Kenshoo, a provider of premium digital marketing technology, released new research findings in the white paper, "Added Value: Facebook Advertising Boosts Paid Search Performance." The study demonstrates the direct, positive impact of Facebook advertising on paid search marketing performance.

OneSpot, a content advertising company that combines content marketing with online advertising, announced it has completed a $5.3 million Series A round of financing. Mohr Davidow Ventures led the investment round with participation from existing and new investors Mack Capital, RSL Ventures, Capital Factory, and Bazaarvoice co-founder Brett Hurt. The investment brings OneSpot's total funding to $6.8 million and will help the company aggressively expand its sales and marketing efforts, as well as broaden and accelerate product development.

Demandbase, Inc., a targeting and personalization platform for B2B, launched B2B Retargeting, extending the capabilities of the existing Company-Targeted Advertising solution. The automated retargeting technology triggers real-time action based on website activity and ensures advertisers deliver the right messages to companies likely to become customers.

Anametrix, the cloud-based, real-time marketing analytics platform, introduced Anametrix for News and Entertainment Media. Optimized for multi-platform media and publishing companies, Anametrix offers news and entertainment media real-time decision-support by connecting web, social, and media-specific reference sources -- including Nielsen and comScore -- for automated reporting, drill-down segmentation and predictive analytics.

Ektron announced a strategic partnership with Tealium, a provider of enterprise tag management and digital data distribution. As part of the agreement, Tealium iQ will be integrated with Ektron so that organizations can better manage their multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Ashton Kutcher (aplusk) has more than 15 million Twitter followers. Harvard Biz Review (@HarvardBiz) has 1.2 million. Peggy Anne Salz, founder and chief analyst of MobileGroove has about 4000. EContent Magazine (@econtentmag) has 2600. What does this all mean? Absolutely nothing! Evaluating social media effectiveness based on "the numbers" is like evaluating whether or not the television ads run during the Super Bowl are "good" or "bad." Unless we're privy to the strategy behind them our opinions are pretty much irrelevant. And while many are still enamored with the numbers - of likes, pins, retweets and +1's - the truth is that in social media, as in any form of marketing communication, it's the real results that matter.

When you want to construct a home, you need a carefully planned blueprint in place before you purchase and assemble the lumber and other essential components. The same is true of an effective advertising campaign, which requires setting specific goals before creating the content and buying space. Yet, many advertisers today are doing the opposite-building their campaign in reverse without any end goal or vision of what their finished advertising "house" should look like, experts say.

Publishers aren't alone in their quest to determine what resonates with their audiences as they attempt to use various social media tools to connect with and engage them. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced that it is in the market for a digital tool to help monitor how effectively it's reaching its audience with its messages and whether their response to these messages are positive or negative. And when you aren't pushing content views as your primary goal, it can be hard to know exactly what your social media metrics are and what they mean.

Anyone who has a blog with an open comment option has encountered malicious online bots. Log in to your Wordpress dashboard, and you'll find hundreds of new comments. Deceptively, they're not often people excited about your eloquently penned prose, but rather systematic bot programs plugging their own products to your regular human readers.

Apple has sold about 140 million iPads worldwide since the tablet's launch about 3 years ago. The wildly successful device has disrupted many industries, creating headaches for some (think personal computers and Microsoft) and opportunities for others, including content owners who can take advantage of the device's capabilities.

It's a question that's been posed since the dawn of the commercial web: Is the internet, long a stronghold for direct marketing, any good for brand advertising?"The question has always been whether brand advertising really works online and whether that money has ever really migrated online," observes Steve Smith, columnist and digital media editor for Media Industry Newsletter (min), and a consultant to web publishers and interactive ad agencies.

If "knowledge is power," as the saying goes, then content analytics is a game-changer for any digital publisher concerned with harnessing the power of content. Today, content providers know more about their audiences than ever before. All the data in the world isn't worth much unless you know how to make sense of it and, more importantly, can put a plan into action that capitalizes on what you know.

Customers are one of a company's most valued assets. At the same time, customer data is one of the most valuable assets a company can acquire and use. Knowing how and why a customer is drawn to a company's products and services provides insights organizations can use to deepen that customer engagement into a very profitable relationship. Fortunately for organizations--and especially their marketers--there are many customer data tools that can help a company most effectively and efficiently collect and analyze that customer data.

If you're considering adding online display advertising to your media mix, your first impressions may be one of confusing three-letter acronyms and an overwhelming number of vendors and technologies. So how do you make sense of this complex market and identify the right approach for your marketing goals?

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.

Email marketing is on everyone's mind these days. But when it comes to open rates, it isn't so much of a content discussion as it is a context discussion. From corporate marketers to internet gurus, the term "email marketing" appears in articles and podcasts about as often as the term "content marketing."

Content is a conversation. Social media gives us the opportunity to share in that conversation. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other similar channels are so popular because they give us a chance to talk. Did you ever think you'd spend hours reading and commenting about your friend's cousin's trip to Mexico? When you do, doesn't it make you feel connected? Being part of a community is fun, energizing, and comforting. It also creates what we need most in marketing-trust.

I have previously reviewed basic business practices required to anticipate and manage inevitable social media crises affecting brands. Even the best business practices can only mitigate social public relations (PR) disasters. And it is expensive, and of dubious value, to do as the Department of State is reported recently to have done: spend $630,000 on Facebook likes. That's probably, at best, a one-off solution.

Content marketing, analytics, creative strategy. Complicated, right? The process maybe, but the end goal needs to be simple. Start with the end in mind. What is your goal? What is the desired outcome? Start there and work backwards.

Social TV is making headlines as broadcasters endeavor to monetize their audiences whose attention is now spread simultaneously across multiple platforms. It is now common knowledge that most TV viewers, while watching their favorite shows, are actively engaged in social media conversations about the shows. Broadcasters have largely seen this phenomenon as an opportunity to grow the audience of their TV programs and accompanying websites, thereby increasing the value of those properties. However many broadcasters have been seeking ways to harness their social media audiences to create new incremental revenue streams. This may sound futuristic but, in many ways, the emerging business model actually harkens back to the earliest days of broadcast media.