Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Matt Hulett
I am just getting back from AdTech in San Francisco. In fact, I am posting right now from 30,000 feet (using Alaska Airlines new Wifi service). I have been attending this show for awhile now and while the attendance numbers may not have been setting records (yet it still felt packed), there was a new intensity around focusing on building real businesses, deals, and partnerships.
My company, Mpire Corporation, introduced a new technology at the show called AdXpose. It turned out to be a fantastic venue to meet with partners. We easily had over 60 appointments over three days around our new product, AdXpose. The style of these meetings reminded me of those speed dating events. There really was a new intensity around determining if there was a compatible partner fit in every conversation. Companies in the ad space seemed to be very clear as to what they are building and where they need to partner. In this economy, companies are ready to partner. From a startup’s perspective, I would highly recommend attending these conferences.
There was also a lot of attention around companies in the optimization landscape and how it’s helping publishers and advertisers evolve online advertising. I’ve called this the “Optimization Stack” or what my investment banker friends call the “online marketing infrastructure” segment. For more on that you can read my post on Adotas.There are a number of different types of optimization, but the companies were doing innovative things were in the campaign and yield Optimization space.
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Some have chosen to optimize many networks like Pubmatic and Rubicon Project. YieldEx and YieldBuild are also active in this space . Within Campaign Optimization, this is an area less mature but still doing important things for both advertisers and publishers. Gigya and Clearspring are looking at campaign engagement through Flash and widgets, while Tumri is doing various levels container optimization using different targeting algorithms. Of course, AdXpose and WidgetBucks play in both the campaign and yield optimization space, too.
