A Kelsey Conference Wrap Up

We’ve been here at the Kelsey Group conference on Drilling Down on Local ’08.  The focus of the event is on "catching the wave in local marketing" and specifically charting the transition from offline to online.  Fortunately the conference is right here in Seattle.  Actually two blocks from our office.

Some of the key themes I saw here were:

1) video is the next big thing in online video advertising
2) vertical marketing and the push to online (makes sense given the topic on local)
3) marketing that drives direct response

The show was impressive not just for the broad, strategic thinking that was evident from leaders throughout the directory, interactive media, publishing, and technology side, but also how the focus was really on drilling down to the local market.   Kate Kaye, Senior Editor at Click Z, said it best when she talked about not forgetting that for many SMBs you can't forget the personal level of investment they make.  These are businesses that make decisions at the dinner table that to them are big decisions.  She also went on to say that, for the SMB, results really matter and that direct response matters because at the end of the day it's their money.

We got a chance to demo our product at the conference and focused exactly on the points referenced above - that we need to move beyond the "promise" of video and to the real science of driving action for businesses.

We also got to listen to some great discussion on the state of old media versus new that highlighted the speed of advertising moving from offline to online.  One such session was lead by Peter Krasilovsky, the Program Director for this event, talking with Merrill Brown, Founder and Principal of MMB Media.  For a recap, check out John Cook's Venture Blog entitled: "Old media needs to wake up, or die."

For us, this conference was great, not just for the chance to demo our product, reconnect with lots of smart industry leading people, but also for the validation in our new platform (launched at Kelsey) and the confirmation that our focus on driving action through online video IS the end game goal for small and mid-market advertisers.