August 1, 2007 session…
MODERATOR:
Chris Bowler, VP, Media Director, Agency.com
PANELISTS:
Warren Kay, Director of Emerging Products, Yahoo! Search Marketing (not present)
Dominic Preuss, Product Manager, Local Advertising, Google
Janice Rohn, VP of Consumer Experience, Yellowpages.com
John du Pre Gauntt, Senior Analyst, eMarketer
The most important thing about this session is that half of the people from the previous session left – it shows that people don’t understand search and understand its’ importance in the eventual mobile domination. This session was presentations and much less dynamic.
Dominic –
Local and mobile are very much the same. Google Maps changes the way that people uses maps. Google Earth has some great partnerships. Google search on the wap browser. Gmail is an important part of our strategy. It is in a single repository. Discussed local business center. Make sure your information is up to date. Coupons for Maps. Regional targeting, country, state, city and radius. Google Local Business Ads. Google Mobile Ads – shorter messaging, link to mobile website, click to call enabled, carrier targeting, markup language targeting.
Janice Rohn – unfortunately had to leave the room for almost all of her talk…
John – Technical scale is not an issue. It’s about answers not links. It’s about all the collateral as well. The pain is very high. The carriers are not supporting a cookie like feature. Cross-carrier targeting it hard. Talked about a number of challenges facing the space and the fragmentation issues. For every $1 you spend on mobile spend $2 on training your staff. If you have the most wonderful mobile experience and a lousy customer experience, it does not matter! I couldn’t agree more.