The holy grail of advertising these days is trying to find exactly what customers are looking for, when they are looking for it and when they are most likely to convert into buyers. In radio and TV advertising, special phone numbers and websites can serve a tracking purpose that allows statisticians to pull out data like this. Online web searching installs a whole new level of data collection that lets sellers really know their buyers (and customize marketing as appropriate). But just how do those customers actually respond to certain forms of advertising? Why are only a fraction of advertising viewers doing anything in reaction to an ad -- why not all 100%?

Biological experiments that take stock of physiological monitoring are nothing new in the advertising arena, and at NBC, advertisers want to know more about consumer reactions as the television medium continues to be under assault from ad dollars moving online (along with advertisers themselves). In order to bring ads back to television, the medium has to evolve beyond passive and impressions-based advertising to one of actually engaging customers and measuring the experience. But what makes up such an experience? Watching KFC (NYSE: YUM)'s absurd ads with a bastardized version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" being screamed in the background, I think, actually drives customers away from the fast-food chain. Perhaps I am wrong.

NBC's research, though, has a new twist: It measures customer engagement to commercial advertisements viewed in fast-forward mode. With more folks in the U.S. using TiVo and other digital video recorders that allow fast-forwarding through commercials, TV networks are losing ad dollars to advertisers that don't want to pay for viewers that zap right through commercials. But, if those viewers have some kind of meaningful engagement to the commercial, even when fast forwarded, then the networks regain some ammunition to negotiate ad rates.

From the beginning, the Apple iPhone launch date has been a moving target: first rumored to be as early as January, it then skipped around June, from June 11 to June 22 to June 20. In Steve Jobs' uncertain speech at the D conference last week, it sounded like the very end of June. But who could be sure? Finally, this morning, a rumor with some teeth from Engadget: June 29 was the date. And then the confirmation: the television commercials, one of which featured the all-important June 29 date, were posted on Apple's web site. And a few minutes after I drooled over the photos, there the date was on my very own TV (NBC, if you're wondering).

As a first-time Apple fanatic (the iPhone will be my first ever Apple purchase, and I've been drooling since January 9), I'm disappointed that I have to wait until June 29, when I was oh-so-hoping I'd have it by mid-June at the latest (I'm eight months pregnant and very much expecting to deliver the news of my new baby's birth via iPhone). But, as my husband says while watching the dripping-with-touch commercial: "boy, that's a cool phone!" and I'm predicting great things and long lines to secure one of these beautiful specimens. As the guys at Switched.com say: "these new previews of the phone and its capabilities make a somewhat acceptable consolation prize" for the later-than-hoped date.

Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) will score big on this one, and even though the date is later than hoped, at least it's not delayed beyond the fuzzy target of "late June" and at least the iPhone is real, it's really almost here.