While attendance at SES San Jose was definitely down this year, it was still a great show.  I enjoyed meeting people at our booth and appreciated the hard work of our team pulling that all together.  We met a lot of interesting folks and enjoyed hearing feedback on the new Click Forensics dashboard.

The big hit, of course, were the “Stress Einstein” squishys! Who wouldn’t want of these guys!  They reminded me of the bobble-heads in “Night at the Museum 2″  

I also enjoyed participating in a session titled, “Ads in a Quality Score World“.   Mike Grehan moderated the panel and both Yahoo (Tomaso Pozzi) and Google (Jonathan Alferness) participated.  WebProNews covered the session and wrote a nice recap. 

The other highlight of the week for me was our Click Quality Council dinner.  We had over 25 executives from ad networks, publishers, advertisers and search engines join us for a great dinner of conversation, networking and fun!

The conversation is always interesting when you have people representing all corners of the online advertising ecosystem.  It was the third year we have hosted the CQC dinner in San Jose and our 13th since the Council was formed in 2006.

Congratulations to the newlyweds… after a long, long courtship Microsoft and Yahoo finally managed to get together (the prenuptials are still being sorted out!).  I have been in favor of this union for sometime now.  Google owns a ridiculous share of the pay per click advertising market and desperately needs a competitor.  Microsoft + Yahoo = Competition.  As I have said for the last several years, the lens we look through at Click Forensics is that of the advertiser.  Competition is always good for the advertiser.  

The growth of online advertising, in particular pay per click advertising, has been meteoric. It is a great model and one that has proven hugely successful for hundreds of thousands of advertisers large and small.  It is a model that will continue to grow as large advertisers shift more dollars from unmeasureable and less effective traditional media.  It will grow because it uses context, targeting and relevancy to the highest level.  Yahoo’s audience enhanced by Microsoft’s technology will mean innovation and efficiency.  There is no doubt; Google will continue to have success.  But the new partnership will make the online world even more attractive for advertisers.

Today there are standards in place to help hold the search providers accountable.  There are better reporting, campaign management and keyword tools to add to the efficiency.  I see a world in the near future where display advertising will begin to make significant gains from the data that exists in search. Context, targeting and relevance can improve every medium and this partnership will leverage that data to a much higher level than before.

So congrats to you both for a new start.  The entire advertising community is pulling for you and expecting big things. I do need to warn you… expectations are high and the honeymoon is short.