A nice note in emcee Judah Phillips' opening remarks - the Monster Worldwide exec helped set up www.analytics4japan.com, a site created by people in the digital analytics and research community that has raised $1,685 in nine days.  The donations go to the Japanese Red Cross, International Medical Corps, Unicef, and Save the Children.

In an afternoon keynote, Prof. Joseph Turow, of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, laid out a scenario where online users become increasingly anxious and disconcerted about the social stratification they find on the Web based on personalized offers and content some people receive and others don't. In other words, the split between those who are targeted and those deemed in industry parlance as 'waste' will become more apparent and lead to growing social divisions. Targeted ads and offers will increasingly become status symbols in the digital age, defining online reputations. How to forestall this …

Clue consumers into the information gathering game that marketers and publishers are playing or prepare for a serious backlash down the line. That's this afternoon's big warning from Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania. "This may well raise the cost of getting [such] information," says Turow -- but it will be worth it in the long run. "People are going to get more disconcerted and angry," as they learn that tangible benefits -- in the form of coupons, discounts and the like -- are going to specific groups of consumers based on tracking …

Why did Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia -- and the founder of such online ad firms as Real Media and TACODA -- leave online advertising for TV? Well, consuming “video” on anything other than a big, hulking living room TV just isn’t TV, Morgan insists. For the 19 years he was involved in selling online adverting, during which time Morgan was focused was on mass awareness, he never felt that a banner on a Web page could even come close to competing with a 30-second spot in a lean back environment. Online “can’t drive the same emotional response,” says Morgan.

Why's everybody always pickin' on behavioral advertisers? That's what David Jakubowski, CEO of Aggregate Knowledge, wants to know. Traditional media and marketing leaders have been far more, er, inquisitive, for years without ever having to apologize for their consumer tracking efforts. "What we're going to see is the offline world teaching the online world how to do business," Jakubowski believes. For his part, MediaPost's Joe Mandese suggests that the fear stems from "scary science," which "reduces everything to data points."

As it get closer to an initial public offering, LinkedIn today announced reaching the nice round number of 100 million users. In a blog post, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said the professional network is adding members at the rate of 1 million a week, "the equivalent of a professional joining the site at faster than one member per second," he wrote. Weiner also noted the site is used in 200 countries, with half more than half its users coming from outside the U.S. LinkedIn filed for an IPO in January, reporting revenue of $161 million for the first nine …

Amid looming threats of government regulation, how do marketers secure access to online consumer behavior? Ask, says Carl Fremont, EVP and Global Media Director at Digitas North America. “We need to ask permission,” Freemont insists. He also suggests ramping up education efforts -- because the IAB’s recent initiative wasn’t enough -- and engaging in a “dialogue” with consumers. “If we do, some of the privacy concerns will [lessen] over time.” Meanwhile, needless to say, “If we don’t self regulate, [the behavioral advertising] will be regulated for us,” says Fremont. Yes, he’s well aware that it might be too late to …

Kicking off OMMA Behavioral, head honcho Ken Fadner is asking that someone -- anyone! -- suggest a new name for the long-running conference. "The subject has gotten so much bigger [than cookies]," says Fadner. Feel free to send any and all ideas to ken @ mediapost.com. Looking back, Fadner notes that MediaPost has been covering behavioral advertising since late 2004, which he calls "a heck of a long time to be talking about behavioral adverting!" (As a side note, conference MC and MediaPost columnist Steve Smith claims that Ken has been asking for behavioral name alternatives since 2004.)

Austin, Tx. -- Young-targeted grass roots marketing can be a difficult job - but not impossible. Speaking at the 4A's Transformation event, Coltrane Curtis, managing partner of influencer/youth-targeted entertainment marketing company Team Epiphany, and ex-VJ of MTV, says one needs to figure out how the strength and direction of influencers and covert that into big brand results. "How do you engage influencers? You have to talk about the flow of information," says Coltrane, who's clients include Nike, Pepsi, Diageo, Gillette, Range Rover, among others. Good news, he says, influencers "are people who are bursting with the seams of …

Austin, Tx. -- Mass collaboration on creative marketing ideas? You are talking crowd-sourcing. "Ten people working together is better than working than two people," says Ignacio Oreamuno, president, GiantHydra, who run IHAVEANIDEA, a large online advertising community, speaking at the 4A's Transformation event here. GiantHydra pushed the idea of crowd-sourcing -- grabbing bigger numbers of creative professionals to work on a project. Some people believe crowd-sourcing, which also can include fans of a specific brand, can be cost effective. "You can get labor of at a cheaper cost," says Tim McClure, co-founder, GSD&M, and founder/CEO, of Mythos …