The ladies in attendance went for retro garb, flashing back to those bygone days of advertising, though not enough of the men pulled out their inner Don Draper. Fortunately Adify supplied fedoras so no one was too out-of-style.

Shortly after arriving, Adify Media’s Lee Hoffman enlightened me on Adify’s business model and some of today’s trends in premium content.

“Publishers want to gain value from their valuable premium content. It’s not just about cookie-based audience targeting, but also about delivering creative in the right content and context to generate impact and results.” he explained.

I sipped another Jack & Coke and mingled with some agency friends from Deep Focus, Mediavest and MEC. It wasn’t long until I came across the incredibly affable Larry Pretto, a regional sales director for Adify for the New York area. Larry and I enjoyed some diner-style food — corn dogs, fries and and listened in on the DJ, who never missed a beat.

Thanks to Adify Media for a great party — it sure was swell!

And now Adify has expanded its midtail video advertising reach at no cost to its clients. After testing the technology with every online video player compliant with the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Video-Ad-Serving Template (VAST) 2.0, Adify has upgraded it proprietary video API, opening a wide array of online video options — content management systems, players and plug-ins, oh my — to brands and media companies over more than 200 vertical ad networks and 18,000 publishers.

Just to drop a few names, Adify’s API goes smooth with Ooyala, AdoTube, Freewheel, Auditude, LiveRail, Delve, Adap.tv, Open Video Ads, FlowPlayer, JW Player, Magnify, Grab Networks and ClipSyndicate.

In addition, the latest API enables video syndication with vertical ad networks, allowing clients to distribute and monetize contributed content. In addition, clients will be able to redirect to remnant video ad networks.

Kaufman goes into more detail about the API in the video below:

With 216 media planners, interactive marketing directors and agency executives responding to its queries, Adify reports that 69% of media planners and agencies are using ad networks as part of their digital buys, compared to 48% recorded in 2008. In addition, vertical ad networks are increasing in notoriety, with 72% of respondents now familiar with the niche services compared to 56% in 2008.

More than two-thirds of respondents cited cost effectiveness as a chief reason for using ad networks. The three most important qualities in ad networks are targeting, transparency and quality, while networks’ creative abilities were the least important attribute.

Adify President Russ Fradin found this most concerning. “As the industry looks for better ways to engage, not just reach, their audience, brands need to focus on compelling creative that builds an ongoing conversation with consumers and placing it where consumers spend time,” he said.

In 2009, 37.9% of those surveyed spent between $1 million to $5 million per quarter on online advertising, while 15.2% of respondents doled out $5 million to $20 million per quarter and 5.9% dropped more than $20 million per quarter. Seventy-three percent of respondent’s digital media budgets were larger than $500,000, compared to 56% in 2008

Branding beat out direct response as the top priority for online campaigns, with 83% of respondents allocating 50% or more of their budget to the cause.

Do you agree with Fradin that media planners and such should be more concerned with the creative capabilities of ad networks? Comment below.

Food CPMs were up 91%, from a median CPM of $3.63 in the second quarter to $6.94 in the third. This accelerated the vertical’s meteoric rise from a median of $1.50 in the first quarter.

Real estate CPMs jumped to a median $7.62 in the third quarter, which wasn’t as impressive as the leap from $2.38 in the first quarter to $6.49 in the second, but still denotes a recovering sector. Entertainment recorded an 8% increase in CPMs, its fourth consecutive quarter of growth.

On the other side, the automotive vertical witnessed a contraction similar to what’s happened in the auto market since “Cash for Clunkers” ended. Median CPM has slipped from $17.26 in the first quarter to $12.47 in the third.

Omniture and comScore have partnered to deliver a unified digital audience measurement system. Specifically designed to meet the unique demands of the digital advertising world, the offering will combine the power of Omniture’s Web analytics with comScore’s new Media Metrix 360 hybrid audience measurement to help provide publishers and advertisers with a unified and comprehensive view of online audiences.

Adify, vertical ad network management and media services company, has annouced that premium interactive ad formats can now be delivered cost-effectively as part of a network buy. Brand marketers can now use Adify’s easy, scalable solution to buy interactive, interstitial, roadblocks and overlay ad units on more than 12,000 hand-selected Web sites across more than 200 vertical ad networks powered by Adify and across Adify Media.

Relevant Searches, a search engine marketing firm, has unveiled new SEO services that dramatically improve end-user experience and put marketers in control of organic search listings and campaign profitability. The company’s SEO 2.0 services deliver content-rich, customized results that are updated daily and empower marketers to manage campaigns to business rules — at the URL level.

Specific Media:

Leroy Holland joins Specific Media as a senior account executive within the San Francisco region. Holland brings more than 10 years of sales experience to Specific Media, including previous positions at AOL’s Platform-A and Fox Interactive Media’s IGN Entertainment.

Melissa Holder was hired as account executive within the San Francisco region. She previously spent four years as a national account executive at Yahoo! Hot Jobs.

Adify:

The vertical ad network management and media services company announced the appointments of Glenn Fishback, SVP media sales, Lee Hoffman, VP media sales, eastern region, and Jonny Byrne, commercial director, UK to build out the sales team for Adify’s new division, Adify Media.

Fishback was previously the VP of sales at Turn Inc. He also held VP of sales positions at Coupons Inc. and Claria Corporation, including management of revenue growth in the U.S., Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

Hoffman joins Adify Media from AOL’s ad network, Platform-A, where he was a regional sales director managing over $50m in revenue. His career includes VP-level sales positions at WebMD, Ask Jeeves, MaxOnline, and MaxWorldwide (formerly L90/Doubleclick North American Media). In his new role at Adify Media, Hoffman will lead Adify’s New York office and drive media sales for the eastern and midwestern U.S.

Byrne comes to Adify from Tiscali UK Ltd, where he was head of agency sales and ran the media sales team responsible for generating in excess of £7m net sales PA. He was sales manager and key account director at Incisive Media (formally VNU Business Publications), and led the international team providing cross-media solutions for Europe’s top 20 corporate tech clients. In his new role as commercial director, Byrne will lead Adify Media’s London office, overseeing UK media sales.

Getfugu:

Former Ask Jeeves co-founder David Warthen was named Chief Technology Officer. In addition to his achievements with Ask Jeeves, Warthen has successfully led a number of smaller startup companies including: Jiles Inc., a start-up company developing natural language search products, Geomas Software, a privately held business developing Geo-Targeted search products based on their intellectual property and Eye Games Inc., a pioneering developer of next-generation man-machine interactive webcam video games.

The Social Media Advertising Consortium (SMAC):

The industry association has announced creation of its Board of Directors and the appointment of Maura Curtin as the organization’s Executive Director. Curtin brings almost 15 years experience in the digital arena at Fox Interactive Media, Fairchild Publications and iVillage.

2ergo:

The mobile tech company is furthering its global expansion plans by today announcing a significant business development partnership in China. The UK-based company has agreed the strategic partnership with telecommunications business development specialist, Intralink.

NetShelter Technology Media

Anne Marie Miller was hired as vice president, strategic accounts. She most recently served as corporate senior vice president of sales at United Business Media.

Hydra

Rachel Corcoran was hired director of compliance overseeing Hydra’s compliance team and the Hydra AdControl suite of services. Most recently, Corcoran served as the manager of corporate regulatory compliance and contracts at Experian.

Pointroll:

Ray McIntosh was hired as sales director, west coast; Chris Baughman as avp, creative strategy; Dana Summers as account executive, Pacific Northwest; and Rhiannon Ubelhor as an account executive, Auto, for the Los Angeles post.

The Adify Amplified partner program’s initial members include Aggregate Knowledge, Ooyala, Rovion and Wave2 Media Solutions. The open infrastructure allows companies to deliver content sponsorships, video, display and rich media advertising to the unique specifications of each Network Builder.

The Network Builder provides Global 100 Media Companies, entrepreneurs, advertisers and quality independent publishers the tools and services to create vertical ad networks that reach highly engaged audiences, and its Adify Media delivers opt-in supplemental media revenues for Adify Network Builder customers to maximize the value they generate from online advertising.

The cable company Cox acquired Adify for $300 million last year.

In Ad Age’s recent article, “What to Expect from the Next Gen of Digital Display,” Rich Karpinski portrays a Wild West-style land grab afoot. Mr. Karpinski sees ad networks, agencies, publishers, and brokers staking out each other’s traditional stomping grounds and jostling each other aside in the effort to take up new territory. Reinforcing the idea that roles are in flux, some networks are predicting that their targeting capacity will increasingly supplant agencies’ planning function.

Both of these visions for “what comes next” show how networks have been successfully moving in on media planning—traditionally an agency strong suit. But don’t count agencies out just yet. .
When it comes to successful planning, agencies still play a critical role that targeting algorithms can’t touch

Certainly, in the current landscape, agencies need to maintain flexibility to operate their businesses – from planning, to day to day operations, to sourcing inventory, to utilizing data – while always balancing value and quality. Partnerships based on total transparency and data ownership may drive us to view inventory as anything from a commodity to a high-value relationship.

Here’s where agencies still have much to offer: While networks offer mass reach, traditional media planners can offer a nuanced evaluation of sites’ content, design, and placement. Savvy brand managers understand that this sort of critical evaluation of context can make the difference between a campaign’s success and a nightmare story of targeting gone wrong. When they collaborate with vertical ad networks, or even form their own vertical ad networks, agencies can deliver relevance as measured by real people—not just their numerical stand-ins.

As Jack Rotolo says in Mr. Karpinski’s piece:

“Content remains one of the more critical factors advertisers evaluate in looking to place their ads; they want to be in contextually relevant areas… Clearly, some advertisers are looking for performance-based advertising. But there’s a whole other arena of advertisers that are really trying to align themselves and create a market position around a brand. They are very selective about the types of environments they are going to get into.”

To date the online world has had a certain amount of disregard for traditional offline branding strategies, but that will soon have to change as well. I predict brands will begin to fight back by building out their own networks within their categories and mining revenue from inventory they are currently ceding to outside players. Karpinski and others seem to agree, noting that “[new] ‘demand-side’ networks run by the large ad holding companies/agencies — VivaKi’s Audience on Demand or Havas’s Adnetik, among others — are emerging to assert the power of the buy-side…”

As offline brands start to take Internet advertising more seriously, we will see an even greater need to build out more integrated and high-value marketing strategies that require brand safety, quality content, and guarantees of contextual relevance. Data-based targeting will continue to expand, but traditional media planning will continue to be of value.

– Express your opinion, comment below.

Adify Media reaches across the vertical ad networks that use Adify Network Builder as well as several Cox media properties to give advertisers and media planners customized access to engaged, educated and affluent audiences. Adify Media has already created private marketplaces for top marketers such as Best Western Hotels, Eukanuba, Febreze, HP, Microsoft and Can-Am Spyder roadster.

Adify now offers two distinct and compliementary lines of business – Adify Network Builder and Adify Media. Adify Network Builder provides Global 100 Media Companies, entrepreneurs, advertisers and quality independent publishers the tools and services to create vertical ad networks that reach highly engaged audiences. while Adify Media delivers opt-in supplemental media revenues for Adify Network Builder customers to maximize the value they generate from online advertising.

The cable company Cox acquired Adify for $300 million last year. According to ComScore, vertical ad networks have increased substantially in the past year, from 21.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience in March 2008 to 57.1 percent in March 2009.

The new network went live Wednesday with a national broadcasting sponsorship promoting The Masters in addition to several national hotel deals. Golf Audience Network has an affluent golf-enthusiast audience that is 79 percent male, with an average age of 41, an average HHI of $92,673, and an average of $857 spent on golf equipment in the past 12 months.

“The bloggers and golf content site publishers who’ve joined the Golf Audience Network are very passionate about the sport and have loyal audiences,” network founder Christopher Barford, said in a statement. “Now that we’ve brought these sites together in the network model, we can approach agencies and tell a compelling story about reaching the affluent market. Major brands and resorts want to run on these hand-picked sites because of the quality of their audiences and the scale they can get from one buy.”

Initial Golf Audience Network members include Out of Bounds Golf, GeoffShackelford.com, and Life in the Rough.