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consumers looked at native ads 53% more frequently that display ads, and 32% of respondents said they would share a native ad with a family member.

Does that mean those consumers will buy more of the products being advertised? The report claims an 18% lift in purchase intent for native advertising vs. banner ads. Cristina Heise, VP of ad agency gyro Cincinnati, says that ringing up a sale isn't necessarily the purpose of a native ad. "Most of marketing is about repeat exposure and conditioning associating an experience with a brand," she says.

Heise's view, native advertising "goes native" in the sense that it adjusts to its surroundings. That doesn't mean a BuzzFeed ad unit necessarily, though. Heise says a compelling fashion ad in Vogue could be considered native advertising.

I can't tell you how many people asked me in the last couple weeks about Japanese teenage girls renting their thighs as advertising space for everything from Green Day albums to local bookstores. Yes, there is a PR agency offering this service, and yes, some girls seem to have participated. But headlines like "Japanese Women Use Their Thighs as Advertising Space" create fake trend hype. "A Handful of Japanese Teenagers Got Paid to Wear Ads on Their Thighs" isn't so exciting, is it?

While I am a fan of supple thighs, I've not seen this fascinating new advertising medium in use. My vision is perfect, but I would have difficulty making out the ads in the real world, no matter how hard I stare. Despite being technically analog, these ads are 100% digital! The whole point of them is to get media outlets desperate for clicks (I'm looking at you Daily Mail) to write about them. There's a word for this: Gimmick.

prankvertising bandwagon—from which brands attempt to shock and awe people into actually paying attention to advertising, instead of ignoring it.

Images account for nearly 50 percent of the average Facebook News Feed's content. Assuming Facebook is a proxy for the entire Internet, then roughly half the pixels on the Internet are black boxes to ad targeters.

When our emotional desires begin to shift toward a prospective brand, we align our reasons to be consistent with that intention. Our critical mind is always looking for evidence to support our beliefs. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the belief, and the greater the tendency is to seek out supporting evidence. We are not rational. We are rationalizers.

people in survey research and focus groups seek out reasons to explain their feelings about new products, concepts, and ads. Self-reported research shines the spotlight on their logical interpretation of emotion, rather than the motivators of behavior, the emotions themselves. Respondents and subsequently marketers often end up inventing rationalizations instead of big ideas.

Dyson now advises: “Don’t do market research--it will either tell you what you already know or put you off altogether.”

a 365 idea--one that can create 365 days of connection between a brand and people

Creativity and innovation are about finding unexpected solutions to obvious problems or finding obvious solutions to unexpected problems

We should use our creativity to provide better businesses and solutions rather than constantly trying to disrupt what people are doing.

Zappos, Trader Joe's, Amazon.com, Method, Red Bull, The Body Shop, Google, and SodaStream all built their brands without advertising. Their brand advocates are their marketing department. "We've built this entire business, and an entire category in fact, on the power of our brand advocates," says Kristin Harp, U.S. marketing manager at SodaStream, which turns tap water into sparkling water and soda.

the three most powerful social media companies--Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn--never spent a dime on advertising or paid people to recommend them. They didn't need to. Advocates used social media to recommend them to their friends.

You may spend millions of dollars on elaborate marketing campaigns. But there is nothing more powerful than a trusted recommendation from a brand advocate.

It was a year for thinking big, and spreading the wealth. Advertisers continued to move well beyond the 30-, 60- and even 90-second spot in 2013, as two of our top 10 ads this year, including No. 1, stretch beyond three minutes. That's an eternity in Internet time, yet they were watched, loved and shared worldwide.

Six other ads are at least a minute long, leaving just two lonely spots—both of them comedies—holding down the fort for the traditional :30.

The films are a great example of how advertising has evolved for the age of perpetual beta. Had Ikea played the ads straight -- had they run nothing but porny shots of whisks and wooden spoons -- the whole campaign would've died as soon as it hit the intertubes; no one wants to look at that stuff (and the beauty of the Internet is that no one has to). But by blurring the line between advertising and content, Ikea creates incentive for people to click and, the thinking goes, to buy more stuff.

"‘Any PR is good PR’ has been replaced by ‘the end justifies the means.’ Was everyone in the airport in on it? If not, imagine strangers thinking you were wanted. Is that really worth it to the brand?"

And yet, the public's seemingly endless appetite for being part of the show enables stunt makers to push the limits of acceptability. "In this age of anonymity, many people probably feel a perverse sense of flattery for being singled out," says SJU’s Solomon. For some, just being part of these marketing campaigns becomes a fusion of flesh and pixels, the ultimate augmented reality.

"Box office is the result of a wide variety of well-aligned tactics and circumstances, and the goal of a stunt, such as our beauty shop scare, is often to earn attention versus buying attention with an audience. When it's successful, the attention you earn greatly exceeds the cost of buying an equal amount of exposure with that audience."

many execs say it's impossible to draw direct correlations between stunts and sales. Most clients seem satisfied with generating high levels of social sharing, with online views providing substantial savings compared to paid media. "From our perspective ... it will more than pay for itself in earned media and 'share of conversation.' That, in turn, translates into brand worth, which in turn drives sales," says Thomas Moradpour, vp, global marketing at Carlsberg. "We won’t be able to track a direct bump—too many variables—but we’ll measure the impact on brand health and equity through our brand trackers in all of our key international markets."

many execs say it's impossible to draw direct correlations between stunts and sales. Most clients seem satisfied with generating high levels of social sharing, with online views providing substantial savings compared to paid media. "From our perspective ... it will more than pay for itself in earned media and 'share of conversation.' That, in turn, translates into brand worth, which in turn drives sales," says Thomas Moradpour, vp, global marketing at Carlsberg. "We won’t be able to track a direct bump—too many variables—but we’ll measure the impact on brand health and equity through our brand trackers in all of our key international markets."

marketers are staging "pranks on steroids," upping the ante in almost every imaginable way and probing darker territory—with the sponsor's name attached. Scenarios that trade on fear, death and danger test the limits of personal privacy and social acceptability. The genre, he says, represents "the dark side of the constant drumbeat to enhance consumer engagement."