This week I was kindly taken to the Cannes Lion Advertising Festival by Microsoft Advertising. Had a great time, here’s a short video from Mel Carson summing up the week.

It’s SMX London on Monday and Tuesday next week. I’m speaking on both days. Monday it’s about Advanced PPC Tactics, Tuesday is about making sense of all the data that SEM creates. If you’re attending then come along to say hello!

It’s nearly February, so that must mean it’s not long until the Search Engine Strategies conference hits London. This year it’s 15th-19th February at the Business Design Centre in Islington (as you can tell from the enormous graphic at the foot of this post).

I’m speaking on Tuesday 16th on the keynote “State of the U.K. Industry Discussion Panel“. I think 2010 could be a year of significant change, so I’m sure we’ll have an extremely healthy debate.

If you want to attend, then get yourself a pass by the end of the week and you can save £100.

It’s ad:tech London in a couple of weeks (22-23 September) and I’m very excited about the Efficient Frontier Search Theatre. This year at ad:tech we’ve decided to try something a little different, so we’re putting on an array of sessions about different aspects search.

There are 7 free sessions each day, and we’ve timed them so they don’t clash with the many other great events happening around the show. We’re also presenting with colleagues and partners from Google, Microsoft and Ayima to give a really well-rounded set of discussions.

Finally, I’m also presenting in the afternoon on Tuesday 22nd.

Look forward to seeing you there!

I spoke yesterday at the IAB Engage for Search event at the CBI conference centre in Centre Point. It was a very enjoyable morning and there’s a great write up on the IAB site. There’s also some good photos on Flickr.

On a personal note I can say the lunch afterwards was excellent. At these kind of conferences lunch is usually dull, but the apple crumble with custard was lovely!

This week I’m speaking at Search Engine Strategies London. I’m on two panels:

• Search Industry Update: A look at what the recent trends are in paid search. I’ll be discussing the numbers from EF’s latest quarterly spend report. (Tuesday at 11am).
• Ads in a Quality Score World: I’ll go through what makes up Quality Score, how you can optimise and what to do if things go wrong. (Wednesday at 2:15pm).

If you’re going to SES then come along and say hello.

When WPP announced last year that it was acquiring 24/7 Realmedia for $649m, we were all a little surprised.  Since then, there's been plenty of speculation of how exactly WPP is going to place 24/7 within its operating group.

Let's hope the 24/7 stand at this week's Online Marketing Show is no indicator of future plans.

I was at EyeforTravel.com’s Travel Distribution Summit this week at the Business Design Centre in Islington. I noticed a new type of exhibitor there that I fear will hit us from behind: masseuses. The biggest stand by far belonged to some massage company. At Internet World last month there must have been half-a-dozen stalls that offered a rub down. Trade shows can be a pain in the neck – perhaps this is just the market responding to that demand.

I spent part of last week at Internet World, a three day event at Earls Court Exhibition Centre. More accurately it was at ‘Earls Court 2′, a name entirely without imagination. Surely ‘Earls Court: The Reckoning’ or ‘Earls Court Strikes Back’ would have given it a bit more umph. Anyway, it is a vast indoor arena that was stuffed full of every kind of online technology and marketing company that you could imagine.

Although I’m not a big fan of exhibitions, they are a good chance to catch up with old colleagues and business partners, and to get a measure of what the digerati are thinking. I also contributed to a panel on search on Thursday morning, together with Amanda Davie (i-level), Hedley Aylott (Summit Media) and Jonty Kelt (DoubleClick).

I picked up on that advertisers and agencies are still struggling to manage large, complex search campaigns. One person remarked that search required the most work of all the media they planned, and was the least profitable. Another expressed dissatisfaction with the tool he was currently using, questioning what it really did to make his team efficient and effective. Both of these comments came from agencies.

Paid search management still has a long way to go.