Track Sessions

Okay, we get it. the iPhone is the coolest phone on the planet and every one of your clients thinks their brand needs an app in Apple’s store. But after all of the cool, and after all of the mobile traffic it generates, the iPhone still only addresses a small fraction of the U.S. market and an even smaller slice of the world. While your development team spent months on an app that quickly got lost in Apple’s store of 50,000 donwloadables, it was missing an opportunity to reach the hundreds of millions of users who occupy the lion’s share of the mobile world. Is the iPhone, perhaps smart phones generally, skewing publishers and content owners away from a mobile “mass market” and into a narrow, very crowded alley that misses even bigger opportunities?

Everyone knows that search can be an effective platform for driving online traffic, leads and sales. But most people don’t realize that search can be leveraged in many ways beyond just the SEM channel. From using search to drive offline sales to mining search data for insights to build audience profiles, search has application to a wide range of marketing techniques. In this session, we’ll share actionable ways to unlock the power of search across all channels and hear case studies from folks in the trenches.

As marketers increasingly jump to performance-based strategies, accountability and profitability lie in assigning a monetary value to the contributions of all media to campaign goals. That includes a laser-like understanding of the interplay among various formats such as search, display, mobile and video -- and even offline media. Disciplined cross-channel management enables marketers to coordinate numerous campaign initiatives, while understanding the when, where and why of success. To drive efficiency and visibility into effectiveness, marketers must identify and capture the relevant metrics, while leveraging modern optimization techniques like multivariate testing -- and loop all optimization back to goal-setting. In this session, you’ll learn best practices for attribution, including: how to set up an attribution model to work towards your advertising goals; the best technologies and tools to enable tracking and acting; and the necessary skills required, either in-house or externally with your agency.

Online video ad units have creatively and technically broken new ground giving marketers amazing new ways to present their promotions. This is good news for media buyers and publishers. At the same time, an underground movement of peer-to-peer content syndication marketing is enabling savvy marketers to generate millions of views of their promotional video content without spending a fortune on a media buy. Which strategies are most effective? Or is a combination of media buying and content syndication the magic bullet?

Every ad recession in the Internet’s short history has been accompanied by revived cries of “make ‘em pay” and “no free lunch.” The indignant rhetoric usually ebbs when the ad money finally comes back, but this time things seem different. With consumers’ content preferences rushing toward online media, publishers are leaning harder on their digital units to deliver dollars and not dimes. And this time publishers large and small are in serious pursuit of multiple paid content models, from collective efforts like Journalism Online to deeper e-commerce affiliations, virtual goods, fee-based e-letters and niche “clubs” that package content and goods. Our panel explores the early learnings from these models, as it also debates what hybrid models both advertisers and users seem likely to support.

Platform fragmentation is an opportunity and a challenge for marketers. There may be millions of people using mobile video but VCast, Mobile TV, mobile Web Video and iPhone have this video dispersed into impossibly small scale. In addition, there is a lack of standards and consistency for ad opportunities as well as for how to measure them. Are these ads truly impactful and do they drive response and/or generate awareness? On this panel, a mix of media buyers, publishers and mobile experts will debate whether mobile video is a viable marketplace for advertisers or if it is still “3 years away”.

More than ever, marketers are tracking their investments to ensure every dollar makes a measurable impact. While online marketing spend continues to grow, many are placing bets on performance marketing. Why? Because marketers can directly see the results -- and pay only for results. And among the most critical, overlooked links in the performance-marketing chain is email. Come learn from top brands and agencies about their approach to performance, and how they leverage email through the entire marketing cycle to drive performance and lifetime value. Learn how email can drive customer lead generation, conversion, engagement, support and loyalty.

The fun of gaming isn’t just in the game itself. For marketers and advertisers, the real fun happens when they can make gaming part of the reasons fans love their brand. And since gaming continues to rack up points with adults and teens alike, from seniors to women to the next generation, we’re taking a close look at one brand that uses gaming to draw in fans and keep them coming back. This case study will show you how it’s done.

You built it. They came. But all of that streaming video content is still a challenge to monetize for most publishers. So many models have been proposed to engage users and advertiser and remunerate publishers. And yet the same old pre-rolls keep coming. What are the key barriers to better monetization of video inventory for publishers? This panel will explore some of the critical challenges: how to value and price video assets in the current environment; how to accurately forecast targeted inventory; evaluate emerging models like cost-per-play; work with optimizers to improve returns. In the age of hulu and major networks pouring hours of prime time content that seems too easy for marketers to buy, what is left for the rest of the eco-system? For years, publishers scrambled to meet the purported demand for video inventory, but now it is time to make a real video strategy.

The term "behavioral targeting" is a hot one, with companies popping up left and right professing to use search patterns, surfing habits, social connections and purchase behavior to target advertising. More buyers are using these tools and, as dollars come into the category, the tracking threatens to become even more invasive. Is behavioral targeting crossing the line? This session will dive into whether these advances are worth the price consumers may pay in lost privacy. Can BT scale? Or, is it dividing up the audience too finely, making it mostly ineffective in reaching enough potential customers?

Hugely popular social media networks like Facebook and Twitter are bigger than ever. But they’re still having trouble developing advertising-driven revenue models. Why? Because they fail to move the needle for marketers who make the advertising investments. Which begs the question: is buying paid ad placements in social media dead? When advertisers buy social media, what benefits, exactly, are they getting? Can paid placements ever move the needle in intimate environments where people wish to talk with one another, not marketers? This discussion will examine the viability of social media as a media opportunity for marketers. What are the opportunities and risks? What social media advertising innovations are in development? Who’s doing it right, and who’s failing?

Fifty thousand, sixty thousand apps and counting. What makes a brand think it has a place in these increasingly cluttered catalogs of downloadable mobile programs? Everyone recognizes that branded mobile apps need to provide value, not just marketing, to consumers, but few have executed on this conventional wisdom well thus far. ‘Be of use,’ is the rallying cry, but how do branding objectives co-exist with utility? Are there any metrics that define success for branded apps? We bring together the makers of some of the most successful branded mobile apps to share their best practices and hard lessons learned.

You don’t need to be a gaming site to realize big traffic and real ad and e-commerce returns from the explosion in online casual playing. This panel explores the multiple revenue streams that already flow to mainstream media sites via their popular arcade gaming section and affiliate relationships with downloadable games e-tailers. Games vendors, syndication and ad networks and publishers will discuss the changing demographics of online gaming as well as the reasons why their audiences often prefer playing within the confines of a non-gaming media brand. But now that those audiences have come, what can publishers do to make the most of the stickiness and user loyalty that games can confer on a publisher? How important is it for a site to put their own brand’s unique stamp on their gaming room? We will explore how it is time for publishers to get serious about having fun.

As more people are examining engagement as a measurement for online marketing, we are realizing that engagement cannot be broadly defined, but we can break down the definition into these three categories; recency, relevance and resonance. Hear how a number of online buyers and marketers are using these measures, to varying degrees of success, as tools for understanding the effectiveness of online campaigns.

With the use of smart phones skyrocketing, mobile search has become a part of everyday life for many consumers. But people search differently through their cell phone than they do from their desktop. Searches for local listings, content, and information trump commercial queries. So what are the opportunities available to marketers today through mobile search? Web giants like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are fighting to extend their market share onto phones, while endemic providers build a new generation of search input that challenge the classic search box. How can marketers leverage local search through innovative iPhone apps, voice, GPS, and the G1 bar code product search? How do mobile search providers like Cha Cha and Medio change the game? These questions and more will be addressed by our expert panel.

The pile-on has reached critical mass: Most of the U.S. brand marketers who are interested in social media are already using it, according to a 2009 report from Equation Research. That doesn’t mean they’re all getting the results they want. And the ones who haven’t tried it yet say it’s because they’re unsure it’ll work. This panel is all about results: We present a case study of a social media experiment that really connected -- and give you the reasons it worked so well.

Turn your back on ad networks, publishers are being told. They devalue your inventory, compete with your sales teams, clash with your content, and often deliver negligible revenue. Which may be fine advice if you are ESPN or Turner and have the scale and staff to sell on your own. But most small and medium publishers, and now mobile content providers, still need the scale, sales and revenue that the horizontal and vertical networks offer. How can they make this marriage of convenience work? Are ad networks really addressing the longstanding grievances of publishers wary of seeing their inventory commoditized and sold in a not-so-blind way? And hasn’t this situation simply gotten worse on the mobile platform where content is even more reliant on networks? Publishers and ad nets have to live together it seems. Let’ see if they have learned how to share the covers.

Social media and search are two of the most vibrant components of digital media. So it’s no wonder that in the eyes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and others there’s hope that search and social can make beautiful music together – like the sound of a cash register, ringing. But what’s the reality? Will advertisers buy keywords off real-time search results the way they do off of more traditional search queries? Can proprietary real-time search data be sold to companies, governments and other entities trying to track buzz and follow the interests of their consumers? How else might buyers use real-time search to grow their clients’ brands? And, of course, might the answer to this dilemma provide a real business model for Twitter at last?

Success of email marketing optimization is based on how well you structure testing, optimization and measurement. This panel speaks to the best practices in email measurement, types of metrics and how key optimization decisions are made. Featuring specialists from the Email Marketing world, Web Analytics world and balanced with a marketer’s view, the panel will outline what are the best approaches to testing opt in forms, registration forms, commerce workflows as well as testing approaches for email creative. Come and see how the best in the industry optimize web analytics systems in support of email marketing.

Social media has the potential to be one of the most powerful advertising tools of 2010 and beyond. But from a creative perspective, many of the existing social media platforms leave much to be desired. The simplicity and utility of social media seems to only contemplate simple applications and banner ads. But a few social media campaigns have broken new ground this year that will raise the bar for what’s to come. Please join us as we look at some creative executions in social media and discuss how creatives can use new social media tools and platforms going forward.

In 2009, social networks like Twitter and Facebook evolved from “brand extensions” and “outreach” for major media into established publisher outposts that can drive traffic, user interaction, and now even ad revenues. But what best practices have emerged for managing these new syndication and relationship engines? This panel will look at issues including who mans the feed, who creates policies for maintaining voice and editorial consistency, and whether social nets are seen as an editorial operation or a way to market media brands. Lastly, this panel will give insight into whether social networks offer traditional content providers a new way of thinking about their own content and relationship to their audience. Last year, publishers scrambled to “plug into” the nets. This year they have to harness the energy.

Everyone agrees that pre-roll is not the future of video (or do they?). If that’s the case, then what is? This session will get down to the brass tacks of what today’s innovations are in online video advertising. Who’s using video and how is it being measured? If you don’t walk out of this session with a new idea that you can test today, then we didn’t do our job!

Keywords are among the most valuable targeting criteria, but focusing only on reaching people when they’re searching is leaving money on the table. In this session, we’ll explore opportunities for re-marketing to searchers after they’ve left Google, Yahoo, Bing or their other engine of choice. We’ll focus on specific search re-targeting offerings from networks and other providers as well as best practices for segmentation and messaging. Finally, we’ll discuss the privacy implications inherent in this approach.

Mobile is poised to become the primary means of reaching consumers, yet the use of mobile in cross-platform advertising campaigns is currently in its infancy—in fact, many of the top 100 brands only started to experiment with mobile in the last two years. So how are advertisers incorporating this powerful channel into the media mix? OMMA examines campaigns promoting the feature films Transformers II, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and National Mandela Day to see how mobile is currently being leveraged to generate audiences, increase brand awareness and foster interest and participation in worthy causes.

Small is the new big when it comes to e-mail publishing. The growth opportunity in publishing to the inbox is laser-targeted content that finds its audience and matches them to the perfect advertiser. How can publishers best identify those opportunities, execute them efficiently, and sell the package to marketing partners? This panel will assemble gurus of the e-mail publishing arena to explore how they leverage internal metrics to identify new content opportunities they can parse from their current audience or to find the right new audience to reach. How do they manage expansion into new content and audience arenas, both on the editorial and the sales side? We will look at leveraging email effectively as freemium content to drive users into paid or registered relationships. We will look at leveraging user-generated content to minimize content production costs and fill the niches.

Maybe it’s not what you know, but who you know? Maybe it’s not who you know, but what you do? Maybe it’s who you know and what they do? The behavioral market is thriving with differing opinions on what data is best for targeting and re-targeting, but does any of this really work for your clients? And, is it even legal or does it infringe upon privacy? Meet some buyers using these data for their clients and hear what they think is effective and ethical, all at the same time.

Original online video programming has limitless "potential" to drive brand performance. But the glut of platforms, providers and content creates complexity that prompts many advertisers to ask: "Is it even worth it?" So what is the right framework for investing in video to help achieve your brand goals? Should you sponsor content, or create your own? How can brands use online video not only to drive purchase intent and customer acquisition, but long-term satisfaction, loyalty and other dimensions of brand health? How can brands leverage homegrown video with traditional advertising and branded content? This panel will probe the online video landscape, including opportunities and threats, and present pragmatic options that move the needle - for marketers.

Video game Avatars are a player’s physical representation in the game world. Branded avatars allow brands to be present in gaming environments without being interruptive, an entirely new and innovative take on in-game marketing. Are gamers willing to interact with and even embrace marketing messaging from in-game virtual street teams? A few fascinating case studies will take the audience through this brave new world of non-invasive game marketing.

If “data is the new media,” as David Verklin famously says, then what value can online publishers extract from this new coin of the realm? Content providers of every size are being overwhelmed by the promises of ad exchanges, data exchanges, yield and ad optimizers. Each says your data is king. We will bring together both publishers and elements of the increasingly complex digital advertising “stack” to help content providers large, medium and small better understand the ways in which user data is being measured and valued on the open market and how publishers can profit from it. Each of these new layers brings different models for measuring and leveraging your audience’s behaviors and optimizing their value to you. How do they compare? What should publishers be asking to vette these propositions?

With the continued growth of social networking platforms as a tool for communications between users, more companies are establishing their presence in social media and using these platforms as a means of customer relationship management beyond their traditional email CRM. In this session we will explore the pluses and minuses of how media managers can help their clients use social media communications for brand interactions and hear from some of the companies that are embedded directly into the social CRM paradigm.

According to recent surveys 88% of consumers planned to use coupons for their back-to-school purchases this year but less than two percent would make use of mobile coupons. Mobile couponing is a staggeringly large market waiting to happen. The phone offers consumer optimal convenience. No clipping, no printing, no leaving the discount at home. Many of the early adopters claim remarkable redemption rates. And couponing can be tied to all of the next-gen mobile technologies like product image scanning and in-store price comparisons. So why are so few marketers even experimenting here? Problems at the point-of-sale, over the proper methods of delivery and with consumer familiarity abound. This panel of participants from the retail, couponing, and mobile marketing value chain will engage the problems and show marketers how they can get started.

When Sprint challenged Mindshare to develop a program that would break through the clutter and engage its younger, tech-savvy customers who were heavy purchasers of data usage packages, they created a multi-platform campaign that heavily leveraged the power of online video. David Lang, president of Mindshare Entertainment, and Simon McPhillips, media director at Sprint, will supply the behind-the-scenes access. This case study review will give you valuable insight into the decision making process, creative considerations, development, and campaign analysis information you need to take your brand from online zero to video Hero.