Raleigh Internet Summit Keynote Pannel

Notes from Raleigh Internet Summit morning sessions

Raleigh Internet Summit Keynote: Future Of Digital Media and Marketing

Sitting with my friend Rich Kurnik (best network guy on planet earth and great, caring friend) and Scott from Channel II. Rich shared cool video use by MyHabit.com by Amazon (look at women's dresses). Very cool, much more engaging product presentation.

Room is about 1/3 B2B marketers, 1/3 B2C and 1/3 tech.

David Perry, Google
Ro Choy, Formspring (27M registered users, content network for teens)

Maria Pergolino, B2B Marketer for Marketo
David Payne, Chief Digital Officer Gannet

Ro Choy, Formspring
Viral marketing is complex. Must connect social and viral marketing. Create a "growth team" something Facebook did well. Email still has a role. We send out 30M emails a day at Formspring.

Content's coolness and value creates platform importance not the other way around.


The genius of Facebook is sharing. Everything you do online relating to social is being aggregated and made available to advertisers. Enormous amount of data: demographics, geographic and many other pulled in data sets create unbelievable performance when aligned. Formspring connects about 40% of our users to Facebook. Facebook is at the heart of this marketing based on rich data leading to vastly increased conversions. 


Anything you share in Facebook is easy to share, harder to share in B2B. LinkedIn has an opportunity, or a competitor to LinkedIn, can fill the B2B social gap. Social for B2B isn't there yet, not at that point of acceptance but fairly short coming. Not quite as sophisticated in B2B space as B2C. Tools aren't as good, yet, either.


Social media is relevant to every choice you make everyday. This is the first layer of what is happening today. What you are going to see is the conversation changes. Discussion boards are going to become friends talking to friends. Friends talking to friends is why Facebook is so successful and find ways to integrate that friends talking to friends into product search and purchase social integration combing UGC (user generated content) and what my friends are talking about magic happens.

Big opportunity for Facebook to walk into video space, but they are there yet. YouTube is still king. 

I like Comcast. They are putting a lot of content up for free. HBO is doing good too. Mobile and tablet is going to consume Internet experience in short order.

David Payne, Gannett / USA Today
We are seeing fragmentation of ecosystem of marketing and advertising. So many choices and so many different people (competitors and customers in space).

Behavior is a swipe behavior, visual metrics not PPC so interesting to see how Google will be able to respond. A vast majority of our traffic is moving into mobile. Scott from Channel 11 said the same thing before the keynote started.

People who are going to drive are those who can connect sales and new media. Who is going to win will be those who provide services that drive sales. Gannett to see the range of services instead of just one. Groupon is in trouble because they only have one. You need a suite of services. 

We use social media in many ways such as news push, audience extension and we play marketer, promoter and news gatherer. 


Part of what customers buy is our clean demarcation between church (editoral) and state (advertising), so marketers as content creators is scary concept. The tablet is showing us a completely different experience. Tablet is taking over where interactive TV never got traction. Tablet's touch = easy to inject different kinds of advertising (both experiential and non-linear). As behavior changes as we start swiping advertising looks and feels more like content (and vice versa). Marketing messages will be text, video, audio, anything and everything. 

Video is important because of the emotional touch points. The ones who simplify, the companies who simplify video as component of local and social, will win. 


My favorite disruptive force is Apple. If we could follow Apple's principles we would better serve our clients.

Maria Pergolino, Marketo
Way we watch TV is changing. Real time consumption is disruptive technology and an undeniable social trend. Disruption is happening because the way we engage with each other is changing. We must take a multi-channel approach.

Game-ification is an example of how consumption is happening.

There is an advantage to early adoption. First on to Google paid less than now. Multi-channel is key. As you get bigger you need to adjust what you are doing. Content is important. 


Social is an important channel for our B2B business and clients. We use promoted Tweets and Facebook ads to be present. We identify pains people are having and create products to solve pain points. Biggest challenge is multi-touch and long term tracking. Important to think about measurement before engagement. Jump in and don't think about tracking can make tracking harder. 


B2B = risks are higher so this makes social engagement differently. You could lose your job if you make the wrong CRM or CMS decision. So social is critical but longer sales cycles and multi-touch makes tracking a challenge. 


When good content was harder to find it was easier to be found. Now it is about finding a way to amplify via your network to overcome the noise. Content is king doesn't ring true unless you have your own court to share that information.


David Perry, Google
From a Google perspective mobile is one of the most disruptive. About 50% in USA have smartphones and this is forcing marketers to create new ways to engage audience. Last time we did a poll 79% of Google's biggest advertisers didn't have mobile sites. That will change.

Lion's share of traffic is Google search. Mobile is up and coming. I think there is room for all of those different things (iPhone, iPad, etc...).

There are a lot of large companies: Google, Facebook, Apple that will provide value to the marketplace. 


Reality is every action leaves some digital signature. Challenge is how to bring all of this data together. First, start with the business goal and work backwards toward the best metrics. How can you understand the digital path. You can do something like "big funnels" that will track all the way through conversion. ???? What is "big funnels". 


Social work in B2B? I can't comment completely but customer service and other social applications seem to be getting hold.


Everyone has the opportunity to become a content creator. We are seeing an explosion in content. Challenge becomes how we make this discoverable. How do we cut through clutter. Every marketer faces this challenge.

Large companies are feeling pressure to become content creators. I'm a HUGE fan of B2B video. If you look online you see customer testimonials. SalesForce, IBM, Oracle = examples of companies using YouTube well. B2B and enterprise tech = social and YouTube and videos are a coming trend.

83% B2B executives consuming more video than a year ago. Amount of videos viewed related to enterprise tech up 2x over last year so this is a trend that will continue.