• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, September 21, 2006

OMMA Conference & Expo Puts Pedal to the Metal. Steve Smith reports.

What the hell just happened?

Any interactive media planner looking ahead to 2007 has Google, YouTube, and MySpace on the radar. "But two of them didn't even exist three years ago and one of them hadn't appeared in its current role," says Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of Publicis Groupe's Denuo. "What sort of plan would we have had three years ago?"

Tobaccowala will expand on that idea during his opening keynote at MediaPost's OMMA Conference & Expo, Sept. 25 and 26. Aptly titled "The Internet: Back on Speed," the conference will explore the new facts of life for interactive media and advertising professionals, and how the pace and velocity of change today profoundly impacts what they do and how they do it.

New media platforms for content and advertising now launch more quickly than ever. In 2000, 97 million Americans had wireless phone subscriptions; now more than 218 million do, giving mobile media an audience penetration that exceeds broadband and rivals television. A year ago, Apple's video iPod didn't exist. iTunes' TV library, not even a year old, boasts 30 cable/broadcast channels on a wholly new pay-per-episode model with more than 20 million monthly visitors. Talk about speed.

The staggering scope of this change is apparent in market data, according to eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey, who will address the conference in an opening keynote, "Our World Speeds Up: Online Media, Marketing, and Advertising by the Numbers."

Growth in online ad spending has been dizzying: more than 30 percent for three years running (2004-2006). And eMarketer projects a bump of 21.6 percent for 2007. In the last three years, search spending alone has nearly doubled to $7.1 billion. Web powerhouses emerge overnight. Consider YouTube, which grew from a mere 58,000 unique visitors last year to 12.6 million this May. MySpace, which barely existed two years ago, grew its audience 230 percent between May 2005 and May 2006, while Flickr grew nearly 500 percent.

"It has done nothing but accelerate, and it will do nothing but accelerate," says Vanity Fair media critic Michael Wolff and author of Burn Rate. Wolff will moderate a panel on the challenges of monetizing consumer-generated content during Day Two of the OMMA conference. "The accelerants here are technology, money, and the tension between incompetence and the specter of new competence, between old and new media."

The Best Laid Plans

An OMMA session dubbed "The Medium" addresses whether Internet speed makes media planning a futile exercise. How do you plan a business, let alone a campaign, in such a mercurial marketplace?

"Every morning there are at least three significant [new] things impacting our business," says Tobaccowala. "Each week at least two or three are at the level of new corporate deals."

Planners are shifting away from traditional media but aren't sure which platform to turn to. "[Agencies] are nowhere near the lead on the emerging digital media or the evolution of traditional media to digital elements," says Cory Treffiletti, vice president, RealBranding.

But just try settling on an established platform, like, say, broadband video. Even there, AOL, Google, YouTube, Guba, iTunes, and Yahoo launch new formats and applications weekly. "Buyers tell me, 'We're spending less on TV this year; we just don't know where to put [the budget].' They need better data on the new channels," says Mike Baker, CEO of enPocket, a provider of mobile marketing solutions.

Media Road Kill

For advertisers, the biggest casualty of accelerated change may very well be the big media on which they depend. Change has always been a fact of business life, but now the shifts are dramatic, says Wolff, who serves as moderator of a panel featuring NBC Universal's Beth Comstock and AOL's Jim Bankoff. Can traditional and online media companies embrace digital disciplines and emerging business models quickly enough?

"We may be talking about a transformation in which one industry is going into a twilight period of obsolescence and a new industry is replacing it. They will transform or deconstruct," says Wolff.

As consumers drive the content and distribution train, can any large company monitor and respond to trends without becoming disoriented or, worse, road kill?

There's no question that marketers are looking to new, highly interactive media experiences, like the ones YouTube and Facebook offer. But will audiences have moved on to the next cool thing by the time marketers and big media figure it all out?

Ironically, it may be the declining quality of media that's driving consumers to explore and experiment with new platforms and content. "It all sucks," says Wolff. "Movies suck, TV sucks, books suck. That's enabled a new kind of anti-content context to be created."

The High-Speed Chase

A Day Two session dubbed "The Marketer" considers whether rapid media change is moving consumers away from advertising altogether. In the sped-up Web 2.0 world, markets emerge in a matter of minutes, not years. Take the role of search: When a new PC virus breaks at 9 a.m., software security companies need to locate and buy the keywords that put their solutions at the top of search results by noon. "Whoever shows up in the top search results first will have a significant advantage over their competition," says Derrick Wheeler, senior search strategist, Acxiom Digital. Being able to detect and exploit new trends early can have bottom-line implications. In the world of search, it pays to be the first and the fastest, Wheeler says.

And consumers now expect as much. "It's an instantaneous marketing process," says David Berkowitz, director of strategic planning, 360i. Marketers need to reel in in-market consumers who are predisposed to buying, and then fulfill their requests immediately. Search engines level the playing field, allowing small companies like regional airlines and boutique financial consultants to compete with bigger rivals. "It's a great equalizer," Berkowitz says.

Yet the loop can be both seductive and deceptive if we don't slow down, warns Treffiletti: "We now react too quickly." Some marketers optimize campaigns before consumers even get through their purchase cycle. Internet speed still has to account for real-world speed.

Is Google the new model for managing an uncertain future? "You have to do the ready-fire-aim model," says Tobaccowala. Of his own company, Denuo, he admits, "We launch in alpha stage and we figure it out. The reality is, we are moving into beta."

But even mighty Google and its vast cache of beta projects may not be so permanent, Wolff warns. "This is basically the history of the Internet: There is one dominant player, everyone tries to do what it does, and then it gets superseded by another dominant player."

Breathe Slowly and Think

The good news about the new Internet pace is that everyone admits they can't really keep up, and it may be dangerous to try. Working strategically is now more important than ever. Positioning brands against the underlying waves of change and within the context of on-demand, personalization, and audience reaggregation trends may well be more critical than riding the ripples.

"You can describe the future at a high level but not in the details," says Baker. Countless media choices will require personalization and intermediaries that help consumers find what they want, but we don't know what will do that or how. Consumers are in control, but do they even know yet what they want to do with this power? Media platforms that enable consumer input are critical, but how much input and in what form? The devil is in the details, or rather in envisioning the details before they surface in the marketplace.

What can media and marketing achieve in this hyper-accelerated environment? Who knows? Reading this article on speed was so five minutes ago.

For more information on the OMMA Conference & Expo, go to www.mediapost.com and click on "MediaPost Shows."