If you've been working on online Mother's Day campaigns or promotions this year, and the result so far aren't encouraging, don't' worry. Things are about to heat up.

Those of us who spend our days online don't think twice about trusting the web with our most personal matters, but as online marketers it may serve us well to keep in mind that the rest of the online population is still having trust issues.

After two days of spam rants, one of our readers wrote me saying I sounded "angry." Well, here's something non-threatening for a change: numbers.

The second day of the FTC Spam Forum has proven to be slightly more informational than the first. The day started off with a panel on the economics of spam and amidst complaints from almost all of the panelists, who talked about the astounding amounts of money being lost as a result of spam, a voice of reason - that of Bigfoot Interactive's CEO Al DiGuido - put things in perspective.

This week I decided it would be a good idea to go to the FTC Spam Forum in Washington, DC, and now that I've spent a day listening to senators, congressmen and other legislators talk about possible government intervention in the Spam crisis, I can honestly say the online industry is on its own when it comes to eradicating the problem.

Here's something we can all hold over traditional advertisers' heads. According to the latest data from BIGresearch, nearly 24% of men and 30% of women in the US regularly go online while they are watching TV, compared to just 8.2% and 10.1%, respectively, who read a newspaper while watching TV.

First off, one more thing about search. According to Amsterdam-based OneStat.com, most people use 2-word phrases in search engines. Of all the search phrases world wide, 29.22% of the people use 2-word phrases and 24.76% use 1-word phrases. The percentages drop with longer phrases. Just something to keep in mind for your SEO efforts.

We've long followed the "most-searched" rankings on individual search engines, but now it looks like there might be a better way to figure out what consumers are looking for online. comScore Networks today announced the launch of qSearch, a system that will track and report consumers' distinct search queries across 25 major search engines and portals.

The March web surfing tallies are beginning to come in and it looks like Americans spent the month surfing international, as well as domestic news sites in record numbers. Nielsen//NetRatings says it was alternative coverage of the war in Iraq that was the major draw.

I have good news to report today, but before I do, I need your help. MediaPost is looking for stars.