Kevin Ryan & Me

Gotham Media Ventures recently hosted “Digital Media, Advertising: The E-Marketing Breakfast“, sponsored by Gridley and Company LLC, one event of a series of breakfasts that will take place over the next few weeks/months. The topic of this breakfast was laoded one – Searching for Dollars: The Future of Search Opportunities and Investment. The venue – Harvard Club of NY….

…at this point it becomes clear: Not a casual event! Unfortunately I didn’t think to wear a suit. I came expecting marketing executives and ended up finding a mixed, well-dressed crowd of VC’s, AE’s, CEO’s and SEM Guru’s. I was just happy I didn’t go with the Pink Polo. Either way, it was definitely a step up from the casual networking and entrepreneur events I’m used to attending. And I’m happy to say the panel was exceptional.

Moderating the event was Stan Sandberg, Principal at Gridley & Company LLC, the events sponsor. The panelists were as follows:

Kevin Ryan Comments on Google

Stan began his introduction with a lengthy happy birthday wish to search giant Google, though I’m not sure today was the right day as I discussed in my previous article  Google’s 10th Birthday! (But what day?). He mentioned 3 solid facts: Internet Marketing is growing fast (22.8%), Search is the biggest and fastest growing sector, and most shockingly in “99 was thr cup of the .com boom…99 was the breakout year.  248 IPOs in 99…0 Venture-Backed IPOs in Q2 2008″, (a point continuously repeated during Web2.0 Expo Panel “Starting up in Silicon Alley”, which I will blog about tomorrow).

On that note, the panel began. There were many great points made covering a number of important areas in Online Marketing. To get them all out, I will format the rest in Q&A form:

Stan: Your thoughts on the future of Search & Search Budgets?

• Aimee: “Much longer investments in strategic planning.”
• Adam: “A lot of growth in analytics in order to create value.”
• Sarah: “There will always be more money in search because it is measurable.”
• Kevin: “Data-mining is absolutely mission critical.”

Stan: Role of the Search Agency today?

• Aimee: “There is a change in process of how agencies are approaching companies.”
• Adam: “Definitely interested in brand building with companies that have offline” (mentioning the possibility of partnering up with the offline agency the company chooses.
• Sarah: “A lot more contingent on the marketer and collaborative efforts…collective brainstorming.”
• Kevin: “The reality is – it is driven by the client. Agencies are driven by the P&L in the end of the day…the client has to drive it.”

Stan: What are you seeing in terms of keyword trends and ROI?

• Kevin: “Two issues -> Minimum click costs continue to increase & media channels are deciding whether or not your site is worthy and that is a BIG problem.

Stan: Google = Better Results…your thoughts?

• Kevin: “70% of search in the US is Google…90% in Western Europe”. Keep in mind geo-location.
• Aimee: “Be aware of the other search engines and how they work. [...] Google drives volume, but other sites can drive better conversions.”
• Adam: “The volume is on Google. It has been a disappointing competition to watch…I am hoping somebody can compete with Google.”
• Kevin: “Google Properties will eventual equal Government Intervention.” In reference to Chrome, “Google terms & conditions are crap”, but he finished off by saying “…maybe we would be better of joining Google.”

Stan: Innovation – Where will it come from?

• Kevin: “Cuil was the worst piece of sh*t search engine. What we saw at the end of that was VCs are now questioning ex-google employees. The press is second guessing the ex-googlers as well. [...] The same journalists who said Cuil was big, also say Yahoo is going down”
• Aimee: “Digital out of home is going to be huge…mobile, video online…also marketing tools”
• Adam: “We need to use 3rd party analytics companies in order to make sense of it all”.
• Sarah: “Google – they got the eyeballs”

Random Quotes…

• Sarah: “There are cases where search makes no-sense!“
• Aimee: “1+1=3″
• Kevin: “We have to be careful how we use the word Study today” (referring to stats and case-studies).
• Adam: The trend and timelines is as follows “Offline -> Website -> Mobile & E-mail”.

The conference ended on a great note, and overall I feel the crowd was pleased.

Me, Aimee Reker & Adam Heimlich

Posted under Events