Microsoft Advertising Blog

2009 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival and Living up to the Promise of Digital Advertising

posted Mon, Jun 08 2009

There is no question it's been a rough go for the industry lately and we've had to show moderation at Cannes this year, but I still feel strongly that the IAF and our sponsorship bring together the top talent in the industry for an important get together at this point in Digital Advertising's journey. I was reminded recently of words from Bill Gates during a going away speech last June. Bill was sort of making fun of how politicians and business leaders always say "this is the most important time!" or "This election is the most critical in our nation's history!" and how that that we all tend to put more importance on a time or event versus the journey. I think those are great words to remember as we head to Cannes this year. Yes, it has been tough, but the Journey for digital is still young and we can and will live up to the promise.

Aside from Steve Ballmer making the trip this year to accept the Media Man of the Year award, I'm looking forward to Digital's role in this year's events. From our Forum on Tuesday discussing today, tomorrow and the future of Digital, to Steve's seminar on Wednesday, I'm anxious to see how the agencies, marketers and creatives are responding to digital. I've also been spending a lot of time in New York (benefit is some great videos to post with Nick Utton from eTrade and David Sable of Wunderman in the very near future) and I'm excited to see the international community and hear how the other regions of the world are thriving and adapting.

I have the good fortune of working on Steve's agenda for the event, working with him and his speech writers on his seminar speech, his agenda of meetings with customers and partners, and various demo's highlighting the power of multi-screen campaigns that target audiences in ways I certainly never could have imagined in the late 80s as a grunt media person at Leo Burnett. I hope you'll join us in Cannes on Tuesday for the Business Forum and Wednesday with Steve, and hear about how Microsoft is trying to build an innovative, customer driven, results-oriented digital canvas that agencies and marketers can paint upon to bring their brands and customers together in engaging ways never imagined. And if you can't join us in Cannes for the festival - we'll be working to bring the sessions to you. We'll be blogging, tweeting, capturing video, and updating our Facebook page - visit our Cannes Lions 2009 page where you can get an aggregated view of our content once the festival kicks off.

If you have any questions for Steve, let me know in the comments.

Mark

Filed under: categories:advertisers:Analytics & Research, Analytics & Research, cannes lions, cannes

Comments

Tue, Jun 09 2009 02:14AM

Mark Tarbatt

What's the latest update on Engagement Mapping?
Wed, Jun 10 2009 10:27PM

Mel Carson - MSFT

If you haven’t seen the latest Atlas Institute study on the Purchase Funnel - www.atlassolutions.com/.../dmi-TheLongRoadtoConversion.pdf - it’s definitely worth a read.

It quantifies the amount of engagement touchpoints prior to purchase, and highlights where different categories of publisher fit within that purchase funnel. We don’t publish the EMap adoption numbers, but safe it to say, since our open beta launch in October 2008, we have hundreds of advertisers who have picked EMap models and have implemented the new conversion metrics in Atlas.

The make-up of the early adopters are predictably, the large direct response advertisers who care the most about ROI from their web campaigns and have sizeable display and search budgets. Near term innovations you can expect later this year will be statistical tools that help advertisers customize their EMap models to their business (i.e. set the dials/assumptions).

Although everyone believes EMap is a quantum leap improvement in ROI reporting over the last ad model, there is already strong demand from marketers to statistically set the variables and weights. Expect to see case studies from the Institute later in the Fall.

Also, rumor has it that the Institute will be conducting an executive training course on ROI measurement best practices in partnership with the IAB’s training program.

For more information on Engagement Mapping, most of the research, overviews and webinars can be found here - www.atlassolutions.com/institute_engagementmapping.aspx
Tue, Jun 16 2009 05:48AM

Mark Tarbatt

Thanks Mel. Can we deploy EMap with some agencies that are using Atlas here in Ireland? How would we go about it? M
Tue, Jun 16 2009 06:38AM

Mel Carson - MSFT

I'll have someone call you. Send me a mail through my community profile and we'll get the ball rolling.....