The programmatic ecosystem should be on notice: as brands get savvier about ad tech, they will want to follow esurance in doing more of it all in house.

When people die, it's sad. But when someone dies in a videogame, it's frustrating. I died a lot in Super Mario Brothers over the years, usually when I was trying to go too fast or show-off in front of friends. Up until the point I found out about the infinite lives glitch in World 3-1, I hadn't beaten the game; the princess was left to die in another castle and I ended up dropping through space in the Phantom Zone below the bottom of the screen like General Zod and his cronies in Superman II.

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- MediaPost Live! hit the party circuit at SXSW Interactive Saturday night including pit stops at Mondelez and ZEFR's "cookies and milk" gathering, Pandora's block party, a launch party for hometown favorite -- Austin-based People Pattern's launch party at the one-and-only Franklin Barbecue -- and an A-list private dinner party hosted by Fox's Joe Marchese where we got briefed by Visa's Shiv Singh on "The Everywhere Initiative."

Tom Bick, Senior Director, Marketing, Kraft; Jim Ensign, VP, Global Digital Marketing, Papa John's International; Zoe Levine, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing, The Coca-Cola Company, converged at OMMA @SXSW Saturday to debate whether mobile ads suck.

Here's a little bit of trivia from the OMMA @SXSW show feature three major international brands talking about mobile advertising. It's all bacon all day, said Jim Esign, VP of global digital marketing at Papa John's International, following the talk about bacon by Tom Bick, senior director of marketing at Kraft.

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- Saudi Royalty, designer and breast cancer awareness activist Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al-Saud unveiled her latest social activation effort during a talk here at the SXSW Interactive festival. The new one, dubbed www.10ksa.com, is intended to break the Guinness world record set by her last effort, which gathered the a record-setting number of Saudi women in public. The reason, she said, was the last one achieved its goal of setting a record and generating publicity, but it didn't generate the educational awareness about breast cancer prevention that she wanted to it accomplish.

Brands working with chat apps need their content to quality, selective, and have a clear voice.   “You want two things: A point of view, and timeliness,” says Diego Nunez, senior director, digital marketing & ecommerce of Skullcandy, in speaking at OMMA at SXSW.  "If you are kind of late to the party it reflects poorly on you." Quantity is important as well. Heather Galt, vp of marketing for chat app Kik, says brands don’t need more than one high quality piece a week. "You don’t want high quantity; it doesn’t need to be huge investment.” …

Chinese messaging app WeChat gives brands a staggering level of access to the messaging apps. Mary Kay is linking its own enterprise systems to its army of consultant/salespeople via a mass market messaging app.

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- Twitter Founder and serial digital entrepreneur Biz Stone shared his latest pivot play during a talk on Day Two of the SXSW Interactive festival here. "Super is my company now," Stone told an audience comprised, in part, by aspiring entrepreneurs who sat rapt in hopes of gleaning insights from Stone on how to create the next big thing. Stone said, it definitely is not Jelly, his attempt to crack the "question and answer" model of social media. Stone said it didn't really work, it isn't making money and he has shifted his focus full-time to Super, which …

The changing face of YouTube stars require the influencer to be popular on more than just YouTube. Brands need to analyze the success across a variety of media platforms.