If you’re in Los Angeles or can get to LA tomorrow, we have plans for you!

SearchFuel and GroupM Search are doing a blitz giveaway today on Twitter, giving four (4) people a free VIP pass to MediaPost’s OMMA Mobile, a one-day event where advertisers and industry leaders come together to talk all things mobile marketing. This pass covers your registration for the event, plus the breakfast and lunch on-site.

But you have to act quickly! OMMA Mobile is tomorrow, Thursday, October 29 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza from 8am til 5:30 or so.

For your chance for a free pass, follow these three simple steps by 3pm CST today:

1. Send a Reply or Direct Message (DM) to @SearchFuel on Twitter
2. Tell us you want to go to OMMA Mobile
   
3. Tell us your company name (Sorry, I do need this. Not for marketing purposes – but when we got these passes I had to agree they’d be used for brand advertisers only, so I need to keep my promise.)
   

We’ll draw 4 names from all of the Tweeps who DM us and I’ll DM you back by 3:30pm CST if you’ve won a pass. From there we’ll connect by email or phone to get you registered.

So why should you see and be seen at OMMA Mobile? For starters, it’s a gathering of more than 200 advertisers and mobile marketing experts which makes for a great day of networking and conversation about where the industry is going. GroupM Search is kicking off the day by hosting the breakfast session, featuring a round table discussion with Google, Microsoft, Joule, Outrider and JumpTap about current challenges and opportunities facing the mobile marketplace today. The day unfolds from there as MediaPost’s mobile columnist Steve Smith emcees the event, and a handful of industry leaders take the stage, including a keynote address by John Zehr, SVP and GM of ESPN Mobile. Other speakers and panelists include Kodak, Paramount, the AP and the Weather Channel, as well as  Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and many more panelists from across multiple areas of mobile expertise.

You can check out the full agenda here.

SO GET TO IT! Pull up your favorite Twitter client and send us a tweet to enter to win your pass to OMMA Mobile. See you in LA.

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This post was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider, Friday, January 16, 2009.

It’s become the vogue pastime to prognosticate trends and events to come in the new year. This year these crystal balls are met with inauguration balls, as the calendar not only flips to a new year, but to a new message of hope and change from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. However, for all the testimonials and affirmations that we can change, the economic future for the U.S. appears firmly entrenched in a deep recession. So, unless the events of next Tuesday create a spiritual revival of consumer confidence that coincides with an awakening of the consumer checkbook, it’s safe to say that from a business and marketing perspective this year will be one of great challenge.

In difficult times comes great opportunity — an opportunity for companies to take calculated risks in order to establish and grow market position and leadership. Risk is an inherent factor in life. The risk-adverse have given up looking at their monthly 401k, or 201k depending on your depth of losses, statements. Then again, those with low risk tolerance are likely best staying home with the lights off avoiding the news, peanut butter and low-flying birds.

So where in the search space are the opportunities for greatest calculated risk to be taken? I see a few areas for advertisers, their agencies and the media vendors alike.

New Media
Is 2009 the year of mobile? For the sake of our clients, I hope not. I say that because the value and insights our clients are gaining from mobile are in part possible because the inventory availability is so strong, with little cost pressure. Due to size constraints on devices, we will never see 10 blue links or top and side navigation advertising on mobile platforms. As such, whenever the year of mobile finally does arrive, one can reasonably expect that costs will increase as demand outpaces supply of real estate. Until that time, those into the pool are enjoying greater freedom to play and learn without cost pressures.

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This post was written by Chris Copeland and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider, Friday, December 19, 2008.

Andy Warhol once said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” More recently, rapper Eminem asked if you had one shot, one moment to seize everything you wanted, would you capture it or let it slip away?

A recent meeting I had with Yahoo brought both of these quotes to mind. A Yahoo product rep told our group that the average search session lasts 15 minutes. That includes the back and forth between clicks and all queries in a given session. A week later, I polled a room of savvy client-side marketers on this issue, and the responses I got ranged from 15 seconds to 3 minutes. It wasn’t until guesses were exhausted that someone finally came onto the exceedingly high time expenditure.

This led me to ask the question: If you were willing to spend 15 minutes searching for something, is the current model of back and forth and refinement the best bet for the future? My personal sense is no, but then, the question becomes: What is?

Let’s begin by exploring what search today does well — immediacy — and what it does reasonably well: organization based on relevancy. Clearly that is an oversimplification, but these are at or near the top of the list. Of all that the search experience provides, encyclopedic knowledge and its organization by any set of guidelines is a massive shift in how the general public finds and is exposed to information. The fact someone can go from zero to being conversant on any topic with the help of Google should not be understated in the value equation. People expect Google to find them the best deals, the most insightful data, and generally create order in their otherwise chaotic world of searching for answers.

But it’s the setting of order — and on whose terms — that may cause a seismic shift in what types of platforms will deliver the intersection of content and intent. Today, the single largest arbiter of relevance is Google, period. This is a company that had moved forward with open as its mantra in social and mobile, and remains completely closed in another area: its search engine. Given this is the secret sauce that makes Google what it is, this is understandable. But it presents challenges for a society becoming more intelligent about the Internet and the social nature of the Web. Last month I discussed GoogleWiki, which begins to alter, in a very small way, the open nature of Google rankings, but this is a far cry from where a personalized search results page could get to very quickly.

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From the editor:
Happy new year to all of you. The new year has started off well for GroupM Search as OMMA Magazine and MediaPost announced their honors for 2008 Agency of the Year, recognizing GroupM Search as Best Search Agency. This is a success to be celebrated not only by each of our search brands – Outrider, Beyond Interaction Search, Mediaedge:cia, Mindshare Search and Catalyst Online, but by each and every one of our clients and employees for their thought leadership, integrated search strategies and results, as well as driving industry innovation and conversation in the areas of paid search, SEO, mobile search, social search, local search and more.

Below is the article from OMMA. Cheers, and here’s to a successful 2009.

Best Search: GroupM Search
By Susan Kuchinskas,  Thursday, January 1, 2009

Mass appeal

We bestowed the bronze award in search to GroupM Search – which isn’t a search agency at all, in the traditional sense. And that’s part of the reason they won. As the line between digital and traditional blurs, and clients consolidate their media buys, GroupM has responded by breaking the walls between search, interactive and traditional.

GroupM manages WPP’s media properties: Maxus, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia and Mindshare, as well as Outrider, a dedicated search division, and Catalyst. GroupM Search was developed by merging the search offerings of Outrider, Catalyst, Quisma and 24/7 Real Media. It gets our nod not only for the success of its companies, making the group as a whole the largest agency buyer of search in the world, but also for its innovation in the structuring of its business.

Search is not an isolated direct response medium, and traditional media are driving search, so GroupM wants its agencies to be able to work across the entire spectrum of media and communications, says Chris Copeland, ceo of GroupM Search in the Americas. “There’s an important connection between the mass scale of traditional media, the freedom of digital media, and search, where consumers express their intent,” he says. “When we combine search with other media, it makes all those channels more successful for the client.”

Mission accomplished. With another shuffle of the deck in 2008, GroupM created what is likely the largest search specialist agency. At the same time, it placed branded search units within each of its four agencies, while maintaining the Outrider brand to serve clients that are not also clients of one of the big four. The company’s proprietary bid management platform, Decide DNA, is part of the confederation that falls under the rubric of GroupM Search. The entire search work force, including the team that develops and distributes tools and technology to the agency brands, totals 600.

The approach positions the companies to take advantage of the trend toward client consolidation of media buying. Such wins began in October 2007, when Mediaedge:cia tore all of at&t’s media business away from WPP rivals OMD and Interpublic. Now, says Rob Norman, ceo of GroupM Interaction, “If a client walks through the door of Mediaedge:cia, for example, and wants to buy any kind of advertising, they can buy it through Mediaedge:cia.”

The system works. This year, Dell wanted to consolidate its business, which had been dispersed among scads of vendors. In a big pitch that included all the major holding companies, WPP won with a proposal to have MediaCom handle all media buying – including search.

The GroupM pitch is clear: You want it, we got it. And GroupM Search has integrated search strategy across the board.

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Head for the mountains of…Utah. You were about to finish the Busch beer jingle weren’t you? Ahh, the true brand marketer in you is coming out. Actually, Outrider, SearchFuel and 120 other brand advertisers, search marketers and industry specialists are 8,000 feet up in the snowy mountains of Park City, Utah, for the sixth Search Insider Summit hosted by MediaPost.

If you couldn’t make it to Search Insider Summit this winter but have a question you want posed to the experts here or about a specific topic on the agenda, shoot me a note at SearchFuel. I’ll get the question answered for you and deliver it here on SearchFuel.

A few hours into it and the promised agenda is already delivering. Gord Hotchkiss returned again as emcee, and the morning kicked off with an analysis of the role of search and online marketing in the Barack Obama/2008 Presidential campaign. Check back for a POV about that discussion before Search Insider is over.  Session discussions then looked at the role of analytics and data in search, and best practices in today’s environment of SEO and paid search. Day Two and Three promise to deliver debates about Google, emerging platforms and their relevancy to search, and discussions about in-house marketing in the bigger search world. I’m curious to hear from in-house marketers about what they are doing and the challenges they face that might bring insights into stronger agency relationships.

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