A new age of branding is upon us. In the pre-search, analog past, a message was pushed—over and over and over again—to consumers until the ideal combination of reach, frequency and targeting (hopefully) achieved its objective of “brand building”—be it recall, awareness or equity. The consumers were the hunted and marketers tried everything to capture them, never knowing exactly where they were or when they would appear. Although push messaging is still effective—and widely used—consumers increasingly are turning branding on its head and putting pressure on marketers to master the art of conversation and develop an equally effective “pull” marketing strategy. Consumers are increasingly proactive and have a new found sense of control. In many cases, the brands have become the hunted and the new laws of branding required all marketers to be able to efficiently and effectively respond to those consumers who are most interested in your products or product category and are raising their hands and asking you to serve up the most relevant brand message to them, whether it be text, image or sight-sound-and-motion video. ad:tech is thrilled to welcome Kevin Kells, the CPG Industry Director for Google to the stage to talk about the new media landscape, the evolving consumer and how marketers, both large and small, can thrive in the era of Performance Branding.

Offline. Online. Above the Line. Below the Line. There is no line. Digital media and technologies have unleashed a torrent of new advertising platforms while traditional media platforms endure increased scrutiny in an era of performance marketing. The media mix has never been so vast yet so fragmented and the consumer has never enjoyed so much control. It is a perfect storm of complexity and if the digital revolution hasn’t already caused enough anxiety, the threat of a recession and reduced advertising budgets also loom. In short, ROI has never been so important. For all of us in marketing communications, the good news is that it has never been such an exciting time to be in this industry. Across most digital platforms, content providers, marketers, agencies and technology providers are limited only by their imagination while many traditional media platforms are becoming more measurable (albeit slowly). Video is revolutionizing the Internet while television is becoming more interactive and television advertising more addressable. Not to be forgotten, search has taken the advertising industry by storm and shows no sign of slowing its siphoning of advertising dollars from all other media. It is a true marketing maelstrom and the pace of change only seems to increasing. How do you make sense of all this change? How do you measure the value of advertising in an increasingly digital media universe? How do you leverage digital media to create the right balance between brand marketing and performance marketing? Led by Abbey Klaassen, Digital Editor of Advertising Age, this session brings together leading marketing and media professionals to discuss how they view the evolving media landscape and the emerging advertising value proposition in an increasingly digital world.

It's no secret that people are increasingly producing and sharing media as well as consuming it, becoming the "former audience" in the process. Their collective embrace of social media is changing the way businesses and brands will need to communicate and collaborate with their customers; it's a conversation you can't control but must understand. In this presentation, Clay Shirky illustrates some of the opportunities and pitfalls in engaging with the former audience, and illuminates some of the important trends unfolding today.

Consumers are inundated with marketing messages through an ever-increasing number of offline and online channels. Meanwhile, advertisers continue to strive to find the optimal mix and experiment with new channels such as social marketing, mobile marketing, online video, advergaming and others. Clearly, knowing what works best to achieve corporate goals is crucial and, for many, digital advertising offers unprecedented insight. However, most of today’s largest advertisers lack direct online transaction models that let performance metrics speak volumes in the boardroom. In addition, nearly all advertisers lack the resources to fully and profitably scale online marketing efforts to the appropriate extent. What could be a flood of dollars online is merely a stream. Moderated by Tim Kopp, CMO of ExactTarget, this panel delves into the state of digital marketing leveraging real-world experiences and the latest thinking from leading consumer packaged goods companies to identify what is needed to usher in the next evolution of Internet marketing.

Leading creative directors and producers showcase a cross section of innovative digital and integrated work for multiple clients, including sharing the strategy behind each campaign and the related pieces that supported the work. Learn from these creative directors about how to inspire and harness the big idea in an increasingly digital world dominated by fragmenting media, consumer generated content and short attention spans. What customer insights and trends are sparking breakthrough ideas and how do leading creative directors and their extended teams factor in evolving trends such as on-demand technologies, mobile communications and ubiquitous media when developing campaigns? This is the place to be to see the latest examples of strategic and tactical creative thinking and execution.

If you buy into the premise that the most successful brands and businesses today are ones being created with consumers instead of for them (i.e., Facebook, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Pandora, Kiva, etc.), the challenge then becomes how marketers can play a credible role across these properties and emerging platforms. Banner ads are dead and marketers and agencies understand that it's crucial to create digital messages, content and products that generate earned media versus paid media. How do these strategic media choices co-exist across an increasingly digital landscape? Moreover, how do senior teams at these companies feel about brands becoming part of their companies and, conversely, how comfortable are brands with integrating their messaging into advertising platforms that they don't control? Moderated by Elizabeth Ross, President of the Americas for Tribal DDB, this panel looks at the emerging digital advertising value chain and how marketers, agencies and publishers can work together to create innovative, high-value advertising solutions for clients who are looking to involve consumers in a brand dialog.

Online retail sales in the US will reach $150 billion this year, up 20% over 2007, according to eMarketer. Most of this growth will be driven not by new buyers, but by veteran online buyers, who are spending more of their budgets online. The latest digital technologies and services offer retailers exciting opportunities to “engage” with prospects and customers in new and profitable ways. Tools such as online video, blogs, podcasts, social networks, search, word-of-mouth and other digital strategies help you to connect with consumers, and your best customers, in ways that will enhance your brand image like never before. Come learn how leading marketers and service firms are using the latest techniques to drive down customer acquisition costs and enhance the lifetime value of new and existing customers.

It’s like swimming in quicksand. No matter how hard or fast you try to swim, you just can’t stay above water. If your job requires you to analyze and understand ad networks, you may have felt like you were just getting your head around the online ad network ecosystem (barely) before the digital advertising network landscape seemed to expand again. From the hundreds of “traditional” ad networks to the rapidly emerging next-generation networks across the mobile, widget and digital out-of-home landscapes, the network landscape is now maddeningly diverse and complex. Separating the wheat from the chaff has become a monumental challenge for even the most seasoned online media professional. And although a single, 60-minute session won’t solve the mystery of this vast marketplace, join us to get a detailed primer on the state of the digital network landscape and gain detailed insights and emerging best practices from leading executives from across this ecosystem—with an objective, independent voice throw in for good measure.

Our industry is once again booming. Start-up venture funding remains widely available and despite a relatively stagnant economy, the pace of mergers and acquisitions activity remains steady as large established media, technology and service companies continue to add to their digital portfolios. In this session, we help you sort through all the noise to look at the spectrum of public companies, the M&A landscape and the key strategic and tactical trends for the business of digital marketing in 2008 and beyond. This panel includes the insights and predictions of experienced, senior executives from the worlds of media, advertising, venture capital and Wall Street.

If you’re a media seller and are feeling less than satisfied by the business you’re booking, you’re not alone. As the focus of many online businesses shifts from pure revenue to profitability, it’s incumbent on sellers and managers to write better business. In this interactive session, we host a panel of sales leaders who share ideas on smart packaging strategies, proper use of targeting, deal size and “when to walk away.” Perfect for sales executives and managers as well as agency and client participants who seek to understand the motivations and goals of their media partners. Moderated by Doug Weaver and Scot McLernon of Upstream Group, the session focuses on yielding best practices and business rules around deal quality and tactics.

When it comes to placing your marketing spend, the opportunities seem endless. Do you invest in traditional or digital, portals and publishers, search, display, ad networks, social media or downloadable media, to name a few, or do you take a closer look at mobile? According to Screen Digest's "Mobile Media Advertising Opportunities: The Market for Advertising on TV, Video and Games" report, US advertising spending on mobile media will exceed $700 million by 2012, up from nearly $88 million in 2008. But the US continues to lag most of the rest of the world with mobile and agencies are slow to shift dollars to mobile. In a study conducted by iMedia late last year, more than 6 out of 10 responding agency executives said they would not put a large portion of their 2008 online budgets into mobile, but who or what is controlling these floodgates? Join this panel of experts as they discuss this slow adoption and what it will take to move more dollars toward mobile.

In this rapidly emerging multi-platform universe, the opportunities to create innovative and compelling marketing campaigns are seemingly endless. Marketers have the opportunity to reach new and more refined audiences with new forms of creative and branded sponsorships, and media companies have a wealth of new platforms and resulting content and advertising inventory models to offer their marketing partners. With this opportunity comes the major challenge of prioritization, execution and go-to market capabilities. In this session, two different sets of presenters discuss how they approached strategy, development and execution for their innovative, new multi-platform initiatives and, in short, how they managed internal teams and external vendors to conceptualize and deliver successful content into the marketplace. Join us as we discover how they delivered on the advertising value proposition for their clients.

Welcome to the era of performance marketing. Digital media, platforms and technologies continue to be enhanced by increasingly focused targeting capabilities that have captured the interest of the buy-side community. The industry continues to strive to deliver the holy grail of advertising—true one-to-one messaging—but over the past few years, marketers and their media partners have executed highly targeted campaigns that successfully deliver on the “one-to-few” marketing promise. More recently, terms such as demographic, experiential, psychographic and behavioral targeting have entered the industry’s lexicon and are standard practices in the targeting ecosystem. But what are the emerging key advancements for targeting and what is next? Where does video fit within the world of targeting and how do key players in the industry feel about the targeting abilities of the various emerging mobile platforms? And how does the industry handle the issue of privacy as the government seems poised to engage more proactively in the affairs of digital media? Join leading buy-side and sell-side industry leaders in a discussion of current and emerging trends and best-practices as it relates to targeting, personalization and precision marketing.

Digital video across multiple platforms is transforming all media and the business of marketing communications. Content providers and media companies have an array of new development opportunities across a variety of platforms and advertisers and creative directors are faced with a seemingly endless stream of new and, in some cases, unproven forms of video-based advertising inventory. Buyers, sellers and producers of online video are excited about the emerging landscape but also keen to move beyond the pre-roll and explore new formats and continue to drive innovation. In addition to the new marketing opportunities, the video era has introduced a fresh set of complex technical and workflow-related challenges with regard to conceptualizing, producing, delivering and measuring the performance of video-based content and advertising. Moderated by Josh Chasin, Chief Research Officer at comScore, this session provides creative professionals, buyers, marketers and producers with valuable insight in how to optimize creative production, development and resource allocation in the digital video age.

Have today’s brands lost their voice in a world of fragmenting media and increasing consumer control? Brad Jakeman, a leading brand advertiser, believes they haven’t and that they are more in control than ever. It’s not all about the channels available to marketers these days but about creating a big idea and executing it across all platforms to create a consistent consumer experience. Join us as Brad Jakeman unleashes the thought process behind big brand marketing and describes how to understand the consumers’ touch points to develop, successfully execute and measure a 360 degree brand experience.

These days, everyone is waxing poetic about "conversations," but to what extent are marketers truly prepared to embrace this opportunity? Conversation is a true art form and most brands are used to simply talking at their customers. As everyone pays lip service to the new era of brand dialog, are we simply marketing and positioning new ways to listen and converse that we simply don't have or are we turning sustainable expertise and know-how into basic building blocks of the new marketing. Who's doing this right—and credibly—and why? Should listening to and conversing with customers share a more symbiotic relationship? Should organizations such as consumer affairs be engaged in the conversation about dialogue, interaction and proactive engagement with consumers, and if so, how? Finally, what are the metrics for measuring success in the era of new marketing? Moderated by Pete Blackshaw of Nielsen Online—and author of the recently released book Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000 (Random House / DoubleDay)—this panel brings together leading consumer marketing executives to talk about perfecting the art of conversation with your customers.

Offline. Online. Above the Line. Below the Line. There is no line. Never—in the history of advertising—has the exercise of strategic media planning and buying been so challenging. Digital media and technologies have unleashed a torrent of new advertising platforms while traditional media platforms endure increased scrutiny in an era of performance marketing. The media mix has never been so vast yet so fragmented and the consumer has never enjoyed so much control. It is a perfect storm of complexity, and if the digital revolution hasn’t already caused enough anxiety, the threat of an economic slowdown and reduced advertising budgets also loom. For media professionals, the good news is that there has never been such an exciting time to be on the buy-side. Across most digital platforms, marketers and their agency partners are limited only by their imagination while many traditional media platforms are becoming more measurable (albeit slowly). Not to be forgotten, search has taken the advertising industry by storm and shows no signs of slowing its siphoning of advertising dollars from all other media. Similarly, ad networks and exchange markets continue to mature, presenting buyers and sellers with new opportunities and challenges. This session brings together leading buy-side and sell-side media professionals to discuss how they view the emerging landscape and how digital is transforming buying and selling media across the advertising landscape.

The paid search marketplace has rocketed from virtually zero to more than $10 billion in the past decade, which begs the question: Is the search marketplace on the verge of maturing in North America or will advertising dollars continue to flow into search? As ROI and performance become increasingly important, will search ultimately gain a larger share of advertising revenues as it evolves into other media or is search generally or at least across some categories, becoming too expensive and competitive? And how will the search marketplace innovate and continue to redefine itself and create a clear-cut advertising value proposition for its clients? Can search make an argument for value beyond pure performance and results (e.g., branding and blocking competition through defensive paid search)? Will further insights and performance gains be realized as they relate to an overall SEM+SEO strategy for a brand or has the industry discovered most of the tricks? How will search evolve into performance media? Led by Jeff Pruitt, Executive VP of Search at iCrossing and President of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), this panel takes a hard look at the current value proposition of search and what the future holds for the North American search marketplace.

Widgets and gadgets play an important role in today's social circles and offer marketers an opportunity to expand their audience and build their brand by reaching core demographics and key influencers. Are they here to stay or just the latest craze? What can the early adopters teach marketers now venturing into these waters, or is it too late to make effective use of this technology? And what will the future hold for advertisers and marketers as mainstream applications provide more robust online offerings? Come learn about the types of widgets and gadgets (e.g., start page, desktop, social media), the platforms they run on (e.g., mobile, TV, gaming) and the interactive content that’s emerging today. Join social media experts as they discuss new-form interactive content that's turning traditional online advertising on its head and explore the value of branding and marketing with today's widgets, gadgets and micro applications.

In this rapidly emerging multi-platform universe, the opportunities to create innovative and compelling campaigns are seemingly endless. Marketers have the opportunity to reach new and more refined audiences with new forms of creative and branded sponsorships. Media companies have a wealth of new platforms and resulting content and advertising inventory models to offer their marketing partners. With this opportunity comes the major challenge of prioritization, execution and go-to market capabilities. In this session, two sets of presenters discuss how they approached strategy, development and execution for their innovative, new multi-platform content and marketing initiatives and, in short, how they managed internal teams and external vendors to conceptualize and deliver successful content and marketing initiatives.

One of the original promises of the Internet was geographically relevant and targeted content for all. Local marketing strategies are effective and have widespread application, yet many marketers have yet to gain a solid understanding of the marketplace. In this session, we provide an update on the local and mobile landscapes today and what you can expect to see in the future. You will also get practical advice on best practices for reaching out to consumers using local marketing tactics with Internet and mobile platforms.

Digital technologies and platforms are constantly changing the publishing landscape. Media companies are finding that their competition is no longer a defined set of traditional players requiring them to continue to identify new and compelling profitable revenue streams. And new-breed publishers must also continue to evolve and innovate as traditional publishers get hip to the point and increasingly offer compelling, multi-platform content and advertising opportunities. The competition is fierce and the stakes are high, and this panel brings together executives from traditional media companies and new breed publishers to talk about their content and technology offerings and the evolving advertising value proposition in this emerging marketplace.

Led by Jon Gibs, VP of Media Analytics for Nielsen Online, this panel offers insights on three key issues as they relate to the emerging value proposition for publishers and advertisers across the social media landscape:

1) Today’s continuum of media includes the staid, standardized media on one end (e.g., AP, Reuters) and some random guy’s blog on the other end. Within this emerging ecosystem, how do consumers perceive the gradations along that continuum? And how do these perceptions affect consumer behavior, advertiser interaction across these segments and overall advertising effectiveness across the social media landscape?

2) Has a clear content business model emerged around long-tail media? If so, is it targeting the play for aggregators (e.g., ad networks, exchanges, etc.) or content publishers (e.g., emerging networks such as blogs and widgets or the next uber-social media site) or both? How does the long-tail—as an aggregate—act as a means of content distribution for mainstream publishers? Do we value the traffic driver of the long tail differently than that of search or other content distribution relationships and, if so, how?

3) Finally, is there an ROI model around long-tail advertising? Is this different from mainstream media? If so, how and what are the drivers and inhibitors of achieving a clear ROI for social networking advertising efforts and what appear to be the short and long-term benefits—if any—of long-tail advertising? Assuming not all long-tail media is created equal, how are different sites selected from an advertising standpoint? Does the traditional ad buying model work in this context? Should we be looking more for advertisers and agencies to incubate long-tail sites by taking a long-term sponsorship model? What are other options?

In the dynamic and fluid world of new media and consumer control, the industry is often focused on “the next big thing”. Indeed, it pays to be aware of what is happening on the cutting-edge of new media but the reality is that marketers must continue to leverage established, as well as forward-thinking, marketing techniques to find new customers and nurture and grow relationships with their existing customers. While platforms and technologies such as online video, mobile and social networking continue to gain traction, leading marketers and their agency partners are leveraging old media, new media and integrated marketing solutions to optimize qualified lead generation and customer acquisition and maximize the lifetime value of its existing customers. This panel brings together executives from first-tier brands and marketing services agencies to discuss the current and future landscape of customer relationship management.

In today’s fragmented media consumption landscape with multiple platforms vying for consumer’s attention, how do marketers know which channels provide the best bang for the buck for extending their brand and reaching their customers? Or, stated another way, how do you justify where to place your digital marketing spend? Is now the right time to trust mobile with your campaign? Join us as this panel of marketers shares several real-world examples, having placed their bets on the mobile front. From strategy and development to implementation to measurement and maximizing your reach and exposure, this group of experts will engage the audience with the power of mobile.

A successful viral event is led and ultimately executed by a group of brand ambassadors, yet finding success is like catching “lightening in a bottle” – sporadic and unpredictable. How do you find this elusive group or even that first brand champion who can set a viral event in motion? And if you are lucky enough to find that group or that one catalyst, how do you motivate or inspire them to take it upon themselves to serve as your brand ambassador? And how do we define “viral” and what are the current and emerging viral platforms? While a YouTube video sharing phenomenon is an obvious and powerful viral event, how do the other platforms such as blogs, Twittering, SMS messaging, and the new explosion of social networking applications come into play? Where are the opportunities and where are the land mines? Should brands try to produce viral phenomena or does that run the risk of violating the unwritten code of authenticity? In the final analysis, the success of a viral campaign is impossible to guarantee. Why do some campaigns receive millions, sometimes tens-of-millions, of impressions in just weeks while other perfectly good campaigns wither and die? How important is production value, utility, entertainment or the media spend? While this form of marketing is still hard to quantify and execute for, best practices are emerging and many lessons have been learned. This engaging session gives you an updated and in-depth understanding of this elusive but powerful marketing ecosystem.

How do you deliver the right message to the right people at the right time? In a marketing universe that continues to expand because of digital technologies—and becomes more interactive as consumers assume more power and control—how do you rise above the noise to deliver a relevant, targeted and engaging message to your audience in a Web 3.0 world? Direct marketing, and email marketing in particular, remain hugely powerful tools and effective marketing channels. However, as the marketing communications landscape evolves, many industry insiders question the role of email marketing moving forward, particularly as it relates to the tween/teen/young adult consumer segments. Email optimization starts by ensuring that you’re sending trusted email that ISPs will deliver to the intended recipients, including a strong call to action and optimizing your content to drive conversions and deliver the highest returns. Whether you’re managing your email communications internally or partnering with a third-party delivery service, discover the best practices you need to maximize your ROI. Hear from leading experts as they analyze the current email marketing ecosystem and lead you through strategies that effectively and efficiently move prospects from awareness to interest to purchase.

We all know that social media is having a transformative effect on the web. But what does this mean for marketers? Is there more to it than Facebook pages and quirky YouTube clips? Shiv Singh believes that the answer is to focus on Social Influence Marketing. The presentation will force you to rethink how you market online. It will leave you with concrete ways to leverage social influencers to reach new customers, manage your digital brand and form deeper and more trusted customer relationships.