Paid search advertising has always provided us with the ability to target users who are showing intent for a certain product, service or general information. Providing users with the ability to look up information while performing other tasks, such as shopping, adds a new dimension to the consumer mindset. For example, a search for “Wal-Mart” on a desktop computer could mean that the consumer is looking for any random item, such as The Da Vinci Code.  Typing the same keyword in an eReader could mean that a user may be looking for a hard copy of the book, while a consumer sitting in traffic could simply be looking for the nearest store location that carries this New York Times best seller.

To take it another step further, consumers searching for movie titles on mobile phones in the morning or early afternoon would most likely be looking for information about the movie and previews.  That very same search query in the evening could be geared towards finding movie reviews, showtimes and locations of where the movie is playing.
 
So what does this mean for brands looking to expand their digital reach? More media channels, touch points, and much more granular targeting, including time of day, will likely yield higher conversion rates and ROI.
 
These new targeting opportunities are very similar to the way mobile advertising was back in 2006-2008 when competition in the space was low, and many were hesitant to explore opportunities with this emerging media. But look at it now.  It is 2010, and advertisers include mobile advertising as a viable portion of their digital campaigns.

When you start to wonder what’s going to happen with the next generation of advertising, understanding intent and monetizing the where and when of search activity seems like the golden ticket.

One of the unique opportunities of my role is that I spend a fair amount of time reflecting on how we have gotten to where we are at this point in time — and even more important, attempting to answer the question “What’s next?”

As I revisit this year and think ahead to 2010, I find myself fixated on the advertising catchphases of 2009. These phases give me clues on how to avoid slow, small steps in 2010, making it the year to be aggressive, take the reins and deliver on our terms as an industry — a year to release the hounds and wage war against what went wrong in 2009. I’ll start 2010 with a column looking at how we regain control; but for now, I want to delve into the abyss to make sure we don’t repeat this year’s shortcomings.

From the early disbelief of and dismissive attitude toward the depth of the economic situation at hand, to the drastic (and at times inexplicable) behavior to withdraw from the battlefield, 2009 was not a year to be proud of in marketing. As always, there were great ideas and campaigns put forward, but the overall tone was defined by discussions of the shape of the recovery and the immortal phrase “flat is the new up.” When break-even becomes an acceptable reality, you get what you deserve.

So for me, the emotion I find to describe 2009 is disappointment. Disappointment that the advertising space wasn’t better positioned to handle and address the economic situation for its clients. Disappointment that after years of press releases suggesting that agencies were digital at their core, it had to come to a recession before that really meant something. Disappointed that social networks became the channel for real-time apologies and customer service. Did we react well? In some cases, yes. But again, if reaction is what you sell, then flat is already your reality.

Being “The Search Guy,” it’s too easy to espouse excitement over the renewal of innovation in the space, the potential of a Bing-Yahoo merger if all the “what-ifs” get answered — and then speculate about the true power of mobile in the real term. It’s too easy because those are channel answers to our challenges. But we, as marketers, have to transcend channels and reach consumers. What I love about the search marketing space is the reality of intent. Without going back, I’m sure I’ve spoken about the promise and power on intention marketing in at least half the columns I’ve written.

When I shift my disappointed gaze away from 2009 and look forward, the emotion that fuels me is a sort of dogged determination. The great American actor Al Pacino delivered one of the best speeches in recent movie history in the Oliver Stone drama “Any Given Sunday.” In the film, Pacino plays Tony D’Amato, an aging football coach who has guided his team to the deciding game of their season and yet finds the challenges from both outside and inside the team to be overwhelming. His team is being ripped apart and he’s preparing to lead them into the game that will dictate their future.

In the pivotal scene where Pacino delivers the speech before his team takes the field, we find a man baring his professional and personal soul. He tells them: “You find out life’s this game of inches. So is football. Because in either game — life or football — the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second.

“On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the difference between winning and losing!”

This is our industry crossroads. Have we become merely a business of execution talent, living on the scale of our trading capital, watching our worth devalued by procurement, and so incapable of change that we rely on third parties like Google to dictate to us through the threat to our very existence? Or is there more to it? Is the value in advertising about using all channels in harmony to enable deep and meaningful connections between brands and customers? It’s always easy to say advertising isn’t rocket science and minimize what we do, but that is no better than saying flat is the new up. Mediocrity breeds mediocrity.

So good-bye 2009, and hello to 2010. But know this. Know that the inches in our business are valuable, the people who deliver them are worth the investments, and the only time “flat” is desirable is when six feet under is the alternative. Welcome to a revival of passion and value, because anything less will be a disappointment we cannot survive.

In a digital age, guessing what people think about your business and validating it in test settings is an outdated concept. There was a time when the speed by which media was produced and disseminated would allow for the assurances that come with the model of targeting large swaths of the public through small segment tests. Unfortunately for some, and opportunistically for others, that time is ending.

In no better way does this show itself than the emergence in the past 10 years of Google, and in the past 12 months the emergence of Twitter. In today’s social and search marketplace, there is a unique opportunity to use intent for insights instead of perceptions and panels for planning. Allow me to demonstrate how any business can use these insights from search and social to redefine its approach to broader media application.

Today, there are millions of advertisers on Google. Each business advertises off a list of keywords which range from brand-specific terms to more general “long-tail” keywords focused on their category and specific identifiers of their business. This set of keywords is the basis for every advertiser’s database of intentions. Google, as first declared by John Battelle, is the purveyor of the database of intentions where a deep understanding of those who raise their hand is stored. These hand raisers shift advertising from perceptions about segments to expressed intent. This shift opens up a world of opportunity for marketers. Suddenly, they know what people are seeking out.

And for several years, this was the promise of hand raisers that existed for marketers. Understanding what they associate with a brand and what motivates them to act upon their personal expression of intent was a vast step forward. Now comes the second piece of the equation, which moves us to a truly insightful place. With the mass adoption of social media, we now can not only understand when people express intent in search, but get much closer to understanding why they have expressed that intent.

Companies are now starting to take their search keyword listings and push them into social media monitoring tools such as truCAST, Cymfony and Radian6. Usage of these tools begins the creation of a closed loop of insights where terms that brands associate with themselves can be monitored. This monitoring spawns learnings about consumers, their motivations and the feelings they associate with that brand. In some cases, this becomes further intelligence that can shape a marketer’s advertising.

If the brand has strong association with specific features and benefits, then a shift in other marketing can be made. For example, if a car brand is perceived to be strong on safety, then a shift in their messaging in paid search and buying more terms or share of voice against that may be a valuable strategy adjustment. There is also the alternate issue which is in areas where a brand has little awareness as determined through social monitoring, and a chance may exist to buy advertising, specifically paid search, where that can be addressed. In cases of crisis and reputation management, this becomes essential for advertisers.

What ultimately happens is a new model where intent facilitates insights emerges and the old model of perception and panels can no longer compete. Advertisers now know not only what people are raising their hands for, but what motivates that to happen and how consumers associate with a brand in those areas. This makes for more intelligent and potentially impactful advertising, which above all, makes the evolution of understanding consumers a key to the future of advertising and works us back from the depths we have seen in the past year.

 This post was also featured on MediaBizBloggers.com.

If you have a child in the 18 to 36-month-old range, you may recognize the catch phrase of the Wonder Pets in the title above. I happen to have a two year old who enjoys the adventures of Tuck, Ming-Ming and Linny. For those who have never seen the Wonder Pets, they are three animals – a hamster, turtle and chick – who enjoy celery, and each episode set out to save a poor, innocent animal using their can-do attitudes and, yep, teamwork.

So what do these Nickelodeon creations have to do with search? Well, since I never attended kindergarten and therefore missed all those things you need to know, I prefer to use my kids’ TV viewing as a means for learning the lessons of life. The Wonder Pets, in their “team together” philosophy, exemplify the greatest area of growth still needed in the search space.

As media fragments further, the interests of an organization become more difficult to realize. What began with the separation of creative and media simply gets harder and harder for brands with each new ad platform, exchange, social media opportunity or video partner. Every choice creates more options, more fragments and more data points to measure; and with many divisions of the same organization or different companies steering these efforts, it becomes very difficult to reach a successful outcome unless everyone is rowing the same direction.

In order to reap true benefits from your marketing efforts, I see three key areas for focus in the coming months and into 2010:

Clear leadership

The land grab in digital advertising right now is a frightening sight. Creative groups want to do media, media wants to build creative, social media “experts” want to drive online strategies, and the proliferation of display choices from traditional display buys to ad networks and exchanges is enough to give the hardiest of souls pause. As such, it is essential for clients to be transparent and clear on who is driving what and to set an expectation for everyone to play nice and work together. This is rarely easy as everyone traditionally positions for their own cause, but the marketers who are willing to appoint a leader and command inclusive behavior will reap benefits faster.

Bring an end to politics as usual

One of the long-standing and greatest challenges to success in the organic search space has been the internal tussle that goes on between IT and marketing. From who “owns” the responsibility around this function to priorities and implications of content and architecture changes, the topic is often hotly contested. And usually that fight is rarely beneficial to an end goal. With the continued rise of importance of non-paid media, organic search is rising up the visibility chart for CMOs, and one area of leadership should step in to eliminate these fights. On the upside, even when these fights still remain, universal search and off-page criteria dictate that less and less the IT bottleneck becomes a deterrent for some companies.

Different indicators for single goal

One of the great challenges to cross-channel measurement is that rarely do channels use the same naming conventions for success. Sure, ROI and revenue are constants, but a GRP and a SOV are not. The important point is not that these need to be the same, but they need to be understood in the context of reaching the common metrics. If ROI is the end goal, then GRP and SOV are both indicators and drivers which lead to ROI, and as such, it is important to know and respect their role. Teamwork does not mean singularity in this case, but it does mean a collaborative effort to move down the funnel towards a single goal.

Sustaining presence amidst fragmented media and working with a vast pool of experts doesn’t mean a brand can’t capture efficiency of channel performance. If your organization can cut through the clutter, agree to the leaders, show leadership by working together internally, and align the metrics to a single end goal, opportunities in search are still great. And then, when it is all said and done and everyone is aligned, we can share a snack of celery, in true Wonder Pet fashion. I know a two year old who would be game.

If you have a child in the 18 to 36-month-old range, you may recognize the catch phrase of the Wonder Pets in the title above. I happen to have a two year old who enjoys the adventures of Tuck, Ming-Ming and Linny. For those who have never seen the Wonder Pets, they are three animals – a hamster, turtle and chick – who enjoy celery, and each episode set out to save a poor, innocent animal using their can-do attitudes and, yep, teamwork.

So what do these Nickelodeon creations have to do with search? Well, since I never attended kindergarten and therefore missed all those things you need to know, I prefer to use my kids’ TV viewing as a means for learning the lessons of life. The Wonder Pets, in their “team together” philosophy, exemplify the greatest area of growth still needed in the search space.

As media fragments further, the interests of an organization become more difficult to realize. What began with the separation of creative and media simply gets harder and harder for brands with each new ad platform, exchange, social media opportunity or video partner. Every choice creates more options, more fragments and more data points to measure; and with many divisions of the same organization or different companies steering these efforts, it becomes very difficult to reach a successful outcome unless everyone is rowing the same direction.

In order to reap true benefits from your marketing efforts, I see three key areas for focus in the coming months and into 2010:

Clear leadership

The land grab in digital advertising right now is a frightening sight. Creative groups want to do media, media wants to build creative, social media “experts” want to drive online strategies, and the proliferation of display choices from traditional display buys to ad networks and exchanges is enough to give the hardiest of souls pause. As such, it is essential for clients to be transparent and clear on who is driving what and to set an expectation for everyone to play nice and work together. This is rarely easy as everyone traditionally positions for their own cause, but the marketers who are willing to appoint a leader and command inclusive behavior will reap benefits faster.

Bring an end to politics as usual

One of the long-standing and greatest challenges to success in the organic search space has been the internal tussle that goes on between IT and marketing. From who “owns” the responsibility around this function to priorities and implications of content and architecture changes, the topic is often hotly contested. And usually that fight is rarely beneficial to an end goal. With the continued rise of importance of non-paid media, organic search is rising up the visibility chart for CMOs, and one area of leadership should step in to eliminate these fights. On the upside, even when these fights still remain, universal search and off-page criteria dictate that less and less the IT bottleneck becomes a deterrent for some companies.

Different indicators for single goal

One of the great challenges to cross-channel measurement is that rarely do channels use the same naming conventions for success. Sure, ROI and revenue are constants, but a GRP and a SOV are not. The important point is not that these need to be the same, but they need to be understood in the context of reaching the common metrics. If ROI is the end goal, then GRP and SOV are both indicators and drivers which lead to ROI, and as such, it is important to know and respect their role. Teamwork does not mean singularity in this case, but it does mean a collaborative effort to move down the funnel towards a single goal.

Sustaining presence amidst fragmented media and working with a vast pool of experts doesn’t mean a brand can’t capture efficiency of channel performance. If your organization can cut through the clutter, agree to the leaders, show leadership by working together internally, and align the metrics to a single end goal, opportunities in search are still great. And then, when it is all said and done and everyone is aligned, we can share a snack of celery, in true Wonder Pet fashion. I know a two year old who would be game.

Shortly after a corporate acquisition and introduction to the world of traditional advertising, I was asked by someone, “What kind of GRPs can we get from search?” Once I got the definition of a gross rating point, I set off to try and figure out how to equate search to TV. In the end, we all came to realize that search is vastly different from TV; to try and measure it in the same manner is both foolish and not terribly productive. The function and value is different, and to try and make a single metric tell the full story minimizes the value each provides on its own.

Now the pendulum has swung the other way and people are questioning why better ROI measurement of social isn’t happening. That’s not to say that when you can track from social to conversion you shouldn’t, but…that’s by and large not the point of social. Social is about being in the conversation and having consumers introduced and become aware of your products and their features and benefits. There’s a payoff to measure in that alone, but the ROI piece will often happen down the funnel in channels like paid search. To get ahead of yourself as a marketer and expect social to deliver on that will cause more problems and lead to less fruitful investments in the channel in the short term.

For those not familiar with search syndication, here’s a quick rundown of what’s taking place. When advertisers choose to buy paid search ads on the major engines, they’re not only bidding for their ads to appear on the main SERPs, they’re bidding to have their ads displayed on thousands of other (usually poor) sites that feature a search box. This is a trick long used by the big players to augment their search volume and claim higher market shares. Do not confuse these syndication partners with contextual advertising or the “content network” as many refer to it. These are two entirely separate subjects.

Google has recognized that smart advertisers often prefer NOT to have their ads blasted across thousands of parked domains and spammy sites with no legitimate content. It’s no secret that conversion rates on these partner sites are typically much lower. Fortunately, they allow you to opt out of the syndication network altogether. Problem solved.

Why doesn’t Yahoo! give us this option? I get it. It’s a business decision. Allowing advertisers to easily opt out of these syndication networks would cost millions in the short term. Some estimates claim as much as 55% of Yahoo!’s paid search clicks come from the syndication partners. To their credit, I think this number is much lower now, but it’s definitely still a substantial percentage, a substantial percentage that the company cannot afford to lose right now. However, a longer term approach would consider the losses over time as advertisers shift budgets away from Yahoo! due to low traffic quality and a lack of transparency on this issue.

Yahoo! does allow blocking of individual domains. The problem is identifying them. Yahoo! certainly isn’t going to provide you with a list of domains in their syndication network. That would make it too easy. Fortunately, there are ways to identify them using site-side analytics tools (i.e. – Google Analytics). In a little over a month, I’ve been able to ID and block over 200 poor performing Yahoo! search partners for one client. This seems like a great solution until you reach the maximum number of blocked domains, which now stands at 500. Considering the short period of time required to surpass 200, a maximum of 500 seems hardly adequate.

Yahoo!’s domain blocking, their policy of discounting clicks from less relevant sources and providing credits for clicks they deem “invalid,” are definitely steps in the right direction, but their reluctance to allow opting out altogether continues to fuel my distaste.

Microsoft isn’t off the hook here. While their syndication network is MUCH more legitimate than Google or Yahoo!’s, they draw my ire by refusing to allow us any control over which sites search ads may appear on. The Bing user interface lacks the functionality to block individual domains. Granted, most of their sites (e.g. – Barrons.com, WSJ.com) yield quality traffic, but then there’s Facebook. For many advertisers, appearing on Facebook isn’t such a bad thing considering its popularity in today’s society. Seems like a great place to reach many target audiences, but certainly not others. One of my clients, a leader in their category, cringes at the thought of appearing on a site like Facebook and for good reason. We’ve observed a 100% bounce rate and average time on site of less than 1 second for all clicks coming from Facebook in the past 30 days for this particular client. Not good. And Microsoft refuses to do anything about it.

I keep hearing that the capability to opt out of syndication is on the roadmap for both Yahoo! & Bing, but that response is getting old. Are they hiring programmers fresh out of 3rd grade to cut costs in Redmond and Sunnyvale? I doubt it. So c’mon guys, you can do better than this.

Now that Microsoft & Yahoo! have finally consummated their courtship, a new chapter will undoubtedly be written in the search syndication saga. How this will play out remains to be seen. As of now, the plan is to integrate all search advertising on the Microsoft adCenter platform for management purposes. Does this mean no blocking capabilities? Will Microsoft, which has been a proponent of higher quality & limited syndication, allow the Yahoo! partner network to poison (strong word I know, but apt) their inventory? Let’s hope not…

Warren Buffet prides himself in being a shareholder. When he buys an interest of whatever size in a company, he intends to hold onto that interest by and large for an extended period of time. His goal is not the quick flip, but rather to buy smart businesses with good leadership and see through the thick and thin towards a better long-term reward. In his eyes, shareholders make businesses, not share traders, because they have a mutual long-term interest in success.

In advertising, this was for a long period of time “The Code”: an often unspoken agreement between advertiser and advertising agency, that together, through thick and thin, each side would respect and value the contributions being made and the economic climate under which events occurred, ensuring that everyone gained in a proportionate way to their stake in the partnership. Well, at worst, that code has been erased; and at best, it’s no longer a viable staple, even for those who might still recognize its necessity.

More and more, we are in a business that delivers disproportionate value against compensation. Procurement departments exist to maximize return for businesses at the expense of value. In an increasingly digital world, the concepts of value, trading and efficiency all become debatable points. This is a column with few answers, rather an open forum for dialogue about the issues facing the space.

Do ad agencies as we know them today have a place in the new world order, when organizations like Google would be just as happy to sell without any interference?

Digital trading platforms will render large and often previously profitable segments of the agency business marginalized, or as merely a commodity in the next decade. As such, the conversation has to start now about the role that these agencies should play, how advertisers will determine value — and, almost equally important, how that determined value will be perceived by someone whose job it is to “save money,” not maximize value.

 Car Buying: Diminished Value in Short Order

The moment you drive a car off the lot, its value precipitously declines. At no time after you take ownership will your average car be worth as much as before you bought it. This feels like the current cycle of advertisers and agencies. Every few years, procurement begins a dance with agencies to determine “the best” fit for the company. In the majority of these situations, the ideas delivered and the proposals made could be solved by a simple math discussion, one in which the agencies are asked to do a monetary “limbo” for the business: He who can go lowest goes home with the prize. I’m painting with broad strokes here, but if we are simply looking to buy a car for a short-term reward and gratification, then saving as much as possible on a continued basis is more important than the commitment to being as one together.

Home Buying: Increased Value Over Time

Ignoring the current housing collapse, the dream, and typically the reality, for most home owners is that over time the home they own not only provides enjoyment, but also will eventually be a source of profit against the original purchase price. The home’s VALUE increases over time through investment in the property, the surrounding neighborhood and the community at large. This value can be measured throughout the relationship thanks to other comparable homes being sold, assessments and personal views based on the efforts put into improving your home.

This is similar to the value that develops when an advertiser invests in an agency partner and allows the relationship to grow. It becomes a code of commitment, with both parties invested; and, like a home, exhibits increasing value. Only in this case, value that is measurable through the perception of the brand, revenue growth and other key metrics against the marketplace (and yes, The Street). Unfortunately, CMOs have a shelf life worse then a can of Spam. With the average below two years, it’s problematic for a CMO to invest in perennials when annuals are much more likely to serve the realities of the job.

There is little to suggest that even with the current economic climate, this car buying mentality is due to subside, but one has to question if the clear lack of alignment that exists between advertiser and agency can sustain if serious changes do not occur. Whether it’s the economy, procurement or simply a shift of self-serve solutions and vendors looking to eliminate the proverbial middle man, the current path does not bring the best to the table. It breeds mediocrity and clock-watching, not innovation and a commitment toward excellence.

Earlier this week, eMarketer published its most recent view on the U.S. advertising space and the spending trends within it. The company noted the point gains being made year over year for digital marketing and explained the impact in its intro as such:

“Digital marketing offers compelling benefits, especially for cash-conscious companies in a recession, because marketers can more readily measure the results of Internet advertising than with most traditional media.  This produces more-efficient advertising and higher ROI, which in turn pushes traditional media to compete with lower pricing.”

So, advertisers are gravitating to more measurable forms of marketing and also looking to channels that produce higher ROI. Makes sense, but when you look at some recent findings from SEMPO’s annual search survey, you start to see a disconnect.

In their ‘08 study, SEMPO asked both advertisers and agencies what metrics they track and the findings were interesting. In the case of brand impact, the agencies surveyed said – by a wide margin (20%+) -  that they measured this more so than the direct advertisers. If marketers are moving dollars online because ROI is better, then why are their agencies worried so much about brand?

It leads to the obvious question. Can search build brands?

I think the jury is still out; but I would contend that search is much more a facilitation vehicle than a vehicle for establishing a brand. Creating brand connectivity in 140 characters is a daunting task when a consumer is predisposed to a brand, let alone when engaging for the first time. If an unknown brand is trying to establish a place and is using search, then there is a one-off opportunity to become acknowledged. But it’s unlikely that Apple-level loyalists are going to rise from such limited interactions.

So, what’s with agencies’ obsession with brand impact? My sense is two things are working here.

1. Agencies in the search marketing industry traditionally have worked under percent of spend models, whereby focusing up the funnel on brand development keywords is a financial win that can be explained as brand building.

2. Up the funnel activity should be about creating a better connection with consumer intent to help brand owners understand if value exists from buying paid search or looking at alternative investments in the search space that allow for alternative focus. Instead, agencies are trying to justify further investment away from other channels by contending that they are moving the needle on brand loyalty.

Can a brand see lift by using search as a primary vehicle? Yes. Will those brands be able to go from 0 to 60 simply using search? If so, I’ve yet to see a solid example of it. All cases studies I’ve seen show that search is a tremendous supplementary vehicle for brand building. So, when agencies suggest they are more interested in brand build than advertisers are, it comes as no surprise. Should brands be more concerned about up the funnel actions? Yes. Should agencies do a better job on that function with priming the funnel and creating connections? If they want to keep growing their investments, it would be a wise move. Because search is not a brick by brick builder for brands, it’s the glue that enables blocks to be added, upon using owned brand content.

Super Bowl Sunday is a unique opportunity for advertisers, in that not only are your ads being shown before a mass audience that spans several demographics, but these viewers actually want to see your ads. They’re waiting and anticipating the commercials. During that :30- or :60-second spot, you are the main event.

But in these tumultuous economic times, glitzy Super Bowl ads can seem like an unnecessary extravagance for some companies. Media buys around the game are down and costs are up. Long-time Super Bowl advertisers such as General Motors and FedEx are sitting this one out, and the pressure is on those companies that are advertising to maximize ROI on this year’s game-time spots.

To ensure these expensive buys pay-off, smart advertisers should not depend only on the eyes that are watching their ads, but also leverage this increased exposure in their online marketing efforts as well.

It’s a pretty standard practice to include a URL in Super Bowl ads, (although, surprisingly, there were still a few who didn’t last year). But how many of the advertisers will not only include a URL, but will tie in their search marketing efforts as well?

Will the creative in advertisers’ paid search ads this weekend and in the days following reflect the messaging in their commercials? Being in a recession, will we see more “call-to-action” ads that consumers can follow through on by going online?

According to a survey conducted by comScore following last year’s Super Bowl, 13% of respondents went online to watch a Super Bowl commercial again. Similarly, 13% of respondents visited an advertiser’s Web site following the Super Bowl. Given the unstable economy and downturn in consumer confidence, are advertisers this year launching special campaigns to direct users to their site or other online content to generate engagement? When they get there, will the sites include content directed at these searchers and take their attention away from the woes we’re facing for just a moment to get them to consider their brand?

Going beyond paid ads, what will advertisers be doing to increase their following on social media sites and in emerging media? YouTube seems to be a natural social media site for these advertisers because users can re-watch their favorite commercials and send them to friends. But what about social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace or other consumer-generated forums? Will advertisers attempt to increase their followers on these sites as part of their Super Bowl marketing?

This Sunday, I’m excited not only for the game and the commercials, but to see who the big winner is in the search space as well – anybody else?