atom had a few things on its mind when making the case for attending ad:tech this year. Would it be worthwhile? Would we learn anything new? And how many USB sticks could we grab?
For those who haven't heard of it, ad:tech London is an annual conference aimed at the online marketing sector that bundles together a supplier exhibition and seminars by leading players in the marketplace, along with a strategic conference by keynote speakers.
We attended on the first day and got there for it opening to maximise our chances on all of the above. Having avoided the long queue with our ebadges, there was already quite a buzz from the attendees and stallholders and there was lots to see and do. With over 170 exhibitors and 100+ seminars, it was going to be a struggle to squeeze them all in.
The ad:tech turnout
After getting our bearings, we could see that all the usual products were on show, from display, email, affiliates and social. One of the largest presences was in the mobile sector, with lots of exhibitors trying to stand out from the crowd with their mobile display platforms. Tracking and analysis also had good visibility with 23 companies trying to convince us we need more than Google Analytics.
Mobile aside, the “next big thing” seemed to come from display via RTB (Real Time Bidding) and re-targeting products. The latter promised more focused targeting of display ads down to product level, resulting in significant increases in CTR. Each supplier seemed to have their own unique algorithm to achieve this, but it presumably only becomes effective with huge volumes, thereby limiting its usefulness to large volume retail sites.
There were a couple of new players to the UK market who had already established themselves overseas, from the USA to India. We managed to have a chat to quite a few of these and will hopefully be able to get some good deals with them as a result!
A worthwhile trip
Overall, the early start and attending on the first day was definitely worthwhile as it was very busy, quite noisy and everyone was feeling fresh and ready to do some business. It was definitely a very useful and engaging conference.
A few new contacts were made along the way, with plenty of interesting propositions to integrate into our future online acquisition strategies. Unfortunately, for the rest of the office, free USB sticks were in very short supply!