Early Monday morning I hopped on a train and headed up to New York for two days at ad:tech. For several years now, PRWeb has had a presence at the ad:tech events and from what I understood they were always terrific opportunities to educate potential customers on the benefits of our service, re-connect with current customers, see what is new in the market and network with potential partners. We had a steady stream of attendees throughout both days we were at the show and I feel comfortable that we accomplished everything we set out to accomplish by participating in the show.

In the midst of all the companies selling SEO and affiliate marketing services, I think the ‘PR’ in ‘PRWeb’ attracted many of attendees who had never heard of PRWeb. Those unfamiliar with the service almost immediately saw the benefit in using PRWeb to publicize their business, and I suppose that is one of the nice things about presenting PRWeb at an event where a majority of the attendees already have a firm grasp of newer information/communication technologies. Two guys who stopped by the booth actually darted back to their hotel room immediately after talking with Joe because they had a press release and wanted to send it out through PRWeb ASAP.

Of course, a majority of visitors to the booth were either current customers who were interested in what was coming down the pipeline, or people who had heard about us through word-of-mouth and wanted to learn more about our service. I could hear many of those who walked by turn and say to their companions, “Oh, that’s PRWeb. We already use them.”

As for the demographic of customers and prospects stopping by the booth, there were certainly a fair share of PR people but the majority were small business owners or marketing professionals.

Walking around the conference it seemed there were increasing numbers of services that attempted to connect customers with social media. Of these a few that stood out to me included:

1. BuzzLogic - The holistic platform focused on influencer relations had a really cool new feature, ‘influencer advertising,’ that provided customers with a method for targeting ads in social media hot spots. Radian6 seems to be an emerging player in this area although right now they seem to lean a bit more heavily to the monitoring/analysis side than the outreach side. At the same time, they have one of the coolest platforms I’ve seen in a while, as well as a refreshing and hip brand aesthetic.
2. Creativeweblogging - A global network of bloggers that offers a variety of advertising options to customers. I noticed a couple of blogger networks as a matter of fact and feel like we may see more to come in the next couple of years.
3. Blogsvertise / PayPerPost - I couldn’t really note any discernible difference between PayPerPost and Blogsvertise. In fact I think their logos even use the same font.

All in all, it was a great opportunity to meet and connect with customers and prospects and re-acclimate myself with the cutting-edge of the industry.

Note: Lee Odden’s blog provides a great multimedia experience of ad:tech in case you want to learn more.