Brands now have the ability target ads through a Telenav platform on iPhones or smartphones running the Android operating system when consumers come within 300 feet of brick and mortar locations. The technology comes from ThinkNear, a privately held hyper-local mobile advertising company in Los Angeles Telenav acquired for $22.5 million in cash and stock.

A new "historical intent targeting" tool from LocalResponse raises the interesting question about where a marketer best locates consumer intent chronologically. In some cases, your behavior last year is more telling than what you did last week.

Bits and bytes feed predictive data models gathered from Web behavior, grocery store purchases, television viewership, demographic information and a host of other sources. Google and Microsoft, along with help from Nielsen, Hitwise and others have figured out ways to link that data from point-of-sale terminals in stores to televisions, computers and mobile devices.

As automation rapidly dominates online advertising, people in the industry have begun a very American process of reflecting on the shape of human agency moving forward.

Facebook remains at odds with investors as the stock price falters from its IPO highs, but overall Facebook remains in favor with many site members. In fact, this year the social network enters The Interbrand 2012 Best Global Brand report at No. 69. And in the pockets of advertisers, improving Facebook ads effectiveness could raise the value of the brand even more.

Don't define the post-PC era as merely "always on" or multii-screen." The early data suggests people really are engaging with media on devices at significantly different times, in various modes, and at much higher levels of involvement. Now, it's really personal.

The need for healthy data seems to bring out the most unlikely sources for online marketers. IDG TechNetwork will announce plans this week to support marketers through a product that taps audience segment. The system, dubbed TechSignals, supports the idea that lots of data informs and improves decisions made by marketers to optimize campaigns in real time by identifying and anticipating purchase intent. In more than 25,000 data segments, it integrates 50 years of research from both IDC and IDG.

I went to the UK last week thinking this was a land where digital privacy was taken oh so much more seriously. Actually, they have chocolate bars that will track you --and marketing teams poised to hunt you down in real time and real space.

That little AddThis button publishers affix to content that gives marketers share counts turned into a massive data collection tool. On Wednesday the company will announce the launch of Purchase Graph, a data set aimed at improving the ability to identify and target Web audiences during the purchase cycle.

A new toggle shows up in Apple's iOS 6 that pertains to user control over ad tracking. But precisely what that seeming "opt-out" affects is still unclear as Apple introduces a new privacy-sensitive method of user tracking.