It is only fitting that the 2006 ad:tech New York show took place immediately following the New York City Marathon. Runners proudly brandishing their medals from this year’s race were seen throughout the Hilton lobby just as runners of a very different stripe – the Internet marketing professional – ran into the Big Apple. The marketing runners were here for a very different race – scrambling from booth, to meeting, to seminar, to keynote, to coffee meeting, to cocktail lounge, to sponsor party – in search of that elusive, but plainly apparent, finish line: the well-placed contact or piece of intelligence that will catapult each attendee (and participating company) to ever greater revenues and market share.

Predictably, with the recent acquisition of YouTube and the growing market share of MySpace, much of the conversation from the speaker’s podium focused on video content powered by broadband. Video (and rich media content in general) is creating new opportunities to engage consumers and generate sales revenues for brand marketers and the ad sales infrastructure that supports them. To highlight this intersection of dependency and opportunity, Tuesday’s keynote panel presentation, “The Online Video Revolution: A Marketer’s Dream or a Consumer Generated Mess?,” included executives from traditional media (CNN), new media (YouTube), agencies (Isobar) and infrastructure (Akamai).

ad:tech 2006 Keynote panel, Tuesday, November 7, 2006: L-R: Drew Ianni, ad:tech chair, Paul Sagan, president & CEO, Akamai Technologies, Sarah Fay, president, Isobar Communications, Jonathan Klein, president, CNN USA, and Suzie Reider, CMO, YouTube.

Several of the speakers chose to contrast the present-day capabilities of content delivery and Internet marketing to where the industry was 10 years ago. Akamai President and CEO Paul Sagan, who during the 1990s was president for New Media at Time Warner, was struck with how long it took us to get here. He recalled forecasting in 1996 that broadband would have 70 percent penetration by 1999. CNN USA President Jonathan Klein, commented that CNN.com now sees over 50 million unique visitors per month and has over three million downloads of video news stories, each of which engage views for 2 minutes per video with users on average downloading 3-4 stories per session for approximately 12-15 minutes of total viewing. He also commented that “pre-roll and post-roll inventory was sold out through Q4 of this year” and appeared generally bullish about the prospects for online video. [Editorial note: it would have been interesting to hear him comment on whether the growth in online ad sales will come at the expense of CNN’s traditional broadcast business.]

While not specifying the number of streams or downloads, YouTube CMO Suzy Reider, indicated that her chief concern “is a coming glut of video inventory” from user-generated content (UGC) sites like YouTube (CNN also aggregates UGC via its iReport news channel) and predicted “depression of prices in the year ahead.” She claimed YouTube was currently enjoying “CPMs in the $20 - $30 range.” It is interesting to note that the ad sales organization at YouTube reports to the office of the CMO (Ms. Reider’s background is in media sales at CNET and Ziff Davis).

Sarah Fay from Isobar (whose agencies include Carat Fusion, Freestyle, Molecular & iProspect) commented that as a buyer the focus for metrics continues to be engagement and, while standard metrics have yet to emerge (and remain somewhat elusive), advertisers are tracking values such as length of viewing as proxies for engagement. Advertisers also continue to fund development at interactive agencies vis-a-vis measurement technologies and investments in media strategy and planning expertise. She cited her own company’s growth from just a few hundred employees in 2003 to over 1,600 worldwide today.

Mobile advertising was also a thread that was evident in both the sessions and the exhibitors. In the “Now & Next Tech Show” innovation pavilion, all of the emerging companies that were on display were focused on the mobile advertising space. Most were showcasing applications and content (gaming) that have advertising embedded. A number of analytics companies were also in evidence.

If you’d like to learn more about what was being discussed at the 30+ sessions that took place over the 2 1/2 days, ad:tech thoughtfully provides a public link to all of the presentations at the event: http://www.ad-tech.com/presentations. 

Outside of the presentations, most of the action was on the show floor itself. This year the exhibit space was spread over three full floors of the Hilton’s conference space. Over 10,000 people attended the show, cramming the aisles, coffee lines and conference rooms. While some complained about the unusually tight hallways and aisles, there were others who liked the buzz and sense of urgency that having too many people in too small a space creates for the show. We’ll see what happens going forward: ad:tech reportedly completes its lease agreement with Hilton in 2007 and will determine if the New York event will be moved to the Javits Center or another venue to better accommodate future increased attendance.

Zango’s presence this year was our best showing yet at ad:tech. Positioned right between the escalators transporting visitors from the keynote sessions and the main entrance for the main show floor, we recorded an optimal number of impressions among show visitors. Even if we did not scan every attendee badge or engage in direct dialogue, the Zango brand was prominently visible to every visitor to the show. Our booth staff, dressed in Zango white and orange, was proactive in bringing visitors into our booth to learn more about the company.

Some of the friendly faces of Zango: L-R Chelsea Carey, Marel Pitter, Janet Carbon-Clifford, Bill Stanton, Koren Benbow-Fung, Joe Dries

Of course, the massage chairs and slippers were a big hit among those who chose to take a break with Zango and had a chance to interact with our team in a casual manner in spite of all the chaos swirling around from the show. The many warm greetings we received from our current advertisers and partners made us feel right at home.

Showing their colors: L-R Top Heather Baumann and Brian Wallace. Scott Iwata, Andrew Slome and Koren Benbow-Fung

We were delighted to have participated in this year’s show and look forward to next year’s gathering.