Ad:Tech NYC 2007 - first impressions three floors, 300+ exhibitors

There are ad:tech exhibitors spread across three floors worth of ballrooms at the Hilton New York. Seriously three floors worth of people handing out paper, lots and lots of paper, plus the de rigueur tchokes. Small, cheap, foam footballs. Many types and sizes of balls, Frisbees, pens, mints and more. Advertising folks don't seem to be, for the most part, all that creative when it comes to promoting themselves. Some firm is handing out cell phone cozies that look like a lounge chair - not so effective as the product, not the company was what was being talked about in the hallways.

And one of the most elaborate booths is, seriously, giving away air. Microsoft Atlas has a full blown, flavored, oxygen bar.

But that is the surface layer, the pile of papers rarely viewed and the toys given away to children, nieces and nephews.

So some observations about who is here at Ad:Tech exhibiting. This is just based on impressions, on the less than 50% of the firms that made enough of an impression that I stopped, looked at their literature, learned a bit more about what they do and who they are.

I have been told that the NYC show is intended to target an audience of mostly advertising industry folks (hence the NYC location). The interesting thing is that I don't really get a sense that there are a lot of people here who are actually in the advertising industry. Perhaps I'm stereotyping to a degree - but also looking at badges, overhearing conversations, and watching booth discussions - I haven't met many actual media buyers or ad agency types. My guess is mostly they are downstairs, not up here in the exhibit hall.

Mostly online marketers so far, a lot of booth folks (many of whom appear to be hired, though some - generally I think the more interesting firms have actual employees working the booths).

Rough stats on company types

So far at least one law firm per floor. Apparently there is demand for lawyers in the ad industry.

About a half dozen or so companies promising solutions (or at least approaches) to deal with click fraud.

More ad networks than you can really count. But I will try to get at least an estimate. My quick count, well over 30 and counting. Four or five just in "in Text advertising" (with many claiming this is unique). Many many more promising Hispanic markets, with each also claiming to be the largest international ad network. A number of third tier search engines/search sites (and Google is here).

A virtual sea of TLA (of course that's "Three Letter Acronyms" ) - CPC, CPA, CPM, CPV (not sure about that last). Dozens of firms focused on email marketing. Nearly ten firms focused on metrics.. This is not counting another dozen plus firms focused on affiliates and managing "CPA" leads, ad networks and the like. Three or four firms offering mobile ad networks of some form.

Over ten, perhaps many more than ten, firms focused on email list management and marketing. Including a few who are offering "guaranteed delivery", claiming to achieve this entirely legally and ethically (not at all clear how they plan on achieving it.).

About a dozen or so search engine optimization firms, not as many as I might have expected.

Very few, again so far at least, traditional media buying firms. Firms who represent a range of brands and manage their media buying and placement online - across ad formats, platforms, networks and more. From a personal perspective these are the firms I am most interested in talking with - as I'm in the midst of building an ad network and they represent the exact right group of buyers for me to talk with about our offering.

My current count is at about ten firms offering a white label ad server of some form for firms to build their own ad network (and in a few cases their own affiliates networks).

And in smaller clusters there are assorted technology firms - a number of hosting companies, a smaller number than I expected number of firms helping with rich media serving, and a few others.

Who is not here - or at least not as large a presence as might be expected

Yahoo does not have a booth of their own. They do have partners here but not a Yahoo booth.

Google has a relatively small booth (Doubleclick has another booth in the same room however).

AOL does not have a booth.

Many of the larger media buying firms (Agency.com for example) are not here. Neither are some of the largest Lead Gen firms (though there are certainly many lead gen firms here).

I do not see many of the major players in online video - no VideoEgg for example. Also missing are the major content delivery networks (which I would argue have a great deal of synergy with the requirements of a large scale ad network - i.e. serving up rich media quickly, reliably, and often in a globally optimized manner).

Tomorrow I will focus mostly on the sessions and keynotes.

Shannon Clark is a founding partner at Nearness Function, a new ad network for the publishers of dynamic content which will launch in a few months. He is the organizer of MeshForum - an annual conference on the study of networks and the one day MeshWalk series of walking conferences. He has been blogging for many years at Searching for the Moon where he covers technology, economics, food, and the life of an entrepreneur. His first server on the Internet was in 1991, he started his first company in 2000 after many years working as a technology consultant.