Insights from the Digital Publishing Summit (DPS) in Utah

eXelate and Autobytel at the Digital Publishing Summit 2011

The eXelate team attended the 2^nd Digital Publisher Summit this week in Park City, Utah and despite rumors to the contrary, there was actual work that was performed in the shadow of the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains. Most notably, we launched our DMP partnership with Autobytel and shared some of their exceptional success with the Summit attendees. eXelate’s Damian Garbaccio and Kyle Pratt, Senior Director of Corporate Development for Autobytel, hit a home run with their breakfast presentation on “Auto-nomous Data Management” (despite the bad pun). The duo shared how despite being sold out of media inventory, Autobytel was able to leverage eXelate’s DataLinX platform to generate incremental revenue from its audience offsite and how the company is leveraging the platform’s DataShield function to protect it’s highly valuable audience.

Also at the event, I sat on a mid-day (i.e. keeping people from skiing) panel about digital branding dollars and how different players in the system (data guys, publishers, exchanges) can play the brand game. Martini Media’s Skip Brand did a great job keeping the crowd engaged and despite trying to foster some conflict, the panelists from Turner, Adap.tv and MSNBC all seemed to agree that measurement and analytics that were consistent with offline branding data would be the key to attracting and keeping real branding dollars.

It wasn’t all work and no play – though. We did join the Liberty (IAC) Advertising and Open X folks for a few, brew-fueled rounds of shuffleboard at the No Name Saloon in Park City, had a good time at the AdMeld sponsored Casino night (where losing funny money was pretty painless) and were even skewered by Comedy Central Comedian  Cash Levy at the Pubmatic Dinner, where he took us to task for our “creative” company name. In classic CEO fashion, I blamed the previous administration and quickly diverted attention to other more easily laughed at subjects like the Perky Jerky suit that appeared at the conference.

All in all a great few days of networking, pitching and learning. Thanks to the DPS staff for a great event!