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Final Ad:Tech Post

Ad:Tech is coming to a close and clearly there is much excitement about the future. Lots of new cash is flowing into the internet channel which obviously will shake out the marketing field in interesting ways. First, for those companies that thought internet marketing was only about web sites, banner ads, email, and search or even unique silos unto themselves are going to have a tough time surviving. With real dollars comes real expectations of performance. No longer can brands afford to invest "a little here, a little there" and scratch the tactics off the list. Internet marketing is a dynamic, living, breathing marketing organism that needs constant attention and care. As one speaker said, "That's why we were given two eyes and one mouth." You've got to look more than talk.

Read on for coverage of the remaining sessions...

New...Integrated...Rich

This session was more about "what's cool that Flashes." Kicking off the speaking from the podium was the ever-entertaining shock-jock of the Internet world Phillip Kaplan, founder of such illuminary sites as FuckedCompany and Mobog. Oh, and he's also the founder of AdBrite, an ad network that feels more like an eBay for ad impressions than a formal network. I'm intrigued.

Local ad guy Tom Kunau from Fallon showed off several new interactive campaigns that prove that Fallon is more than just their BMW Films work. Recent campaigns for Brawny and Travelers were both engaging and entertaining. We'll see if they bring in the kudos like the BMW work did.

The final presenter was Brett Hurt, founder of a company that's been on my radar for some time -- BazaarVoice. The company provides integrated customer reviews directly into branded web sites. Think "testimonials" but, well, they're real. So along side that picture of the Sony LCD TV will be an RSS feed of reviews -- both positive and negative (though a strong majority naturally tend to flow positive) -- from actual owners and buyers of that product.

The metrics are strong. PETCO as an example saw a 5X improvement in email click-through and conversion rates when they included reviews. Burpee saw a 43% higher click-through rate on product pages. Good stuff.

Mobile Marketing Ecosystem

This session was the one I had been waiting for since I'm personally involved in some fairly out-there wireless campaigns right now. Fortunately, the presentation from Courtney Acuff of Denuo and Peter Fuller of i-Jump was more open ended and open to questions.

To set the stage, they reiterated a common theme at Ad:Tech: we are experiencing massive time shifting (TiVO), place shifting (wireless, international) and power shifting (consumer control, consumer generated media). That points to the cell phone as a powerful new medium since all three of these shifts can be empowered by the phone and powerful apps. They also mentioned that TXT messaging now is pretty much where email was ten years ago, so imagine the growth potential.

As advertisers and marketers, we have the opportunity to either screw it up, as happened largely with email or do it right by leading in standard making and best practices bodies such as the Mobile Marketing Association. Also, we need to remember that wireless is controlled by the carrier and simply isn't as freewheeling as the bodiless Internet. If you screw around, the carriers will shut you down. Apparently this has just occurred with an SMS provider in the Bay Area who inadvertently sent a message about an upcoming horror movie to its audience at 2 AM rather than 2 PM, sending families throughout the area into a fearful frenzy as their phones all rang in the middle of the night. The carriers essentially locked out the service provider.

Some interesting wireless items on the horizon:

- Phones will be broadband by 2008
- the new StarStar program offered by Zoove.com offers a less painful Premium SMS interface. Others should be on the way.
- Content such as "mobisodes" will become more prevelant
- mobile needs some sort of ad network

Wireless is the current wild west. It's absolutely HUGE in numbers and is truly multicultural and international. I still think it may dwarf the challenges the web has presented in its short 15 year lifespan. Stay buckled up.

Local Media Strategies

For the first time in Ad:Tech history a session was dedicated to local marketing. The verdict is still out, in my mind, as to how we research local audiences. Companies such as Centro seem very compelling since they aggregate inventory and other marketing opportunities from very local sources such as newspapers and radio. For example, if you want to know what happened to your local sports teams, you wouldn't go to Google, you'd go to your newspaper. And yet advertisers continue to pour money into the major portals. Companies like Centro offer efficiencies in the market to allow us to reach people in local markets. I like 'em.

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, presentation by Bryan Eisenberg

If you've been in the online marketing business for longer than a month, you probably know about Bryan Eisenberg, one of the great minds of web usability and, as he's coined, the "persuasion architecture." He's just written a new book called Waiting for Your Cat to Bark. (Taking a cue from Seth Godin I'm sure, the book was handed out to everyone here...good word-of-mouth, eh?) It follows along the persuasion architecture model that forces us to quick thinking of a web site as a series of static pages, but ways that people of varying motivations and behaviors attempt to solve a problem. Hopefully that problem is solved when they complete some sort of interaction or transaction. If not, maybe it's because you were trying to tell your story rather than solve their problem. Again, one mouth, two eyes (ears???) comes to mind.

I won't go into detail. Might as well buy the book from the source.

Overall...

...I'd say Ad:Tech was well worth the trip. The crowd seems to be greying which tells me a lot about the state of online marketing. It's maturing. It's hungry for knowledge. It's becoming very practical. It's very, very real.

I hope you found this useful. If you have any questions for me, please contact me any time. I'd love your feedback.

Go forth and enjoy!

Andrew

PS - This is raw blogging...I'll go in later when I have more time to clean it up. Until then, forgive me for typos and misssspellins.

Posted by Andrew at July 25, 2006