Joanna O'Connell, senior analyst at Forrester, wants to rename her keynote, "The Future of Digital Media Buying." Let's call it, "Revenge of The Nerds," she suggests. A self-described nerd, O'Connell says she's pretty excited about the state of media buying. "It's really about man and machine," which she considers "a beautiful combination."

OMMA Display's first panel of the day, "Man vs. Machine," is tackling the display ad marketplace's obsession with automation, and it's uneasy relationship with humans.

Microsoft Advertising creative guru Stephen Kim just gave a preview of Microsoft's new Avatar Kinect platform to OMMA Display attendees, and it's pretty amazing. Basically, it converts us real human beings into talking avatar versions of ourselves. Pretty cool, and obviously, has lots of applications for individuals, content creators, and of course, brands.

Creativity is a big part of how Microsoft thinks about digital display advertising. Not so surprisingly, so said Stephen J. Kim, General Manager of Global Creative Solutions at Microsoft -- after a not so brief fire drill here at OMMA Display. "How do we think about this landscape? How will [the landscape] continue to evolve" These are the questions that keep Kim up at night. "When we think about doing research around the world, we typically don't start with advertising," he notes. Rather, he and his team start with transcending storytelling concepts, and drill down from there. Good storytelling is …

Try blaring incredibly loud, annoying high-pitched audio tones over and over and over again. Yep, that's what's happening even as I (try) to blog this post at the OMMA Display venue of the Sentry conference center in Midtown Manhattan.

That's how opening keynoter Stephen J. Kim, General Manager, Global Creative Solutions, Microsoft, kicked things off this morning, quite literally showing a picture of a "big monster chasing a little monster."

Before introducing Stephen J. Kim, General Manager, Global Creative Solutions at Microsoft, Mediapost's own Steve Smith talked a little about the idea by OMMA Display. In short, the conference is essentially OMMA Ad Nets, but broadened to address an increasingly open field of creative and technology advancements used to make the digital ad machine run. As Smith reminds us, digital display ads are rapidly evolving to tell ever more compelling stories to vastly larger audience around the world. As Smith reminds us, "Storytelling is still central."

According to OMMA Display chair and emcee (and Mobile Marketing Daily editor) Steve Smith, display advertising is poised to overtake search as the No. 1 source of growth for the online ad industry.

Yuck, but that was the metaphor 360i's David Berkowitz struck while grilling Crowd Factory CEO Sanjay Dholakia during a mock "RFP" session of social media vendors at OMMA Social.

That's what OMMA Social programming chair and emcee (and Social Insider columnist) Cathy Taylor asked Tim Mahlman, Chief Revenue Officer, Klout to distinguish. Specifically, she asked him to focus on "clout with a C."