Have you noticed a massive surge on Facebook lately, since it opened up itself up to everyone outside of .edu? I have -- and I bet that other social networks are now scrambling to respond, especially in light of Facebook's opening of its API. That has released the floodgates of partner enhancements, add-ons and functionality, to integrate a myriad other data services and social networks deep within and beyond the core Facebook platform.

Why should you care about widgets? Simply put, widgets are the most recent embodiment of highly distributable Web media. And I believe that over the next three years, widgets will change online advertising as we know it today.

Much of traditional media is based on estimated audience data. But as we move more towards a digital-centric planning environment, our focus will shift toward accountability; the dominant forms of media will cease their dependence on estimates and shift toward actual audience. The real question is, how long will this take, and what are the implications for planners and buyers?

After the dialogue following last week's post, I wanted to expand on social media's definition a bit this week, as well as look at some easy ways to get started in "digital social media advertising."

Is Father's Day a profitable holiday? According to a study from National Retail Federation conducted by BIG Research, the average person will spend $98.34 on the holiday, up from $88.80 last year.

Superbowl XLI was a beehive of advertising inspired by consumer participation. Four months later, marketers are still experimenting with all sorts of consumer-generated campaigns. While this bandwagon is still relatively new, marketers are beginning to learn some key lessons around these hybrid programs....

What's going to be the next wave of online ad targeting? Predictive targeting -- one step closer to the Holy Grail of delivering the right ad to the right person at the right time in the right place.

I just finished watching the MTV Movie Awards. It took me all of 20 minutes to watch the entire show, or at least the entire portion of the show that was worth watching. Many people have hemmed and hawed about what to do to make these shows more interesting, but I want to take a moment to share my thoughts...

It's hard to hold conversations when everyone who's talking has varying views on the definitions of key vocabulary. Yet our entire industry is talking about social media -- and I defy you to find two people that define social media the same way. Determined to solve this problem for the industry single-handedly... I looked up the term on Wikipedia (which, incidentally, cites itself as an example of social media). What I found was not only woefully incomplete (first time this has happened to me on Wikipedia), but there are a couple of areas where I would differ with the entry …

The Internet has become a necessity, not a luxury. It's funny because I, like you, remember when we looked at the Web differently. Remember putting together all those slides for sales deck pitches and presentations? The ones that showed the penetration of the Internet as a media? Or how about the slide captioned, "Pretty soon everyone will be online."