Ad:Tech San Francisco 2009

Ad:Tech San Francisco 09 was really awesome. Overall I made a good amount of contacts and more importantly had a great time hanging out with some of the coolest people in the industry.

Here is my recap of the events that went on.

Day 1: Tuesday
On Tuesday morning, Jacob (my marketing employee) and I drove in from the east bay to San Francisco. The drive took just about 30 minutes and we got in about 10:30 am.

When we got in, the first thing we did was meetup with Mr. Pauly Beats AKA uberaffiliate. We said our hellos, and then went to wait in the enormous line for badge holders.

After that we saw the guys from Tracking202 Pro and got to do a little meet and greet with them. It was great seeing / meeting all those guys again. Really a great group of guys.

Following that, Jacob and I proceeded to walk the floors until around noon. I met up with Justin from AffBuzz, a new site which syndicates all the popular affiliate marketers blogs.

Around noon, I had a interview with the tracking 202 guys. This interview went pretty well and should be posted online within a week or two. It’s all about affiliate marketing, pay per click, etc.

After the interview, Jacob and I continued to walk the floor more.

While walking the floor, one thing really begun to bug me. It seems advertisers seemed to give us a little less attention than some of the older folks. I suppose that it was because they took us less seriously and thought that we would just take their time without producing any business.

There was one booth in particular that really surprised me. I was looking for traffic sources as always and began to ask the man behind this booth about the traffic that this guy’s company was able to produce.

He then asked me what my budget was instead of answering my questions to which my annoyed self replied, “a lot.” He then said, “a lot” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people in a condescending tone. After this, I explained a 6 figure a month budget. Unbelievably, he laughed and said, “2 guys from Pittsburg spending that kind of money… If you were spending that money, you would have heard about us already!”

After that, I just walked away. Who wants to do business with a guy like that?! Haha!

< / end rant>

After that annoying bit, we had lunch at buckhorn grill. It was fairly good.

Following lunch, we went to the second floor exhibit which I enjoyed much more. Much less traffic and much more professional people, with the exception of “SEO Inc.” which over all treated me like a child and way over quoted me on prices. $15,000 for a small local website project that is already ranking… I don’t know what they’re trying to pull. I could hire a digitalpoint seo for $500 and probably get significant results.

Beyond the bad experience with SEO Inc’s booth, there was a ton of great booths.

I got to meetup with the people that I am using for my credit card transactions and also the people who I am using for outsourced billing support. Both really great companies and people. I won’t post that information on here, but if you’re in need of either, feel free to contact me.

After all the walking, I was worn out and we drove back home around 4 PM. It took us a bit longer to get home due to good ol’ traffic.

Here is a video I tried to make… Excuse the “Ok Guys” that I constantly say… Not quite sure why I kept saying that… probably due to being distracted by all the stuff.

Day 2: Wednesday
Wednesday was a great day for me.

I had my morning work out and then a meeting locally.

After this meeting I drove in around 4 PM. I got to catch up with Jason from Direct Agents. He is my AM and has been really great in working with me!

After this, I went out to the Lobby and caught up with a couple guys including Larby, Rob (Partner with Larby), Nickycakes, Paul (Uber), Blake from Meritcard, Harrison, and a few others!

It was nice to just talk in the lobby for a while with no sales pitches, etc. Just good times.

I drove over to San Francisco and offered to drive Larby, Paul, and Rob over to the meetup202. I was scheduled to speak and was unsure about what I was going to say really… Doh! Here I have a car full of people who make a lot more than I do, and I am going to be speaking in front of them! Hahaha… They made sure to tease me a bit about that. It was funny… But not as funny as getting lost on the way to this place!

My GPS decided to take us on a while goose chase… and we circled the block about 3 times before finding where this place was. Rob called Wes and we got a bunch of people to come wait for us out on the street to help us find the place! Haha.

The meetup started out a bit slow but turned into this super awesome event, the highlight of the Ad:tech week, in fact! Not only did I get to hang out with incredibly smart people, I got to meet and greet with everyone and got free pizza. Woo!

I got to meet a lot of the people from Jar-Media which is a great affiliate network in San Francisco. That was great!

After hanging out with friends for about an hour and a half, it was time to “present.” Gulp… I was the first to go because I saw that Dennis Yu (who is probably the most crazy smart PPC Marketer I have met) had Power point! You can never beat powerpoint!!!

So that being said, I spoke very briefly about expanding your PPC Campaigns. It was brief because I was nervous. I could have expanded a lot more on what I was going to say but I was nervous and usually cut things short when I am nervous.

After I spoke, Ruck, Paul Bourque and Larby spoke to the crowd as Dennis Yu prepared his presentation.

All the presentations given were really good. I learned something from each one and I hope you guys did as well.

I enjoyed hanging out with the guys and we decided to have lunch on Friday.

We all went to the Cheesecake Factory. It was pretty good food but really great times. I learned a ton of information!

(from left to right)
Dennis Yu, Pauly Beats, Nick Chedda, Me, and Larby.

It was a great time for sure!

And that ends a great Ad:Tech!