Well alrighty.  My first trip to Ad:tech San Francisco is in the books.  They claimed to have about 300 companies exhibiting, and I think I talked to more than my fair share.  So as promised, here are a few companies I thought were pretty interesting.

1) Without a doubt, the guys at AdReady.com were the hit of the show.   A well funded company with a simple solution for a common problem.  That’s a pretty good formula for success.  Plus, I got to chat with a Senior VP.  When a Senior VP is schlepping time on a show floor, it shows something about the caliber of people they hire.  Check them out if you have a few minutes.

2) Before I go into all the companies that I walked away from thinking, “Wow, that’s cool,” let me throw out a caveat.  There were a lot of future unemployed people at this show.  My bubble alert would go off every time a company claimed they were a “revolutionary way to optimize your ad budgets” and you talked to some 25 year old who had just cut his teeth as a junior media buyer at a 3rd tier ad agency.  I saw a lot of companies, none of which I’ll name, that seemed to have the strategy of, “Well we have a Series A, and we’ll get some Series B funding in 2010.”  Except, there may not be any VC funding in 2010.  Plus, everyone seems to have a strategy of selling to Google, Yahoo or Microsoft in 2 years.  I think the best job you could get right now is a M+A guy at one of those 3 places…  

3) Ok, some things I liked:

• SeeSawNetworks – Rep firm for all types of weird ways to advertise
• SproutBuilder – I didn’t quite get the full concept, but looked like a cool way to make widgets 
• LSNMobile – Serving Mobile Ads, but in a cool way and they are profitable.
• IdeaLaunch – There were tons of companies offering Landing Page Optimization services.  I can’t remember why, but I liked these guys.

4) Affiliate Programs and Networks – It was fascinating to me how many new affiliate networks are out there these days.  Equally fascinating was the fact that all the big guys didn’t bother to attend the show. 

5) Final shout of annoyance: I’m going to express a little displeasure toward the Rubicon Project.  Only because, I RSVP’d for their party and they didn’t have me in the database, so I couldn’t get in.  Probably my fault for not noticing the lack of a confirmation email.  You see, since they weren’t sure if anyone was going to come to their party, they invited EVERYONE in the world.  Then when more people showed up than they expected, they had to adhere to the RSVP list, which caused an issue of portraying themselves as an internet company who had a internet sign-up form that didn’t work.   Now, I’m a nobody, so leaving me stranded outside is no big deal.  And there was plenty of stuff to do so I didn’t really care.  But here’s where I thought they looked kind of unpolished – the door people even refused to admit an extremely well connected CEO of a pretty strong VC backed company, while their own Marketing Coordinators and their friends drank free Grey Goose.  Bubble alert – when your junior level guys are getting drunk at a party you are hosting, and you don’t have anyone senior enough at the door to let in a CEO of a company you should work with, you need to re-evaluate why you are throwing a party.  Let your guys get drunk at home.  Use Ad:Tech to talk to the CEO that wanted to talk to you. Or, I guess you can be that cocky and see if it works for you.  I guess I just wouldn’t be that cocky in a recession.

6) Final note: I can only hope the Seattle light rail will be as efficient as the BART.  I was off my plane, on the BART and in my hotel in like 45-50 minutes, for a $5.00 fare.  Compare that to the $50 cab ride I would need to take to get home from Sea-Tac today.  Love that BART.