“In these days of budget cuts and profit woes, even the most hardened of advertisers are wondering about whether to invest in advertising. Hesitancy stems not only from leaner profits making advertising expenditures less viable, but lack of insight into whether advertising really works, and if so, when and why.”

“Companies have access to more information about their customers than ever before, and customers aren’t exactly jumping for joy. Purchasing habits, medical information, financial reports, favorite music groups, and millions of other bits of personal information are being captured by companies. In Making It Personal: How to Profit from Personalization without Invading Privacy, Bruce Kasanoff teaches businesses how to get closer to customers without violating their trust.”

“Before there were presentations, there were conversations, which were a little like presentations but used fewer bullet points, and no one had to dim the lights. A woman we can call Sarah Wyndham, a defense-industry consultant living in Alexandria, Virginia, recently began to feel that her two daughters weren’t listening when she asked them to clean their bedrooms and do their chores. So, one morning, she sat down at her computer, opened Microsoft’s PowerPoint program, and typed…”

“A while back, I wrote about how I was going to use the term ’search engine marketing’ rather than ’search engine optimization’ to cover the wide range of activities involved in obtaining traffic from search engines. Apparently, readers like the idea. Over 30 people sent emails to me on the subject, with the vast majority of them in favor of the change.”