Online Female Consumer Graces Us with Laser Eyes

I was really looking forward to attending The Online Female Consumer - Come Meet Them Tuesday afternoon, featuring CEO Kate Everett-Thorp of Real Girls Media as moderator and Senior Analyst Debra Aho Williamson of eMarketer. Additional panelists were women pulled from various walks of life (well, except not), the youngest being thirty and the oldest in their mid-forties, with children of varying ages.

First impression: oh, we'll be hearing from Fembots. Kate and Debra seemed tight and mildly Stepford in appearance. I don't know what it was but the room took on a defensive and unfun Girl Power air that had nothing to do with trouncing around in platforms and going ziga-zig ahhh.

Demystifying the Art of (Digital) Conversation

Yesterday I attended The Art of Conversation: Establishing Brand Dialog in the Digital Era. Four sales-smiley and devastatingly diplomatic panelists weighed in, including the severe-looking (but ultimately rather personable) Bruce Rogers, VP of Marketing, Forbes.com; David A. Yovanno, General Manager, ValueClick Media; Mark Ribaudo, Group Director of Marketing, Scholastic Inc.; and Eric Picard, Director, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions.

Moderator Sheryl Draizen, SVP and GM at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, kicked us off by asking the panelists what their favorite quotes were. Perhaps Ribaudo's best embodied the frenzy that's overcome our industry in a fast-paced landscape ruled primarily by Youtube and Myspace: "Seize the moment."

With all media going digital, I wondered whether a marketer's priorities have changed. Does on-the-spot conversion continue to define a successful campaign, or is it all about throwing dosh at engagement and brand-building in hopes of a long-term relationship with (ideally) enthusiastic consumers?

TV 2.0 Overview - Convergence at Last

What in the heck is TV 2.0? I just got Web 2.0 all figured out last year and now we have TV 2.0!?! While this was slated as an overview, and Susan Bratton told us earlier that today's sessions would be walking us through the Big Picture with top level views, moderator Andrew Moskowitz did not introduce the subject or give that explanation. In fact, he did little else other than read from cards (perhaps for the first time?) to introduce our two panelists. Luckily the session improved once the panelists got started.

Friction Does Not Make Me Hot

This panel was for the hardcore advertising operations managers and workers, something I really know nothing about - or so I thought. Moderated by R. Michael Leo, CEO and President, Operative along with panelists from different sides of the buying process they were to talk about some of the issues facing them today. As technology has made things easier, the people side of Operations is becoming a larger piece of the pie. Combine this with a large percentage of profits coming from advertising and you get a leveraging point where process and system fixes can mean big increases on real profit.

B2B Search Marketing Best Practices

As a marketer who's agency works with relatively small technology companies, I found some inspiration in the BtoB Search Marketing Best Practices panel this afternoon. It seems the big guys share the same challenges as the little ones, with the additional test of very large-scale programs, and organizational complexities to manage. Of course, they have the advantage of tremendous resources, and established brand recognition, but my impression is that the playing field is pretty even all things considered.

John Tapping, Director of the BtoB Technology Vertical at Google moderated a panel for this session that included Crispin Sheridan, Director of Online Marketing at SAP, Martin Laetsch, Manager of Worldwide Search at Intel, and Dema Zlotin, President of SEM agency Silicon Space.

Marketing Malpractice - Innovation, Ho!

The best session I've been to yet was "Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure" with ARF Chief Strategy Officer Taddy Hall, who presented a number of ideas he's worked on with Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovation's Solution, The Innovator's Dilemma, and Seeing What's Next. At the very least, read the third of these books. It's pretty deep but damn insightful. I also wrote about it in MediaPost.

Taddy's bold assumption: "Marketers aren't stupid." So why are people making so many wasteful decisions? And what are the keys to brand success?

"A brand with no purpose is an empty shell, no matter how clever its personality or catchy its advertising." He asked, "What's the job spec your brand is filling?"

He cited three popular research mistakes: segmenting based on product attributes, segmenting based on consumer attributes, and targeting a large market.

Managing Ultra-Complex Search Campaigns

Are you in Excel Hell? If your search campaign has gone beyond your ability to analyze with a spreadsheet, you may have an ultra-complex campaign on your hands according to Bill Hunt of Global Strategies International. Bill's long-time client IBM exemplifies the ultra-complex campaign with many unique business units, a complex product mix, hundreds of thousands of targeted phrases, and multiple responsible owners within the organization.

Bill Hunt was joined Roger Barnette of SearchIgnite, and Peter Morse of ECNext in a panel moderated by Daron Babin of WebMasterRadio.fm.

Trend Trackers Tell All (Oooh)

Thursday morning brought together a group of Boba Fetts for the new era with "Global Trends, Newsmaker Brands, and Cool Hunting: Trend Trackers Tell All." That's right - cool is the new bounty. See how hip that sounds? But don't try this at home. Not everyone can be a cool hunter. Leave that to the professionals, especially the bunch on this panel.

Rich LeFurgy of Archer Advisors moderated this esteemed group: Tom Conger, Futurist and Founder, Social Technologies; Michael Tchong, Trend Analyst, UberCool; and Josh Rubin, Editor in Chief, CoolHunting.com. We'll look at some quick takes, made-up words, catch phrases, and new sites and products.

The best take: Tchong on Web.2.0: "It's crap... we're still on 0.8." He's concerned that the venture capital's not going to the right people. Tchong also had a great zinger on simplicity: "Venture capitalists won't invest in anything with one button to push. Then they always ask where their added value is."

The session focused on five trends:
1. Place-Shifting
2. Consumer Creation
3. Web 2.0
4. Attention Deficit
5. Simplification

Email Marketing : It's Like You Never Left

What's next after email marketing? Isn't RSS going to free us from all those problems with email like deliverability issues, and steadily dropping open rates?

Not so fast says Barry Stamos, Senior Director of Strategy at Responsys. Email is still one of the best tools available for making and maintaining a connection to your customers. "Email [today] is sort of like website development was 4 to 5 years ago" says Stamos. "Each one is a chance to make or break your relationship". Stamos recently came to Responsys via the acquisition of INBOX Marketing where they guaranteed an increase in email marketing sucess rates by 50%. "We never had to refund any client campaign".

In this morning's session "Email Marketing : The Cinderella Story" Stamos and clients Dre Madden of online ticket marketplace StubHub, and Karolyn Stayer of cosmetics brand Philosophy describe how they boosted conversions from their email marketing by up to an astounding 1200%.

If you were looking for a session with some advice you can use right when you get back, this was it. Madden and Stayer each described how they had used limited resources to make relatively simple changes to their email programs to generate fantastic improvements in results.

Smaller Is Better With Podcasting

iPressroom Founder and Chairman Eric Schwartzman moderted the session entitled "Podcasts and vidcasts for marketing and public relations. The panel consisted of CP+B VP/Director of Communications Katie Kempner, TNC New Media Founder and CEO Tim Borkquin, The Gilmore Gang's Steve Gilmore and Kelly Wagman. The goal of the session was to inform the audience of the benefits of the podcast as a medium and Schwartzman set the stage by saying podcast advertising revenue will hit $327 million in 2010, up from $3.1 million in 2005.

Linking & Optimization for Better Rankings & More Traffic

Mike Grehan of MarketSmart Interactive, one of the fathers of SEM, promised to talk about linking and debunk some myths of search. If you have been reading MIke's articles lately, perhaps you would not need quite so much debunking.

Mike went back to the beginning and asked the audience a few questions. "Why should your pages be at the top of the search engines? Who else thinks you are the best?" These are some of the key questions that you need to be able to answer or else you will not be able to rise in the search results.

You need to prepare and think like an end user. After all, describing your site is not what a user will type into the search engine. You need to be able to describe who you are, what you do, what you are known for, and what your message is. You need to understand what the end user thinks, and to do this you need to talk to people outside your organization.

How to Grow a Profitable Affiliate Channel

This panel was well moderated Declan Dunn and had panelists with very little overlap in their area of expertise and focus. Beth Kirsch of LowerMyBills represented the more traditional Affiliate side, Amanda Watlington of Searching for Profit represented the search based affiliates, Peter Figueredo (that's pronounced fig-your-a-dough, Declan) of NETexponent was there to talk about cooperative marketing, and Marissa Levinson of SixApart explained how blogs can complement an affiliated program.

Playing with the Blogosphere

With my first choice of sessions overfull, I decided to see what was new with the blogosphere. Henry Copeland of Blogads moderated a panel of B.L. Ochman of What's Next Online and Sebastian Paaw from the Netherlands Board of Tourism talking about case studies from a blog based campaign each had created.

RSS Deconstructed

ClickZ Executive Editor Rebecca Lieb moderated "RSS Deconstructed" with perspectives from a researcher, agency executive, marketer, and email solutions provider. Rebecca gave her personal take clearly: if you're looking to reach her, RSS is a great way to do so. She subscribes to the press release feed of every company she covers that has one.

Jon Gibs, Nielsen//NetRatings Director of Media Analytics, opened up the discussion saying that according to survey data, RSS ads are moderately irritating, but active RSS users are less irritated than non-users - a good sign. He then focused on the group that is irritated. Those annoyed by RSS cite a number of reasons, such as that it's "pure," that it's an escape from the "old internet to the new internet," and that it's just more advertising which they're already sick of. However, there was still some acceptance for the ads to support the content. His conclusion: "No, consumers don't hate RSS advertising. They are resigned to RSS advertising and the more they use RSS the more likely they are to become accepting of it."

Next up: Avenue A - Razorfish GM/VP Mark Stephens. He spoke about the trends from consumer and advertiser perspectives. "It's not always about the data," he said, noting that some applications such as podcasting are more valuable than available metrics alone will tell you. Stephens kept stressing the contextual nature of RSS ads, and added behavioral targeting can be layered on top. The highlight were the actual examples he showed - namely with NYTimes.com and CondeNet. It emphasized this is real, and these ads aren't just going on the "cat blogs" that Seth Godin has talked about - the blogs by people talking about their personal lives.

Organic SEO: Fireside Chat With the Experts

Barbara Coll, founder and CEO of WebMama, and Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay Inc tackled the topic of Organic SEO. Both are bonafide experts in the field. Barbara Coll has been a Search Engine Optimization practitioner for years, and was the founding president of SEMPO. Bruce Clay is well-known from his Search Engine Relationship Chart, and boasts SEO clients like Edmunds, and MTV.

This session was full of hands-on practical advice to ensure your site will perform well in natural search. Of course, everyone would love to appear on top of natural search rankings, and if you follow their tips it can happen for you too. Or at least maybe it will help.

The Fuzzy Future of Search

After coming out of the keynote by Mark Kvamme I was stoked. Ten years of excitement and bliss are coming our way. I was so excited that I even thanked Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer for the great session. They look kind of alike ok? Though the fact that the "speaker" was standing alone with Steve Hall might have clued me in...

So, now that Mark/Geoff had buit up the excitement level, I was off to hear Bambi Francisco grill some "thought leaders" on the future of search. Panelists included Kevin Ryan, Managing partner of Kinetic Results, Dana Todd of SiteLab (and current President of SEMPO - Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization), John Batelle of Federated Media Publishing, and Fredrick Markini of iProspect.

Sounded like a great session.

But it turns out that the future is not well defined. Maybe my hopes were too high, but the session seemed to me to contain a few too many random musings about the future of search, and very few clear ideas. Maybe it had something to do with the panel itself. The representatives, though I'm sure they do a fine job with things like reacting to change, or plotting a reasonable course for their customers, seemed to me are really more well-connected users of marketing tools than oracles for the future of search.

Multicultural Studies

I was one of few attendees who had the pleasure of sitting through the "Multicultural Studies" session Wednesday before lunch. With the exception of the opening remarks from Nielsen//NetRatings VP Charlie Buchwalter, it was entirely US-focused; I expected more of an international slant to it. Marketers targeting African Americans and Hispanics would have found this session especially valuable, and it's worth digging up their presentations if they become available online later.

Buchwalter introduced the session showing top sites, demographics, and online advertisers in selected countries. The moral: countries are like snowflakes; no two are the same. Blame this blogger for the metaphor, as it didn't come from the speaker.

Then came Iconoculture VP Donna Daniels, who entitled her presentation "The Digital Divide is Dead! The 411 on African Americans, Technology and New Pathways to Reach Them." She spoke of "technomorphing," which Iconoculture has service-marked. I didn't quite get what this meant, but I'm sure you can define it any way you like.

Sold Out! Ad Networks, Practical Usage Advice

I tried my best to make this session, but arriving just a few minutes before it started I ran into a line that was not moving. The security guard was not letting anyone in because the room was full! From conversations around me, I heard that this was the second session in a row in this room (one of the bigger ones) that filled up and had to turn away attendees. The room was packed, with many people standing two deep around the edges. There were murmurs of "refund" going around from the five or ten people who could not get in again, but we almost had an alternative session with representatives from Yahoo! and ValueClick among those barred from entry.