• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 17, 2009

Richard Frankel, president of online ad network Rocket Fuel is doing his best to convince a panel of publishers â€" including, ESPN’s David Roter, senior director of digital sales -- that his companies have a place in the industry.

“Technology” -- i.e., ad networks -- “can help advertisers reach audiences in a way,” said Frankel. Ad networks, he said, “provide publishers with the ability to get more value … we’re actually pushing up the value for our publishers.”

Admitted Walker Jacobs, SVP, Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Ad Sales, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc, “There certainly is a place for ad networks.”

He then went on to toe ESPN’s line that networks are often guilty or eroding brand value and rampant cannibalization.

Bucking a broad industry trend, ESPN last year famously ended its arrangement with several unidentified ad nets.

At an Interactive Advertising Bureau annual meeting in ‘08, incoming chair Wenda Harris Millard famously warned that media companies were selling web inventory like “pork bellies.”