By Tom Polanski

I found it ironic that every booth I visited used brochures, flyers and printed pens to market their products at a convention for digital media marketers. There was very little interactivity. Although there were several interesting ideas being brought to market, I couldn’t see how they could be used by our client base to drive revenue increases. I could imagine a Fortune 500 company testing these ideas because those types of companies see long-term value in return on influence and return on branding. However, our clients are return on investment motivated.

I left the convention after the first day with mixed emotions. I wondered why I came but was glad I came too. As so often is the case, when I’m mixed in with a room full of creative, high energy people, my thinking was sparked in directions it may not have gone otherwise. As a result of my attendance, not only have I given birth to a new brood of brain-children, I’m certain that I’ve identified a pocket of the internet universe that hasn’t been exploited by marketers. If my team and I can bring this product to market we’ll be able to deliver ads to people who are in a prime position to be marketed to based on their past and current behavior. We’ll be able to target these ads to a spectacularly granular level. To the best of my knowledge nobody’s done this to this audience. Of course, especially after attending Ad-Tech, I’m well aware that the world is full of bright, hungry people and it may well be that marketing to the audience I have in mind has been tried before but the challenges proved too daunting.

There will be challenges. 

I’ve vetted this idea with people like Mathew Klein at Fuor Digital, Keith Newman of Home Technologies Network, Kevin Cuxil at Centric and Brian Mitchell, among others, and all have endorsed the idea as having tremendous merit. So we’ll move forward with development and testing as quickly as possible. Who knows, maybe you’ll see me standing in front of a booth at Ad-Tech, touting a new service. But I promise you I won’t be handing out printed pens, brochures and flyers.