The floor opens with Gary Stein as moderator and welcomes everyone for coming. He says he will show us the online advertising forecast which is just being released in this session. He seems quite excited to show us the new data. It looks like search revenues at 6.8 billion in 2009 will surpass display advertising. That�s significant. Search is continuing to grow upwards. He says the one thing will change is the cost to display a search ad. The pricing scheme distribution raises some interesting conclusions that CPM will slowly decline over the next 5 years. It will be replaced with preferred cost per click. He says they are seeing publishers getting into deeper content. So what are advertiser�s plans and experiences? The graph looks like Email (house list), SEO, Paid Search, and Banners are in the top 4 as planned online advertising they will use in the next 12 months. The issue that has also been with that is behavioral targeting. How much do people believe in behavioral targeting and how effective is it. When asked what will give the best ROI, most publishers say behavioral targeting. The problem: there are not a lot of people doing it. They believe I can work, but not with ability or desire.
The good news he explains is that publisher confidence that their getting a good ROI from their online advertising. This is good news and has been consistent the last two years. This is an indicator that relates to a great ongoing opportunity, its not in a peak, and its going to continue to grow. Gary talks next about agency strengths vs. client needs. The biggest split relates to industry expertise. It means that if you sell knitting supplies, then you don�t necessary want to hire someone who just specializes in knitting supplies. You don�t need to show up with knitting needle skills. The only industry that bucks this trend is pharmaceuticals. Advertisers are looking for very good expertise and looking for someone to help pilot them through the waters.
Doran Suite from Agency.com was up after Gary and plans to talk about what he is doing from creative decisions from both sides. Sides like the web side and the PR side sometimes don�t understand each other. Why can�t they all work together. In traditional agencies you have different wings such as creative people, technology people, strategy people, etc.. When they got together they created something. He says there is more competition, and less people with good skills. In the past couple years, things have gone gangbusters. Their clients are demanding things they hear even though its not necessary good. Clients and middle management people who have aged and they are more mature about the internet. It�s a big shift and changed the way the education continues.
Mark Stephens from Razorfish talks next. He says its always been about the data. Razorfish brings a more holistic view to the web. Gary asks him about splits. Mark says there are really not too many splits. They want to look at the views of the website, the branding, and looking at website traffic to convert to into rating. They are taking analytics and converting into agency terms.
Heidi Browning from Organic says they want to build a good relationship with the client. From a media perspective, they combine the organic with the traditional. They want to present a more well rounded prospective of the success they can generate. She says more and more people are wanting to bring their websites out into the media space. They watch closely the ad units and how people interact with them. Such as getting a mobile phone number and how many pages have view is an indication of a level of engagement.
