Those brands that are still ‘just’ advertising have it relatively easy.  They partner with advertising agencies that are tasked with coming up with the creative idea for advertising campaigns. In fact, they have a dedicated staff of “creatives” tasked with doing just that.

Not to denigrate agencies, or creatives, or the vast amount of strategy, research, iterations, testing and refinements that go into creating advertising campaigns, but that model is now radically changing, making the question of where creative comes from a legitimate one.

Sure, advertising agencies own advertising. However in an increasingly mobile world where user-generated content, social media and earned media are burgeoning, advertising is a somewhat diminishing channel and not at all the core creative idea it once was.  In digital (and soon, in traditional media as well), paid, earned and owned media are converging and commingling. Advertising is no longer a stand-alone. It works much, much more effectively in conjunction with broader strategic marketing initiatives that place as much (if not more) emphasis on owned and earned channels.

This raises a chicken-and-egg dilemma for marketers: who’s driving? If paid, earned and owned media all inform a campaign or marketing initiative, and learnings from one channel can be applied to the other for optimization and improvement, which channel leads, and which follow? It the channel that’s doing the driving isn’t advertising, it’s doubtful the creative core of a campaign comes from…creatives.

Together with my colleagues Jeremiah Owyang and Jessica Groopman, I’ve been working on research that looks at how paid, earned and owned media are converging. A growing trend is unquestionably that the creative germ originates in owned and earned media before it becomes paid (i.e. advertising).

Take Facebook ads that ‘pin’ a brand’s wall post in a display ad unit. Or Bazaarvoice’s new ads that retarget shoppers with ad units that feature a geo- and demographically targeted user review of the product they were just viewing.

Brands can even turn lemons into lemonade by taking negative consumer reviews and, by adding a twist of clever content marketing, turn them into positives, as did one local eatery and Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

When marketing creative flows in from multiple sources, the way marketing and advertising work must inevitably shift. How? We’re sifting through findings, but there are some clear initial insights.

Real time: There’s a constant flow of consumers providing insight, feedback, media, and other digital material in real time on the web. Monitoring all this is a given, but reacting to it in real time is increasingly important, and something too few marketing organizations are prioritizing. Small wonder; real time marketing is resource intensive, and it’s hard. Increasingly, it’s necessary and will prove a real advantage to those who do it.

Listening and analysis: If creative ideas flow from chatter on the web, it’s critical to intelligently listen to all that chatter, to monitor it, triage it, and leverage it into ads and other marketing collateral. The SMMS sector is a veritable explosion of M&A activity right now due to this trend.

Content strategy: Owned media matters. Consumers expect it, social media demands it (and all brands are social, whether they’re playing in that particular sandbox or not). The web in general, and social media in particular, demands a steady stream of content, something brands must prepare for strategically as well as tactically.

Shifting agency models: It’s not as if advertising agencies haven’t seen this coming. Many are shifting staffing (as should brands) to bolster core capabilities such as creative and media with more support for content, data, and social media capabilities.  PR shops are doing this a well, of course, and so are the more forward-looking brands.

Others will certainly follow.  Because agencies creatives now only sometimes lead the creative charge, and the media plan is hardly what determines where, and how, that creative message spreads.

What’s the ROI of a ‘like’ on Facebook?

For too many marketers, getting fans or ‘likes’ on Facebook is a goal unto itself. It’s about as legitimate a goal as measuring how many ‘hits’ a website got circa 1998. Just as those ‘hits weren’t translating into revenue in the early days of the commercial internet, so too are many Facebook advertisers and marketers having difficulty determining if their efforts are bearing fruit, and how to leverage fans and likes into actual revenue.

Others are being more methodical about it. Research published today by Facebook in conjunction with comScore reveals that of 60+ campaigns measured, 70 percent of major brands have seen 3X to 5X ROI – in many cases offline, in-store sales, as a result of combining paid media buys on Facebook with the earned media from fans and friends of those fans.

On a call yesterday, Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s head of measurement and insights, told me, “These are very healthy numbers. The vast majority of these campaigns had really, really positive ROI.”

The question now, of course, is dissecting, mapping and documenting why these campaigns worked. “Paid [media] for us is actually an amplification of earned,” Smallwood told me, a trend Jeremiah Owyang and I are learning in the process of our in-progress research on the confluence of paid, earned and owned media.

Earned media – how to get it at scale and how to leverage it effectively – is a brand new skill. Facebook’s new research (the report is entitled “The Power of Like 2″) demonstrates that there’s not just synergy in combining paid, earned and owned media, but there’s profit in it as well for brands such as Starbucks, Target, Applebee’s, Nutella and Best Western.

Yet doing so requires new alignments in vendors, creative, media, agency relationships and even the internal org chart. Stay tuned for lots more work on this important topic.

It almost had to happen. Ad stacks are proliferating across the digital media landscape, and corporate behemoths such as IBM and Adobe are refining and growing their suites of digital marketing and advertising software offerings. All the while, Google’s been very quiet on the display advertising front.

No longer. Today at DoubleClick Insights, Google announced its commitment to going full-bore into the stack wars with what Vice President, Display Advertising Neal Mohan described to me in an advance briefing is “the biggest upgrade in DoubleClick history.”

Everything digital advertising at Google: search, the Google Display Network, AdSense, text ads, rich media, YouTube, and mobile advertising (AdMob) will be integrated. A new brand encompassing all of DoubleClick’s platform technology has been created. The components include:

• DoubleClick Digital Marketing Manager – an upgraded version of the DoubleClick ad server, the control panel for ad scheduling, delivery, reporting and more across premium media.
• DoubleClick Bid Manager – a revamp of media buying platform Invite Media. Google promises faster processing and better reporting to manage audience buying across ad exchanges.
• DoubleClick Search (launched last year) enables buying across multiple search engines.
• DoubleClick Studio – a rich media solution that now incorporates Teracent.
• Google Analytics integration.

“It’s a rolling thunder kind of rollout,” Mohan explained. Workflow, reporting and portfolio management components won’t be released for several weeks. “We invested very heavily in building out a unified stack instead of kluging together existing products.”

Mohan identifies three core benefits of turning all Google’s ad products into a unified stack (and DoubleClick is the platform used by most top agencies and advertisers). The first is “giving time back to our advertisers and agencies.”  In a typical week, Mohan estimates, up to two full days are spent in various digital platforms that don’t talk to each other. “By bringing all these pieces together we can save up to  six working weeks per person per year,” he claims.

Unified reporting and attribution is the second benefit. DoubleClick promises its suite will provide perspective and insights across campaigns and channels. How did display influence search, or vice versa?

Finally, Google says it’s offering cross-channel campaign optimization that will encompass bidding and campaign management.

How will Google’s stack differ from the other major players, notably Adobe and IBM? Most notably, DoubleClick includes an ad server – those two players don’t serve ads (AppNexus, however, does). Critically, the stack will maintain an open API to enable integrations of other software packages.

An open API is a desirable feature in any ad technology stack, but here it’s critical as (Google+ excepted), social support is something earmarked for an unspecified future date, not the present. Moreover, it’s hardly a secret that Google’s relationship with Twitter is tenuous, and with Facebook openly competitive. Both can be viewed as significant shortcomings in a truly integrated stack – though clearly no stack out there is all things to all advertisers.

Social isn’t Google’s only long-term goal. “Digital, whether on the search or display side, has been a result of performance marketing,” notes Mohan, “The brand opportunity still remains untapped.”

Smashing silos and making digital processes easier, more streamlined and unified is a good thing.  What remains to be seen is if the digital brand opportunity lies in display advertising, or in social channels including earned and owned media.

Image: DumboNYC.com

A version of this post also appears on iMedia Connection

How do you influence the digital influencers? What is influence, anyway? And if you can rally influencers to your side, cause, brand or point of view, what’s the best way to approach the task? What can realistically be achieved? And how do you measure results.

There’s no dearth of talk about online influence, but until now there’s been precious little actionable advice. With the publication of my colleague Brian Solis‘ new research report, “The Rise of Digital Influence,” (it’s subtitled “A ‘how-to’ guide for businesses to spark desirable effects and outcomes through social media influence), marketers are provided with frameworks and action plans to get both strategic and tactical in their approach to effectively harnessing the elusive, but oh, so desirable impact a community of influencers. Brian helpfully defines digital influences as, “the ability to cause effect, change behavior, and drive measurable outcomes online.”

A feature of this research of particular interest is a long, hard look at the tools that purportedly measure influence, e.g. Klout, Kred, and PeerIndex. Based on game mechanics (and people all to ready to game the system), I’ve looked on these tools with suspicion, particularly after Klout listed me as influential on the topic of the Calgary Flames (maybe you’re aware they’re a hockey team, but I had to google it). Do these new services that capture social media scores equate to influence? No, says Brian – but that doesn’t mean they’re not useful. “The measure here…is not influence or the capacity to influence, but instead visibility with the possibility of causing effect.”

The report contains an Influence Framework as well as an Influence Action Plan to help brands and their agencies identify connected consumers and to define and measure digital influence initiatives via an included step-by-step process. Vendors in the influence metrics space are also compared, feature-by-feature, in a helpful grid.

“The Rise of Digital Influence” is a watershed in digital influence. It’s going to stop airy-fairy conversation about “influencing influencers” dead in its tracks and instead supplant vague and aspirational jargon-laced talk with substantive, strategic processes.

And, like all Altimeter Group research, the report is available to read and to share under Creative Commons. Thanks for passing it along if you find it helpful.

Cartoon credit: NewYorkComputerHelp.com

In digital channels, everything can be measured, and content marketing initiatives are no exception to that rule. Without measurement, there’s no way of knowing what’s working and what isn’t. You won’t have any information upon which you can refine or improve results, or jettison the stuff that’s less effective.

In short, you should never begin content marketing until you have an ongoing plan for measurement and analysis. Not only will it continually inform endeavors as they move forward, it also justifies the time, energy, resources, and budget required to get those endeavors underway to the people in the corner office.

Establish a measurement plan
The first step is determining what will be measured. Yet when you can measure practically everything, narrowing that list down to the essentials is a daunting but necessary task. Skip it and you put yourself at high risk for what web analytics pros call “analysis paralysis.” Confronted with mountains of web analytics data throws even the most stalwart people into deer-in-headlights mode.

So the first step in setting up a plan for measurement is establishing key performance indicators (KPIs), perhaps five or so. These are the core goals that are foundational to success. KPIs vary depending on goals. Examples might be newsletter sign-ups, white paper downloads, leads from a contact form, increased site traffic, higher search rankings, inbound phone calls, increased online orders, higher brand (or product) awareness, more inbound links, and keyword value. It’s your call, so long as KPIs are relevant to business and marketing goals and are measurable.

Let’s examine some of the top content marketing KPIs.

Web traffic and engagement
We’ve evolved well beyond the early internet era when “clicks” or “hits” were the ne plus ultra of site owner goals. It’s not just traffic that counts, it’s what the traffic does that matters — users exhibiting desired behaviors, such as downloading, sharing, commenting, signing up for a newsletter, or calling a call center. Use an analytics package to track behaviors (Goals in Google Analytics) helps to answer these questions.

Where the traffic goes is equally important to when they consume a piece of content. Do they stick with it to the end or bail off the page after only a few seconds? Are they visiting the pages or site sections you want them to?

Others use website analysis to assess that very elusive (but oh-so-desirable) goal of user engagement. To measure engagement, you have to define it (which no one really has). That’s not stopping you from developing a working definition of your own. Perhaps it’s someone who viewed three or more pages, or spent three or more minutes on the site, or a visitor who returned multiple times. Traffic is a metric that can also be applied to social media (e.g., “likes” on Facebook).

Search keywords are also a value that can be very effectively tied to traffic. What keywords are visitors using to find your content? What are the highest-converting keywords (e.g., the ones that lead visitors where you want them to go, or that make them stick around longer and consume more)? You ought to create more content for them! Keywords are worthwhile for almost any content marketer to measure.

Bottom line? Slice traffic measurement any way you want to, just so long as what you measure is in consistent, pre-defined units.

Sales
A survey conducted in 2010 by Bazaarvoice and The CMO Club shows CMOs aspire to move beyond engagement (number of fans, site traffic, etc.) to tie social media more closely into hard business metrics such as revenue and conversion.

Sometimes it’s easy to tie content directly into sales. Yet very often, no matter how effective the content, there are still secondary and often tertiary steps in the sales cycle (most often, long- or short-term cycles of lead generation and consideration).

This is where it’s important to build attribution methods into content marketing initiatives to get credit where it’s due. Online registration forms are one method (e.g., prior to downloading a white paper). Other companies assign discrete 800 numbers to different pieces of content to learn what generates calls. In some cases, definitively demonstrating content marketing shortens a sales cycle and can be an effective proof of its worth.

Qualitative customer feedback
Friends, fans, “likes,” comments, reviews, survey responses — everyone likes to be liked, and being liked does impart value. The question, of course, is how much value? A “like” on Facebook from a member with a closed profile or with only a dozen friends in their network is clearly not worth that same “like” from a member with an open profile — and thousands of friends who see that message.

Feedback serves other purposes than the network effect. Comments on content, product reviews, and tweets can lead to improvements and refinements in products, customer service, and research and development. Recommendations and becoming a fan can aid in branding and awareness, or in the perception of your company or its executives as credible thought leaders. Positive Twitter mentions serve much the same purpose.

Once again, this may be an area essential to your own KPIs, but it requires analysis and refinement before deployment.

Sales lead quality
Content-oriented marketing initiatives crafted to engage and educate a target audience are the most effective at driving “high value leads most likely to convert to sales” (Lenskold Group/emedia Lead Generation Marketing ROI study, 2010).

Yet to implement sales lead quality as a metric, you must first define a “quality lead.” Perhaps it’s by job title (e.g., parsing out VP and above titles from the average site visitor). Bear in mind, however, this depends on the type of offering and sales cycle. It’s hard to define a quality lead for toothpaste because everyone buys it. In large enterprises, a VP may not be as important a qualifier as someone from procurement. Alternately, a high quality lead may be someone who watched an online demo and downloaded a white paper prior to getting in touch. (My recently published research report on content marketing, available as a free download, contains a full case study of this example.)

By all means, measure sales lead quality. First, ensure you can define and identify it!

Search (and social media) ranking (and visibility)
Increased search awareness is often the primary goal of content marketing. It’s not just getting the company or product name to rank high in organic search results; it’s also ranking for the relevant keywords and phrases searchers use to find what you’re offering — at all stages of the sales and lead development cycle. Web analytics help gauge this. So do services such as Alexa.com and Compete.com, which benchmark search terms for you as well as competitors.

Boosting SEO ranking is more than mere visibility, however. Judiciously optimizing for the right keywords helps connect with the right visitors who are most likely to engage with content, and ultimately convert.

Similarly, social media visibility boosts search rankings and can also increase awareness, buzz, branding, and other key metrics around a brand, product, or service.

Conclusion
An attractive aspect of content marketing is that it’s a highly creative, right-brain discipline. Content marketers tell stories, use images, produce videos, and are wordsmiths. Yet all that creativity must be governed by discipline, measurement, and a strong degree of precision. Choosing what metrics matter, why, and how to actually measure them is just as critical as the creative element of content marketing.

Image: Medicalengineer.co.uk

Many of us grew up with Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. For the past few years the refrain has been Google, Google, Google. But this past week, it’s been all Facebook, all the time.

As we wait for the biggest IPO in tech history to shake out, the question I’m being asked most by clients and especially the mainstream media is, by far, “what’s Facebook going to do with all that money?”

I’d love it if “One Buck Zuck” would send me a check. Barring that, some reasonable conjectures can be drawn.

1. Mobile Facebook’s S-1 filing contained all the usual risk disclaimers: changing market conditions, loss of key executives, that stuff. But there was one zinger in the boilerplate – Facebook’s statement that mobile is growing fast, and that the company can’t yet monetize it. It’s not too much of a leap from there to the conclusion that multiple millions of dollars can be applied to figuring this one out. An article published the day after the filing suggests we’ll see the first Facebook mobile ads in March. Yet mobile means different things to different users, fast as the channel is growing. Smartphones, tablets…when it comes to mobile advertising, Facebook will require more than one solution. And that’s to say nothing of Facebook Credits and other commerce opportunities on mobile platforms. There’s plenty of R&D opportunity for Facebook across the mobile spectrum.
2. Data Data is Facebook’s core product. Not only do they have more of it every day on their users, that data is getting increasingly complex. In addition to basic demographic data, there’s friends and friends-of-friends. Groups they’re a part of, companies worked at, Likes, and soon, Actions, what they’re reading, listening to, eating and buying are only the beginning. Managing this data, parsing it, and making it useful and actionable to advertisers and marketers in ways that can help increase user engagement, create newer and more premium advertising products, extract deeper meaning and clarity from stores of data so complex it very nearly qualifies as big data is challenging, to say the least. It’s also critical to Facebook’s future. Data is what Facebook sells.
3. Platform What’s next for Facebook’s platform? It’s currently central to a vital Facebook economy. Without that platform, companies ranging from Zynga to Buddy Media would hardly exist as we know them today. Media companies from the Wall Street Journal to Spotfiy wouldn’t be able to reach and interact with Facebook users. It’s critical to keep that platform open and to continually expand upon its scope. Is social commerce the next comer? Features that link Facebook more deeply into the real world? Without the platform, Facebook doesn’t have the data, so watch for new developments in this arena, too.
4. Acquisitions Remember when Google was just a search engine? That was years ago, before YouTube, Blogger, Analytics and a host of other features that now seem integral to the company, but once upon a time were acquisitions. Google has largely become a roll-up, and Facebook could begin to follow that path as well (maybe by buying a search engine and finally incorporating real search into its platform?). Sure, Facebook’s made some small acquisitions in the past, but these are broadly viewed as more a bid to acquire talent, not technology. With a mind-boggling bank balance, that may well change.
5. 5). Talent Silicon Valley engineers are high in demand, and you have to find a way to bring them to your company. In Facebook’s case, it’s not longer possible to do this with the lure of pre-IPO stock options. Facebook will soon be forced to pay a premium for new talent, particularly as some of an estimated 500 to 1,000 newly minted millionaires cash out. Sure, some will buy houses and cars. But others will yearn to get back to start-up culture. They’ll start new ventures, or even finance them. Facebook will pay more for talent in the long run, but their IPO will help to spark Silicon Valley’s economy, and that can only mean good things for innovation.

Google has a new, 360-degree privacy policy. Take that, Facebook. The consolidation of data that creates a unified customer profile across very nearly all of Google's products and services creates a view of the customer that's very, very Facebook in nature.

Funny that with all the attention directed to the Facebook IPO lately, so few commentators have made this observation.

It's a good idea that has, understandably, creeped users out. The reality and the perception of privacy are miles apart in the mind of the public and notoriously difficult to change.

This move does make enormous sense for Google on three primary levels.

1. Google's stated reason for making a major change. It doesn't make sense to have 70 different privacy policies. It does make sense to consolidate, and to simplify language. That's good UX.
2. Google is increasingly a media company. Its revenue comes from ad sales. These privacy policy changes will help it deliver not only better search results (let's leave personalized search out of the equation for now), but better ads. It's a major step closer to cracking the database of intentions. What's a "Jaguar"? An "Apple"? "Bass"? The move really will help refine results.
3. Google needs a 360 degree view of the customer now more than ever. Why? Because Facebook's already got it. Or is at least a lot closer to having it than Google is if all Google's information is separately warehoused. Facebook is currently better positioned than Google to "know" what videos you're watching on YouTube (which Google owns!), and tie that data with what you're reading in "The Wall Street Journal" or "The Washington Post," or posting on Pinterest. With Facebook about to go public, Google needs to change that equation, and change it fast.

Privacy image: www.epic.org

Over 800 million active users - more than half of whom log in on any given day and interact with over 900 million "objects" (pages, groups, communities, etc.). Over 250 million photos uploaded every day, over 70 languages on the site. The stats go on and on, and any way you look at them, the numbers are huge.

How can Facebook grow bigger still? That's what we're waiting so see as the tech world - heck, the world at large - holds it breath for the biggest IPO since Google went public in 2004.

There's practically consensus that Facebook will go public in June, meaning an announcement (and a prospectus) are almost imminently forthcoming. This has naturally sparked conversation among Altimeter Group analysts (notably Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Solis and myself) as we discuss and debate the implications of the Big Event, and work to come up with clear answers to the many questions we're being asked by journalists working on what, outside of the presidential election, will be one of the biggest stories of 2012.

Here are some of our answers to the many "will this happen?" and "what does it mean..?" questions we've been fielding from the media regarding Facebook's IPO:

What does it mean….to Facebook employees? There will most certainly be retention issues. Some key employees will quit. They'll travel, or buy houses and cars with newfound wealth.  It will also increase the already fierce talent war with tangible value. Facebook will attract different employees, while early innovators who value a start-up culture will go elsewhere.  Expect to see a Facebook Mafia of investors begin to emerge.  Still others will spin off and form new companies. This has big implications for future innovation. Facebook may face some short term losses, but the tech industry will see an infusion of new capital and new ideas.

What does it mean….for future IPOs? Will Twitter and [fill in the blank] go public right away? If Facebook's IPO is successful, a rising tide will likely raise all boats. But Facebook has built a real business and has a solid advertising model. It's already an enormous company. Twitter (and others) is at a very different phase in its lifecycle.

How is Facebook's IPO different from Web 1.0 and the dot-come bubble? There are real business models here, with real revenues.  

How will Facebook's IPO be influenced by recent, unspectacular IPOs, such as Groupon or Zynga? Facebook is an enormous, global company,  the proverbial 900-lb. gorilla. Facebook's IPO is more analogous to Google going public and not at all comparable to smaller players in the tech space. It is, however, important to note that many, many smaller companies are part of a much larger Facebook ecosystem. This includes ad agencies, technology firms, analytics firms, mobile players, brand marketers, social commerce providers, media companies and a myriad of players (such as Zynga, itself a Facebook partner) with a business model directly coupled with Facebook's API. When looking at Facebook's revenues, it's critical investors understand the difference between advertising revenues, that flow directly into Facebook's coffers, and marketing spend that benefits the Facebook ecosystem, but not directly into Facebook itself.

What's to stop Facebook from imploding, as MySpace did? MySpace remained static. Facebook continues to innovate, and to push audience beyond where they are comfortable, often to great success. Not so long ago members had to have a .edu address to join, remember? A hue and cry was raised when Facebook opened to everyone. In a conversation today at Facebook headquarters, spokesman Brandon McCormick said the more users complain about new features, the more data reveal they're actually using those features more. "We're a social network," he said, "we have a natural feedback mechanism. People use our product to complain about our product. People hated the Newsfeed when we launched it, now it's the core of how they use the product. If we changed everything the second they started complaining, we wouldn't have the data."

Courageous -- and based on hard data.

It's never uninteresting to keep an eye on Facebook, no more so than now. We'll continue to watch and to share our thoughts on Facebook's IPO. And we're always happy to share our observations with the media. Get in touch with us at press[at]altimetergroup.com

Cross-posted from the Altimeter Group blog.

I spent this afternoon immersed in a briefing on IBM's most recent research effort, perhaps the most exhaustive survey of CMOs ever conducted. In a four month period, the company interviewed over 1,700 CMOs in 64 countries to learn more about their priorities and their pain points. The full report is available for download (registration required).

There are many fascinating insights in the report, as well as much information that's validating, if unsurprising (CMOs feel they need to better understand social media, data, and technology in general, for example). Two tables are of particular interest given the rise of content marketing and social media.

When asked in which areas they plan to increase the use of technology, responses are overwhelmingly geared toward content-oriented initiatives. Social media, content management, tablet applications - all these are heavily oriented toward the creation of content, not advertising and not direct marketing. SEO made the list, but search advertising didn't. Less than half plan to invest in more email technology - unthinkable a mere five years ago.

Of course, this naturally doesn't mean CMOs plan to abandon email marketing (or any of the aforementioned channels). But these planned investments indicate that worldwide, companies want to create content, interest and dialogue with customers and prospects.

This indication is borne out in their plans for partnerships. In the chart on the left, red indicates near-term, yellow longer-term plans. Call and service centers, community development, and new media strategy outweigh more traditional agency considerations for either traditional or digital advertising.

These are all themes I'll be digging into shortly in a research project: how organizations are reallocating both internal and external marketing resources to balance their need for advertising with the demands of content, social media and conversational marketing  

Advertising: is it dying? In an ecosystem where rolling your own media has never been easier or cheaper, why would advertisers buy media from publishers to spread their messages? What's the new model: advertorial; advertent (as one attendee dubbed it); content marketing? And hey, aren't ads content, too?

Last night a group of advertisers and marketers from all sides of the equation (tech, buy-side, media and agency) got together at the Hangar to discuss these and other very topical issues around the future of media and advertising. As is traditional, we kicked off with a Wiki Wall to rev our brains. Questions included: "In what year will advertising die?" "What works better online, ads or content?" and "When do you build content versus buy media."

There were passionate opinions, dissent, and even +1s.

Fueled with wine and lots of food, conversation began in earnest (ably facilitated by my colleague Jeremiah Owyang - also the event photographer). Some of the major points we touched on encompassed the following.

Advertising isn't dying but...there are more options. Roll-your-own-media is a viable option, and one paying off handsomely for all types of advertisers and marketing, from the biggest CPG brands to B2B and even mom 'n' pop operations. Yet striking a balance between paid and non-paid (more about that below) media is complicated. It means new skill sets, budgets and resource allocations.

Media is changing, often painfully A point that really resonated with the group was the statement that the New York Times has more Twitter followers than it does print subscribers. Ouch. When should publishers throw up a paywall, follow a freemium model, or throw open the gates? It hasn't been easy to monetize Google traffic. To make things more complex, publishers (not to mention media companies like Spotify) are playing in a Facebook world. That means lots of eyeballs, but scant tolerance for buy me/click here now-type messages. Some publishers, particularly in the magazine world, are establishing in-house agencies to provide advertorial for advertisers. But when advertisers begin content marketing initiative, publishers suddenly find themselves in a situation where clients are also competitors. Talk about disruption!

Content assumes multiple guises, resulting in a high level of complexity Where does content come from? Seemingly everywhere. It can be earned, owned, user-generated, aggregated or curated - or a combination of all of the above. Determining what to use, which goes where, how to integrate content with other marketing initiatives, governance, measurement and quality benchmarks is no mean feat. It requires new attitudes, resources and skill sets. Adding element such as targeting to the conversation, and addition channels such as mobile, only underscore how much there is to grasp...and balance.

The conversation was animated and lively - with a fantastic level of participation from the group. But it was the tip of the iceberg. Happily, it lay some solid foundations for my first Altimeter research report on how content marketing will impact the advertising and media ecosystem.

Missed the discussion? No you didn't. We recorded the evening's proceedings - watch the conversation here.