Big Data is hot, hot, hot! Companies such as Google, IBM, Oracle, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft are only a few that see Big Data not only as a gold mine of information but as a competitive necessity required to create new products; analyze, understand, and better serve the needs of customers; spot trends; look for patterns; and gain insights previously too expensive to examine.

We're taking the Marketing Smarts podcast on the road, and our first stop was in Seattle on March 28, as part of the run-up to our SocialTech 2012 conference. I sat down with Ian Lurie, CEO of PortentInteractive, and Geoff Livingston, author and marketing strategist, in front of a 125 smart marketers at the Seattle Art Museum, and we captured the ensuing conversations for posterity. (You can listen to the recording below.)

51% of senior marketers say that the lack of data sharing across their organization is an obstacle to measuring the ROI of their marketing, according to [download page] a survey released in March 2012 by Columbia University’s Center on Global Brand Leadership and the New York American Marketing Association (NYAMA)

Half of women in 2011 said they regularly influence friends and family to buy or not buy a particular product or service, representing a 61% jump from 31% who responded that way in 2008, according to a white paper released in January 2012 by Fleishman-Hillard in partnership with Hearst Magazine.

Digital privacy involves three main stakeholders: consumers, the government and the advertising industry. Consumers are increasingly concerned about their privacy. Government entities in the US and elsewhere are looking to temper that anxiety through laws, regulations and pressure on the digital ad ecosystem.