Wednesday, October 10, 2007

By:  Des Cahill, CEO

The mornings are crisper, the days shorter. The Yankees and Red Sox are in the pennant race. Well, the Red Sox anyway.  And DMA's annual conference is coming up next week, October 13-18 in Chicago.
 
DMA '07 Conference and Exhibition is run by the U.S. Direct Marketing Association. It is billed as the world's largest event for marketers for innovation, education and inspiration. If measured by the sheer number of marketers attending, the event lives up to its billing. It is simply "the" annual show for offline direct marketers. The guys that put that junk mail in your snail mail box.
 
It is debatable, however, if the DMA conference is "the" show for practitioners of online marketing - like email, SEO/SEM, display ads, blogging, etc. It will be interesting to see how well, or how poorly, online marketing is promoted at the show. Will the online marketing vendors be put in the "interactive ghetto", lost among a see of direct mail list brokers? Or will online marketing be front and center of the conference's overall debate and discussion - prominently featured as the revolutionary and disruptive marketing force that it has become.
 
Fact: According to Internet Advertising Bureau/Price Waterhouse Coopers data - online ad spending in 2006 in the U.S. was $16.9B - or 6.4% of the total $265B spent in total offline (radio, TV, print, billboards, etc.) and online (email, lead generation, search, online classifieds, etc.). The key statistic to note is that the online slice is projected to grow at an annual rate of 22.5% between now and 2011, while overall ad spending is not going to grow anywhere near that rate.
 
Conclusion? Online ad spending is here to stay, growing fast and shifting significant dollars away from traditional media spending.
 
So I'm going to the windy city not expecting that email and other online channels will not be relegated to a secondary role at the DMA annual conference. I am hopeful that the DMA leadership has recognized that they need to sacrifice some of the ties to the past in order to get at the head of the interactive marketing, online advertising parade. I'll let you know what I see and hear at the show. If DMA doesn't show the leadership and vision it should for interactive marketers, there are other trade associations and conferences that would be more than happy to take on that role.
 
If you're at the DMA annual conference in Chicago it would be great to see you. Habeas is exhibiting in the Online Marketing Solutions Pavilion at booth #1528. I'll be speaking at a "Ask the Experts" roundtable session on Monday October 15 at 12:30 -1:30 PM in the exhibit hall in room F1-2 west. I'll also be participating in a panel entitled "Email Deliverability. Is it the List, Sender, or Content?" run by Austin Bliss of Fresh Address on Wednesday, October 17, 11:30AM-12:30PM in room W-194B.
 
Hope to see you there!