The Advertising Week conference will exit from New York tomorrow, and if the events tonight are any indication, the industry has got its swagger back.

Among the events is a launch dinner for stealthy venture-backed advertising company Permuto Inc. Held at The Mott, a trendy restaurant in downtown Manhattan, the dinner will be custom crafted, based on recommendations by the chef, and each course will be accompanied by a wine chosen by the restaurant’s sommelier.

Permuto, an online marketing company seeking to optimize display advertising for its client brands, has launched a new platform that measures the performance of this type of ad with the same precision that most search engine text-ads are evaluated. Called, ShopperConnect, the platform is targeted at web-based retailers, promising to collect purchasing data, provide dazzling ads, buy ad space and calculate browsers’ responses to the ads.

Danny Flamberg, September 23, 2009

Online display ads are the red-headed freckled kid of interactive advertising; present but not quite understood even though last year 4.5 trillion ads were served and each of us was exposed to nearly a hundred ads per person each business day.

Marketers spent an estimated $5.9 billion in 2008 to spray and pray banners, skyscrapers, advergames, “ghost” ads and moving or animated images (the top five ad formats) across the Internet. Some hoped to provoke clicks and convert those clicks into sales. Yet many just hoped to expose passing web surfers to a brand image or brand impression in the hope of raising or extending awareness or priming the pump for later consideration or sales.

For a couple of years now I have admonished the advertising world to come up with “new age” technologies to match Web 2.0 tech advances. Until yesterday, not many have really captured even a part of the idea that online ads (or offline ones either) need another delivery methodology. Except for perhaps Google. Permuto, a Palo Alto startup with this goal in mind, just launched ShopperConnect, its marque service for advertisers and consumers alike. This technically advanced, and well thought out product may in fact be the precursor to even more refined ad-wares that might just solve the problem of effectively engaging the online market.