Data is driving decision-making in more businesses and sectors, and in ways that would have been surprising just a couple of years ago.

As in: Oh my god, when you really get down and think about it (and read this article), Netflix’s development of the new buzzed-about show House of Cards was totally driven by data and insights they obtain from mining the habits of their subscribers. In fact, their entire business is only possible through the hyper-intelligent use of data.

And, that’s nothing, it’s just entertainment. Take a look at how that most basic of human drives — the desire to find a mate — is being shaped and recast, made efficient and effective through data wizardry. If, as the online dating companies claim, “20% of us meet our future spouse online,” then eHarmony, Match.com, et al are mining a lot of data with massive impact on the lives of many.

Data is critical to winning in the future of marketing.

As digital ad spending outstrips print and is poised to be the big dog in marketing, data grows right along with it. Down the road, nearly all forms of marketing will be digitized in some way— addressable and targetable. What this means is an even deeper trough of data for marketers, brands, agencies and media companies to mine for insights.

In short, all marketing relies on data but in the big game, the winners will be the ones who can sift through the biggest pile of sand and extract the gold nuggets. We’re seeing more marketers look for solutions to get a handle on the vast trove of data available to them and leverage it for smarter business decisions.

Facebook has a billion consumers on its platform, China has hundreds of millions of folks on mobile phones. All of these people, preferences and actions create data points that are of potential interest to marketers. How do we all benefit from our data being used? Why do we care? In the great value exchange, people will get better targeted messages from brands, some offers and savings, and maybe some interesting (ad-supported) content.

More facets of our lives are being impacted by data — mostly for good — and the onus is on each of us to understand what that really means.

Like the saying goes, “knowing is half the battle.” It’s an established fact that our data is being known, used and monetized by enterprises and entities far and wide. We all have a horse in this data-stakes, a few examples of which are:

• Politicians and government are using data in the democratic process, as in the data-driven Obama election victory in 2012.
• Insurance companies are using tons of data to model and predict who will get sick and cost them more money; or who should get lower car insurance rates.
• The growing use of wearable devices such as the Fitbit. They read our physical status and imagine what we (or others) will do with the data they throw off.

While there are many critical reasons to reform education and job training in this country, here’s one thing we definitely need to do: start preparing a generation of data scientists, analysts and engineers who know how to work with and leverage data to build our tomorrow. I know for sure that our future depends on it. We’re all data now.

Consumers are ignoring ads like never before and banner blindness is plaguing the industry. Even if consumers were paying attention, many ads wouldn’t be “in view”:  They’re served below the fold, or take longer to load than the time viewers typically spend on the page.

So how can you make sure your ads will be seen? Get ads into the content stream. It’s where you and every other consumer on earth spend the bulk of their time: watching, listening and reading content.

Companies like Vibrant Media create “in-content” brand-discovery solutions that get brand messages into those content streams, where consumers are actually paying attention. These placements are the polar opposite of the old static banner ads that sit quietly in the right rail of the page, just waiting to be ignored. For example, Vibrant has contextually relevant rich-media brand canvases that take all of your great content – such as the social media channels you spent so much sweat and treasure to populate – and bring it into the editorial well, where it’s ready to be discovered by consumers who are interested.

Now that you’re in the content, what are you going to deliver? There will always be a place for “traditional” digital advertising, whether it is a 15-second web video spot or even a banner ad with a simple call to action. However, we have seen that advertising performs best when it delivers genuine value to the consumer. Create ads that are relevant, fun and engaging. Want to do display? Then make it radically different, like this one from Ikea. Reel people in with ads that are contextually relevant, and really useful like these Jeep ads that run alongside news stories and highlight road conditions and weather info.

Much of the buzz around native advertising focuses on branded content or sponsored content, such as what you see on sites like Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post. It is clear this will grow as an opportunity for publishers seeing their revenue squeezed both online and off.

However, not every brand is going to develop its own content shop with a healthy budget. We should hope to see “hundreds of content shops” blossom, whether they are small home-based operations in Brooklyn or big-time offshoots of ad agencies. We’ve already seen some PR firms get into the game.

Whatever its origin, content is the key (along with context, of course) to the hearts and minds of consumers. Ads need to be fun, value-adding, and “content-like,” and they need to be seen to be appreciated. You’ve engaged them, so now you better be engaging.

Let’s face it: mobile advertising still has a long way to go. Facebook finally announced its latest and greatest mobile-ad effort last week, but smart industry folks say it still leaves much to be desired. And even though more money’s flowing toward mobile, the dollars spent on mobile marketing still don’t come close to aligning with the amount of time we spend with smartphones in hand. In fact, some say that the only reason mobile pulls in ad spend is because it’s so  damn cheap.

Even so, it seems inevitable that mobile’s share of spend will continue to increase – if only because it already owns such a significant share of mind. Mobile also has serious potential to perform for marketers. A Nielsen report out this week showed a shorter time to purchase and dramatically higher purchase rates among mobile consumers. And leaders at trailblazing agencies are putting serious effort into setting the mobile agenda for the rest of the marketing world.

Mobile has transcended its role as a connection and convergence device. In the words of Starcom MediaVest Group’s Jesse Missad, “it will be part of every communications plan.”

I spoke with Missad and other industry leaders about their thoughts on mobile. Here are their five rules for the mobile road – actionable insights you can put to work right now:

1. Don’t ask “if,” but “how?” Big brands no longer see the need to justify mobile. Rather, they’re looking for partners who’ve mastered it. The question is not whether you need mobile, but how you can do it well. Altimeter Group analyst Chris Silva harks back to an old lesson of Web 1.0, saying that agencies need to be “mature” about mobile – putting real thought into strategy and technology. The days of building it and hoping they will come are long gone.

2. Mix it up. Faced with a sprawling menu of mobile marketing options – from apps and ads to sites and social media – brands risk getting stuck on one reliable formula. Don’t. Every campaign is different, and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions in today’s world. Consumers expect more than that – as Paul Gelb of Razorfish puts it, “success comes from identifying actionable consumer insights, business objectives and the experiential message to communicate.”

3. Which leads me to my next rule: Know thy customer. Mobile technology brings new possibilities to people’s lives, and new opportunities for marketers to deliver engaging content, messages, value and utility. But it also means that consumers expect an experience tailored to their needs. Central to this, from a marketing perspective, is relevance. Thanks to mobile technology, we can deliver content and advertising experiences that are in truly the interest of the consumer. As Gelb says, when advertising is contextually relevant, users in overwhelming numbers “report not only a positive impression of the ad they saw but also the concept of ad-supported media.”

4. Lead through change. It takes more than a village, but rather a whole industry to spur the changes we need to see in mobile advertising. This will take broad adoption of initiatives by trade groups such as the IAB or MMA, decisive action by top agencies and brands, and widespread adoption of standardized metrics that show how mobile is actually working. Missad says we face a long road ahead. “While progress is being made through mobile ad-server development, publisher adoption of tags, and attitudinal evaluation, measurement is simply not keeping up with consumer realities and proliferation of technology.”

5. Last but not least, put mobile first. Paul Gelb believes that mobile needs to emerge from its silo. “It’s always on,” he says, so find ways to integrate it with TV and brick-and-mortar touchpoints to more holistically engage your consumer. Missad adds: “Reality calls for an integrated approach to mobility, not a separate strategy. Mobile is a full-funnel solution.”

The key takeaway here? Follow these five indisputable rules to spur and accelerate change across our industry. By doing so, we can all work to build an ideal mobile future.

Facebook is not the only entity out there to realize that a picture is worth a thousand clicks. Let’s look at a range of models in the field right now – both the hyped-up and the lesser known – and see what they have to offer for smart marketers.

The Buzzfeed Model

This publisher has taken a deceptively simple model – ready-to-go-viral content – and built a Web and mobile entity with somewhere around 25 million unique monthly viewers and north of 100 employees. Buzzfeed’s mantra seems to be that compelling content (mostly image galleries), crafted into “sponsored stories” for brands, performs better than display ads. This is music to the ears of tuned-in marketers tired of .01% CTRs. “Banner blindness” is a real issue, with countless eye-tracking studies showing that consumers ignore standard ad units online and on mobile (when they’re not skipping ads on their DVRs).

The takeaway: Sponsored image galleries are the latest iteration of “ads as content.” Brands can use them to engage audiences in a new way that rises above the typical ad noise by providing clever (sometimes even edgy), entertaining, and shareable content. Bonus point: Buzzfeed president Jon Steinberg says his sponsored galleries perform well on mobile, too.

The UGC Model

You could call this the Facebook model, or the Instagram model, etc. Click on a friend’s photo on your “news feed” right now and what do you get? No prize for guessing which retargeted ad/tech-related advertisement I’m seeing. Facebook’s entire proposition is based on Users Generating Content. The recent Instagram acquisition and the unveiling of its Camera app may be attempts to make the company a stronger play in mobile; however, both moves are designed to get more photos onto your Facebook wall. And, as Buzzfeed has shown, no combo is more compelling than photos and mobile.

The takeaway: While UGC may not be for everyone, it simply makes sense for brands to dip their toes into the photo pool – for the sake of both scale and engagement. Of course, brand safety will always be a concern, but filtering technology is improving and (certain) brands seem by nature more willing to take risks. We’re betting that we’ll see others follow the example of Imgur and Lipton, who recently rolled out a pretty edgy campaign tapping some of the site’s billions of UGC images.

The In-Image Model

Why simply sponsor or present images when you can brand them? In-image advertising is fairly new but has been embraced by major brands such as Chrysler, Vodafone, and Nikon, who are attracted to high engagement rates and the ability to drive back-end results. The ads are a breakthrough placement, appearing where users are focused, which is contextually relevant to the content they’re viewing. What’s more, they’re attractive to brands because people actually want to see them – the in-image ad renders as a small, branded overlay on the bottom of a publisher’s brand-safe editorial image. Vibrant Media is a pioneer in this space, and we have seen that while viewers typically spend half a minute on a page, two-thirds of that time is spent on the content; and one-third of that is spent focused on one picture. In a recent research study conducted on behalf of Vibrant, 76% of respondents rated in-image advertising more positively than display.

The takeaway: In-image is an option for major brand marketers who want to attract consumers with ads that are relevant to the content they’re engaged with and that perform better than traditional display advertising – in a trusted environment and with qualified engagement.

The Pinterest Model

We couldn’t very well present this menu of options without mentioning the current darling of social media. The photo-pinning site has been hot for a while now and seriously showing some leg with brands. However, as countless others have already said so much about Pinterest, I’ll spare you my two more cents.

The takeaway: Like some of the other models above (viz UGC), the future of photo-pinning – its shelf-life for consumers and its relevance for brands – is not clear. However, the concept of User-Generated Curation is compelling and the barrier to entry for a brand is fairly low. The Pinterest model is certainly a surer bet for online retailers who want to monetize affiliate traffic from product images.

As we’ve seen, the world of images is huge and expanding with new platforms and possibilities. There’s no end in sight for the explosion of UGC and the phenomenon of “everyone taking pictures of everything everywhere all the time.” Smart marketers should embrace these changes and seek to engage people where their wants and needs converge. After all, we should always aim to create advertising in the interest of consumers, and consumers are clearly interested in pictures.

But after a teaser video from Google’s Project Glass made the rounds recently, giving a glimpse at life, with the company’s reality-augmenting glasses, it became clear that mobile is just the tip of the wireless iceberg.

The ship is sailing into the unchartered waters toward a post-mobile world where we’ll all be connected, all the time. The boundaries will blur between what is and isn't a device, and with everything mobile, labels like “wired” and “wireless” will become meaningless. Consumers will start looking to technologies and brands to simplify how we engage with the world and information around us.

So how can brands ensure they’re prepared for the changes taking shape before our very eyes? By paying close attention to these five trends that I’m betting will define our collective post-mobile future:

• Smart Everything: The reason Google glasses really capture the imagination is that they seem to make the stuff of sci-fi a reality. And they’re just one of the ways in which technology’s moving in on previously analog parts of our lives. For instance, our homes. Check out this futuristic mirror from Cybertecture that’s doing things George Jetson would recognize. Like this mirror, new screens -- “fifth screen,” anyone? – from watches, to kitchen appliances, to goggles, will put us at the center of a wall of intelligent data, that Adam Ferrier of Naked Communications  says, “represents a paradigm shift in advertising as much as it represents a change in the way we use computers on the move. It means ads everywhere, and different kinds of ads too…”

• Tech Gets Physical: We are witnessing advancements in biotech - and I don’t mean cloning or genetic modification, but the introduction of technology to our very bodies. Data comes from everywhere these days, including our cells. Companies like FitBit are finding new ways to record and leverage that data. For now, they seem to be focused on helping athletes (and wannabes) build better workouts, but it’s only a matter of time before brands begin to look more closely at how such data might be used to develop new customer relationships.

• User-Centrism: One of the most interesting trends we’ve seen in the world of media is the fragmentation of ownership – technology has empowered the masses, and they’re leveraging their power in new ways every week. This is nothing new, but it is something to keep an eye on. Because if brands want to remain relevant to their audiences, they’re going to have to engage in a media landscape where the traditional publishing model no longer exists. Pinterest, Flipboard, and other curation tools are where it’s at right now, enabling content to be remixed, repurposed, and shared by consumers, and not media owners.

• Multi-Multi-Platform Marketing: Prepare your brand to work with the marketing organization of the future by thinking broadly about consumer perceptions of your product, and communicating about them in a holistic way. Be aware of all of the new contexts in our lives, how and when we want to interact with brands, how are lives are changing, and the new possibilities to bring us value and not just marketing noise.

• New Horizons in Innovation: Until recently, most brands, products, marketing, and media were local, and barely traveled; today they’re frequent flyers. The question now is, can innovation in marketing make the leap across borders? When you want inspiration for your campaigns, be sure to look beyond your usual competitor set to find the most compelling and innovative initiatives in your sector, wherever they may be. Big brands are tapping local innovation more and more, testing new approaches and then repurposing them them elsewhere. Coca-Cola took the best approaches of gamification, Shazam, and the second-screen experience and ran with it in China. Tesco is testing out mobile, interactive shopping experiences in Seoul that the U.S. is not quite ready for, technologically and socially.

So what’s the bottom line? Media devices like smartphones and tablets have changed our lives permanently. And as we spend more time in the resulting new media environments, they’ll define how we spend more of our money, too. As brands and marketers explore the new opportunities presented by life in this new techno-data-sphere, we must remain mindful of how consumers are evolving. If we can do that, we’ll be well on our way to a post-mobile future that makes sense for consumers, marketers, and brands.

You know the saying: The times they are a-changing. And nowhere more than in our world of digital marketing. Whether or not you engage in the hype surrounding the shiny new technologies and platforms that constantly promise to “change everything,” you have to admit that these here are exciting times we live in. Get out your new iPad everyone and get ready to take some notes.

Now, I’m not a psychic. I don’t know what our world will look like in five years (though I did recently venture a guess in these very pages). But I do know that if you want to succeed as a marketer in our always-evolving world, you’d better be ready to be increasingly mobile, engaging, relevant, and aware of the contexts in which we all now operate.

To prepare for a “Minority Report”-style, hyper-connected future, here are five big ideas you can embrace now to stay ahead of the curve:

1. Geo-Power

Location features of social apps such as Foursquare, Ban.jo, Path, et al. are a potential goldmine of important data on consumer habits and preferences. Near-Field Communications (NFC) and wireless payments are here and just starting to show their potential. Privacy issues still need to be resolved, but there is a clear demand from consumers who want marketers to find ways to make their purchases and lives easier. And, if the rumors are true that the iPhone 5 will ship with NFC, expect this geo-power to go from leading edge to mainstream with the swipe of a finger.

2. The Video Land Grab

While online video and mobile are – unsurprisingly – attracting a lot of heat, the marketing spend they draw is still way out of line with the amount of attention they attract from consumers. Don’t just throw money at these new channels: Instead of placing pre-roll video ads and other “forced-view” options, look to user-initiated solutions that respect the user, their time, and their interests.

3. You Down with UGC?

I’m talking about the new UGC: User Generated Curation, powered by content-discovery apps like Pulse, Flipboard, Fancy, and Foodspotting. Publishers and merchants are providing the content, and consumers are cultivating feeds that suit their interests and contexts. The power to filter data and curate personalized information platforms has been put in the hands of the people. These are models for how brands will stay relevant to consumers. As these platforms evolve, they could provide the next great marketing platform. The massive attention consumers and marketers are devoting to Pinterest clearly demonstrates how personal curation and relevance can drive engagement.

4. Thinking Beyond the Tap

Tablets are obviously a magnificent canvas where marketers can paint engaging experiences for consumers. But what are you going to do with your users after you get them to tap? Don’t think you can count on rolling out the same old display strategy. It’s time to get creative and imagine the new possibilities inspired by this new platform. Media industry guru Ken Doctor points to innovative advertisers who take advantage of the unique iPad format: “What’s better for an insurance company like Liberty Mutual than threatening you with disaster (tornado, earthquake, flood) and then inviting you to simply tilt your iPad to watch the damage disappear?” Now that’s what I call mobile advertising.

5. United We Stand

Ditch the silos in your advertising strategy and focus on the most important thing – your customer. In this increasingly interconnected world, consumers don’t think in terms of silos, so why should you? The power of integration is evident in the dividends it pays for brands. Google found that consumers had 74% brand recall when the advertiser has an integrated strategy that carries across mobile, TV, and online. QR codes and “bridging” apps like Viggle that help deliver second-screen relevance can support marketers’ efforts to unleash multiplatform, integrated relevance.

So what are you waiting for? The future is here. Smart marketers will succeed in this world by engaging with the trends that have resonance and relevance for the emerging consumer of today.

The data speaks for itself. Mobile web usage continues to increase dramatically; more people are buying smartphones and tablets, and taking them online. They’re changing the way we watch TV, experience advertising, and make purchase decisions, both online and in-store.

Thanks to this burgeoning mobile shift, scenarios that seemed futuristic not so long ago are becoming our here-and-now reality. Try this one on for size:

You are woken up by the alarm on your smartphone. As you brush your teeth (with your Bluetooth-connected toothbrush), perhaps you attend to a screen or two that’s integrated into your home – maybe via a smart mirror or smart window. Your screens present you with relevant, custom-curated news and information, tailored to your needs and interests based on the preferences you’ve opted to share with media companies. You grab a 10-Hour Energy – in the future, five hours doesn’t cut it – and you’re out the door on your way to work. All you carry is a smartphone and a tablet. When your cab drops you at your office, you wave your phone to pay. At your desk you place your tablet and smartphone in docks, via which they sync instantly with your office’s information systems. A laser virtual keyboard and Kinect interface allow you to input text and control your computing world with gestures.

Sound crazy? Well, pending a few processor upgrades and an uptick in mobile bandwidth, everything here is entirely plausible using technology that’s widely available right now. That same technology is about to dramatically alter how we shop – online, on Main Street, and at the mall.

Our mobile future is, if not already here, fast approaching. So how can smart marketers make the most of the mobile shift to capture new opportunities for consumer engagement?

Here are a few emerging technologies to keep an eye on:

• Near-Field Communications: This technology, which enables devices in close proximity to communicate, promises to have enormous impact on how we market to consumers. Right now it’s discussed mostly as a mobile-payment platform, which it will be, but it also has great potential to deliver hyper-relevancy and drive engagement. Chris Silva of Altimeter warns, however, that privacy issues will need to be top of mind where near-field communications (NFC) are concerned. And I have to agree with Silva on this point: “I don’t necessarily want a ‘Minority Report’ experience where I’m walking down the street and getting marketed to by name because I passed by a sensor.”

• Digital Bridges: QR codes and other offline triggers often get a bad rap, but along with apps like Viggle and Shazam, they’re invaluable as “bridging” technologies that connect the online and offline worlds via users’ mobile devices. What’s more, they deliver highly qualified ‘clicks’ to marketers – the QR-scanning customer has gone out of her way to engage with you. Now how will you return the favor?

• Device Fingerprinting: Still in its infancy, “device fingerprinting” will allow targeting in a way similar to what a cookie does online. This and other standards will emerge to allow consumers to decide what data they want to share with marketers in exchange for a new level of convenience and relevance. Google and others are looking at new frontiers to integrate data across devices and make mobile even more useful to consumers and brands.

• Showrooming: Brick-and-mortar retailers are likely to suffer the most from the new phenomenon of “showrooming,” where people use their phones to comparison shop online while in retail stores. During the holidays, 52% of shoppers used their phones to conduct research in stores, after which many of them chose to make their purchases online. It’s easy to see how this could escalate into a headache for businesses. Marketers can fight back by building apps or working with companies such as Milo that use offers and recommendations to incentivize store visits and purchases.

• Real-Time Dialogue: Customers aren’t waiting until they get home to review your shop, restaurant, or salon anymore – with geo-enabled apps like Foursquare and Yelp at their fingertips, they don’t have to. Next time you’re in a restaurant, look around. That’s right, look up from your own smartphone and notice how many of your fellow diners are engaged with their phones – looking up a Groupon offer, letting friends know where they are, checking reviews on crowd-sourced – or even (gasp) traditional – media sites. Mobile consumers are social, and they are going with the crowd. Tap into the ratings, feedback, and check-in data your customers so readily provide to open a two-way dialogue. It’ll add up to better consumer engagement, and better business performance.

There’s no question that our transformation to a mobile society is already underway. Broader adoption and better integration of mobile technologies will permanently alter the ways we interact with our customers and with each other. Marketers who understand and embrace this change will remain relevant long into the future.

It’d be an understatement to say that brands have embraced content creation as a marketing strategy. Branded content has become a staple of cross-platform, integrated marketing campaigns everywhere, as a nearly fail-proof way to engage consumers, and turn them into customers. As industry analyst Rebecca Lieb said recently, every single one of the major brands she speaks with is increasing its production of original content.

But am I alone in thinking that maybe it’s enough already? Sooner or later, some savvy startup or sprawling conglomerate has to realize that the long tail is losing its appeal. More isn’t always better, as Sheena Iyengar said in her awesome TED Talk. What we need isn’t customization, but relevance.

So how can we, as marketers, deliver the relevance customers want and need? How can we ensure that our content – whether it’s an article, an ad, or an image – reaches the right consumers in the most relevant and meaningful way?

Behavioral targeting gets part of the job done. Knowing what a potential shopper has recently done online, what sites they visited, what ecommerce channels they browsed gives us a sense of their past behavior, and some indication of what they’re likely to view, see, and buy in the future. But our online lives – like the ones we live in the real world – are complex, and to understand a consumer’s likely intent, we first need to understand his or her contexts.

That’s right – contexts, plural. As Tom Wentworth wrote on Mashable recently, if targeting is to deliver effective results, marketers need to understand changes in consumer context. His example? “You might be a 45-year-old technology manager who likes jazz and runs marathons, but you’re also a husband, a son, an uncle and a friend — and your purchases reflect all those different contexts.”

Smart marketing strategies need to combine behavioral – or “personal” – relevance with contextual relevance.

SoLoMo (social, local, mobile if you’ve somehow avoided it so far) is part of our buzzy jargon now. If you’re doing a social media campaign, think about the contexts. For instance, a young working mom on Pinterest is in the context of seeing popular recipes her friends are cooking, or she’s on LinkedIn researching advice about work/life balance, and on Facebook accepting invitations for a night out with friends. The content is being shaped, controlled, and shared by the user (consumer), but it’s the contexts that marketers need to understand to deliver a message that will resonate with the consumer.

Local creates amazing opportunities to look at context. When I check in on Foursquare, I choose to share my real-time, local context. Brands including Starwood Hotels and History Channel are experimenting with new ways to harness and leverage that data. Others will inevitably follow, as devices (wearable and otherwise) continue to get smarter.

Don’t forget that ALL of this – even the So and the Lo – is mobile. With mobile Internet usage expected to soon surpass desktop, nearly all media consumption is bound to soon be mobile. As a result, contexts will shift ever more fluidly.

It’s overwhelming, sure. But consider the possibilities, both for marketers and for consumers who welcome relevant, personalized brand engagement in the right context. We’re just beginning to glimpse a bit of what the future might hold. Ford and other auto companies are pushing forward with new telematics that can understand consumers’ health and wellness, and Google’s “self-driving” car concept is starting to seem not only sensible, but possibly inevitable. Soon our cars will know where we are, what we like to eat, and when we tend to get hungry. It’s not too hard to imagine our dashboard suggesting we pop off at the next exit for a top-rated BBQ joint.

Exciting, right? And all empowered by context. So let’s not forget that regardless of the platform, whatever the device, and however smart the strategy, content still matters – but relevance and context rule.

Now here’s the bad news. The “Big Five” publishers – Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL – attract a whopping 83% of US online ad spend. Of this group Facebook is expected to dramatically expand its share. New players are attracting more revenue as well. According to Business Insider, they are dominated by a few that are not necessarily thought of as traditional “publishers,” such as Hulu, YouTube, and Twitter.

Add to this the reported Q4 digital-spending cuts, and new pressures from RTB and exchanges, and you’ll get why some publishers are starting to freak out. Exchange- and RTB-driven selling more than doubled in 2011, building fears of channel conflict and depressed CPMs. Further pressure arises from the commoditization of inventory and the agency trading desks.

So, what’s a publisher to do? Join the mad rush to land-grab in mobile? (Still not economically sustainable.) Set up a private exchange or funnel all of your inventory through existing exchanges? (Puts too much value at risk.) Whatever publishers’ options might be, flailing around and pivoting from one business model to the next is clearly not one of them.

Based on over 11 years of making money for publishers, we’ve come up with a real prescription for publisher health to face the all too exciting times ahead in 2012:

• Focus on what you’re not doing. Examine revenue channels you haven’t yet tapped. Over the years you’ve invested in great content, photos, slideshows, and videos. Are you fully monetizing all these opportunities? We work with thousands of premium publishers who found vibrant sources of revenue through new ultra-relevant, non-intrusive ad units – such as in-text, toolbars, and dynamic display – that actually enhance the user’s experience by providing contextually relevant, consistently useful brand advertising. Look beyond your ad units, too – maybe you have data that you could monetize, for instance. With so much spend going to the Big Five, how are you going to grab your piece of the pie? Seek network partners who have strong relationships with top 100 brands who will leverage their strengths to get you the best deals.

• Take tech seriously. Smart publishers dedicate people and resources to maximizing yields and by shopping around, trying out different partners, exchanges, and other revenue opportunities.

• Steal from the best. Why is social media so appealing to advertisers? It’s the interactivity, sharing, and engagement. So what can you learn from someone like Facebook, a platform that’s drawing a substantial10% of the US online ad spend? One thing’s for sure, work with partners who can bring social media engagement to your site and audience. Brands are increasingly looking at unique placements such as social media toolbars that push branded social media content to the context of the bottom of a relevant publisher page, where consumers can engage right then and there, without leaving your site.

• You are the new TV. Numbers don’t lie. Video ad spend online is projected to surpass $7B by 2015, US online video viewers will reach 169 million next year, and 72% of publishers say video will bring them the most revenue (eMarketer). There are a number of ways to approach video. You can choose to throw up a roadblock/interstitial and annoy a user into watching an ad. You can use pre-roll and “reward” users with a bit of premium content later on. Or, you can run ads that are neither distracting nor aggressive. Publishers who work with Vibrant provide user-initiated video ad formats that are immersive and engaging, and developed to support consumer choice. Because of this, they perform for brands and publishers and, of course, for users.

It has been a bumpy few years for online publishers, and the roller-coaster ride will continue. But with the potential of new ad formats and new ad technologies, I think that if we look creatively at solutions that deliver for audiences and for publishers and brands, opportunities for all of us will abound in the year to come.

With so much at stake from now through Christmas – holiday sales represent nearly 20% of retail sales for the whole year – marketers pull out all the stops to get an edge on the competition. For most, that means amping up and ramping up on the digital advertising front. After all, more than 57% of marketers say they rely on digital ads to increase brand awareness and purchases; digital drives a significant amount of both offline retail behavior (through online branding) and online purchasing (through brand and direct-reponse initiatives).

But before we ladle out the eggnog and throw marketing caution to the wind, it’s important to remember that with a few slight tweaks, holiday marketers need to follow the same guidelines this time of year that they do when the fake snow’s not falling. So what’s the hot, new trend for marketers this holiday season? Common sense.

Based on best practices and insight from colleagues around the digital industry, I’ve identified five essential rules to follow for your holiday marketing, guaranteed to see you through to 2012 with nary a regret:

1. Always be relevant. It sounds like Marketing 101, but keeping consumers and their wants, needs, conditions, and situations at the core of what you do will guarantee results. Along with demographic info, you must understand what content your audience is viewing, watching and reading, and align your ads with that content. This year, more than ever, we’re seeing consumers who are not only price-conscious, but also spending-conscious. The better you understand consumers’ circumstances, the better prepared you’ll be to make a strong case for the value and benefits of your product.
2. Context matters – and so does content. What are you serving in your display, toolbar, and in-text ads? Time and again, we see that the most engaging ads offer users relevant content within the context of the page they’re viewing. Maybe you’re marketing a tooth-whitening product, for example. Serve ads that understand the context of a page – whether it’s about finding a date for New Year’s Eve or taking great holiday photos – and change dynamically to give users meaningful information they can use.
3. Serve a need, need to serve. We all know that geo-targeted, locally relevant marketing holds great appeal for brands and consumers (viz. a recent major IPO), so make sure your advertising caters to consumers’ needs. Here’s a cue from retailer Lowe’s, who used a targeted keyword strategy to score big with an award-winning campaign during the holiday season last year. Lowe’s created a custom in-text store locator ad unit that leveraged ShopLocal's robust API feed to deliver geo-targeted product deals within relevant, topical, and seasonal content. Cha-ching!
4. Don’t share your voice, own it. Keyword ownership is everything, especially in auto, consumer electronics and other hyper-competitive sectors. Along with category and brand words, seasonally specific terms like “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” are obvious winners. Act first and fast, and you can let keywords do the work for you. A smart contextual plan gives you access to every relevant nook of the Web without specific spot-buying.
5. Know the channels and work them. It goes without saying that social media is attracting heat and dollars from marketers. Brands look for increased mileage from their social media assets – surfacing social content in new ad formats that push the Facebook page and Twitter feed to the consumer in a relevant context, as opposed to pulling them away to their social media. Last year, Best Buy successfully brought its “Twelpforce” help-desk Twitter feed into relevant content and engagement through customized in-text ad units. And, this year, envelope-pushing brand Axe is using an innovative social toolbar to bring its clever social media content to a broader audience.

Happy holidays, and here’s to a happy and hangover-free marketing season full of common sense, brand lift, and conversions for all!

In decades past, amazing creative was what pushed the advertising envelope. Consider Apple’s pivotal “1984” ad or Wendy’s unforgettable “Where’s the Beef?” But now, thanks to technology, innovation in advertising is about connecting with consumers. Want to make a great ad? Make it engaging, informative, useful, or fun (or if you’re really good, all of the above).

The service-oriented approach to ad creative is even more critical in the changing digital landscape. With the emerging maturity of so-called “digital natives,” we have a new understanding of how profoundly media and technology are altering the ways in which people interact with content and advertising. Recent studies show that 98 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds use social media and 63 percent of those 18 to 29 use geosocial (check-ins) or location-based services. Just imagine what numbers we’ll see when today’s kindergartners stand up to be counted.

And yet, at the same time, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), in a recent poll of its membership, found that only 30 percent consider online ads effective, down 2 percent from 2009.

In our mad dash for CTR and attribution, we often forget that an ad doesn’t work unless it works for consumers -- a notoriously diverse and difficult group to target.

One approach that’s been effective for marketers, both online and off: creating ads that contribute something to consumers’ lives, without distracting or annoying them. User-initiated campaigns are giving consumers greater control of how and when they engage with brands -- through in-text, in-image, and toolbar-based ads. Video spots are beginning to evolve from pre-roll and other “forced view” strategies, toward more user-initiated, immersive formats.

At the same time, more smart marketers are embracing strategies that allow them to be contextually relevant to consumers by delivering ads in the right place and at the right time. Ads that provide utility, entertainment, and value are an asset for the consumer, whether they’re recipes from a food brand or road conditions from an auto maker.

Smart marketers are also taking note of the shift to mobile, which is rapidly changing the way ads work. Sure, everyone will still watch TV at home and maybe use desktop computers (at work at least) for the immediately foreseeable future. But consumer behavior is definitely on the move, with mobile Internet usage projected to surpass desktop by 2014. Especially in the cities, the mobile and tablet lifestyle is taking over, with more of our lives and decisions outsourced to FreshDirect, Seamless, Netflix streaming, and Yelp.

What will it mean to add value, fun, and engagement as we move into this new context? How will ads remain relevant alongside apps, gaming and mobile ecommerce? One thing is for sure: Users will be dictating the terms of engagement.

And what of the digital natives, the generation growing up in a world that is all mobile, all social, all the time? How will they engage with marketers five or ten years down the road? Time will tell, but my bet is that if those of us paying the closest attention to consumers are going to figure it out first.