OK, I know… SES London 2008 show (February 19-21) already started, while I’m still publishing pre-interviews.

Truth is that I am at SES London 2008 since yesterday, and Steven Kaufman, Senior VP at Digitas (a Publicis group company), sent me his feedback two days ago – I just couldn’t blog as I have been traveling… when are we going to have onboard free wi-fi on International flight? (Lufthansa already offers it, by the way).

So here is the last of the SES London 2008 pre-interviews, featuring today Steven Kaufman, who just spoke at a SES London 2008 session about Global topics in search.

You are a Senior VP at Digitas – can you tell us about your role at Digitas?

I have a number of roles at Digitas. First I manage our NY media capability. This means being accountable for the entire media group from an administrative perspective which ranges from making sure everyone is working on client business to ensuring people do their timesheets on time. I also manage specific parts of client business.

And lastly, I am responsible for our search engine marketing practice across offices. This means working with my team to develop our strategy, our market differentiators, evaluate tools and techniques, maintaining relationships with the engines... It certainly keeps me busy.

Digitas is part of the Publicis Group – how is search doing in the big world of advertisers, still struggling to get included in the media plan, or on its way to a full integration with other online and offline channels?

I think we have been lucky in that search is often the first thing funded - and we are being pressed by our clients all the time to spend more on search - it works and it drives high quality customers so our clients want more.

It is hard to get them to understand that we can't just make more search volume for them. We can closely integrate with other online and offline efforts to make sure we are in a position to capture the search volume those channels create, but we cannot make more people search on our own. Instead we spend our time optimizing our current campaigns to make them even more efficient.

You will be speaking in London at a Global panel. Can you give us some anticipation from your presentation? Can you give us a brief insight on the differences or similarities between the US and the European search markets? And what about Asia ?

Good question. I think that at the core of search as a channel, market differences aren't that significant. People search and around the world, much of this behavior is consistent.

Assuming you are a recognizable brand, your brand terms are going to drive significant, efficient volume. Tail terms are where markets may behave differently based on local nuances. And then there are the engines that dominate. As dominating as Google is in the US , it has even more share in the UK . And there are other players in Asia .

A lot of US speakers this year at SES London, more than usual – is the US finally paying attention at the local European search markets or is this focus just on London and the UK?

I think that you can't help but think global now. The world from a business perspective has really gotten flat. If you are selling a product in the US , there is no reason you can't offer it globally. With a few toggles to your account on Google, your ad can now appear around the world. And with shipping possibilities, you can deliver your product anyplace in the world in a few days if not overnight. Almost every RFP we receive these days has a global component to it.

Global local search markets, but we always talk about the search engine marketing industry. What about news and mobile search around the world?

I don't know a whole lot about this but I think that Universal Search is going to address much of this - the engines are all working to refine their listings to include as much relevant information as possible - and as more of the world's information gets indexed, expect it to appear in your search results.

Things like the iPhone promise to change the way we consume data via mobile applications. I think we have only started to scratch the surface of the opportunity here and things like the iPhone and Android are going to continue to change the game.

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Thank you Steven for your time and search knowledge!

For those interested in catching up in person with Steven Kaufman at SES London 2008, he will be speaking at another couple of sessions today: the early morning Keynote Roundtable: The Changing Search World, and also at the Compare and Contrast: Ad Programs Strategies panel in the afternoon.

Today is also a good day to catch up with me after the Blog & Feed Search SEO panel where I will be speaking before lunchtime. Just come to say hi!!