Programmatic IO is done, on to Admonsters!
(for interested readers: the soundtrack to this post is Don Henley’s “In a New York Minute”)
One week I’m in the sunny paradise of the Cascais outside Lisbon, then after a brief stop in Spain and 8 more hours of luxurious economy class travel, I was whisked to the hustle and bustle of New York City. I was joined by Simplaex CTO, Moti, as we were attending AdExchanger’s Programmatic IO #PROGIO.
The first day was great, having different streams for different disciplines. There was a separate section for the Buy Side, Sell Side and Ad Ops. I gravitated toward the sell side, naturally — and got to hear some great presentations — especially from Business Insider’s Jana Meron and Digitas’ Liane Nadeau who spoke about the journey of one dollar as it travels through the ecosystem. Also interesting was Unruly’s COO, Kenneth Suh, speaking about how emotion is key for effective advertising.
I also got to bump into an old colleague from back in the day at Fiksu. The real Fiksu pre-June 2016, not whatever it is now ;) Tom Cummings is VP Solution Consulting with Nanigans. He seems busy as ever helping build incremental value to user acquisition campaigns.
The closing session of the event was a fireside chat with Sir Martin Sorrell. That dude’s got his eye on the prize still, that’s for sure. Will be interesting to see the progress he makes with S4 Capital over the next 12 months.
Moti and I spent two more days in the city meeting with current partners and prospective clients. Cleverly, someone arranged it so we started the morning with our first meeting in the Financial District and walked our way back to midtown for our last meeting — with a pit stop at Chelsea Market.
Now back in Berlin, it’s time to do some laundry and a quick trip to London before heading off to Admonsters Publisher Forum in Austin, Texas. Between me and you, it’s been about six years since I was last in The Lone Star State — and I’m looking forward to it, for sure!
Roadhouse beers and BBQ anyone?
