Listening to leading advertising executives wax about the state of digital marketing and you’re left with the feeling of an industry that hasn’t gotten comfortable in its own skin yet.

At the Always On conference in New York, attendees from ad agencies, Web companies, ad network descended on the Mandarin Oriental in Columbus Circle to discuss all things new media.

Participants in one panel tackled the subject of monetization — a question at the top of the agenda of every advertiser and content publisher trying to find their niche on the Web.

Well, like most panels where top-level executives gather to discuss top-level issues, the panel titled “When Will Online Advertising Dollars Catch up with Online Viewership?” raised more questions than it answered.

“We live in impatient times, but we’re actually moving very fast,” said Bruce Nelson, Vice Chairman of Omnicom, one of the world’s largest advertising holding companies.

Penry Price, Google’s Vice President of Advertising Sales, suggested that the blusterous tide that carried in the first wave of Internet high-flyers 10 odd years ago set expectations too high, that a transformative medium like the Web needs time to mature.

Nelson reminded the audience that ad spending on the Web is increasing at twice the rate of the previous newcomer to the media mix: cable television. And cable didn’t require advertisers to reinvent the playbook — Madison Avenue creatives been making TV spots for decades.

But, step back 30 years earlier, and broadcast TV was the new kid on the block scrapping to earn respect from advertisers, Bob Jeffrey reminded us. Jeffrey is the chairman and CEO of JWT, another global advertising powerhouse, and he knows his history.

“A lot of creatives weren’t interested in television in the early 50’s,” he said. “A double-page spread in Life magazine was considered a career maker.”

Creatives are still learning how to create and package their messages online. Media buyers are still figuring out the best pricing structures, and advertisers are still grappling with the ROI matrix.

The takeaway message: it’s an evolutionary process. Both Jeffrey and Nelson said that they no longer encountered any resistance from their clients in convincing them to integrate digital into their media mix.

Price demurred when asked about Google’s designs on horning in on the agency’s business: “We don’t want to purchase any agencies — that’s not a margin business we want to get into.” (Sprinkles of laughter throughout the crowd.)

“We do want to work with agencies and work with creatives,” he said, emphasizing that Google’s core competencies do not include storytelling – the pap of the agencies’ output. What Google brings to the table is scale, reach and solutions to technical problems, which could make it a very powerful ally for the agencies.

But when it comes to advertising, Price admits that even Google doesn’t have a crystal ball:

“The Internet and digital media is about the most blank canvas that we have.”

The rumors are not new, but they're getting hard to ignore.  The New York Post has turned up sources close to Yahoo who warn that CEO Jerry Yang might be forced to sell a large stake of the company to a private equity firm out of fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders.  Yahoo's stock is hovering a couple points above its 52 week low. The company is expected to lay off hundreds -- if not thousands (Henry Blodget has reported 2,500).

Next Wednesday the company reports its fourth quarter earnings. In the interest of showing good faith for the investors, official word on the extent of the layoffs (it seems now more a question of how many, not if) could come before or along with the earnings, which are expected to be bleak.

Yahoo continues to lose market share and ad revenue to Google, but of course the other portals are, too. And with the economy threatening to slip into recession, Yahoo isn't the only company that will be tightening its belt. Google's stock has dipped of late, and could very well slide further in a jittery economy.

But Google and Yahoo are catching the economic downturn on a different plane than Yahoo. At CES earlier this month, Yang laid out a vision for making Yahoo the "indispensable" starting point on the Web. At this precarious point, we're left to wonder if Yang will even get the chance to see it through.

Public-interest groups like the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) are a vital safeguard for consumers in the digital age. They keep vigilant watch over the Internet, fight the tough fight against large companies and hack through arcane government bureaucracies. Their dedicated staffs work long hours to promote the causes of consumer protection and corporate transparency. These principles are beyond reproach.

But there might come a point when even the champions of the good fight go too far.

EPIC and several other groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission on Saturday requesting that the agency order Ask.com to pull its AskEraser product from the market. AskEraser is a privacy feature that promises to delete users' browsing histories from Ask's servers. The product was introduced in December.

In the complaint, EPIC et al charge Ask with deceptive trade practices, claiming that the product creates a unique persistent identifier that could still be used to track consumers, that the information trail of users who enabled AskEraser is still available to Ask's business partners, like Google, and that the mechanism of the opt-out cookie is not a viable privacy safeguard because it does not scale.

The complaint also takes issue with the two-year lifespan of the AskEraser cookie. The groups are not right on this one. Ask changed the application earlier this month, extending the life of the askeraser cookie to 30 years. This information is available on Ask's Frequently Asked Questions page.

The point about consumer data being tracked by Ask's business partners is true enough. Google serves ads on Ask's search pages, and, by the terms of its agreement Ask has no control over what information is stored on the servers of Google. Ask readily admitted this limitation when it rolled out AskEraser, and virtually ever media outlet that covered the announcement included that important point in the story. That important point also appears in Ask's FAQ section.

The groups also object to the unique persistent identifier that is created in the form of a time stamp when a user turns on AskEraser.  This is certainly the case, but Ask rebuts the charge with the claim that, with its search logs expunged, there is nothing to track, so the persistent identifier is a non-issue.

Finally, EPIC et al take issue with Ask's warning that it will turn AskEraser off if ordered to do so by a court or other legal authority.  The FTC complaint calls this a deceptive trade practice; Ask says that it, like any legitimate business, is obligated to comply with the law.

Nicholas Graham, Ask's vice president of corporate communications, freely admits that AskEraser is not perfect, that it has limitations and room for improvement. The roll-out of AskEraser grabbed headlines because it was the first time a major search engine had offered a feature that gave customers the chance to erase their browsing histories. The CDD, one of the groups that signed the complaint, greeted the announcement in December with an upbeat tone of cautious optimism. It was a good first step.

Now, after EPIC and Ask have been unable to connect to discuss the concerns on a technical level, the groups are taking their case to the FTC, calling for the product to be pulled from the market. The debatable merits of the complaint notwithstanding, by appealing to the feds to shut the service down, they give scant incentive to other search companies to develop similar features that start taking privacy more seriously. And that is, after all, what they want. Isn't it?

Most of the lawsuits that the RIAA issues never make it to court.  Usually, recipients of the association's prelitigation letters, very often university students, settle, staving off the possibility of an ugly, expensive legal mess.

Such was not the case with Tanya Andersen, a disabled single mother living in Oregon, responded to the RIAA's lawsuit in 2005 with a vigorous denial of the charges and a countersuit.  The RIAA's suit has since been tossed out of court, and earlier this week, a U.S. District judge in Oregon upheld an earlier ruling that the RIAA must compensate Andersen for her legal fees.

The judge also cleared the way for Andersen's malicious-prosecution case against the RIAA to obtain a class-action status.  Among the bizarre tactics that Andersen alleges the RIAA investigators engaged in include impersonating a relative while on the phone with her elementary-school-aged daughter.

The RIAA legal beat is nothing if not lively.  Of necessity, the RIAA's file-sharing cases that make it to court get very personal very quickly.  We learn what kind of music people listen to, what sorts of pornography they favor and other details about their Internet habits that they'd just as soon keep to themselves.  Well, Andersen's showing us that the mud flies both ways.  This should be a fun one to watch.

Time is running short for aspirant Web marketeers to take up the Google Online Marketing challenge.

Google sent out a notice today calling for more universities to enter the competition where marketing students will see who can deliver the best results to a local small business using AdWords.

The rules: the company can't have more than 100 employees, and it has to already have a Web site.  Faculty members divide up their marketing students into teams, and each team gets a $200 AdWords voucher to work their marketing magic.

Teams are to submit a market analysis of the company before and after the AdWords campaign.  What could be better?  A small business gets a free marketing consult, marketing students get some high-octane resume fodder, and Google takes yet another step toward institutionalizing itself.  After all, what better way to position AdWords as the pivot point of online marketing for small businesses than to secure the endorsement of academia at large?

Talk about a marketing strategy: Google reaches out to the university community, offers a modest AdWords voucher and the promise of the real-world experience that professors love to talk up in their course descriptions, and -- BOOM!  Google's on the syllabus of Marketing 101 classes in schools around the world.

Google said that it set out with the modest goal of signing up 200 schools worldwide.  To date, 724 universities in the United States alone have signed up.

Ingenious.  To the clever folks in Mountain View, I doff my mortarboard to you!

Might we look forward to a day when the RIAA is nothing more than four dead letters?  Could it be?  But who would attend the funeral, other than Lars Ulrich?

Rumors are beginning to swirl that EMI, one of the Big Four record labels, is considering withdrawing its support from the RIAA and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the music industry trade association in Great Britain.

Variety has reported that EMI is in talks with the other major record labels over the potential of restructuring the trade groups.  In December, EMI sent a letter to the IFPI that could well become the first step toward its withdrawal from the organization.  There's also been some talk of merging the two groups into one.

In any event, EMI isn't happy with the trade groups.  Threatening the RIAA with the prospect of withdrawing from the group -- and even taking other labels with it -- just might be enough to force its hand and change its policies.  After all, what would the RIAA be if the big four -- with their myriad subsidiary labels -- dropped it?  It would be an association in search of an industry to represent.

Speculation and rumors for now, to be sure, but it's got to be an encouraging sign for the legions of folks out there who've been taking shots at the RIAA for the last several years.

The RIAA has taken a firm stand against digital piracy.  On its Web site there is no shortage of saber-rattling rhetoric about prosecution and lawsuits and the moral outrage of stealing from copyright-holders.

The validity of these claims really isn't important anymore.  Suing your fans by the thousands isn't good for business, certainly not when your most visible success came in the form of a $222,000 damages award won from a single mother for downloading 24 songs from the Internet.

Throwing mud at the RIAA is a favorite pastime in blogdom, so no need to pile on anymore.  We can leave it at this: The legal strategy is obviously failing.  CD sales are plummeting, major artists are defecting from their labels in droves, and DRM-free digital music is going to become the industry standard -- just how effectively has the RIAA been representing its industry?  Sounds like EMI already has an answer.