IAB FORUM Milan 2008: Internet, the heart of communication

After having attended the IAB Forum which took place this 5th & 6th of November in Milan along with our 77Academy students, I wanted to share with you the bits and bolts of one particular conference, dedicated to Web 2.0, led by industry leaders, Yahoo!, MySpace and Tag Advertising. One of our 77Academy students, Zsuzsanna Racz, brightly summed things p for us in the following post.

IAB Forum Milan: WEB 2.0

First up was Giusy Cappiello, Tag Advertising’s Sales Director, which operates oneBlog, the first Italian technology network. The agency has recently launched blog advertising for Volvo’s XC60 to invite people for on-the-spot test drives and open Q&As sessions with industry experts.

This new way of communication between business and interested users, however raises some concerns. If users are free to comment on a product, the company might end up with bad reputation. And here comes the evolution of the web: moderating the comments to control there is no one who is offensive, which brings us back to one of our previously discussed topics, online reputation management.

The next up was Lorenzo Montagna, Commercial Director Yahoo! Italy,  who discussed “a successful case, where knowledge, commercial communication, people and brand grow together”. Today the company offers information and communication (portal, search), personalization (My Yahoo!) and sharing (Y! answers, flickr and delicious) to its 550 million users. Montagna presented successful cases of businesses advertising on user-generated sites.

In its early days, Flickr, for instance, display only textual advertising in order not to be invasive. Today you can find photography-related banners, e.g. Canon’s new model. He also discussed how businesses can make the best out of Yahoo! Answers, where you receive the answers to your questions two hours later. For example, by having a dedicated group of creatives assigned specifically to tackle Q&A’s on a specific subject or industry, as Johnson & Johnson did with regards to the pregnancy and parenting topics. But why the hamster?

And last but not least, Francesco Barbarani, Country Manager for MySpace presenting “new scenarios to communicate with users” where he promised not to talk about his company too much, however, we couldn’t help hearing about the 117 million current MySpace users and the 5 million active bands that are in it, plus the fact that they are the second largest video sharing site after YouTube, where 2/3 of the videos are seen on the users’ profiles.

Here’s the message for you: instead of intrusive monologues try to create an exclusive dialogue with potential consumers. People don’t want insensitive advertising, they want companies to get in the cosumer’s shoes instead and give them what they want and like to hear.

This is what web 2.0 offers you.

(Image credits : IAB Forum 2008 Photo Gallery)

I like it!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Media News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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