Highlights From OMMA Global 2010

Over the past two days, PSFK has been checking out a handful of panels and booths at the OMMA Global Conference happening in New York.

Covering a wide variety of digital marketing tools, the conference’s various panels and keynote sessions tackled pressing issues and innovations in the fields of audience analysis, media spend optimization, and (of course) social media.

Here are some highlights from the show:

Google’s Big Move Into Display Advertising

Google’s presence echoed throughout the entire conference. It’s recent acquisitions of Teracent and Invite Media, in addition to it’s ‘Watch This Space‘ campaign verify that Google is trying to grow it’s display business significantly. We can expect to see further integration of these entities into Double Click, as the behemoth moves into technologies that enable advertisers and agencies to customize their ads, re-target them to, serve them to various publishers, automate optimizations based on key performance indicators, and so forth.

Rise in Access to Data, Audiences, Consumer Insights, & Media Inventory

This is the clearest trend when it comes to the various businesses stationed at the booths. A significant batch of the 50 companies were software and technology developers aimed at making media planning and buying easier for agencies and clients. OMMA attendees had the opportunity to watch live demos and sample innovative multi-purpose dashboards.

Other companies focused solely on the audience piece of online targeting or analyze consumer semantics and contexts. While not entirely new, these types of companies typically have real-time applications that gather deep demographic, psychographic information to target more efficiently and place ads in front of the right people at the right time.

Everyone Is Still Confused About Social Media

Despite the lengthy conversations that have taken place around and about social media, this front of digital media still remains quite raw. Some companies claim they have it figured out, while others are calling for a complete overhaul of how digital is measured. Many have developed hubs that simplify the process of managing online communities across different platforms, but we are not at the stage where there is a sense of cohesion on best practices when it comes to social media.

OMMA Global New York 2010