Pubcon Proved Itself to be a No-Fluff Conference

I’ll admit that I have a love/hate relationship with industry conferences. I love being around bright, like-minded people who clearly have a strong interest for the subject matter. I also love learning–anything and everything–especially when I can apply what I’ve learned to my team, or even cross-functionally! However, I can feel slighted or even annoyed when I leave a conference. Sometimes the booklets we receive on the first day, some thicker than the ones I carried around in university, are primarily made up of sponsored ads, and the insights provided are high-level, “Google-able” fluff that I could have put together myself if I had a printer and only 30 minutes of prep time. So when I attended my first ever Pubcon in Las Vegas earlier this month, I really didn’t know what to expect. I had heard positive things about the conference but I still wanted to attend from an unbiased standpoint. Each day started at 8:30am, ran until 5:30pm, and consisted of 10 topically different swimlanes with sessions on Content Marketing, Mobile SEO, Social Influencer Marketing and more. Want to know how to better rank organically for your content? Check. Care about optimizing PPC advertisements? Sure thing. What about generating more leads for your website? No problem. How about making so much money you can buy your own island to retire on tomorrow? Not available this year, but a guy can dream.

Keynote Speakers Galore

Throughout this learning-first, no-fluff conference, we had opportunities to hear from industry leaders such as Peter Shankman, Tom Hale of SurveyMonkey, Joost de Valk of Yoast, and Gary Illyes of Google. Each person gave interesting insights from their organization, and explained how it might be applied to your own. However, it was apparent that everyone was most interested in what Gary had to say. Gary Illyes, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, is regarded as a bit of a pseudo-prophet, and many digital publishers hang by his every word (even if he wishes they wouldn’t). Regardless, I had the opportunity to sit and listen to Gary’s morning and afternoon keynotes, and am now here to let you know what we should be on the lookout for when it comes to Google and their ever-dominant search presence. As mentioned in one of our previous posts, SEO Trends for 2018, voice search is increasing at a rapid rate, especially as we’re now starting to interact with new smart devices and their AI personal assistants. In fact, voice search accounts for 20% of all mobile queries on Google. According to Gary, there are plans to make software that’ll be deployed on smart devices featuring the option for voice queries on Android TV in the coming future.

The Importance of Featured Snippets

Featured snippets were also a hot topic at PubCon this year, and Gary had some recommendations on this too. If you weren’t already aware, a featured snippet, displayed at position 0 on Google, extracts a summarized answer from what Google deems to be the most accurate source in order to satisfy a user’s query. If you’re a digital content publisher, this is extremely enticing as you don’t necessarily have to rank in position 1 in order to showcase your content. While featured snippets have been around for a few years, Gary mentioned their ranking algorithm to determine the “best” content for the snippet position is continually changing. I sat in a few workshops where the instructors noted they saw many of their posts be bumped into or out of position 0 without ever adjusting the content on their page based on these volatile algorithmic changes.

Google’s “Mobile First Index”

Since 2016 Google has been experimenting with a “mobile first index” to better serve the majority of their users who, as you guessed, search primarily on mobile devices. Google currently uses a desktop-first index which satisfies the vast majority of websites. Some publishers are nervous as to what a “mobile first index” means for their search rankings and discoverability. However, Gary doesn’t want you to fret; he mentioned during the keynote that if your website’s content and markup is responsive across devices, you don’t need to sweat. Gary also mentioned Google is slowly adding more sites to this index, but only those that have the server capacity, coupled with parities from a content and structured data perspective. Since this is still a work in progress, there still isn’t have a timeline as to when this index will be rolled out.

The Importance of AMP

Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) project was announced in the latter half of 2015. AMP’s purpose is to bring faster content and ad results for its users and publishers. Each AMP-enabled page has 3 core, customized components: HTML, JS, and a cache. At Perk Canada we implemented AMP onto our flagship brands starting with Esports Edition back in September 2016. During one of Gary’s Q&A sessions, an audience member raised a question regarding the cost vs. benefit when migrating to AMP, especially as some networks have plans to release faster download speeds in the coming year. Gary acknowledged this and hypothesized that AMP could be irrelevant in five to 10 years for some countries with those faster speeds. But, for other countries with lesser speeds, Gary mentioned AMP’s publishing technology will still remain critical in order to access the information they need. Like any good pseudo-prophet, Gary concluded his keynote by stating that any good publisher shouldn’t only be focused on the micro changes that Google may be rolling out with their algorithm, but instead focus on the macros of what’s going to improve the results for their users.

Pubcon: An A+ Conference

At the end of my third day at Pubcon Las Vegas, I felt extremely satisfied. I was impressed not only with the quantity of workshops, but also with the quality of each one. Rather than explaining the subject matter at a high-level, each instructor used their own learnings and insights to build the case study they were presenting. I found I made more notes at this conference than in some of my university lectures. I was also surprised to see just how strong the community was that attended: many of them were there for their 9th, 10th or even 17th time. It reminded me of being at a high school reunion, except everyone actually wanted to talk and reconnect, versus politely making small talk until you finally thought of an excuse to grab some more punch.

The State of Communicators

At the beginning of the month I ventured to Boston, MA for Inbound 2017, the world’s biggest conference devoted to inbound marketing. I was fortunate to hear from a stacked roster of inspiring speakers like Brene Brown, Bozoma Saint John, Piera Gelardi, Rand Fishkin, and a woman who embodies speaking truth to power—former First Lady Michelle Obama. You may have noticed that we are in some tense and divided times, both online and off, and being a communicator has never felt so persnickety. Toning down language to appeal broadly, sticking to safe topics, ignoring the news cycle more often than embracing it—we’ve all been extra robotic. So, it’s no surprise that this year’s conference themes centred around humanity. More specifically, the value of relationships, and how culture, belonging, empathy, authenticity and vulnerability can facilitate meaningful connections with consumers. Today’s savvy communicators get that businesses are dependent on people and relationships, and to be successful we need to communicate as humans to other humans.  Essentially, developing mutually-beneficial, lasting relationships as a business translates to better retention, reputation and ROI. This is the philosophy behind the inbound methodology.

How Exactly Do We Build Relationships—Aren’t We Already Supposed to Be Doing That?

Of course we’re already supposed to have the deepest relationships, sexiest products, and most meaningful messages, but if 2017 teaches you one lesson it’s this: how the world is supposed to work, and how it actually does, can be lightyears apart—humans are messy. But messy doesn’t mean that businesses shouldn’t try, fail and learn. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, success is coming from embracing the human condition. By setting a course, staying true and seeking feedback, our brands, products and messages resonate more meaningfully with those who we seek to engage.

Setting Course: Know Your Mission and Why It Matters

Mission matters. This concept was iterated over and over from speakers across all walks of life. Here’s why:

“If people are working hard on a mission they believe in, they call it passion. If people are working hard on a mission they don’t believe in, they call that stress.” – Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot, quoting Simon Sinek.

In the talk below, both Brian and Dharmesh reiterate the value of defining mission, strategic action planning and adapting based on data. Figuring out what the mission is, means we also figure out what the mission isn’t. Learn to say no to projects that don’t align with the mission. Work on less, striving for quality, not quantity. Your bandwidth is finite, seek activities that yield the greatest impact.

Staying True: Know Yourself, Why You Matter and Own It

To truly know where you’re going, you need to know yourself. What’s good about your culture, what’s great about your brand, what’s your unique value proposition as a human being? Piera Gelardi, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Refinery 29, takes us through the process of fearless self-discovery in her talk below, Courageous Creativity.Unfortunately, owning the discoveries you make about yourself, your brand and your business can be the scariest hurdle between mediocrity and greatness. Michelle Poler speaks about overcoming this fear, and it starts by putting yourself out there, making yourself vulnerable, courageously sharing your truths, your journey, your authentic vision—warts and all.Bozoma Saint John reminds us that brands are our neighbours, employers, leaders, representatives, and today’s customers are earned, not by a blemish free record, but by how brands respond to life’s inevitable ups and downs. Do we learn from mistakes, are we providing real value to consumers, are we doing the right thing right? Opening yourself up to those questions can make you vulnerable, but soul seems to be the secret sauce of remarkable brands.

Seeking Feedback: Acknowledge Opportunities, Nurture Them and Grow Better

Now that we’ve awoke, found our mission and are owing our authentic, awesome selves, we need to take inventory, and check to see how closely outcomes align with outputs – get some feedback. Brene Brown spoke about brain trusts, emphasizing that seeking and receiving feedback is critical to growth. Adam Grant encourages us to not just welcome feedback, but to seek it out, and get good at receiving it. Don’t just measure success, but acknowledge shortcomings, weaknesses and failures and treat them as opportunities to learn, change and grow better. But, today’s hardest problem is not just the message, but the cultural lens—and according to SEO guru Rand Fishkin, it’s up to marketers to mind the gap. Rand’s talk “Cultural Conditioning is Mucking Up Our Marketing” dives deep into the biases that hinder marketers from genuinely connecting with people. In the end, powerful growth comes from thinking critically, quantifying strengths and weakness, then moving forward based on diverse insights and feedback.

Onwards, Towards Greatness

The collective emphasis at Inbound2017 was recognizing that we’re all human beings trying to fail forward. Doing this in a way that’s gracious, bold, unique and genuine is as hard, as it is rewarding. Savvy businesses see transactions as relationships. When we nurture these relationships through positive, valuable interactions, we create retention. Retention builds reputation, referrals and ROI, creating a virtuous cycle of growth.Bozoma Saint John, Chief Brands Officer at Uber, sums it up perfectly:

“…Our ancestor’s legacy will forever leave a mark where we’ve been. And I want to leave a mark here, in this time and in this space. I want this place to never be the same once I’ve sashayed through it.”

So ask yourself, once you’ve sashayed through this place called life, what legacy will you have left behind? If you don’t like the answer, set course, stay true and seek feedback—and never be afraid to change for the better.

The Ad Stack Explained

The term ad stack is one you’ve probably heard thrown around agency meetings, watching a business news program, or from the mouth of a well-intentioned uncle trying to figure out what you do for a living. In the modern world of digital marketing, it is a buzz word with many complicated definitions. In a nutshell, the ad stack is the series of companies and technologies on the internet that gets an advertiser’s message in front of the right consumer at the right time, so they will take some sort of desired action like buying a product or contacting a sales rep. What that looks like in practice varies. You could be talking about one large company that offers an out-of-the-box solution (simple but limited), or a custom-built solution that involves plugging in different technologies to fulfill complex marketing objectives. I will try to illustrate the basic idea with the analogy of an apple traveling from its tree to the end consumer, who is hungry for some fruit.

The Advertiser

The first party in the ad stack is the advertiser. Whether they are a brand or the brand’s agency, a humble marketing intern or a full-fledged trading desk, they are trying to find their target audience or consumer, get a message in front of them in the form of an ad impression, and move them through the funnel to complete the marketing objective. Think of them as the apple-eater, whose objective is sales instead of eating a tasty, worm-free apple.

The Demand Side Platform (DSP)

If you were looking to buy an apple, you’d likely go to a grocery store, which can offer you apples at a range of prices, varieties and sizes. Think of the DSP as the grocery store. DSPs provide the UI and functionality required for an advertiser to create and manage their many advertising campaigns. They can choose the demographic, behavioural and other targeting dimensions of their ideal audience and restrict the kinds of impressions that match their objectives (mobile vs. desktop for example). Many also allow advertisers to integrate their direct campaigns (where they have made deals with specific publishers) with various types of open real-time bidding (RTB) campaigns in one platform.

The Ad Exchange

Many grocery stores source the apples their customers want by purchasing them from large produce terminals. Loud and busy, produce terminals are physical markets where the grocery stores can connect with the farmers who grow the produce, learn about the available inventory, negotiate prices, and in real time purchase the product their customers want. Ad exchanges work the same way by connecting DSPs with supply side platforms (more on them in a minute) who have access to the ad impressions advertisers want to reach. In a fraction of a second, the exchange compares the details about the impression (like Phentermine online from the publisher or first, second and third party data about who will see the impression) and the specifics of the advertiser’s campaign (audience & pricing settings they chose in the DSP’s UI). Once it has a list of all eligible advertisers (those who would want to buy this specific impression), the exchange passes forward the ad of the highest bidding advertiser and charges them for the impression. Automatically, ad exchanges perform this function for all kinds of ad formats and all kinds of users, literally millions of times a second. 24/7, 365.

The Supply Side Platform (SSP)

The SSP represents the other side of the exchange (the farmer at the produce terminal). Like the DSP, the SSP is a platform that allows publishers (of both websites and apps) to manage how they monetize the impressions they show their audience. Among many other features, SSPs allow publishers to integrate their existing direct relationships with access to open exchanges, pass along data about their users for more informed ad buying, and set the minimum price an ad impression is worth to them (often opting for other monetization options when active bids are below their threshold). Silagra allow publishers more control than ever to manage the experience of their users so it is inline with their brand, and keep users wanting to come back.

Publishers

Finally, and probably easiest to understand, are the publishers (the apple tree). Through creating great content, developing compelling mobile apps, or whatever it is they do, publishers bring users into the ecosystem by engaging them, curating them, and learning as much about them as possible (in an uninstructive way) so that they can show the right advertiser’s ad, at the right time, and make money.

Where Does Perk Canada Fit?

Perk.com Canada is a digital media publishing company. We develop large, targeted audiences across a range of channels, and deliver them relevant, authentic, engaging content created by experts in the space. We fill the Publisher slot in the ad stack, in the end connecting advertisers with our highly-engaged audiences in non-intrusive ways at the right point in the funnel, to help fulfill advertiser’s objectives.