"TRANSFORMING CLASSIFIEDS"
MIAMI GENERAL MEETING, 5-8 NOVEMBER 2008
As online classifieds become more and more about connecting buyers and sellers in their local area, and the technologies to deliver location-specific information to searchers proliferate, the ICMA autumn conference will focus on the challenges and opportunities that these changes represent for classified media publishers.
The format of the GM will be as in Amsterdam, i.e. a full 3 days of sessions from Thursday to Saturday, with delegates arriving on Wednesday to enjoy lunch, an afternoon activity and the Welcome Reception and Dinner.
The proposed programme is posted below and speakers will be confirmed throughout the spring and summer - check back for latest updates!
QUICK LINKS
Wednesday 5 November
Thursday 6 November - Keynote Address, Plenary Sessions
Friday 7 November - Plenary Sessions, Workshops
Saturday 8 November - Publishers' Meeting, Sales Managers' Workshop
Wednesday 5 November
11.00-13.30 Registration
12.00-13.00 Lunch
14.00 - 16.00 Teambuilding Event
19.00 - 22.30 Welcome Reception and Dinner
Thursday 6 November
Session 1 Chairperson's Opening
Keynote Address
Session 2 Moving Pictures - what are the opportunities for classified media publishers?
A panel session comprising some of the leading practitioners of video classified advertising, analysts and technology providers will describe and discuss how video is performing, what business models can underpin it, and what are the do's and don't's of successful (and simple) implementation. With plenty of time for Q&A, this is a real chance to get to grips with this exciting new medium.
Lunch
Session 3 The new verticals (programmed by the Kelsey Group)
This session will look at the increasing number of vertical specialist sites which are carving our new niches for themselves in the traditional world of established horizontal sites. Is deeper and more specialist necessarily better? And what do they need to do to deliver better value to both advertisers and users? Plus a look at the specialist vertical search engines which are popping up all over...
Session 4 Enhanced advertising (programmed by the Kelsey Group)
Gone are the days when a sales person offered an advertiser the three choices of a lineage, semi-display or photo-ad. Nowadays, even C2C advertisers have much higher expectations of how they can present their products and services most effectively, and with publishers need to make up those margins, there are many new advertising offerings and formats available - how are they performing and what's just around the corner?
Evening: Group Cuban-style dinner event
Friday 7 November
Session 1 Mobile, mapping, geo-location and more...
For both technophiles and technophobes, this session will address and review some of the emerging technologies which are enabling local search products. How can these added-value services be easily and profitably integrated into classified sites, and most importantly, how can they drive traffic and be monetized? A business perspective on a technical issue...
Session 2 Focus on real-estate and local search
A dedicated session exploring the strides that the real-estate verticals have made in the local search space in recent years. After all, the neighbourhood that buyers are searching in is usually pretty clearly defined so how have the major players leveraged this natural preference and built complementary functionality to support it? What can classified media publishers learn from their experiences?
Lunch
Session 3 & 4 Search Workshops
A small change from previous GM's, in Miami we will be offering 3 specialist search workshops which will run concurrently for a full afternoon (2 sessions) to enable the workshop leaders and participants to really delve deeply into their subjects.
WORKSHOP 1 - GOOGLE ANALYTICS
This workshop will help publishers leverage the power of Google Analytics, Google's free site-performance tracking and monitoring tool. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it, and the workshop will help participants better understand the detailed data that can be derived from weblog files, and crucially, what you can do to improve your site's performance.
WORKSHOP 2 - SEO/SEM (SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION/SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING)
Following the extraordinary success of the Search Lab in February, there will be a further special session to assist publishers in gaining better placement on the search engines' first page of organic results as well as managing their SEM programmes and budgets to best effect. With 30-50% of traffic to classified site typically coming from search engines, this is a session you simply can't afford to miss!
WORKSHOP 3 - MONETISING SEARCH
Why should Google (and Yahoo!, MSN et all...) get all the revenue from the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) model when search on classified sites can generate serious income for publishers themselves? But what platform should publishers invest in and how can sales people be trained to best market this new offering to advertisers? A masterclass in making money from search...
Evening: Free time to enjoy the many fine dining and nightlife experiences that Miami offers
Saturday 8 November
Session 1, 2 & 3 Publishers' Meeting
Session 1, 2 & 3 Sales Managers' Workshop
Session 4 Business Meeting
Evening: Gala Party
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