beliefs to shape our view of the world around us. I also mentioned how our belief constructs impact our view of brands. As luck would have it, two separate pieces crossed my path this week, both of which provide excellent examples of how we may perceive brands, and how marketers often get it wrong when trying to shepherd a brand through the marketplace.

Rather than offering a traditional blanket "thank you" or a discount or promotion for reaching two million Facebook fans, AT&T will take two full days this week to celebrate a number of its fans individually ... and through song.

Resource's core target audience is women 35 to 45, typically married and with children, who are affluent, have "holistic" lifestyles and tend to be "thought leaders," reports Larry Cooper, senior marketing manager for Resource. "These are women who have a sense of discovery."

A Chevy Sonic will be awarded to both the 2012 Street League Champion and a Street League fan. Through an online contest, consumers can enter-to-win the same vehicle as the one given to the 2012 Champion.

Probably best known as a tourist destination for American history buffs, the City of Brotherly Love is going to be putting fine arts on its lapel with a campaign timed to the opening of the Barnes Foundation this week.

Is there more to General Motors' decision earlier this week to pull its paid ads from Facebook than meets the eye? Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser thinks so. He postulates that GM was signaling that it's willing "to walk away from any negotiation with any media owner." Another takeaway is that social media is a highly lucrative business for ad agencies.

There's a new social media kid on the block - and she's already the most popular kid in school. What's her name? Let's just say she's gotten a lot of Pinterest lately.

WPP's Possible Worldwide has bought a majority stake in Grape, a Russian digital agency. Like most holding companies, WPP is bulking up on its resources in faster-growing markets like Russia, with predictions of 13% to 14% annual spending growth there through 2014.

Bloggers and reporters who write about social media have often been accused of overstating its importance relative to other things like food, water, and shelter. But the widespread angst provoked by Facebook's somewhat-lackluster initial public offering confirms that we were right all along: Facebook is at least as important as all of human civilization, if not more so.

Is social media chatter, opinion and condemnation enough to gain insight into the success rate of a new fall show? Can social media activity make or break a show? It's hard to say the TV business knows the answer yet -- it probably never will -- but it is increasingly clear that the more endorsements that trickle through blogs, forums, Facebook and Twitter, the better.

Talking about Google+ has always been a strange experience, sometimes bordering on Zen-like paradox. It is both a Facebook competitor and not a Facebook competitor; similarly, it is a social network but also not a social network (because it is, rather, a "suite of social tools"). To the list of questions with diametrically opposed answers we can now add the big one: "Does anyone use it?"

Tablet owners use the devices at home three-quarters of the time, according to a study conducted by Viacom. In the home, 96% of consumers use them in the living room; 94% in the bedroom, 75% in the home office, 70% on the porch and 68% in the kitchen. With these usage statistics, perhaps marketers should look more closely at their video strategies for tablets?

The 2012 London Olympics could be dubbed the first-ever "Digital Olympic Games," thanks to the extensive digital coverage across platforms and devices announced by the BBC on Wednesday.

The online video industry -- which has long been held back by supply-side scarcity and measurement problems -- is finally maturing, it seems.

In comments filed to the Federal Communications Commission on Monday, the National Association of Broadcasters decided to focus on services that pose a threat to its members' business models, rather than the likes of Hulu or Netflix, two services that might qualify as "multichannel video programming distributors" under a revised definition.

Many of the conversations about the digital content newfronts and the television upfronts have been framed as a zero-sum game: You're either focused on TV or you're focused on digital. Too little dialogue acknowledges the symbiotic relationship between the two. Even for TV's own digital properties, the upfront deals focus first on locking in broadcast assets, with digital assets designated to "player to be named later" status, often handled without thoughtful input from experts in that field. Brands wind up buying ad space on TV without locking in the valuable, complementary assets at the time, thus diminishing the future negotiating leverage and, more importantly, the creative connection between the two.

BBC Worldwide is extending its relationship with social, online TV site Viki. Through its BBC Advertising arm, the BBC will be pooling together ad inventory from its own BBC Worldwide operations with that of Viki, which is accessed in over 200 countries and offers TV shows, movies and other premium content in over 150 languages - with those translations powered by its user base. The deal will mean that BBC can add further scale to its own advertising operations to target a class of larger advertisers looking to reach that international audience on a wide scale.

Despite the increasing number of options available to consumers, they're still watching the majority of their video programming on television sets -- a behavior that has some effect on consumers' purchase considerations.

Tribune Media Services, which provides information about entertainment and related content to TV program guides, movie listings and other metadata-reliant applications, is partnering with Digitalsmiths, which specializes in video content discovery, to offer TMS customers new APIs that expand the range of uses for TMS metadata.

I had an elaborate, "funny" introduction written about the handful of Siemens videos that we'll be discussing in today's exercise. In it, I spun a whimsical tale about how I happened upon the clips after clicking on a typo-laden banner ad that lined the right side of the Doonesbury home page. You may well have LOLOMG'd! at the part where I likened the failure to hyphenate "100-year-old factory" to leaving the scene of a hit-and-run accident that mortally injured a small child and his puppy. There is no humor like grammar humor. But frankly, after rewatching the videos, I'm too depressed to polish it up for publication.

This is a tough week for online video to get any attention. It's TV upfront time, and the broadcast networks are touting their new fall lineups to Madison Avenue. Sure, digital extensions and online video add-ons will be part of many shows' marketing efforts during the season, but the reality is online video won't get much play at the TV upfront.

Merriam-Webster defines it as "the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service." The Chartered Institute of Marketing says it's "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably." But I, of course, have an alternate definition, which is this: Marketing is a process of recognition. It is the process by which you recognize your customers and the process by which they recognize you.

When you're building a company, there are many factors that affect your success, but none are as important as the people who surround you. To quote Patti Smith, "The People Have The Power"! The people make the company. You may have the greatest idea in the world, but if you don't have the right team, it will be difficult to create success.

If you ever meet me in a professional setting, you may notice my black notebook and black-ink pen. I carry it around like an evangelical Christian does his copy of the Bible. There are four reasons:

Recently, Sir James Dyson, the founder of the Dyson Company and the inventor of sleek household appliances, said that he doesn't believe in branding. "We're only as good as our latest product," Dyson said. "I don't believe in brand at all."

If I asked you to move a brick wall, how would you do it? Would you slam your weight against it until it began to budge? Would you get a digger, rip it out of the ground, and drop it in its new location? Would you tell me it's impossible?

As a rule, and with only rare exceptions, I don't buy public stocks. I prefer to limit my equity investments to early stage start-ups. Thus, I won't be buying Facebook shares when they go public soon. However, I am very bullish on the company. As big as Facebook is today, I believe that it will become a much, much bigger and more valuable company over time, and I suspect that folks who buy its stock will do well. Here are my reasons why:

Is it possible the concept of truly commerce-enabled interactive television is nothing more than a myth? From my perspective -- specifically that of a consumer -- I'm starting to think that's the case.

The ad-tech industry has forgotten how to speak English. As MediaPost editor in chief Joe Mandese said, "the exclusionary nature of online media always talking to itself only divides the world of marketing, advertising and media services." I doubt anyone disagrees.

Agencies continue to look for a new model for the future. There are two reasons for this. First, agency fees have been under attack for years. The other issue is people. The war for top talent is fierce. One upstart agency -- Ignited, full-service shop based in Los Angeles -- is addressing both of these issues in a new way.

In any given moment, we are surrounded, in vast quantities: millions upon millions of them, crowding and jostling for our attention. Some people become overwhelmed by them. Some try to create relationships with them. Some people ignore them totally. But sometimes the ideas that envelop us cannot be ignored.

Emails that remind customers to come back and finish checking out their shopping carts are some of the highest-ROI messages a marketer can send. So why aren't you deploying these high-value emails yet?

For years we accessed information via computers much the same way we consumed it via the old tube radios, which took up huge amounts of space and required us to make the time and effort to go to them. Thanks to smartphones and tablets, email marketers now find themselves at the same crossroads radio was at decades ago. Marketers must now adapt their methods and messages to stay relevant, or be left behind by the mobile consumer.

I know it's tough to plan a test; it takes a lot of work to generate a hypothesis, create assets and content accordingly, structure the test, send it, and measure and analyze the results. But each little insight you make adds up to a better understanding of your subscribers and their preferences. If you're committed to testing (and you should be), there is always something you can test, even in the simplest of campaigns.

Mobile open rates are rising faster than expected. If this trend continues, these rates will overtake opens on webmail and desktop email clients by the end of the year, or even as soon as this summer. Here's what I see as the three big implications of the boom in mobile email:

It takes all sorts of experts to launch a rock-star email campaign, and it's crucial to have everyone's eyes looking out for ways to boost the creative. Even team leaders without strong backgrounds in design or copy can effectively evaluate email creative to get campaigns into tiptop shape. Make these three steps part of your agenda before letting an email leave your desk (er, computer screen):

Before we get to the "how," let's explore the "why"? In today's age of rich media and social connectivity, multi-modal consumers reserve their attention for the most compelling, contextual experiences. With that said, how does a static medium like email survive as a marketing tool?

What are you focused on right now? What are the Big Kahuna issues that you are spending serious brainpower thinking about? In the last few months I've met with about a dozen companies, mostly in B2C industries, and, somewhat to my surprise, the topics we discussed were amazingly consistent from company to company. Not a single company wanted to talk about list/database growth. Rather, every issue or topic of concern revolved around approaches to maximize engagement and conversion among existing contacts.

Return on investment (ROI) is the metric marketers most commonly use to compare ads, campaigns and even entire channels. ROI makes sense for evaluating marketing when the primary input is external spending: buying media, printing expense, postage, creative costs or sponsorship fees, for example. Email, however, does not fit neatly into the same model. Because the monetary "investment" denominator in email is comparatively low, using a strict ROI calculation will always allow it to shine. That's fine with those of us in the email industry, as we always win the ROI contests. But it misrepresents what must actually be invested in email in order for it to perform: the internal resources that nurture and grow the program.

So I am hanging out on Captiva Island, Fla., this week at MediaPost's own Email Insider Summit. I have been attending these summits for many years now, and there are always stories that become folklore among us -- stories that always manage to bubble to the surface at inconvenient and embarrassing times. So, rather than wait for that moment, I figured I would 1) create it, and 2) turn it into email advice. Here goes:

Just when it seemed that the social media landscape was solidifying around Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, Pinterest burst onto the scene. As of February, Pinterest became the No. 3 social network by web traffic behind Facebook and Twitter, according to Experian Hitwise data. That growth has not only led to brands launching Pinterest pages, but to marketers promoting those pages in their email campaigns.

Paid search has proven to be one of the highest ROI channels in digital advertising, but keywords are both the life's blood and bane of an SEM's existence. With an infinite number of keywords that could be associated with any retailer's product catalog, it's damn near impossible to predict and manage all the right keywords that will maximize your revenue and return on ad spend.

Last week I talked about the power of our beliefs to shape our view of the world around us. I also mentioned how our belief constructs impact our view of brands. As luck would have it, two separate pieces crossed my path this week, both of which provide excellent examples of how we may perceive brands, and how marketers often get it wrong when trying to shepherd a brand through the marketplace.

I'm sure you've all watched "Mad Men" and wondered what it would be like if Don Draper worked in today's advertising industry. But what if the greatest fictional ad creative of all time found himself in SEM?

Big data is everywhere. It's become a fashionable topic du jour, and in an industry like search engine marketing, where data is everything, that trend holds especially true. One of my favorite quotes on the importance of data to the future of business is from Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian, "Datarati are companies that have the edge in consumer data insight... Data is ubiquitous and cheap, analytical ability is scarce... The sexiest job in the next ten years will be statistician."

In his book "The Believing Brain," Michael Shermer spends several hundred pages exploring just how powerful beliefs are in forming our view of the world. Beliefs impact not just what we think, but they literally filter what we see and do. And, once in place, beliefs tend to be stubbornly unshakeable. We will go to great extents to defend our beliefs with rationalizations that are often totally or partially fabricated. As Shermer says, "Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow."

I have to admit it - yesterday's column by Ryan DeShazer got my dander up a little bit. Just the headline -- "Doesn't Google Owe SEOs Something?" -- caught me and wouldn't let go. So, I decided I'd present the other side of this discussion today on why Google does not owe anything to SEOs.

"It's one of the most important rules of search engine optimization. Don't depend solely on SEO. Especially don't depend solely on Google, the largest of the SEO sources. I'm always surprised when people fail to learn this lesson." That's how Danny Sullivan began his column, "Penguin's Reminder: Google Doesn't Owe You A Living, So Don't Depend On It." In that piece, Sullivan draws parallels between Google's latest algorithm update, codenamed Penguin, and algorithm changes from the past. He references the online virulence that often occurs in the wake of such changes. Penguin has been no different. Hence the article and the position that Google doesn't owe you anything -- get over yourself.

There's a chicken and an egg paradox in mobile marketing. Many mobile sites sit moldering in the online wilderness, attracting few to no visitors. The same could be said for many elaborate online customer portals, social media outposts or online communities. Somebody went to the trouble to build them, but no one came. Why? Well, it could be because no one thinks to go to the trouble to look for them, just as no one expects to find a ball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield.

Last week was the 13th running of the Search Insider Summit, AKA -- as I once made the mistake of referring to it and and am still reminded by my wife every time I leave her and my three kids to go -- summer camp for search geeks. As I had done for each of the last 11 outings, I tracked the official SIS buzz-o-meter to capture the focus of the content and jargon of the campers, er... attendees. This go-round proved to be quite buzz-worthy, even by SIS standards. Let's just say it was DataPoppin'!

Just get on with it already. You've thought about it. You've made excuses. You know it's time. As a search marketer, you need to get off last-click attribution. Ahh... last-click attribution. Like any addictive drug, it gets you hooked and is hard to give up. But, like any addictive drug, the fun days are over, and now, if you don't quit, you will only see the negative consequences.

Mobile is far behind online technologies when it comes to tracking and providing the data sets necessary for an equivalent RTB economy. But mobile also changes some of the terms of ad targeting, promising a rich layer of location data and perhaps different ideas of what constitutes "premium" inventory.

Seventy three percent of marketers using an automated tag management system (TMS) said it speeds up their ability to run marketing campaigns, with 42% describing the process as "significantly faster."

As the recent "Avengers" marketing juggernaut attests, all kinds of brands want to get next to a box office winner. Flixster is rolling out a new targeting product that aligns advertisers with the buzz their key demo is generating around certain films.

A group of researchers at Microsoft and the CS Department of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology explored methods for modeling query and click behavior in Web searchers, as well as temporal characteristics in query and URLs

We may not be waiting decades for "Minority Report"-style personal signage after all. Short-range networks are already being built that can tie your portable people meter, your cell phone, to digital signage.

BlueKai wants to connect every corporate data applications on the planet into one grid, and give digital management rights to each company so they can share content.

Apps are adding a new and fascinating layer to the data sets both developers and marketers can use to refine their offerings. Tshis is much like the early days of behavioral targeting, when we had no idea yet what value the data might render.

The industry still continues to operate under old privacy rules, though it's changing -- a change fueled, some believe, by the tension between first-party companies and third parties that use the data.

Think Realtime is bringing yet another layer of automation to the highly mechanized new machine of digital ad buying. Its machine learning system optimizes and automates RTB execution on Google Display.

IBM unveiled its study Beyond Digital, analyzing the digital behavior of 3,800 respondents in six countries, at the National Association of Broadcasters show.

It's no secret that LinkedIn company pages are an excellent social channel for B2B marketers -- especially if you take certain steps to ensure you're optimizing your company's page to its full potential. As of February, there were more than 150 million active LinkedIn users, more than 2 million LinkedIn company pages, and more than 1 million LinkedIn groups. Professionals actively research and discuss their respective industries on LinkedIn, making it a terrific outlet to introduce your brand to prospective customers while keeping current ones updated and educated. So how do you get an edge on your competitors? It starts with an effective company profile page. It's the first thing someone sees, and first impressions can be everything. Here are five tips to help build the perfect LinkedIn company brand page and bring in leads.

Whether or not you’ve seen the "Moneyball” movie or read Michael Lewis’ terrific book, you surely know the basic premise: a small-budget team beats the big boys by analyzing the data that really matters, rather than relying on the established stats the others continue to use.  Billy Beane, Paul DePodesta and others used new measures like Wins Above Replacement and OPS to find price/value players and win more games than the pundits expected from low-spending teams.  Beane and his upstart protégés effectively applied Apple’s “Think Different” maxim and shook up a sedentary world.

A growing number of smart marketers are applying the same Moneyball principles to their customer acquisition media spending.  Moneyball’s gurus boiled baseball down to Runs Created -- that is, if you score more runs than the other team, you win.  And when you win more games, you gain “market share,” rising in the standings.  It’s just as simple in marketing -- essentially substituting Sales Created for Runs Created.  Use the right tools to analyze your spending and you’ll find the combination that will result in more business and more market share for less.

This is where performance marketing comes in.  Instead of acronyms like OPS, we have eCPM, eCPA and eCPL.  We even have MVP.  Ignore these measures and you might virtually sign an overweight, over-the-hill pitcher to a long, expensive contract. 

Channel your inner stats geek for a moment and let’s examine these measures.

What is eCPM?  It’s a bottom-up measure that shows what your media spending is really worth.  The calculation starts with performance programs, where you pay for results only, generally on a Cost per Lead (CPL) basis.  Effective CPM is figured by dividing the amount you’re willing to pay for a qualified lead by the ad impressions. As an example, let’s say you run a dedicated email to 100,000 and yield 125 qualified leads, paying $20 per lead.  The total spending is $2,500.  And that’s an eCPM of $25. Why is that measure important?  It sets a standard for what you should be willing to pay that list owner on a straight CPM basis. 

This kind of bottom up thinking leads to fair pricing for direct-focused media – it can be considered a base price in negotiations.  And there’s always an argument that branding value adds to that base CPM, it’s certainly valid to add a set dollar amount to the eCPM.

How about eCPA?  Same basic concept, but now we look at the real bottom-line results: how many of the leads turned into actual sales?  And how much revenue did the average sale generate?  How many “runs” did the media create?  This can be harder to calculate because the data may not be as easy to get.  But it is getting better: There are end-to-end systems now that make it simpler to link the source of sales to the original media action.  The flip side is eCPL, where you can examine how paid (CPM) media converts into prospects.  This is simply fixed media cost over number of leads or actions generated.

Let’s not forget MVP.  In the performance world, an MVP is a Most Valuable Prospect -- that one-in-a-thousand prospect who should make you jump through hoops when she raises her hand. 

When dealing in the realm of eCPM, keep the MVP in mind -- simply because not all leads are equal.  If you set a value for a qualified prospect, certain prospects should be worth more, because they can be heavy users or high margin players.  Qualified prospects  at the top of your screening criteria are the “free agents” who should give you the best return on your nurturing cost -- even if you spend more than average to acquire them.  A Moneyball approach overweights the factors you care about, and may ignore factors your industry generally seeks.

What about media relationships?  Using these metrics helps identify media that might not be considered otherwise, just like Beane’s Oakland As traded for players nobody else seemed to want.  The metrics also help rationalize pricing and potentially build longer-term relations with the media you currently use.  In either case, the medium gets an opportunity to prove itself.  And you both get to agree on a formula for a fair price.

Want to win the game unfairly?  Take a swing at some of these new ways to pitch data.

We all know the script now, don't we? The latest financial crisis comes, the markets overreact, the politicians throw up their hands, and the consumers hide under the bed and stop spending. Then the marketers try to figure out how to grow while their staffs and budgets are being cut for the second time in three years. Not a recipe for a happy ending -- or for holding on to your CMO position.

Given the popularity and frequency at which social/mobile applications emerge, we've reached a point where it's assumed that when a new platform is introduced, opportunities for marketers to leverage the platform should be in place at launch. In theory, this makes sense: after all, the only thing you need to do to generate a potential lead on Facebook is to click that "like" button. What's not quite as clear is the role that emerging platforms play in attracting customers.

It's no secret -- smartphone adoption won't be slowing down anytime soon. And as advances in mobile technology bring these devices closer to the experience provided by the standard computer, there will be an opportunity for marketers to bring consumers richer advertising experiences. Through the power of mobile applications or clever use of the mobile web, marketers will have several channels to try and generate solid leads. But before you launch that next campaign, perhaps take the tips below into account.

Without question, social media is proving itself increasingly valuable as a way to reach out to and connect with consumers. Plus, it's easy to measure and provides nearly instant gratification -- for both our online audience and for us as marketers, too. Does that mean you should be focusing solely on social media for lead generation?

What state of mind are you in when you read your favorite news source, check sports scores, or gossip sites? What about when you are in the market for something (could be a car, could be a new recipe for dinner, information on health matters, whatever) or when you just need to connect, to feel like the people, places and opinions that matter most to you are close and accessible? Despite all the digital analytics, it's surmising your state of mind that is the ultimate goal: are you searching car sites because you are in market or because you just love to see new cars, or maybe you need to know what is coming down the pike in automotive offerings because your job requires it?

Whether you're running an inbound call center or generating leads online, the most important first step is knowing the identity of whom you're communicating with. There is no point in overlaying a host of attributes -- purchasing scores, home ownership, credit worthiness, vehicle ownership, purchasing patterns and lifestyle characteristics - unless you know who is on the other end of the line. The keystone is still "identifiers," because attributes are useless without association to a true and current identity.

What we see has a profound effect on what we do, how we feel, and who we are. Through experience and experimentation, we continually increase our understanding of the visual world and how we are influenced by it. Psychologist Albert Mehrabian demonstrated that 93% of communication is nonverbal. Past research at 3M Corporation concluded that we process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Further studies found that the human brain deciphers image elements simultaneously, while language is decoded in a linear, sequential manner taking more time to process. Therefore the ability of visual stimuli to communicate and influence is undeniable and inescapable.

Time and time again, we in this industry are asked the same question, "what is the most effective way of generating leads??? The answer to this question lies in one truth, and that is the attention span of the user. When a user signs up for a product they are at the peak of their personal interest level, but that level quickly diminishes. With each different type of advertising technique, the user is one-on-one with a product, and they longer they spend with it, the better the lead will ultimately be. The goal is to keep the user as interested as possible, for as long as possible, before making them do anything on their end (click a button, fill out a form, etc.).

I knew some big advertiser was going to pull out of advertising on Facebook, as General Motors did earlier this week. It was predictable, as predictable as the fact that The Wall Street Journal would exhibit positively exquisite timing in breaking the story less than a week before the Facebook IPO. The details -- on the off-chance you missed them -- are that GM, which had been spending about $10 million on Facebook advertising, has decided not to anymore. (It will continue to market on the platform -- on its corporate and brand pages -- just not by buying ads.) Take that, reach generator!

Happy Internet Week! Did you realize it was that time of year again? It's one of the holiest weeks on the digital media calendar, nestled between the first and second Social Media Weeks, and well ahead of Advertising Week and Social Week. Also, don't confuse it for Foursquare Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day, neither of which take place during Internet Week, but they keep the spirit alive year-round.

With the Facebook IPO a little more than a week away, Facebook -- and, in particular Mark Zuckerberg -- is everywhere. Zuck is on the cover of New York magazine, and his every move is being watched, whether he is emerging from a black SUV to go to a roadshow presentation, or wearing his trademark hoodie to the roadshow, a fashion statement that one Wedbush Securities analyst called a "a mark of immaturity." Since this column is not devoted to fashion, I'll beg off any commentary on that one, except to say that the wearing of the possibly "immature" hoodie is perhaps the ultimate statement of how Facebook will run itself for the foreseeable future. How? Exactly how Mark Zuckerberg wants it to run.

Is reality broken? I've been grappling with the idea ever since reading "Reality is Broken" by Jane McGonigal, who argues that games provide a better, more motivating version of life than reality. Almost inherent in her description of gameplay is the social component, as the vast majority of her examples involve games people play together -- usually virtually.

When a big technology client asked me to be its eyes and ears in a big online technical community, my initial reaction was "Whom did I offend?" This 1.8 million-member online community of technology specialists thrives on topics like storage arrays and server scripting. Was I intimidated? You bet. During four months of trial and error, though, I learned how to appreciate and even enjoy the unique language and style of the uber-geek community. If you're a marketer trying to reach technical types through social media, here are some tips:

I'm hoping that even all of the techno-forward people who read this column still experience occasional moments of wonder at what all of these gadgets we own can do. I had two such moments this week:

What if you didn't need a mobile phone to share content? What if you could share your literal point of view? What if "always on" didn't just mean an Internet connection that was constantly active, but referred to a device you wore that was always on you, ready to share your thoughts practically as soon as they came to mind? That's the idea behind Project Glass, Google's latest foray into hardware.

Much has been said about the amendment to Facebook's S1 this week, but, for the Social Media Insider, it's still not enough. Something has been troubling me about the newly revealed numbers in the S1, and it has a name: seasonality.

When you read or watched "The Hunger Games," did you catch all the lessons for social media marketers? Any story about a post-apocalyptic society sacrificing 23 teenagers annually was clearly written with marketers in mind. Maybe that's not the case, but there's still plenty marketers can learn. Here are 10 lessons coming all the way from Panem, the nation featured in "The Hunger Games":

So, today I'm trying to figure out Facebook. Not about whether I should invest in it when it goes public (I won't have the money), but about what the numbers on whether to advertise on it -- or not -- really mean.