IAB Engage 2010: Digital Thought-Leadership, Partnerships and Fish and Chips

In an industry that is evolving at such a fast pace, it is always good, every now and then, to sit down and reflect on these trends and innovations which are opening new territories to explore, creating new challenges…

In the UK, IAB Engage is one of these great opportunities to hear from worldwide thought-leaders and the much anticipated 2010 edition did not fail to its reputation.

Live from London

Today in London’s Mermaid Centre, an audience of over 600 marketing decision makers was mesmerised by the great line-up of speakers including comedian Jimmy Carr, Procter & Gamble Corporate Marketing Director Roisin Donnelly, and internet entrepreneur and founder of Spotify Daniel Ek.

Each shared unique thoughts on how digital is deeply modifying the way marketers should approach their core mission: to build even great brands for consumers.

The full Twitter coverage of the day can be found here, but here are our Twitter highlights from the day:

Asking British comedian Jimmy Carr to come for a fire-side chat at the end was a stroke of genius by the organisers. A welcome warm-down from from the super-charged insight and advice from earlier in the day.

Richard Eyre & Jimmy Carr

Getting you there!

Supercharging your brand online is obviously an ambition shared by most of marketers. However what clearly came out of that day is that there are several paths to this achievement.

Publishers, technology companies, and agencies are constantly innovating to push the boundaries of what’s possible. And today the speakers clearly laid out the key factors of success – offering more interaction, targeting better the audience, leveraging technology for greater, more immersive brand experiences.

However to get there, companies need to embrace that ambition throughout their entire business (not just marketing) and they need the right partners to turn this ambition into a reality. Or as we once put it at Microsoft Advertising, “You choose the destination, we’ll get you there”.

Partnering to success.

Talking about partnering, it was great to see two senior executives from Yahoo! and Microsoft on stage. Just a few days after announcing that the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance had reached a key milestone with Microsoft now providing the organic search results for all web, image and video searches, and the paid search advertisements on Yahoo! Search in the US and Canada, Carol Bartz, Yahoo! CEO, and Dr Qi Lu, Microsoft’s Online Services Division President, were in Europe to share their respective visions of the digital space and its evolution.

This was also the opportunity to confirm that both companies anticipate starting the organic and paid search transitions in select markets in Europe early 2011, and plan to complete the transitions with quality in all European markets by early 2012.

In particular we intend to start with the UK, France and Ireland, with other markets to follow.

If both companies feel that it would improve the overall experience, we may adjust the timing of the transitions. For more information, you may want to keep an eye on www.searchalliance.com.

To conclude on that IAB Engage coverage, I wanted to share my personal feeling regarding this event: Whether it’s search, display, games advertising and even multiscreen, digital is going experiencing major game changers these days and it feels good to be at the core of that change to enable our customers, our partners, our brands benefit from it too.

Thanks,

Cedric

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