By now, we all know that YouTube is more than cute cat videos. Beauty guru Michelle Phan started with tutorial videos and now has her own line of cosmetics. Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s channel boasts 4.6 million subscribers and more than 1.3 billion views. As evidenced by the amount of pre-roll advertising airing before videos, many marketers have caught on to YouTube’s popularity.

Facebook announced at Advertising Week the relaunch of its Atlas ad server product — and with good reason. If Atlas is successful, it could have major repercussions for online advertising. Like other ad servers, Atlas allows brands and their agencies to manage, execute and measure campaigns across a wide variety of sites.

To find this decade’s hottest medium, look no further than your pants pocket, or perhaps your purse. The popularity of mobile has skyrocketed, and marketers must consider it as carefully as they would any other channel. According to comScore, 176 million people in the U.S. have smartphones (approximately 73 percent mobile market penetration).

Television continues to be the main way consumers view the biggest sporting event in the U.S., but use of mobile devices and social networks during Super Bowl XLIX continues to proliferate. This means more work for brands advertising during the big game, as they will need both broadcast and digital components for their campaigns.

Not too long ago, the term “programmatic buying” applied strictly to digital display ads. We found three articles demonstrating that it’s spread outside this original, narrow application and is touching almost all aspects of advertising – from tried-and-true print to shiny-new native. Adiant and Zemanta Set New Standard for the Programmatic Native Advertising Industry With Advanced RTB Technology Partnership.

Attention spans have shrunk, and social streams are flooded with (mostly useless) information. Brands must do more than just maintain a Facebook page and tweet regularly to capture attention. At a client’s annual sales event, Empower MediaMarketing CEO Jim Price discussed how retailers can use social media to stand out and to truly engage with consumers.