By way of welcoming attendees to OMMA RTB, this morning, co-MC and MediaPost Editor-in-Chief Joe Mandese warned them that they ("people, culture, organizations") represent the greatest barrier to progress. Love you, too, Joe! Inconvenient as it may be, however, Mandese added that successful RTB strategies must internalize "the human factor." Feelin' the love!

If Buzzfeed's founders founded Buzzfeed, today, there would probably be no Buzzfeed.com, according Buzzfeed President Jon Steinberg. (Not a founder himself, Steinberg joined Buzzfeed from Google in mid-2010.) Rather, Steinberg thinks the trend aggregator -- which uses a combination of algorithmic and human sifting to pick popular Web content -- would exist as a "super presence" on super social-hubs likes YouTube and Facebook.

Noah Brier of social media marketing firm Percolate distinguishes between two types of social content: “stalk” and “flow.” The former is more ambitious material—a high-quality video or longer-form written piece—a brand might post on a weekly or quarterly basis. Flow refers to content produced on a more continous basis—links, polls-to keep people engaged between the stalk postings. He added that most brands lean toward only post higher level content quarterly.

Jordan Bitterman, SVP of Social Marketing Practice Director at Digitas, just opened his afternoon panel with a theory: To be a great social brand means being a great producer of content. He welcomed anyone at OMMA Social to debunk said theory. Taking the bait, Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Business, IBM Global Business Services, challenged: "I am not sure it is about content ... I am going to say it is about context ... and the context is about people interacting with each other."

Has social broken apart the sales funnel? Blended it together is more like it, according to Jason Yau, Integrated Marketing Communications Manager at L'Oreal. During his afternoon keynote at OMMA Social, Yau broke down L'Oreal's social strategy, and its Chromatics campaign, which engages industry professionals and consumers with a digital hair-coloring service. Rather than a linear sales funnel, Yau admits that consumers' path to purchase is often a long and winding road. During his presentation, Yau explored how this path related to L'Oreal's Redken and Pureology brands and the social team structure, strategy and content approach.

Speaking to Madison Ave.'s take on social, 1-in-4 of display ads now appear on social media sites, while only 15% of online ad dollars go to the category. That's according to Eli Goodman, Media Evangelist at comScore, who chalks up the disparity to "lower CPMs," and brands' lingering social prejudices. Regarding brands' remaining fears, Goodman thinks "that's going to change."

Facebook's new privacy policy apparently will allow the company to send targeted ads to users even when they're not on the social networking site. But that new policy has many observers wondering whether consumers will find those types of ads too creepy.

Once Facebook goes public, it will only lead the company to push the boundaries of how it can use member data to bolster the value of advertising on the site.  Chris Emme, VP, East Coast, RadiumOne, speaking on an OMMA Social panel Tuesday, said the quarterly pressure on Facebook to make its revenue numbers will force it to more fully exploit the trove of user data it possesses to keep sales growing. That push will run up against its obligations to protect users privacy, creating an ongoing tension for Facebook on how it balances those two conflicting goals. John Montgomery, …

Montgomery said that people - in the industry, in advocacy groups, and regulators - tend to look at the volume of people who click to opt-out of data privacy options, but he said most people don't look at what he said was an even more meaningful statistic: the number of people who click to read their data usage agreement, and then click to opt-out.

Madison Ave. desperately needs to change its vernacular, according to John Montgomery, COO of GroupM Interaction, North America. "Tracking" and "targeting" are terms of war, Montgomery is explaining on an early-afternoon panel at OMMA Mobile. "These are things you do before you kill people!" We love the name of the panel from which Montgomery is holding forth: "Invade My Privacy, Please: How to Use Social Targeting Without Being Creepy." -- But "creepy" it is, Montgomery insists. "Perceptions are reality [when it comes consumers' idea of how closely marketers are watching them], and people are creeped out." If they had all …