FOOA: Future of Online Advertising Notes: Jay Adelson, Digg (w/video!)

Here are my notes from the presentations by Jay Adelson, Digg CEO at the Future of Online Advertising conference. I will post my complete commentary plus audio files this weekend (there is a LOT of audio editing to do) so please grab the RSS Feed.

Basically Jay's presentation was about Revision3 and how they are going about getting advertising. This was my first time hearing him speak live and I was concerned about how it would go after his great (sarcasm) Forbes interview earlier this year. I thought he did an OK job overall. 

Here are my notes:

• Stresses how important it is for us to create new standards.
• Internet video is a square peg:
  -- three const. with differnt motives: aggregators, distributors and content owners
  -- which group does a media buyer care about?
  -- no standard players
  -- industry raced to injection, pre-roll ad overlay
• Lots of debate about revenue
• Believes there are over 1000 startups trying to use the flash player for video content
• The death of pre-roll is coming and "post-roll is a joke"
• Basically shows product placements with actors in the videos/shows to sell
• Shows DiggNation and their PayPerPost-type ad for Verizon cellphone
• Future is consolidation, aggregation and standards.
  - custom, techniques increasingly leave agencies out of the creative loop
  - only a percentage of content can support custom creative
  - standards are required for integrated sponsorships, badging and overlay
  - aggregators and media reps needs to smell smaller, similar video properties in aggregate
• Takeaways
  -- it's not a technology problem
  -- media buyers increasingly understand impressions will be acquired through aggregators
  -- for true roi, direct to content relationships will rule in 2008
  -- standards around sponsorships are needed
• Donna from InsiderChatter asks a lot of questions but she did ask a good one that I was also thinking about in DiggNation vs. PayPerPost and his answer was ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT- basically he said that people know that the first part is an advert and that when Kevin discusses the Zune after the beginning advert he notes that he is now speaking "real" - I mean c'mon, would Kevin bash the Zune even if he hated it knowing that he just made nice cash from Bill? I doubt it. I don't think there is anything wrong with the type of ad that they are using, but it means that Kevin clearly is endorsing xyz product and anything further than that should be noted that it might be biased because of it.

Here is the video I captured. Some notes: I basically recorded his entire speech except the open discussion. I had to move the camera because the photographer stood in front of it (d'oh!) at about the 9 minute mark. The video is just under 20 minutes in length.