A Big Thank You To The iMedia Sponsor Companies!

First, as an attendee of iMedia, I want to send a shout out to the many companies that make this excellent series of events possible throughout the year.


But I want to thank you for more than that – because sponsor presentations are an excellent time for all of us to understand the tremendous amount of work being done EVERY DAY to make publisher media solutions work harder for users.

Tribal Fusion (disclosure: a C:SF client) kicked off iMedia with a thought provoking POV on how we need to think about the entire purchase funnel and its many stages in order to maximize results. As digital is becoming more of a lynchpin in marketing, we need to carefully understand the various levels of the consumer decision process, and understand what our plans lack. And then find solutions so we do something about the bottlenecks in our marketing efforts. Their presentation was really a statement about the new levels of marketing sophistication necessary to succeed in digital and get better results.


Tremor Media provided a look into their efforts to develop new ways to make online video even more powerful through capitalizing on the interactive nature of digital. But what was perhaps even more interesting were the ways that they are thinking about the space. Their preso offered ample evidence that online video needn't be and indeed isn't simply moving a TV experience from the boob toob onto a putty colored box.

Casale continued their long history of sponsorship with iMedia, and again it was their thinking and ideas that really enriched my experience here. Ideas about the best ways to target and how a relationship should work between an agency and a media partner. I hear both pubs and agencies critiquing each other a lot, and I was pleased to hear Casale put a stake in the ground about how these relationships can improve.


You know, there are a lot of people who poo-poo the network/site rep space, but those that do really fail to see the potential power of a network as a source of insights and ideas -- who better to help us understand what is going on out there than a company that connects with 100 million plus people a month? I am glad to see that networks are out to show us all of the value they can add rather than focus on the basic services they can provide. It’s that spirit of innovation that makes digital marketing such a cool thing to be a part of.


The other two sponsor presentations on Sunday were Appsavvy and DBG. I am going to start with DBG because what most amazed me about their presentation was how incredibly well produced their sponsored programming is. Great ideas…very well executed. I was dumbstruck because I think if you stacked their shows against much of the TV programming out their today, you’d be very surprised as to which programs looked better and hung together better. Beautiful programs centered on real ideas. And the brands really woven into the content -- this is so much more than Paula and Simon holding up curvy red cups.


Appsavvy was very new to me – I was most taken by the scale that they have created with their network of apps. I think the figure was 65MM uniques a month – a clear indication of the relevance of their content. They also brought along several of the developers of their most popular apps – who provided some tight insights on the communities they have assembled and are indeed so close to.


As always, I really enjoyed the sponsored presos and want to thank all of these companies for their patronage of iMedia for without them we wouldn’t have this great opportunity to learn and share ideas.