Todd, who’s the cofounder and CMO of Newsforce, stressed in an interview, “The attribution model is the only model, frankly.”  Which is an endorsement that’s about as strong as they come.

Then, with respect to how everyone else at the OMS conference felt that performance and branding should be balanced, Todd said, “Most of the marketers . . . are absolutely convinced that blended is good and there has to be a certain amount of branding stuff that feeds the top of the funnel or you’re never going to get anything at the bottom of the funnel.”

And finally, although Todd also pointed out that the theory has been around for decades, she touched on the fact that the marketing “rule of three” has been confirmed, meaning it takes three exposures for individuals to remember a person, brand, or just about anything.

Take these matters into consideration as you move forward with any marketing campaigns, then.

According to Todd, storyteller marketing has been somewhat abandoned due to the short-sided nature of performance marketing. Most search marketers think in terms of click-to-click or campaign-to-campaign, but storyteller marketing takes a bigger commitment.

Todd recommends that marketers look at communication goals and understand what they want people to believe about their business. Once that is determined, marketers can then develop a storyline with those goals integrated into their brand.

Next, Todd says marketers need to commit to that storyline for a minimum of three years. While this doesn’t mean using the same ad over and over, it does mean building and developing the storyline in a variety of ways.

Storyteller marketing is a powerful way to connect with people, so why not utilize it?

All the search engines have recently stepped up their efforts with semantic search and hope to better understand each user’s intent. For example, if a user searches for “cougar” are they looking for an animal, a car, or a TV series?  Semantic technology has potential to provide a better understanding of that intent.

While many questions pertaining to semantics remain, one certainty that Dana Todd of Newsforce points out is that semantics go beyond keywords and produce new and intriguing data layers to calculate.

Where do you think semantics will take us moving forward? Do you have concerns about semantic search?

Some marketers are overwhelmed by the social media outbreak and have trouble integrating it into their business. It is important to remember that social media is a powerful force that can increase brand awareness, control reputation management, and more.

To begin, Dana suggests looking into your business structure and target market. Secondly, determine what you need to do to improve your business and how you can engage in it with your target. Once that is done, the question of which social tools you should use should be clear.

Have you found the right fit for social media in your business model? If so, how did you reach that determination?

First of all, the print media is noticeably struggling but this only means more and more people are going online for their news. According to her presentation on “News Search SEO” at SES New York, Dana says news sites have more than 250 million readers.

Additional data from Dana further proves that the news industry is not going anywhere anytime soon:

-    The newspaper digital audience has grown 60 percent in the last three years.
-    44 percent of all Web users visited newspaper Web sites in January of 2009.
-    Newspaper views are up to trillions monthly.
-    Alternative news sources (search, Twitter, blogs, social media, etc.) offer more opportunities.

Social media in general, but especially Twitter, have renewed an interest in news for many people. The fact that Google is now including Twitter results into Google results is just more evidence of the value and opportunities of news online.

This information is valuable to NewsForce because it allows the online news space increase their prominence and visibility in the traditional news space through its advertising channel.

“We’ve also been tracking the migration of people and technologies into in-house support both on the SEO side and the paper-click side. So a more and more emerging class of marketers who are inside corporations are building search strategies within those organizations.”

Another issue that seems to be unfolding is the trend toward paid searches. Demand for search engine marketing is still strong, but buying it and the quality of it is a completely different story. Dana Todd explained to us what this means.

“So I think what’s happening, is back in the early days of SEO, it didn’t cost a lot because very few people did it, and it was just sort of tinkering around. And then, all of a sudden, it got really expensive and I remember in the early days like when i price pack was first startingyou know, at the time it was scandalous to think that someone could charge $100,000 for SEO. Now, you can certainly see a more diversified approach to that. Some people are actually cutting it up and doing pieces of it.”

There is also a greater emphasis on paid searches. While demand is still very high for search marketing, the buying game is a different story. You are now seeing a more diversified approach since many companies are sharing the load. Companies are moving to a more specialized form of search marketing. Despite these trends, companies still need to work together in order to be successful.

Todd also told us all about the SEMPO Institute and how you can attend. Learn more about all this and much more from the exclusive WebProNews video shot on location at SES New York 2007.

SEMPO is currently winding down market research aimed at measuring the attitudes surrounding click fraud by primarily gauging how deeply advertisers are concerned about the practice, and whether they feel that deliberate steps need to be taken in order to address the issue. SEMPO is also launching an institute designed to produce a new generation of search engine marketing professionals, offering courses in the fundamentals of SEM, as well as advanced SEO and SEM offerings. As SEM begins to disperse into specialized realms, it will be important to have adequately educated professionals spearheading the profession.