Microformats for Search Marketing
So what's to be done? Well, for starters, the folks who own search engines, ad networks, content platforms and all rest could work to make the rules of the game a lot clearer. The businesses I spoke to and the agencies that serve them just want a level playing field. Also, it's well past time for common standards in the marketing profession. Though the IAB has done a wonderful job in recent years, their work is just an opening salvo. Marketing needs a movement along the lines of the microformats effort to create common standards for structured data. Finally, technology players of all types who seek to serve marketers must more fully embrace the use of APIs so, for instance, common dashboards can be easily created to allow for efficient reporting across the Web marketing remit. If we can't all play nicely together, let's at least allow a strong ecosystem to grow up around us that will enable marketers to efficiently knit our technologies together into an integrated solution.