Yesterday I went to an event called Digital Experience Day presented by Media Mind (formerly eyeblaster). For the last 8 years or so, I never quite figured out the difference, EyeBlaster or Eyewonder? The names were so confusing to me that I never really figured it out – that is until yesterday. It’s neither. It’s MediaMind. It finally got through to me.

Never knowing what to expect at these types of things – will it be a sheer waste of time and random sales pitches from those who jump from company? It wasn’t.

It was the best one-day conference I have attended yet. I think I got more value from it than I have at some 3 day conferences. I’ll give you a few excerpts, so you can think about attending next year. Sorry, the US events are done. If you want to go out of the country, they are in Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney and Singapore in November. I will definitely go next year as it was a great escape and well worth my time….and yes, there were drinks, free ones.

• First Dean Donaldson, Global Media director of MediaMind spoke. He spoke about the eGRP, which is passive exposure+ active engagement. Moving beyond the browser to a futuristic world in which we no longer type into Google. Marketers will even be more challenged than they are today. Currently 50% of Facebook updates and activity are done on a mobile; this is a testament to the fragmented world we live in. More technology means less waste, but won’t replace human insight, but how do we get to the insights with so many screens?
• Then John from FOX talked about his launch campaigns and how he does it all. He does it all with awesome vendor support from talented big picture thinkers. If he can dream it, it can be done. It takes big picture thinking to make a real impact, and we have to go beyond the “stats” and take a leap of faith to really get the job done. We have to push creative boundaries to make an impact with modern consumers. He talked about the complexities of digital media: 1. Getting people on board(internally), 2. Engaging the vendor partners, 3. Planning is a mess
• Shawn Rorick talked about transparency to brands, and how there is a lack of it. While his talk was about view through vs. click through and some clients being blind to view through (which was kind of 10 years ago, in my opinion), he did bring up the overall more interesting point, which is client transparency in general. We need more of it across all facets of campaigns, planning, buying and what is happening behind the agency walls. Challenge your agencies on this and force them to come through, if they don't then you know you have an issue.
• After many interesting panels, and a few short presentations, MediaMind wrapped it all up with their new product launch. What they are doing is just smart. They are taking the best of creative expertise and wrapping all of the analytics you could ever want into one pretty package. In one console you get things like Smart Versioning, which gives you control to optimize creative to your audience funnel, and change settings in seconds. Smart Trading works as a DSP in a sense, but is fully integrated into the platform. Smart planning allows buyers to fully plan a campaign against benchmarked performance of other advertisers, industries and more. It sounds too good to be true – but is it? I think they are doing the right thing and agencies and clients alike will be excited about where they are going with their investments. Is it different from tools we have today or really good marketing? I guess we will find out.

While those are just a few of the excerpts from the daylong event, more of what I learned was that sometimes, those “vendor meetings” can be very valuable. Instead of staying in the office, get out more and you never know what you will find. Take a chance – at least one out of every 5 makes up for the bad 4. In this case- that was the truth - and there were free drinks.

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