Miles 33 Ltd. and Localstars Ltd. inked a partnership that will allow Miles 33 to integrate Localstars' digital ad production tools to Mile 33's FutureProof platform. The deal will allow Miles 33 to offer digital ad solutions without external production processes.

With Spectrum for Mobile, TwelvefoldMedia, formerly BuzzLogic, aims to help brands target, connect with, and persuade potential customers. Spectrum for Mobile extends a company's online targeting capabilities to mobile platforms and claims much higher engagements.

Facebook is set to begin inserting "featured stories" into users' mobile feeds as soon as early March. These stories will be marketing-led posts, not paid ads, the company claims, and could mark Facebook's first step in profiting from its 425 million active mobile users.

Twitter has announced another set of advertising partners who will feature branded profile pages, including NPR; NBC News; The Huffington Post; Al Jazeera; aNobii; and others.

Zynga, Inc. has introduced a "reward advertising" program to its metropolis-construction game, CityVille, where players can earn energy by interacting with a sponsor. The program rolled out in December and includes sponsors like The Coca-Cola Co. and MasterCard.

We all know Twitter is a powerful tool, but many publishers aren't sure how to build goodwill while still promoting their own content. Here are a few quick tips for publishers looking to implement a simple social media strategy that doesn't give community short shrift while building traffic and brand awareness.

NetShelter Technology Media, a company founded by brothers Peyman and Pirouz Nilforoush in 1999, launched a solution to this marketing problem called inPowered. Leveraging NetShelter's network of tech influencers, which comprises more than 4,500 familiar, trusted independent blogs including 9To5Mac, CrackBerry.com, Chip Chick, and SlashGear, the inPowered platform gives brands advertising options by enabling them to see which blogs are influencing target customers, use blog content to generate product awareness, and turn blog readers into customers.

Money is the root of all evil. It is also the foundation upon which economies are built. Certainly, it's high on the list of objectives for most organizations. Hey, even not-for-profits have to cover costs. So how do we reconcile this yearning for earning with such laudable corporate mottos as "do no evil"? Companies with good reputations generally earn them by delivering genuine value to customers. These, and others, often offset craven capitalistic endeavors by doing good works. Value and giving back are certainly admirable tactics, and I would not discourage any company from following this righteous path.

The cartoonish graphic is clean, colorful and simple: A young girl curls up on a park bench to scan the top headlines on her tablet while an assumedly older, bespectacled man sitting next to her is riveted to the local print newspaper he holds up to his face. Anchored below the art is a commanding headline that is terse, direct, and assured: "Smart is the new sexy," it asserts. And as a closing statement, the motto "The newspaper-get it" floats in the bottom right corner.

With the emergence of digital natives, companies are questioning how best to gain brand awareness with this sizable new group. As Celia Goodnow of the Seattle PI noted in her article "Millennials Thrive on Choice, Instant Results," Millennials are the second-largest generation in U.S. history after the Baby Boomers. They are coming into their own and companies want to determine how best to market to them and generate sales from them.

A number of companies have taken the "we know our market" approach by using a simple demographic definition of the market, as opposed to defining the market based on an understanding of the drivers of demand. Knowing these drivers offers far more insight when establishing a market strategy.

It is helpful to keep in mind a simple adage coined by Ray Krok, the founder of McDonald's: "Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself." This is true for any generation (or population for that matter). Understand your customers, what motivates their demand, and meet those needs. The fact that Millennials now use multiple means to obtain and share information creates both a challenge and an opportunity. For a long time, marketers took a broad approach, as the channels available to them were geared toward a mass market strategy. The message could be targeted, but the medium reached the masses. Contrary to some current beliefs, those avenues are still available.

The days when companies could buy a magazine ad or a 30-second primetime spot and have a well-rounded marketing strategy are long gone. These days, having a web strategy is not only important but increasingly complicated. Just in the last 10 years, companies have gone from thinking about advertising on websites and with search displays, to having to incorporate blogs, social networks, and mobile platforms. While all these new ways to interact and be informed may be good for the general public, for a company's marketing team they can present a daunting task: How do you get a customer to focus on your product when their attention is being pulled in a host of different directions?

There seems to be a great deal of uncertainty about how to tap into the digital native (the Millennial generation) market. Take a breath -- the task is not as difficult or as different as some would have you think. Digital natives may be a new crop of potential customers, but many of their core drivers of demand are similar to what motivated previous generations. It's important to remember that when establishing a marketing strategy, the first step remains the same: Start by understanding what it is that the market is looking for.

Digital old-timers may recall the three C's of successful online business models circa 2001. Content, Community, and Commerce appeared on just about any business plan that circulated in VC Land at the time. Understanding that the web was at least three channels at once (publishing, merchandising, and person-to-person communication) was considered essential to establishing unique business models. The problem at the time for most media sites was that all three C's were a bit broken. It has taken a decade, but the rise of online search along with Facebook and Twitter have helped content companies attack two of the three C's. And in the last year, we have seen a full program to get the Commerce piece up-to-speed as challenged media models look to ecommerce revenue streams. Skittishness about maintaining separation of editorial and commercial church and state is dissolving about as fast as company margins are.

The problem with our increasingly connected society is that there are more channels and opportunities than ever to share our story, but the pitfalls have also become more dangerous. Jumping into the modern social scene with your company's message can feel like swimming with sharks while wearing a SPAM scuba suit. So let's look at a real world example and see what we can learn about where and how to best share our content.

If you're a loyal reader of EContent and my column (and I hope you are), you should already know that we have been living through a communications revolution. No, it isn't being televised; it's being tweeted, blogged, and filmed. In December 2011, using social media to drum up interest in businesses is mainstream-commonplace even. It's hard to imagine a time before social media now that it's become ubiquitous, but when I first started writing this column in 2003, I had to explain what a blog was. YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook didn't exist. The only thing your mobile phone could do was make and receive phone calls--maybe text, if you were lucky.

A few days before the wedding, I found myself sitting with my laptop searching YouTube for makeup tips. In a matter of seconds, I'd found exactly what I was looking for. I discovered a channel called The MakeUpChair With Sineady Cady (she has a really lovely accent, and the videos are worth watching just to hear her). Sineady is a young makeup artist living in Ireland, who uses a blog and her YouTube channel to promote her brand and find new clients. Her email address is posted right there on the channel, so if you're looking for someone to do your makeup for a special day, you can shoot her a message.

I recently jumped on the Mad Men bandwagon. That Jon Hamm sure is handsome, and boy oh boy, did they smoke a lot. There's plenty to gawk at-and cringe at-on that show. The sexism. The debauchery. All those pregnant ladies hitting the bottle and smoking up a storm. As I watch--floating somewhere between awe and disgust--the goings-on of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce have got me pondering the modern business of advertising.