ad:tech ’07 Thoughts and Review

So now that I’ve had a little time to breathe after getting back from ad:tech, I can blog about it a little. I apologize if this post doesn’t seem structured enough, I’m just going to be randomly talking about different things and I may go off on some tangents. What I hope to provide you is with what an event is like (I’ll be talking about it on a by day basis), and my honest review of everything there. So let’s jump into a life of a traveling affiliate marketer…

Monday : Prepare for Liftoff

Monday was Day 1 of the conference, and the day I actually came in. I had to wake up at 6am and pimp myself out, then head to the airport for the short 1 hour flight. I met up with one of my partners that I spent most of the trip with and we had lunch. After lunch we headed into the expo hall. Don’t I look stunning?

The jolly green giant of expo halls.

Compared to Affiliate Summit East, ad:tech was a pretty big monster. Four (I think) PACKED floors of all types of booths, from affiliate networks to law firms. Crazy amounts of people and business going on. It’s also a lot more corporate than Miami was. I had to wear a sport coat instead of shorts and a t-shirt or polo..dressing up really isn’t my thing. Now let’s talk about my impression of the actual expo hall and all the different booths there.

Tangent #1 : are they all the same?

My initial impression after checking out a couple of the floors was : what is different about any of these networks? There were SO many networks out there, and to me they all looked the same. If a network doesn’t stand out to me, why will I take interest in doing business with them? I mean honestly, it just looked like a bunch of average networks trying to compete with the giants, only they have nothing special to offer. Here’s an example of a booth I stopped by: it was an affiliate network and I won’t give the name out not because I care, but because I simply can’t even remember what it was called. The girl starts talking to me asking me what I do. I tell her I’m a publisher, and she tells me that she’s an affiliate network (how original). It’s even better because she’s speaking Spanglish and couldn’t understand what I was saying. Here’s exactly how the chat went :

Me : So do you guys have any exclusive offers?
Her : Do we have any online offers?
Me : No, ex-clu-sive offers.
Her : Online offers? Yes we have some.
Me : Ok cool, have a good one.

I mean why in God’s name send somebody there that can’t even speak English? It’s just another network with nothing to offer.

Another booth out there was offering web hosting. They had a guy standing out front with the company info card just saying “Web hosting? Web hosting? Web hosting?” to every person that walked by. I was inclined to say, “Yes, I have web hosting, do you?” Seriously, what is going to draw me into considering business with this company? According to them, their sales pitch is that they offer “web hosting”. I have web hosting, no need for more.

To spark real interest, you need something to actually draw people in – whether it be something about the business, or something simple like a box full of floating money that you can go in and grab.

Alright, tangent through. I stopped at a couple booths and got to meet a couple of my affiliate managers which was fun. I actually got to meet my very first affiliate manager who I’ve known since day 1.

I went back to my room and got ready for dinner. We went out to a small bar with Azoogle and had some nice food. The Azoogle peeps are always a good time. After that it was party time…or my attempts at it. We went to one of the parties and of course they were ID’ing people (keep in mind I’m 19). Somebody ended up getting an ID of a guy with a fat head…looked nothing like me. Of course that didn’t work so I was shut down. Then we headed to the main party of the night at Pacha. Luckily they scanned ID’s and didn’t even look at them, so I was able to get in. There was some weird shit there…they had mascots dressed in animal suits running around dancing, I felt like I was in a crack house or something. The party was pretty good, then headed back to the hotel and crashed. Here’s a crappy iPhone picture to illustrate how crowded a party like this is. People reaaaally want to network here.

Tuesday : Day 2

Woke up, got some breakfast, then headed back to the expo hall to meet more people. I think this was the day I got to meet Diorex. Cool guy, smart guy. We got to talk about some things, and eventually I got to set him up with a deal for something with one of my contacts. Networking is key boys and girls. It was another exhausting day of meetings and meeting new people, but in the end it was pretty productive. Tuesday night I had dinner with CX Digital (formerly Incentaclick). We went to this really nice place called Asia de Cuba, they had great food and got to network with some other people at the dinner. Did I say networking is key already? One of the guys I met ended up sending me a huge file on how to save money on taxes (in legal ways), as well as possibly set up a direct deal for an offer.

Google booth? Mmm, no.

Google had a booth, which means we all got to ask the Google team our questions and they could help us out, yayy!! Hardly. Every time I asked a question about Adwords, a “specialist” would walk me over to a computer and look it up with me on Google’s help page. In the end, they always ended up saying “give us and email and somebody will get back to you.” No real surprise there, that’s what happens every time I have a problem with Google. With the amount I spend you think they’d be able to expedite the process of getting a dedicated account rep, but I guess not. Aside from the $50 Adwords vouchers, the Google booth deemed itself to be pretty useless.

After dinner came more parties. I tried getting into the club I had gotten denied at the previous night, and it didn’t work again. We then headed to the Rubicon party and got a table there, it’s was alright. There weren’t that many people I knew there so it was pretty much hanging out with the people I went with.

Wednesday : Day 3

Wednesday there was no expo hall, so it was more of a relaxing day. I went out with some people from CX Digital as well as others I knew around the city. We went to the Museum of Modern Art, it just wasn’t really my thing. Here’s a picture I took of one of the pieces :

Yes…that’s a blank canvas.

After that we walked around shopping. I spent more money on a wallet then any man ever should, but I was peer pressured into it so ah well, all in good fun. That’s pretty much the only thing I bought. Wednesday night was dinner with Neveblue, we went to this jazzy place and had some good steak. Here’s a picture of us waiting in the cold for our limo to swing by and pick us up.

After that we went back to the Hilton and waited for Jon and a bunch of Wickedfire people to arrive. We hung out there for a little and then went bar hopping.

The $20 Piss

So we’re in this limo driving like 25 minutes to this place called Pianos, and I have to pee like you wouldn’t believe. We get there and I don’t get in (it was the only place that night that I didn’t get in). I have no idea where I’m going, but I really really had to pee. The bouncer told me that there’s this pizza place down the street where I can go. I find the place, and the guy is telling me “no public bathrooms” even though I’m telling him I’ll buy like 10 pizzas. So I leave and I’m walking down the street and see stairs heading down into a building that says “The Dark Room”. Probably a little dangerous as I had no idea what it was, but I went down there (that’s how bad I had to go). The bouncer doesn’t let me in, so I resort to desperate measures and flash a $20 bill (I was going to flash 40). He nods his head and let’s me in. I go in, take my pee, and then leave. He definitely thought I was going in there to buy crack. I left the dark room and immediately joined back up with the WF people. We walked into a bar next door where I had no problem getting in…and they had a bathroom too.

Thursday: The Last Day

The end was here, I didn’t do too much in NYC this day. I went and visited the Azoogle office for a couple hours, it’s going to be really cool once the massive construction finishes. After that I went shopping and bought something for my girlfriend, and then headed out. I went back to my partners home in New Jersey to work for the weekend on things. In the week I was away from home, we actually doubled our profits, so it was really productive. Thursday night we went to a Facebook Developers Conference in Philly, that was alright. I got to talk to one of the founders of Facebook, I wanted to ask what was up with their ad network. He said he really didn’t know too much about it and to email him. The conference was in some small building in the ghetto – it was over 200 people PACKED into this small room huddled around a Powerpoint presentation. Here’s a very crappy picture I took of it :

 
For the next 3 days I just got to do a lot of work, nothing I’m going to talk about here :). It was really productive though and we got some very nice plans for the future. That 100k/day mark used to not even be visible, but now it’s in sight off in the distance. I headed back home to a TON of email and backed up work, which explains the lack of major posts.

 

Was it worth it?

That’s the main question most people think of when thinking about attending an event. My answer is the same as the one I gave about Affiliate Summit : hell ya it was worth it. Aside from gifts, trip expenses came out to about $400 (flight, cab from airport, some snacks). My hotel was on my Starwood card and was free, along with all the food I bought there. I pretty much took a limo everywhere and that was paid for, as were the dinners with networks. Even if I had to pay for all of that, a few thousand dollars would still have been worth it. It was fun, and I got to meet a couple people that made the trip worth it. Spend the money and come and see me in Vegas this Feb.

Affiliate Summit vs. ad:tech?

The next question here would be : which conference did I enjoy more, ASE or ad:tech? Overall, I’d have to say that I liked Affiliate Summit more. I like the more laid back atmosphere, and I seemed to meet more actual affiliates there. The bars were a lot easier to get in to lol, and it wasn’t as corporate as NYC was. I liked meeting people during the day and then just going and relaxing on the beach. ad:tech was productive, but just felt so non-stop. By the time parties came I was beat and didn’t really feel like going anyways. I’d still recommend going to both, my personal opinion was just that I enjoyed Affiliate Summit a little more.

Alright, I got through a decent amount of information there. It takes a couple full weeks to process everything that went on in those few days, but hopefully you got a good picture of what it would be like to be there. If you attended make sure to post and let me know what you thought of the event.