• by Masha Geller , February 15, 2002

The first and most important day of the AAAA media conference began today with Conference Chair Allen Banks outlining some of the most pressing issues facing the advertising industry, such as clutter and inaccurate data. While Banks offered no immediate solutions, he did introduce the morning’s keynote speaker: AOL Time Warner’s Bob Pittman, who gave the audience a basic overview of the Internet’s power as a Customer Relationship Management tool.

Two general sessions that followed had little to do with advertising media, but did keep the audience entertained, as Barry Diller, head of USA networks, and a panel of ABC news journalists discussed issues like convergence, unbiased reporting and John Miller’s fateful interview with Osama Bin Laden.

Most of the action, as usual, took place on the trade show floor, which was filled almost entirely by veteran companies like Nielsen, CMR, and SRDS, whose booths attracted the most visitors, unlike the few Internet-based participants (MSN, ValueClick and Google).

Incidentally, the most peculiar exhibitor was a company that refurbishes 1950’s ambulances to carry ad displays and rolling text messages, which in my book falls into the category of “seems oddly interesting at first glance, but will never work in the real world.”

Unfortunately, the one session I was most looking forward to, “Buying Interactive Advertising,” was cancelled – a fact that went almost unnoticed by the conference attendees. As I said yesterday, this is not a crowd that pays a lot of attention to the online medium, but as one of our readers wrote in response, “Rome wasn't built in a day, and the loudest talkers can be the most reluctant walkers. For all their talk about innovation, advertisers move at glacial speed. 'Twas ever thus. Keep on plugging.”

And that’s what I fully plan on doing going forward.