This week, I had the great pleasure of attending the iMedia Agency Summit in Austin, TX. Always a great event, this Summit held the dubious distinction of being the first ever to have two sessions of the infamous "One-Minute Match-Ups," a frenetic hour-long session of speed dating between buys and sellers in the ad biz (Note to the iMedians — 90 seconds was WAY better than 60!). It's a phenomenal opportunity to get a 10,000 view of the digital media landscape in a short time and to initiate relationships that in typical iMedia fashion, get strengthened later on at the bar.
Since not all of you could be there, and I got to do this twice, I thought it would be fun to give you, dear readers, a digital glimpse into the wonder that is the One-Minute Match-Ups. This is a brief look into what I absorbed from my meeting (if I get it wrong reps, might want to reconsider your pitch).
In (mostly) no particular order...
Sportgenic - Makes top spot on my list for giving me these awesome K-Swiss sneakers AND introducing a very cool product. Sports marketing network that has new shopping cart tool that lets you create your own media network on the fly. And beats ESPN on traffic.
Brightroll - One of the best, largest, most transparent video ads networks out there. Great presentation that really helped us understand why their business model helps deliver greater value for our clients. Plus, Charlie just got the stewardess to give us free Bloody Mary's on the flight back to San Francisco.
Cooking.com - Sells cooking stuff. Has cooking content. Mostly women audience.
Radar Online - Entertainment site. Eager to do integrated content deals. Has relationships with celebs.
Pandora - Everyone's favorite online radio station that creates stations customized to your tastes. If you don't use this site, you're missing out on a great opportunity to find cool new music you'll love. Doing some interested unique immersive page takeover programs for brands.
MapQuest - Maps. New thing is retailers can buy geo-targeted ads on map results.
Format Dynamics - Control the formating of when people print out your webpage (think movie tickets, boarding passes). Have a CPP (cost-per-print) model.
Traffic Marketplace - Sells... traffic?
AdMob - Great preso on reach and direct response effectiveness of mobile. CPC model had mixed reviews from people I spoke to. Made claim it can serve ads in 50% of iPhone apps. Working on Blackberry. Going to be a leader in the space whether it becomes mainstream in 2009 , 2010 or 2011.
24/7 Real Media - "We don't have to position ourselves. We do 50 things great." Whatever those are.
Doubleclick - Google's ad serving technology.
Healthline - Network of health websites.
NHL - Hockey. Men. Grrrr.
Weather Underground - This is a site for "weather geeks." A must have on every umbrella company media plan.
SheKnows.com - Great site for reaching women. Offered to help me with research if I ever need some for a pitch or a client. Appreciate that.
QuadrantOne - Newspaper media.
Photobucket - Photo site with cool tools for editing photos.
RockYou - Owns some of the top apps on Facebook and other social nets and serves ads in their own and 3rd (4th?) party apps. Does well with entertainment, CPG and auto.
Media Shakers - Sales rep was a really nice guy, but I don't remember what this media network does. Sorry, Andy.
Platform-A - This is a whole advertising ecosystem that AOL has pulled together: media properties, ad serving, content creation, etc. AOL owns a surprising number of top tier sites you might not think of.
PointRoll - Rich-media ads.
Break Media - Video sharing site targeting men. Unique thing these guys are doing is creating content for brands to distribute on their site with in-house production studio.
CPX Interactive - X stands for whatever you want to measure. Ad network that takes a consultative approach to direct response.
Apartments.com - find people when they are looking for a new place to live.
TheStreet.com - Affluent men read about their portfolios taking on this site.
AudienceScience - Behavioral targeting ad network. Also has a on-site behavioral targeting solution for optimizing commerce I want to take a look at.
Adconion - Still not sure if this rhymes with onion. Media network. Sells media. Or conions.
Thomson Reuters - Besides their top-tier financial sites, controls a bunch of the billboards in Times Square.
Triad Digital - Sell three things. Don't remember what they are.
D&B Digital - Did not meet these guys so me not knowing what they do is no fault of theirs. However, they sponsored cocktails, so thank for the drinks guys.
1800FREE411 - Free ad-supported 411 information. Interesting targeting capabilities: when someone calls for a listing for a bar, they can hear an ad for your beer client.
DBG - Produces and distributes episodic branded video content. Takes low margin on production and makes up for it on distribution.
CollectiveMedia - Has a ton of B2B and global sites in its network.
EyeWonder - Pitch: "We're better than Eyeblaster and PointRoll. Goodby uses us." Part of the rich-media pack.
MarthaStewart.com - Great way to reach macho men who are into street fighting. Just kidding. It's Martha. Speaks for itself.
WeatherBug - Weather for normal people. As opposed to weather geeks.
Trulia - Real estate that has created a really engaging site with some awesome tools that I'll actually go back in use as I search for a house this year. Can target by neighborhood or zip code of search or where they're surfing.
Undertone Networks - Sell premium sites only.
Akamai - Network does behavioral targeting based on online shopping data, not just sites visited.
AdFusion - Creates and distributes content (articles) and sells on a CPC model.
BBE - Another company in the same space as DBG. Produces and distributes episodic video content. Not sure of the point of differentiation is between these two. Note for both of you guys: Brightroll listened to that feedback last time and gave a great presentation that made people understand why their model was better than competitors. Try to do the same next time.
Acceleration - Technology partner to agencies. Implements Omniture and Doubleclick.
Goodway Group - Has automotive ad network and Ivy Pixel networks.
Gaia Online - Wacky avatar-based worlds (but not real-estate based like 2nd Life) with unique and interesting advertising opportunities. Kids these days.
IAC Advertising - Another murky and indistinguishable media network
Vizu - Really interesting company focusing on brand lift measurement. Where Dynamic Logic asks 20 questions in its site surverys and gets a 0.1% response rate, Vizu asks just one question and increases responses to 3-4%. And reduces cost to under $10k.
Quattro Wireless - Mobile ad network that build the mobile sites for many of its clients so can offer unique "beyond the banner" ad opportunities in mobile. Also gave me a ride into downtown office, so thanks!!!
GreyStripe - Another wireless ad network that got rave revues from people at my lunch table who had done programs with them. Has full mobile screen ad unit based on Flash technology. Showed me a very cool game they did for Burger King.
Gawker Media - Network of super-cool blogs like Lifehacker and Gawker.com.
LucidMedia - Talks about transparency, but so did everyone. Does semantic targeting which is an enhanced version of contextual targeting that goes beyond keywords to looking at sentence structure to determine relevance.
JiWire - Wi Fi ad network. For some reason, hates the term "Wi Fi" but that's what they do.
JumpTap - Mobile Ad network that IMHO is crossing the privacy line in how it is targeting consumers. Actually works with AT&T to use the numbers you call and the Equifax credit report you submit when you buy a phone to server you ads. Sorry, this is sounds icky to me.
MyPoints - Big redemption program for people to collect reward points and cash them in for stuff. Some interested opportunities here because they know what people are buying to get the points in the first place.
YouTube - Obviously the largest video sharing site on the web. Doing some really interesting programs with brands.
Eyeblaster - These guys are no longer just a rich-media ad server. They have developed a custom CMS solution for Flash banners. Their evangelist, Dean Donaldson, gave an eloquent talk on how purchases really happen today and made the point that the click-to-buy mentality marketers have come to rely on because we can measure it is a fantasy because it doesn't represent how people actually buy stuff. To its credit, Eyeblaster is working to develop more appropriate metrics based on actual consumer behavior.
Betawave - This is my former boss from Tribal DDB, Matt Freeman's, media company. They have a network that sells "attention based media" – basically immersive ad units and site integration opportunities — with scale.
Myxer - The largest mobile entertainment website. Download ringtones and wallpapers.
InsightExpress - These guys do research on the awareness impact of digital ads. Also do custom research.
Zap2it - Another entertainment website owned by Tribune Media Services.
InterCLICK - I believe that what makes this media network special is their targeting capabilities. Their tag line is "know your audience" anyway. Love the iPod they bought us at the last Agency Summit, however. Thanks, guys.
Datran Media - They claim that Aperture has way better data for than ComScore because ComScore uses data from 1 million people and they use data from 70 million.
PriceGrabber.com - Comparison shopping site.
Dictionary.com - You can target by keyword that people look up on their site.
BAT (brand affinity technologies) - They have a list of B-list athletes (think Tony Dorsett, and Emmit Smith) that have basically signed on to whore themselves out for endorsements on a CPM basis. They have a library of green-screened photos of these athletes you can rent out to endorse your bowling alley or dry cleaning business in a banner ad. Rindonkulous.
HomeAway - Site for rich people to rent villas in Puerto Vallarta and such.
AdNectar - Virtual branded gifts in Facebook.
Crave Online - Men. This looks like the Maxim of Ad Networks.
Vevo - Google and Universal are spinning off a music channel that is currently on YouTube into a new property that will be "the largest" (I qualify that because I heard the word largest so many times in two days that it has no meaning left to me) music site on the web.
Newssift - New site from the Financial Times that reps financial newspapers
Yahoo! - The announcement of new Yahoo SmartAds generated a lot of excitement at the conference. They essentially allow you to test multiple assets and use behavioral and search data to target and retarget unique ads to individual people across their network. Doubles conversion rates. Yahooooooo!
Operative - Outsource your ad trafficking and ad serving instead of doing it in-house.
Permuto - Target active online shoppers in this network. Seems smart to focus on people who have a propensity to shop online. Also sheds light on the fact that most stuff we buy isn't bought online (93% according to my friend Matt Green over at Blue Ribbon Digital, the "click-to-mortar" agency).
ComScore - Offers a ton of site data on most sites based on consumer tracking.
Tribal Fusion - Creates customized ad networks for you.
WhitePages.com - The phone book online.
LinkedIn - Last, but not least. Ubiquitous business tool that allows you to tap into your network to find jobs, answers, employees, even customers. It's one of three social tools I use every day (the others being Facebook and Twitter)
There you have it folks. I do this stuff so you don't have to. Publishers: if I got your story wrong, sorry about that. Tell it better next time.
