Thank You PPC Summit

Posted on March 6th, 2008 in PPC Search

Several weeks ago, Nickycakes stumbled the website for PPC Summit. Reading that they were having one of their events in Boston (home of Nicky) a few weeks later, the Cakes emailed them on a whim requesting a press pass. They responded pretty quick saying they’d be happy to have him.

First a little background on the conference. It’s held several times a year at different locations around the country. The price is about $1k for a two day pass which includes everything. A big breakfast, lunch, and sessions all day on different aspects of PPC marketing. There are always simultaneous “basic” and “advanced” sessions going on with topics ranging from picking keywords to automatic bid management algorithms.

Admittedly, Nickycakes was pretty biased going into it. From the speaker lineup and subjects listed, it seemed like a big advertisement for the big 3 search networks and some SEM services. While this proved to be partially true, on a whole, the conference was quite good and had a lot of juicy info for any level of PPC marketer.

Sadly, due to getting sick, the Cakes was only able to attend the first day of the conference, but that part ended up being really good. The keynotes sucked. The one at breakfast was by this chick from Microsoft Adcenter who had very little idea about the service she was promoting. The one at lunch was by the CEO of Sedo who was obviously trying to tell everyone why they needed to buy auctioned domains from them. But some of the smaller sessions were awesome. The best, by far, was the advanced session on MSN Search marketing by Michael Behrens, VP of E-mail marketing at WebMetro. The Cakes actually had lunch with the dude not knowing that he was giving the MSN talk later that day. He was one of the only people there who really knew his stuff when it came to PPC. If you ever have a chance to see a talk on anything by this guy, or if you’re a conference person looking for a speaker, this guy is worth the money, for real.

The funny thing was, pretty much everyone there was completely or mostly inexperienced when it came to PPC marketing. Probably 80% of the attendees were sent by their employers to learn how to advertise their business on the internet. One chick Nicky talked to outside the hotel worked for a business promoting “remote access” software for PC’s. When asked how her product was better than a free solution like VNC, she couldn’t even answer. She just said it was better because it was “web based” so you could access it anywhere (????). Good luck on recouping the $1000 loss on sending that chick to PPC summit.

The only other affiliate marketer Nickycakes noticed there was Amit Mehta, mentioned late last year in the top 10 worst make money online sites post. Guess he was looking for new ways to promote his network of affiliate sites in the background check niche. Good luck doggie.

Overall, it was a great experience, and would have been totally worth the money if Nickycakes had to personally front the coin for it. It definitely gets the Cakes mushroom stamp of approval, and whether you’re a newb or a pro at PPC, it would be worth checking it out when it comes to your area. They’re having conferences in Vancouver, London, San Fran, and LA later this year.

Thanks again Karen and the rest of the folks at PPC Summit.

Keep it real.