I have friends who spend, I don't know, twenty hours a day on FaceBook.  "You can do so much" or some version of that is the usual comment on the engagement level social media offers. Panel discussions yesterday and today, regardless of what they were about, all seemed to orbit social media.  I'm on the outside of this, and I'm thinking it's my age.  I know it's probably a cliche, but still. I think if kids' meet the Web, and online social media, then their minds - who knows, perhaps their physical brains - are shaped by it enough so …

FTC's Harrison said the agency needs more information from marketers and tech companies involved in online tracking to to better regulate the industry. "What we would like to know is just what is being collectedd and how it's being used and how its being combined," she said. Otherwise policy will be made and "it may not be good policy because there isn't enough information."

The current debate surrounding industry self-regulation of the collection and disclosure of online consumer behavior is mirroring a similar, now defunct debate of the late 1990s concerning "online profiling." The big difference now, Eileen Harrington, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission, said Friday afternoon during OMMA Expo's "Bad Science" panel discussion, is, well, "everything."

Within the realm of online privacy issues, who owns the data generated when consumers use the Web? Read the privacy policy, says Jeff Hirsch, President & CEO, Revenue Science. Trying to identify personal information online is a red herring, argues Eileen Harrington, Deputy Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission It’s “almost a game of chicken going on here,” she says. The longer companies withhold their data gathering practices, the more likely it becomes that Government will step in.

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."