ad:tech Sydney’s marketing “love-in”

I read someone on Twitter describe this week’s ad:tech Sydney conference as a “love-in for marketers and ad agencies.” (Read ad:tech twitterings here.) It’s an interesting description that betrays an obvious slant towards the “other camp” which I heard one ad agency exec describe with a hint of derision as “all these social media consultants.”

As an aside, we’ve also got the “tech” part of this whole “ad:tech” meme. But that’s been conveniently sidelined in the battle of marketing ideologies. Maybe we just take technology (ie. the one giant computer called the internet) for granted now, since it’s use-case scenarios that matter.

So all this got me thinking. What is it about the mindset of agency-types, and the mindset of social media consultant-types (I tend to fall into the latter), that causes mild friction at events like ad:tech?

If I can be permitted to grossly simplify, agencies are commissioned by clients to conduct campaigns. Defined periods of time in which various media tools are exercised to generate sales on behalf of said client. No shock there, since advertising still keeps most of the media industry running.

Then we’ve got social media consultants, whose stock in trade is the intellectual property and experience they sell to clients for the purpose of engaging target stakeholder communities in conversations about brand, ideas, ideologies, and so on. The marketing angle can be less clear, or stated positively, more broadly defined.

It’s the classic conundrum where the disciplines of marketing, advertising, communications, PR and good-old editorial collide and get mashed up. The answers are not simple or easily quantified — unless of course you’re an agency charged with delivering quantifiable results to justify a very large invoice. Quantified results are where you make, or lose money. And by the way, that’s what this whole internet thing has promised the marketing community since the mid-1990s and we’re still trying to figure it out!

Anyway, while listening to keynotes and panel discussions yesterday, I got the impression agency types are very clearly focussed on the profit motive (surprise!). They might not be getting it right all the time, but their drive to find measurable results is clear. And you know what, I don’t think that’s bad.

However it does raise a challenge for content-focussed social media consultants (communities are giant content machines, after all). They must come up with some clearly agreed metrics and models that communicate to c-level executives just why the social media revolution matters to the bottom line. I’m the first to admit this is not an easy problem to solve.

But let’s face the harsh recession reality: if more of the social media consultants out there want to make more (or any) money from client engagements then it’s time we developed more solid, industry-wide accepted answers when companies demand reasonable levels of quantitative measurement.

Am I right?

Mark Jones is an enterprise technology strategist, speaker and journalist. mark@filteredmedia.com.au

The turnout was reasonable and I think we covered some good ground. I wanted to take this opportunity to reiterate some of the points I made for anyone who was there or anyone who missed it but was curious.

1/ Eyeballs alone isn’t what attracts advertisers, it’s content AND eyeballs. Context is important … advertisers aren’t just looking for straight numbers … they want qualified audience in premium environments. So what does this mean - well … can we stop using blanket, irrelevant statements like we have x thousand users … what we (ie media and communication agencies) want to know is deeper details about your audience and how they consume content. Because of this point, my belief is the best content will prevail as the best content can’t be commoditised … but eyeballs can.

2/ Clutter is a by-product of bad sales/commercialisation. I made the point that no one has asked for some frontpages to have 15-20 different ad messages on it. No user and no advertiser. It’s the publishers that have driven this and personally they are shortchanging both of their customers. The issue is kind of simple - the more ads you have on a page, the more you devalue the ad space, which in turn means you need to run more ads to try and generate the extraction per pageview that people are expecting as you are generating less money per ad space. Then it gets ridiculous when publishers start running pop unders as well. Here’s a tip - spend more time training your sales team and trying to quantify the true value of your audience. Then you might be able to justify a decent CPM. This might lose me some sales people friends but I am constantly shocked at the lack of ability of most sales organisations to rationalise their share of spend and the cost of their media. How hard can it be?

3/ Ads are content. Advertising placed on a site I think contributes to peoples perceptions of the media brand … it’s effectively content … no different to how ads in a magazine like Vogue are like content in that magazine. I raised the experience of a large publisher coming into me and selling their teenage girl site. They told me how connected they were with this audience and how in tune they were with them and the content they liked … unfortunately the page example they showed me had a Welcome back Tiger Ad from Pfizer for Viagra. An ad aimed at men aged over 50 on a teen girl site. Yeah … they know their audience! So - what does it say about a ‘high end’ media brand if they’re running ads for the cheapest credit card, or the cheapest prepaid mobile, or P&O cruises? Not good things surely … And what does it say to advertisers? Does Mercedes Benz really want to run their brand ads next to Dodo?

4/ The barriers to producing content are low - brands can become content creators and distributors. I don’t think we covered this as much as we could have (only had 45 mins) but brands now can become content providers and many are already doing this. I referenced the Optus Biz Think Tank as well as Special K’s ‘Map My Fitness’ as excellent examples of brands creating something innovative and unique. Add to this initiatives such as Ford’s Tonk A Pom, JL Krafts kitchen vignettes, Virgin Mobile’s new Right Music Wrongs concept - many of these are far more interesting than media content and incorporate the brand beautifully. I made the comment that media publishers better realise their USP quick smart otherwise clever brands will start creating their own and using the web and search as a way of driving instant audience. The idea of a media gatekeeper is redundant.

5/ Supply is infinite. The amount of supply in terms of eyeballs and digital advertising is effectively infinite. As a result pricing moves more into the area of straight supply and demand … which will only lead one way, down. For years publishers have been able to charge whatever they have wanted with very little justification … this has to change. Here’s the rub though - great content and context is FINITE … hence it is extremely valuable and advertisers will want to be around it. The challenge - show the value. The digital world isn’t a monopoly/duopoly like the TV and newspaper worlds. The era of gouging is over but those with the best content and the best story will be successful.

6/ Content doesn’t just have to be the words/pictures that ads are run alongside. This is more from an agency perspective … but the most valuable content for me is real, meaty information about the audience. What motivates them? What are they reading? How? When? Why? How often do they come back? How old are they? Do they interact with the content? The sort of things that tell me about the audience and what makes them tick. Why do we need to know this? So we can create relevant advertising, not dumb interference.

7/ Great content is more important than ever. Content is vitally important and professional content isn’t going anywhere … but the lines between pro and amateur content will blur. Vivek pointed out that there’s a lot of bad professional content and a lot of good amateur content and vice versa and he’s completely right. Still, we all agreed that great content is what distinguises media brands and there should be a premium paid for those who can deliver this and meaningful audience connections.

8/ More transperency needed. Cam Curtis from Allure made this point and I agreed with him. There does need to be more transperency between agencies and publishers if we’re to get the best results . My only comment was for this to happen both agency and publisher require the same agenda - getting the best for the client. If the agency is trying to get the best possible outcome for the client but the publisher is trying to extract the highest possible amount of dollars from the agency then it won’t work. Agenda’s need to be aligned and the agenda needs to be around solving business objectives.

http://talkingdigital.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/my-panel-at-adtech-content-and-its-context-in-digital-media/

What is interesting to see now however is that as digital evolves and becomes even more complex, the debate is now just as relevant to the digital space itself. The diversity of digital channels from search to mobile, content creation to social media is again, specialist.

At a technical level, even the concept of building a basic website often requires an agency make a choice whether they will use .net, or PHP, whether they will build all their solutions around sharepoint, develop their own inhouse CMS or become integrators of other systems. Do they need dedicated IA’s do their creatives have the muscle in action script etc.

The challenges here are the same, to have expertise, you need experts. Experts = headcount and you can’t carry headcount unless you have enough revenue coming from a particular channel (or area of focus) to justify the investment. I would take my hat off to any agency that can truly claim to have genuine experts in every field of digital both strategic and executional who are fully utilised but not overworked.

So this session on the ad:tech program should be interesting. Cora kicked off the Voice of the industry some time ago with a post about this topic and last week I was able to catch up with Jules from the Hallway to get his take on what the real questions are. To get another perspective we talked to Mike Zeederberg from Profero who takes the position of being both specialist and generalist which is another tactic…

Jules and Mike

I’d be really interested in your thoughts or questions for the panel and if you have any points to discuss here on the brain.
You can see the whole ad:tech program here and you can still book tickets.