• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, July 14, 2005

In an industry where everyone's always looking for the next new thing, it seems as if interest is already waning in some of the last year's hottest topics --search, behavioral marketing, spam laws, cookie deletions and the like -- at least if Ad:Tech is anything to go by.

All of those topics were eclipsed this week in Chicago by the latest development to capture the imagination of online marketers: consumer-generated media.

This week at Ad:Tech, sessions on search were under attended, with the large auditorium at the Sheraton Hotel devoted to such panels nearly empty. On the other hand, the smaller room devoted to blogs, word of mouth marketing and podcasting, was standing room only for much of the day Tuesday.

By The Minute's count, at least five separate Ad:Tech sessions concerned word of mouth, blogs or other types of consumer-controlled media. Panelists talked about how blogs could hurt businesses, how they could help them and how marketers could infiltrate the blogosphere. One speaker talked about how blogs could jump-start e-commerce, demonstrating the concept with a PowerPoint slide showing "Jesusland" t-shirts, which became a fad after the word appeared on the blogosphere following last November's election.

Some of the advice was useful, albeit repetitive. The most common suggestions? Don't shout at consumers. Let them find you. No PR-ease in blogs.

All sensible warnings. But marketing executives also need to keep in mind that the blogosphere is popular precisely because it hasn't yet been infiltrated by corporations. If marketers successfully co-opt blogs, it's inevitable that those sites will lose whatever pull they have with consumers.