Learning Advanced Online Advertising at SMX

With all the different types of online advertising growing and changing almost as fast as the Internet itself we are always working to stay up to date.  That is why IC Agency headed to the United States to attend SMX Advanced in Seattle June 2nd and 3rd.  While there are a lot of great advertising events in Europe including some from SMX there is no event worldwide that can match the tracks and attendees that are at SMX Advanced. 

SMX Advanced often is a place where companies make announcements and new features are released.  At this year’s event Google shared a lot about the AdWords Quality Score and new SEO guidelines coming soon to the algorithm but the biggest event was Microsoft officially launch bing.  Microsoft was at the event with several of the developers of bing showing off the functionality and features and answering questions about the future of bing and Microsoft.

Almost like a bunch of friends getting around a table and sharing at SMX Advanced people freely share industry insights, such as Frederick Vallaeys from Google unveiling more on how the Quality Score works at AdWords, agencies sharing optimization insights which included how to give any AdWords account an instant QS boost.

Other insights came from Laura Lippay from Yahoo! on SEO and from Derrick Wheeler from Microsoft showing how Microsoft’s team handles SEO which included a brief introduction into the new SEO toolkit from Microsoft.  All these things really make a difference to how SEO and online advertising works for our clients and while some of the things discussed are still not public knowledge they are what is happening now.

Since this is the only event worldwide that offers this level of insight the advertising elite from Europe where in attendance including some from Germany, France, Spain, the UK and a some even came in from Asia, but most of the attendees are from the United States as that market is still on average running ahead of the rest of the world, but hopefully in future years it becomes more of a International event.

Another great advantage of attending an event like this in the United States is getting to speak first hand to the people that created or manage the tools we all use daily.  During this event we had several talks with the various management teams at Google as one of their largest development teams based in Seattle but the one company facebook we normally pass by this time we ended up spending a few hours talking with.

According to Google facebook in Switzerland is the most used website with 1.8 million users that generate 950 million page views monthly and with the new systems from facebook, targeting those users is easy and effective.  That is while even though debate about connecting luxury brands to facebook never ends these targeting options and ad formats make advertising on facebook a viable option to target even the most sophisticated and discerning users.

What is next for IC Agency? Well there are always the regional SMX, SES, ad:tech and smaller regional events in which we attend, but we do hope with the help of other agencies, clients and the Internet community as a whole that in the coming years Switzerland can attract higher level advertising events. Maybe we will even see SMX Advanced doing a European focused event based in Switzerland?