Our breakout session featured a spirited discussion around the topic of integration and convergence. The group quickly outlined 5 challenges/keys to success: 1. Data integration 2. People integration (both on the agency side and internally at corporations) 3. Metric integration 4. Incentive integration (across LOBs, agencies, etc.) 5. Message integration So how do you prioritize among these? Certainly, they can't all be magically integrated overnight. James Lamberti from comScore pointed out that there are 2 ways to approach integration and convergence. You can look at it thru the consumer lens and make sure that your target audience has …

David Berkowitz of 360i painted the scene of the 2013 Search Insider Summit at a sunny golf, resort in Antarctica. He then asked panelists to weigh in on what they're seeing at that time. Matt Greitzer of Avenue A/Razorfish kicked it off with the observation that search will be ubiquitous. People will be searching in many more places for many more reasons. Craig Macdonald of Covario chimed in that MSFT will still be trying to buy Yahoo. He added that attribution modeling will be the key to success. By 2013, Craig thinks the value of all activity before …

Unfortunately, I had to depart the conference a little early this year. Tonight''s events will include a cocktail party, sunset cruise and BBQ - Probably the most fun night of the entire event! I am counting on Aaron to blog about it in full detail, so I can feel like I was still there. Regardless of whether you read these postings because you did attend or couldn''t attend, it should be clear that the networking between agencies, platforms and clients is unmatchable. Thank you to everyone that works so hard to make it happen!

"[Jerry] Yang reacted like [Steve] Ballmer gave Yahoo a diganosis of chronic foot fungus."

In the Social Search breakout session, Marshall Clark of Organic predicted that the big search engines will incorporate social connections into the algorithms to improve relevancy. He pointed to StumbleUpon as an example of that trend in action.

The Mobile Search breakout session led by Dan Perry of Cars.com raised this important question. Is mobile just WAP sites or is it any web experience that lives outside the computer? The latter, of course, includes apps on mobile devices, "regular" websites that live on iPhones, etc.

During a breakout session on Social Media, the group began discussing the tendency of younger demographics to roll out of bed and check Facebook first thing in the morning and the potential evolution targeting could play in search query volume. If behavioral targeting advances to a point where advertising and content could essentially become predictive, then would we seek out fewer answers from search engines?  This is an interesting question. Most direct marketers would love that capability; however, social media in general is not a direct marketing channel. You have to wonder when online advertising will evolve to …

Ladies and Gentleman, start your pocketbooks...

Breakfast was sponsored by AOL''s Platform-A, and VP of product sales Julie Greenhouse gave a brief presentation on why the Web giant''s ad platform is kicking butt.

3 macro issues - liquidity, inflation, real-estate reevaluation