State of the industry, cont.
Which industries will shine in their digital marketing efforts in 2010?
Flamberg: Porn, gaming, entertainment media, and telecom.
Morgan: Consumer electronics, distance education, and local retail could all shine this coming year. Each has some secular growth drivers.
Nichols: I expect a big advance in digital media utilization by local companies. Well beyond search.
Smith: Tech will lead the way. Companies like Cisco, Intel, and HP understand how to spend their way out of a down cycle.
If you could make one change to the interactive marketing industry, what would it be?
Kleinberg: I'd shift the ROI conversation from one of measuring cost to one of measuring value. Agencies are perceived as commodities by many marketers right now. It's because of the scrutiny around what now can be measured easily with digital technology. However, the very real, but intangible value that smart, creative, strategic agencies can provide is overlooked because it might not neatly fit into a spreadsheet.
Nichols: That we consistently act consumer-centrically rather than vehicle-centrically.
Schwartz: Faster uptake on creating metrics around new platforms, new behaviors. A willingness as an industry to move toward standards and evolve old thinking on measurement.
Smith: Systems integration. Enable publisher systems to communicate with agency systems. Of course, in order to do that, they both have major retrofitting of their own systems, and there needs be a lot of across-the-table collaboration.
Lori Luechtefeld is editor of iMedia Connection.
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