Since its soft launch about seven months ago, more than 200 customers have adopted the system, J.D. Peterson, director of product management, told ADOTAS. “So far, about 62% of the early adopters use at least two of the products in the toolset – and 72% plan to use three or more in the next six months. We modeled the system after Microsoft Office. Initially, people were only buying it for Word – but soon everyone was using Excel and PowerPoint.”

Lyris HQ was built on Adobe Flex Builder 3 technology; when ADOTAS took it for a test drive, the desktop-like interface was easy to navigate and tightly integrated – with lots of shiny bells and whistles that would make scheduling and launching campaigns — and analyzing their performance — a snap. Delivered in a hosted model, the interface starts at $299 a month.

“Today’s online marketers wear many hats and they have little time to complete their tasks, let alone navigate a sea of disparate online marketing tools — none of which can give them a single, clear view of their campaign results,” said Blaine Mathieu, CMO, Lyris, in a written statement. “As a result, small-to mid-sized marketing teams need help to regain control of their campaigns. That help comes in the form of Lyris HQ, which is the only solution available today that provides easy-to-use, affordable, integrated Web-based marketing capabilities that combine email marketing, Web analysis and optimization, and PPC marketing.”

The company also announced the launch of Lyris HQ for Agencies, an online marketing platform geared to address the direct needs of advertising and marketing firms that serve multiple clients. (It’s priced at $500 a month for up to nine clients).

Lyris has been in business since 1994 has about 10,000 customers, has raked in about $43 million in revenue and is growing exponentially (the staff grew from about 180 six months ago to about 270 today). Clients include Nokia, Adobe and Jupitermedia.

Bigreds.com reportedly says it used Overture Services (acquired by Yahoo in 2003) between 2002 and 2006; the retailer was charged north of $936,000 by Yahoo’s search marketing unit based on clicks that Bigreds.com received on other sites affiliated with Yahoo and Overture.

The retailer claimed the sources of the affiliate-generated clicks were from Web site operators who wanted to boost their commission. Bigreds.com alleges that Yahoo and Overture were aware of the fraud in 2006 and failed to eliminate it, instead offering Bigreds.com $17,000 for clicks billed to the company in the spring of that year.

The suit was filed this month in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. In 2005, Yahoo paid $4.5 million to settle a click fraud class action suit.

Adroll’s system works by allowing each Web site owner sets his or her own minimum acceptable price. Adroll finds advertisers willing to pay that price, and runs the audience-targeted ads when advertisers start their campaign. Web sites use Adroll and AdSense at the same time, on the same ad space, and earn more. Adroll adjusts prices dynamically for each site (and every community) so as more inventory sells, it sells at higher prices.

“Small and medium-sized Web site owners understand how valuable their audience is, and understand that they are not compensated adequately based on clicks (or CTR) alone,” Jared Kopf, CEO of Adroll told Adotas. “Today, AdSense pretty much wins every time when it comes to remnant. And optimization may help on occasion. But ‘remnant’ refers to being unsold — the inventory is often still high quality — just difficult to reach. So we decided to focus on the problem of aggregation and targeting.

“What we discovered is that two problems have to be solved simultaneously to make this work for brands: we lower the search cost of finding relevant audiences and also reduce the execution cost of buying ad space across the Web sites with those audiences,” Kopf added. “By rolling up sites, we found that marketers get what they have been looking for… an easier way to find and reach (and efficiently buy across) targeted audiences.”

Adroll estimates that communities that are the most active could earn three to four times more with Adroll than they do with AdSense alone.

“The result for publishers is an open system where any high-quality sites can earn more using Adroll, by layering it in with AdSense or another ad network already in use,” Kopf said. “Adroll serves the AdSense. And Adroll can deliver premium CPMs … by being the layer above a remnant solution. But because audiences are more valuable than clicks and impressions, it significantly improves the bottom line for publisher.”

Adroll’s most popular communities to date are focuses on food and wine, sports, cars and independent music. Brands such as Progressive Insurance, Chrome Bags and Function Drinks are engaged and premium niche sites like Menusim, Ecofabulous, Knickers, Goodreads are already participating in the community.

In March, Google changed its AdWords algorithm, which means that some advertising are paying much higher rates … yet their conversion rates have hit the skids.

“If it were just a rate increase, I would have tolerated it. But my ad rates have doubled and I’ve got no business,” an anonymous tipster told Wired.com.

Google, for its part, says that its drop in paid clicks is … intentional. The Web titan justifies the higher ad rates, saying that serving fewer, but more relevant ads more than makes up for the lower conversion rates.

But advertisers ain’t having it, Wired reports.

“I am seeing large-scale advertisers whose general cost per clicks is trending up … and they’re seeing impressions go down,” Jeremy Chatfield, an analyst at Web marketing firm Merjis, told Wired.com.

But … (you knew there was going to be a but in here) …  at times, I find myself in situations where my clients are making minor modifications to things like the subhead of a press release, and I start scratching my head and wondering, is perhaps taking micromanagement to an unnecessary level?

Don’t get me wrong: I know they’re making edits based on the nuances they think each word will communicate, which is understandable, but in focusing on such minute details, they sometimes miss the big picture.

I admit it — some of the blame lies with me. I probably have not communicated the changes in public relations over the last decade well enough. Sometimes, we just can’t hope to control every aspect of the message. I may also be guilty of not properly educating my clients on the value of the press release in today’s corporate communications matrix versus its role a mere decade ago.

But I have one client who after a few initial successes began to green-light projects without too many edits. Now I don’t necessarily think that my work for that client is significantly better than it is for other clients. And that client certainly has opinions on how he thinks marketing should be done. But in this case, it’s just a CEO saying his time is better spent plotting out overall strategy — not focusing on every tiny tactical detail.

I am not writing this to criticize any of my clients, because believe me … I’m guilty of the same crime I’m charging them with. I’m probably a bigger control freak than any of them (just ask my 9-year-old son … I can’t remember the last time I let him cross the street alone and I doubt he can either).

The key to making C-level executives, their campaigns, our businesses and yes, even ourselves, more successful is by learning to cede a bit of control – a tall order, but an important one.

There is one job that I believe was a seminal point in my career. Looking back, it was a position where my CEO really let me fly solo on multiple projects. Though I may have accomplished more in other positions, I developed greater self-confidence in that post, which to this day helps me better handle uncharted territories.

In today’s digital world, where every click is accounted for and with a questionable economic outlook on the horizon, it’s easier to try and play it safe.

But now more than ever, we need to let go and let those below us fly.

They also found that 68% of online marketers worldwide didn’t know if they could trust the visitor/traffic profile online media owners and publishers claimed. Other concerns: click fraud and uncertainty about where ads actually landed.

The report finds that “despite today’s buzz on all things digital, despite global interactive advertising being forecast to reach $147 billion by 2012 from the current $45 billion, and despite three online media platforms making it to the Fournaise 2007 top 10 marketing Effectiveness Ranking in the day-to-day reality of generating incremental customer demand for their products or services, marketers seem to have a major trust issue when it comes to the overall reliability and credibility of online advertising.”

“Across the thousands of online campaigns we audit track for our clients worldwide through our independent WebAnalyser and its 5-t Audit Tracking methodology, we have been observing consistently poor results: Click Through Rates have fallen as low as 0.15% (sometimes even lower), Conversion Rates are barely reaching the 3% average, and as far as Returns on Marketing Investment are concerned, our clients are most of the time flirting with the sub-30% numbers,” Jerome Fontaine, CEO and chief tracker of The Fournaise Marketing Group, said in a release.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel though: marketers want independent auditing of what media owners and publishers claim and independent auditing of the results of individual campaigns. With these changes in place – they are the norm for print and broadcast ads after all – Fournaise predicts that online media platforms will surpass their already impressive rates of growth.

With the new deal, Ringleader’s third-party interactive advertising network will make an additional 50 million impressions per month for brands who want to break into mobile advertising. Local Wireless users will be able to access news, streaming video, weather, sports and more from more than 140 local affiliates.

“With Ringleader Digital’s ability to integrate with existing online ad campaigns, rolling out multi-channel campaigns locally through mobile advertising is now a one-step process for advertisers,” said Bob Walczak, CEO of Ringleader. “And, through our relationship with LSN, our ad network now includes access to the most watched media in local markets nationwide. Our rapidly growing list of premium brands can finally leverage some of the most desirable ad inventory in local advertising.”

The industry is seeing a significant increase within the industry in mobile advertising – and Ringleader says its technical capabilities have solved many of the initial mobile advertising barriers and problems, helping to boost click-through rates.

“In 2005, the typical mobile purchase was only $5,000 to $10,000 per campaign,” said Mark Pearlstein, vice president of business development at Ringleader. “However, as of last year, it increased from $50,000 to $100,000. Now in 2008, we are seeing mobile click-through rates at two to three percent, and advertisers are taking notice with campaign proposals in the seven figures.”

The company’s mobile advertising network works with publishers, carriers and ad agencies to extend the interactive experience to mobile. It has created a device-agnostic network so that ads can appear on any mobile network.

Pellman will oversee strategic company initiatives, operations, growth and business development. He replaces Tom Cuthbert, Click Forensics founder, president and CEO; Cuthbert will stay on board as president and will focus on industry initiatives, marketing and business development.

Previously, Pellman served as entrepreneur in residence at Austin Ventures; he has also worked in marketing for Hoover’s.

In 2006, Click Forensics created the Click Fraud Index – it monitors online campaigns for click fraud by correlating data collected from search provider campaigns and interactive advertisers’ own Web sites.