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Well it is a week late, but here is a summary of the happenings at Web Advertising '97 I promised. I know what your are thinking. "Hey Richard, you promised us this summary DURING the conference." Both nights of the conference I had the opportunity to go dine (and drink) with some of the brightest people in this industry. Frankly, it was a temptation that no Internet marketeer could resist.
As you may have noticed, the traffic on the list was fairly light during the conference. I think it was because a good portion of the most vocal list members were at the conference. Which leads me into the dinner Sunday night. We ended up with more than 40 people. Most of the attendees were members of this list and it was the first time many of us actually met in person. Good food and conversation abounded and I would just like to say I'm sorry I couldn't be everywhere at once. I would have loved to have talked to each of you in-depth.
Rumor has it the next Web Advertising conference will be in New York sometime in February of 1998. We will definitely have another List dinner there. Stay tuned!
On with the summary...
I could in no way see and hear all there was to see and hear at this conference. In fact, the original listing of sessions I said I would cover was far too ambitious. So here is my best shot at it.
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The keynote address was delivered by Robert Raisch of The Internet Company. I think he set the tone for what would be a recurring theme throughout the conference - delivering targeted advertising that is, as Rob put it, "...a marriage between content and solicitation." And that targeting mechanism will be event or interest triggered. For example, if I do a search for air fares from Dallas to Houston on the day my favorite rock band is in town the content returned to me will include info about the show and how to buy tickets. This isn't that far away, as Infoseek unveiled a new service that lays the foundation for doing such targeting. More about that later.
Rob also made a very astute insight - the push model has got problems. As push content increases in popularity, it requires an increase in bandwidth - bandwidth that is being supply by companies other than those doing the pushing. Or to use Rob's example: A T1 line can support maybe 1000 simultaneous "non-push" users. Throw push into the mix and that same line can only support a fraction of those users. It raises the obvious question: Who is going to pay for the extra bandwidth needed? The advertiser? The user? Or the ISP?
And Rob offered up confirmation of another speculation I had heard in other circles; we could be buying our Internet access from the electric company in the future. Utilities are building an infrastructure to more efficiently monitor electrical usage, and there is no real reason why content couldn't be sent back and forth over those same lines.
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The next session I was able to attend was Jim Sterne's "What's in a Web Ad: From Banners and Links to Interactive Video." It was a showcase of the cool and unusual advertising mechanisms. Jim proved that there are literally dozens of alternative promotional vehicles besides plain old banner ads - from the morphing headers on Wired's "Packet" to the spotted backgrounds for Disney's "101 Dalmations."
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"Creative for the Web: What gets Clicks," can be best summarized with a top 10 list Infoseek devised for the presentation:
1.) click here -- make it clear the banner is something to be clicked
5.) change creative frequently -- on the Infoseek site, banners seem to wear out after 200,000 to 400,000 impressions
6.) match your message to your targeting -- make sure your banner is targeted (I've seen this tip work first hand. Banners attached to keywords pull much better.)
7.) don't waste time/money on contests -- contest banners don't pull any better
Here are some supplemental links the panelists gave out:
How to make Web ads more effective
Building a Better Banner
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"Customized Ad Delivery: The Year of the Database," was a panel discussion of how to serve ads with precision using database technology. It is here that Infoseek offered up some compelling technology - Ultramatch. It essentially can build a profile of your behavior on the Infoseek web site in real-time and serve you ads based on that profile. It is very different that other intelligent systems out there because Ultraseek does its magic while preserving your anonymity and not forcing you to give up any information. It simply watched your behavior and builds a profile in REAL-TIME. That profile is then used to serve targeted ads. In the trial run of the system, Infoseek demonstrate significantly higher click-through rates than the alternative targeting method - attaching the banners to keywords.
If you want a hard copy of the Infoseek study, send your name and snail mail address to: research_at_infoseek.com.
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"What Makes a Good Media Site for Your Client?" was a panel exploration of what media buyers look for in evaluating a buy on a site. To be honest, I missed most of this one because I was going through the 300+ email messages that had accumulated in my in-box since I arrived in Monterey. I did, however, catch one of the things that ticked media buyers off - the inability to get good, standard reports on how their ads were doing. Their proposed solution: the client should be serving the ads to the media outlet. Starwave Corp.'s Shelley Morrison was making a very good point during the Q&A session about this when she said, "Why would we allow a client to hold our entire site hostage?"
Ad Age's Debbie Williamson (who was moderator of the panel) wrote a story detailing the issues:
OPINION: Who should serve ads? Marketers say they will
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"Promoting Your Site for Free (or Almost Free)," was an exploration into the world of online media relations and publicity; and it was delivered by the recognized genius of this field, Eric Ward. What Eric talks about isn't as sexy as java-based ads or real-time visitor profiling systems, but it is essential to the success of any web site. Eric's entire presentation can be found online at:
It is chuck-full of resources and should be required reading for anyone in the online promotions industry.
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As you would expect from a Mark Welch presentation, he was direct and candid. I think his biggest point was that no ad network has a good method for categorizing the sites within its network and (surprise, surprise) sometimes certain ad network representatives lie.
Mark's complete presentation is online at:
http://www.ca-probate.com/webadv97.htm
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The panelists for "The Future of Web Advertising" raised more questions than they answered, which is not surprising in an industry that moves as rapidly as online advertising.
Shawn Gold of Rare Medium pointed out that we need to start asking questions such as:
a.) Where are the distribution channels? (AOL, pointcast, search engines??)
His underlying tenet that drives the answers to all the above questions is: "Efficiency is king - consumers want to get it on and get to it as soon as possible."
Bill Cleary of CKS sees the Internet as a component that should be integrated into an overall promotional campaign. His point was that it is an exceptional medium for supporting an informed purchase. His experience with the web's use in supporting car sales shows that people do interact with the web when making informed purchases. But we can't treat the Internet as an extension of any other type of promotional vehicle if we want it to have an impact. The Internet must be treated as its own, unique medium.
Jeff Einstein of CMP Media sees a model of syndicated content emerging. He sees self-contained commercial programs as an efficient way to deliver targeted materials to the right audience.
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Cliff and I also gave a couple of presentations at Web Advertising '97. They are online at:
We plan on expanding them in the future and will let the list know when we have made substantive changes. If you have any questions about our presentations, you can reach us at:
rhoy_at_tenagra.com (me)
If other presenters from Web Advertising has their presentations online, send me the URL and I will send it out to the list. Also, I understand that Thunderlizard (the conference organizer) puts up PDF versions of various presenters' slides on its web site.
For details, see:
http://www.thunderlizard.com/webad97.html
That's it!
richard
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