• by Masha Geller , January 31, 2003

Remember the good old days of dot-com parties? After the crash, it seemed like there was nowhere for an online ad pro to schmooze. Well, the reality is that parties have simply grown up, much like the industry itself. From riotous bashes with booming music and Ru Paul, to elegant and sophisticated dinner soirées.

Last night, there were two such dinners held in Manhattan. Both were invitation-only events attended by the crème de la crème of the interactive ad industry – the New York Times Digital first annual Ad Innovations Awards Dinner and the first IAB/Underscore Innovators Roundtable Dinner.

Held in the executive dining room of the New York Times Company (if that’s not grown up, I don’t know what is), the Ad Innovators dinner honored online creativity and, more specifically, winners of the NYTimes.com Design a Surround Session contest. The $50,000 prize went to Tribal DDB-Dallas for their American Airlines, Changing the Face of Travel campaign (check out the creative and some of the other entries on the site).

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Chairman and Publisher of NYT, kicked off the event, reminded the group that his great grandfather Adolph Ochs (founder of the NYT) once said, “You can more readily judge the character of a newspaper by its advertising columns than by any other outward appearance.” Sulzberger said that goes for websites, too. “What we’ve learned at NYTD is to present advertising and package content in ways that appeal to both the intellect and emotions of our audiences. Great advertising must complement outstanding editorial content.”

Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of the NYTD, also took the opportunity to announce two new offerings – half page ads (Jason Krebs, NYTimes.com’s VP of Sales said an undisclosed advertiser has already bought into the concept and the first half-pages ads will start running in April,) and Wide-Angle Targeting, which is a tool that allows advertisers to reach their target regardless of where they are on the site. As Nisenholtz explained, it’s a simple two-step process that involves first pinpointing a segment of readers who visited a designated section of the site during the previous month for at least five pageviews and then serving relevant advertising to these readers wherever they are on the site based on this prior behavior.

On the other side of town, at the IAB/Underscore dinner sponsored by Advertising.com, about 30 of the online advertising industry’s leading minds were debating the burning question of, ”Can technology make contextualization, optimization and customization turnkey for the average advertiser?”

Jeff Minsky, Media Director of OMD Digital, said events like last night’s Innovators Roundtable (named as a tribute to The Algonquin Roundtable, which was an informal gathering of a group of people who met at a large round table in the dining room of the Hotel Algonquin in New York during the 1920s and 30s), really give everyone the opportunity to talk openly about the industry issues in an informal setting where people are more apt to speak their true opinion, which he thinks is more beneficial than the big conferences where everyone tends to ‘put on a show.’ As for the consensus, the group agreed that technology has its place, but the human element is essential to every campaign. Minsky said, “Even though we’ve heard most of these bits and pieces before, it was nice to get the client perspective and hear the mix of different ideas.”

Jim Meskauskas, Chief Strategy Officer of Underscore Marketing, summed up the lively discussion, which lasted well into the evening, as follows: "I think one of the best things about last night was that it showed that though the industry may have lost some of its names, it's lost none of its intelligence or vigor."