I recently returned from the Search Insider Summit in Captiva Island, Florida. The SIS Summit is unlike any other conference I’ve attended (SES, SMX, AdTech, DMA, eTail, Shop.org) in that SIS is setup like a TED conference where each speaker is given anywhere from 5-18 minutes to present. The presentations are designed to really make you think. Instead of presenting a bunch of tactical, how-to information, SIS presentations are more focused on findings and research for performance of different types of media. Several presentations discussed what we can expect in the future of advertising and technology and how that’s going to impact the online marketing space. Unlike the title of the conference, this is really about performance marketing, not purely search.

Another key differentiator between SIS and other conferences is that it is structured to allow ample time to get to know the other attendees. The sessions run from 8am to 2pm, followed by several activities that allow you to partake in with other attendees. It’s during these activities, the drinks that follow, then dinner, then more drinks, that you really get to develop relationships with thought leaders in the industry. SIS conferences are held in beautiful locations and while there’s plenty of time for fun and drinks in the sun, most importantly, there’s a whole lot to be learned.

Below is a compilation of some of the more interesting companies and takeaways that I had from this year’s show:

Blue Kai:

• Wants to be the “Intel inside of display advertising”;
• Able to incorporate data from places like Acxiom and Experian, along with the companies own data to better target audience’s online;
• Has a lot of knowledge about where the consumer is at in the buying cycle, so you can target the right message to them;
• The types of data that they furnish allows for real-time bidding and display.

Microsoft:

• Discussed new type of user experience for search;
• Download GetPivot.com. This is a new way to think about search using images.

Yahoo:

• Discussed their rich ads in search, which is a search ad that also has the ability to play a video. Yahoo mentioned that click through rates and conversion rates have gone way up for customers who’ve used these ad formats, and in some cases, customers conversion rates have gone up by 50%;
• They will be targeting ads using a person’s search query history. This means if someone does a search for something which they have no ad inventory, they will look at that person’s prior searches and show ads related to those;
• Will start showing ads before a full search query is typed in. Using the Search Suggest feature, Yahoo will guess when you start typing a query as to what you’re looking for and show ads. They said that this could mean that people will start bidding on letters and syllables in addition to complete words;
• Lastly, Yahoo’s Sketch-A-Search is a new local search feature for smartphones that allows you to draw a shape or a line on a map and find restaurants, stores, etc., within that shape or on that line.

comScore:

• Discussed ‘The Wharton Project: The Future of Advertising’. This is a huge research project funded by companies such as Google to gain greater insights to how advertising actually works and what the future of it is. You can learn more by going to www.youtube.com/fastforward.

Razorfish:

• “Don’t position search by insulting other tactics.” This statement means that just because other forms of marketing aren’t as quantifiable as search does not mean they can’t be just as important;
• Forget ROI – Remember the Audience;
• Enables Stories Everywhere – this means that you’re consumers are not just on search, they are all over the Internet, and anywhere you can engage in conversation (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) is a worthwhile exercise;
• Resist the DR Temptation – this again speaks to the first point that just because an ad is not designed to do direct response does not mean it is not a worthwhile marketing exercise.

Efficient Frontier:

• “Errors using inadequate data are much less than using no data at all,” said by Charles Babbage;
• Presented a lot of interesting data about attribution management and how different types of ads can work together to achieve sales;
• Talked a lot about how display and search work very effectively together;
• Referenced a comScore study from 2009 about how search and display work together.

Other Notes:

• An attendee referenced an interesting article titled, “Sit. Walk. Slouch. Communicate. Create. Consume. Why the iPad Will Be A Hit” by Rishad Tobaccowalla
  • The iPad was discussed a lot at this conference and what it means for the future of marketing
• Chris Copeland, CEO of Group M Search, was a great presenter. He talked about a world without Google. His firm has done a lot of research on how social influences other channels. Chris wrote a good whitepaper called ‘The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption’.
• It was noted there are two types of agencies: implementers and consultancies. I thought this was an important distinction because too many agencies out there just do the busy work. They don’t provide insights, they are more reactive than proactive and are there simply to get ads running, whereas consultancies help you to achieve business goals with their primary tool being the use of advertising and the interpretation of advertising to reach those goals.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 29th, 2010 at 8:26 am and is filed under All Blogs, Analytics, Attribution Management, News, What's New?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.