Day 1 at Adtech

Our trip started off a little rough. Our Delta flight from Orlando to New York City on Tuesday was completely canceled because of some sort of “electrical” problem. We were supposed to arrive in NYC around 5pm but had to re-route our trip. We arrived around 8pm. We jumped into a cab and headed to our hotel, The New Yorker. This was our first time staying at this hotel. We booked our room kind of last minute and some of our other hotel options were already booked full. When we arrived the counter clerk told me that I had booked the “small room.” She offered to upgrade us two levels for free. The room was tiny so I hate to think what the “small” room might have looked like. You pretty much run into the bed the second you open the door. We have stayed in New York City several times now so we know most of the hotels have tiny rooms, but with the upgrade we were expecting a little more. We did get a nice view of the city which was probably the upgrade she was referring to, not the size of the room.

After dropping off our bags, Deb and I decided we were not up for any partying that night so we went to a local Japanese restaurant and then called it a night about 11pm.

Day 2 at Adtech

We got a late start on day 2. We had breakfast at the hotel diner about 10pm and then headed over to the Javitzs Convention center for the Adtech show. The convention center itself was nice. The registration line at Adtech was not nice. I think we stood in line about thirty minutes and then they started handing out some temporary wrist bands so we could get into the expo hall and get our conference badges later.

The expo hall was amazing. I think there were over 250+ exhibitors. I’ll spare you the long list because you can find them all here. I wish I would have taken more pictures of the booths because some of them were pretty slick. Speaking of slick, one of the first booths we stopped by was the Convert2Media booth. They had a bar-style booth with some nice brew on tap. It was great chatting with Ruck, Steve, Mike and the rest of the Convert2Media crew! Did you happened to see Ruck’s custom ordered shoes? I think I intentionally took a little extra time on this row of the expo hall so I could go back and get a refill a couple times. By the way, when Ruck asks don’t ever tell Ruck what other networks you might be working with because he will pretty much curse you out (in the nicest way). I stopped by the Convert2Media office/mansion a few days ago to pickup an amazing prize I won from a recent affiliate revenue contest they held. More on that later.

I pretty much stopped at every company booth that I might be able to advertise with because I’m going full steam ahead with direct and media buys. There were also a ton of affiliate networks at Adtech as well. Of course I stopped by and chatted with my friends Mike Kelly and others at Market Leverage. Can you make great money with Market Leverage? A screenshot is coming soon.

Before leaving the expo hall we stopped by the Clickbooth booth and ran into Eric Schechter and my buddy Murray Newlands. Eric hooked us up with some VIP tickets to their party at Pancha. Eric is the social media guy at Clickbooth. We talked a lot during the event and it was great getting to know him more. There are so many good things I could say about Murray that I’ll be making a separate post about him and what he is up to. If you are an affiliate network not collaborating with Murray Newlands yet, you should be.

We only made it about half-way through the Adtech expo hall during day one. Deb and I had some lunch and then headed back to the hotel for a break.

While at the hotel Dina Riccobono from Market Leverage contacted us and hooked us up with New York Knicks tickets. These weren’t just tickets, they were $750 a piece Legends Suite tickets.  We had awesome seats, great service, quarterly stat updates, and a Knicks Swag Laptop bag filled with a Knicks shirt, sweatshirt, and hat.  Dina Riccobono = Awesome.

Also there was Zac Johnson. Zac is a great guy but you probably already know that. You’ll find some great tips on his blog including such as his recent Breakdown of a Profitable Facebook Ads Campaign.

John Reiser was also there. He is a professional golfer and will be blogging about his journey as a pro golfer here. John is a super cool guy and was a lot of fun to hang out with. I look forward to seeing him at some other events soon.

After the game Deb and I headed over to the Clickbooth party at Pancha where we did some more networking and chatted with Eric Schechter, John Resier, Murray Newlands and others. Slick Rick was the featured performer. “La di da di we like to party” old-school.

I also met Brittany, my publisher manager at Clickbooth. Deb really loved her because she though Deb looked 25 years old tops, but we are both in our early 30’s with two kids. She thought I could be 25 years-old tops too, but that’s normal for me. Not a bad thing I guess especially in another few years. Haha. Brittany and I had an unfortunate head-butt and I hope she didn’t end up with too much of a headache. Sorry Brittany but it was all your fault!

We got back to the hotel after the Clickbooth party a little after 2AM and crashed.

Day 3 at Adtech

I woke up with a bit of a hangover but I had still had a lot of new and old contacts to meet in the expo hall so we forced ourselves to get up and get going. We grabbed some coffee and hit the rest of the expo hall. I met a lot of new companies for the first time and now have a ton of new test buys to setup over the next few weeks.

Later that day we attended a BlogUP hosted by Eric from Clickbooth and Murray Newlands (his BlogUP recap). The turnout was small but a ton of great information was shared. They will be holding more events soon so make sure you attend the next one. After the BlogUP we all went out for a nice dinner and shared more ideas and stories.

We had a 7AM flight out of NYC the next morning so headed back to the hotel after dinner. We still only got about 4 hours of sleep that night.

Was Adtech Worth The Trip?

100% yes. This was by far my most productive conference in terms of meeting new contacts and finding new business. As an affiliate, even if you are not into media buys and such, there were a ton of affiliate networks attending as well. I look forward to attending again next year. Our next trip will be the Affiliate Summit 2010 in Vegas. I can’t wait for that one too.

Did you attend Adtech? What did you think of the event?