The theme was, as you might guess, TARGETING…specifically, the promise of providing more relevant ads online and the ecosystem of companies emerging to help fulfill that. The day’s panels and sessions covered a number of topics – data proliferation, social media targeting, what it really means to “buy audience”, etc.

In particular, I enjoyed a late-morning panel on ad networks – interestingly enough, the, ah, interactions of a couple of the panelists showed me just how much publishers distrust exchanges. I liked the social media targeting panel as well: the participants cast more of vision for where things are headed versus where they are. Rob Key of Converseon talked about eventually being able to draw correlations between changes in online sentiment and changes in real business metrics such as sales. Probably a bit early to do this now, but once more data points exist, the thought leaders will be able to use econometrics and other advanced analytics to build causal relationships and ultimately integrate social media marketing more fully into the broader marketing mix.

As always, I liked the networking most. Digiday attracts a good conference crowd: when I was at MRM, I always felt that vendors were more interested in conversation for the sake of conversation (as opposed to for the sake of selling) than at other events. This time around, more folks stuck around for the happy hour than usual…not sure if there’s anything to take away from that, but it made for good conversation.

In thinking of what could make this an even better experience, I had a couple of thoughts:

• I like the fact that they hand everyone an attendee list upon registration, but it would be nice to know who’s coming in advance of the event itself. In particular, I’m thinking that using an Eventbrite-like tool, where you can see attendees updated in real-time, would be useful. Eventbrite is especially nice because it allows attendees to enter their website and Twitter info – this could enable conversations in advance of the conference itself. Am I crazy, or would this be useful?
• Digiday would benefit from audience participation going beyond Q&A at the end of each session. What if they crowdsourced an entire panel and discussion (both topic and participants), either prior to the event or at the event itself? Or, give the audience polling devices or a site by which they can give a quick 1-5 rating on each panel. All easier said than done, with the point being that more interactivity is a good thing.

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Wrong-headed Thinking about Publisher Inventory – Zeronomy.

I wrote on this a few days ago, but Rob’s post has the benefit of his experience and perspective. His last sentence says it all: publishers have to bring their own data to the table if they want to differentiate their brand. They’re not hapless victims being steamrolled by the big bad DSPs…or at least, they don’t have to be. It’s great that yield optimizers are helping protect the value of publisher inventory, but watching this industry, you feel like these guys aren’t using what they already know about their audience.

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• Publishers: Get The Most From The Exchange (oxyfish.com)

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In casual conversation at the meetup, Dennis had briefly touched on the proliferation of data, both online and offline, and how this proliferation is changing the way media is bought and sold. I wanted to get more of his thoughts here (and hear who he thinks is best-positioned to deal with these changes), hence the sit-down. Plus, he’s a super-nice guy.

As we chatted about the future of analytics, Dennis pointed out that the business of collecting, storing, and retrieving data has become a commodity. As a result, being able to tell what happened and why is so…yesterday. Rather, the REAL opportunity lies in using a combination of business intelligence and predictive analytics to make forward-looking decisions using data. He used the example of a retailer who studied how weather impacts consumer behavior on Black Friday – do consumers shop offline more in good weather and online more in bad weather? This retailer used the results to adjust the amount they chose to spend on their AdWords campaign.

We also talked a bit about the state of online advertising. Dennis pointed out that a publisher can now know a lot about who’s coming to their site, so much so that they may have to be paid for their data. It’s an interesting topic these days – there seems to be disagreement about the value of publisher data, what it’s best used for (leverage in direct sales vs. extracting higher bids in ad exchanges), and how exactly to extract the value of that data. For his part, Dennis suggested that some smart publishers may decide to forego the ad exchanges entirely (focusing on direct sales), while putting their data on exchanges like that from BlueKai.

It was a really informative conversation, and I certainly can’t thank Dennis enough for taking the time to speak. Check out his Visual Revenue blog to get regular dose of his insight mixed with good humor.

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