Here are a few of the top stories in which eMarketer data and analysis were featured this week:

6/17: Forbes.com – What Digital Marketers Can Learn From Cooking Fried Chicken
Every American loves fried chicken, so much so that fried-chicken recipes have become a sacred part of American cuisine. And who among us can think of fried chicken without Colonel Sanders springing immediately to mind? Read more.

6/17: Mashable.com – 4 Rules of Engagement for Mobile Marketing
Smartphones, the most powerful data-collection tools ever created, don’t just tell brands what consumers want but where consumers are. Sometimes they even tell brands what consumers are doing at different times of the day. Read more.

6/17: USA Today – Cannes ad fest kicks off this weekend
Marketing messages are all around us. They appear on our TV screens and near our Facebook profiles. They arrive through Outlook email and via Twitter tweets. They stare up from the plastic bins at the airport security check and are on the plastic keys used to unlock hotel room doors. Read more.

6/16: AdAge.com – TV Ad Services Provider DG Buys Online Ad Firm MediaMind for $414 Million
Another day, another big transaction in online advertising. Days after Google finalized its $390 million deal for Admeld, Texas-based DG acquired online ad firm MediaMind for $414 million in cash. Read more.

6.15: WSJ.com – Bubble Worries Hit Tech Firms Based in China
Concerns about a new bubble in the tech sector have spread to China’s Internet industry, combining with questions about accounting issues at Chinese firms to drive down share prices from sky-high levels, and raising questions about the appetite for further U.S. listings by Chinese Web companies. Read more.

6/14: eMarketer.com – Geoff Ramsey & Vipin Mayar Predict Display Growth at 2011 IAB Innovation Days
eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey and McCann Worldgroup EVP Vipin Mayar predict 20 percent growth in online advertising, fast growth in display ads and the dynamic need for metrics, measurement, and frameworks. Read more.

6/13: MediaPost.com – Brands Waste Budgets In Misdirected Attribution, Media Buys
Between 36% and 60% of companies’ digital advertising revenue could be at risk for misdirected media buys. That’s according to a ClearSaleing study released Monday. Read more.

6/13: WSJ.com – Google Sees Admeld Boosting Display Ad Efforts
Google Inc. (GOOG) on Monday confirmed a deal to buy online-ad firm Admeld Inc., as the technology giant bolstered its offerings for selling graphical and interactive ads. Read more.

6/13: Reuters.com – Facebook looking at IPO in first quarter
Facebook is preparing to file for an initial public offering as early as October or November that could value the popular social networking site at more than $100 billion, financial news channel CNBC reported on Monday. Read more.

6/13: FastCompany.com – The Twitter Paradox
There’s an old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Twitter is a paradox that redefines that old saying to, “If it’s broke, don’t fix it, because it works.” Read more.

6/13: BusinessInsider.com – Is Groupon An Overvalued One-Trick Pony?
The moment Groupon goes public later this year, it becomes a takeover target — it can’t happen too soon, given the latest turn of events. Read more.

6/13: Mashable.com – Display Ad Spending Jumped 14.6% in the First Quarter
In another sign of confirmation that the display ad business is booming, Kantar Media estimates such advertising grew 14.6% in 2011′s first quarter. Read more.

For more of eMarketer’s recent news coverage, click here.

eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey participated in last week’s M.Tech 2011 virtual microconference on ‘Defining the Frontier of Marketing Technology.’ Sixty leaders shared their most important takeaways on the rapidly converging world of marketing and technology. In case you missed it, you can view the replay here.

To listen and watch playback of the webinar, Tips for Reaching & Engaging the Elusive Millennial with eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey, click here. You can view the PowerPoint deck below.

Join eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey to find out about:

• The fluid ways these digital natives spend their media time
• What they really think about advertising
• Why their deep involvement with social media does not mean deep trust
  of social networks
• What brands need to know about the research and purchase habits of these
  device agnostics
• What are the marketing techniques that fail with millennials—and the
  ones that succeed

About Geoff Ramsey
Geoff Ramsey is one of the internet’s most exciting digital marketing visionaries. As CEO and co-founder of eMarketer, Geoff is on the cutting edge of new research statistics, trends and best practices, covering every aspect of marketing in the digital age. He is frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNN, Bloomberg Businessweek and Advertising Age.

A highly regarded speaker with an engaging presentation style, Geoff speaks at major digital, media and corporate events around the globe, including the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Sponsored by:

To watch playback from this Webinar, click here.

Social media has certainly got the attention of marketers today. In fact, over one-half claim they’re “participating” in the social media realm, and a majority expect to boost their social media expenditures this year.

However, when it comes to actually measuring a return on their social investment, fewer than one-fifth do so. There are many obstacles, not the least of which is a dizzying array of social media metrics to choose from. But the tide is turning. Marketers are figuring out how to justify the dollar and time expenditures required to engage with consumers in social media, both on large social networks such as Facebook and marketers’ own social microsites.

In this engaging, informative webinar, eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey will walk you through the seven guidelines for making and measuring a social media payout, all based on hard data, case studies and a cross-section of best practices culled from leading experts and marketers.

In this session, you’ll find out:

• Why fewer than one in five marketers currently measure social ROI
• Why 2010 will be the year social media gets an ROI mandate
• How the leaders in social media measurement enjoy a competitive advantage
• What the seven practical solutions for driving bottom-line results from your social media investment are

About Geoff Ramsey

Geoff Ramsey is one of the Internet’s most exciting digital marketing visionaries. As CEO and co-founder of eMarketer, Geoff is on the cutting edge of new research statistics, trends and best practices, covering every aspect of marketing in the digital age.

He is frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNN, BusinessWeek, Business 2.0 and Advertising Age. A highly regarded speaker with an engaging presentation style, Geoff speaks at major industry and corporate events around the globe, including ad:tech, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), The Conference Board, the Economist Conferences, Yahoo!, Google, OMMA and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA).

Prior to starting eMarketer, Geoff worked at several large New York ad agencies, including TBWA and Ogilvy & Mather, where he ran multinational accounts for brands including Procter & Gamble, Kraft General Foods, M&M Mars and AT&T.

To watch playback from this Webinar, click here.

Speaker: Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer CEO
What: Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media
When: Thursday, April 29, 2010, 1 PM ET

Sponsored by Unica.

During the course of last week we weighed in on several trends to watch in 2010. Here’s a quick and tidy round-up of those predictions.

• Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO, Geoff Ramsey: During 2010, as US ad budgets crack open just a little, look for an accelerated migration of ad dollars from traditional to digital media. Advertising on social networks will never attract a large share of marketers’ ad dollars, while the classic interruption/disruption model of advertising, whereby marketers insert unwanted, usually irrelevant ads as a price the consumer must pay to view desired content, will erode, if not fade away.



• Social Media: Marketers will demand better ways to manage and measure the impact of earned media—the additional unpaid exposure a brand gets when consumers share about the brand online. Search will get more social in several ways: by including real-time content in results (e.g., Twitter posts), adding information from social network friends to results, and using collective information from other Web users to hone search relevance. These trends will yield new ad formats that may incorporate friends’ viewpoints or interactions directly into the ad—and will raise new red flags among privacy advocates. (Read more…)