Online shoppers have an entire global marketplace only a few mouse clicks away. Lately, however, online shoppers and those advertiser and marketers who are trying to reach them see guided shopping, like what exists in the blogosphere, as compelling.

Depending on whom you ask, the in-text ad is either an ingenious ad revenue-generation mechanism (an opinion typically shared by marketing and ad sales people), or pure unadulterated evil invented by Lucifer himself (popular opinion among journalists and editors)....

How does an e-marketer create online ad campaigns with easily understood and intrinsic value? By integrating multi-media proposals into an advertiser's thought process come budget-planning time.

In this emerging cross-platform world, how should your publishing organization be structured to efficiently maximize your revenue potential, regardless of the platform chosen by the audience your brand engages? Should you have a separate sales team selling your online inventory? No, and here's why....

The last month has witnessed a parade of big announcements from the major social media players. First, Google revealed the widget platform Open Social, and Android, a mobile OS; then MySpace unveiled Self Serve, a system that allows advertisers to easily create and manage profile-targeted ads; lastly, Facebook then launched Facebook Pages, the product with the most immediate impact to publishers. Content owners now have an easy way to engage the 50+ million members of Facebook via a branded page. Besides the reach, there are other advantages to creating a presence on the socnet du jour.

If there was a way for your Web site to generate substantially more money with little effort, and no cost, while adding value for you users, would you do it? Of course you would. But, many online publishers aren't aware of the immediate opportunities to drive incremental revenue for their Web properties. Most only make use of traditional banner and sponsorship revenue streams, neglecting more innovative ways of actually engaging their users to meet their goals.

Optimization -- that fancy word for making a selling process more relevant and engaging for your customer --could be said to have four major approaches that have critical value for marketers: experimentation, targeting, behavioral and social. In recent weeks I outlined how marketers can use the first three for improving performance metrics on all types of websites. Social media is the last of the major optimization approaches to explore (at least for now).

Today, domain brand names can help businesses have a commanding presence with universal access in e-commerce, acting like very special golden keys.

A few weeks ago, a column by Cory Treffiletti ( served those of us in sales an insightful reminder of the preparation required to conduct a positive sales call experience. Cory's column was also a bit disturbing as he gleefully detailed how he kicked a salesperson out of his office for failing to prepare properly.It's so easy to kick the salesperson. We have a dog's-eye perspective that leaves us vulnerable. Our managers kick us around inside our building to ensure we spend more time outside of it -- only to get kicked around by the people we're paid to call …

Not all behavioral targeting is created equally. Many networks and publishers are touting behavioral in their marketing materials and the sad truth is, most of them have little experience with true behavioral and are simply remarketing to people who have arrived on the marketer's Web site or previously clicked on their ad. I admit this is a very powerful technique -- but it's only one piece of the behavioral puzzle.