Below, have a look at photos of some of the attendees (broken down by slide number and identified left to right).

2976: Ken Solano, Jason Smith (both Horizon Media), Dina Smyth, Nick Rau, (both Vizu)

2977: Jenny Campbell (Vizu), Scott Stopper (Annalect)

2978: Kelly Mullins (WildTangent), Greg Olson (Audience Science), Aimee Gerry (Vizu)

2988: Scott Stopper (Annalect), John Moffett (Vizu)

2992: Dina Smyth (Vizu), James Kreckler (Rodale)

ADOTAS

While the whole party seemed to go by in a, erm… a Flash, here’s the part that lasts — this year’s winners, selected from over 100 campaigns:

People’s Choice: Personal PC Store — Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Microsoft Windows, Universal McCann

Smartest Ad (Americas): White Collar — Glow Interactive, USA Network, Ignited

Smartest Ad (EMEA): Specsavers 2011 — Specsavers, MEC, infinite corridor @Annex

Smartest Ad (Asia Pacific): Yellovator — Clemenger, Millipede, Yellow Pages, OMD Melbourne

Smartest Homepage Customization: Allstate Mayhem — CBSi, Leo Burnett, Starcom

With the exception of the People’s Choice category, for which voting was open to the public, the awards were selected by a panel of international industry experts. Check out previews of those winning ads here, and check out photos of the party below (courtesy of MediaMind, naturally).

ADOTAS

Every year Clickbooth exhibits at ad:tech NY and not only hosts an exclusive party, but brings the industry’s elite together for a great networking opportunity. This year is no different! You can expect to be entertained all night with a performance by old school hip-hop artist Skee-Lo (known for his hit “I Wish”), Maxim’s Hometown Hottie Model Erin McKinnon, DJ Jaam, a fire dancer and an open bar from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. for VIPs.

Don’t be left out in the cold (literally), be sure to RSVP to get in the door!

What: Clickbooth presents Affiliate Awakening II

Where: Amnesia NYC, 609 W. 29th Street, NY, NY 10001

When: Wednesday, November 9th, 10pm – 3am

RSVP: Here!

Yes, I still play ping pong a good deal as many of my musician pals are avid pongers, which I mention to AdSafe CEO Scott Knoll at his company’s joint party with m6d at SPiN, a classy ping pong/drinking establishment by the Empire State Building (I actually met co-owner Susan Surandon on a previous visit and tried my best not to think about this). He replies that it’s the same with ad tech people — in fact, his old DoubleClick boss Kevin Ryan was the company ping pong champion and still plays competitively.

The ad techers’ affinity for ping pong takes center stage as the tournament gets going: the teams, mainly based on company divisions, are fiercely competitive (but still friendly — most of them have to work together the next day) and foul words go flying — it’s amazing the things that come out of people’s mouths when they slam the ball off the table.

Alas, I can’t join the action because, man about town I am, I have a Vibrant Media party to hit later. So I stick to the sidelines, getting some more details from Knoll about AdSafe’s recently launched Engagement Quality Ratings, pre-bid verification technology. I also run into m6d CEO Tom Phillips, who informs me the company I used to know as Media6Degrees has quietly rebranded itself as m6d and renamed its specialty “prospect targeting.”

“It’s dry, but true,” Phillips commented. “And it needs to be true.”

Previously, m6d was known as a leading social targeting firm, but that classification ended up causing much confusion as social targeting has nothing to do with social media. While social targeting gets maligned a lot as “lookalike targeting,” prospect targeting is actually a fairer description of what m6d does — target users with similar aspects to current customers/site visitors who have shown an affinity for the brand.

As we’re both big music guys (I still remember getting distracted while interviewing Phillips by a conference room named “Max’s Kansas City“ and a framed copy of The Cars‘ self-titled debut album on the wall), Phillips introduces me to Brian Dalessandro, director of data mining and statistical analysis, who I actually already knew from his band Hi, Mountain (which may have a new name soon). Dalessandro also plays drums for the m6d house band (I have a standing invite to jam at their next get-together) as well as Something Heavy, which is led by Alan Chapell of Chappell & Associates.

Chappell, who is definitely a great resource when it comes to the legal issues surrounding data collection and online privacy, was hanging out too and promoting Something Heavy’s next gig at the Canal Room on Nov. 8. From the pictures on the Facebook site, he looks like a helluva frontman — I can’t wait to get the live experience next week.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Lindsey Bourne, marketing manager for Legolas, a startup focusing on buying and selling audience futures. Forget real-time bidding — how about future-time bidding? (Yay, another acronym — FTB.) Before rushing back to her ping pong match, Bourne excitedly explained how Legolas’ technology forecasts the audience that will arrive on a site and enables advertisers to bid on serving impressions to these future visitors — going out as far as two or three months at the moment. Could this be the new guaranteed, audience-targeted inventory for advanced campaign planning?

On a side note, Legolas just partnered with consumer and market intelligence firm SymphonyIRI to leverage in-store purchase behavior and sales data into the media buying and campaign measurement processes.

But enough business — let’s see some little balls being smacked around! The winner of the tournament was Team Mindshare, made up of Abraham Madampil, MindShare ad operations manager, and Rob Patcher, AdSafe account manager. I hope the prize was a golden paddle — those can come in really handy in the bedroom… When you need to swat a mosquito… Yeah…

All photos courtesy of Michelle Wild of MWild Photography.

Opening up for NbyN is another veteran rapper, the always amazing Slick Rick, as well as Jonathan Emile and Mike Posner. With around 3,000 people expected to show, you better RSVP now to get on the guest list — doors are at 9, with Slick Rick at 10:15 and NbyN at 11:45.

CRUNCH blends Choicestream’s 10-year supply of proprietary intent data with third-party data from partner companies to create audience segments, and then target them using real-time bidding (courtesy of an AppNexus partnership). Word on the street is the company will be introducing some hot new features around the ad:tech NYC conference… Which is next week! Oh my…

ADOTAS

Vibrant’s guests stopped dancing and stared all slack-jawed and googly-eyed as clips of attendees throwing glitter, shaking their hair (now I know how shampoo commercials are filmed), popping balloons and even play-punching (I think) each other with boxing gloves were instantly transformed into magical pieces of cinema via the old trick of slow motion (with hyper-modern amenities).

But words can only go so far in this case — I mean, if a picture is worth 1,000 words, then 30 seconds of video shot at 1,000 frames per second really requires 30 million words to describe. Fortunately, Vibrant put together a classy highlight reel, with musical accompaniment by Lou Reed (recorded long before he started working with aging metalheads). There’s even a contest (and Vibrant fan-builder) that goes with it — whoever gets the most likes from a video posted on Facebook and tagged @vibrant wins an iPad2.

With attendees returning for multiple screen tests, the video booth was certainly the highlight of the Vibrant Awards, but the company had more to offer party-goers. The elegant room — which played host to Paul McCartney’s wedding reception a few weekends before — was packed, forcing tardy guests like me stand outside and play a few rounds of Angry Birds before getting in. Across from the video booth, attendees lined up to either get their fortunes told — and they had a choice between a palm reader and tarot card dealer.

New CEO Cella Irvine’s jubilation at the party’s smashing success was only matched by her excitement concerning Vibrant’s future initiatives. Although it’s still mainly known for its in-text advertising, Vibrant has been making moves across channels, adding social toolbar services for both publishers and advertisers. Vibrant is leveraging its contextual platform further, growing its business in the “in-image” (overlays on new online image inventory) ad space and as well as making a name in the video advertising marketplace.

Oh, and yeah, there were awards: a panel of senior agency and brand executives along with more than 600 public votes from industry members judged Vibrant’s nominees on creative strategy, contextual relevance, end-user perspective and brand message communication. The winners were:

• Vodafone D2 GmbH/Media Team OMD – Global Silver Award
• Chrysler LLC/Universal McCann – Global Bronze Award
• Arm & Hammer/MAXUS – US Silver Award
• Sprint/Mindshare – US Bronze Award
• Unilever AXE/Mindshare – Industry’s Choice Award

Click here to see all the acknowledged campaigns.

ADOTAS

What: INTENTclick PubCon Conference After Party

Where: Zuri Bar inside the MGM Grand Hotel
3799 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas, NV 89109

Zuri Bar offers an extensive cocktail list featuring both classic and trendy libations from inside the center of excitement at the MGM Grand.

When: Wednesday Nov. 9, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.

Who: Bloggers interested in making-money, saving money and increasing revenue online.

Hosts:

Murray Newlands

Murray Newlands is the founder of InfluencePeople as well as a successful speaker, blogger, founder of several marketing and blogging clubs and author of various eBooks that is interested in bringing like-minded bloggers together for an evening of fun. Oh, he enjoys writing articles for Adotas as well.

INTENTclick

INTENTclick contains content-rich sites in specific performance driven categories, and is able to deliver to these sites the highest monetization levels available in the market.

INTENTclick is a system that was created primarily for content writers who use content writing as a means for promoting and selling products online. This system essentially takes and uses a series of words within existing content and turns them into highly monetized links without affecting the SEO value of the content. These links are dynamically created as the page is loaded and upon mouse over on one of these links, a small pop-up window containing an advertisement appears.

RSVP: Here

The industrial kitchen/event space was the scene of the cocktail reception following Vitrue’s first annual client summit, humorously titled “Vitrue School for the Socially Gifted.” Keynote speeches were given earlier in the day by Brian Solis, principle for the Altimeter Group and author of the book “The End of Business as Usual,” as well as Ekaterina Walter, social media strategist for Intel. Vitrue had plenty to talk about itself — the company acquired social gaming platform GamesThatGive in July before rolling out the initial upgrades for version 3.0 of its Vitrue Social Relationship Management platform in August.

But after the business talk was through, it was time for drinks and food — and Hudson Yards Kitchen had plenty to offer on both fronts. The venue featured four food and drink stations that not only served delectable edibles, but also offered workshops on mixology (the alcoholic variant, as opposed to the DJing kind), smoking meats and pasta production.

The smell of pulled pork lured me to the Southern-style (or Suddern-style) station, but it was the country fried chicken with spicy ketchup that made my tastebuds sing. In addition, succulent mac and cheese and green bean casserole made me wonder if I’d been magically transported to Atlanta  – which happens to be where Vitrue is headquartered.

Founder and CEO Reggie Bradford had been keeping tabs on the station as well, monitoring the progress made on the Boston Butt, a massive slab of pork from the upper part of the shoulder from the front leg. His interest led to some discussion about the roots of that name as the Northeast isn’t really regaled for its great smoked meats — turns out it’s a colonial phrase referencing the way the meat was cut in Boston and then packaged into barrels called “butts” for storage or shipment.

Bradford boasts a diversity of marketing experience, having served in marketing and management positions at Miller Brewing Company (before the merger with Coors) as well as WebMD CMO in the 90s. Vitrue is actually Bradford’s third startup, originally developed as a tool for helping brands build communities based on user-generated online video content. However, discussions with clients awakened the need for a more holistic social marketing system.

To that extent, Bradford sees (and Vitrue has been compared to) the social media marketer’s version of SalesForce.com. At its core, Vitrue is a technology company, he said, offering a white-label platform for branded social media efforts. But in addition to software-as-a-service, the company has broken into providing actual social marketing services rather than just the toolkit.

But Bradford is quite fun to chat with not just about social media, but also sports — he loves his University of Georgia Bulldogs. He also told me about living in the Upper East Side in the early Giuliani days — the transition period, when you were more likely to be mobbed in Time Square rather than run over by a mob of tourists. As a big beer fan, I told him he should really take a trip across the East River to sample the craft brews served at the Brooklyn Brewery.

Enjoy some snaps — I wish they could capture how delicious that country fried chicken was.

New York could have been mistaken for London that misty Thursday evening, as the clouds seemed to lounge on the tops of skyscrapers. Although an October chill swept through the air, amplified by the sea breeze coming off the Hudson River, the view from the top deck was worth any and all shivering, especially when the captain took the ship for an up and personal view of Lady Liberty.

Someone joked that Casale is known for picking the worst times for events, but as fall tends to be my favorite season, I found everything about the atmosphere to be lovely. Besides, I was staying warm with a complimentary mariner’s cap emblazoned with the Casale logo.

If attendees — including representatives from major publishers like Gawker, Martha Stewart and MLB.com as well as tech partner MediaMath — couldn’t take the cold, well there was plenty to do inside: a dance-off erupted at a Microsoft Kinect (I saw some very interesting moves being thrown around to Salt ‘N Pepa’s “Push It) while old-fashioned folks hit up the physical dance floor when the DJ sank into a Michael Jackson retrospective. A colorful magician showed off his card skills, and may have even given away some secrets.

Below deck, patrons enjoyed an array of specialty pastas and tender sliced roast and/or turkey while enjoying the sea-level view. And, especially after one-too-many glasses of the superb champagne (what else would you drink on a yacht), I found myself returning to the frites station and its addictive mayonaise dipping sauce

CEO and President Joe Casale was all smiles as he greeted boarding passengers before the cruise set off and then served as host for the voyage. Along with his son and Vice President of Strategy Andrew Casale and a posse of Casale staff, he’d taken a flight down from the network’s headquarters in Toronto earlier that day, but showed no evidence of being tired. A few associates mentioned that day trips to NYC to visit publishers, agencies and tech companies were standard practice.

On one of his rounds, Joe took a few minutes to discuss the recently introduced CasaleX RTB platform, which he said had been met with wide approval by the network’s 3,000 premium publishers. Setting it apart from other ad networks that have introduced RTB, the platform was built in-house off of existing tech.

“Actually, we already had the real-time element,” he said with a grin.

More than three quarters of Casale’s base are using the platform, but Joe was marveling about the future potential RTB, claiming that it’s only in its initial stages. On that note, we chatted about whether programmatic buying was merely the buzz word du jour or the next wave of technological evolution.

Alas, the point of the cruise was to show Casale knows how to have a good time. Shop talk about private exchanges, data-imbued social targeting, the Federal Trade Commission’s three-pronged online privacy framework and rumors about massive rounds of funding gave way to more fun conversations. In particular, the New Yorkers were pumped to talk about the upcoming CMJ Music Festival — yes, my band Libel is playing, but instead of promoting, I was more interested in finding out where the new buzz bands were playing.

As we docked and then exited the vessel, the wife (who accompanied and served as Adotas photographer) was simply astounded. She commented, “This is really the appropriate way to treat your clients.” Indeed, I thought, indeed.