The M&A frenzy has created a lot of uncertainty. Our panel offers insights on what the advertising buying binge means for brand marketers.

Size matters. A lot. And with talk of mergers and acquisitions reaching what seems like critical mass, a handful of interactive industry notables joined investment banker Tolman Geffs, managing director of The Jordan, Edmiston Group, for a candid discussion on what the trend of digital consolidation means for brand marketers.

"In the end, it comes down to scale," Dave Morgan, EVP of global advertising strategy at AOL, told attendees at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point, Fla. "The only way to drive the conversation between the brand and the consumer is to have platforms that have real reach and that can put the brand in touch with the right consumer."

While reach may be a question of size and scope, the buzzword for the panel was data.

According to John Vincent, CEO of EyeWonder, the ability to leverage reach by making the most out of the data that comes from being so large will be the story going forward as Google moves into the display business and Microsoft plays catch-up with its bid for Yahoo.

"The efficiencies of data and targeting are more realistic today with the vertical nature of the space than they previously were in the years before," Vincent said.

But the business dynamic created by those efficiencies is one that should be both terrifying and exhilarating for brand marketers, according to Vincent.

For marketers debating between using Google or Microsoft, the fear is that a small handful of players will be able to act as intermediaries between brands and consumers, allowing those companies to both set the price and obfuscate the effectiveness of a particular campaign.

Vincent urged the brand marketers in attendance to exploit the current competition by a small group of companies to push for greater transparency in the rapidly growing display business.

"Yahoo and MSN will be more aggressive in terms of giving brands access to community information in light of Google and DoubleClick," Vincent said. "In search Google asks the client what they want to achieve and quotes a price, keeping the data in a black box. If they do that in display, you have no ability to differentiate from one competitor to the next. You need to ask what level of openness Google gives you to rate effectiveness and see if you can't get more out Microsoft, Yahoo or AOL."

But despite rapid consolidation, the world doesn't come down to a handful of massive players, according to Michael Cassidy, CEO Undertone Networks.

"I guess we're considered a small network, but we do reach one in three users on the web," Cassidy said. "There's definitely a role for a lot of private providers in the space, even with all of the mergers and acquisitions.

Morgan, who saw AOL gobble up Tacoda last year, agreed with Cassidy's point, telling the crowd that reaching the last quintile of users -- a notoriously difficult chore -- is something that small networks have had a lot of success with because of their flexibility.

But David Moore, CEO, 24/7 Real Media, a company now under the WPP umbrella, said he wasn't so sure big players would always be the norm.

"Nobody is going to completely own this marketplace," Moore said, illustrating his point by citing inroads made by cable networks into the TV broadcast business during the '80s and '90s. "Maintaining scale of that magnitude is just impossible over the long run."

If Moore is right, fears of Google/DoubleClick or Microsoft/Yahoo may be overblown by government regulators concerned about antitrust implications raised by the deals. But one concern brands should be careful not to overlook is the privacy issue raised by a handful of companies having access to so much user data. 

"With all the data that is out there, you need to make sure that you use it in a way that doesn't freak out consumers and take steps that send this industry or your brand backward," Cassidy said.  

Michael Estrin is associate editor at iMedia Connection. Read full bio.