Ad Tech SF

Hit the Ad Tech conference yesterday at Moscone Center in San Franciso.  The place was packed with companies doing interesting things.

Enjoyed speaking with Christine McKibban of Search Engine Optimization Inc. about the blurring of lines between traditional SEO and SEM.  So many companies are offering mixed models and it's hard to distiquish who really delivers.  SEO Inc. best answered my standard question:  "Why do you guys do it better?".  They cited their participation in the W3C and how close they are to the standards that define web behavior.

Dr. Yakov Kamen of Relevad regaled me with a detailed description of his Semantic Keyword Analytics products:  ReleWord, ReleKey, and ReleText.  Fascinating stuff.  Not only do they have the algorithms, but they also know what you want to do with that information, and they make it easy to use for real-world applications.

Shane Wall of ClickForensics gave me a tour of how they track and highlight click fraud -- a topic on everyone's mind.  Looks like their data is cleaner than most companies, since their business model does not give them mixed incentives.  They can deliver averages by sector or drill down to analyze individual streams of traffic.

Caught up with Ani Kortikar of NetraMind.  Nice to see their company growing at a healthy clip.  They have a gang with heavy analytics background combined with a very responsive business front-end (Ani) that makes them a good custom design, analysis, and management house.

Mario Bonilla of PRWeb blasted through everything I could ask about the company in rapid, cheerful, competent manner.  If you haven't used them, you should consider it -- they have a full range of exposure:  basic-for-free to mega-blast-for-$$.

The most professional ad network I spoke with was Casale Media.  It probably helped that I was speaking with Carl Casale.  :->  Definitely impressed with their presence and reach.