Arianna Huffington, President and Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post Media Group gave the opening Keynote Presentation at ad:tech San Francisco this morning.
She is an entertaining and interesting speaker; she’s also charming and very beautiful. A great combination for the morning after the biggest party night in digital media of the year! Her session was titled: ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised…It Will Be Tweeted and Facebooked’ and she spoke about her vision for where consumers can and should focus their energies and attention in the future.

You can see the Presentation here: www.ad-tech.com/youtube

The key themes of Arianna’s speech were: enchantment – stay focused on what it is that motivates and inspires your audience, local – talk to people at a local level, it’s the environment they’re most engaged with, disconnect – eventually we’ll need to let go of some of the modes, methods and machines that we’re attached to.

Arianna wrapped up saying that newspapers won’t die, they will have a vibrant online life and in the same morning that the IAB reported 15% growth in online ad revenue (2009-2010) I thought this was a really promising point of view.

Check out the Twitter stream #adtech for some of the key quotations – there were some awesome one liners and summary points.

This year’s ad:tech Sydney program is packed full of discussions and presentations on the important and interesting issues that are affecting our industry. There are three streams of content so you have to choose your session carefully! Here’s some of the highlights that I’m looking foward to:

This opening session on day two, “How Is The Digital Media Environment Morphing?”, will be fascinating. In just 45 minutes the panellists will look at the key technology, business and creative shifts that are taking place in the market, and specifically what they mean for digital advertisers. It’ll be great hearing Starcom, comScore, The Project Factory and IAB Australia tackle this big question.

We all know that social media changes every day and we constantly have to react to those changes so I’m looking forward to knowing how the speakers on “Next Generation Social Media Strategy” think we should deal with that. Reading Room, Community Engine and TickYes will be talking around some key points including KPIs, ROI, tools and resourcing, so that we can all take away some specific learning points.

There have been some really good examples and campaigns using location based marketing in the last twelve months but I’m keen to hear more and to know how location marketing can be really valuable for consumers and advertisers. In “What Are The Real Opportunities Within Mobile Location Marketing?” Navteq, Insqribe, Powerhouse Museum will be sharing their experiences, vision for what’s coming and details of specific platforms and services that they think are valuable.

Registration

Book your ad:tech Sydney CONFERENCE pass to gain access to all event features.
Book a free ad:tech Sydney EXHIBITION pass to gain access to the Keynote Presentations, Breakfast Briefing, Expo Seminar Theatre, Networking Party and of course the EXHIBITION.

ad:tech Sydney
9-10 March 2011
Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre
Register for ad:tech Sydney here.

The Data & Analytics advisory council for ad:tech Sydney 2011 met to discuss the issues that are affecting the market and the content that should be on the ad:tech programme. Here is a summary of the key areas discussed:

Resource / Resourcing
• What is best practice on resourcing data and analytics management?
• Strategy and execution of data techniques / management should be separated so that there’s a better focus
• How to define data and where it sits with clients / agencies
• Data is a form of intellectual property so should it therefore leveraged / managed in house or is outsourcing ok? But the lack of skills, resource, innovation in house means that the data won’t get managed as well as possible.
• There aren’t agencies that can deliver a data service; there’s a lack of specialist agencies
• There is a huge knowledge gap in what people think they know about data (and everything to do with it) and what they actually know.
• Clients need to define what they want and they need to drive the program and the results

Investment
• Ideally clients would look at spending on data at the start of a campaign in order to target, then the middle of the campaign in order to change / adjust the direction of the campaign, then at the end of the campaign to understand the results.
• Agencies (or someone) need to tell clients what to spend on what and how much

Theft / Fraud
• Data theft is prevalent. Trade or theft of email addresses is prevalent; lots of value is attributed to these things
• There isn’t a lot of ‘policing’ of data theft / fraud / management
• Regulators are concerned with breaches and infringements of data management and this in turn leads to over zealousness in use of legal teams and how to service consumers
• Advertisers / brands / marketers need to know how to work with regulatory authorities and still be able to do their job

Data Visualisation
• Visualisation piece is interesting – how to make the data mean something
• How do marketing actually use data?
• What are the interesting ways of using data?
• What are the real new ways of using data?
• How is data processed by people?
• What different tools are used for visualisation?
• It’s really important to look past just the part about making data pretty and also consider what is the data based on, what was the field research? Visualisation tools are good but where does data come from?

Trust / Mistrust of Data
• Data isn’t trusted. Where did the mistrust come from?
• What data can you trust?
• Who do you trust to come up with the numbers? Can you trust what comes off / out of your own site?
• We’re collecting heaps of data – how do we clean the rubbish?

Use of Data
• What does the future look like? If marketers use data really well then people will be prepared to pay for it

Comparisons / Benchmarking
• IAB standard and certification will lead to comparison from one business to another as opposed to just doing the best you can, and this is possibly not the best approach for business. Measuring against each other can be irrelevant.
• Benchmarking is better than standards
• Marketers need to ‘watch out’ for data that is used in particular ways – comparisons, headline statistics that are not representative, drawing one set of conclusions compared to another
• Insights are lost because companies don’t standardise their metrics internally (they compare differently year on year for example)
• Benchmarking and knowledge transfer are gaps / poorly managed and so a lot of potential intel is lost in organisations
• There needs to be clarity on the different aspects of the campaign, what’s important about those aspects (ROI, revenue, other return or value)

‘Return’
• Time spent on site is misunderstood as a form of measurement
• Different forms of measurement mean different things to different businesses

Tools & Their Capabilities
• Reality check chart of data management platforms
• Understanding the technology, innovations and explanations (of them) in the market. What are the opportunities for marketers and how they affect consumers?
• Platforms, technologies, systems are seen as ‘rubbish’ but is that because nothing else exists?

Have your say

This is a summary of the points that were made in the meeting. We’ll be working on this and integrating these topics and themes into the ad:tech Sydney 2011 conference programme. If you have feedback on these points or want to make suggestions about additional topics or speakers for the programme then please leave comments or get in touch with me here.

Notes from the other advisory council meetings

Social Media Strategy
Digital Strategy
e-Commerce / Online Retail advisory
Monetising Digital
Unwired Media
Creative & Brand
Entertainment & Experience
Core Digital Media

Who’s on the other advisory councils:

Social Media Strategy
Unwired Media
Digital Strategy
e-Commerce / Online Retail advisory
Monetising Digital
Brand & Creative
Core Digital Media
Entertainment & Experience
ad:tech Sydney advisory council groups named

The Monetising Digital advisory council for ad:tech Sydney 2011 met to discuss the issues that are affecting the market and the content that should be on the ad:tech programme. Here is a summary of the key areas discussed:

Valuing Digital
• What does monetising digital really mean?
• Does digital go beyond the concepts of paid, owned, earned?
• Should we be placing a value on digital rather than a value on monetising digital?
• Brands need to have relevance, have value and to listen. And content is still king.

Internal Challenges
• How do you take the concept of valuing digital upwards in the organisation?
• What are the pain points for advertisers: resourcing, education, margins and agency models
• The only way to achieve what you’re being tasked to do is through better efficiency

Data
• The value of data is only as strong as the insights but how do you resource that? What’s the best way to make that happen?
• There are bits of data but they’re not integrated or attributed or being used to generate valuable insights
• There is a need to understand different analytics to know what you’re making happen. We’re at a transition point. How can we break data / analytics down easier?
• How do you find, track, measure, engage consumers?
• It’s ok to talk about ‘how to make a buck from an ad’, but how do you get better value? What gets measured gets managed, so what do you manage? For a start we can now track consumers throughout purchase cycles
• There needs to be more focus on business analysis as part of the marketing role

Targets & ROI
• How do you decide which KPIs will show value?
• How do you realise digital value now and in the future. What are the digital KPIs?

Channels
• It’s important to treat mediums in the ‘best’ way; use them for the ‘best’ means and outcome. How do you educate brands / marketers on how to do this?
• How do you monetise social media?
• Does everyone know how to monetise different mediums, channels, platforms, opportunities?
• Owning / charging for content is getting tricky. This is where the interest in tablets and apps is coming from.

Understanding / Valuing Consumers
• There’s a shift from advertising-to-consumers to engaging-with-consumers. So we’re in transition at the moment. How do we do it? Associated with this how does the concept of content need to change?
• Software and hardware is liberating the customer & consumer; you could previously ‘make’ a consumer fit in with your brand, now consumer is calling the shots
• Consumer expectations are incredibly high and you cannot afford not to be in this space? And not to be in it successfully.
• What about enforced change e.g. pay to air customers? How have SBS been forced in to change?
• The customer journey has changed – people have shifted what they will / won’t pay for
• There are generational implications and change – what are they?

Valuing Agencies
• Agencies aren’t incentivised to monetise; some clients don’t share their end results
• It’s about vested interest – whose interest is where and what do they get (from the relationship) and therefore what does it mean for performance
• Briefs aren’t around monetising digital, they’re around brand etc. which means frequently the work / campaign answers a different problem

Innovation
• What about the innovation and opportunities to monetise digital? What if you threw open how the brief works and threw it open to customers – Pepsi China did this and got 5000 ideas
• There is a lot of money attached to an app economy; innovation is the answer to how to monetise digital
• Can we go back to start-up phases, incubating the new, how do I do more with less – tomorrow?

Have your say

This is a summary of the points that were made in the meeting. We’ll be working on this and integrating these topics and themes into the ad:tech Sydney 2011 conference programme. If you have feedback on these points or want to make suggestions about additional topics or speakers for the programme then please leave comments or get in touch with me here.

Notes from the other advisory council meetings

Social Media Strategy
Data & Analytics
Digital Strategy
e-Commerce / Online Retail advisory
Unwired Media
Creative & Brand
Entertainment & Experience
Core Digital Media

Who’s on the other advisory councils:

Social Media Strategy
Unwired Media
Digital Strategy
e-Commerce / Online Retail advisory
Data & Analytics
Brand & Creative
Core Digital Media
Entertainment & Experience
ad:tech Sydney advisory council groups named

We’ve talked about ‘connecting’ through digital media, and ‘engaging’ and ‘building relationships’, but now is the time to talk about how we’re really going to drive ‘return’ through digital. Sure that means we need to understand what ‘return’ means and we need to figure out how we’re measuring all that ‘return’ but it’s time to start delivering on digital’s Big Promise…..

The ad:tech 2011 CONFERENCE program will feature content on Monetising Digital and we’re delighted to be working with this group of local industry executives to shape and guide that content:

Michael Buckley, Managing Director, Amnesia Razorfish
Murray Howe, Executive Manager Group Marketing, Suncorp
Nicole Watson, Senior Brand Manager, CommSec
Paul Fisher, CEO, IAB Australia
Gavin Smithen, Director – National Brands and Agencies, ReachLocal

My expectation is that this subject ‘monetising digital’ will weave through the CONFERENCE program as a theme rather than specific conference sessions but I’m still keen to know what you think on this area. Have your say on the ad:tech program. Use the comments box to suggest topics and speakers that you think would add value to the program. We look forward to hearing from you.

Read about the other advisory councils:

Social Media Strategy
Unwired Media
Digital Strategy
e-Commerce / Online Retail advisory
Data & Analytics
Brand & Creative
Core Digital Media
Entertainment & Experience
ad:tech Sydney advisory council groups named