Belated Ad:Tech review
April 24th, 2008 | by Klaus Holzapfel |I spent two days at Ad:Tech in San Francisco last week. My focus was on video publishing options for our moviebakery clients. But of course I also took the opportunity to look at the advertising scene in general:
Google
Ever tried to get in touch with them in the US? Don’t try this trade show. The put up a front and tried to provide me with an 1-800 number. I was about to ask them why they are even there but then my gentlemen genes kicked in and I swallowed the question.
Yahoo
Totally different story. I know who I will be talking to when I have questions regarding any of their services. Now I hope Google doesn’t buy them and takes their phones away.
Web 1.0 Still Around
Many exhibitors booths looked like 1999 – still. I didn’t count the email and affiliate marketing companies but I think if this is all you are doing your days in the industry are numbered.
What I missed was a holistic killer application: Why doesn’t someone take a client by the hand and guides them all the way from A to Z: From social networking, online and offline lead generation, SEO and PPC to monitoring the results of all your activities? Bill Ganz of More Media Group has been asking himself the same question and is taking that route with FastTrack and he might just be solving the riddle. He brings the best individual services together and bundles them for his clients. Smart that is.
Interactive Video
Interactive video is the next big thing and exhibitors are taking note of that. I still think that something scripted in Flash Actionscript can’t be beaten but some pretty nice turnkey solutions are popping up. The advantage being lower development cost and much easier implementation.
One vendor offered to generate reports about your competitors marketing budget and how exactly they are spending it. If you don’t feel like doing your homework and watching your competition that is the easy way to spy on them.
Local search
I met with a number of providers of local search platforms. My biggest issue are all the empty pages I get whenever I do a local search. It seems like I need to jump to 10 pages to find what I am looking for. And of course most of the results aren’t accessible via Google but only through their platforms. Some guys are working on aggregating all results and hopefully we see a true frontrunner in this field that gets it all right.
Summing it up:
I am looking forward to presenting some of the concepts to our clients and take it from there. Putting pieces of the puzzle together is fun.
Here are some solutions I liked:
Kontera – In-Text Advertising – definitely a viable alternative to Google Adwords
Videoclix – They understand the power of interactive videos and really embrace that concept
Blinkx – Contextual advertising for online videos – right down our alley
RevShare – Performance based TV Advertising – Yes please!
Ions.com – This site is a bit confusing at first but these guys have a pretty advance concept of bringing video, blogging, networking, PR etc together.
SpotXchange – A great solution for moviebakery customers that don’t want to go the viral route.
Scenecaster – They offer an interactive application that let’s user create their own virtual experience. I have seen my daughter glued to these apps and it might have some merit. Advertisers can add their items into a catalog available to the users of site. You can also create your own branded environment for your audience.
This is not an inclusive list. These are just some providers that to come to my mind.
