I attended a Netimperative Search Marketing roundtable last week to discuss bid management and the future role of agencies in search. It was a good debate but though we started on topic, we roamed through the full spectrum of digital media leaving no pixel unturned.

There seemed to be a sense that as Yahoo was moving to the opaque Panama platform, bid management software was on its death bed. And for traditional, rules-based management systems I agree. They’ve been dying a slow death ever since Google’s market position became so dominant. However, that doesn’t mean technology can’t be applied to manage and optimise bids on opaque marketplaces. It just has to be a whole lot more sophisticated.

There’s a write up and a recording of the session here.