Atlantic Internet Marketing Conference (AIM 2007) Day One

Today was a long, full, rich experience with lots of information passed to the attendees. The majority of the presenters gave number-heavy presentations to reinforce their positions on market penetration, changing consumers bases and practices, and a very much evolving marketing art to marketing science. One of the major themes running through out the day was that the consumer was now the hunter with the tools and technologies to find the marketers and their messages, not the other way around.

If I were to include all of the information I received today this post would go on forever, so my intent is to briefly recap each of the presentations that I attended and then conclude with my thoughts on the day. All of the conference presentations will eventually be made available.

Keynote - Yahoo! - New Methods for Online Marketing

The keynote speaker was Kerry Munro, the General manager of Yahoo! Canada. He presented a lot of facts and figures about current Internet usage and penetration in Canada generally and with Yahoo!.ca in particular. here are just a few of the numbers:

• 58% of Canadian households are on line
• By 2009 $16 B Can will be spent on e-commerce
• Over 1 billion people online world wide
• Main use of Internet in Canada by consumers is for research, not purchase
• Yahoo! has 70% penetration - most visited site in the world (Yahoo's words)
• 82% of Canadians have Internet access (second in world only to South Korea)
• The Internet is 21% of weekly media usage but only 6% of the marketing budgets spent
• Canada most engaged country in the world - average of 40.8 hours/month spent online (29.6 hours/month for the USA)
• Canadians are not like Americans - more social, want more entertainment, humour, and sports, use more IM and downloads, higher % of women and teens. Canadians spend less per-capita online - main reason is a dearth of Canadian online merchants
• Internet is the new prime time - from 4 PM - 8:30 PM 70% of the 12-24 age group is on line. They spend more time online than with TV, print, or radio media
• Yahoo!.ca front page reaches over twice as many viewers as the top-rated TV show

According to Yahoo! you need the following to be successful on line:

1. Get online
2. Make the most of your site
3. Market online - branding
4. Use behavioural targeting
5. Make the most of Web 2.0 (a very common theme through out the day)
6. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - searchers are engaged - 2-3 brands compared before choice made.

eBay - The Internet as Primary Customer Acquisition Driver

Presenter was Jordan Banks, General manager, eBay Canada. eBay was web 2.0 before there was Web 2.0 bringing together communities of buyers and sellers. eBay now has 233 million registered users (Q1 2007), $14.3 billion in revenue, reaches 55.4% of Internet users and has 12,416,000 unique visitors/month.

Only 14% of Canadian retailers are engaged in e-commerce. The following things have had the biggest impact on Internet marketing and marketers:

• Broadband - it's "always on"
• Search - can't fight disintermediation
• Mobile - convenience rules the day
• Social nature of the Web - ignore it at your great peril (less about content, more about engagement)
• Personalization - make it about me
• Distributed content - widgets etc.

The Changing Face of Marketing

Presenter was Jamie Davison, Principal, Modern Media

Now about behaviour targeting and analytics. marketing is changing from an art to a science. Thirty years ago there were 3 major TV networks, today there are 12 major media segments with thousands of choices - mass marketing approach no longer as effective. What has changed is:

• Internet celebrities (Yuma Yuma boy, etc.) - not good content, but available on demand (Democratization of content)
• Web 2.0 - marketing tool increases engagement - Facebook, Second Life
• You cannot just buy people's attention, you must engage them

Who's Clicking You? Internet Attitudes and Behaviours Among Atlantic Canadians

Presenter was Layton Dorey, managing director of Research, Bristol

Authors of the Inside Out Report, Atlantic Canada's in-depth journal of public opinion. This presentation had a lot of very interesting statistics on Atlantic Canada Internet penetration and usage. Here are some of the highlights (all relate to Atlantic Canada):

• 60% penetration
• TV, radio, and newspaper media still strong
• 17% in a social community - Second Life, Facebook, etc.)
• Biggest issue is developing trust in the technology - over 2/3 of all respondents across all age groups do not trust Internet ads or click on them
• 84% never click a pop-up ad
• 84% watch more than 2 hours of TV per day
• 60% spend more than 2 hours online per day

Forget 2.0... Let's Talk Web 3.0 and What It Will Mean To You

Presenter was Frederic S. Gionet, VP Innovation, Bristol

This was the best presentation of the day for me as it was the most relevant and interesting to me. To provide context, the "Christmas Carol of The Web" was presented:

• The Stone Age - Pre-Web
• The Past - Web 1.0
• The Present - Web 2.0
• The Future - Web 3.0 and beyond

Presentation highlights included:

• Second Life was presented as an example of Web 3.0 - immersive, customizable, and engaging
• Devices other than computers will become the dominant medium (smart phones etc.)
• Web will be more instinctive, easier to use
• Web 3.0 (1010/2012?)
• Mobility including GPS
• Internet-enabled TV
• Domination of Web Services
• Digital Paper - interactive/changeable ads
• Smart Billboards/Display
• 3d interaction and collaboration - Second Life. Bristol has an island in Second Life
• User will be King

Integrated Inline-Offline Marketing

Presenters were Chris Keevil, President, Colour and Malcolm Fraser, President ISL

Offline media is anything not the Internet - TV, radio, print, etc.. Customers now harder to reach - due to fragmented media and a move towards personal media.

• 1954 - 74% of families were watching "I love Lucy"
  
• 2007 - 15% of families watching "CSI"

Main points of the presentation:

• Big change in the numbers watching the top-rated TV show - marketing issue.
• More things to consume attention now than ever before
• Hunter has become the hunted - marketers need to be in a place where they can be found
• Must drive traffic to your Web site
• Web site usability is key
• Media has changed - gather and collect information but now must also think of layout and content too

Youcasting - Communication in the Age of the Clever Consumer

Presenter was Jeff White of Brightwhite Design.

A very good presentation on the use of the following online marketing tools:

• Viral video - companies are making YouTube amateur quality video to market themselves
• podcasting
• Word of Mouth - IM/chat - GMail - no advertising - just WOM invites
• Blogging - least expensive/most time consuming marketing tool, but search engines love blogs

The key is building connections with consumers

Beyond The Internet

Presenter was Krista White, Associate Media Director, Cossette Communication Group

The last presentation of the day the focus was on video games, cell phones, mobile media, TV and out of home media:

• Video games now out revenue movies ($10 b to $9B)
• Average age of gamer in Canada - 33
• In game advertising and product placement now common
• Pizza Hut/Everquest - can order a pizza while playing the game
• Ceel phone - adoption low in Canada (61% - Japan - 95%)
• Texting growing
• progressed from SMS to enhanced EMS to multi-media MMS
• Mobile TV growing
• Proximity-based marketing growing - infra-red communication between cell phones/PdAs and billboards/vending machines
• ITV - Interactive TV - 8% of Domino's Pizza's orders in the UK are from ITV
• TV viewing is not declining but commercial watching is - PVRs, VOD (Video on Demand)
  

My Thoughts

A very interesting day - the Internet is the marketing tool of the present and the future. It was interesting to see the knowledge of Web 2.0 and social networking and how marketing has had a fundamental paradigm shift due to the fracturing of media into so many sectors.

It will be interesting to see which sectors and which technologies truly dominate the future. It may be that the fracturing of media will mean that no one technology or media will dominate - cell phones, ITV, the Web, all will have a part to play. Can't wait for tomorrow...