Marcom Keynotes Virtual Show

LOS ANGELES Delivering his keynote address to open AdweekMedia's first Interactive Marketing Virtual Conference and Trade Show this morning, former Yahoo! executive John Marcom said that despite the industry reliving some unsettling aspects of the dot-com boom and the daunting hegemony of Google, new opportunities await marketers who can navigate rapidly changing technological advances.In a talk he called "The Times They Are a Changing: Using Technology to Compete on a Grander Scale," the former Time Inc. executive and svp of international operations at Yahoo! said he had learned more in his recent surveys of the interactive world than in his years at Yahoo! from 2003-07. Marcom said that the industry has become reminiscent of 1999 and its "froth, a lot of crazy stuff in the market and a painful aftermath." He noted similarities such as Web sites bearing "cute titles without apparent meaning," renewed Hollywood interest in entertainment sites and young entrepreneurs raising money yet "sometimes freely admitting they don't know what the business model is."He said the key differences between the present situation and 1999 include bigger, more reliable and cheaper bandwidth "pipelines" everywhere. Marcom noted the concomitant rise in "fuel flowing from the Googlesphere" and other ad-friendly platforms has already seen online ad expenditures in the United Kingdom overtake newspaper spending, which is expected to happen in the U.S. by 2011. That windfall of advertising revenue has permitted Web developers to risk enterprising developments, Marcom said. He added that business deals once thought "unthinkable," such as the AOL acquisition of Time Warner, now seem more credible. When News Corp. approached Dow Jones, he said, "everyone kind of concluded that made sense."Marcom said that user sovereignty is being fulfilled by open platforms yielding more personal media experiences and more control over all aspects of content consumption and communication. But that also a poses problem for the old paradigm of advertising, he said.Open-source products such as the nonprofit foundation forged by Firefox, Wikipedia and Mozilla's video player have evolved to the point of offering significant competition to commercially produced products, without much thought or worry about revenue sources. Marcom said that the unprecedented "degree of personalization, focus and relevance" in sites such as Facebook that are built around the user should also influence media choices. He said meaningful, easy personalization of media, using products such as Apple's iPhone, would continue the personalization tendency and lead to "a continued blurring of online and mobile media." Among Marcom's industry predictions:* Google and its marketing model will continue to grow, spread and impact the industry as a "fact of life." He predicted that matching marketing and user needs would continue to improve, and that auction pricing (e.g., Yahoo! and Overture) would replace conventional media buying.* Large media will continue to lose power and margin, even as "big mass audience draws remain what that are" or even become more valuable, though where the money flows will be subject to constant renegotiation. * Apple's iPhone is "the first big chink in carriers' armor," despite the Internet's demonstration that open platforms and experiences, where various interests compete, are ultimately better for the consumer. Computer and mobile experiences will continue to blur, and mobile content will come to be seen as "just content" to the consumer in context.* New media businesses will also be challenged by cannibalization and by becoming captive to outmoded business models as their users age. New entrants into the new media business will find that getting new users isn't as difficult as the "technological staying power" to sustain the businesses.Turning to emerging user needs, Marcom cited as challenges consumer management of real-time communications, coping with the growth of multiple social networks and "figuring out what is really worth" seeing, hearing, storing and sharing.He said successful marketers would "tune out a lot of noise that gets the media excited." Many of the distribution battles, Marcom said, are irrelevant unless "you own a TV network," cable station or phone company. He cautioned marketers to "be realistic about gimmicks," asking whether anyone remembers "the second user-generated commercial." He said marketers should concentrate on accountability and measurement. "Media buyers really can hold feet to the fire and demand that answers be provided," he said. "That's a minimal requirement of this age." Dividing consumers into those who know what they want, those who don't and those who "didn't know [they] wanted that," Marcom said that search marketing with behavioral targeting data would still be an effective way to reach consumers, but that beating Google would be difficult."There's no way to engineer desire that I've read about," Marcom said. "There's still a lot of room for art, for genius, for inspiration. ... For a lot of this kind of emotion-building anticipation, marketers [will] turn to conventional means, and probably get a lot smarter about how they value it." Marcom added that many successful advertising techniques, such as authentic voice and engaging storytelling, would remain what they've always been regardless of changing media and channels.The virtual conference continues throughout the day, with free registration available here.Upcoming virtual "live" panels include a mobile marketing discussion with Brian Morrissey, Adweek digital editor; Nicholas Covey, marketing analytics and development manager, Nielsen Wireless and Nielsen Games; and Kevin Perkins, CEO, Greenlight Wireless. A panel on extending brand awareness through social marketing will combine Brandweek editor Todd Wasserman, ISM president Barton Goldenberg and MEC Interaction managing partner Alan Schanzer. A panel on search-engine marketing will feature Mediaweek senior editor Mike Shields, Forrester Research senior analyst Shar VanBoskirk and Reprise Media COO Steve Chiles. Elliot Markowitz, Nielsen Business Media's editorial director of Web casts and digital events, will moderate all panels. Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek are publications of Nielsen Business Media.

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Marcom Keynotes Virtual Show

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