I'm sure you've all watched "Mad Men" and wondered what it would be like if Don Draper worked in today's advertising industry. But what if the greatest fictional ad creative of all time found himself in SEM?

Big data is everywhere. It's become a fashionable topic du jour, and in an industry like search engine marketing, where data is everything, that trend holds especially true. One of my favorite quotes on the importance of data to the future of business is from Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian, "Datarati are companies that have the edge in consumer data insight... Data is ubiquitous and cheap, analytical ability is scarce... The sexiest job in the next ten years will be statistician."

In his book "The Believing Brain," Michael Shermer spends several hundred pages exploring just how powerful beliefs are in forming our view of the world. Beliefs impact not just what we think, but they literally filter what we see and do. And, once in place, beliefs tend to be stubbornly unshakeable. We will go to great extents to defend our beliefs with rationalizations that are often totally or partially fabricated. As Shermer says, "Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow."

I have to admit it - yesterday's column by Ryan DeShazer got my dander up a little bit. Just the headline -- "Doesn't Google Owe SEOs Something?" -- caught me and wouldn't let go. So, I decided I'd present the other side of this discussion today on why Google does not owe anything to SEOs.

"It's one of the most important rules of search engine optimization. Don't depend solely on SEO. Especially don't depend solely on Google, the largest of the SEO sources. I'm always surprised when people fail to learn this lesson." That's how Danny Sullivan began his column, "Penguin's Reminder: Google Doesn't Owe You A Living, So Don't Depend On It." In that piece, Sullivan draws parallels between Google's latest algorithm update, codenamed Penguin, and algorithm changes from the past. He references the online virulence that often occurs in the wake of such changes. Penguin has been no different. Hence the article and …

There's a chicken and an egg paradox in mobile marketing. Many mobile sites sit moldering in the online wilderness, attracting few to no visitors. The same could be said for many elaborate online customer portals, social media outposts or online communities. Somebody went to the trouble to build them, but no one came. Why? Well, it could be because no one thinks to go to the trouble to look for them, just as no one expects to find a ball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield.

Last week was the 13th running of the Search Insider Summit, AKA -- as I once made the mistake of referring to it and and am still reminded by my wife every time I leave her and my three kids to go -- summer camp for search geeks. As I had done for each of the last 11 outings, I tracked the official SIS buzz-o-meter to capture the focus of the content and jargon of the campers, er... attendees. This go-round proved to be quite buzz-worthy, even by SIS standards. Let's just say it was DataPoppin'!

Just get on with it already. You've thought about it. You've made excuses. You know it's time. As a search marketer, you need to get off last-click attribution. Ahh... last-click attribution. Like any addictive drug, it gets you hooked and is hard to give up. But, like any addictive drug, the fun days are over, and now, if you don't quit, you will only see the negative consequences.

Out-of-the-box website analytics tools are rarely satisfying. Sites that track only standard visits, pageviews, and bounces are missing out on some of the richest Web marketing data available. Every digital marketer should have a clear understanding of the data points that will be essential to maximizing the on-site user experience, which will ultimately foster greater audience engagement and yield more revenue.

Imagine gathering bids for a construction project in your house such as a bathroom renovation. A few hours before the deal is signed, you happen to find out that your friend had his comparable bathroom redone for $7,500 by the same contractor, but your quote comes in at $12,000, for the same work and material. You confront your contractor over the pricing disparity and he tells you, "I'm charging you more because you pay more in property taxes." Sounds ridiculous, right? It is, but this kind of discriminatory pricing is exactly what many interactive ad agencies do every day