Recently, Forrester introduced a new way to consider influence in Social Media.  We identified a group of social media participants we call Mass Influencers.  While just 16% of the US population, Mass Influencers are responsible for 80% of the influence impressions and posts about products and services in social channels. 

As noted in the Forrester report, Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid and on the Forrester blog, Mass Influencers come in two flavors: 

• Mass Connectors, who create a great number of impressions about brands and services in social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, and
• Mass Mavens, who create and share content about products and services in other social channels such as YouTube, blogs, forums, or ratings and review sites.

The fact that a minority of social media participants represent the lion’s share of buzz about products and services is probably not at all surprising,  but what does this mean to marketers?  How can brands  develop programs that activate the potential of Mass Influencers to create awareness and consideration among their readers, friends, followers and others in social venues?  The answer comes from Peer Influence Analysis (PIA), Forrester’s new framework to analyze influence within particular markets, demographics and industries.

I was included on a very interesting panel discussion a couple of weeks ago entitled, "Stories From The Frontline, Building A Social Media Business."   The event was co-sponsored by TiE and the Social Media Club SFSV and included a terrific set of people who were experienced, smart and funny: 

• Blake Cahill, Senior VP of Marketing, Visible Technologies
• Louis Gray, Managing Director, New Media, Paladin Advisors Group
• Emily Melton, Partner, Mayfield Fund
• Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO & Co-Founder, Yelp

Rich Reader captured a quick clip of me sharing thoughts on the appropriateness of measuring ROI in Social Media.  While the panel format doesn't furnish time for an appropriate deep dive into when and how ROI might be an appropriate metric, I believe in most cases ROI is the wrong question to ask (and if you start with the wrong question, you'll get the wrong answer.)

I will be working on a report about Social Media and Marketing ROI.  Your thoughts and input are welcome and encouraged.  Please check out the 76-second clip and then let me know what you think. 

In the eleven years I have worked in and covered the display advertising market, I have never seen such a frenzy as I do today. In the past week, I  learned of three more DSP's, two data companies and an attribution vendor.  Agencies are also in the game this time around. So what is causing this pile-on of new ad technologies to the market? There are a few things:

- Leveled playing field on the exchanges: The ad exchanges allow for innovation in ad optimization and bidding. Additionally, small companies can suddently compete for inventory that used to be locked up by ad network contracts.

- Better technologies: Cookieless tracking, container tags, real time bidding, data targeting and dynamic ad generation are all innovations that are hitting the hockey stick curve right about...now.

- Opening purse strings: We know that display advertising spending was essentially flat from 2008 to 2009. It appears that 2010 will show improvement. Marketers are getting budgets back and are ready to spend them.

- Desperate publishers: Publishers are grasping to find ways to make more money on their sites, so they are handing over the reigns to sell side platforms to help them optimize.

Of course, agencies, ad networks and portals are clamoring to keep up, claiming to have all of what the data providers, DSP's and SSP's have and more. Some do, most don't (there is also strong evidence that much of the vendor space is still vapor-ware.) All of these changes are exciting, but there are a few things that MUST happen for marketers and publishers to come out winners in the midst of so much change.

Following its acquisition of Quattro Wireless for $275,000,000, Apple has just announced the launch of iAd, its mobile advertising platform (see my colleague’s take here). Adding the $750,000,000 that Google is ready to invest in AdMob (the deal is still under FCC scrutiny), the two most disruptive new mobile entrants have invested more than $1 billion — a clear signal that mobile advertising has long-term potential. The main difference between Google and Apple is that Apple is only just entering the advertising business, while Google’s entire business model simply IS advertising. However, that potential has yet to be realized. Does that mean stakeholders can generate significant revenues in the short term and that operators will be bypassed once again? I have read in various places some strange comments suggesting that Google’s mobile ad revenue share with mobile operators would be a way to finance network evolution. Just compare the cost of a base station and the significant investment required to finance 4G with absolute mobile advertising revenues and you’ll quickly figure out for yourself that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. This is more of an online advertising discussion around the Net neutrality debate (remember France Telecom’s CEO warning that he was not “building freeways for Californian cars”!) but it will crop up later for mobile.