DSA Online | New Media Updates

Last week was the IAB’s spring Mixx conference in Toronto. Lynn Hoffman, Derek Leverington, and Roslyn Kozak joined me from Regina to add Western credentials to the show. Following several years of cookie-cutter Ontario/national centric road show presentations from the IAB, I was unsure of what to expect from this talk. I had been very vocal about my discontent with presentations that had been brought to Vancouver in the past and figured if I was going to continue to have a leg to stand on that I should attend the larger functions that require paid-entry. The local road show presentations are free, and I usually suggest people who are new or getting into online attend the show when it arrives in their town.

The event was held in the Carlu Theatre in downtown Toronto. Early morning (really early for me…), we headed over to the theatre and prepped ourselves for a day of live-tweeting and blogging. If you were following my twitter account, you may have followed my notes and comments about the presentation throughout the day. New to twitter?: simply click on the follow me icon in the left hand sidebar and you’ll see my historical posts. #mixx was used for the event, so if you’re interested, you can sort the hashtagged tweets from the day (March 5th); however, be aware the #mixx is usually used for a tech news site and will contain tweets that are not relevant to the conference. It was pretty funny to see our table set-up to live-tweet, since I am constantly looking to the audience when I present. I wouldn’t know what to do with a room full of twitterers paying more attention to their tiny keypads than my circus performance on the stage.

Inside The Obama Social Media Marketing Juggernaut
Jascha Franklin Hodge, Co-founder of Blue State Digital

This talk was really great. Not only was the presentation visually captivating, who wouldn’t be salivating over a chance to review the social juggernaut that was the Obama race. Mr. Hodge’s team was very fortunate in that that they had the flexibility to add and tweak social interactions throughout the campaign. Much of their success was the freedom to try different things and effectively streamline communications with their audience. I was pretty captivated and I salivated at the chance to incorporate even ONE of these components in a Canadian campaign.

Lessons learned and/or reinforced:

-Social media “…is not about the rock star”, it’s about the conversation. Engage your community and allow them to become your voice. “Turn users into advocates”.
-Build a strong brand. Brand professionally & consistently. Then let your community take over. By providing your “fans” with license to use your logo (you can control it by providing it in many different formats), they will diversify your reach and your acceptance. P2P is stronger than B2P.

Adnetik, Havas’ Digital Trading Network: The Next Sea Change In Digital Marketing?
Nathan Woodman, Global Managing Director, Adnetik

This talk had the misfortune of being after Mr. Hodge’s talk. Also, this presentation was very technical and a little dry. This is a product that may eventually come to Canada – but this fact wasn’t actually revealed until the closing statements. I am pretty sure that 70% of the audience started working on their mobiles after the first technical slide – and then he lost the room. However, it was an interesting product. Havas represents a middle man service called the Virtual Brand Network that helps publishers bid on the available brand impressions based on the value of the interaction vs the ad bid of a competitor. I’m just not sure if we have the inventory or the population to support such a model, since we can barely drill down behavioural targeting within Canadian provinces (beyond Ontario and Quebec). Since the system depends on profiling the Canadian online population, I also think that our privacy laws will slow down it’s assimilation into our media scene. Interesting stuff – but not really relevant to the Canadian market…yet.

Fun fact: Seems people in Toronto (and I suppose the East US) like to use the term “Sea Change”. Beyond its use in the title of this presentation, several panelists used the phrase. For those not in the know, it is an idiom for a broad transformation. Not sure why it’s so popular in the big smoke right now – I’m likely to just keep saying “big change”.

Notes for Havas: 1) make a mobile friendly site so people can check out your company when you’re presenting 2) consider having your fun video that showcases the possibilities at the START of the presentation.

Display Fights Back!
Gian Fulgoni, Executive Chairman and Co-founder, comScore Inc.

I get a tingly little happy sensation when big ticket presenters say things that I am teaching in my classes. Since this was the big cheese at comScore, it made me sit up a little straighter in my chair. Most people in the industry right now are facing major declines in display advertising spending. With big properties like Facebook, Google and MSN selling some of their inventory on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis, the value of an ad impression is made to look like it’s worth $0. Since these publishers are giving away impressions, it’s causing sites to sling mud about the CPC system. This presentation reinforced many of the stats that I present in my “Why & When to Buy” seminar, dealing with campaign goals and vocabulary. If a client is going into a campaign expecting click-through rate to be the be all-end all, then you better be prepared to talk about why your rate was less than 1%.

Unfortunately, every stat save for 3 slides was American, including a fascinating “cookie-deletion” study. I was shocked at the numbers showing people who deleted cookies from their system and wondered if user-capability (confidence online) had anything to do with it. When I asked if the qualifying question had been asked, I was informed that it was based on their user panel, so users weren’t consulted, their computers were. To further illustrate his numbers, Mr. Fulgoni asked those in the room who deleted their cookies to raise their hand. More than 90% claimed they did and I was floored. Are there seriously that many people taking the time to go and delete their cookies, or did they all have their browsers set to do so? Is it paranoia? Is it because of the industry we’re in? Is it because their IT department has a policy? I was intrigued. I asked everyone at my table WHY they deleted their cookies, since everyone beside Lynn, Derek, Roslyn and I had raised their hands. No one could give me a straight answer and in fact one lady just decided not to make eye contact with me.

Why do you delete your cookies? Do you even know if your browser is set to auto-delete your cookies? Comment below and give me your answers or answer the poll in the left hand side bar.

Lessons learned and/or reinforced:
-Sites that offer CPC are devaluing the impression to showcase the sexy, measurable “click” – say the publishers who aren’t providing CPC to advertisers.
-Clients are still focused on the click.
-Clickers are not necessarily “valuable conversions”. Clickers tend to be young and low-income – not necessarily everyone’s target.
-CTR is usually best used to measure search marketing.
-A combination of Search + Display gives a significant lift in brand recall.
-comScore Canada will be publishing a Canadian version of the cookie-deletion rate within the year.

Slow Dancin’ With Doritos: A Study In Brand Hijacking – Gone Right!
Fernando L. Barbella, Interactive Creative Director, BBDO Argentina

While there was a language barrier, this presentation was my favourite. This is ironic since I am constantly belly aching about national or US case-studies being irrelevant to the western Canada market. The topic was around brand-hijacking; when some external force takes over the brand messaging laid out by the client or agency. In this case, Doritos-Argentina had a great campaign set out to target youth – so good that the campaign was picked-up and championed by 33 Facebook groups and 240 blogs. Only one problem – people were photo editing stills of the campaign without the logo. Their strategy, which was “Que Vuelvan Los Lentos” or “Bring back slow dancing” was a hit and the demographic was spreading the good word, but were neglecting to pass on the brand at the same time. How did they bring it around – by giving the people what they wanted? They hosted a mega-show (slow dance) attended by 4,000+ people.

Lessons learned and/or reinforced:
-Brand hijacking is scary. It’s less scary when you don’t negatively react to potentially good news.
-Trust your agency.
-Social networking is a great way to expose your message – however, you are not in control of the message once it leaves your hands. Be flexible and be ready for change.