Can a traditional enterprise technology company really talk to a CMO? This is a very pertinent question in the marketplace right now, as more and more we're seeing the CMO transition to take over responsibility for creating and managing a technology stack that informs marketing. It's the "last frontier" for enterprise, one that's being hotly pursued by companies such as Salesforce and Oracle.

New Jersey, New York and neighboring states were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, and I hope the national and global attention the residents receive from the extreme media attention help them gather the necessary support to rebuild as soon as possible. Indeed, the region will rebuild. I have no doubt about that. But I also hope Hurricane Sandy's aftermath in the spotlight will continue and drive our attention to other important and long-term issues.

While I work in New York City, on most nights and weekends I live in a small rural town about 90 minutes away. Last week superstorm Sandy affected people on the East Coast -- sometimes tragically so -- and our area was no exception. We have been without power, running water, TV, Internet and train service since last Monday. While the trains have been running again as of Sunday, the rest of those services are still out.

Surely you've noticed. Your newsfeed currently features four topics, pretty much exclusively: updates on Sandy and her aftermath, Halloween pics, political updates -- and requests from companies whose Pages you've Liked to also express Interest in them. It's not their fault, they say. It's Facebook. Facebook has changed the settings so now only 10%-15% of our fans will see our posts. Unless we pay. Or unless you make a new part of your Facebook -- an "Interest list" -- that will show ALL our posts. Which will work great, as long as you visit this Interest list -- which evidently …

I hear lots of people in our industry ask the same question about ad technology sales: What challenges do you face getting your clients to understand your offering? As I was thinking through an intelligent response, I realized the answer sounded too familiar to my gripes with politics. Let me explain

I'm writing on Tuesday morning, Oct. 30, from my home office in Westchester County, New York, only a few blocks from Long Island Sound. I surveyed the town in my Jeep Wrangler and saw downed trees and loose power lines everywhere.

In the world of startups, the term "mafia" has come to positively describe a group of people who have built a successful company and then continued to work together to create a new wave of startups. As Sarah Lacy, founder and editor-in-chief of PandoDaily, the Silicon Valley-based publisher, recently put it: "In the case of the strongest and most enduring mafias, the sum of these distributed but connected ventures - influenced by heavy lessons from a shared past - wind up being larger than the original company that spawned it all."

There is a Tom Fishburne cartoon from 2008 called "Poser Marketing." It depicts a can of soda, brand unrecognizable, anthropomorphized with arms, legs and a face. There are three hipster-looking youngsters sitting in the corner. "Fine," declares Soda Can Guy, "You win! I give up trying to interrupt you with TV ads you stubbornly refuse to watch. You can be my Myspace friend or watch my YouTube videos instead." The hipsters are unmoved; only one of them bothers to offer a reply: "Whatever, loser."

Today I would like to introduce you to Jack Smith, our chief product officer at Simulmedia. He'll tell us about the conference he thinks is so important: The Strata Conference + Hadoop World, which show how the role of technology, science and big data will forever alter the makeup of marketing organizations.

The medium is still maturing. There currently is a lack of proven brand case studies, and as a result there are more direct-response advertisers driving CPC or CPA ad models than there are CPM-driven brand advertisers. The ad formats are still in flux, and the growth rate for consumer use is so steep that standard metrics for success are almost obsolete by the time they are published.