DMS’08 Day Three

Well I have returned from Atlanta and wanted to post on Day 3 of the Kelsey Conference. Instead of writing on each session, I thought I would comment on them here.  I thought the talks this day were great.

1. First up was Briggs Ferguson, President-Internet, Idearc Media whose talk was Local Search- What is Holding Us Back. Briggs feels more could have done (excluding the economy as a factor) to grow local search.  He showed estimates made 5 years ago on how much local search was to grow feel short ($7 billion projected vs $2 billion actual).  Briggs feels it is due to 4 factors:

1. poor traffic access 2. poor traffic quality 3. lack of standardization 4. not enough innovation

Despite these factors, there is lots of room for opportunity and the mobile market will play a big part in that growth.

2. The Online Video Opportunitywas a panel discussion with Chuck Lee, Executive Director, Internet Marketing, AT&T Advertising & Publishing, Olivier Vincent, President and CEO, Canpages, John McIntyre, CEO, PixelFish and Mark Moore, Cofounder and CEO, SpotMixer.

This was a nice discussion on where online video is and going. They commented that the number of people who viewed videos online is growing and will be catching up with those online searching.  The panel indicated that the barriers to video are going down thus more will be getting involved with online videos. They discussed the different types of videos and the options websites have to get videos on their sites.

3. Mobile Local Search — What’s the Role for Yellow Pages Publishers?with Bruce Crair, COO, Local.com and Lauri Kangaslahti, Director – Consumer Services Business Unit, Fonecta.

Bruce showed that US Mobile total ad spending will be $1484 million. Mobile is growing and on can deny that fact. Bruce also discussed what he saw as the problems with mobile search today.

• no standards for mobile search
• how to monetize –very small real estate  and how get smb to advertise on mobile
• bandwidth issues
• usability- screen size and speed of interaction

4. The final session of the day, The Change Imperative,  was a look into the future and where the panel thought we would be on a number of interesting and fun questions.  On the panel was Geoff Avard, GM, Strategy, Sensis, Perry Evans , President & CEO, Local Matters, Sebastien Provencher, Co-Founder, VP Product Management, Praized Media and Ken Ray, CMO, AT&T Publishing & Advertising. Check out the Kelsey Blog for a nice write up on it.