Usually, we visit a webpage for either content or utility. Sometimes when we’re lucky, we get both. So it’s no wonder that in the past few years we’ve  seen the rise of content marketing in an attempt to combine the best of both worlds. 

When I visit a site intending to buy something transactional, utility is the table stake to get me there. I also want to find out as much as I can before I buy anything; give me reviews, industry news and a way to see what other folks like me are buying. It’s a huge advantage if I can do all of these things without ever leaving your website. Bonus for me because I get everything I want in one stop and bonus for you because not only do I stay on your site, I come back again and I tell my friends about my great experience.

How do we find the sites we visit? If we know where we want to head, we type in the URL and off we go. If we aren’t sure, we typically visit a search engine, throw in a search term and see what it cranks out.  If we’re lucky, we have a recommendation from a friend (perhaps through social media) and find exactly what we want.  For most of us, I would guess this last approach is the preferred method for finding most things online. After all, a friend’s opinion generally carries more weight than a site’s SEO.

Consumers aren’t the only ones to notice this preference. Erik Qualman has been telling us for the several years in his video “Social Media Revolution” that “we will no longer search for products and services…they will find us via social media.” How will the products and services find us? They will find us via the continuing explosion of social media usage and referrals. 

In his October 2012 article in the Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal points out that across the same sites, social sources were responsible for 18% of referral traffic and search sources were responsible for 22%. 

How is it possible that social referrals will surpass search in the coming years? Social referrals will continue to rise as our activity increases on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, where we share things that we love with others. Instantly we can electronically share information with thousands of people whereas in the past we probably would have had ten to twenty face-to-face conversations. This idea of products and services finding consumers is accelerating as we continue to use social media as a way to share what we like, love, need, are looking for and don’t like.

Facebook has just stomped on the gas pedal. By introducing “Graph” search across its massive hold of user preference data, you can group your Facebook search into a specific subset, such as "my friends who like hockey," or more precisely "my friends who like hockey and live in Chicago." You can also filter for things like music or movies my friends like.

For advertisers, by becoming more well-liked on Facebook, they are more likely to be found by folks who are actively looking for their products and services as well as the products that are similar to them. If you haven’t heard of the term contextual search, get ready because that’s how we’ll refer to this new Facebook search capability. And certainly others will be looking for ways to replicate this contextual search functionality. 

Similarly, Google introduced its social network Google+, which is unlike other social networks in that it’s not accessed through a single website. Google has described Google+ as a "social layer" consisting of not just a single site, but rather an overarching "layer" which covers many of its online properties. The company clearly recognizes that social referrals will continue to rise in number and in importance and this is a way for it to maintain market share.

All of this brings me to a central question: how will this affect our search behaviors and the ways marketers optimize their pages to be found? As Greg Levitt pointed out in his MediaPost  entry from Jan. 9, this changing of the search guard will force marketers to optimize social media content distribution versus tweaking their interaction with search engine algorithms. 

Marketers and advertisers must optimize their media plans beyond just SEO. Social recommendations and sharing may end up being much more important. It isn’t just about someone typing in a search term and happening upon your site.

Can users share information about your product on Twitter? Can they send your product as gifts on Facebook? How many users are sharing information about your service on Facebook graph? Are there images of your products on Pinterest and Instagram? These questions will become the norm in the coming years and social media usage and the phenomenon of social referrals continue to rise.

Marketers/Advertisers: How will this affect your channel planning and optimization schemes?

Per Ad Age, 30-second spots in this year’s Super Bowl sold for around $3.7 million - yep, they're already sold out. For any marketer buying one of these spots, this is likely the largest single advertising investment all year. Recouping this kind of investment takes a massive lift in sales and/or customer acquisition activity—a lift most companies won't see. This is why, for most advertisers, it’s an easy decision to stay away from the big game. How then, does any advertiser decide it’s a good idea to spend this kind of money?

It starts with the understanding that any marketer buying a spot in the Super Bowl won’t see a direct equal return on the money spent—not right away anyway. Buying a spot in the Super Bowl is more about being culturally relevant. There are still no other events where an advertiser can present a brand message to an American audience upwards of 100 million people all at one time. 

And boy, do we like those brand messages. We tweet, like, share, vote on, upload, blog and discuss in person what we’ve seen. The Super Bowl is also one of the few events where there’s analysis of the game and the advertising in the newspapers the day after.  You don’t see columns in the Chicago Tribune about who won and lost the advertising race on the last episode of Grey’s Anatomy. 

Astute marketers can take their participation in the game and use social media as a force multiplier to generate buzz and excitement around their message both before and after the game. Creating contests, leaking additional video content and tweeting out questions around the ads are just some of the ways advertisers create this buzz.

Sometimes the marketers don’t have to do anything. Just this week I went looking for classic Super Bowl ads via branded channels on YouTube. These ad views will register with the marketers long after the ads have run in real time. 

Advertisers/Marketers: Do you think advertising in the Super Bowl is worth the cost?

In a recent blog post on iMediaConnection, Penry Price advocates that the rise of programmatic buying shouldn’t kill media planner creativity. I’ll take it a step further. Programmatic buying should actually enhance creativity.

When I had my first media planning job, the Internet was just starting to become an advertising medium. Back then a “roadblock” on the MSN homepage was a really big deal, and no one had ever heard of optimizing the plan, never mind doing it in real time. 

But that’s what programmatic buying now offers; the ability to reach consumers based on changing data in real time. As a former media planner, that’s exciting to me and it should be to you too.

I know what you’re thinking, how can I be creative when I’m staring at campaign dashboards all day? Price says it best:

“You can be more creative and serve your clients better (and be a hero at work) if you work to align your efforts to truly understand the journeys of your client’s potential customers.”  

Look at the matrix of web traffic data on the dashboard as a person and not as a slice of a customer segment.  For example, think of it as a person desperately searching for the season’s hottest Christmas toy and appreciate their journey as your own. Then recognize that programmatic buying platforms give you the ability to make that toy appear right before that person’s eyes.   

So what’s next? Look around for more interesting ways to connect your clients to people and their journeys. Everything is a potential entry point to the journey, from the ways people interact with products to their media consumption habits throughout the day. You can be the expert in the room; all it takes is some creativity. There, I said it.

There's an old advertising axiom: "Where there are people, there's money." 

Okay, so its not an old advertising axiom and, in fact, I just made it up. But it seems like the battle cry for those spending money in and around social media these days. I think, though, that advertisers are missing something when they go charging into the social media landscape all big-eyed with wallet wide open.

Yes, there are millions upon millions of people spending boatloads of minutes with social media every day. And yes, if you want to sell a product or service you have to go where the people are spending their time regardless of the format. But just because people spend lots of highly engaged minutes in this space doesn't mean those minutes translate directly into advertising gold. 

So what gives?

First, none of the major players in social media have really figured out a business model that draws a straight line between folks spending time with their service and revenue. Don't believe me? Ask yourself the following questions: 

• How much is each of your Facebook fans worth?
• What's the sales impact of a "Like" on your brand page?  
• How many Twitter followers do you need to break even or make money on your social media investment?   

Second, social media is a strange mix. It's a water cooler conversation, coffee klatch, family reunion, stream of consciousness, and ultimate narcissistic platform all rolled into one. It's the intersection of the sharing of troves of personal information over the world's most perfect advertising medium.  But because we don't approach our water cooler conversations or narcissistic moments with the expectation to buy anything, we don't make it easy for advertisers to act on this perfect storm.

So what's an advertiser to do? They can't, after all, walk away from all of this great data being gathered from our social media activity, can they? No, and the good news is they shouldn't. But rather than trying to derive ROI directly from social media, advertisers should think more about social media as a space for consumer cultivation rather than conversion.

I know I'd be intrigued by offers based on insights into my life gathered from my social media breadcrumb trail. To me offers that are tailored to my needs are smart and thoughtful and something I'd listen to. And, yes, maybe even buy.

Last week Microsoft announced it intends to launch Windows 8 with Do Not Track (DNT) as the default setting set for the included version of their web browser Internet Explorer (IE10). It has caused much controversy and gnashing of teeth among digital advertising proponents.

What is DNT and how does it work? 

To answer that, first a little bit about the way browesers and web servers work:  any time you tell your browser to navigate to a web address, your browser makes a call to the server and asks the server to send back data. So when I type www.espn.com into my browser it contacts the servers at ESPN and asks them to send back the information I know to be ESPN.com.  What the servers at ESPN can also send back is some tracking software to see where else I go and what I do on the web, and to store any preferences I may set for that site. (I don't know if ESPN does or does not track its visitors, but I do know this is very common to web publishers.)

DNT is a setting on the browser that tells the web server not use that tracking technology with this user. 

What does this mean? 

That's part of the problem—no one really agrees what it means when a DNT signal is received by a web server from a browser.  Does it mean collect information on what I do on your site but not the rest of the web? Or does it mean don't watch what I do at all? What kinds of tracking mechanisms are affected by this signal?  It's not yet clear.

As Microsoft's Chief Privacy Officer, Brendon Lynch, states in his blog post from May 31, "At the moment there is not yet an agreed definition of how to respond to a DNT signal."  Adding to the confusion is the fact there is also no mechanism forcing web servers to obey the DNT signal.  Which means they can simply choose to track you anyway.    

Why would Microsoft do this? 

In 2007, several consumer advocacy groups asked the Federal Trade Commission to create a Do Not Track list for online advertising. Microsoft says it's responding to these requests and "putting people first" by placing privacy controls in the hands of the people.

Suppose for a second that the DNT signal means no publisher is allowed to collect any information on you or your web travels. Then consider that IE market share hovers between 30% and 55%. Add to this the low probability most users will look for or change the DNT settings on their browser.  This would mean personalized experiences on the web would go away for those of us with the DNT signal set to "on."

Online advertising would go back to the days of scattershot ads. Because advertisers wouldn't be able to gather insights from your behavior on the web, they can no longer tailor their offers or experiences to you. 

I suspect this is a move designed to generate goodwill for Microsoft with consumers now, all the while striking a galancing blow to Google. In the end, I'd guess IE10 will ship with the DNT signal off, with very explicit intstructions on how to turn it on. 

We'll all have to stay tuned to see how this all shakes out. Just today, Ad Age reports that W3C, the international organization that sets standards for web protocols, "is preparing to label Microsoft's browser as 'noncompliant,' setting up a showdown between Redmond, web-standards creators and the rest of the online-ad ecosystem."

How do you think this controversy will affect the online advertising world?

I was reminded that Ben Franklin told us "time is money" when a colleague recently asked me why any advertiser would use an online ad network versus buying directly from a website. While I considered my answer, I realized how timely it was that I had just read Greg Skipper's article "7 things you don't know about ad networks and are afraid to ask" on iMedia Connection.  

Working directly with a site publisher offers advantages, the kinds of advantages that help CMOs, CEOs, CROs, COOs, and CFOs all sleep well at night. Prime inventory, great service, transparency, brand safety, and a tailored program to name a few. Since we know time is money, we suddenly realize scale is missing here. To gain scale working with individual site publishers you need lots and lots of time. So much time, in fact, that it would cost you more to do it this way than work with an advertising network. 

I know, I know. Ad networks can be a scary play for an advertiser.  Do you ever really know all the places your ad went? Are you getting what you paid for? How do you know the inventory you bought isn't cheaper someplace else? Can they really guarantee a safe environment for my brand? The answer to all of these depends on you and asking the right questions to understand what you don't already know about ad networks.

Ad networks are getting better at transparency, and as Skipper points out, "high quality networks stand to gain the most as advertisers get more sophisticated with regards to transparency." The better you are, they better they'll have to be. 

Also know that networks cannot afford to be pricey: "If they charge too much, advertisers won't buy; if they charge too little, publishers won't leverage the ad network."  While you may not be getting the absolute lowest price ever, consider how much time and effort you save by letting the network give you scale, and realize the ad network is adding value to the process.

Why not just purchase inventory through an exchange? You have to realize that exchanges are the open market bazaar of the internet—simply a place for buyers and sellers to come and trade. The ad network, on the other hand, offers "value in the form of data, technology, and optimization, and then sells that inventory to advetisers." 

Like anything in life it all comes down to you: kick the tires and ask all the questions—even the ones you're afraid to ask—before you buy to make sure you understand what you're getting.  And know that ad networks wouldn't be in play unless they provided a valuable service to folks every day.       

John Wanamaker once famously said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

Since then, advertising executives and marketers have been chasing the advertising Holy Grail: proof of which half of the advertising dollar is wasted. This mission is inherently flawed—we all understand there will always be "waste" in advertising. This, however, hasn't stopped the advertising industry from trying. There are entire departments and agencies devoted to research and analytics trying to solve this riddle.

Historically, the standard for ad delivery has been OTS or "Opportunity To See," based on the idea that once an ad was delivered over any medium the consumer had an opportunity to see it. Anecdotally we all understand this assumption to be incorrect. People walk away from the TV and change the radio channel during commercial breaks and, sometimes, remember which billboards they've seen. Along came the Internet and the promise of being able to track every ad, when and where it was delivered, and even generally who saw it. Ads on the Internet would only be served when the web page was delivered to a human, essentially eliminating waste.

Then comScore brought word last week that up to 31% of digital display ads served weren't in view (see comScore's vCE study). Meaning: no one ever saw the ad even though an ad server said the impression was delivered. Again we sit at Square One on the mission to understand which half of the advertising dollar is wasted.

Maybe that's OK.

Maybe advertisers can make up for display ads not seen, commercial breaks spent in the bathroom or billboards not driven under in other ways. Perhaps advertisers can focus on making messages that live on beyond the :30 unit, the 30-sheet, or skyscraper.

Maybe the key is to create content that gets people talking around today's version of the water cooler: Facebook, G Chat, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.