The Permuto team was out and about that the Ad-Tech conference in uncharacteristically balmy San Francisco (April 21-23, 2009).  This popular annual conference is the intersection of business, marketing, advertising, and some web technology.  Overall, the conference is a proxy of the health of the online advertising industry which can be summed up in one word… industrious.

This year, the venue Moscone West was quite a bit smaller than in years past.  The current state of the economy has slimmed down the number and size of the booths.  For example, Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft had always had a sizable booths were much smaller presences than years before.  Yahoo! did not have a booth but a meeting room.  Google had a slimmed down booth and a meeting room.  Microsoft was pretty much a no-show on the expo floor this year.

Despite the slimmer list of exhibitors, the turnout at the show was excellent.  The show floor was extremely crowded and bustling with people.  There was definitely lots of energy, optimism, and excitement in the air with a lot of business cards changing hands, catching up with old colleagues, consummating new business deals, and budding business relationships.  People were definitely focused on making their business more efficient through the economic storm.

At night, the attendees of the show were treated to a bevy of parties scatter across the city hosted by VC’s, ad networks, and lead generation companies.  The parties were all packed to the gills and flowing with free food and drinks.  A great time was had by all.

Recently, 27 of the web’s largest publishers have agreed to try at least one of three new extra-large ad units aimed at stimulating creativity and better meeting marketers’ needs.

The new units, introduced by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) earlier this month, include a 336 wide x 860 tall Fixed Panel that resembles a jumbo skyscraper, a 468 wide x 648 tall XXL Box that supports page-turns and video, and a 970 wide x 418 tall Pushdown that drops down to reveal the ad before retracting back up to the top of the page.

The participating OPA members include high-brow publishers like CBSi, CNN, ESPN, MTV Networks, the New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, to name just a few. According to the OPA, the 27 initial publishers had a combined, unduplicated reach of 108.3 million visitors, or 66% of the total U.S. Internet audience, in January 2009. At the trial’s end in July 2009, these new ad units will be available exclusively through the participants’ ad sales teams.

While the ads are designed to give advertisers greater visibility, more room for creativity, better measurability, and a broader range of options for user interactivity, it remains to be seen whether these ads will be embraced or scorned by users. If somewhat controversial, this development certainly proves that publishers are willing to cater to advertisers’ demands for larger display units and improved integration.

It’ll be interesting to see where this trend goes or is it something having to do with the tough economy.  Larger ads are certainly more impactful and does lead to higher brand awareness and impact to the consumer.