As digital marketers, we're constantly tasked with getting customers to do something. Like this. Click that. Comment here. Buy now. Engage, please.

Brands can successfully and consistently accomplish this by rewarding their customers. Those rewards do not have to be financial in nature....

Here's a video on my panel this week at OMMA RTB. If you don't have time to sit through this, I recommend checking out the post I wrote, Is is time for a Real-Time marketing culture, to work out my thoughts for this panel.

I'm writing this post on an airplane, watching President Obama's inauguration in real-time as I soar across the United States. 

I'm heading to NYC because I'll be speaking on a panel titled From Real-Time Bidding to a Real-Time Marketing Culture at the OMMA RTB conference this Thursday, January 24.

(...at 2:30pm at the Grand Hyatt if you'd like to come...)

2012 was a crazy year for advertisers. It seemed like there was a new trend, buzzword or meme to make sense of every week. And, of course, the good folks at Traction are dedicated to helping you understand them.

Here's a roundup of my 12 favorite stories we wrote in 2012.

Last night was the company holiday party. We went bowling.

I had a byline today in Ad Age today about why the mobile ad industry is failing. There's great targeting capability happening with "Big Data" but what value does it bring to advertisers?

I had an article published on iMedia today about Agency Partnerships. Partnerships are vital in today's day and age—and we've had a lot of them. Here I provide 5 tips to be successful at them.

After writing a post a few weeks ago called "Is Coke it?" on the new content-driven website for coca-colacompany.com, Ashley Brown, Coke's head of digital and social media reached out to me and invited me to write a follow-up story on the pages of Coca-Cola's very own web site.

I just got back from the iMedia Breakthrough Summit which was almost completely focused on mobile. Within the first 10 minutes of the conference, someone cracked the joke that "once again, this is the year of mobile!"

There are a zillion stats I could post (I won't bother) showing we all use smartphones to access the internet these days. But what does that mean for advertisers? 

Advertisers, marketers and agencies alike have had a tough year, but at the end of it all we have plenty reasons to be thankful. 

Here are seven things that any and all of us industry folk can thank our lucky stars for.