Straight from snowy Park City, the ad tech experts are talking "haves and have-nots" at OMMA's Search Insider Summit on Tuesday afternoon. Nothing to do with socioeconomic trends, they're addressing the great divide between those companies (think Google and Microsoft) with the millions to make sense of big data and attribution signals, and everyone else. "There are the big [players] that have millions of dollars to spend on ... examining the data" -- in order to separate valuable insights from all the noise -- and the many, many marketers that don't, said Kevin Lee, Chairman and CEO of search engine …

If you're not partnering with offline and display teams to share the consumer path you won't get as much potential traffic. It's not just about the last mile but rather how you tell the consumer story across the entire path, according to Ryan Durham, Senior Brand Manager for Digital, Dish Network, speaking at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit, Tuesday, about native ad units.

CRT Capital Analyst Neil Doshi released numbers from a recent survey related to Twitter use at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit Tuesday. About 7,000 respondents participated. Of those, about 1,700 said they use Twitter. When it comes to ads, 87% said the quality of ads on Twitter are the same or better as the quality of ads on Facebook, but 86% said they do not click on the ads. Ironically, only 33% of people who use Twitter never tweet. About 41% use it to get real news and information, and only 4% follow brands. Of the people who use Twitter, …

Don't be alarmed (!), but a green-eyed monster has been spotted in the vicinity of a native advertising panel at OMMA's Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah. Sure, native was all the rage in 2013, but, say panels, search was native before native was native! "Search was the first native format," insists Jason Lehmbeck, Founder of DataPop, a startup with search roots that uses big data to deliver custom online ads.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to the "customer comes first" or "the customer is always right" mantras. Evidently, Intuit still believes it. Make customers the center of the strategy, per Cezanne Huq, Online Acquisition and Business Strategist, Intuit. He opened Day 2 of the MediaPost Search Insider Summit with a few stats search marketers need to consumer when mapping out campaigns to give consumers a better experience with products. He said more than 70% of advertisers gets allocated to TV, per Magna Global; 28% of mobile searches drive conversions through store visits, calls and purchases, per Google; and Intuit acquired …

Cezanne Hug faults most brands for failing to deliver a digital "dial tone." Come again? By "dial tone," Intuit's online acquisition and business strategist is referring to supreme service reliability across digital channels -- tantamount to the dial tone that we all used to expect when we would pick up a phone receiver. Hug used the message to kick off the second day of OMMA's Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah. More broadly, Hug said it has never been more important for digital marketers to understand offline opportunities -- a message that appears to be making the rounds, this …

Closing out the first day of panels at MediaPost's Search Insider Summit, experts and attendees are doing their best to think beyond the search box. Particularly with regard to data integration, marketers should be "thinking broader than search and digital," suggested Michael Lummus, Digital Marketing Solutions Manager at Teradata. In the broadest sense, success will come to those who follow consumers' lead, said Joy Billings, Director of Analytics and Optimization at Experian Consumer Direct. To break out the search zone, there's no shame in seeking outside help, stressed panel moderator and independent consultant Gord Hotchkiss. Marketers are notorious for keeping …

Don't just rely on big data for the solution to all search marketing problems. Stop talking about "big data" and start thinking and connecting meaningful data. know the business question and seek out the answer, per Joy Billings, Director, Analytics and Optimization, Experian Consumer Direct, at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit.

Kenshoo CMO Aaron Goldman led a panel of experts on how to leverage social to drive search and vice versa. Some of the mistakes when crossing channels include attribution and tracking correctly. There's a need to understand the touch points in social and where to find them. Is social about the top of the funnel, or the bottom? Other mistakes include people looking at the standard metrics without dissecting and understanding what it means for their brand, when you syndicate content irrelevant to the audience it's a waste of time, not producing the right story when producing the content, and …

What makes search-based ad creative successful? Facebook's Rob Creekmore says it's simply a matter of including four elements: a strong focal point; a strong brand connection; an appropriate tone; and a nice reward for the viewer, be it a giggle or a bit of useful information. Surprisingly, Creekmore -- attribution lead at Facebook -- says much (if not most) of the search creative his team sees still fails to hit all four elements.