The remainder of the day was typical agency land — waiting for the happy hour to begin. Now mind you, I’m sitting in my hotel room, awaiting an event tonight sponsored by HitWise at the Whiskey Bar at the W Hotel. This blog post is clean and sober. Safe to read.

I did spend the morning with our good friend Stepheny Lauer, VP of Marketing for Coldwell Banker Chicago. Steph’s been a client for over five years, and she also has some great dot com war stories to tell from a previous career.

The Trade Show

I skipped a session this afternoon to walk through the exhibit area here at the Sheraton Towers. Pretty good showing, but I’ll you: the ad networks are ablaze. I don’t know for certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised if half the technology vendors are ad networks. I’d hate to be a start-up in this field. Seems like the shake out has already occurred and there are a few winners, from companies like ValueClick, DRIVE, and Advertising.com. Of course, there are others, but when you’re sitting on years of historical data like the big guys are you retain a knowledge of online customer behaviors that’s probably unparalleled.

There’s a lot of snake oil in this business right now, so be careful. Only trust what Ciceron tells you.

Tonight’s the HitWise event, and, as of two minutes ago, Steph at Coldwell just scored behind home-plate seats for tonight’s White Sox/Twins game in the corporate box. Had I said “no” you all would no longer consider me sane, nor would you continue to read this blog.

Go Twins!