Here's What You Missed at Marin Masters SF, 2013

Our fourth annual Marin Masters event took place on Tuesday in San Francisco, and we’d like to thank all who came for making it such a success! This special event brings together top digital marketers to discuss emerging strategies, best practices, and what comes next. And, what event would be complete without some music, food and drinks?

This year we welcomed guest speakers Cameron Urry from Extra Space Storage, and Joe Stephens from Yahoo. If you couldn’t make it, read on to get some of the highlights and we hope to see you next time!

Here’s what you missed:

There’s great power in personalization. Cameron’s team at Extra Space Storage is using complex data to create what they call “personas in search.” By understanding what kind of visitors they get and how valuable those visitors are, the team is able to create meaningful personality categories and use them to execute more intelligent bidding. Joe from Yahoo also spoke on this theme, discussing how the Yahoo! Bing Network is striving to advance personalized search retargeting to benefit consumers and advertisers alike.

Audience data is key. In the search marketing world, advertisers often focus entirely on getting their message out there, despite iffy knowledge about who their audience really is. Looking ahead, managing complex data to really understand audiences is going to be huge.

Innovative ad types are making a splash. Joe from Yahoo dished on the unique and innovative ad types available through the Yahoo! Bing Network, including Yahoo’s latest native ad format: stream ads. Featured on many of Yahoo’s popular sites, stream ads provide personalized and useful offerings as part of a user’s content stream. Product Ads are a hot topic, as well.

There’s more to come! We’re excited to be in such an innovative field, with lots of rapid growth and change. Our CMO, Matt Ackley, shared his strong vision of what’s in store for the world of online advertising. And our VP of Product Management, Wesley MacLaggan, gave an insightful overview of the Marin Product Roadmap.