ad:tech State of the Industry: It's Getting Better All the Time

Yesterday, I had the honor of moderating the keynote panel at ad:tech Chicago. Below is a copy of the presentation I used to kick things off and give the panelists something to react to. It should be pretty self-explanatory without my voiceover.

One thing I'll point out is that on slide 9 I asked the crowd to weigh in via show of hands and some 80-90% voted for social media as the fastest growing area of digital marketing. But, as I mentioned in my post recapping my ad:tech webinar, "growth" can be widely interpreted.

I should also mention that @LenKendall makes a good point when he says, er... tweets, "When determining growth of ANYTHING. Factor in growth of population. That ratio will show you true growth vs. stagnation."

Overall, I thought the dialogue on the panel was great. Sean Finnegan of SMG was a great sport about slide 19, especially considering his kids were in the audience. Jeff Levick of AOL Advertising shared some interesting nuggets about the direction his company is heading -- specifically, around creation of original content. (Off-stage he told me that they have some 1,000+ writers in NYC cranking stuff out.) John Cantarella of Time.com had a great soundbyte as he lamented "parasitic aggregators" of content -- although he refused to name any, I chimed in with a Huff-Po cough. And Jeff Bell represented DOmedia well by calling attention to the need for better attribution management -- although that buzzword seems to have caused some confusion.

It definitely seems like the consensus is the volume of planning (and actual spending) activity is picking up. Both AOL and Time.com reported heavy increases in RFPs -- interesting, John pointed out that almost 100% of the requests are for custom packages, not straight ad units. And Sean and Jeff both said they've seen client budgets open up a bit headed into the holidays.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time before I could get to the SMS Q&A but we were able to squeeze in 2 live audience questions that called attention to trends in video and corporate social responsibility.

I'd like to thank Drew Ianni, ad:tech programming chair, for the opportunity to participate and CIMA, for nominating me to represent the organization. And, of course, my fellow panelists for engaging in the conversation and opening their kimonos a bit.

Looking forward to next year. Hopefully by then, WAY up will be the new up. Hey, we can imagine, can't we? (Sorry, had to close with another Beatles reference.)

State Of The Industry: ad:tech Chicago Keynote Panel Presented by CIMA

View more presentations from Aaron Goldman.

What a Difference a Year Will Make

Today I peered into my crystal ball (not to be confused with my Magic Obama 8 Ball) to see what 2009 would bring for the search marketing community.

Below are my 10 predictions. Check out the full post on the Resolution Media blog.

1. Yahoo will be broken up and sold off.

2. Google will offer DART Search for free.

3. Omniture will acquire Covario and incorporate it into its Genesis suite.

4. One of the Big 4 search engines will bow display ads on SERPs.

5. Microsoft will enhance its search results by incorporating the social graph.

6. Google will have a major privacy slip-up and experience serious consumer backlash.

7. Mobile will become a staple of search marketing programs.

8. Search marketers will focus more on post-click activity.

9. Search agencies will expand their offerings beyond “pure” search.

10. I will finally get around to launching GoodSEMBadSEM.com, GoodPPCBadPPC.com, and GoodSEOBadSEO.com.

Yahoo to Buy AOL?

2 months ago, I had buying AOL as #2 on my list of Top 10 things I'd do if I were running Microsoft. Looks like the folks in Sunnyvale read my column before the powers-that-be in Redmond got around to it as Yahoo is about to beat Microsoft to the punch again.

Over the past week, rumors have been swirling that Yahoo is close to acquiring AOL for the cool price of $8 billion. This would bring its combined search share up to 25% -- still not within spitting distance of Google but nearly 2.5x that of Microsoft.

The real nut here for Yahoo would be in a bolstered display offering with massive scale for behavioral targeting, search retargeting, and video. Once again, I have to give props to Yahoo for continuing to press forward when it could be ducking and running.