• by Masha Geller , June 17, 2003

For someone who's been to every one of the last nine Ad:Tech conferences, the first day of the San Francisco show yesterday was certainly an interesting experience.

Just to get the no-so-good news over with first, as far as the content goes, anyone who's read even just the headlines of the industry press in the last six months already knows everything being presented at this show. Unfortunately (and this problem may or may not get resolved during the second and third days of the show,) the presentations are largely PowerPoint pitches.

That said, no one comes to conferences to learn anything new these days anyway, so the real story of the show is in the turnout and the mood, which even this skeptic is quite impressed with.

As I've mentioned before, the show is a sell-out, with a huge exhibit hall that opened today, and more than 2,000 registrants, who dutifully attended most of the presentations and turned up in full force at the parties later in the evening (and there were at least 5 of those thrown around town, all reminiscent of 1999 and 2000).

Whereas at last year's West Coast show attendees felt that the industry was picking up speed after the crash for the first time and the typical response to "how's business?" was a timid "you know, surviving, thank goodness," this one is very different. "How's business this year? It's picking up. Big time." I must have talked to more than two dozen people yesterday who told me that they're pitching real business to real companies with real money to spend online.

The exhibit hall (my favorite part of any tradeshow) is the big story today, along with a keynote by Bob DeSena, Director of Relationship Marketing at Masterfoods USA, and I promise to let you know if everyone remains in high spirits for the rest of the conference. But if this show is any indication of things to come, I'd start making my travel plans for Ad:Tech New York in the Fall right now.