I largely agree with your comments about Dave's presentation. It's a treat to hear candid and insightful commentary from someone who is thinking and doing the same things as much of our advertiser base. It's too bad his session was away from the main floor of the conference, and that a simultaneous session was going on with Anne Holland, who is always a compelling speaker as well.
Dave clearly understands the dynamics driving the online directory marketplace, and the varieties of ways directories, as intermediaries, are seeking to differentiate themselves from Google. Google has pretty much killed the future for traditional b2b directories, at least for those who simply aggregate contact information and serve it up in a structure that has more ties to their print roots than to how users want to access the information. Publishers need to provide unique, valuable content in an application that is truly useful to end-users in order to create a viable marketplace for their advertisers.
All that said, Dave's on the leading edge of the curve for typical marketers in his space. And as businesses that are interested in making money today, publishers respond to where and how their less sophisticated customers want to spend their marketing budgets. We have a responsibility to our customers to deliver value for their investment, but many are less forward thinking in their expectations of what that means, at least for today.
Hugh
p.s. Dave probably has gotten this feedback already, but I can't emphasize enough the value of adding conversion rate (in his case, I believe that would be leads that result in an RFQ) into the Google value equation. A little time and money spent here may put a bit better perspective on the net benefits of Google adwords, which as one who also advertises with them, I believe are highly overrated.
Hugh--
Thanks for agreeing and additional comments. You make the situation sound dire, which I may have avoided, but you are closer to right. Its too bad the laggards keep the directories in their comfort zone.
As to Google conversion rates, I do track those. And they look poor, but there isn't anything to compare them with. Am looking at client-side tracking software that can help with that, tho.
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