Open Source Marketing & Advertising

Implications: Fueled by the wider "Web 2.0" movement and technology protocols, marketing and advertising are also setting up to explore "open source" as an option -- a collaboration-based "operating system" for media and advertising metrics. M&A activity within media and digital advertising is also opening the doorway for shared access to consumer-facing ("attention" metadata ownership) and advertiser-side (ad optimization) information.

Analysis: Back in 2005, Doug Weaver suggested that we would see the emergence of Open Source Marketing and discussed its many promises. 

Today, we're absolutely moving toward a world where "markets are conversations" (The ClueTrain Manifesto) and companies like Google (GOOG) are setting up to give away valuable tools and information.  The benefits of recognizing and acting on these once futuristic concepts are becoming increasingly powerful for companies that are willing and able to adapt -- today.

Says Weaver, "Open source marketing can actually shed light on what happens when you turn the various knobs in the online plan."

While this may sound rather un-compelling to the layperson, to Web marketers its a bit of a Holy Grail. 

As we examine the moves and predict the plans of companies like Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) and All Mighty Google we're also forced to closely track their many competitors -- from clunky, publicly held Goliaths to nimble, privately funded start-up companies that see the same potential to not only "free up" consumer-based data and media but marketing/advertising data.  They, too, see the potential.