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The necessity of having a clear and cohesive mobile marketing strategy has never been greater. Companies that do not have a mobile marketing strategy now are light years behind the curve in the face of booming smartphone adoption and changing consumer behavior. Research firm Forrester took a look at some of the biggest and best mobile marketing companies to see how they stack up and what benefits they can add for companies.

There is a problem with Forrester's research. Mainly, it looks only at the biggest and best. It is an enterprise-focused report that narrows in on nine mobile marketing companies and the strengths behind each. Fundamentally, this is the wrong approach to take in a world where dozens of innovative startups are tackling the idea of mobile marketing with fresh ideas and eager teams.

Back in the day; back when we still did telephone interviews, mall intercepts, and door to door product placements, i.e. before the Internet, it used to take weeks, sometimes months, to get results from marketing research projects.

To test a package, for example, we would contract with a field service that had a mall facility and recruit shoppers to compare the package designs and tell us about their preferences. Generally it would take two to three weeks to get the artwork and approvals from the client, two weeks to actually conduct the interviewing, a week to have the questionnaires coded and tabulated, then another week to prepare the final report and present it to the client.

A new report out from Sitel on social media and consumer trends implies that social media is key to reaching Gen Y (those born between 1980 and 2000), but the numbers don't add up. While the Gen Y, or people born between 1980-2000, are in fact "digital natives," that doesn't mean they are actually most reachable via social media marketing.

It's almost a decade ago now that the 2002 film Minority Report showed the moral majority what the future will look like in 2054 when mobility, geo-location and targeted content technologies merge. While the movie looks at various elements of the digital future, the biggest 'ah ha' moment for both privacy advocates and marketers alike happens when John Anderton (Tom Cruise) has his retinas scanned as he exists the train and a digital billboard displays "John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right now."

So how long until you walk past a store and it offers the "other people like/bought" experience outside of the confines of a website? Services like AT&T's Shop Alerts show promise by linking customers proximity to stores and offers. But these aren't the "other people like you" recommendations based on behavior that go beyond the proximity to a store you already like (and have already subscribed to).

So it is that time of year, when we think back on all of our past successes and failures. Here are the most notable PR blunders that we've seen cross our desktops in the year. We have removed the actual names of the offending parties, just to make it a more sporting game. The hard part of this piece was limiting it to just the ten biggest.

There have been a lot of stats thrown at developers this week. The Pew Internet and American Life Project said that 50% of all U.S. adults have apps on their cellphones either coming from downloads or pre-loads by the carriers. Nielsen says that 43% of all U.S. adults have smartphones and that 62% of adults aged 25-44 have smartphones. This all brings us to a question all mobile developers should be asking themselves: Who are you developing for?

Coders have a habit of focusing on functionality. They see that something can be done in the environment they are working in and then go about connecting the codes, SDKs and APIs to create a dynamic app. Add some great artwork and a great app is born. Or is it? Is it a great app if nobody is using it?

Scott Berkun is giving away his latest title Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds through November 3rd.

All he wants in return? Your email address. More specifically, Berkun asks that folks sign up for his monthly mailing list. And you can unsubscribe if you don't like what he's sending, so there's little risk involved.

Over 40% of a brand's Facebook page fans "unlike" the page as soon as a campaign ends, suggesting that a lot of follower activity on the social network is driven by agency interaction, not a real loyalty to the brand, according to a new study.

The study by DDB reveals that two in five brand followers surveyed are not interested in engaging with Facebook pages after a marketing engagement ends.

Klout revealed a beta version of its new topic pages today, which it hopes will turn the company into something more like a Nielsen-type rating service rather than a vanity metric for people using social media.

The pages are Klout's way of scanning the Web looking for influential discussions and the people who are leading those discussions.

If you want something more capable than Hootsuite to handle your social media marketing, then you might want to take a closer look at what Pardot's Marketing Automation service provides. The marketing automation platform has gotten some new social media features that complement its existing tools for handling CRM integration, email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring and ROI reporting.