The big conversation at the iMedia Summit today has been focusing on the Superbowl advertisements – no surprise really given the event kicked off with a Superbowl party & Bob Garfield’s opening keynote was a deconstruction of the ads.

The biggest talking point with this crowd: Google’s ad. Most love it (in fact I just polled 24 brand marketers & 15 loved it while only 2 didn’t like it). Yesterday during the Superbowl my CEO Rob Key leant over to Craig Daitch & I seconds after the spot aired and said “how long until we see a parody of that online?”

Well, Slate didn’t disappoint with this satirical take on the ad seen through the eyes of Tiger Wood’s search history after that fateful day in November:

Hat tip to our good friends at Agency Spy! And stay tuned to our @Converseon Twitter account for updates from the conference.

We are proud to announce that Mike Moran, our Chief Strategist has done it again. This month he and co-writer Bill Hunt published the second edition of Search Engine Marketing, Inc which you can purchase on Amazon here.

The second edition edition of Mike’s highly regarded book address some of the changes seen in the search industry in the last few years along with increased focus on social media. Already, the book is on the Top Ten List for retailing books by Amazon.com and has received good press and dozens of positive reviews

This week, our Fall intern, Lindsey Loughman, sat down with Mike to get his input on the book, the future of search and his role here at Converseon:

If you like to skip ahead to a particular question (although we recommend the entire interview), here are the show notes:

0:00 Intro
0:12 What is the Book About?
1:30 What Updates are in the New Book?
3:44 Who Will Get the Most Out of the Book?
5:00 Why is Search Important ?
6:35 What is the Future of Search Marketing?
8:51 How Are You Using Search at Converseon?

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”
-George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

We’re happy to announce that we will be hosting the second installment of the Social Media Measurement Roundtable at our New York City headquarters on Thursday August 7. This intimate event will feature a select crowd of leading social media measurement thinkers and doers and follows on from the success of the first such event in Toronto earlier this year.

Katie Paine, author of Measuring Public Relationships and CEO of KDPaine & Partners will be assisting in leading discussion at the roundtable. She will also be joined by Marshall Sponder, the Chair of the Web Analytics Association`s Community and Social Media committee and Converseon’s Director of Social Media Constantin Basturea. Social media professionals, PR practicioners and web analytics experts will be present to discuss the methodologies and resources available today in measuring PR and social media initiatives.

Here are the details:

Date: Thursday August 7, 2008

Time: 5:00 – 7:00pm

Location:
Converseon
53 West 36th Street, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10018

We’d love for you to join us and throw your two cents on this topic. However, space is limited and it is essential to RSVP for this event, so if you’d like to attend please RSVP as soon as possible to Chrissie Hsu (chsu AT converseon.com)

Today Aberdeen Group released its Social Media Measurement and Monitoring Report.

As a leading company providing social media monitoring and measurement services Converseon agreed to help sponsor the report earlier this year to help educate the industry. To find out more about our Conversation Mining and eResponder social media monitoring technology, visit our site here. We will be providing a review of the research in the coming days; however, on an initial glance it appears to have some interesting findings, such as:

• It found that Best-in-Class organizations are over 680% more likely than Laggards to improve their ability to predict customer behavior through the use of social media monitoring and analysis tools.

• Best-in-Class companies are nurturing technology implementation with key organizational processes and capabilities, such as a formalized process for monitoring consumer-generated content (65%), dedicated personnel devoted to social media monitoring (52%), and an “early warning system” for detecting potential threats to the brand (42%).

• As a result of strong organizational support, Best-in-Class companies are 5 times more likely than Laggards to be “extremely satisfied” with the number of actionable insights derived from social media monitoring and analysis.

The report is an important contribution to other research of the industry that has been growing, including Peter Kim’s industry report (The Forrester Wave™: Brand Monitoring, Q3 2006) and Nathan Gilliat’s comprehensive Guide to Social Media Analysis.

Access to the report is free until March 31 (just requires a registration) and please click here to download your copy.

We hope you find it interesting and of use and look forward to feedback.

I had the pleasure of participating in the OMMA panel last Monday adeptly moderated by Max Kalehoff with David Dunn of Edelman and Keith O’Brien providing some solid insight. MediaPost provided full coverage of the session. The consensus was, i believe, that in this world of subversive content creation and virality, brands are not quite ready to defend their brand through new and emerging tools.

Of course, I’ve always felt the best defense is a good offense, as indeed if we don’t define ourselves, others will happily define us. With a standing room crowd, the topic is clearly on the minds of many. I predicted that by next year, if the session is done again, that there will be more “directors of social media” in attendance as brands continue to create these internal positions to transcend the traditional marketing siloes that inhibit effective brand defense. We’ll see if the prognostication is accurate over time.