I’ve just finished reading “A Whole New Mind - Why right-brainers will rule the future”.  In it, Daniel Pink explores the growing importance of storytelling, meaning, empathy, and concept.  Leaders will need to see the big picture and connect the ‘relationships between relationships’.  So, inventors and creative types are the future. 

Great news for the art student that I was and for those many hoping for a Lion at the Cannes Festival this week. 

Isn’t the nature of creative changing?

Admob hit (what I think is) a big milestone in May. They are now serving 100M ad impressions each day to cell phones. (See their May Metrics report) The US represents 45 percent of this traffic. Admob serves ads on to 5000 publisher sites. They are not the only mobile ad network in the US so the number of daily impressions is actually even higher. It's still a small fraction of the online impressions, but shows the potential of this market.

Their May Metrics report just came out and it's full of even more detail than ever before - more countries, top handsets by country, etc. - a wealth of information and must read.

Just when we all thought the curtain had closed on the soap opera surrounding Yahoo!, the media company announced it officially ended talks with Microsoft and instead entered a partnership with Google – a match both firms hope has revenue upside of about $800 million.

I’ll admit, I’m still scratching my head on exactly why Yahoo! thought this move was a smart one for them.  I see the deal as:

*A great move for Google.  Google – which already has about 60% of consumer searches and its own vast paid search and contextual network – now has access to and will make money off of its primary rival’s inventory.

Now that Yahoo's going to make more money by showing lots more Google paid search ads on its own search results pages and Microsoft said it doesn't want all of Yahoo, but is still open to part, we get a partial answer to How Ya Gonna Stop Google Now - Yahoo version - but we need an answer for the Microsoft version.

I guess the answer is, Yahoo ain't gonna stop Google now. Yahoo also said it would dabble in Google contextual ads. Yahoo still believes it's critical to integrate search and display, and maintains it can still do this under the potential agreement. Yahoo claims its own marketplace is competitive at the head, but not the tail of queries -- which is how it'll hold on to doing business directly with its premium advertisers, I guess.