Learnings from the OMR Conference 2018

I listened to great speakers like Lars Silberbauer, Social Media Director at Lego or Andreas Briese, CE Partnership Director at YouTube, pitched on the stage of the Next Media Accelerator and explained what my company tubics does (= a YouTube SEO platform) about a hundred times.But here’s 5 very simple learnings that I took home from this massive event:

Video is everything

As the founder of a YouTube tech startup my opinion may be a little biased but no matter if you looked at the big booths of Facebook and Google, big agencies or startups that connect influencers to brands everybody seems to position himself as an expert for video content. There was even a conference tour dedicated to the topic of video marketing. The NY Times claims that we already entered the “post-text future”.

MarTech is not dead

As a Software Tool that could be categorized as MarTech (= Marketing Technology), we heard several times that the big time of MarTech is over. Investors rather like to talk about AI or blockchain. But looking at the numerous successful MarTech companies that just start to reach a mainstream audience and to make serious profits it looks like the trend for MarTech will be going upwards for quite some more time until we will see any signs for consolidation or decline. I don’t know exactly what’s the percentage of service-based vs. software-based companies among the over 300 exhibitors of OMR but I would say that the majority were software businesses.

Online Marketing companies need to specialize

While companies, people, and budgets in Online Marketing are getting more and bigger it increasingly gets more difficult to be an overall expert in Online Marketing. The larger the cake gets the more it makes sense to specialize in one of the many different disciplines (performance marketing, search, SEA, analytics, social media management) that Online Marketing covers.

Traditional marketers and publishers are deeply afraid of the future

While many media agencies, publishers or traditional advertising agencies see their customer base eroding and their budgets shifting towards digital, smart agencies start to look for partners to stay competitive and ways to shift or nurture their business models.

Digital Marketing Conferences are a very physical affair

In spite of that, there are thousands of people at an online marketing conference that stare into their smartphones or take photos or videos for their blogs and social media, those that get out the most of their presence on such a conference are for sure those that have the most in-person meetings with potential customers. And the most crowded booths were the ones with the best beverages.