Jeff Holecko, North American media manager for Kimberly Clark, said one of the most exciting areas of development for packaged goods companies which sell baby and childcare products is "the intersection of search, social, and moms. Moms -- especially young moms -- are social mavens. That's how they communicate, that's where they are."

... although it sounded that way for a second when Dan Fleetwood, director of global search marketing for SAP, said the "president of the U.S. [division of SAP] is calling us" about search engine optimization.

We've all heard a lot of complaints about the depressing effects of government regulation on business during the tentative economic recovery. Turns out regulation can hinder something as seemingly uncontroversial as search engine optimization as well. Matt van Dalsem, vice-president of Black Rock, cited a couple obstacles to search engine optimization for Black Rock's white papers and other publications targeting financial advisors. Maybe unsurprisingly, one of the biggest obstacles is heavy SEC regulation, which means that Black Rock's compliance department has to vet not only content but the way that it's marketed and distributed.

"Google, Facebook and Yahoo would like you to spend more money." More as this story develops...

Zinman finished up with a survey of companies which provide full funnel attribution, compiled by Forrester, including Atlas, Coremetrics, ClearSaleing, Visual IQ, TruEffect, [x+1], Theorem -- adding "there's no excuse" for not using these kind of services to make ad spending more efficient and effective.

Zinman is showing us an example of a full funnel attribution exercise, meaning the practice measuring the correct partial value of each interactive ad that drove a desired outcome (per Forrester). He noted that we tend to give 100% credit to the last click, which naturally favors search and short-changes everything else. But he also points out that traditional media have developed sophisticated attribution models -- including for example TV ads, because "obviously no one is clicking on TV ads." It's a pretty convincing argument: after all, TV has dominated advertising spending for decades with what is mostly branding (as …

Following Aaron Goldman and Rob McEvily's retro 80's hip-hop intro, the first speaker at Day 2 of the Search Insider Summit -- David Zinman, vice-president and general manager for Yahoo's display advertising -- started the day with a call for more harmonious coordination of search with other disciplines, including of course display. Zinman predicted that the new generation of DSPs, DMPs, SEM firms will allow more flexibility in terms of moving money back and forth between search, display, and optimization, and coordinating these disciplines with each other. And they definitely work together: he cited a study showing that coordinating display …

audience question asking whether Facebook has any plans for sharing/exposing user data, and allowing 3rd party companies to join up their data for more extensive behavioral targeting. But no dice: Yi says "in the near term, which is actually pretty long, we're unlikely to share user data because it's just a bridge too far in terms of privacy." However the company is working on ways to share some "granular" but "non-identifiable" data that would allow re-targeting within certain limited parameters. On that note, I'd like to express my appreciation of "bridge too far" and any other application of military metaphors …

Yi separates search from social marketing in part by distinguishing between they fall on the "purchase funnel": search is low down on the funnel, closer to the point of purchase, whereas Facebook is spread along the entire funnel, from discovery down to purchase. He also gave some tips about how to leverage advertising in a discovery medium: for example, ads that ask questions (e.g., "love rock music?") are more likely to get clicks when people are in a more casual, sharing and discovering mode.

John Yi said advertisers can impart a sense of urgency and increase conversion rates with limited-time offers -- click now, deal ends soon, etc. But only include this in the ad copy if it's true, otherwise you'll get "kicked off the platform." Because Facebook has no love for lies.