Contenders From TV, Print, Radio, Internet Square Off For Local Ad Dollars

They must have been giving out free donuts again in the conference room hallway; this session was nearly empty. The mean count (taking into consideration the trickling in and out of misdirected expo hall salespeeps) was 42 attendees - and that is including the panelists and moderator David Hutchinson of Program Partners, Inc. Maybe the 2-day hangover had finally set in for 90% of conference attendees, or maybe, just maybe, nobody wanted to hear about how local ad dollars are being spread across multiple media platforms.

I certainly hope that this is not the case. If so: shame, shame, shame on you, ad:tech attendees. Don’t cha know that local is the way of the future?

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Advanced SEO: Use Common Sense

Before I got to ad:tech I was really looking forward to hearing truly advanced techniques here. But after sitting though a few panels with experts who were not as expert as billed, my expectations were tempered. Add in that this session was to be mostly audience Q&A and that the audience was not advanced power users, and you get basic search engine optimization advice. Let me first give away the biggest secret of SEO: build your site for the users and the search engines will like it. Anything done for the sole purpose of the search spider is likely to either make no difference or hurt. I’ve known this for years and I’m not a certified expert.

Old Warriors Descend from On High

“You’re born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you’re up in the rarefied atmosphere and you’ve forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake, son.” - Eddie Temple, Layer Cake

ad:tech’s Wednesday evening keynote, entitled Old Warriors Don’t Die!, gave war-hardy industry executives a rare opportunity to reflect on the early state of online communication. Moderator Tony Perkins of AlwaysOn Network moved discourse saltily between the following panelists: founder Jonathan Nelson of Organic, founder Kevin O’Connor of O’Connor Ventures, managing general partner Bob Davis of Highland Capital, and co-founder Gene DeRose of House Party, Inc.

It’s a Branded New World

Branding online seems to be the antithesis of what everyone has been promoting about advertising online. The promise of tracking and accountability has long been the Holy Grail, but most of the money being spent is by the large brands more interested in different metrics. As the audience was told, brand equity convinces people to “buy 30 gallon tubs of Hellman’s mayonnaise at Costco.” The panel spoke about breaking through the clutter online to get the brand message out to the consumer and drive brand preference.

Publishing in the Digital Era

Although the attendance was fairly meager, today’s Publishing in the Digital Era panel brought together an all-star group to share their insights on how to evolve an old business to the realities of a new world. Joining Moderator Randy Bennett of the Newspaper Association of America were panelists Christian Hendricks, VP of Interactive Media at McClatchy Company, Michelle Slack, Director of Digital Media at Hearst Newspapers, Sylvia Mariano, Executive Director of Edmunds Inc., and Karen Dorst, Account Development Director at Mansueto Ventures (publishers of Inc, and FastCompany).

The State of the Agency

The panelists - a trio running AKQA, Modem and Molecular -  made the point that some of the best marketing ideas are coming from their technology departments, not the marketing guys. Once the techies understand what is wanted, they are able to present innovative ideas for achieving those goals.  I found it interesting to hear this perspective from an agency; clearly the industry is evolving.

Social Networks and Consumer Generated Media: Re-Examining the Value Proposition

Jim Scheinman from Bebo talked about how a user mentioned one weekend that he ate 14 packs of Skittles. He said that the user started to become a “representative” for Skittles on Bebo, drawing more attention to the Skittles brand. These are the kinds of branding opportunites which are starting to appear on social networks

Roy deSouza from Zedo talked about how behavioural targeting increases advertising performance by 4-5 times.  Zedo puts a pixel on the ebay homepage, then when users are picked up on the social network an ebay ad can be shown. Roy has been far and away the sharpest panelist I have heard all day.

Market Focus: US Hispanics Online

If you’re interested in the U.S. Hispanic market, you should attend ad:tech Miami, since its focused on Hispanics online. Currently 15% of the broader market is Hispanic, and this will grow to 19% by 2020. The Hispanic population is growing four times faster than general population, however spending for the Hispanic segment isn’t proportional. It’s also a young market.

On Beer and Big Balls

I popped into a session that covered Anheuser-Busch’s Here’s to Beer campaign and Verb, an active attempt to bring play back to the kiddies.

ad:tech is quite possibly the only place where beer marketing and children can be discussed in one forum.

Naked Bloggers in the Trenches

Tuesday’s panel by top bloggers started with some early references to nudity, which for them unfortunately was not a pleasant thought. Mentions of working from bed - mostly naked - and “open kimonos” aside, the panel did make a great point that to create a strong personal brand is openness.  The panel consisted of four experienced bloggers and a tag-along moderator.  Perhaps I was expecting too much after my previous experience. You had Steve Hall of AdRants (and the official ad:tech blog) fame, Karl Long of Nokia’s N-Gage Web/Social Media area, co-creator of AskANinja.com Kent Nichols, and Jeremiah Owyang from Podtech who streamed the panel live and followed the online chat from those watching remotely.

When asked where their brand identity came from, Steve said that it basically came from who he was.  From his experience in the industry he could see through the cracks and read through the BS of a press release.  While he may be a bit snarky online, many have observed that he is much nicer in person than the publisher of Adrants. Karl also tried out a podcast and noted that the intimacy of having your voice go into someone’s head made him more approachable than the typed word. Kent said that when they started AskANinja they did not have a plan. It all evolved through a dialog with the audience, but once you do figure it out, you have to know your brand better than they do. He said that it is like the Simpsons. If you go back and watch the first season, the characters are one dimensional, badly drawn, and the voices are not quite right.

Mad Scientists’ Club Meeting

“Welcome to your 5th grade science class,” moderator Lori Schwartz of Interpublic Group announced to the audience. Awkward pause. Are we supposed to laugh? A few nervous twitters had to suffice.

Luckily, the metaphor didn’t get carried to the point of obnoxiousness - only mild. She did tell us that she was mostly pleased with our test papers and definitely referred to the panelists as “mad scientists,” but other than that I didn’t feel entirely uncomfortable. I also felt moderately good about the system they utilized to field questions from the audience. We were provided with a number to text questions to, courtesy of HipCricket, the mobile marketing agency. CEO Ivan Braiker further showcased the interface by creating a contest: the audience could text the word “gift” to the number and at the end of the session a number was chosen at random to receive a $100 gift card.

Measurement and Metrics : The Debate Rages On

Measurement and Metrics. Should you measure? Should you not measure? And if you measure, should you refer to the result of your measurements as metrics? some argument, instead we saw a very harmonious discussion of the challenges of measurement and the implications of data in our very ROI driven business.

Rick Bruner, Director of Research and Industry Relations at Doubleclick was joined by Young-Bean Song, VP of Analytics at Atlas Institute, Chad Parizman, Director of Online Analytics at Scripps Networks Interactive (home of The Food Network & other television properties), Darren Stoll, Macys.com Director of Marketing Analytics, and John Squire, Sr. VP Product Strategy and GM Search Services at CoreMetrics.

All panelists agreed that one of the biggest challenges they currently face is how to “go beyond the last ad seen.” When you begin looking at all the touch points of your campaign instead of the last point leading to an ultimate conversion point - sale, newsletter sign-up etc - you begin to get a much more nuanced impression of your overall campaign effectiveness. According to Young-Bean Song, Atlas looked at this issue and saw that search-derived visitors who had previously been exposed to display advertising saw a 22% increased likelihood to convert.

eCommerce 2.0: Levi’s, Lego and Why You Wish You Had their Brands

Any session with Geoff Ramsey is guaranteed to be a fact-fest. Today, as moderator of the eCommerce 2.0 session, he did not disappoint. Here are a few from the first five minutes of the session:

• 92% of adults regularly go online when considering a purchase
• online search influences 20-30% of offline purchases
• 78% of internet users in America shop online
• 50% of online adults watch video on YouTube
• video adspend for 2006 was $410 million out of $16 billion in total adspend, but is expected to grow to $2.9 billion by 2010
• there are 72 million blogs online, but only 7-10% of Internet users are active blog readers
• MySpace has 60 million users
• Google’s Eric Schmidt said “We are in the worldwide advertising market.” A 600 billion dollar market
• 25% of online visitors go to social media sites

Dispatch From DC (or You Can’t Save the Village Idiot All the Time)

While everyone packed into the room next door was learning how to harness the unsuspecting masses into pitching their wares for them - at Viral and WOM - I was learning how those very actions may later be deemed deceptive or an invasion of privacy. Boy, are those people going to be sorry they filled that room before I made it in there.

In truth, this session was a very interesting and timely. Gary Arlen, President of Arlen Communications was Moderator. His firm represents Sony, the NFL, Microsoft, and The Washington Post among other well-known groups. Joining him as panelists were Christine Varney, head of the Internet Practice Group at law firm Hogan & Hartson - clients include MySpace, DoubleClick, eBay, and others - and Alen Chapell, President of Chapell & Associates, who’s firm helps organizations “increase the transparency of their business practices.” To me, Alen sounds like a person you call when something has gone terribly wrong.

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble?

RogerMcNamee did a top notch job moderating a panel of experts, keeping them on topic and calling them out when they got too self promotional. Unlike most panels where the moderator is a secondary part of the panel, there to ask questions and make introductions, Roger really took an active part in the discussions. The panel even asked questions of him. The point of the session was to tell the audience about where the opportunities await for new and existing businesses looking for VC money or acquisition. Each panelist had a chance to introduce themselves through their answer to a question about what they are looking for and see as the next opportunity.

Attendees Caught The Viral Bug

The planning team that scheduled the rooms for this morning’s sessions apparently didn’t get the word that Word Of Mouth is a hot topic. If you arrived only 10 minutes early you (and I) missed out. The audience had already filled the room, and the hallway, to capacity. If you look really close, you can see one of the speakers through the door:

Meanwhile though, the session on government regulation next door (in a room twice as big) had plenty of seats. Sounds like a job for the Department of Planning for Planning Department.

Off to learn what Big Brother has in store for us.

New Gaming Media

So, I’m driving down the streets of San Fran at 200 mph in my brand new Ferrari avoiding drivers left and right, when I pass a truck covered by a Carl’s Jr. ad. It’s funny, I don’t think I ever really noticed advertising in video games before. It’s been done in the movies for years, and now subtle product placement is taking off in the gaming industry. The Gamer Nation session focused on different forms of in game advertising.

Successful Viral and Word of Mouth Efforts Get Explored

If viral and word of mouth are your thing, you might want to check out the Workshop session moderated by EVB Founder and CEO Daniel Stein who, along with panelists YouTube Head of Product Marketing Jamie Byrne, Barbarian Group President and Co-Founder Benjamin Palmer, MTV/VH1 Programming VP Gaurav Misha and Microsoft Director of Buzz Marketing Sean Carver, will explore what makes a successful viral campaign. Best practices, examples and approaches will be discussed. The panel is on Tuesday, April 24 at 12:15PM