One of the joys of independent consulting is the opportunity to learn from a wide range of companies and the many solutions providers who stand ready to serve them. For startup CanaryVoice, we identified that social media savvy moms are likely to embrace its unique voicemail greetings service, leading us to explore the “momosphere” and participation in the BLP CONNECT! conference where “warrior-preneur” and marketing consultant Ann Evanston gave an inspiring keynote on “The Power of Connecting.”

Her request for audience feedback on the meaning of “connection” elicited a wide range of responses, including: growing relationships, personal converstions, face-to-face meetings, follow-up, support, cameraderie, resources, interest and attention. According to Evanston, connection means “creating an energy that draws people to you.” Pull not push marketing. Inbound, not outbound marketing. Energetically, YOU are what creates your brand, which is distinctly unique from the product you sell. YOU make your brand unique and special, and as such you can program marketing activities to create an energy that attracts customers to your brand.

While the emphasis of Evanston’s talk was geared toward an audience of women entrepreneurs and guiding their use of social media, every marketer can benefit from thinking more about ways to energize and connect with their audiences, no matter what the product or the size of the marketing budget. If the word for 2010 was “authentic” and in 2011 we are talking about being “transparent,” the word for 2012 will be to “humanize” your brand, according to Evanston.

So how do you go about humanizing, connecting and energizing your brand? Here were my take-aways from Evanston’s motivating talk:

1) Create polarity in your marketing. Ho-hum marketing is average and safe — be brave, be memorable and be yourself!

2) Understand that multiple “buying types” exist and that you need to appeal to all of them while being ready to refine your pitch once you determine which buying type you are dealing with. Diversify how you connect by creating different ways to tell your story.

3) Think with abundance, not in scarcity mode. Doing so will help you attract like-minded people who want to do business with you. You will create connections you never thought possible, that will lead to an even greater number of customers, referral partners and promotion opportunities.

4) Let go of the fear. Fear of success, fear of the money you can really make, fear of polarity, fear of that first Tweet. Don’t let fear hold you back from getting the things done you need to do to drive your business forward.

5) Create a step-by-step plan comprised of systems and processes that develop revenue…and, of course, give Ann a call to help!

There is nothing more powerful than the energetic connections an entrepreneur can make when she tells her story with authenticity, honesty and fearlessness. Whether it’s in a selling situation, a speech or social media marketing, let go of the fears that are holding you back. There is a world of partners, customers and advocates out there just waiting for you to make powerful connections that will help you grow your business.

Unlike consumer marketing, where sales from advertising expenditures are a direct operating expense and measuring conversion rates and lifts in retail sales are resident to the business model itself, measuring the sales impact from B2B marketing initiatives is often a more challenging task.

My clients often ask, and this post seeks to answer:

• How do we determine the overall impact of our marketing investment?
• What return on investment we should expect from individual marketing initiatives?
• What benchmarks can be established to compare the effectiveness across our programs?

When measuring the impact of marketing, it is important to do so in the context of the larger corporate agenda. If the stated company objective is to grow revenue while maintaining high customer satisfaction, the related marketing objectives might be to increase awareness while better educating existing customers about products and services they aren’t currently buying. Only from this understanding can sales, marketing, product and operations align under a common value proposition that gets everyone on board with measuring the impact of the company’s external marketing and communication investment.

What to Measure
“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count;
everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.”
– Albert Einstein

Measurement of B2B marketing effectiveness is a relative one, and somewhere between hyper-obsessive measurement and doing nothing, there lies the opportunity to monitor how a company’s investment in marketing is affecting the bottom line.

The best unit of measurement for B2B marketing is cost-per-lead because it holds Marketing accountable to driving new inquiries at some measured cost while giving Sales a familiar metric by which they can also be held accountable. Ultimately a cost-per-sale analysis should be applied, but a cost-per-lead metric is the most common metric by which sales and marketing can share responsibility for their combined efforts.

Since all marketing programs will reach some percentage of both current and prospective customers, applying a CPL metric removes from the equation events that are out of Marketing’s control, such as competition, objection handling, timing, etc.

Actions a target audience may take along the sales funnel that can feed an ROI modle are:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Leads
• Conversations (at events)
• Inquiries (by phone ormail)
• Qualified meetings
• Opportunities (RFPs)
• Sales
• Retention
• Lifetime Value (LTV)

There is wide variance in the types of B2B marketing programs available, and an equally broad range of ways to measure their associated impact. Whether considered individually or collectively, B2B marketing programs can be justified and evaluated by their:

• Cost
• Potential to drive revenue (or other rationale made by management)
• Size of audience
• Quality of audience
• Measurability/accountability

Marketing Spend as a Percentage of Revenue
According to a 2008 IDC study, on average B2B companies spend 2.8% of revenue on marketing (ranging from .8% in the services sector to 5.8% for IT companies). Spending levels depend largely upon the stage of the company and its strategic need to invest in awareness initiatives. The study showed marketing programs represented 61% of total marketing spend, with an average of $293,000 of program spend and $16.8 million in revenue for each corporate marketing staff member.

Return on Investment Benchmarking
Ultimately, a company needs to ascertain its ROI from marketing in order to assure shareholders that the expense is warranted, and to more intelligently make investments in the future based on the results experienced in the past.

While every marketing investment will return a different result, at a macro level we can calculate is how the overall amount invested in marketing (entire spend and salaries) relates to revenue. For example, spending roughly $500,000 to generate $20 million in revenue (2.5% of sales put toward marketing), would be a gross ROI of 3900% (ROI = Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment/Cost of Investment).

Such a gross metric, while interesting, is not that useful for making decisions about where to invest in specific marketing programs. On an individual basis, my rule of thumb has always been that it’s reasonable to expect an average gain of 10x the amount spent, or an ROI of approximately 1,000% from any single program. Some will generate more and some less, but using this as a basic metric provides a starting point from which to create historical benchmarks.

Measurement by Objective
While ultimately, the goal of any organization is to drive sales growth, the process typically begins with marketing programs that drive awareness and leads, each of which have unique properties when it comes to measuring ROI.

Awareness (CPM)

Awareness among customers and prospects, and — more importantly — their attitudes and feelings toward the company, is an important metric by which to determine the impact marketing is having on sales. It is also somewhat difficult to measure.

At one (very expensive) extreme, custom research companies can develop custom panels of would-be customers who can be studied year-over-year to show trends in industry attitudes toward your brand. In the online advertising industry there is another less expensive, and potentially more effective, solution is offered by Advertiser Perceptions, which measures awareness, attitudes and perceptions about specific media vendors by marketers and the agencies that represent them.

At the other end of the spectrum, surveying your own customers is an easy and inexpensive barometer of perception. An adept management team should also have an instinct for whether the company’s marketing is resonating with customers based on their direct feedback from the sales channel. If sales are going up and customers are echoing certain brand values and calling for products and features by name, then something about the company’s marketing is clearly working.

Leads (CPL)

I’ve found marketing to drive demand generation in the B2B space less important than the “air cover” a national sales team can benefit from as they seek to ensure their prospects have heard of the company and have a basic understanding of how it’s different from competitors whom they may perceive to all “sound alike.”

Leads are a viable metric for determining the relative effectiveness of all marketing programs, and wherever possible a contact form should be used to obtain for more information. However, lead-generation as a marketing objective is likely to be inefficient for a high-end sale because it is more likely to attract smaller, unsophisticated advertisers when the company has likely already identified and is pursuing through its national sales force.

Sales (CPA)

Fundamentally, all marketing activities exist to support revenue. Marketing’s impact on sales can be felt at many levels – from positioning to equip sales reps with the right words and collateral, to sponsorship and advertising, editorial coverage, promotions and event marketing – done with the intent of driving revenue.

Unfortunately, it’s harder to measure the impact of great sales collateral and a well-differentiated positioning strategy than it is to track a click-to-sale ratio. These intangible measures can only be captured through the close alignment of sales and marketing to ensure market feedback is systematically incorporated into future iterations of product marketing and corporate positioning.

Retention

Conventional wisdom says it costs five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. Therefore, some emphasis should always be placed on cost-effectively generating new opportunities from existing clients and sales management should undertake a periodic customer retention analysis to determine the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer.

In Measuring ROI from B2B Marketing: Part II, I will take a closer look at the differences between different B2B marketing tactics and how each can be measured for their relative effectiveness.

With a conference the size and importance of ad:tech, each attendee is likely to give a different answer when asked ”so, how was the show?” From my perspective, ad:tech, along with the industry it serves, is alive and well. Now in its second year at Javits Center, ad:tech New York has never been short of attendees, with around 13,000 pre-registered for the show last week (Nov. 2-4). 

Typically the signal-to-noise ratio at ad:tech is so bad it requires you to speak with 1o people to arrive at a single qualified conversation on the show floor. But I’m pleased to report that the efforts of ad:tech chairwoman Sarah Fay and the DMG management team to pull the show back from the brink of being an affiliate vendor-fest appear to be working. During the couple of hours I walked the floor, in addition to at least three prospective CPA/CPL advertisers, I met representatives of Pepsico and Vonage, both of whom seemed open to new opportunities. Exhibitors echoed this sentiment, which was great to hear since even with a booth, introductions to big brands are unlikely unless prearranged.

While my primary focus was to evangelize ValueClick Media’s recent advancements in data, audience targeting and optimization technology among press, clients and digital opinion leaders, I did a fair amount of listening too, and came away with a few themes worth sharing:

• The ad:tech conference is healthy and so is online advertising. No recession here, thank-you-very-much and knock on wood.
• Social commerce is hot, with some mentioning the Gap ‘deal’ by name.
• Questions abound regarding how, when and where social, mobile, local and search intersect with meaningful traction.
• Lots of buzz surrounding the Rubicon/FAN and Specific/BBE deals, rumors of AOL buying Dotomi and other video consolidation anticipated.
• A prevailing attitude of “enough already” when it comes to the over-labeling, shiny-button syndrome that seems to plague our industry. People are ready for consolidation and until then want to simplify the silos in ways that can make it easier for brands to buy from digital media providers.

If you are in agreement with the last point, you should love the video investment banker and savvy online self-promoter Terence Kawaja posted during the conference. Enjoy!

For more information from the conference, the ad:tech blog is always a good read.

This week comScore and ValueClick Media released a white paper I co-authored titled “When Money Moves to Digital, Where Should It Go? Identifying the right media-placement strategies for digital display.”  The study was based on over 100 campaigns run on the ValueClick Media network and used comScore’s Action Lift reporting methodology to evaluate the impact of various display placement and pricing strategies on site visitation and search behavior .

                       Read the press release.                        Download the paper.

While cross-media and search vs. display has been studied previously, to our knowledge this is the first quantitative analysis of the view-through effectiveness of various display placement strategies (Audience Targeting, Contextual Targeting, Retargeting) and pricing options (Premium/CPM, Efficiency/CPC). And while the study is by no means exhaustive, and may even raise more questions than it answers, it validates the efficacy of display advertising and provides direction on which placement strategies to deploy to drive advertiser performance, whether measured by brand or direct response metrics.

Here are a few of the key findings:

• Retargeting works extremely well and should be considered for both direct response and branding initiatives
• Some placements create new traffic while others find audiences that are already engaged with the subject
• Marketers in different industries take advantage of the strategies differently
• All multi-strategy marketers increased site visitation above the norm
• Advertisers who used three or more placement strategies tended to have one metric in which they disproportionately beat the norm

While the study was exclusively on placements across the ValueClick Media network, it was not sponsored research, but rather done in partnership with comScore. Regardless, the campaigns were all sold and delivered on a single network, so a different network or analysis across an entire campaign may have shown different results.

That said, the data tells an interesting story about ValueClick Media. Most surprising to me was the lift, however small, driven by the RON baseline, something we attribute to the impact data and optimization is increasingly having on the ability to predict the performance of every impression — a huge validation of our technology. Contextual pricing probably skewed high due to inclusion of campaigns run on our more exclusive vertical networks. And the data suggests we just may be undervaluing our audience targeting and retargeting inventory.

Laurie Sullivan did a great job of recapping the results of the paper in her MediaPost article published today. I will be presenting the research with Anne Hunter on Tuesday at the IAB MIXX conference in NY. Our workshop is up against sponsored content from Google/AdMob, Yahoo! and AOL, so I’m eager to see what audience we attract. Whoever comes, I’m looking forward to seeing everyone during Advertising Week in NY!

Rarely does a panel discussion achieve an optimal mix of education, entertainment and controversy the way the Fixing Advertising session did on Monday night in Los Angeles. The education series, sponsored by Dapper, has now made its way to every major U.S. media market in an effort to not only make sense of the fragmented display advertising landscape, but to actually do something about it. Bravo!

Credit for the effective cadence and tone of the session goes to Pete Kim, General Manager of Yahoo! SmartAds, who clearly being qualified to serve on the panel himself had the audience on the edge of their seats just by knowing just when to dial up and down the intensity. He began by asking the audience what level of discussion they wanted to hear, which was promptly met with shouts of ”deep dive” and “hard core!” And the panel did not disappoint. 

So what is being done to “fix” advertising? Kim began the conversation by asking the panel to articulate what’s broken — and everyone had an opinion about given the theme of the evening. 

According to Zack Coelius of Triggit, advertising is broken because it’s fragmented. It’s broken when it costs 20 to 30 percent of the media budget just to plan, buy and manage the process, especially when you don’t know where your ads are going and when you don’t have control over the buy.

Frank Adante of Rubicon echoed his sentiment from the publisher perspective, explaining how the sell side is fragmented too. Finding the money is difficult, he says, when an estimated two million advertisers are buying from one thousand sources and at least 500 sales teams worldwide. Not to mention the difficulties presented by multiple billing, collections, reporting systems. The solution, he suggests, is a central platform for selling and the  need for automation.

According to Jon Aizen of Dapper, people enjoy the web and get great value, but they don’t like display ads, which cover 10-20% of the visual real estate. After all, banners haven’t changed much since 1994. Advertisers actually have sometthing people want, but the advertising isn’t reflective of their offering, which Dapper hopes to change by matching visitors to relevant content.

Amy Lehman of United Online made a compelling case for how expensive it is to manage campaign reporting, metrics and attribution and how insane it is that we have not dealt with this as an industry already. Furthermore, she said, the industry is “beyond commodotized” and we make enable fragmentation which only makes it harder on ourselves. Ultimately, according to Lehman, most facets of the fragmented ecosystem (analytics, rich media, creative optimization, ad verification, etc.) belong resident in the ad server. 

As automation of these processes takes hold, will jobs actually be eliminated? Probably not, since machines can’t do creative or strategy, but more junior level roles centered around manually running reports and  managing pivot tables may evaborate, or at least their jobs will change, as the industry continues its rapid trend toward automation. According to Adante, automation is partly the cause of the fragmentation, referencing how a huge SEM/SEO services industry was built upon the backs of the major search engines.

Jon Aizen spoke about page saturation, consumer immunity (banner blindness). Unlike how a half page ad in print is half the cost of a full page, more ads on the page online are sold at the same rate, thus creating banner blindness. In Aizen’s view, sometimes it is more prudent to know when not to serve an ad. He also claims display units are too small and not intrusive enough. After all, when was the last time a banner ad made you laugh or cry?

The days of arbitrage models where middlemen add no value are over. If Terrence Kawaja’s now infamous GCA Savvian fragmentation slide is an indicator of some future consolidation, the Kim asks “by whom?” According to Coelius, “it’s going to be a going out of business process, not a buying process.” For those vendors who help to add insight and extract real value for advertisers, however, the outcome may certainly be acquisition by those larger media players and agencies who must continue acquiring such technology to compete long term.

Partly justifying the need for so much data and analytics is how much more multi-dimensional and dynamic display is compared to search. The mere fact that campaigns are distributed among thousands of sites in and of itself is complex. Then add in the critical creative component, which according to Michael Baker, a recent DataXu study found was the single most important factor in driving conversions, followed by consumer and context.

Being hosted at The Rubicon Project, Adante diligently represented the voice of publishers, whose role in all of this cannot be overlooked. According to some, a publisher backlash related to how networks use their data is looming, but there shouldn’t be any at all if publishers are simply paid for each impression based on what it is worth to the advertiser, which is what DSPs and sophisticated ad networks are set up to do.

Best quotes of the evening:

“We’re trying to kill online advertising and replace it with content.” – Jon Aizen

“Arbitrage just needs to die.” -  Zach Coelius

 ”These little buy and sell side technologies are like plaque in the teeth of Google.” – Michael Baker

From left to right: Amy Lehman, SVP Advertising, United Online; Zach Coelius, Founder & CEO, Triggit; Frank Addante, Founder & CEO, The Rubicon Project; Jon Aizen, COO & Co-Founder, Dapper; Peter Kim, General Manager of Yahoo! SmartAds; Michael Baker, CEO, DataXu, James Beriker, CEO, Dapper.

I’m no researcher, but in recent years have acquired an appreciation for the role of research in audience targeting and measurement as well as its effectiveness in B2B marketing. Last week I had a rare opportunity to rub elbows with some of the digital media industry’s top research experts during the Advertising Research Foundation’s Audience Measurement 5.0 conference in New York. As part of the “Media Smackdown” track, I was there to co-present new research on “Media Placement Strategy and its Impact on Online Ad Effectiveness” with Anne Hunter, VP of advertising effectiveness at comScore.

Notwithstanding how excited I was to participate in the conference and introduce the research ValueClick Media and comScore will release in the coming weeks, I took the opportunity to revisit my own understanding of the state of online measurement and targeting. The main question on my mind: how far away are we from seeing brands invest more heavily in digital, which today accounts for a disproportionate +/- six percent of total media spending? Through my conversations, I reaffirmed my understanding of what’s possible today, and I got fairly consistent feedback on where things need to go in order to move us toward the measurement and targeting capabilities necessary to give brand advertisers the confidence to spend more online.

Randy Cohen, founder and CEO of Advertiser Perceptions, reinforced what comScore suggested in its 2008 “Whither the Click” research, when he reminded me that “we’re chasing the wrong metric in performance.” The real money, he says, is in upper funnel measurement and our ability to prove that online advertising is capable of moving consumers into the consideration set for a particular brand. More succinctly put, he suggests “return on ad spend is a metric, but what matters most is return on brand.” Although he predicts innovative vendors will partner to deliver breakthroughs in audience targeting and measurement brands can embrace, like most people I spoke with, he doubts a single metric for brand engagement is realistic.

A related theme shared throughout the week and captured best in my conversation with Jack Myers, is the need to move ROI measurement beyond online sales impact and brand lift studies and into better accountability for its impact on offline sales. While offline sales impact studies have shown proven lift from online campaigns, they are expensive and fall short of brand marketers’ true desire: to target ads on the basis of offline shopping behavior.

The ability to target based on offline sales data was first explored by Yahoo Consumer Direct (with Nielsen/Homescan) in 2003 and improvements can surely be expected through a more recent announcement of a joint venture between IRI and Nielsen. It is unclear yet how this will impact comScore’s relationship with IRI. comScore has partnerships with other offline data providers, including dunnhumbyUSA, Polk and others, which until recently existed primarily for the purpose of measuring offline sales impacts as a result of online advertising. But the more interesting development for comScore is its introduction of Audience Advantage, which combines offline data with comScore panel data and a look-alike modeling methodology to allow networks and portals to “pre-score” media for its propensity to identify consumers who have exhibited similar behavior to those who purchased particular products offline.

While Consumer Direct and Audience Advantage, with their look-alike models have been around for awhile, third party data sources for online behavioral targeting have emerged as a key component of the display advertising landscape over the past two years. To the extent these providers can deliver specific audiences who have exhibited a recent behavior with any scale, it would stand to reason that this would be the more effective targeting method – perhaps worthy of a future comparison by an innovating brand. Whatever approach is best, there are actionable brand targeting and measurement solutions emerging, which when proven, promoted, refined and repeated will be a boon for display advertising online.

My most entertaining conversation of the week, and perhaps the most insightful, was with Andy Fisher, EVP Global Data and Analytics Director for Starcom, who suggested that brands really do want to spend more online, if nothing else because they know their future job security depends on digital. If only we could demonstrate for them a clear reason to do so. Brands, he said, want to know who they are reaching. Not just what audience segment performed well for a particular metric, but the specific individuals reached by a campaign. To support this ideal, measurement and ratings vendors should strive to report on granular audience delivery metrics, much in the way they do for media measurement today. One shortcoming, it seems is the lack of a common taxonomy for measuring behavioral audience segments. Even if there were, the user profile data it would rely upon lives in the proprietary databases of advertisers and media companies, each with their slightly different description of the same users and valid reasons for not wanting to share the data freely.

I was unable to find anyone to argue in favor of context over audience, however, as our study with comScore will demonstrate, what strategy to deploy is highly dependent upon price, reach and each marketer’s specific objectives – and deploying multiple strategies may be most effective. To that end, one of the more interesting point made by Mr. Fisher was how in television, media equates to audience because all of the creative is delivered against the same media at the same time, making it easier to measure and scale. Whereas the distributed nature of online carries with it many more complexities because of the requirement to reach and measure audiences across several media placement options. I’m sure I am oversimplifying this thought and hope he will elaborate.

Another concept that arose from a guided luncheon discussion led by Ms. Hunter and reiterated by Joanne Burns, EVP of marketing, research and new media at Twentieth Television, was the need for research and marketing to work more integrally together. When speaking with brands, in fact, Robert McLoughlin, director strategic insights at AOL said his approach is to first ask “what is your research goal” and only then dig deeper into the typical line of questioning related to marketing objectives.

Although I’m sure gaps remain in my understanding of what’s possible and where things are headed, I came away from Audience Measurement 5.0 much more confidence that the metrics CPG and other brand-oriented advertisers demand is on the horizon, if not here already. Regardless, I can assure you there is an army of intelligent marketers, publishers, analysts, scientists and researchers working to ensure online advertising isn’t relegated to being exclusively a direct response medium.

On the heels of the 2009 election which included some important mayoral and gubernatorial races and ballot initiatives, I’m pleased to participate in the E-Voter Institute webinar “Looking Into the Crystal Ball: Primaries 2010” on Thursday, November 6, 2009 at noon PT. Attendees will receive a copy of the Institute’s new book About Face: The Dramatic Impact of the Internet on Politics and Advocacywhich includes two chapters I authored on lead generation and the use of video in political marketing online.

In addition to showing the kind of voter information that can be sourced using comScore’s Plan Metrix psychographic data (includes “political activities,” “political outlook” and “political affiliations”), I will be presenting various ways for political marketers to reach and persuade voters online. From basic demo/psycho/contextual/technographic targeting to more sophisticated forms of behavioral targeting and use of third party data to identify voters while keeping within bounds of current regulatory guidelines surrounding online behavioral advertising.

I’ll also be speaking about the impact of creative in persuading voters, the ability to measure the effectiveness of persuasion efforts and the importance of making online advertising just one aspect of a good integrated plan that takes into consideration fundamental political marketing concepts and the integrated use of offline media, search and social media.

If you’re reading this before noon PT on 11/6/09, it’s not too late to join us! Or please forward this link to any of your politically minded marketing colleagues.

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) has preliminarily outlined legislation he will  introduce to regulate consumer privacy in a thoughtful editorial in The Hill entitled “Behavioral ads: The need for privacy protection.” In a separate interview related to net neutrality, he stated that he hoped the bi-partisan legislation would be introduced before Congress adjourns on October 30.

In the article, Boucher clearly articulates the issues related to how behavioral advertising impacts consumer privacy and he makes a reasonable argument for ways to give consumers assurances  about what data is being collected about them without disrupting the online advertising and e-commerce ecosystem. Particularly encouraging is his recognition of the fact that behavioral targeting tailors ads to consumers’ interests and helps keep Internet content free.  

From the article it sounds like Boucher ”gets it,” but there were plenty of details left unstated and the lobbying efforts of industry associations and companies with a stake in the outcome will no-doubt continue up until the deadline. It will be interesting to read the finer points of the legislation and it looks like a bill may now be just weeks away.

Heard around Advertising Week: “You still call it behavioral targeting?” “Thank god congress is preoccupied with healthcare.” “Don’t order business cards, we’re going green.” “Part of the charm of Advertising Week is that events are NOT all in one place.”

 OMMA Keynote - The State of the Agency Business – An Analyst’s View

Jordan Rohan, Founder and Managing Partner, Clearmeadow Partners

It was refreshing to hear Jordan Rohan focused on anything other than lead generation, and his analysis of the agency business seemed on point. He says a confluence of events has created the current state of declining agency profitability. A complex media environment, characterized by “social distraction” and “mobile distraction,” will only help to accelerate this trend because it increases the complexity as people multi-task on top of multiple media usage. In today’s environment, agencies need to act less like a steward of the brand and more like an intermediary to all brands.

Case in point, social media usage is on the rise, but pricing is low:

Facebook $.60 CPM

MySpace $1.36 CPM

…and portal traffic is flat and prices are falling:

Yahoo! $8.44. CPM

Microsoft $9.68 CPM

AOL $13.58 CPM

Innovation in agencies – Risks taken, when successful are considered innovation, yet the economic incentives are not in place for agencies to take risks. Cited RGA work for Nokia and CPB work for Microsoft, Burger King as examples of risks taken and work done across platform that is working well.

Venture capitalists are reluctant to invest in people businesses where assets walk out the door every day. When a people business turns into something that can exist on its own, suddenly the money appears.

OMMA Keynote – How Dunkin Does Social

Frances Allen, Brand Marketing Officer, Dunkin’ Brands, Inc.

“Winning every trip, every day.” Not taking customers for granted.

Social values must reflect brand values. Fostering a relationship with passionate customers, a group defined as much by a sense of common brand values as a love of the products. Relationships take time, effort and commitment. Brands that make investment in relationship over time will win. There will be hard days, yes, but in the end it will be worth it.

Social strategy:

1) Hearts & minds – Facebook “Fan of the Week” and “Coolata”

2) Motivations and behaviors – “Dunkin’ Run” application to order for groups

3) Place and context – Create Dunkin’s Next Donut – (TV, radio, outdoor, online and in-store)

4) Communication

Set realistic expectations.

Perception becomes reality.

Be true to yourself.

OMMA Keynote – Nick Brien, President & CEO, Mediabrands

A marketing revolution: a new art, a new science

We’ve always lived in a social world, but now we have more control, the ability to customize, the ability to create new channels and to connect.

62.5% of people using the Internet globally say they are actively involved in social media.

Social means business transformation:

Social media / awareness

Social marketing / advocacy (sell something, utility)

Social business / reinvention

Agencies continuing to conduct business under reach/frequency models do a disservice to the medium:

1) Kill the hierarchy

2) Engage community power

3) Master the art of response

4) Create content

5) Embrace ingenuity

MIXX Keynote – The End of “Digital” Marketing?

Nikesh Arora, President Global Sales Operations and Business Development, Google

Before it was called a “car,” it was the “horseless carriage.” Before it was just a “teevision,” it was the “color television.” Similarly, during our careers we will just call it “marketing.” Sometimes you don’t realize you are going through a revolution until you step out of it.

1.7B Internet users, 2B mobile users worldwide.

In any new technology, advertising comes later in the cycle:

Technology –> Content –> Users –> Advertising

We’re still in the early part of the cycle in advertising and marketing.

Mattel Barbie television ad in 1959 – 10 years after – cut and paste from radio jingles vs. Audi ad dramatically showing car driving up ski ramp created exclusively for television

1981 – story for newspapers delivered electronically vs. TwitPic of USAirways plane in Hudson

Everything is localized down to you – Android video app combining camera phone to data

New generations of information created by you

Marketing is the new finance, with a sample size of {all}

All advertising is engaging – bidirectional media

Advertising Week is underway in New York  and as vibrant as ever, with more events to attend and more people to meet than could be accomplished in the span of an entire career, let alone a single week. Highlights from day one included editorial coverage of Moms Media announcement and lots of interest from both publishers and advertisers. Based on initial feedback, it seems like pretty good timing to launch a vertical ad network aimed at reaching moms online.

Great ValueClick Media workshop panel on ”How Leading Advertisers Use Ad Networks to Achieve Brand Marketing Objectives.” A BIG THANK YOU to Doug Chavez of Del Monte Foods, Erin Hunter of comScore, Steve Ustaris of Studiocom and Chris Arens of Catalyst:SF.

It was great seeing everyone on ValueClick Media’s NY team — what an impressive group of veteran online advertising professionals. Thanks also to IAB MIXX and OMMA Global conferences for all of your hard work in hosting two first class intustry events…if only you would do it together again!

Morning keynote #1

Along with the theme of “Fueling Advertising’s Creative Revolution,” Adobe SVP Global Marketing Ann Lewnes posed a challenge for all stakeholders in the online advertising ecosystem:

Media – Create experiences that leverage the medium and crack the nut on monetization.

Agency – Evangelize the medium and proactively push the boundaries of what is possible.

Clients – Be open to exploring more options and encourage your companies to overcome resistance

Flash Platform Services – Gigya partnership and tracking widgets — “thinking outside the rectangle.”

Augmented Reality – offline/online integration – cool demo of a direct mail piece, which when held in front of a webcam creates a 3D online experience. Holds interesting possibilities for making offline content more creative online.

Vision for Omniture integration and the ability to track creative executions through to monetization – sounds like a bright future for Flash cookies to me.

Adaptive Layout Technologies – Times Reader 2.0 flash player demo – adapts content to any size screen, ads also adapt automatically to content. Tools for developers create desktop apps using Flash/HTML

Keynote #2

Microsoft – Yusuf Mehdi, SVP Online Services spoke of “Misses, homeruns and game changers” and Microsoft’s view of the future.

I’m not sure if it’s an internal product mantra or something Mr. Mehdi devised for today’s session, but was inspired by these sound principles, which referenced as he presented Project Natal and Bing:

1) Be Authentic – Million Dollar Home Page

2) Be opportunistic and responsive – Ashton Kutcher

3) Relentless measurement and optimization – Zappos.com

4) Be social – Starbucks

5) Ads are content – Burger King “Freak Out”

The Bing demo was useful/relevant and served as a reminder that despite the bazillions spent on making me aware of the brand I have yet to type it into a browser (note to self: check out Bing!).

Bing is trying to deliver unmet needs in search and provide more intuitive results considering:

Imprecise Results – 25% of clicks lead to ‘back’

Refinement – 42% of sessions need refinement

Lengthy tasks – 50% of time spent on long queries

Demo included cool visual search demo with examples including female senators, U.S. government line of succession, handbags and cameras. Also impressive, though not elaborated on were some impressive reporting features for advertisers based on H/M/L usage.

Project Natal – Next generation of computing and how humans interact with computers. Xbox human controller will be first. Think Wii but without a controller. This much I could get my head around, until he introduced the “Dag” (aka Digital Assitant Guide) a creepy Max Hedroom-like video avatar who was all too happy to pull up meeting notes or dial up a video conference, but was unbelievable that he would add much value to my computing experience. Don’t get me wrong. Overall, it was the most impressive, innovative, well-executed and entertaining demo I’ve seen in a long time — just slightly ahead of its time.