• by May 26, 2004

San Francisco--Tchotchke watch.

The Ad:Tech show floor is littered with them--tchotchkes. They're back, and better than ever. My personal favorite: A handheld, portable mini fan from BlowSearch. This battery-powered baby works beautifully and sports a string so you can wear it around your neck. A good thing for those dank, humid summer days in New York.

My other personal favorite: the orange flip-flops from HotBar. Google's flashing keychain was cute.

Now ask me who these companies are (not Google; I know Google). But what is HotBar and what is BlowSearch? HotBar is an adware application or toolbar. BlowSearch pulls data from top search engines. But I wonder if they'll be around in another year or two. Companies like AzoogleAds.com, Ampere Media, Accipiter, Blue Lithium, Did-It.com, Casale Media, DigitalGrit, eZula, Kaboose, Tribal Fusion and Zarl.com. Cool names and all, but does this profusion of affiliate marketing providers, search companies, ad networks and toolbars fill a market need? Do we have all the makings of another Internet gold rush, boom and bust cycle?

I don't really think so. Why? Because the tone today is different. It is a tone of tempered enthusiasm and startups that appear to have actual business fundamentals. They are making money and will become acquisition targets. The market appears healthy, at least for now. These unknown upstarts, all vying for our attention on the show floor, are likely to remain small until they're snapped up or die naturally.

Speaking of the show floor, it was packed. Really. Elbow-to-elbow. In fact, Ad:Tech organizers say they'll move the San Francisco show next year to a different hotel that will offer more spacious quarters.

On this last day of Ad:Tech, SF, it's only fitting to ponder some overall trends and who better to identify them than Geoff Ramsey, CEO and co-founder of eMarketer, the Internet researcher and data aggregator. Yesterday during a panel on TV, print, radio and online media, Ramsey identified several emerging trends industry types should think about:

1. Consumers are skeptical of advertising and resistant to it.
2. Consumers are in control. (To be sure, this is a trend that keeps popping up at all advertising and marketing conferences in the last six months).
3. Media fragmentation is a fact. (We've heard this one before too.)
4. Granular targeting is increasingly supplementing broad-based awareness advertising and marketing efforts.
5. Marketers and their agencies are being held to higher forms of accountability than ever; the all-important return-on-investment metric is not going away. (We've definitely heard this one before.)

Ramsey, always equipped with a laundry list of data, cited a Yankelovich study that finds 65 percent of the people surveyed "feel constantly bombarded with too many marketing messages." Consumers are increasingly taking control- signing up for the federal Do-Not-Call list and arming themselves with personal, portable devices that they can configure to their own liking.

Ramsey points out that online advertising spending increased by 21 percent from 2002 to 2003. Projections for 2004 growth range from Gartner's 3.2 percent (Ramsey is shocked it's so low), to Forrester's 23 percent. Of course, first quarter online ad revenue data issued on Monday by the Inteactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed a 39 percent increase.

Either way, smart marketers and their agencies will need to navigate through these projections and trends to figure out how to reach the fickle, tech-savvy, in-control and petulant consumer who will pick and choose as he or she pleases.