Tactical SEO: Welcome to the Google Show

The most informative session I attended at ad:tech was the Tactical SEO Workshop—which isn’t really saying much.

Panel stars included Bruce Clay, the most talkative moderator I’ve ever seen, and Aaron D’Souza of Google—who, Clay anxiously pointed out, was also on this panel last year. There were two other people on board—but as Aaron Batte snippily Twittered, it was pretty much The Aaron D’Souza Show.

To kick things off, here’s something you probably didn’t know: Of all sites that commit the icky mistake of using it to point to a URL, Adobe ranks highest for the phrase “Click here.”

Do yourself (and whomever else you link to) a favor. When linking, use relevant anchor text instead of the generic sort.

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‘Internet Superstars’ Take Stage at Best ad:tech Session Ever

ad:tech very much needed the so-called Internet Superstars, four “internet famous” types who were the center of the closing keynote at this year’s San Francisco conference. The name, a bit cheesy for a panel (buy, hey, it’s the name of the Revision3 show), was apt for the ad:tech crowd, a very different crowd than the SXSW crowd to whom, internet stardom is the norm.

Mobile Advertising: Does Adidas Show it’s Already Here?

“This year is the year of mobile marketing.” That statement always raises chuckles among advertisers, but the “Exchange Series V: What Can Mobile Do For You?” shows that in the US Market, mobile advertising has been done with success. And yes, with actual case studies to boot not the “vagueness” that Alisa has described as being the theme of other ad:tech sessions.

On the panel included David Gale (Vibes Media), Gene Keenan (Isobar Communications) and
Chris Murphy (adidas USA). Their case studies focused around Transformers, Adidas and Verizon. Beyond the QA session provided for a pretty good best practices introduction to mobile advertising.

The Adidas case study was by far the most impressive. It demonstrated that a coordinated campaign - from TV commercials to in-store retail placement - can be all tied together with mobile tactics to create a campaign that can engage with their audience on personal level.

ad:tech San Francisco Captured Flickr-Style

Catch the second day (OK, mostly night) of ad:tech San Francisco in our Flickr albums. Here’s day one. Here’s day two. Oh, yes, we do love to have fun. Rubicon rocked. The Oldtimers party was exquisite. Datran did dinner and...what would an ad:tech photo album be without booth babes? Enjoy.

“Beyond the Banner” Not Quite Beyond

Ahh, the second to last session of the last day. Everyone’s sticking around to check out Web 2.0 darling Kevin Rose and this mysterious “Internet Superstar” giving the closing keynote. But, before the entertaining antics of these web stars, we have the “Beyond the Banner/Beyond the Network: The Mid-Tail and the Promise of Engagement” panel. Maybe I was just tired and grumpy, but there was nothing beyond about this panel. In fact, they mostly discussed the issues of media buyers not planning well enough or not fully understanding the tools available to define and meet campaign objectives.

The Empowered Consumer: Are We Losing Control of our Brands? No! Yes!

Moderator Marc Ruxin, Senior VP/ Director of Digital Strategy and Innovation for McCann Worldgroup opened up the session declaring this would be the “best conversastion about conversations.” My first thought was why the hell control-freaks Microsoft and Citi were on a panel ostensibly discussing the “empowered consumer” and the conversation we all must join (in transparent, authentic ways, of course). Seriously? Microsoft? On the whole, this was an interesting panel with some of the best funny/strange comments of the conference (minus of course the best quote of all from opening keynoter Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak who proclaimed resolutely “I believe in print!"). Below is a summary of topics the panel covered with only the choicest quotes from the panelists…

Where Is My Local Interactive Marketing Association?

20 odd people showed up for the panel “How Interactive Marketing Associations are Driving Growth One Market at a Time” and I think most of them were friends of those on the panel.  I hate to say this, but I’m not really sure if there was anything to learn from this panel - other than that there is an association in my home city of Los Angeles that I’ve never heard of.

Back to the Future: Marketing with Downloadable Media

Not so much a panel discussion, the session was more of a group presentation.  The moderator and panelists each had about ten minutes of charts that sometimes reached into fifteen.  Not that the material was not interesting, but I was hoping for more back and forth between the panel and a moderator who guided the discussion. They did a good job of following the description for the panel, which means the audience got the fill of definitions, case studies, best practices, and more for both the marketers and the people who might want to try their hand at creating a podcast or vidcast.

Widgets, Gadgets and Apps Oh My!

One of the final session’s of Ad-Tech brought together a panel to represent the whole widget ecosystem. Or rather, as it might be described here: We want to explore the synergies in the widget/social app space, with special emphasis on monetizing tweens/millenials for a potential power panel play. I keeeed, actually this was one of the more practical sessions I attended.

The session was moderated by Jerimiah Owyang from Forrester Research with a panel representing:

The Platform-

Kent Schoen, Product Marketing Manager at Facebook



Widget Development-

Hooman Radfar, CEO of Clearspring Technologies



Analysis-

Jane Felice, Senior Client Service Director, Media and Entertainment at comScore



and an end Client-

Ed Davis, VP of Product Development at ESPN Digital Media.

The best thing about this session, was that it was a genuine panel, rather than a series of short presentations. The moderator led the discussion, and each of the panelists had a chance to jump in when they could contribute.

The Geoff Ramsey Brand Promise

Depending upon your perspective, Geoff Ramsey either phones in his presentations by doing essentially the same presentation every time while swapping out stats, or (and this is more likely) he has carefully crafted his personal brand to the degree that Ad-Tech sees fit to call his session “the Geoff Ramsey Experience”.

From my experience, the Geoff Ramsey Experience entails:

- Before beginning the statistics stream, he starts by pointing out that data can be used to make almost any case you like.

- He tests the limits of PowerPoint’s ability to layer big stars, text boxes, clip art and low rez web photos together. Designers in the audience are light-headed by the end.

- Throws in a good sprinkling of jokes. About half are good, the audience is too sleepy, hungry or confused to catch the rest.

- Then a good mix of “So and so said this”, followed by illustrative stat, followed by “don’t believe me, look at these guys (show other market researchers numbers), followed by pointing out that one of the other researchers might be smoking crack.

All told, this comes together to form one of the sessions I always plan to attend.

Now, if you really want to get all the stats from his presentation, I suggest you contact eMarketer and ask for a copy—I’m sure they will help you. Despite the fact that Ramsey specifically said not to take notes, I risked his wrath in order to provide you the stats I know you want.

“Leading Marketers Share Their Vision” What Vision?

After wrapping up the “Consumer Insights: Leading Marketers Share Their Vision” session on Wednesday, I decided that my lunch at the Utah Hotel was probably more enlightening than this panel.

The premise of the session, as put forth by moderator Kevin Delaney of The Wall Street Journal, was that consumers are acting differently than they used to, so how do we as marketers reach them? Read: the digital lives of consumers is changing the way they behave and interact with media and therefore creating a challenge for marketers.

On panel to tackle this question were Mel Clements, Advertising and Digital Manager of Nike Basketball, Daina Middleton, Global Advertising and Interactive Marketing Director for HP, Mark Fogelberg ANA Director of Communications and Content, and Zdenek Kratky, Brand Manager of Consumer Lifestyle for Philips DAP.

The Modern Agency: We’re Still Trying to Find One

Mark Kingdon, from Organic, kicked off the session with an overview of the challenges facing agencies today. From questions of the recession to the increasing reshuffling of the agency constellation between digital, creative and traditional agencies and their clients. Mark is an appropriate pick as a moderator, as he’s been writing on the modern agency since 2006. And considering we’re still having a panel on the topic, we’re obviously not there yet.

The agencies on the panel were fairly diverse set of older and new agencies: Organic, R/GA, Neo@Ogilvy, AKQA, and Carat. What would of been interesting is the inclusion of agencies that are very clearly digital marketers rather than creative and small, boutique agencies that, while small, are more nimble to new advertising opportunities.

Finally, A Panel to Sink Your Teeth Into: Two Case Studies

The Exchange Series IV: The Consumer Experience in a Multi-Platform World was one of the last panels of a very long Wednesday here at ad:tech, and since vaguery seems to be a common theme this year, my expectations for this panel going into it were admittedly low. However, I stumbled upon what was perhaps the most informative, energetic session I’ve attended as actual case studies of innovative, integrated, collaborative campaigns for T-Mobile/MTV and Nim’s Island/Stardoll were shared. If you were looking for concrete examples of actual campaigns and their specifics, this was the panel for you.

On panel to discuss their campaigns were Pooja Midha, VP, Business Development for MTV Networks, Dan Fietsam, Executive VP/Executive Creative Director for Publicis in the West, and Vijay Rao, VP, Associate Director of Communications Planning at Optimedia comprised the T-Mobile/MTV team. Matt Griswold, Director of Interactive Marketing for Fox Walden and Glen Ginsburg, Senior VP of Sales for Stardoll were on hand to discuss their Nim’s Island/Stardoll collaboration. Unlike a traditional panel with a moderator, this session was truly a show and tell of successful, experimental campaigns. To get right down to it, lets go through each case study. First up, T-Mobile and MTV....

Mobile & Local Get Down To Business

Wednesday’s performance marketing session, Tactical Search : Local & Mobile Search, promised an update on the mobile and local landscape, along with practical advice on current best practices. And, the session did deliver on both counts.

The panel was composed of Zach Anderson, VP of Marketing at TicketCity, Sean Cummings, Marketing Director of Ask.com, Erika Moersch, Manager of Paid Serach at Outrider, and Ian White, CEO of Urban Mapping and moderated by industry veteran Dana Todd currently CMO of Newsforce (and SEMPO board member).

Zack Anderson took the stage first and provided an outline of their efforts as an online tickets vendor to reach local and mobile customers. It is a pet peeve of mine (and I know I’m not alone in this) when speakers agree to come to an event, but then hold back the specifics of their experience for fear of giving away their trade secrets. Zack did not do that.

In Pursuit of Something Shiny

Power Panel: The Internet Economy. It’s an amalgam of nonsense. What’s a power panel (Ariel asks)? What does it mean to discuss the internet economy?

It turns out discussing the internet economy is a lot like discussing the US economy. Conversation goes in circles, common frets are repeated to a fever pitch, and the most influential players tread shallow water.

Welcome to the Vortex of (Metrics) Hell

Josh Chasin of comScore opened the panel by defining “maelstrom” for the audience. I’ll let you go off and look up your favorite definition, but suffice it to say that Josh welcomed us all to the Vortex of Hell. It was a great mix for the panel with representatives from Panel based companies (Josh from comScore and Jon Gibs, VP, Media Analytics, Nielsen Online) along with top industry analyst Young-Bean Song VP of Analytics & Atlas Institute and veteran Beth Uyenco, Global Research Director, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions. Josh opened by defining a few questions for the panel to discuss and each panelist had a few minutes to talk to the audience.

While it’s nice for the panelists to get to present an introduction, I really don’t care for a set of charts to start a panel. That said, it was refreshing to hear Jon, the panel measurement representative come out and admit that panel data alone is not enough. He said that an integrated approach is best, taking the best of the panel data and server side data. In fact, his stated goal is to “move all measurement to integrated on next five years.”

Creative Is Not Hard, Finding Talent Is

I was a bit apprehensive as the Exchange Series I: New Creative, New Tools session began. Billed as an interactive workshop, it began with a presentation on the big screen telling us about the creative process.  Describing the process from the perspective of the large agency with large clients, Tim Smith from Applied Design Group talked about how creative is often an afterthought, “putting lipstick on the pig” or “decorating the spec.” Instead, shops need to use small groups empowered to make decisions and “steer the creative ideation” using agile development. 

I don’t know if eyes glazed over in the audience or not, but this was not the workshop I expected.  Luckily, this was the end of the presentation, and the beginning of a great interactive session.  The crowd of close to 200 broke up into four groups moderated by Tim and his crew of leaders Andrew Peters (UE Architect, Inc.), Jason Wilson (Applied Design Group), and Joel Hladecek (Innovation, PHD).  I sat in on Tim’s group.

A Socratic Dialog on Media and Entertainment

At the Media Entertainment panel, the big question was addressing the fracturing of media. It’s no longer print and TV; it’s podcasting, YouTube, Hulu.com, Apple TV, print, video-on-demand and so on. So the question for those dealing with programming, advertising distribution is: How do we handle this radically, fluid media landscape that is still in its infancy?

To help address these questions, the session included a selection of panelists working with major brands: David Morris (CNET), Nicole McCormack (Digital division of Martha Stewart), Peter Kang (Ogilvy West), and Julie Rohm (Consultant with auto manufacturers).

Rather then asking direct questions on media distributions strategy or challenges of those producing content, the moderator Shelly Palmer, director at Advanced Media Ventures Group, framed the panel within what he called ”socratic conversations.” These conversations basically centered on Shelly throwing out abstract and qualitative questions to puzzle the panelists. Shelly managed to take what one would expect to be an corporate executive-level forum on multi-platform media into something more akin to a college-level philosophy discussion.

Like Your Mom: Marketers Cling to MySpace, Facebook as the Hip Thing

Tuesday at ad:tech San Francisco kicked off with a profusion of “Power Panels.” Though it’s not clear what defines a “Power Panel” from a regular panel, I decided to drop in on “Power Panel: Social Network Marketing - Exploring The Value Proposition.” Led by Debra Aho Williamson of eMarketer, the panel aimed to define what the value proposition was for social networking. Williamsom somewhat awkwardly explained that social networking, like a cat, was now on its fifth life out of nine without providing any reasons as to why and later stating it was a growing, living thing. Awkwardness aside, the panel focused on two case studies to tell their story.

Minority Report 2008

In the Power Panel: Tales from the Bleeding Edge—Game-Changing Opportunities for Tomorrow’s Marketer attendees were shown just how close we are to Minority Report style personalized marketing today.

This panel discussion featuring Jason Goldberg of MTI Interactive, Bruno Uzzan of Total Immersion, Alan Schulman of imc2, and Michael Mak of bCode, shared live demonstrations and examples of true one-to-one marketing in action.

First up, Jason Goldberg described how their company is working to change the retail shopping experience, and allow marketers an unprecendented level of insight into consumer behavior. The challenge, according to Jason, is how to get customers engaged and involved. Half of all retail visits result in no purchase, he says, so this is a challenge worth taking.

MTI Interactive customer PEP Boys is addressing that challenge through an RFID keychain. This $5 device allows in-store kiosks to remember your personal preferences (like your car make and model) and display appropriate data as you approach. “Do people like this, or does it freak them out?” asked the moderator Lori Schwartz. “Both” was Jason’s answer—“if the value proposition is good enough, people love it”.

…and God Created Kodak

Did you ever see that spot where Vinny Pastore beats the crap out of a printer, then gets a Kodak EasyPrint? This is part of Kodak TWO-OH, a bid to cash in on modernity by a brand that’s been around since the beginning of time.

CMO Jeff Hayzlett of Kodak, who led the ad:tech opening keynote, has an inferiority complex. He thinks he’s too big. His suits are undoubtedly XXXL, his expressions cup-runneth-over, and his swaggers could alter the course of human minnows in a crowded hallway.

But in the hallowed sanctum, Jeff’s big views and irrepressible personality are forcing an old brand to learn new tricks.