How could I blog about a conference and not post some party pix? My gosh, it’s become sort of a tradition here at TSB. So here ya go, all you voyeurs out there: lotsa goofy grab shots with my cheap little camera that doesn’t do flash shots worth a damn…so I shoot only with available light, and get all kinds of blur and fuzz and stuff. 
I know its painful for you purists out there (trust me, it hurts me, too), but I just can’t fit in my big camera at these things. I have to travel light. These will still give you a feel for things, I hope, here at ad:tech Chicago last night. The venue was Fulton’s on the River, a huge club/restaurant at Wacker and LaSalle.
I’d always heard the parties were legendary at ad:tech shows. Well, this was the only one happening at this event (at least that I heard of). Even Google, which had a presence here (as an exhibitor), apparently didn’t have a party — a first in my experience! 
(Times getting tough, Eric? I know you’re trying to control that headcount now, but why is the party budget always the first to go?) I did hear WebTrends took some people to the Cubs-Phillies game, but that was about it. There were likely other, smaller gatherings, however — with 3000-some people at this thing. The majority of the attendees turned out for this one, big, official party, however (sponsored by CIMA) — so, it was mobbed. One free drink ticket and some minimal muchies — whoopie. But everyone seemed to be having fun, whether indoors in the AC, or out in the humid air on the crowded, narrow deck alongside the river.
I met some fun people: Mark Gordonson with rich-media company InterPolls, Pasadena — a surfer who lives in Venice, CA, and also surfs down at San O. 
(How do I always manage to meet surfers at conferences? Global tribe, indeed…) He covers the Midwest, so had recently been in Mpls to meet with Target. He said he’s hearing advertisers wanting technology that would let web users pull widgets off their ads to put onto their own SN sites. Pretty cool. Also ran into Manoj Jasra, director of technology for B2B search firm Enquiro in British Columbia. He’s here blogging for his own blog and has a close relationship with WebTrends (but missed the bus to Wrigley Field).
I also met the infamous Ron May of The May Report, a longtime source of tech scoop and gossip in Chicagoland. This guy knows how to work a crowd, collecting cards like mad, and talking into his voice recorder to make notes on the fly…. 
Later, I met a really smart young New Media Account exec for the local ABC affiliate, ABC7Chicago, Farren Ionita. She said she was a dot-bomb startup survivor, but didn’t look old enough. Wow, she asked so many smart questions, my head hurt. I had to tell her I’d email her after the wine wore off. 
But here goes, Farren: you asked what’s one cool thing we need in online advertising but don’t have yet? Okay, listening? It’s the ability to target brand messages to very specific, pinpointed demographics across all the social networking sites that are proliferating out there — thousands and thousands of them (not just the big ones everyone’s heard of). Think long tail, and because all those SN sites need to monetize to stay alive. That’s just got to happen, and I’m betting it will soon. So, there ya have it! 
After a couple Merlots — okay, three, all right? — and a few bites of something so small I could barely taste it, I had to get back to my hotel for some real food. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I was snoozing by 11:30. Had to be fresh for the last day of ad:tech, which I’m betting I’ll like even more.
(I’ll try to get all my party pix uploaded to my Flickr page later.)
Geoff Atkinson, marketing chief at Overstock.com, reiterated that “traffic is just getting so much more expensive to acquire.” His firm started using BT about a year ago. “When a customer first arrives, for example, we log how he or she got there — by a certain keyword, for example. Then, on the next visit, we know that customer and feed them something that’s relevant.” Brent Hieggelke, VP of strategic marketing at Omniture, said when he first joined the firm, his friends thought all this “on-site targeting was hocus-pocus.” But it’s quickly become for real. His firm calls it “automated 1:1 targeting.” The customer hits the site, and their technology builds a profile. “It’s a self-learning predictive modeling engine,” he said. “The optimal content decision can then be sent to the CMS (content management system).” What data is used to select content? “Site behaviors, temporal aspects (such as time of day), environmental aspects, and referrer values,” he said. “This enables companies to quit having those weekly meetings to decide what goes on on the home page.” It now can all be automated, down to the individual. Hieggelke also noted his firm has found that the log-off page is a great place for targeted ads. “Behavioral targeting is bringing marketing back to the marketing world.” A few good questions then came from the audience. The first was “What percentage of users totally wipe out their cookies regularly?” Omniture’s Hieggelke said he’s seen some say as high as 15-30%. “But we find it’s only in the single digits.” A second question related to customers’ concerns for privacy. “We think it’s important to keep a customer mindset,” said Kefta’s Suchet. “Don’t capture too much data — find just what’s relevant to you.” Omniture’s Hieggelke added: “A customer’s name and social security number has no value to us at all.” Suchet added that BT enables campaigns to be “continually learning, changing — you can’t sit still, you must always adjust based on what competitors are doing and so forth.” A final audience question: When building profiles, what data do you use? “Primarily clickstream data,” said Omniture’s Hieggelke, “because that’s easy. But also data from your CRM system, and whatever else is determined to be predictive. Most companies take existing web analystics data and feed that in first.”
Tourists are everywhere here, and the Chicago people are, bar none, the best when it comes to hospitality. Why are we inside on a day like this? 🙂 Anyway, I got here to the conference center about 10:30 and hit the showfloor soon after it opened. Had a great conversation with Mark Carlson, CEO of 
This is a company with technology to help retailers, media companies, and marketers of all types use RSS feeds to sell their wares — instead of struggling with email marketing, which he says has a whole raft of problems. SimpleFeed’s online application has a dead-simple UI that lets even non-tech people set up and manage feeds — PR people, product managers, anybody. No geek needed. The firm counts some 50 customers now, mostly Fortune 1000, but, at a minimum charge of $2000 per month, even some smaller firms are taking advantage of the service. SimpleFeed is a Sequoia-backed company and launched at DEMO ’06. I remembered them from that event, and they’ve come a long way since then, Carlson says, increasing their customer count by 10x. Their partners include many of the major email marketing services – who, surprisingly, don’t see them so much as competition, but as a natural evolution in the practice of online marketing.
The firm is based in the Netherlands (with a new office in SF), and just launched at ad:tech Hamburg in May. Their ads are clickable so the viewer can interact with the video at just the right moment — say, when a car appears, he can click on a logo or ad for the car. The default is that, when clicked, the video pauses, while the viewer goes to the advertiser’s site. The intregration of the ad with the streaming video happens on the viewer’s computer. Ads can be targeted by geography or behavior. “Is anyone else doing this?” I asked cofounder and VP marketing, Menno Biesiot. He said YouTube and Metacafe are working on something similar, but his firm sees this as validation, and leading to standard-setting in this area of much-needed innovation. The software is available now for download at the company’s site, and a demo is available there. I was impressed with the presentation, and with the look and minimalism of the ads. Not too distracting, about as tasteful as ads can be in this medium, from what I’ve seen. Check it out and see what you think. 
No, seriously, I’m getting soo into ad technology and widget technology these days, how could I miss it? And I actually love being on Lake Michigan — literally! It’s being held in the Navy Pier conference center. Lots of good speakers and exhibitors at this one that I want to hear from. Please, definitely look me up if you’re there and think you have something disruptive in the world of advertising and marketing that we should all know about.
I’ll see a lot of my friends and clients at this one….including a bunch of you in my 
Looking forward to seeing many of my media and blogger friends at this one — and, yes, I know a lot of you VCs colleagues will be lurking about, too… 🙂 Nothing beats hearing some 70 startups, many heretofore in stealth mode, pitch their new wares. DEMO rocks! And you’ll read all about it again right here, o faithful readers….
Guys like Brad Feld, VC extraordinaire in Boulder, are involved, too. I just gotta find out more about the the brand of startup mojo those guys have going’ there — it’s awesome! And how can you miss an event with a sales pitch like this:
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