Adtech Day 2
March 11, 2009 · 15 Comments
Ben Shepherd writes: I’m at the airport waiting to fly back to Melbourne after Day 2 of Adtech Sydney.

Today was interesting. I only really saw 2 sessions aside the one I was involved in but I did a bit of watching and tried to capture the overall sentiment from the event.

One thing I have taken out is there is still a monster divide between the ‘technologists’ and the wider ‘advertising’ industry. It’s almost a land grab and I think it’s getting worse. There is so little consideration paid by the digerati to the wider world of communications both advertising wise and non advertising wise that it creates a silo mentality and a feeling that ‘digital is number 1′. IRL (in real life for the non awesome) guys this won’t work … integration is required and I, for one, question how many of you will go with this when the words ‘crowdsource’, ‘the conversation’, ‘dialogue’, ’social graph’ etc are often muttered but never defined nor tied back to business objectives (which are, you know, the reason why clients (ie those who pay us) use communications channels)

Another thing is the digital industry aren’t particularly good generally at answering questions thrown up from the audience. It’s all very prepared. I asked 4 questions over 2 days and none were actually answered. Maybe some should consider politics!

Twitter and Social Media was definitely the main theme but I question how much said around both wasn’t hot air. Yes, social media is important but I feel so much of the conversation around it is so ambigous and macro that it’s almost like people are making it up on the spot.

I think in hindsight Liam and I were a little wrong around the structure of the conference and the mix was about right – so congrats to Jenny and Beth around this. I spoke to a lot of people today and they were happy with how the event flowed. The crowd was incredibly diverse so the agenda needed to be diverse too.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed the panel I was on had to start late due to the previous one going overtime by 10 minutes. I love hearing Laurel Papworth’s voice just as much as she clearly does (don’t worry Laurel, I enjoy the sound of my own voice too) … but it was a bit rude considering it was the end of the day. Once we got cracking I felt we covered some interesting terrain around the importance of professional content and media brands.

The last click attribution session was interesting in parts. Jenny Bewes from Vodafone was exceptional on stage and it was good to get candid conversation from a marketer around the wider mix and how digital fits into all the broad touchpoints from POS to CRM to TV, newspapers, call centre … just great. Michael Buckley from Amnesia was going very well until he started talking about media consumption as a % and media spend % and then he lost me – I hate that comparison as the only media that is disproportionate in terms of more spends is newspapers … but I think perhaps I misunderstood him. I wanted to ask him who he thinks should be tasked with making the wider world aware of click attribution or misattribution but the session was over by then. Michael – that said I thought you were good and it was great to have a smart, clever media guy involved on a panel!

Monetising Social Networks … hrm … I’m not a believer in these slides and have seen them so many times. Also, Arrington isn’t still in Hawaii … he’s back at Techcrunch. I think saying Michael Arrington could create a Murdoch style empire is so off the mark it’s amusing … he runs a blog around start ups with around 1m users globally and an audience that isn’t really the most valuable around … do you realise the magnitude of Newscorp? The guy from Minti was interesting but I think most people were like ‘Dude what is Minti?’

Twitter stream – valuable but maybe too many back seat drivers. Struggled to take much out of it personally but I guess the irony is it’s easier to observe than really participate.

My key takeout – get clients to come next year. Adtech is GOLD for clients but I think sadly not enough were there. Lets find a way to get this content in front of them. I know for 2010 I’ll be recommending we bring along some of our clients at MAXUS as they will get a heap out of it. Beth – send me the dates when you can!

And thanks to everyone who came along to our panel – and thanks to Vivek, Duff and Julian

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