Leech marketing has been an issue for event marketers forever. There’s a serious perception problem out there because posts like this that tout that “You, too, can get edge on the cheap” are completely oblivious to the long-term ramifications of their actions.

One way to counter this thinking is to offer sponsorships at all budget levels that allow even small companies to participate in the event. But it’s also up to us to educate companies within the industry we serve about the fact that if everyone hosted “a massive tailgate outside the venue in a Airstream draped in your logo,” eventually there would be no event left at which they could be “creative.”

I always like to see two areas of interest coming together. In this case, it’s online video and tradeshows. TradeShowNews.tv recently launched.

Looks like a great way to bring your show to anyone who can’t attend and it might just convince them to attend the following year.

It’s pretty cool to see your name as an author on Amazon.com. The Podcast Academy The Business Podcasting Book: Launching, Marketing, and Measuring Your Podcast is now on pre-sale at Amazon.com.

I enjoy writing but it’s hard work. I now understand when authors say they have to force themselves to allocate time every day to writing – and I wrote just a small portion of this one!

If you’re looking for a one-stop shop for business podcasting – this is the book to buy.

Oprah I’m available for your show when you’re ready. My number is on my blog.

After three years in Ontario, California we announced last week that we will be moving the Podcast and New Media Expo in 2008 to Las Vegas- king of tradeshow cities. I’ve been considering it for nearly two years but wanted to make sure the event had solidified itself as the leader in this new space before we made the jump. The pros and cons of moving to Las Vegas are worthy of a separate post so I’ll address that later.

But this post is about something else I’ve discovered over the past week – the blogosphere is not what it claims to be. My gut has always told me this is so and deep down (another way to describe my intuition) I’ve known it for a long time but only this week have I really seen it in action. Friends and business associates I have discussed this with privately have all said, “This is news to you?” And yet very few bloggers and podcasters are talking about it publicly.

Here’s the issue: bloggers, “powncers” and “twittereres” are moderating their comments not just for spam and foul language, but for honest, legitimate posts that tend to disagree with their views. I knew our move to Las Vegas would not be welcomed by everyone. Most humans dislike change, like routine and it’s impossible to please everyone. As an event organizer you have to research and study what’s best for the majority of your attendees and exhibitors and then make a decision.

I knew our decision to move would be welcomed by most everyone – and it has. And for those bloggers, podcasters, and online publishers that disagreed with the move and posted on their blogs about it, I took comfort in knowing that I had dedicated the next several days to leaving explanations in the comments of any negative posts. I mean the New York Times in countless articles has told me many times to simply “join the conversation.” PR experts around the world talk about “joining the conversation.” After all, the blogosphere prides itself on allowing dissenting opinions to be heard and take part in the conversation right?

Wrong.

In the past four days, most of my comments where I have started by saying, “John Doe- thanks for your thoughts on our move. I understand why you may not like it but here’s why we made the decision so you can understand the background” have not shown up in the comments. I never attacked the commenter or even so much as said “you’re wrong.” I simply offered a more detailed explanation in the comments of their post so that I could offer an explanation of the move, an alternative view or in some cases correct blatant errors of fact (wrong dates of the event, etc).

6 of my 8 comments have yet to show up on these blogs or pownce conversations – blogs that talk about priding themselves on being “transparent” yet are anything but. When I’ve been able to find an email address for the blogger, I’ve sent an email with basically the same comments as my comment in their blog and additional information – not one response yet. It’s happened a few times in the past year but not until this week has it hit home for me that the blogosphere is not about “a conversation” if you want that conversation to happen in the comments. The only alternative is to post the responses on your own blog and link to the posts.

Bloggers have every right to moderate comments as they wish. But the “transparency” of the blogosphere seems pretty opaque to me right now.

There’s been a lot of talk for two years about trying to find CPM (cost per thousand) rates for niche audio and video online. My opinion – don’t bother – CPM is broken for anything other than massive traffic, “everyone-in-the world-visits” sites like Yahoo! and Google. I’ve always said this, but never sat down and explained exactly why – here’s my attempt:

The CPM advertising model doesn’t work for the “niche” sites because CPM (cost per thousand) was designed for large, wide demographic sites like Yahoo! or CNN. Because the demographic is so widespread on those sites, the advertiser uses the CPM model because they know that their actual target market is, for example, only 5% of the audience. CPM is based on the premise that you need to waste your impressions on 95% of the audience in order to get to that 5% you really want to hit.

A niche site targets just that 5% and makes it 100% of their audience so that not one impression is wasted. The old model simply doesn’t fit niche sites. Furthermore, if they tried to use that model, they would be grossly undervaluing their content if they try to compare “apples to apples.”

If I’ve confused everyone enough, here’s a final example to explain my point.

If Gatorade wanted to reach triathletes to promote their new Endurance Hydration Formula, they could certainly advertise on Yahoo! Sports to reach the 2% of the audience of that site who are triathletes and pay $25 CPM. 98% of their marketing would be wasted on the football, baseball, hockey, etc. fans. If Yahoo! Sports gets (just for the sake of round numbers so I don’t have to break out my calculator), one million visitors a day, Gatorade would pay $25,000 for that day to reach the 20,000 triathletes.

If a site like EndurancePlanet.com has an audience of 20,000 triathletes, and tried to use the same $25 CPM, Gatorade would pay just $500 to reach the same exact audience! Yet try telling Gatorade their CPM rate is $1,250 – I’d be laughed out of the conference room! Yet, “apples-to-apples” that’s exactly what they’d spend on a CPM model to reach the same target.

Instead of talking about numbers, the thing to do would be to talk about targets. How much is it going to cost me to reach the exact person I want to reach and ignore everyone I don’t – a CPT (cost-per-target) model – that’s the way to truly compare ad rates across any site. That way, Yahoo! gets paid the same amount to advertise to their one million visitors as EndurancePlanet.com does to reach their 20,000 visitors.

By the way, always thinking of the tradeshow angle, this is exactly how I explain why it costs nearly as much to exhibit at the Podcast and New Media Expo as it does to exhibit at NAB. Their audience is much larger of course, but the attendees at our Expo are 100% the exact target market, while only 5% of NAB attendees are their target.

Every so often I check back in on “my baby” EndurancePlanet.com, the podcast I sold a few months ago, and I have to say the new owners are doing a fabulous job. Their passion and deep involvement in endurance sports shines through in each episode and I dare say, the show is much better now than when I was doing it.

I’m thrilled for the listeners and happy that the quality has been taken to the next level.

I’m going to expand this blog a bit to things I find interesting online – but that still have some relation to the events, tradeshow and new media space. Here is my first such post.

Two days ago I went on to Orbitz.com to search for flights from Orange County, CA (John Wayne Airport) to Sarasota, Florida for some meetings I have in May. Then today I was reading an article at the San Francisco Chronicle website and the two ads for Orbitz that popped up around the article mentioned special rates from Orange County to Sarasota.

I knew this technology existed, of course, with browser cookies and such, but this was the first time I had seen it work this way – a customized ad on a totally unrelated website based on information I had searched for on the advertiser’s website a few days earlier. It made me a bit uncomfortable, but at the same time, I’ve never been a big privacy hound and actually find it useful to know that the rates for the flight may have been updated.

It hit home for me big time today that my steps really are being tracked all over the Internet. It’s fascinating and unnerving at the same time.

I’m a little late with this post but Time Magazine’s Person of the Year is a good sign for the Podcast and New Media Expo. I am steering the Expo to be a central event where content creators (like podcasters) will network and learn how to create more compelling media.

I think there is going to be tremendous demand for education in this area and I want the Expo to be the “go-to” place for that. There is definitely a learning curve for creating audio and video (I know – I’ve been learning Sony Vegas for the past couple of weeks and it’s been…interesting) and as more people decide to create media, the Expo will benefit in both attendee and exhibitor numbers.

One of the downsides of being a tradeshow organizer who is deeply involved in the subject matter your show is about (in this case, podcasting) is that you don’t get invited to speak at other events on the subject. Justifiably, the other show organizers see me as a competitor – even though I rarely mention our show when speaking – and never do in those rare occasions where I speak at another tradeshow or conference.

But I love speaking about podcasting and new media so I jump at the chance to do so when invited. UCLA is running an extension course in January entitled “Introduction to New Media Public Relations: Generating Public Awareness with Blogs, Podcasts, RSS, and Websites.” (thanks for trusting me with your class for 90 minutes Eric.) I won’t let you down!

Podcasters have been having a (sometimes heated) discussion for the past two years about metrics for advertisers. Jason Van Orden, one of our speakers for Podcast Expo and an author on the subject, has fanned the fire again with his posts about the subject and I’m glad he has because it’s a discussion that needs to keep happening. But naturally there is a strong lesson for tradeshow owners here that is unrelated to podcast metrics – more on that in a minute.

For some reason, podcasts have been held to a higher standard than all other media when it comes to impressions. If someone only downloads part of a podcast, does that still count as an impression? Scott Bourne, also one of our speakers, says it beautifully here, in a comment on Jason’s post, but here is a clip:

“When I ask them if they only pay magazine publishers for ads when the magazine staff can prove the subscribers did a “complete read” of the magazine, they give me a blank stare. When I ask them if they only pay television producers for ads when the TV staff can prove the viewers watched the “complete commercial,” they give me a blank stare.”

Magazine advertisers don’t pay for ads in only the magazines that were read cover to cover, and TV/radio advertisers don’t pay only when they can prove the viewer/listener saw the entire show. That, coupled with the fact that most ads in podcasts are at the beginning, should begin to settle all of these arguments – partial downloads DO count and are worth every penny as much as a complete download.

Now, what does this have to do with tradeshows? As show organizers we are constantly talking about attendees in the door – in fact rarely do we talk about anything else. Yes it’s important – probably the most important thing about how we sell our events to potential sponsors and exhibitors. But the impressions that are made on the website, in the direct mail we send and in the email marketing we do, is almost an afterthought in terms of the value to the exhibitor. Sure it’s in the bullet points of what they get for their money, but do we really do enough to show the value of those impressions? I’d say we don’t.

Even when that attendee doesn’t come to the show, the sponsor’s and exhibitor’s name (and perhaps logo) have been in front of them in one way or another – and that is valuable! I’m not saying it’s as valuable as a face-to-face conversation in the booth, but let’s not get in the habit of totally discounting the value exhibitors get from getting in front of attendees (by way of direct mail, email and the show website) who don’t actually make it to the event.

The attendee on the show floor is a complete download – the prospect who visits the show website, gets the email or reads the show brochure is a partial download – and BOTH have value and are what we are offering to exhibitors and sponsors.