“These are perilous economic times” is the incessant media mantra. Indeed, as a country, we are experiencing a perfect economic storm. In this very grim environment, a young, first-term, African-American senator from Illinois had the chutzpah to strategically position and conceptually frame his long-shot run to the White House with the audacity of hope. And he won by a landslide — so maybe there’s something to this hope thing. Hope is defined by Webster’s like this: 1) to desire with expectation of obtainment; 2) to expect with confidence. The obvious lesson for marketers and media, along with the folks in the online performance marketing space, is: we are in the hope business.

It’s deceptive, really. That lowly toll-free number at the top of your SEM landing site or page. Sure, people call it; you capture leads and on a good day even make some sales. You figure some of those leads and sales are a result of your hard-fought SEM campaign. But how many? How many phone leads can you really attribute directly to your paid SEM efforts versus organic activity, or worse, other offline media traffic that happens to be funneling into the same location? The answer is quite simple. And it requires only a nominal amount of IT attention to know your real ROI from your SEM campaign.

Consumers and businesses are tightening their belts and their budgets, but brand marketers need to look at today’s recession economy as an opportunity. Now is the ideal time to ramp up your marketing efforts and build stronger relationships with your customers.

Over the last several years we have witnessed a very interesting evolution in the online lead generation space. Internally, we insisted that all of the incentive-based paths, the pre-checked boxes (also called opt-outs, regardless of what the lead-gen provider wants to call them) and other “non-user friendly” methods of generating leads couldn’t last. I will be the first to admit, it had/has lasted a lot longer than I expected, albeit not as widespread as it was.

Selecting the right advertising agency can be a daunting task, and finding an advertising agency that has expertise in direct marketing across online and offline channels can be even harder. With today’s media options, it is no longer as simple as choosing an agency that handles traditional media such as television, print or radio. With the birth of online advertising, the process of choosing an advertising agency has become more and more complicated. Some advertisers have an agency for search, one for display, one for television, one for creative, and so on and so on. It can be a management and campaign success measurement nightmare.

Americans are in the midst of a slow-motion economic panic as banks, insurance companies and jobs disappear before our eyes. The numbers show how consumer spending continues to decline as confidence wanes. And marketing budgets are being slashed. What works in this ugly climate?

If you have ever used a search engine in your life, you probably have some sense of knowledge that search engine optimization is now the state of the market when it comes to customer acquisition and online audience development. I’ve heard that old school lead generation was derived from affiliate networking marketing inventory and revenue sharing models. These days many marketers are seeking additional inventory alternatives to broaden their potential audience.

I was pleased to hear that the IAB had just announced Email Data Management Best Practices, but after reading the document, I was somewhat disappointed disappointed with what I found regarding data-sharing. The sharing of email addresses with multiple marketing companies for the purpose of sending multiple email messages from different senders is simply not a best practice.

If you’re a digital marketer working in the world of online advertising, you know that the majority of an operations team’s efforts go into ad trafficking, which involves campaign execution , setup, optimization and reporting. In fact, an average of two-thirds of the employees on a given account team are responsible for this aspect of the work, while just one third handle the higher-level tasks of a campaign’s strategy and creative. With so many employees needed to support a relatively low-level function, digital marketers often find it difficult to maximize ROI and scale their business efficiently.

If you’re a digital marketer working in the world of online advertising, you know that the majority of an operations team’s efforts go into ad trafficking, which involves campaign execution , setup, optimization and reporting. In fact, an average of two-thirds of the employees on a given account team are responsible for this aspect of the work, while just one third handle the higher-level tasks of a campaign’s strategy and creative. With so many employees needed to support a relatively low-level function, digital marketers often find it difficult to maximize ROI and scale their business efficiently.