At ad|tech there's a lot of talk about online advertising - it's real, it's coming, it's very exciting, advertisers have no choice but to spend more of their money on the Web - but few people actually know how to walk to walk. In other words, no one has a strong idea or, for that matter, a particularly strong view on how to embrace online advertising. Instead, you get a lot of strategic mumbo-jumbo. For example, advertisers are struggling with how to approach the video market. Do they sponsor videos, do they make pre-roll placements, and do they get involved with user-generated content? What about virtual worlds such as Second Life?  "I'm not a Second Life person but I feel we all better experiment there because more and more people are embracing it," said Peter Naylor, senior vice-president, digital media sales with NBC Universal, during a panel this morning. And what about social networks? Sure, Google is prepared to spend $910-million on MySpace but how do advertisers, in general, capitalize the social networking phenomena? What role will consumers play in creating advertising - a trend evident by the number of companies running contests that involve consumers creating ads for the Super Bowl. New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliot quasi-suggeseted that "two Super Bowls from now or five Super Bowls from now, all the major commercials will be created by consumers". 
  Of course, the key player in the online advertising market's evolution are advertisers, which explains why everyone was so interested in listening to the views of Ted McConnell, Interactive Innovation Director with Procter & Gamble, which plans to allocate more of its multi-billion dollar advertising budget online. McConnell, whose decisions can make or break the online advertising dreams of many companies, joked that is has "100,000 people who want to help me do my job".
  With everyone (advertisers, ad agencies, ad networks, Web sites) interested in doing more business online, education will be an important element so advertisers are comfortable spending more money on the Web and where exactly to run campaigns to build brand and sell more stuff. It's still early days so all the talk is good but it would be refreshing to see more people say "I don't know what's going to happen".
Update: Apparently, there are lots of people definitely interested in learning more about the online advertising market given more than 12,000 people pre-registered for ad|tech. The show's popularity stands in contrast to 2001/2002 when the conference was held in a single room.
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