I couldn't be more impressed with the initiative. It's been done on a smaller scale by other companies on the platform but Facebook is scaling it up. It's an imaginative idea and something only Facebook can do in a uniquely Facebook way on mass scale. Uniquely Facebook in how the social networking site is depending upon peer influence to spur action among millions of people. Best of all it takes very little effort by anyone for this to happen. More companies should think this way. It's a lot easier (and less expensive) to make a change, to positively impact the world around you than you may often realize.

Hence the rise of Facebook and Twitter as major marketing platforms. Facebook's revenues appear to have more than doubled year over year. They realized as did many marketers that while social media marketing is critical, it alone without highly synchronized paid digital media investments won't give the consistent scale that a marketer needs to achieve business results. That's why dollars are shifting to Facebook and Twitter so dramatically. The platforms allow for organic, authentic social media engagement to be scaled up with paid investments through advertising products like Reach Generator and Promoted Trends.

This leads to another challenge though - and that's in how you do budgeting. Historically in most corporations, social media spends have been tied to digital cash budgets and separate from the digital media spends. Those budgets were aligned more tightly with the TV, Radio, OOH and Print spends. Certainly not through the same lens as the social media organic spends. In many cases, they even had different budget owners and organizational hierarchies around them.

Now the two sides of social media marketing need to be executed together and therefore the budget needs to sit in one place as does the accountability. Separating out paid digital media as a separate budget bucket from organic social media makes less and less sense. Thinking of paid, owned and social media as fundamentally different is wrong too. They're intrinsically linked. However, your organization is probably not making that change. It probably even uses different agencies to manage the different dimensions of social media marketing. That's a problem. Break down the paid, owned and social media chinese walls right now.

For more on this read the 2nd edition of Social Media Marketing for Dummies.

1. Releasing ads online early is becoming table-stakes. Nearly everyone seems to be doing this and with good reason. It's about building momentum into the Super Bowl typically done with a mixture of paid and organic promotions of the TV ads online.

2. The smarter advertisers are constructing narratives around teasers, the TV commercial and what should happen after the ad airs. Some are even focusing on second screen social TV experiences (we being one of those).

3. A much smaller subset of advertisers are recognizing that there's more to the Super Bowl than just the advertising or their own advertising. As a result, they have a more integrated, cohesive strategy build around the entirety of the Super Bowl experience. More will move in this direction next year.

4. Hashtag mania is taking hold. Lots of advertisers will be promoting hashtags. Many over their Facebook urls or website address. Time will tell whether these are valuable or if they get lost in the clutter of the moment. How many people will use those hashtags that are promoted?

5. Ad-meters galore for certain. Last year we got to experience lots of different ad meters. This year there are going to be even more with many varied measures of success. What's certain every advertiser will probably have at least one meter that they will be able to point to and say that they did well! In another year or two, the ad meters will reduce in number.

For more on the Super Digital mania, read this Reuters piece and this Ad Age story where our Pepsi plans are discussed (there's more detail in the Ad Age story)

Yes, we absolutely live in a real-time world and we have to be hyper-quick. But at the same time changing consumer perceptions of a brand sometimes can take years just as meaningful competitive marketshare moves take time. Influences affecting consumers are more varied, more random and less controllable than ever before too. They're also global and hyper local all at once.

It is indeed a fascinating time to be in marketing. And while some facets of marketing make it an extremely sexy discipline, others make it a more difficult discipline than ever. In this world, the adage, don't mistake motion for progress gets infinitely more complex to recognize.

Television advertising has undergone significant changes in the last 30 years. However, it is arguably on the verge of its greatest changes ever. From where I sit as the Global Head of Digital at PepsiCo Beverages, charged with navigating our brand's foray into the digital world, I see three big changes:

When you look at the statistics, the reasons are obvious. According to a recent study, 60% of television viewers also look at their mobile phones while watching TV shows. 33% have their laptops open in front of them and most interestingly, iPad owners spend the most time in front of the TV with their tablet than any other activity. It makes sense for TV advertisements to be thought of as an element in a broader narrative arch for the brand - a narrative arch that allows the brand to tell a more complete and a more interactive story. But what are the implications for marketers today? Read the complete post on the Harvard Business Review website and catch the earlier piece that I had written for them too.