Just finished trolling around the ENTIRE ad:tech expo floor with Steve Hall of Adrants. It was like Christmas shopping with lots of snarky comments. It was awesome. Also, I am wearing, like, 5-inch stilettos, and my feet don’t hurt. No, we’ve moved beyond pain to total numbness.
Me & Steve, my new BFF.
In other news, today’s first keynote address was bitchin. The second keynote, a panel, was mildly insightful in a comfirming-what-I-already-know-without-being-blatantly-wrong kind of way. Everything else I’ve seen here has had major problems.
Takeaways so far are that techies are ahead of marketers, marketers are ahead of clients, and it’s up to agency-embedded tech fiends to pull the whole thing forward inch by grueling inch. It’s discouraging. It’s painful. It makes one want to grind one’s teeth and inflict or self-inflict a great deal of bodily harm. But at the end of each day, we get a little closer to having functional digital content that’s well produced, usable, and adequately monetized. It’s up to the ad geeks to pile the coke in that engine. Coke, not as in the drink. Coke as in, like, fuel.
Whatever. It’s been a hella long couple of days, and I have no idea what to really tell the kids (a.k.a., the agency execs) back home.
(Photo courtesy of the Adrants Flickr stream.)
Categories: adtech
Tagged: adtech, Jolie O'Dell, Steve Hall, Adrants
Disable their Internet connectivity intermittently during a 3-day technology conference.
Seriously. It’s freakin’ ad:tech. This should not be an issue.
And yeah, the bloggers are pissed. Some of them had left for a few hours while the Internet was shut down.
Me, I wandered around the exhibit hall and tweeted from my phone. Highlights thus far include:
–a bevy of petite ‘flight attendants’ with ’safety cards’ (guaranteed obnoxious promotional hook)
–a fifties-diner-themed booth complete with petite (and shockingly young-looking) soda jerk girls (embarrassing to watch, like a bad Halloween) who, as it turned out, were giving out pie (best swag ever, according to Angela Natividad)
–the Rubicon anti-booth, which is bad ASS. It’s like a very comfortable lounge/bar lookin’ thing with sectional seating and ottomans in red and black suede.
–a bar in the middle of the hall that, when I first stopped by, was totally devoid of chicks. I did see one lady there on my last pass through.
Glad to be here and blogging again. But seriously. Internet. Ad:tech. Come. On.
Categories: adtech
Tagged: adtech, blogger
*waiting for cab in front of Moscone Center following ad:tech day one
*20 minutes later, still waiting
*chatting with Kirby Winfield, about to share cab
“So,” he asks, “what did you think of today?”
I reply, “Mickey Mouse. Seems more focused on clients who don’t understand tech than on agencies who have to actually do the work.”
He chuckled.
“Is this your first ad:tech? Yeah, they’re usually about two years behind the times.”
Ssssssuck.
Categories: adtech
Tagged: adtech, Kirby Winfield
