Last week, I was in New York for Ad:Tech 2009 at the Javits Center. From my perspective, the conference, was a smash hit. On day one alone, an estimated 8,000 attended, and there was a two-hour wait
in a line that extended from the lobby out to 11th Avenue. And the keynotes and conference sessions seemed very well-received.
We had a booth at the Expo, so I got to talk with a huge number
of folks I would otherwise not have met, and learned a lot from our conversions together.
First and foremost, the message I got loud and clear is that businesses are gearing up to start
investing in marketing after more than a year of increasing austerity. This, of course, is great news and portends good things for the larger economy (here's hoping those good things come quickly,
given the jobs report on Friday).
The other message I heard, over and over again, is that people seem exhausted by the huge inefficiencies in marketing today. This is particularly true for
Web marketing, including display, search and especially social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
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Specifically regarding search, the overwhelming sense I got is that it is still so mysterious.
There's real confusion among everyday businesspeople and rank-and-file marketers about how things work, despite the many blogs, newsletters and columns on the topic. Folks get that Google, in
particular, provides a range of "free" tools -- AdWords, Website Optimizer, and a huge number of help pages -- but still feel they can't quite figure out how to make everything work to their
advantage. They don't understand why ads are rejected, or why, despite placing a maximum bid, they don't get into a top position for their preferred keywords. The concept of quality scores confounds.
(Forget SEO: most view it as pure voodoo.) And where, in the name of all that's holy, is the bonanza of traffic they've been promised?! Beyond search, I heard real frustration around
managing email marketing campaigns ("Gmail is just a black hole!" one woman asserted, despite, she said, real efforts to follow all the rules.)
And many folks want simple, easy-to-use tools
for planning and managing integrated campaigns, but can't seem to find them. They want to run display ads across publisher sites, on Facebook and on other social networks. And they'd love to figure
out how all this integrates with their conversations on Twitter. More than anything, they want an efficient way to report on the whole kit and caboodle. And while there are a ton of tools,
technologies and consultants of varying depth and quality, all seem to address one specific point across the spectrum of need -- and none play well together.
So what's to be done? Well, for
starters, the folks who own search engines, ad networks, content platforms and all rest could work to make the rules of the game a lot clearer. The businesses I spoke to and the agencies that serve
them just want a level playing field. Also, it's well past time for common standards in the marketing profession. Though the IAB has done a wonderful job in recent years, their work is just an
opening salvo.
Marketing needs a movement along the lines of the microformats effort to create common standards for structured data.
Finally, technology players of all types who seek to serve marketers must more fully embrace the use of APIs so, for instance, common dashboards can be easily created to allow for efficient reporting
across the Web marketing remit. If we can't all play nicely together, let's at least allow a strong ecosystem to grow up around us that will enable marketers to efficiently knit our technologies
together into an integrated solution.
Those of us at work enabling the business of marketing do it to produce a profit, of course. But we also do it out of a genuine desire to be of service
to our customers. I see this where I work; I see it across our competitors; and I see it throughout the Web marketing universe. So it should be natural to consider our customers' whole needs even as
we narrowly focus on meeting one in particular. Marketers are about to start spending again. Let's make it easier for them to do it.