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Visual learners and data jockeys rejoice: Google just launched a search tool that provides in an interactive chart public data that's usually so hard to dig up that even policy wonks would be challenged.

The new tool allows you to search for specific public information, for instance the unemployment rate in a particular state, and a box with an interactive graph appears that displays the pertinent data. From there you could compare it to other states in a graphical interface.

Right now, the data tool just includes information provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau's Population Division, but eventually, Google says you'll find information on everything from the average price of cookies to the number of wildfires that occur.

The goal, according to the blog post by Google Product Manager Ola Rosling, is to "pave the way for public data to take a more central role in informed public conversations." That's admirable - even, one could argue, critically integral to a healthy democracy - and if you're not a fan of "American Idol," particularly welcome.

Peer-to-peer buzz about products is gold to advertisers, after all, most people tend to buy what their friends recommend over what an ad suggests, but quantifying word-of-mouth value has been vexing. Meteor Solutions, a new company, says its technology can connect the performance of paid online ad campaigns with the lift that occurs when people pass on the ads to others through social networking sites and e-mail.

So, for instance, if a customer who clicks on an ad sends the link to the merchant's page to others who've never seen that ad, there's more value to that ad than meets the eye. Especially since industry insiders say word-of-mouth recommendations turn into sales.

"Word of mouth (WOM) is one of the most credible ways to get a recommendation about a company, product or service, and the practice is growing exponentially with the advent of social networking and Web 2.0," says Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee Results. "Recent research we've conducted has shown that nearly one-fifth (20 percent) of all visitors to the 100 top-grossing retail Web sites came by way of recommendation, and those that came from WOM were more likely to buy, recommend, return to the site and remain loyal."

Also, people referred to e-commerce sites by shared links are four times more likely to buy a product than people who come from other sources, according to the report "Social Media Measurement: Measurable outcomes of social media engagement (tying revenue to social media actions)" by online marketing company Razorfish.

"Put this together with the fact that 20 percent of traffic is coming from word-of-mouth, and suddenly the WOM channel and knowing exactly what's going on there becomes hugely important to e-commerce sites," said Ben Straley, CEO of Meteor Solutions.

The problem for advertisers was that it was difficult to quantify this peer-to-peer buzz, but Meteor Solutions is promising to change that by allowing advertisers to measure, optimize and manage word-of-mouth branding with the same precision as paid advertising.

A new mobile pay-per-click ad service launched recently called tapMatch is taking on Google's mobile AdWords.

Mobile search and advertising startup Jumptap's tapMatch lets advertisers pay to have text ads placed next to keywords on mobile Web sites, search results and applications, very much like Google's mobile PPC service.

The difference is that tapMatch lets advertisers target specific phones and carriers, which is important because mobile handsets run on different platforms and so not all downloads work across the board.

"Think about how Google revolutionized online ads with AdWords," CMO Paran Johar said. "That's what we'll do with mobile ads because there's no self-serve platform out there that lets you do this on the keyword level, at the handset level, not Google, not Yahoo, not Microsoft."

TapMatch builds audience profiles from multiple sources, including search queries, context and click-through history, to match the most relevant ad messages to each mobile consumer, said Johar. Advertisers maximize performance by targeting keywords, categories, location, demographics, mobile carrier, publisher and smartphones including Blackberry and iPhone models.

And while it may seem that taking on Google is hype for the service, it appears the burgeoning mobile ad market has plenty of room for more than one player. With a slew of new smartphones rolling out this summer, notably the Palm Pre, new BlackBerry Storms, a rumored iPhone and Android-based handsets from Samsung and HTC, there seems to be room for growth in mobile advertising. Plus, the success of smartphone apps is spawning a whole new way for marketers to interact beyond the banner ad.

Johar said he doesn't see smartphone adoption cooling down anytime soon, either.
"It's a cultural phenomenon, just like broadband was in terms of, at some point, no one has dial-up, people are like, 'You still have dial-up instead of broadband?' They just can't believe it. That's also driving mobile usage. People just won't settle for a regular cell phone, they're going to have to have a smartphone."

Apparently Johar's quite convincing: Jumptap has raised $72 million to-date, including a $26 million round last August.