Consumers have high expectations for marketing content from entertainment brands, especially when it comes to being entertained. This is why social channels can be a marketer's best friend, especially if they are savvy enough to leverage new features and channels as they are introduced.

The major gift-giving seasons certainly make sense for brands to focus on selling all sorts of merchandise, so having solid holiday marketing plans in place by the end of the summer is essential.

There's never more interest in predictive analytics than around March Madness, when fans are looking for whatever edge they can get in filling out the perfect bracket. There are also few uses of predictive analytics that are more Sisyphean; according to DePaul University professor Jeff Bergen, the odds of having a perfect March Madness bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.

Facebook and Twitter have been pounding the pavement in Hollywood in an arms race to acquire rights to stream live television programming.

Okay, I admit it: I recently struggled to get television coverage in Los Angeles for one of my projects. Granted, it was a feature story and it was on a busy news day, but still-I'd hoped at least one of the local news stations would come out and cover my event.