We've have been enjoying the content on VentureBlog and Bag and Baggage for some time, but recently both of these Creative Commons licensed blogs did a great job covering The Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital Conference.

Thanks to some restrictions on the conference, professional journalists were not allowed to cover the event, but audience members could. VentureBlog had some great insights to take away from the conference and Bag and Baggage did a great job taking live notes from the Steve Jobs interview and the dinner with Bill Gates, and also posted photos from the event.

In addition to the recent reporting, each blog has content worthy of merit. VentureBlog is run by venture capital firm investors and their series of posts on Presenting Your Company offers many useful insider tips. We've pointed to Denise at Bag and Baggage before on this weblog, but her posts on what Creative Commons licenses mean for weblog authors were instructive for the community.

Lots of good folks will be at the ClickZ Weblog Business Strategy conference in Boston next Monday and Tuesday. I'll be moderating the Blogging Technologies and Platforms panel Monday at 4:45. Also on the panel: Dan, Anil, Bob, Michael, John and Jason.

SearchEngineWatch: Ad Agencies Slowly Embrace Search Engine Marketing

As the cottage industry of search engine marketing continues to mature into a legitimate form of brand and conversion marketing, traditional ad agencies are actively stepping in to take advantage of the growth in search industry dollars.

Are they? Whilst it is true that the media, interactive, digital and direct marketing arms of major agency groups are focusing more and more attention on SEM, it is a bit misleading to state that traditional ad agencies are. Creativity and coke still rule the roast there - both of which are totally incompatible with SEM.

B2BMarketingBiz: If Your CEO Gave You $50,000, What Marketing Tactics Would You Spend it On?

So here's what your peers would be up to if some extra budget came their way this year:

Here are the top seven tactics that marketers seeking a safe investment volunteered to spend their $50,000 on:

1. Direct postal mail
2 & 3 (tied). Telemarketing and email
4. Search engine marketing
5. PR
6. Revamping current Web site
7. Webinars

Here are the seven tactics that marketers most yearned to test out, if they didn't have to worry as much about the bottom line right away (note that telemarketing didn't even make the list):

1. Search engine marketing
2. Email marketing
3. Webinars
4. Revamping current Web site
5. Direct postal mail
6. Launching an email newsletter
7. PR

Wired: Spam Is in Eye of the Beholder

A somewhat tongue in cheek look at the discussion on spam from this top direct marketing event. I'm sure that we will be hearing more reports from here soon.

Between sessions, some mourned the loss of their very favorite sales-pitch slogans.

"I feel like a lot of really good words have been stolen from me," said Kevin Codell, a freelance advertising copywriter who is attending the conference.

"Free. Opportunity. Exciting. Credit. All of these words are now too 'spammy' to use because they are on the block lists used by antispam filters," he said. "Even e-mails containing the word click are being filtered out now."

VentureBlog: The Savior Of Web Advertising?

Consumers have one of two modes when they visit websites: browse or search. In browse mode, they're surfing from one site to another, maybe reading, maybe being entertained but generally not stopping in any one place too long. In search mode, they're looking for something specific and have an end goal in mind. Most (but not all) browse mode traffic occurs off search engines and much (but not all) search mode traffic occurs on search engines. Search type traffic also occurs on product review sites and comparative pricing engines.

I would argue that contextual advertising of the type John discusses in his article is extremely effective when a user is in search mode but a needless distraction in browse mode.

I'm in half agreement with this - Whilst it is true that non-search based contextual advertising will not work as well as search based, that does not mean that it won't work to a reasonable level. The real question is - what will that level be?

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