Here we are in the middle of National Small Business Week, which seems like a great time to unveil the agenda and key themes of our upcoming SMB conference, which happens Sept. 29-30 at the Marriott Denver Tech Center. This event helps companies understand what makes SMBs tick so they can more successfully build and sell digital marketing solutions for small-business advertisers.

We are bringing a new look and feel to this year’s SMB conference — a faster pace, deeper audience engagement, a much more tactical focus and truly candid conversations about what it really takes to win in this exciting and challenging space.

​The preliminary SMB 2015 agenda reads as a road map of the most exciting opportunities and vexing challenges facing the local SMB digital marketing ecosystem. Keep an eye here as we add VIPs in the local SMBs as headline speakers, executive interview subjects and panelists.

Our Day 1 Headliner will be a joint session with Chris Terrill and Craig Smith, CEO and COO, respectively, of Home Advisor, a leader in matching home improvement leads with qualified merchants. Chris and Craig have been deep in the SMB trenches and understand what it takes to find the right business model for success in this space. Other headliners, including leaders from many of the premier SMB facing brands, will be announced soon.

Here are a few of the topics we’ll tackle at SMB 2015:

Making Big Data Small Enough for SMBs
Is Location the New Local?
Programmatic for SMBs — Is This a Thing Yet?
Is There a Play for the Long Tail SMB?
We’re Not Going to Say ‘Content is King’ — But It Kinda Is
Crowdfunding and Micro-lending — The Democratization of SMB Finance?
Bringing Hollywood to Main Street — Evolutions in Video Advertising

The post First Look at BIA/Kelsey's SMB 2015 appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to Davenport in October 2013 for a “Wired Internet Network System for the Internet Video Streams of Radio Stations.” Since then, he’s been working with SurferNetwork engaging in testing and concept development while trying to raise industry interest in supporting this idea for how to add new video advertising inventory that is synchronized to the radio station listening experience. As Davenport puts it, “You can double 12 minutes of radio ad inventory into 24 minutes of inventory with ad replacement technology by adding video that is synchronized to the airplay across any Internet connected device.”

One example he pointed out to us when he partnered with C360 Technologies, Inc. and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra to allow radio listeners enjoying a performance to simultaneously view the performance via Internet connections and devices with the added user engagement feature of having 360 degree camera controls to pan around the orchestra. That makes the listening experience more fun and that type of technology can also be applied to commercials and other sponsored content.

We’ve talked about different ways radio broadcasters can leverage their large and often quite loyal audiences over-the-air with synchronized audio technologies such as what Xapp Media is doing. MediaSynced, active in the U.S. and Europe, is another company that offers ways to sync real-time TV and radio with online campaigns. In MediaSynced’s 100 or so campaign deployments with brands like Renault and Sony, the analytics have been encouraging. MediaSync reports CTR increased 113% for Renault with 5.7 million unique impressions and CTR increased 210% for Sony with 3.6 million impressions. Other campaigns showed significantly decreased Costs per Lead, 37% less as compared to a similar RTB programmatic display campaign.

The message Sheridan’s Davenport is trying to bring to the radio industry is an important one and adds generally to the potential digital arsenal radio broadcasters can use to generate significant value by leveraging their valuable over-the-air assets with compelling new Internet technologies tied specifically to that asset.

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