For me, the most interesting panel of the entire conference was the Social Commerce panel on Tuesday. The speakers (from left to right) were:
Jeffrey Taylor, Founder of EONS and most famous for founding Monster.com.
Nathan Freitas, Co-Founder of Cruxy
David Andre, CEO Mall Networks
Geoff Donaker, COO of Yelp
Everything was kicked off by the Moderator, Stephen DiMarco (not pictured) VP of Marketing at Compete.com, saying, "There is much more for marketers to do with social networking than running ads on MySpace." Truly getting involved in the social sites is what he defines as "Social Commerce." Most of the focus was really on how these guys got their networks off the ground and what makes them compelling.
Yelp is a site I use myself and is a great user generated recommendation site for Restaurants, Bars and other local services. Geoff from Yelp says the #1 secret to their success is focusing on the "yelpers" because the reviews they provide are critical to Yelps success. He compared their site to zagat that puts the focus on the business itself and then offers up x reviews. Alternatively, Yelp spotlights the reviewer first and the x businesses they have reviewed second, which feeds the egos of the yelpers. His other main point was "Censorship Kills UGC." Totally agree.
The show stopper for me was some information that Jeff Taylor gave on the ramping up of Eons. Eons is "MySpace for the 50+ Segment" and Jeff proudly stated that he was able to book 6 brands for $1M in advertising each before they even had 1 user! This is an amazing achievement! He says this was possible because most advertisers and media focus on 25-49 and by attacking the 50+ segment he hit an untapped niche that is critical to the success of these unnamed brands.
Intrigued, I went to Eons.com to see who these advertisers were. What's odd is that I saw a lot more direct response advertisers than I expected. With only 400,000 uniques right now and $6M in ads to deliver in the next 18 months for these "brands", I would expect to see more of those brands and no companies like Blair.com that are totally direct response focused. So whats going on? Honestly, I think he stretched his definition of the term "brand" and I bet that this $6M is not CPM media at all. He is counting his chickens before they hatch and they have a lot more to do before he will ever see any of that money. Anyone can get large amounts of CPA and CPC media committed to run on their site...its nothing to brag about. I understand that you need to start somewhere, but the way he pounded his chest on stage I would have expected a little more.
That being said, Jeff Taylor is a proven, successful leader and he will go a long way with this new venture. I wish him luck.
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