The personal touch works when it comes to creating content. Consumers want to know the brand, what it stands for and how it is made. Creating quality content requires brands to know their audience, create compelling messages, rely on cross-channel media, and open up to share personal experiences that can help consumers learn more about the brand.

A Microsoft Scroogled campaign dishes the turkey on the Google Chromebook with the help of the reality television service "Pawn Stars" that highlights people carrying their out-of-the-ordinary and personal possessions into a Las Vegas Pawn shop for appraisals.

Tablets will nearly out-ship half of the world's PC shipments in 2014 -- defined as tablet, notebook and desktop combined, according to one independent analyst firm, which lumps the three devices into the PC category. This market worldwide rose 18% this year.

Black Friday doesn't officially begin in the United States until the day after Thanksgiving, but this year a slew of retailers began offering the deals a week early. Amazon, Best Buy and The Sharper Image are among those calling these early days Black Friday deals week.

Blocking search terms and aggregating others to identify trends typically becomes a focus at the end of the year, but a few end-of-year stories might have marketers scratching their heads. This one got me thinking whether marketers should take a more active role in policing where they market their services and products.

Marketers often get it wrong. They assume certain keywords will attract consumers to a Web page, but many times that page either remains difficult to find or the keywords tied to the page don't reflect the correct products and services. While correcting the problem means testing to improve the click-through and the retention rates, as well as determining the best phrases, words and terminology, how click-through rates vary depends on referring Web pages. I'm fascinated by the way search marketers drive conversions.

I've lived in the same home for nearly my entire adult life, so I'm doing a bit of home renovating in preparation for getting married. We're not changing everything, but rather updating bathroom sinks, fixtures and hardware like doorknobs. I love glass doorknobs. Good ones are difficult to find, but I searched online and found this great distributor, myknobs.com, where you can find just about any doorknob you can possibly imagine.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in a blog post Monday describes how the company will encrypt all information moving between Yahoo data centers, and plans to give users an option by the end of Q1 2014 to encrypt all data flowing to and from Yahoo.

Black Friday shopping will merge more with Cyber Monday this year, according to research released Monday. Some 51% of consumers participating in a Nielsen survey said they plan to do Black Friday shopping online. Only 13% will shop in the physical stores on the day after Thanksgiving -- down from 17% in 2012. It's another opportunity for search engine marketers to attract consumers online.

What influences consumers to make a purchase? Google wanted to know how digital drives auto research and purchase decisions, so it launched a study with Millward Brown Digital and called it "Vehicle Shopper Path to Purchase Study." It shows how search, video and other online media work with offline advertising.