FreshDirect’s Rick Braddock writes today that “too much attention has been given to digital advertising,” and that he and other executives at the online grocery store have instead focused on customer relationships and making sales.

He got even more customer feedback on Friday, when he delivered similar remarks at a marketing conference in New York.

After discussing some of FreshDirect’s new interactive features, including “You Might Also Like,” which suggests additional items based on what you’ve added to your shopping cart, a woman in the audience said she was “a little annoyed by it.” She asked Mr. Braddock if the site’s customization plans included a way for customers to block it.

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Omniture (OMTR) shares are down sharply today following cautious comments on the stock this morning by Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartley.

Bartley writes that “feedback from the channel is markedly more negative” than it was two to three months ago. He says the poor economy is resulting in month-over-month slowing in the online business analytics sector; he says Q4 activity is weaker than expected in what is normally a seasonally strong period. “In general, existing customers are not expected to increase their investments in 2009,” he writes. Bartley also says new customer growth is slowing; he expects a drop of 30-50 percent in 2009 in new customer additions.

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If over the last decade you’ve read any of the many books and articles promoting the Net as a means for forming self-regulating, super-democratic communities, you have no doubt come across glowing descriptions of eBay’s feedback system. By providing buyers and sellers with a simple means for rating one another, eBay has been able, we’ve been told, to avoid lots of rules and regulations and other top-down controls. The community, built on trust and fellow-feeling, essentially managed itself. Tom Friedman, in his book “The World Is Flat,” voiced the common opinion when he called eBay a “self-governing nation-state.” Nice story. Too bad it didn’t work out.

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eBay has been making some changes lately that aren’t sitting well with eBay sellers. First, it announced fee changes that initially were promoted as “lower fees,” but the details showed were only lower for goods that didn’t sell. The fees on sold goods were actually higher. Now, the company has banned sellers from giving “negative” feedback on buyers. This is quite an interesting move.

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