FOOA: Future of Online Advertising: Ryan Carson's Marketing Plan

Here are my notes from the presentation by Ryan Carson of Carson Systems at the Future of Online Advertising conference.

Ryan was a fill-in for one of the presenters who cancelled at the last minute. Ryan decided to provide some insight into the marketing plans that Carson Systems used for the Future of Online Advertising conference. While I disagreed with Ryan's decision to show his ledgers for DropSend earlier this year, I think this made for a great discussion.

I don't have many notes from his discussion but here is the chart that he used for the basis for his discussion (click it for the larger version).

Basically Ryan ran two types of deals:

• Barter
• Paid ads

Barter included sites like TechCrunch where he offered a commission for signups. He also bought some ads. In the image, green are the barters.

I thought he did a great job of explaining how he decided on which types of ads to run. I think Ryan is awesome and hope one day I get a chance to sit down with him (and the team) to really learn more.

He then opened the discussion up to the audience. Several people provided tips for the future (get it ha ha) including myself:

• Offering "10% off" can make it appear like the conference isn't popular and might actually keep people away
• In addition, most of the attendees are coming from employers who won't care much about saving $80. Perhaps offer a book bundle instead.
• The ad they ran in the magazine had no wording about it being a conference and might have appeared as just a normal advert.

Do you have any suggestions for Ryan? Were you thinking of attending and decided not to? Would you attend in the future? Drop your thoughts in the comments!