An extensive new study from NPD Group finds that no matter what's going with the economy, consumers aren't so much recovering as they are resetting. "Overall, consumers have reached this new equilibrium of spending and making decisions about things like groceries and apparel and electronics and automotive," Dee Warmath, SVP/Retail Insights for NPD, tells Marketing Daily. "The pie has shrunk, so each category is competing with another. So while there is a roving release of pent-up demand, there's not an overall increase in spending." The Port Washington, N.Y.-based market research company interviewed some 71,000 consumers across eight categories, …

Tuaca, the Brown-Forman liqueur whose roots hail back to the Renaissance, has launched a new "Go Beyond the Usual"-themed, integrated marketing campaign to go along with its recently updated packaging – both designed to appeal to the spirit's core audience of younger adults seeking a unique, "adventurous" experience.

It looks like economic conditions have begun to improve for search marketing. Melanie Mitchell, SVP/Search Marketing Strategy at Digitas, told BlueGlass L.A. 2010 attendees the agency is hiring because the business continues to grow. I've heard that same sentiment several times during the past week, including at MediaPost's Ad Nets conference on Monday in Los Angeles.

Yahoo plans to release details about the alliance with Microsoft at 2 pacific today, Dave Roth, Director of Search Marketing at Yahoo, told about 200 attendees at the BlueGlass L.A. 2010 conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Making sure not to break any news before this afternoon, he ran through already available information on the unified marketplace and the transition timeline. UPDATE: While search marketers will buy search ads through adCenter and have them appear on Yahoo and Bing, buying display ads will mean marketers will need to buy through Yahoo's network and adCenter.

Pulling out of ad networks? Not so much these days. Last year ESPN made a big decision -- banning ad networks, troubled by the activity of the business which can heavily discount its digital inventory. But there have been fewer big publisher pullouts since then. "You haven't heard about a major announcement in a while," says Eric Franchi, senior vp of business development of Undertone Networks, at a panel at the OMMA Ad Nets conference. "Publishers are really trying to figure this out." Andrew Jacobson, vp of digital sales of Gannett, says the reason is publishers are …

Don Draper, the storyteller, isn't dead, but some panelists believe the creative stories that keep consumers remembering the brand are dying. During OMMA Ad Nets on Monday in Los Angeles, those on the "Get Me Creative!: Does Don Draper Have Any Place in a Data-Driven World?" panel agreed to disagree. While Sacha Reeb, executive creative director at Organic, believes "there's a good deal of story yet to be told," Martin Betoni, creative director at Centro, thinks "we did this as an industry to ourselves."

When it comes to restaurants, two new studies point to social media still having somewhat limited impact on the overall consumer universe, but very strong influence within specific, generally younger, segments.   One, from Technomic, points to significant opportunities among early technology adopters, based on their use of social media and heavy QSR and fast casual restaurant use.  Another, from M/A/R/C Research and focused just on QSRs, finds social media not being a major fast-food information source for most consumers, but being very important, particularly for promotions, among those who do use these media in relation to fast food.

Are ad networks becoming something else, asks Joe Mandese, Editor in Chief, MediaPost, at OMMA Ad Net in Los Angeles. Will ad nets survive in the age of the DSPs or are they becoming another type of business? Panelists say they will survive as long as they provide value. Well, not everyone believes that. Having 400 ad networks is probably too many, says Brian Mikalis, vice president of sales at Pandora. "We have saw a shift in Q1 2010, a downward trend forecast, and thought that would change in Q2, but we didn't," he says. It appears the …

Ad networks may change but will continue to exist, according to Anthony Katsure, general manager for Mediamath, because they handle three, logistics-heavy services: 1. content consolidation, 2. contextualization, and 3. data

Cory Treffiletti, president and managing partner of Catalyst: SF, at the OMMA Ad Nets conference, questioned whether too much automation in the digital world may be creating a different role for digital media agencies. "We a spend on labor; I don't see that going away," says Dave Martin, senior vp of media for Ignited. "I want my clients to need me -- whatever it takes." This means even if the agency doesn't always makes money on it. That also means meeting and learning many new technologies and platforms to give clients the most alternatives. "We want our …