Adify President Russell Fradin, speaking at the OMMA Global show in New York, had a news flash for the social networking industry: CPMs are the wrong metric for selling advertising on your sites. Why, because you have so many damn pages. Social nets find themselves awash in low CPMs precisely because they have hundreds of millions of impressions, most of …

What to do when you finally accept the fact that you’re without talent? Surround yourself with talented people who, for some strange reason, think of you are talented, according to Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO, Denuo, Chief Innovation Officer, Publicis Groupe Media. That’s the “grand ponzi scheme we’re all involved in,” Tobaccowala said in his address to the best of the advertising and marketing community (!!!) over lunch. Another word of wisdom from Tobaccowala: “Leadership is a task, not an identity.” Apparently, the idea of leadership is an antiquated one. Sorry, Jack Welch! And, another: If someone is …

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Isobar's Nigel Morris agreed that Chris Anderson's concept of "freemium"--giving away content or services for free in order to upsell consumers on higher value products--will become a widespread model for media owners. The question is, how do they get enough people in with free content and then how do they monetize them, especially in a digital environment? And Ad messages supporting free content can't just be pushed out there. "All advertising is only going to be relevant if it adds some value," he said.

Mobile, media and advertising executives agreed that advertisers don' t really distinguish whether mobile advertising runs on on-deck--the mobile gateways controlled by the carriers--or off-deck, via the wider mobile Web. But mobile consultant Eric Bader of Brand in Hand said the landscape is starting to shift in favor of off-deck. "In terms of performance across a number of different categories and a number of campaigns targeting different audiences, the carrier deck is starting to diminsh in terms of performance," he said. "People are still using the deck to get somewhere, they're just not using ads to get there."

Are too many conference discussions dancing around the salient issue of individual relevance? Maybe.

Jason Temming assocate director at Starcom said there was obvious synergy for Gillette at  Sports Illustrated when it comes to reaching men, 18-24 who  control their media. "That's why mash-up technology was such a great fit." Stacey Vollman, general manager at  SI.com said that the concept of mash-up also mean application in a controlled fashion, since there was a lot of potential for the kinds of user-content that Gillette would not want to be associated with, eg, profanity.  "We controlled the original content," said Vollman, "But let users create their content, through in-house design teams that developed the interface." …

Are too many conference discussions dancing around the salient issue of individual relevance? Maybe. A key to making social networking, content and advertising work on interactive platforms is relevance. That’s relevance as in having significant value to individual consumer. That notion seems foreign to many advertisers and agencies, content producers and distributors, who continue to view their Web audiences as a collective "we." By and large, how they use the Web is still all about them and their corporate agenda, or what they perceive to be the interests and needs of consumer categories. The keep to securing and sustaining user …

I'd expected the Friday morning OMMA ad-track panel to be packed. With men. Why? it's about Gillette's interactive campaign on Sports Illustrated's SI.com, centered on, you guessed it, the Swimsuit Issue, the only issue I care about. Unless there's a boxing story. Well it was mostly men, but not packed. What was I missing? A panel on social media versus porn?

Social media are the bane of my existence, says Chris Curtin, vp digital strategy, H-P. "It has greatest promise for us but has to be thought through and not just the ultimate PSS of your campaign." Bob Stohrer, CMO of Virgin Mobile USA, had more questions than answers because, as he says, you have to come at social media from all angles. The "Strip to Clothe" campaign few weeks ago, donating to homeless youth, took off on its own, but was shut down two weeks into it. "Most such campaigns depend on flanking media." No easy answers, everyone …