“Most ad networks will start producing their own content to advertise against; and some content companies today will get acquired by ad networks (in 2008).”

Marshall Kirkpatrick
ReadWriteWeb.com

“1. Search is 2% of all media budget. Big agencies aren’s incented to “get” search.

2. To agencies, search is DR (direct response) and should be relegated to a DR silo and judged on DR metrics.

3. Search is granular (lots of pushing little levers). That’s not what big agencies do best.

4. Agencies exist to persuade people to buy something when they weren’t considering it. Search is “multiple choice” giving people a list of things to choose from when they’re already in the consideration phase.”

Gord Hotchkiss
via MediaPost

While speaking at LeWeb3 on the subject of “green businesses” in today’s Web business ecosystem…

“If you were to try and sell Squidooo, Blogspot or Technorati in their current state today they would not be worth much money—because they’re so polluted.  Nobody wants to buy real estate in a town that’s filled with toxic waste… and those three towns are filled with toxic waste. 

So actually if you do these bad things and pollute the river you’re actually going to have a hard time having an exit.”

Jason Calacanis
CEO
Mahalo.com

“I have been getting a lot of people asking me: Have you seen any interesting Social Media Campaigns these days?

Wrong Question

There is no such thing as a Social Media Campaign.  Social Media is not a campaign—you cannot view it through an outdated advertising lens.

If you are an individual it is about creativity and expression and connection.  If you are a company it is an attitude, behavioral and cultural shift.  It should be about persistence and dialogue and being in it for the long-haul. It is strategic.”

Doborah Schultz
MMI International

“Why don’t we find more relevant ads online more often, in more places? It is certainly not a matter of technology. We now have ad delivery technologies that can do with ads just about anything that you could imagine.

In my opinion, it isn’t the lack of ability to deliver a relevant ad that is holding us back; rather, it is the lack of relevant ads to deliver. We just don’t have creative enough arrows in the quiver. We don’t have enough different ads with enough unique and differentiating elements that can communicate specific relevant messages to consumers.”

Dave Morgan
Executive Vice President, Global Advertising Strategy
AOL
via Mediapost

“Engagement is not a metric that anyone understands and even when used it rarely drives the action / improvement on the website. Why?  Because it is not really a metric, it is an excuse.  An excuse for an unwillingness to sit down and identify why a site exists.  An excuse for a unwillingness to identify real metrics that measure if your web presence is productive.  An excuse for taking a short cut with clickstream data rather than apply a true Web Analytics 2.0 approach to measure success.”

Avinash Kaushik
Analytics Evangelist
Google Inc.