I've written several times over the last year about the emerging opportunity in auction-based display media, especially as it relates to ad exchanges. A small group of us at my company hypothesized that these "search-like" capabilities applied to display media could produce "search-like" performance, even though display media is a push, not pull, medium. So far our hypothesis has been correct. And though the ad exchange market is a tiny fraction of the $30 billion global search market, we think it's a channel worth betting on. Apparently Google does, too. In the next few weeks Google will likely release version …

It's been just over six weeks since the birth of Bing. While I didn't actually say Microsoft's new search baby was ugly, I was less than optimistic about its chances of unseating Google in a popularity contest. So, with every measurement panel carefully following Bing's debut, I think it's time to see just how the little engine is doing in the search (oops, make that "decision") sandbox.

It's been about three months since I launched my new venture, Connectual. In thinking about the ups and downs I've experienced, it struck me how profoundly my tenure in search marketing prepared me for running a business. Here are 10 things I've learned over the years in search that have helped me as a business owner.

Imagine that we didn't have Google. Imagine a Terminator came back from the future to kill Google before it became self-aware. Imagine that it found the global jeadquarters in Mountain View and managed to destroy Google's "brain." For purposes of this thought experiment, let's actually restrict ourselves for a moment to the idea of a world without Google search. Here's what I believe would happen from a consumer perspective: there would be a brief and reasonably harsh shudder -- and then we would go on as normal.

Like you, I've read all the commentary about Google's announced development of a browser-based OS, and to be frank, I'm hardly convinced that this development represents anything more than a sideshow, albeit a headline-grabbing one. Here's a short list of why I think we're all going to be talking about something else in a very short period of time.

At the end of "Casablanca," Humphrey Bogart's character, Rick, utters the famous line "I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship." And in those words, we find the current feelings from advertisers towards the newly credible Microsoft search entry, Bing. So far, the data is good. Query shares are up, and advertisers are reporting positive click and ROI trending. Overall, good news for a space lacking a viable forward-moving competitor for too long.

I've been working with companies on SEO for over a decade now, and there's one thing I've noticed: all things being equal, healthy companies with great cultures seem to do much better in organic search results. And by organic success, I mean the good, white-hat, Matt Cutts-approved kind of success. I bet that if you found the companies that do well in organic search, you'd also find companies that Jim Collins (author of "Built to Last" and "Good to Great") would be proud of. This correlation can't be coincidence, so I've outlined some reasons why this might be so.

A couple of columns ago I pondered aloud on the reasons why, in the face of the task of building a real-time search engine, Google should buy Twitter. I received more email, phone calls, and tweets on that column than many others in recent memory. While most commenters seemed to have a positive outlook about a Twitter and Google merge, many are skeptical of the search possibilities of Twitter, and others are just sick and tired of hearing about it. Leaving the monetization argument aspect of Twitter on the side for the moment, there is still a strong case for …

For the industry, search is about heat maps and conversions and brand impression; it has to be this way in order for it to exist at the scale it does. But all of those business imperatives driving the search machine fade away for me when I turn to it, trembling and uncertain, grateful for its patient willingness to answer my every question, no matter how ignorant, no matter how similar to my 20 previous questions.

Search has so much power and potential that expands beyond conventional searches at a search engine. It can have a starring role in shaping TV.