The conference portion of Pubcon ended yesterday. Exhibitors pulled down their booths promptly at about 5pm. It would be great if there was more time in between sessions to visit the exhibit hall though. Overall, it was a great show and opportunity to connect with many of the leaders in search marketing.
Yahoo drew a lot of attention to the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) program and seems very committed to building a great program for publishers and advertisers.
Yahoo also announced the availability for blog publishers that are participating in the beta YPN program to place ads in their RSS feeds. That’s something that I will be testing with this blog very soon. Feedback is welcome.
Google had quite a week with announcements. At the conference, the “secret topic” at the Google sponsored lunch was not about Google Base, although that went live this week, but about Google Analytics.
I asked what the “real” business reason was, for offering Urchin/Google Analytics for free. Lawrence from Google stuck to the party line on making analytics more transparent to search marketers, citing a study which reported that less than 20% of search marketers effectively use analytics. Also, if offering Google Analytics for free helps AdWords signups, then that’s icing on the cake. Watch for an interview with Brett Crosby on Google Analytics in the next few weeks.
Today is the actual “Pubcon” part of the conference where it’s all about networking over at the NY NY casino.
I have posts on the Super Session, Blogging for Fun and Profit as well as Search Marketing with PPC to post. In both cases, the battery on my big old Dell ran out and I had to go “old school” and actually take notes in a note book. Those will be added by Friday.
If you would like to read more comprehensive coverage of the Pubcon 10 conference, please be sure to read Search Engine Roundtable by Barry Schwartz of RustyBrick.
Next up for Search Marketing conferences is the Chicago SES Dec 5-8.
Tags: Pubcon, YPN, Yahoo, Google Analytics, Google Base, WebmasterWorld
