The inability to measure return on investment is the biggest problem facing social media advertising campaigns, according to marketing and advertising executives surveyed by an independent research firm on behalf of The Creative Group. Out of some 500 marketing and advertising execs polled on social media, 40% said measuring or defining ROI was the biggest challenge for their agencies or firms.

In a move that could raise the profile of Google+ and highlight some of its nifty capabilities, The New York Times will host a series of Google+ Hangouts with U.S. Olympic athletes over the next week, according to a post on the NYT's Google+ page. The first Hangout, which is scheduled to take place today at 6 p.m. ET, will give participants a chance to interact with Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks and Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers, both of whom are going to London to play on the U.S. Olympic basketball team.

"Software-as-a-service" (SaaS) is playing an increasingly important role in social media marketing, and I'm not just saying that because the acronym resembles my last name, although that does help endear it to me. SaaS is important because it will help small and mid-sized advertisers to adopt social and mobile media marketing, which in turn will contribute to revenue growth, especially from local ad dollars.

Twitter's iPhone app is getting a major overhaul in the near future, according to details which leaked over the weekend on the App Store and were first reported by 9to5mac.com. The new 4.3 version of the app will include improved notifications, search, and interactivity, as well as some "power user" features, which should make it as easy to use as the Web site.

Another week, and another piece of gender-related news sends me back to the bottomless well of Sinbad headlines. It turns out women are indeed more social than men, or at least use social media more often, according to a roundup of recent research published by Digital Flash NYC.

They may not have figured out exactly how to use it for marketing, but the bosses of big companies are plenty aware of social media, especially when it comes to the risks it presents to their businesses. That's according to a new survey of 192 U.S. CEOs performed by Deloitte & Touche and Forbes Insights, which found that 27% of CEOs predicted social media will be an area of growing risk in coming years.

After its high-profile dumping in May, Facebook wants to win back GM as an advertiser, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reports that Facebook global sales boss Carolyn Everson met with GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick in Cannes last month to present the social network's case. Everson reportedly told Ewanick that Facebook is willing to help GM with "better data" for measuring ROI on its social media investments, going some distance to meeting GM's original demands, but GM is said to still be skeptical.

I'm not sure why condoms were on my list of things you could never market using social media, since, obviously, you can; you just need a moderately naughty idea, a gangsta rapper, his bodacious wife, and a small dose of topical anesthetic. On that note Durex has introduced a new Facebook app to help couples "sync up" their lovemaking by choosing the right song. Playing on the tagline for the new Performax condom brand -- which is designed "to speed her up and slow him down" with a numbing benzocaine lubricant among other features -- the Facebook app asks couples …

Women are more likely than men to follow brands on social media, at least if they have kids, according to a survey of 1,453 U.S. online adults conducted by Burst Media in May 2012: overall 58.1% of online moms follow brands online, Burst found, compared to 49.1% of all respondents. And 31.7% of online moms said they were likely to follow a brand promoted in an online ad, compared to 25.4% of all respondents.

In addition to its obvious importance as a political football, the Supreme Court's ruling on the health care reform is interesting as a study in the propagation of information -- and error -- across the media universe, including social media. For those readers who haven't already guessed what I'm referring to, CNN.com screwed the pooch in a big way this morning, with a banner headline reporting that the Supreme Court struck down the individual mandate which is the centerpiece of the health care reform.