The craziness at SXSW makes having a place to unwind midday extremely valuable. Courtyard kicked off a yearlong campaign at the South by Southwest Interactive festival allowing folks to pull up a couch for an hour directly in the midst of the downtown action.

Ads today exist for reasons other than to sell stuff. Content made that possible. Take Procter & Gamble's Olympics themed spot "Thank you Mom," for example. It teaches that falling, or failing, only makes us stronger, and emphasizes the importance of offering encouragement to try again. To honor this type of content, TED has released the top 14 ads worth spreading. These ads educate us, have a social message, or simply make us think.

Local query results and content from neighborhood stores have become the focus of search engines. Yahoo on Wednesday began pulling in Yelp's online reviews of local merchants to improve the information available in its search engine results. The news came a day after Google said it would add customer ratings annotations based on survey data.

With Google announcing plans to launch its first software development kit (SDK) this month for wearable devices, and startups pitching ideas and winning over investors, marketers need to become more aware of how wearable devices will change their role across search engine media -- and become aware of how to capitalize on the data behind the gadgets.

Opinions. Some people put a lot of weight behind them when making a purchase decision, especially when backed by aggregated data from hundreds of completed surveys. Google this week will roll out consumer rating annotations. The new format will become part of search ads to provide detailed consumer opinion data in search results.

Toyota is working with Google to reimagine the purchase path through desktops and mobile devices. The Google+ Toyota collaboration is part of a digital meets metal campaign to help consumers and dealerships make the transition.

Yes, you heard correctly. I'm headed today to South by Southwest interactive in Austin. Apparently, Subway is headed there too. In fact, it's the Subway brand's first foray at SXSWi in a big way. The brand plans to make a big splash for its Flatizza pizza by allowing folks to sample the new menu item around town.

Search engine marketing automated bids and programmatic ad buying: think of the two as close cousins. I believe programmatic's roots were in search engine marketing's automated digital ad systems originating with engines like Google and Bing. In the display and video world this has become a way to explain how to execute automated media buys through exchanges, trading desks, and demand-side platforms. Just think automation -- so when I explain this story about VivaKi's push to increase bid optimization you'll understand how it fits into the scheme of things.

Okay -- it's not fair for me to only suggest Yahoo wants to terminate Google and Yahoo sign-ins to improve ad and content targeting. They also want to improve privacy and keep a tighter grip on the data collected from across their network of services and sites -- data that should become worth millions in advertising long-term.

Women might rule when it comes to shopping, but they also kick butt in technology. Some will get backing from Google this year in a new program to foster female-led technology companies. The program, #40Forward, will dole out $1 million in aggregate to companies that have pledged to increase female participation by 25% during the next year.