Some of the most prominent conferences include:

• Digiday Conference – May 14th
• OMMA at Internet Week – May 14th – May 17th
• IAB – Innovation Days - May 16th – May 17th

If you are interested in meeting up, we have a few people out in force taking meetings and making the rounds at the various events who would be happy to chat.

Contact us on Twitter @Mediaplex or email me.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif., May 09, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — ValueClick Media, a division of ValueClick, Inc., today announced the launch of its new digital video ad platform, ValueClick Video. Armed with industry leading targeting capabilities and optimization technology, ValueClick Video empowers advertisers to effectively reach and engage their audiences in a medium that is expected to become a major component of interactive advertising.

According to ValueClick Media’s 2011 advertiser survey results, 76 percent of advertisers plan to dedicate media spend to online video this year. ValueClick Media has its sights set on this surging ad format–expected to grow nearly 55 percent this year, according to eMarketer.

“The power of video is becoming evident in today’s online advertising landscape,” said Bill Todd, president of ValueClick Media. “With ValueClick Video, we are expanding our video footprint by combining our renowned targeting capabilities, real-time optimization and display campaign efficiencies into one high-impact, results driven platform for advertisers.”

ValueClick Media powers up new Video ad platform

ValueClick Video provides advertisers and brand marketers with innovative digital video solutions that leverage parent company ValueClick’s Data Management Platform. The proprietary Platform offers unique targeting capabilities that result in 5.5 times the lift in unaided awareness and increases purchase intent by as much as 73 percent when compared to industry norms (Vizu).

“The enhanced Video platform complements the current efforts of our sales teams across the U.S., allowing them to deliver highly-competitive cross-platform video ad solutions,” said Todd.

The new platform offers an available inventory of 10,000 brand safe websites–CNN, Fox News Channel, New York Post, Kiplinger, and more–plus the ability to reach 80 percent of all iPhone and Android users.

Premier targeting capabilities

ValueClick Video advertisers receive exclusive access to 212MM unique online user profiles and $6.7B in transactional data to pinpoint the ideal audience from display, to smartphones and tablet devices.

In order to deliver precisely on brand-specific campaign objectives, ValueClick Video offers the following targeting capabilities:

– Contextual — Page-level, machine-learned classification of users

– Geography — Target users by zip code, DMA, county or state

– Geo-fencing — Pinpoint video ads within a specific driving/walking distance

– Previous purchase activity — Data points provided by category product level, transactions, click, ad interaction or by browser

– Operating Platform — Find audiences by operating system (Mac, PC) or browser (Chrome, Firefox)

– Day-Part — Target users when they are most receptive to your message

Top talent hired to lead ValueClick Video

ValueClick Media is pleased to announce the appointment of two digital media veterans to lead ValueClick Video.

Dan Alexander, formerly the head of media for Adconion Direct, joins ValueClick Video as director of video strategy, and Lisa-Dawn Rogers, formerly the digital sales account director for BrightRoll, takes the role of national video strategy sales manager. The new leadership team brings two decades of combined experience managing progressive, results-driven video and digital ad campaigns for top brand advertisers.

“ValueClick Media has been a consistent market leader for the past 14 years across display, lead generation, mobile, and now video,” said Alexander. “The team has done an impressive job introducing video into this growing market, and I look forward to helping raise mass awareness around our video solutions, expertise, technology and data capabilities.”

The study even broke out usage of smartphones by ethnic groups, showing that Asian Americans have the highest usage of 67.3%, followed by Hispanics at 57.3%, African Americans at 54.4% and whites at 44.7%.

This trend is no surprise to most in online marketing, as many brands are flocking to mobile and technology providers are learning how to work with it.  Brand started experimenting with mobile several years back and now can use it for both branding and direct response advertising initiatives.

The mobile space has certainly grown from mobile text messaged ads to mobile search, and small display 320×50 ads at the bottom of application ads to rich video interstitials from companies like Greystripe.  As new handheld devices come to market, developers have needed to account of iPads and other tablets where most are leveraging HTML5.  The space continues to segment into Hispanic networks like Redmas that reinforce the investment many companies have made into space over the last couple years.

Internationally, the trend is interesting as well.  Countries in the first-world are high adopters of smartphone, but I those people in countries with less infrastructure are also getting their hands on smartphone before they get a computer.

I am excited about where the mobile and tablet industry will grow into next as the mobile channel is continue to impress.

Inspired by Terry Kawaja’s LUMAscape display ecosystem graphic, “The Dish” is a useful and coherent model to help marketers understand what different players in the space do, and how they work together.

Check out the article on iMediaConnection.com, and be sure to let us know what you think. If you need a high-resolution version – contact me.

Want to know why the board chose SK+G?

Find out in the video below:

It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the best and brightest in the Bay Area digital community.

sfBIG is hosting its annual Big Stars Awards on April 26th, and we want you to be there.

This year’s categories will celebrate the best work and people in the following categories:

Most Innovative Campaign of the Year
Most Innovative Team
Best Media Plan of the Year
Best Mobile Campaign
Best Social Media Campaign
Best Search Campaign
Next Big Digital Start-Up
Next Big Salesperson
Next Big Media Planner
Lynn Ingham Community Service Award
sfBIG Hall of Fame

The event sells out every year, so don’t delay and RSVP today.

I will be there taking pictures and tweeting from the event.

Here are a few pictures I snapped of the event.

Here is some more additional information about Adam:

Speaker: Adam Seymour, SVP, Managing Director – Digital
Adam Seymour currently oversees Optimedia’s digital media investments, Search, and Analytics practices across the country and also manages the company’s San Francisco office. The portfolio of clients under management includes T-Mobile, HP, Nintendo, Toyota Scion, Orbitz, Collective Brands, Pinnacle Foods, British Airways and BBC among others.

Adam has been a leader in the digital space for more than a decade and has a strong track record of managing client’s first forays into digital. Adam has been involved in Digital Media since the early days of the industry with stints at Grey Advertising New York, Modem Media, and Hill Holiday.

For those who are investing more in advertising, many recognize the potential for client retention, product upsells or new client acquisitions through cross-channel synergies.  One major opportunity financial clients have (especially those with many products) is cross-channel retargeting.  Meaning that if a user is on Google/Bing searching for a home mortgage, credit card or debt services, MOJO can retarget customers on advertiser’s display buys and make sure the creative used is customized for that customer.

For example, if someone searches Google or Bing for refinancing options for their home mortgage but never converts, a financial institution may want to make sure the next creative that potential customer sees reflects their particular product interest.  The ultimate goal for that advertiser is to get that potential customer back into the sales funnel.

Many of the top searched keyword categories were bucketed under financial services, meaning that many of those keywords can get really expensive as advertisers bid up the CPC.  Due to these inflated CPC rates for keywords, it is important to maximize your budget in the ad channels used and make every dollar count through good search strategies and the cross-channel opportunities.

Here is the list of the top 20 search keyword categories last year’s Q2 (note the top financial categories):