Time and again I've gotten on my soapbox to preach the importance of integrating search into the overall marketing mix, but this time the writing is on the wall... or should I say, the search results page. It's time to see things for how they really are: search impacts brand. End of story.

Currently, the Advertising Research Foundation has an initiative called MI4. Its task is to create a cross-channel measurement of advertising effectiveness that can foster more accountability and facilitate multichannel marketing measurement....

For ten years the search industry has been built on the concept of keywords. What began in organic search has multiplied many times over in paid search. To many, this means no list of terms is ever too long, and no word ever irrelevant.

Long live personalized search; personalized search is dead. The same can be said of social search and vertical search. All three are melding, and a search giant has an opportunity to bring this hybrid technology to the masses.

We are stuck in the awkward period between proposing a revolutionary idea and doing what is right for the brand, with the technology that's available far ahead of consumer adoption.

By now, it should be crystal clear that search marketing is every bit as important as online advertising, e-mail marketing, content sponsorships, and Web sites when it comes to achieving success online. With media allocation priorities coming into focus, it's time for interactive marketers to think more critically about search in the context of integration.

It was a sad day in the Hotchkiss household. While doing her homework, my 12-year-old daughter, Alanna, had a question. Until now, she always asked me, her father. This time, she went straight to Google. The 10-year-old, Lauren, is already heading in the same direction. I'm sensing the old days may never return.

The golden age of mass media was perhaps best characterized by the peak in audience of the three big broadcast television networks. Many have said the Internet is most responsible for furthering media fragmentation. But one of the biggest paradoxes is that the new digital world follows a pattern of dominance similar to the old, in at least one fundamental way: search is following a curve where only a few control access and exposure.

Let's project into the future: Search-Informed Marketing, beyond search engines, is growing; Google has pioneered thoughtvertising--advertising targeted to consumer's thought patterns, that enters directly into one's brain.

Pacifying your CEO, while bringing a product to market, is like taking a cross-country road trip with your kids.