Online Marketing Blog

Jeremiah Owyang posted recently asking his readers what conferences they would be attending in the coming months and I thought that would be a great question for Online Marketing Blog readers as well.

Over the past 3 years we’ve been focused on search marketing conferences but have expanded more into direct marketing, interactive and PR. We’ll continue that trend the rest of this year but with more conferences outside of search as our online marketing agency evolves.

Conferences that I’m attending in the coming months include:

• May: ACCM in Florida
• Jun: PRSA Digital Impact in NYC

Topics for this morning’s keynote centered on the notion of the “new P” platforms, video advertising and random references to Gilligan’s Island and weird porn.

The panel was moderated by Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of IAB. Panelists included:

• Suzie Reider, Head of Ad Sales YouTube.com
• Michael Barrett, EVP, Chief Revenue Officer Fox Interactive Media
• Arianna Huffington, c-founder and Editor in Chief Huffington Post
• Matt Freeman, CEO Tribal DDB Worldwide

Arriving at JFK was surprisingly un-eventful and smooth. Carry on is certainly the way to go. I walked right off the plane and to the taxi area where a town car agreed to take me to Midtown for the same price as a cab. There is no substitute for a ride with legroom.

Upon arrival at the Hilton where the ad:tech NYC conference was being held, I ran into Patrick Gavin of Text Link Ads/Media Whiz. A great guy and very successful as well. I didn’t think to take a photo, but in case you don’t know him, he looks like that fellow on the show “The Bachelor”.

Next week I’ll be attending my last “blogging only” conference of the year, ad:tech New York, and possibly for quite a while. I will be performing blogging duties for the adtechblog.com along with Sara Holoubek, Richard Cacciato, Craig Peters, Steve Hall, Angela Natividad and Robert Gorell. With that many bloggers and over 10,000 people registered for the event, that’s what I call a blogger bonanza!

Attending conferences purely to blog has been great the past few years but speaking and performing editor duties for our media sponsorships has taken a much higher priority. Of course, when I am fortunate enough to be able to speak at a conference there’s always some blogging that goes along with it.

Have you noticed the number of regionalized or small scale search marketing conferences that are popping up?Jill Whalen has been running her High Rankings Search Engine Marketing seminar for a few years now (disclosure: I am a speaker for the Mpls event and my PR agency works with Jill) that is very hands on focused. The speakers all share a very similar philosophy about search marketing so there are not the mixed messages you get at larger events.

Danny Sullivan has started his SMX event (is that name a subliminal play on Search Marketing Sex?) starting in Seattle this summer as well.

Day two of ad:tech Chicago rounded up with a sigh. With all the parties Monday night, I think some of the attendees were looking forward to the end of the day. Lots of good sessions and a few duds, but that’s the way it goes with most conferences. Luckily, the two sessions I covered went pretty well. There were quite a few folks covering the conference so I’ve assembled a list of all search marketing and related posts below:

Coverage by the ad:tech blog:

This session, “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark - Persuasion Architecture - Persuading Customers When they Ignore Marketing” with Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now is titled after the book of the same name. Basically this session was about marketers getting poor results because they are using old Pavolovian rules of marketing and that consumers buy differently than in the past. Customers are less like compliant dogs and more like finicky cats. Hence the title.

ad:tech Chicago is coming along nicely. Coverage of the conference by Online Marketing Blog as well as DMNews and iMedia Connection is keeping those who were not able to attend well informed. Here’s the next installement of our coverage:
Any discussion about social media and social networking is going to involve MySpace. This session did exactly that with some aspect of MySpace being included in just about every speaker’s contribution to the session.

Rather than a presentation format, moderator David Carlick of Vantage Point Venture Partners introduces “Social Media: The Dynamics of the Genre and the Opportunities for Marketers” as a Q and A session.

The first day here at ad:tech Chicago was pretty good. I covered 3 sessions over at Online Marketing Blog and at the ad:tech blog.

Link Building
Big Brands and Podcasting
Warm and Cozy SEO

Also, Carlen Lea Lesser covered: “Managing Ultra-Complex Search Campaigns”

In the morning I had the chance to briefly meet keynote speaker, Fay Ferguson and chat a bit with fellow ad:tech blogger David Berkowitz of 360i and contributor to Media Post Search Insider. I also had a most enjoyable conversation with Mickey Alam Kahn, Senior Editor of DMNews.

Our next installment of ongoing ad:tech Chicago 2006 coverage provided by Online Marketing Blog focuses on link building.

This SEO related session was two thirds full, which dispells my earlier suggestion that interest in SEO might be slipping here at ad:tech. What was to be a rounded topic of on-page and off-page optimization turned out to be focused on linking as one of the presenters was not able to attend.

Here is the next installment of Online Marketing Blog coverage of ad:tech Chicago 2006:

With a slight delay, this standing room only session started off with Moderator Henry Copeland of blogads.com introducing the speakers which included: Michael Moore of Nestle Purina Pet Care, Robert Claypoole “Consumer and Professional Relationship Marketing” for Johnson and Johnson Vision Care division, Heather Sefcik of Henkel Consumer Adhesives (Duck Tape) and Brian Bloom of Ligget Stashower, a marketing PR firm that works with the Duck Tape brand.

As part of the ongoing coverage of ad:tech Chicago 2006 Online Marketing Blog is doing for the ad:tech blog, here is the first installment on the sessions about SEO that I was able to attend. Above is a photo of (L to R) Dana Todd, Bruce Clay and Fionn Downhill. Bruce is actually wearing a tie!
While there was no fireplace, there certainly was a good share of chatting in this session on organic search engine optimization. Introductions were handled by Fionn Downhill of Elixir Systems (I love her accent) to a room that was surprisingly 1/2 full. Perhaps search marketing is losing some of its luster with the ad:tech crowd? The need for SEO certainly hasn’t abated as Dana Todd of¬†SiteLab and Bruce Clay of BruceClay.com were able to attest in this mostly Q and A formatted session.