Plus: What content marketing is and isn't; meet Generation C, the connected demographic; and online retail spending passes $200B in 2011

Reach your target audience, or your money back!: Forbes.com, Daily Meal and Undertone are part of a small band of plucky publishers who offer money-back guarantees to major advertisers if their campaigns fall short of agreed-upon goals. This tactic aims to encourage advertisers to spend more on online branding, although these three publishers haven't seen a big boost in business--yet. Since beginning the offer in 2003, Forbes.com has only had to pay back one advertiser---who, not surprisingly, is still a loyal advertising partner.

Call 'em "Generation C," for connected: Americans ages 18 to 34 comprise "Generation C," a demographic marked by a powerful attraction to digital connectivity, according to Nielsen and NM Incite. This age group makes up 23% of the U.S. population, but they represent 27% of online video-watchers, 33% of tablet owners and 39% of smartphone users. Nielsen says Gen C'ers are "incredibly unique consumers" who offer challenges, opportunities and beaucoup touch points for marketers.

5 tough questions about content marketing, complete with answers: Content marketing is attracting advertisers in droves, says Rebecca Lieb in Ad Age Digital, and some 60 senior marketing and advertising executives told her that they're going to dramatically boost their investment in it. Still, they're asking tough questions about the trend, and Lieb offers answers to five of the hardest ones.

Don't confuse content marketing with press releases or ads: American Express, General Electric and other major brands are employing journalists to help strengthen their content marketing campaigns, which focus on engaging the hearts and minds of customers by running practical, straightforward and even non-promotional information. Effective content campaigns can bring visitors to sites more cheaply than advertising, and user behavior studies show them staying longer and interacting more. Read about the secrets of successful campaigns.

Local businesses can have their business info included in ads

March has, ahem, marched in, and with it are several great enhancements to Microsoft Advertising adCenter. Find out below how these latest adCenter upgrades provide you with a new ad format, easier account accessibility, improved bulk management and more:

Display your address and phone number in your search ads with Location Extension

Now you can make your ads more actionable by including your business location and phone number with Location Extension. And to let you take better advantage of this new ad format, the number of business locations that can be uploaded through the adCenter UI has been increased from 50 to 1,000 at the customer level.

Also, when you implement Local Extension and include smartphones in your targeting, your search ads will automatically have click-to-call functionality on Bing for Mobile. Yahoo! for Mobile will soon have this feature, as well.

Accessing your adCenter account is easier and more flexible

Good news: You can now access your adCenter account through Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers on Mac and PC.

Increased campaign management efficiencies

To help broaden your reach, the option to target exclusively by age and gender has been removed. We recommend that you use the existing bid-boosting functionality to ensure that you reach your intended audience and receive the best results.

Plus: App revs to reach $8.6B in 2016; SMBs to allocate 26% of ad spend to digital; Spam turns 75, and more

$465.5 billion: Predicted global ad spend in 2012, up 4.9% compared to a 3.8% gain last year, according to research firm Strategy Analytics and reported in the Hollywood Reporter. Growth in the U.S. is expected to be 2.7%, far exceeding last year's growth of just 0.6%. Furthermore, the article notes, global spend could reach a half-trillion in 2014.

$40.6 billion: Worldwide mobile app revenues in 2016, compared to just $8.6 billion, according to ABI Research and reported by eMarketer. Evidently, when it comes to making vacuuming people's pockets, there's an app for that.

26%: The percentage of ad spend that small- and medium-sized businesses will spend on digital advertising over the next year, according to a piece in MediaPost. Given the popularity of Groupon, LivingSocial and other eCirculars, that seems odd, but maybe SMBs need a little time to catch the wave.

-9.96%: The loss in single-copy magazine sales in 2011, reports MediaPost. Subscriptions were also down, but only slightly. Adjust your ad dollars accordingly.

Online deals are more in demand than ever. Are you ready?

When I was but a wee lad, just starting out in business, I delivered "shoppers"—newsprint circulars chock-full of local business coupons—to my neighbors for a whopping big paycheck of about $15 per month. It should come as no surprise that delivery methods for such deals and offers have become considerably more sophisticated.

The study, "eCirculars and Online Deals," conducted last November by the Yahoo! Insights team and our research partner, Ipsos, found that 69% of the 2,000 or so adult shoppers surveyed said they seek more deals and coupons because of the Internet. According to Yahoo! Buzz, interest in coupons was up 83% in 2011 versus 2010.

You asked on Facebook. You asked on Twitter. You asked in person. Yep, it turns out advertisers had a lot of questions for CEO Scott Thompson. Here are just a few of the more common queries our new leader has had to tackle.

Is Yahoo! a media company or a technology company?

I've gotten this question a lot and, when it's asked, I think people usually expect that I'll say one or the other. But the fact is, Yahoo! is both a media company and a technology company. In order to deliver the premium content experiences we are known for, to maintain deep engagement with consumers, and to give advertisers unparalleled opportunities to target the audiences they need at scale, we have to be great at both media and technology. We have tremendous depth on the media side with all of our original programming, top-ranked properties, and coverage of major events. We will also continue to invest in best-in-class products, engineering and technology expertise to push innovation further. So it's not an either-or proposition. We have been, and will continue to be, a company that values and focuses on both media and technology.

What are your priorities during your first three months on the job?

I have a predisposition to move fast, but Yahoo! is a large and complex company that takes a bit of time to understand. Coming in the door I knew first and foremost that I needed to spend a significant portion of my time listening—to our leaders, our employees, our users and our advertising clients—to get fully up to speed. For example, I've met with many of our top advertiser and agency clients, to hear their thoughts on what we're doing well and what we need to do better. These conversations have helped validate some of the opinions I had formed through extensive research before taking this job, as well as deepened my understanding of our assets and challenges.

I plan to act quickly and aggressively to move the company forward. I'm focused on completing the analysis necessary to make informed decisions and acting on strategies that will take Yahoo! in new directions. There is enormous strength and value in Yahoo!'s assets, the talent of our people, and the huge opportunity in front of us.

With its unmatched reach and premium content, Yahoo! helps advertisers reach the online entertainment audiences of their dreams

Online users are especially open and receptive to advertising when they're consuming content that they're passionate about---and entertainment fans are a particularly passionate audience, according to "Advertising by Mindset," a study conducted by Yahoo! and Proctor & Gamble.

When you're targeting audiences that are into almost any aspect of entertainment—whether it's movies, TV, music, award shows or celebrity news—Yahoo! is the place to connect with them.

"We know how to bring online fans together to celebrate the most exciting events in entertainment, and help advertisers and brands become part of the celebration," says Sibyl Goldman,Yahoo!'s Vice President, Entertainment.

IAB names Yahoo! a Mobile Rising Star

Jean Dujardin, eat your heart out. At its annual leadership meeting in Miami Beach, Florida, the Internet Advertising Bureau today presented Yahoo! with its "Mobile Rising Star" award in the impressive "full page" concept category.

It's not just another plaque. In fact, it's an invitation to help steer the course of mobile advertising into the future. Mobile Rising Star winners will collaborate with the IAB and its experts to create detailed specs for their units to run across screens and operating systems, including mobile Web and apps. The IAB intends these new formats to work across all major mobile platforms, allowing mobile ad buys at a scale that rivals traditional online platforms.

Rich Ads in Search delivers a healthy dose of traffic and conversions

General Nutrition Center, Inc. (GNC) was searching for a competitive advantage—much like the one the brand constantly delivers for its health and fitness consumers. Rich Ads in Search on Yahoo! Search and Bing enabled GNC to stand out from some fierce competition with eye-catching visuals that enhanced click-through rates, and additional links that drove value-creating conversions.

The Challenge

For years, GNC, the largest global specialty retailer of nutritional products, has invested in search marketing to deliver strong conversion rates at a low cost-per-action. However, as the health and nutrition market grew increasingly crowded, the brand needed an additional competitive edge to stand out from all the clutter.

"At GNC, we're always looking for new ways to push the envelope with our marketing campaigns," says Shawn Freeman, Director of Online Marketing. "We wanted a new, innovative way to drive more traffic to our e-commerce site and, most importantly, increase revenue and return-on-investment."

The Solution

In partnership with its digital agency True Action Network, GNC turned to Rich Ads in Search to increase CTR and conversions. These ads, which appear in both Yahoo! Search and Bing search results, offer search advertisers the ability to display images, links, logos, videos and form fields in their ads—not just plain text. Rich Ads in Search are also unique because they give brands another clear competitive advantage: They are always at the top of the page, which has proven to get the most visibility and strongest CTR on the search results page.