The Strategic Advertising Forum

Misty Swan
The Strategic Advertising Forum
The Strategic Advertising Forum, held on April 20, 2018 in the World Trade Center at the Conde Naste Venues, brought together New York City's agency, association, non-profit, and corporate advertising community to discuss best practices, strategy, engaging case studies, and overall thought leadership courtesy of MV Digital Group and Google.


The most interesting portion of the forum was the panel discussion hosted by Eric Story, the vice president of Grassroots Professional Network. Industry professionals gave their perspectives on digital advertising strategies. Professionals included Pooja Huffman director of marketing at Hive, Zach Silber Chief Innovation Officer at Kivvit, Sue Zoldak founder of the Zoldak Agency and Thomas Sanchez CEO of Social driver. Particularly Zach Silber spoke about the change in  advertising pay-per-click. He explained that for the longest time those who could pay the most would have their advertisements foremost displayed. Now we are in a time where it is about relevancy, so much so that there are quality scores related to ads. For those who produce the most quality content behind their ad in reference to the target audience gets to compete for top advertising spots.


“It's no longer about who paid the most, it's about who is running the most relevant ad in reference to the audience”


Before this transition we often attributed the most relevant information in our search, for instance, would come first. But because of this shift we come to learn about the consumer. Zack stated that the most passionate targets scroll through or go beyond the first page because of this relevant content driven ad space.


The panel went on to discuss how advertising used to be about interrupting people. Now, it’s become more about getting permission to talk to them again later to continue the conversation.


Moving on with the discussion Eric then asked about measuring the success of a campaign. One answer I was completely surprised to hear was from Pooja Huffman. She stated one of the ways she measures success of a campaign is through watching the comments made and posted about the campaign via Facebook or on articles published about the campaign. One would ask how do you determine success though? She explained that if people are consistently questioning things that can be found in the FAQs there may be a misconception that the campaign is not addressing, giving you a since of if it is working or not.  


“People are always afraid of comments, but comments are where you measure the movement from beginning to end...it's the comments that tell you whether people are there or not”


She also explained this is another good way to create interaction with the brand, having consumers ask and answer questions within the brand community, that can lead to taking action on the website for instance like signing a petition or something along those lines. In the same instance Zach pointed out that measuring comments can not stand alone. He mentioned that if this was the case many brand would have bot farms everywhere pushing out comments. So its best to pair measuring comments with another component to analyze success, mentioning the impact a truly authentic comment can make. Finding 1 authentic post in a public forum relative to the category can make much more of an impact than 1000 miscellaneous comments with the website. And using tools like Hexagon and simple whiteboard can help aggregate data from commenting.


From the Strategic Advertising forum, I gathered that there is no one way to measure the effectiveness a campaign. It is rather a combination of outlets and approaches dependent on the specification of what the brand is trying to achieve. In order to create effective ads we must use advertising as a way to continue our conversation.


I attended the event with a group of BICsters. We were given free lunch, Google swag, and the opportunity to preview the Conde Naste Venues. Overall it was a good learning experience. While I am not working for any brands or for an agency, it is good to know the ways in which I interact with advertisements and what they analyze for further engagement.   


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