San Francisco was a outstanding setting for OMMA-West, a leading conference produced by MediaPost, which brought together technologists and marketers, thus providing insights into the very significant impact of different technologies. Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Innovation Officer, Publicis Groupe Media, was the opening keynote speaker as well as panel participant. His focus on balancing "Art and Numbers" was appropos to this audience. The technology enables measuring "outcomes", which means determining effectiveness of media campaigns. Traditional media has measured the wrong numbers, with the new metrics providing additional insights into media behavior. One major change is that the new media model is "asset allocation" of existing budgets, with marketers becoming "traders", instead of the old model of media buyer and planner. As Google Adword costs rise in the current auction environment, TV and other media channels become more attractive. The economics of digital information are profoundly changing the relationships between the consumer, the advertisers and the media.

Bob Garfield, Editor-at-Large, Advertising Age, was the afternoon keynote, with the provocative title "The Chaos Scenario: what happens if the old media/marketing model collapses before the new model is built?" He used an amusing multimedia-enabled presentation which broke all digital rights copyright rules, but made the point of a rapidly changing environment. Broadband penetration is still only 50% of households, vs. television with 100% penetration. He ended his presentation with clips of the tsunami, stressing the inevitability of major change in the industry.

John Battelle, noted entrepreneur and blogger/ journalist, was keynoter on the second day, acknowledging the failure of the first iteration of the web, which was long on vision, short on execution and profits. The next iteration is long on execution, long on profits, and even longer in vision. Now the web is a platform for content and services, not software. The innovation is in the assembly, using lightweight business models, with limited capital costs, limited customer acquisition costs, moderate creation costs, and even more importantly, healthy profits. I found his description of blogs as a lightweight publications, providing a means to carry on a conversation with an audience/community more realistic than the journalistic dogma that usually accompanies blog discussions.

Some of the insights from the panels and breakout sessions:

• Niche markets, specialized publications, new technologies, rise of the author or the show are all forces which are fragmenting the traditional media environment. The audiences are smaller, so takes many more to achieve the same scale.
• Vertical search will become more important, because it provides targeting. This works better in some industries than others.
• Local search is also important to reach geographically bound advertisers, and has become more interesting with the advent of pay per call, with an 800 number.
• International is opening up new markets, from both a product and advertising standpoint.
• Video content is becoming more important, but limited by technology. Interestingly, metadata about video is more important than in text based content.
• Mobile searching is a key area to watch for search, though implementation still has challenges, particularly with designing content advertising. Integration with bar coding opens up interesting applications.
• Consumer confidence (or lack thereof) in the web generated some serious discussion about the impact on branding, with companies needing to have explicit best practices posted.
• Company reputation is a major concern for PR professionals, who now have to deal with the impact of the technology on their function. Baseline is establishment of a blogging strategy,which has both PR and marketing elements.

Good interaction, good speakers, but clearly an industry in the midst of major changes with a lot advertising dollars to spend, debating the balance between traditional media and the new media. Perhaps the most interesting suggestion was to have a 17 year old on your board as a gauge of new trends to follow!