“Nobody’s going to opt in” to behavioral targeting, according to Ari Brandt, CEO of Linkstorm, but Brandt failed to deflate the hopes of Eric Wegerbauer of Direct Partners, who replied that a combination of precise targeting and excellent creative could indeed produce opt-ins. James Kiernan of Mediavest said self-regulation is the way to go, and was optimistic that consumers will opt in if the advantages and benefits of behavioral targeting are explained to them. Brandt himself said he's not concerned, since Linkstorm is "the last mile" of behavioral targeting, in that its audiences tend to be highly self-selecting.

Bigger isn’t better when it comes to online display advertising, according to Eric Wegerbauer, chief creative officer for Direct Partners. Wegerbauer opined during the panel on ad creative Tuesday afternoon that trends are headed towards smaller and smaller interfaces, both on mobile devices and small laptops, as people give up their desktops “almost like people gave up their home phones, using their cell phones as their main phones.” If anything, he seemed to imply, display ads need to get smaller to adapt to the new formats.

The panel just dismissed the idea that movie studios might be convinced to share targeting data for users for similar movies -- because movies are in effect a zero-sum game (more for you equals less for me). Kate Wheatley of Mediacom got a laugh recalling her work with Warner: "It’s hard enough for Warner Theatrical and Warner Home Video to talk to each other."

There is definitely such a thing as too much frequency, especially when you're using "niche" ad networks, according to panelists on the entertainment panel at OMMA Tuesday afternoon. The precise audience targeting they allow can also over-deliver impressions, said Dave Martin of Ignited, who warned in some cases "once you start to hit someone ten times, their purchase intent is going to start going down." Likewise Elizabeth Blair, CEO of Brand.net, said advertisers should definitely pay attention to "controlling frequency across the whole ad buy," and not just on single sites -- "You only want them to see it ten …

Mobile Marketing "The most permanent cookie in the world is your phone number," says Alec Andronikov, CEO Movoxx.

Well the government prints them, like everyone else, silly! A little closer to the ad transaction, however, an OMMA audience member made the interesting point that premium publishers might be able to participate in ad networks without hurting their bottom line (by devaluing their content) because, in at least some situations, dollars for premium publishers come from a different "bucket" than dollars for ad networks. So they can have their media cake and eat it, too.

Everyone agreed that it’s the publisher’s responsibility to protect those parts of user data that could be considered sensitive. The question is, where does the boundary lie? Here the premium publisher panel agreed only that there still is no agreement, with different companies following different standards, employing various physical metaphors for ambiguity. This situation is inherently dangerous as some of the more shady practitioners (my word, not theirs) will naturally push the envelope until they provoke a crackdown. Thus the industry needs to establish its own standards or risk official regulatory by the powers that be.