Because I’m feeling a little scattered today, this blog entry is a veritable potpourri of stuff.

Google has opened its television ad program to all marketers. The company has been testing the TV Ads platform, which uses an auction model, since June of 2007. The analytics include how many seconds consumers were tuned into an ad (per impression) and how many consumers watched from start to finish. The program allows businesses to reach upwards of 13 million Dish Network households from 94 different cable networks.

I’ve spent much of the week at Web 2.0 Expo. Man, the show was good and very well attended. It was also super well organized. And the Blogtropul.us (a room for bloggers) was hopping with people streaming live, blogging, doing video and writing up real time accounts from the show. There was even yoga happening in there.

Earlier this week the market researcher the e-tailing group put out its 7th annual Merchant Survey. The study reveals that merchants are taking a laser focused approach, doing more with less online and streamlining for performance and profitability.

The one-day LinkShare Summit is over and I came away from the event with some new ideas, a ton of business cards, a renewed positive outlook about the state of interactive marketing and a very nasty head cold.

I’m off to attend the LinkShare Summit all day today. I expect the day to be jam-packed with networking and sessions. I’m really looking forward to hearing the keynote speaker Ian Ayres, a professor at the Yale School of Management and author of the book Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart. I always get something valuable from speakers with an economic, academic or business background.

One of the most challenging issues facing online merchants is recruiting new affiliates. In fact, we have a feature article on that very topic in the latest issue (January/February) of Revenue. And while Senior Writer Alexandra Wharton talks to a wide array of publishers and merchants about the complex and often frustrating issue of affiliate recruiting, the show promoters of Affiliate Summit have come up with a unique approach to give merchants unprecedented direct access to top earning affiliates.

This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast my fabulous co-host Shawn Collins and I talked about the new MacBook Air at announced MacWorld, a hosted version of OpenAds, why relying solely on Google AdSense is not a good idea, Shawn’s continued fatblogging efforts, the Great Affiliate Road Rally charity event at Affiliate Summit West, and Pepperjam’s launch of new affiliate network. Listen to the show.

I recently received yet another hand-written letter from a grateful reader. This one was filled with praise for the magazine as well as a few too many details about the author’s personal life. I think outlining his string of tragedies was meant to provide me with some insight about how he is working very hard to make lemonade out of the lemons he was dealt.

The letter was touching because it was heartfelt and infused with the excitement of how online marketing might help provide a better life. My guess is that many people stumble into online marketing with the same unbridled hope. He specifically cited the Affiliate Advantage interview with Kim Rowley as an inspiring and uplifting article.

According to a new study by The Nielsen Company, tweens (kids ages 8 to 12) may be leading the U.S. mobile marketing revolution.

The findings state 5 percent of tweens access the Internet over their phone each month.
Forty-one percent of tween mobile Internet users say they do so while commuting or traveling (to school, for example), mobile content such as the Internet is also a social medium for this audience. 26 percent of tween mobile Internet users say they access the web while at a friend’s house and 17 percent say they do so at social events, according to the research.

Revenue’s November/December cover story was about search alternatives. Senior Writer Alex Wharton opened the article with an anecdote about someone cruising around on Digg.com and stumbling upon popular story about “the Slanket” and then purchasing the item.

Alex did a great job of illustrating how people can serendipitously “find” things they want when they weren’t even looking for them. I highly recommend you read the story.