Social media ROI can be wide-ranging and variable, according to Nate Riggs, digital marketing strategist for restaurant marketing for Bob Evan, who notes that Facebook fandom might not equate direcetly to sales, but is nonetheless very useful as a feedback mechanism and intelligence tool -- allowing Bob Evans to know, for example, when coupon promotions and special offers are getting traction and generating positive buzz (and also letting the company know when there are issues at the restaurants which need to be resolved).

Social media ROI can be wide-ranging and variable, according to Nate Riggs, digital marketing strategist for restaurant marketing for Bob Evan, who notes that Facebook fandom might not equate direcetly to sales, but is nonetheless very useful as a feedback mechanism and intelligence tool -- allowing Bob Evans to know, for example, when coupon promotions and special offers are getting traction and generating positive buzz (and also letting the company know when there are issues at the restaurants which need to be resolved).

BabyCenter has to do so some education on mobile marketing for its parent company Johnson & Johnson, but very little for its core audience, because new mothers (which I am going to read as women ages 22-38) are at the cutting edge of mobile adoption. That seems to be supported by independent research from Nielsen, which found in 2010 that women use mobile devices to text and talk more than men, at about 856 minutes per month on the line, versus 667 minutes for men.

A feisty audience at the Search Insider Summit. During the panel I just moderated on intent- and interest-based search  marketing, Rimm Kaufman Group co-founder and CEO George Michie just disputed the very existence of the much-cited purchase intent funnel, with its different stages of latent intent, research, intent to buy, and so on. According to Michie, the data he has seen suggests that the purchase intent funnel is "a nice story that really doesn't happen very often." Shaping up to be an interesting and disputatious SIS. 

The audience isn't shy at the Search Insider Summit this year: the first challenge to a speaker came 20 minutes into the conference, when an audience member took  issue with Neil Doshi's praise of social media as a marketing platform -- specifically, that Facebook has "fantastic targeting" and social media can produce good ROI.  Doshi clarified that he meant Facebook has good targeting at the demographic level, and that social media could produce good ROI in the future.

TV's long dominance of ad spending may finally be facing a serious challenge, according to Citi Group's Doshi, who predicts more movement of TV ad dollars to online advertising -- especially search and social media. Doshi adds that Citi Group believes Facebook may be well-suited for demand generation, making it a close competitor in TV's traditional area of strength.

Half of American and European CIOs plan to implement some kind of cloud-based service in 2012, according to Neil Doshi, senior equity analyst with Citi Investment Research & Analysis. Doshi also forecasts continuing strong growth for social gaming companies like Zynga, maker of Farmville and Cityville, due in part to sales of virtual goods.

In his Insider Summit keynote address, Tynt CEO Derek Ball offered five reasons why email has an advantage over social media.

One of the recurring themes at this week's Email Insider Summit has been that with all the excitement about social media, it's following the original.

Three email marketing executives were asked which brands they feel balance the amount of transactional-oriented and brand-building messages they send ... here are some entrants ...: