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Hunter Madsen, Head of Marketing at Yahoo! Canada spoke to a packed house of marketers, PR’s and technology enthusiasts at Toronto’s Imperial Pub last night.

Madsen built on a lecture he had given at the Canadian Marketing Association’s Word of Mouth Marketing Conference just a few weeks before. He addressed the challenges advertisers and publishers face in the age of social media and more specifically, user generated content.

The session was the latest installment of Toronto’s Third Tuesday Social Media and PR Meet Up which, as indicated, takes placed on the third Tuesday of every month. Social media geeks from across the Greater Toronto Area gather for drinks, discussion, and a keynote speaker.

Madsen treated attendees to a forty minute presentation on how Yahoo! and other industry leaders are addressing the challenges of an ever-changing online community.

Some highlights:

- The traditional advertising model between marketers, publishers and consumers has broken as a result of recent innovations in technology.
- 70% of internet users are actively looking for ways to block advertising.
- What to do?
o Advertisers approach the challenge in 3 different ways:

• Crashing the party (placing ads in venues such as YouTube)
• Holding the party (marketer gives up control of the brand and leaves it to fans)
• Outsourcing (paid bloggers, UGC ads such as the Doritos Superbowl commercials)

o Publishers approach the challenge in 3 different ways:

• Hosting UGC platforms and surrounding them with ads.
• Creating products fueled by UGC (Yahoo Answers)
• Playing the UGC editor (Shakira’s mash up of fan videos for “Hips Don’t Lie”)

The presentation was followed by a lengthy Q&A session where Madsen covered everything from the complex nature of UGC ownership to one of Yahoo’s latest initiatives, Up Your Music.

Special guest Shel Holtz of For Immediate Release and author of A Shel of My Former Self was on hand to mingle with Toronto’s blogging community.

Next Third Tuesday will be a special evening with the founders of mesh conference who will discuss the evolution of Toronto’s premiere technology gathering. Just in time for Toronto Technology Week!

Categories: Event Review, Toronto Tech Week