Well, the Digitrends summit has come to an end. But speaking of conferences and before I tell you about one of the most useful discussions of the event, I have an offer to present. As a MediaPost subscriber, you qualify to receive a special 20% discount to @d:Tech New York, which is coming up on November 8. As you know, in the past we've been able to arrange discounts for you to attend conferences we think are worthy of your attention, so scroll down to the end of this email for instructions on obtaining the discount. As for Digitrends, …

The second day of the Digitrends Fall Media Buyers Summit opened with a discussion on wireless. The panel's goal was to separate hype from reality, which wasn't easy considering the moderator, Digitrends CEO Rick Parkhill, kicked things off by stating that the wireless advertising market is predicted to reach $17 billion by 2005. While none of the panelists expressly disagreed with the prediction, they cited the all-too-familiar obstacles of wireless, such as lack of adoption by consumers, privacy concerns, creative limitations and the like. Nor could the panelists predict where the $17 would come from - some said wireless …

As promised, here's my first impression of the Digitrends Fall Media Buyers summit in Iconocast-like terms: * Organization - stellar, except for the deceiving piece of paper that not only sent attendees to the wrong places, it told them the wrong time for the event of the day - the panel discussion about the definition of an impression. * Content - nothing you haven't heard/read before. * Schmooze Factor - the BEST I've seen EVER. The first two points are probably negligible in the context of most industry gatherings. People found their way to wherever they were supposed …

The word for today is "expectations." I'm at the Digitrends Fall Media Buyers Summit in Colorado Springs and maybe it's the rarified air, but the atmosphere at yesterday's welcome reception was that of great anticipation and excitement - that very rarely happens at industry gatherings. At least to this extent. Everyone I talked to was - and no, I'm not kidding - genuinely excited about learning something new from the 40 some odd senior media buying executives assembled here and roughly twice as many media sellers. Mainly, attendees agree that the size of the conference is what makes …

Despite all the stories we've heard about online advertising exchanges struggling for acceptance by the industry, more and more of them seem to be popping up all over the cyber landscape. Just today, a company called AdBuySell.com - www.adbuysell.com - is introducing its new Internet Advertising Marketplace. Of course, the official announcement is filled with phrases like "revolutionizing the exchange of media with a direct and consolidated connection between unlimited web publishers and advertisers," and "closing the gap between media sellers and buyers by eliminating the high cost of a network middleman and dramatically increasing their reach for more …

Following yesterday's column about the growing pains of the online advertising industry, a reader charged me with over-hyping the Internet as a whole. He wrote, "If those big advertisers would take a deep look at how their banners are "published" and the unevenness of the flow of impressions, they would have to wonder at what they got themselves into. But, no one on the agency side wants to tell them this is not yet a medium." I thought we were all past the point of having to prove our online advertising existence, so allow me a rebuttal. First …

If you're as baffled as I am with all the numbers and predictions this industry throws at us on a daily basis, this week takes the cake. First, shortly after the DoubleClick and Yahoo earnings numbers came out, Merrill Lynch Internet analyst Henry Blodget predicted a dramatic slowdown in Internet advertising, causing one fairly respected media publication to imply Blodget is "smoking something." Conversely, the newest numbers from AdZone Interactive, an advertising research firm that tracks ads on 1,300 websites, yesterday showed that Internet ad expenditures bounced back in September, increasing 13.2% to $1.6 billion after having dropped …

A new Forrester Research study is causing quite a stir in the industry this week - it suggests that banner ads actually do work for some types of products, and have no effect whatsoever for other types of products in terms of driving short-term sales. Imagine that! According to Forrester, when people were exposed to banner ads for "impulse food products" - snacks, candy, soda - product sales increased by 19%. And, there's a direct connection between frequency and effectiveness. Sales went up once people were exposed to an impulse food product banner at least seven times. …

Why is it that whenever a company is not doing well, the first thing they do is cut the marketing budget? Is that really the way to go? What about the famous motto of Gert Boyle, Columbia Sportswear's founder: "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise!" Anyone would agree that in the recent past dot-coms have thrown way too many ad dollars to the wind simply because, well, they had money to burn. But the moment things aren't going well, those ad dollars get locked up in a safe never to be seen again. Just …

In the world of Internet metrics, the Priceline Grocery and Gasoline services, which the company closed recently due to financial problems within their supplier WebHouse, were success stories. They were the top 2 services visitors used on the site after the homepage. In August, Priceline Groceries attracted 2.8 million unique visitors while Priceline Gasoline, which only launched in June, had 1.7 million unique visitors. By comparison, none of the other Priceline services was able to attract more than 560,000 unique visitors. Priceline Groceries, with a reach of 3.3%, outperformed such sites as abcnews.com, nytimes.com, mtv.com and sony.com. Priceline Gasoline garnered …