Social initiatives are highly visible. Their purpose is to lend social status to the early market. To these trendsetters, having discovered the brand and being the one recommending it works as a sort of social currency. Trendsetters are generally influenced by social outliners—people who exist even further on the outskirts of the mainstream. Let’s call these innovators the influencers of the influencers. Getting them on board sets in motion a linear pattern of influence from the extreme fringe all the way to the mass public.

Google Inc. took another major step in its quest to ensure that wherever consumers go—whether to laptops to search sports scores or videos, or to phones to find a restaurant—advertisers will be there too.

Last week, the search giant said it was buying AdMob Inc., a developer of technology that plops ads into thousands of mobile-phone applications, for $750 million in Google stock.

We live in a cluttered media environment where the consumer’s attention is a precious resource. It’s no longer enough to sell an innovative feature or project an image, as brands have done for hundreds of years. Innovation, quickly copied, no longer wins the day. With so many niche products breaking consumers up into smaller groups, brands can discontinue any one product in order to launch another without disappointing too many people at a time. The game has changed: the world is in fact flat, and so is the global playing field.