JayWeintraub.com - Internet Advertising Analysis and Growth Insights

LeadsCon Las Vegas 2009 Update

For those who don't know, my excuse for not writing enough, besides my litmus test of "Is Andrew going to like this?" is LeadsCon, the tradeshow that I run for the online customer acquisition space. The planning for the show has reached a point where I wanted to provide an update / overview.

Last year's show, the inaugural event, drew just north of 600 people from 250 companies. The first question I often get is "Will this show be bigger?" While we are trending ahead, I don't want to take anything for granted. I realize that LeadsCon is a marketing expense in a year of many economic and market challenges, but those challenges have proven a strong motivator to continually enhance the show's value. Which is why for 2009, I say we will be bigger and better, but just as relevant. 

LeadsCon is designed for a wide range of companies - from lead buyers to lead sellers, technology solution providers to investors. Its goal is to advance online customer acquisition and to showcase the best companies and minds in this, a powerful type, of online advertising. For those going and/or thinking about going, here is what is in store for you. (Disclaimer: I tried but imperfectly to hold back on the marketing speak.)

Keynote Speaker Dan Ariely

Headlining LeadsCon Las Vegas 2009 is keynote speaker and best selling author of Predictably Irrational Dan Ariely. Listen to the speech that will change the way you view your decisions and how your customers interact with you.

I read his book, and by the second chapter, I said, I'll pay whatever it takes to have. Perhaps irrational, but your gain. For those who have yet to learn of Dr. Ariely, this award-winning, MIT behavioral economist, shows what we marketers always knew that people do not we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Not only do people make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes. But knowledge is power.

While you may not, your customers consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. I, mean others, fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet, as his enlightening studies show, these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational. It's not luck that Starbucks trained us to pay $4 for coffee. It's their understanding of our irrationality.

Relevant Panels

This year is unlike any other in our industry's past. I feel LeadsCon does a good job of focusing on the relevant issues, i.e. with content designed to spark ideas and produce actionable results once you return to the office. View the program here.   

260+ 400+ Companies to Meet

Already, more than 400 companies have signed up to attend LeadsCon, representing perhaps the best mix of big and small, private and public in online customer acquisition. I'm excited to see the deals that will transpire knowing who is coming already. See the full list here. 

All-Star Speakers

The content is only as good as the people delivering it. From a keynote that will pay for the trip alone to the two days of thought-provoking panels with 50+ of the leading minds in online customers acquisition, LeadsCon I hope has something for just about everyone. 

Amazing Room Rates

We all want a great room at a great rate, especially this year when cost-cutting and cash preservation is top of mind. LeadsCon and the Mirage are here to help. You get a completely renovated room at an off-strip price - $95/night. Suggested travel dates: Check-in March 3, 2009. Check out March, 6, 2009. You will want to make sure you stay around for the almost famous LeadsCon Party the evening of March 5th hosted by All Web Leads and Tree.com. 

Mark your calendars. Make your travel plans. March 4 -5, 2009 is right around the corner. Here is what is in store for you. 

Sponsors:

Looking for the discount are you? OK. You made it this far. (New registrations only.)

What If Acquisitions - Facebook and Meebo

One expects many things from the Wall Street Journal, but reporting on new web sites before they become mainstream is not among them. Yet, it was through an article in the WSJ Online that led me to a site which has become an integral part of my daily computing life - Meebo. It was in 2005, during ad:tech the WSJ Online ran a story about Meebo (cached page). For those that don't know Meebo, the now three-plus year old article still summarizes it well. Meebo lets "anyone with an Internet connection send instant messages via major services, [AIM, YIM, MSN, GChat, etc.] without needing to download the messaging software to their PCs.

Meebo is to instant messaging what Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or Gmail (among the leaders) are to email. Instead of needing to be at your own computer to check email, you simply need a web browser. It's a such a simple concept and one we take for granted, but that same simplicity had yet to make its way ot instant messaging. Some of the major chat clients offered web based versions, but they were clunky, slow, and not fully featured. And, if you had more than one client, you would need to have more than one window open and flip back and forth.

Just as not everyone has the same email extension, not everyone uses the same instant messaging client, and people routinely would download, and use simultaneously, multiple chat programs. Doing that is just enough of a hassle that it made Trillian such a success. But Trillian was also a download, which added a slight but significant restraint on the use of instant messaging; you had to use a machine that was yours or one that had Trillian or that you could install it with relative comfort. Not so with Meebo. And, it's not just that Meebo created arguably the first web based aggregator, it's that they did it so slickly as to make you not miss a download. That was the key. The gave users no reason to switch back.

Three plus years since reading that article, I continue to use instant messaging daily and Meebo. I've watched as they increase the product suite and look for ways to monetize what they created. Theirs is a classic dilemma - a great product but one that was created and funded on a potential acquisition happening not on it becoming a profitable, stand alone business. Had times not turned so difficult globally, they would probably have been acquired by now. The question, though, was always, by whom. The logical choices are those that Meebo works with. In my opinion, it won't be AOL, Yahoo, or MSN (luckily for Meebo). That leaves a few others - Google, MySpace, and Facebook. 

Perhaps it is because I don't fully understand Twitter or its power that I don't fully understand the appeal or value of a Twitter acquisition by Facebook. It hasn't become essential yet, although the sites that create functionality for Twitter have, as I use Twitter much more than I would were it not for them. Instant messaging on the other hand, I get and can't live without. While, it's decidedly old school, I think that many of the younger generation use it as well. It hasn't been completely replaced by social networking. If that were the case, then social networks wouldn't focus on offering their own versions. In other words, instant messaging and social networking are not mutually exclusive. They are both forms of communication, with instant messaging being more vertical than Facebook which is more horizontal and inclusive of instant messaging.

In my opinion, if Facebook wants to enhance its position, it needs to improve its vertical tools that enable communication, and none is better than instant messaging. In other words, pick up Meebo, who can do what the current Facebook cannot - extend its use when not on Facebook but who without Facebook doesn't offer Facebook users much incentive to use its service. Additionally, Facebook would as a result, create more active users among those that might use other chat programs and have a Facebook account but not use it that much. Now, I'm sure there are some nice holes in this, a definite late night pondering, but any time I find myself switching back and forth between two sites, there seems value in making them one.