Whether you're wearing your consumer hat or your media professional hat, it really doesn't matter -- there are just so many pages -- and so little time.

If you're a marketer who just witnessed Google's $16.5 billion purchase of YouTube and News Corp's recent purchase of MySpace, you're probably left wondering… what do I do with this? Is this just another place I have to be, thing I have to sponsor, trend I have to follow quick…or Sumner Redstone might fire me?

Strip away the hype and the HTML and you might discover that, creatively, there's some very interesting opportunities for your brand to appear alongside user-generated media (UGM).  But not in the manner you've been accustomed to appearing. By this, I'm not referring to the video pre-rolls, rich media banners or page-takeovers du jour. I'm referring to something much headier:

Brand attribute matching. Sound like an excuse to write another branding book? It's not. It's really very simple.

Let's say your brand essence or core attributes, as defined by your brand platform, are Classic, American and Exclusive. Nowhere in your most recent campaign online or off does it mention those words-- because they're the DNA behind your brand… not the campaign idea. 

Enter the world of tagging. By carefully embedding meta-tags in your online content around those (three) linked core brand attributes, site-based or distributed, you can put your brand in a position to let the aggregating algorithms push you into lists of user-generated destinations chalk full of Classic, American and Exclusive oriented content you otherwise wouldn't have a chance of finding for yourself. 

Think about it. There are some communities out there where brands just naturally find themselves aligning, like a hand fits a glove. And yet, they're nowhere near each other online. Take Harley-Davidson and The Allman Brothers Band. They just go together-- well, maybe Jack Daniels belongs in there, too. But let's not advocate drinking and driving, let's just say the consumer profile AND the conversation fit.

Take it one step further and you can match attributes of Tylenol (pain reduction) with Airport Security. Connection strategies like these are too infrequently driven by those media planners creative types who are able to smartly match brand attributes with content attributes. And being in the midst of a wave of consumer tagging, it's just one deeper layer of opportunity agencies have to evolve online creative efficiency from pure message optimization to deeper, smarter placements propelled by tagging. Try explaining that to your client.

As a creative director, I never thought mastering the art of tagging was something I would need to aspire to. But as user-generated media begins to dwarf that of the major media companies, very soon we'll need to serve our messages and our consumers in wholly different ways. And we need to begin now… before the engines themselves decide they can serve our clients better than we can.

Which brings me to my last question: How well are you being served?

(iMediaConnection)