I loved this article from MediaPost and had to share. I mean, who couldn’t use a good statistical laugh on a Wednesday morning.

20 Funny, Clueless, Weird, And Existential Google Keyword Searches

Did you see this article in WARC: US marketers aim to measure social media?

Worth a read…. Some highlights:

Moreover, 80% of chief marketing officers are now using consumer insights generated on the web to help “shape decision-making at the executive level”.

Similarly, 90% employ “customer stories and product suggestions” in helping identify which goods they should attempt to develop.

By the end of next year, 59% more respondents will utilise reviews from members of the public in the innovation process, with information found on Twitter recording a 407% uptick on this measure.

Sam Decker, chief marketing officer of Bazaarvoice, argued “while 2009 may have been a trial run for many brands and social media, in 2010, CMOs expect social initiatives to directly impact their bottom lines, without exception.”

Of course, we love this because this is what we do in our Social Focal Reports: analyze conversations to identify important trends and information for product and marketing opportunities, and more.

This cracked us up. HassleMe. Not drinking enough water? Forgot to call your mother? Need a little help keeping out of the dog house? Tell the nice folks at HassleMe what to bug you about, and they’ll nag you via email at semi-unpredictable intervals. Nagging. Just like Mama used to do.

We were fascinated to read this article at Searchengineland and the Hitwise data that was released last week. Seems that more searchers are using complex, longer queries. Great news for efficiency! We are huge fans of searching deeply and saving time!

The Hitwise release also talks about Business and Finance, Sports, Online Video and Social Networking categories showing double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines in January 2009 as compared to January 2008.

Lately, we’ve been thinking about media planning point(s) of view on the appropriateness of different types of media planning approaches – in particular reach vs. frequency. Don’t ask us why. We’re just curious that way.

And what we found were differing opinions. Big surprise in the advertising industry.

Still, we thought we’d share some of the articles with you.

Because who couldn’t use a little light reading?

January 13, 2009 from Media Realism Blog
TV Reach & Frequency–Obsolete?

October 8, 2008 from David L. Smith & MediaPost
Web Video GRPs: Not All Are Equal

September 16, 2008 from Josh Chasin & MediaPost
Valuation And Evaluation

July 2, 2008 from Judah Phillips & MediaPost
Performance, Performance, Performance

June 17, 2008 from Josh Chasin & Media Post
Reach, Frequency Help Online GRPs

June 17, 2008 from David L. Smith & Media Post
Should The Web Have GRPs?

April 26, 2008 from Broadcasting & Cable
Measuring Engagement
Audience Metric Exerts Increasing Influence on Ad Spending

We see pieces of these all the time. But wouldn’t it be great if someone put together a comprehensive collection of data?

Someone did.

Ignite Social Media has it here for your viewing pleasure.

IBM’s second global online survey of consumer digital media and entertainment habits was published.

While we all assumed that consumers would trade personal information for incentives, it’s been hard to quantify.

Close to 60 percent of total respondents were willing to provide information about themselves — such as age, gender, lifestyle or communications preferences — in exchange for something of value. Younger respondents had fewer concerns about revealing personal preferences, and a sizeable portion of participants over the age of 45 were also willing to share information about themselves. However, all respondents indicated the need for perceived value and incentives as a trade-off to provide personal information.

The report has some other interesting data. Worth a read.

Megan, our Director of News & Media Research, is always reading. Is that a great job, or what!? Last night (at some crazy hour) she sent me this article, When Is Social Networking Kosher In The Office? from NPR. You can read it or listen to it.

I had to share this one, because we hear companies discussing this all the time – the pros and cons of social networking. This story talks about Yammer as one workplace solution for team microblogging.

Findownerssearch.com is one of those sites that makes us think: “Why didn’t someone invent this sooner?”

Findownerssearch allows you to:

Find the owner of a brand name
Find all the brands owned by an individual or company
Find brands in a given area/category

Just think of the possibilities. You can use this site to do competitive analysis, provide information for a new business pitch, research a new product development. I typed in “Pendaflex” (mostly b/c I am sitting next to many items that need to be filed). I got the parent company name, address, and a list of all the other products they make. Oh, I also got descriptions of the products as well. So simple, yet so very useful.

Research tip borrowed (with permission) from Third Hand Secretarial, the best virtual assistant in the world. (She didn’t say that, we did.)

Ever visit a Website that contained some information you wanted to share with someone – if only you could highlight the information. Well. . .you can and here is how to do it:

Visit Awesome Highlighter

• Enter the blog or Website address that you wish to highlight
• Click highlight page
• The blog or Website will appear, with the “Awesome Highlighter” tool bar across the top
• Highlight the applicable content. You can even change the highlight color by using the color chooser on the top right corner of the toolbar
• Add a note to the highlighted information if you choose
• Click on Done
• You are redirected to a page that contains the content you highlighted and a customized URL
• Send that customized URL to your colleagues, business associates, friends or family to show them the parts of the blog or Website you want them to see.

Voila! We can think of some great applications for this. Bet you can, too.