Last night, the monthly Dallas/Fort Worth Interactive Marketing Association (DFWIMA) meeting was held at the La Cima Club, on the 26th floor of the Los Colinas Towers, smack dab in the middle of Dallas and Fort Worth (ok, not really in the middle, but close enough to all the ad agencies in town to be called the center of the metroplex according to them).
I arrived promptly at 5:55 or so, and the meeting was scheduled to start at 6. I sauntered in, washed up in the restroom quickly, picked up my name tag, and walked to the bar to get my standard Jack and Coke. (Oddly, DFWIMA’s gotten cheap on me. Instead of the normal two drink tickets for each member that attends, I only got one, and on top of that liquor was cash only… no tickets.) I opted for a Bud Light and headed into the meeting room to survey the crowd.
There were fewer people at the meeting than I normally remember seeing at past meetings, but not too few to be what I’d consider a bad turn out. The presentation topic of the evening was titled Online Marketing with Michael Zimbalist, who is the Executive Director of the Online Publishers Association whose mission “is to advance the policies of high-quality online publishers before the advertising community, the press, the government and the public. OPA will serve to help its members fairly compete in the marketplace for advertising services and will act as a voice so that online users clearly understand the benefits that quality publishers provide to the public discourse.”
Mike’s presentation was great. Very energetic, and informative. He covered a lot of points from the recent research that OPA’s been publishing (on their website in PDF form). Some of the main points that Mike covered were related to these reports:
· Consumers with Workplace Internet Access Spend More Time Online than Watching TV [pdf]
· Online Advertising Creates Synergy with TV Campaigns [pdf]
· touched briefly on this report’s findings during the Q&A Paid Online Content U.S. Market Spending Report, Q1 2001 through Q1 2002 [pdf]
Overall the main points I took home from this presentation were:
1. AOL’s advertising revenue this year sucks compared to the past. From other sources (that I can’t find right now), I get the feeling that this sort of scares people, and makes them think that AOL’s been lying about their revenue for a while, but that overstating revenues (by including barter deals in revenue reports for example) used to be common practice, and thus was ‘okay’ by the industry’s standards. The industry is still in its teenage years, and is growing up quickly.
2. Online advertising is definitely picking up ‘real’ revenue this year, and should continue for a while. It just makes sense that this will happen, but it was refreshing to hear Mike say that that’s what the member companies of the OPA are seeing too.
3. Daypart advertising makes sense for those advertiser that its applicable to, and on those publisher’s sites where the traffic warrants it. For example (my example) I could see Lancomb running evening advertising on AOL while they’re also running prime-time TV advertising, as a synergistic attempt at ‘owning’ that time slot across all media that’s in heavy use by the demographic they’re targeting. Hell, they could buy that day part across as many media outlets as they could find that would offer it and really own that daypart for their demographic. The same would be true for late evening advertising for say, Ford or Chevy running TV spots on FX or during late night TV and internet ads on Maxim’s website… dayparts will work, if used effectively as a ‘covergence’ of campaigns tactic.
The meeting overall was also great. I met a few new people, did some networking with folks that I’ve met before. (Temerlin McClain is hiring for an AE position on the American Airlines account. If you’re interested email me, and I’ll tell you who to send your resume to.) Generally had a great time, and learned something, and that was the goal of attending. DFWIMA has got to be one of the best professional organizations I’ve ever belonged to. The membership fee is definitely worth it, if you’re in the area.
Next month’s presentation will be The Changing Online Media Landscape with Charlie Buchwalter, VP, Client Analytics, Nielsen NetRatings. See you there.
“Dumb, Dumb, Dumb…”
Reflection is something that everyone should take part in on a regular basis: Take time out to reflect on the past periodically…
Interesting statistic from 
Flying Fish sells yachting classes in Europe. They charge a lot of money for kids just out of school, but they have a few tricks up their sleeves to ensure conversion:
We’ve been thinking of moving from our 2,500 sq. ft. two story home with large backyard and trees, to a downtown condo type living area, since we don’t have kids, and won’t for another 5 years or so… sort of our way of being able to easily keep our youth, and enjoy it. We’d really like to move somewhere ‘close to the action’ instead of living out in suburbia where we are now.
Newsletters are the primary traffic drivers to my employer’s website. I’ve been checking our statistics every day for the past year. I’m convinced that our newsletter is the primary driver of traffic to the website… no question in my mind.
Zachary Rogers tackles an increasing problem for publishers and agencies alike in his latest article on Turbo Ads: 
The reason I want to use any handheld has always been seamless integration with my habits, and applications. 
I don’t know about you, but where I work, its just lip service. My current employer provides terrible customer service, 99% of the time, and its for many of the reasons 
Ok, I 
According to 
No shit!
