The net.marketing conference, thought earlier this year to be able to draw 1,000 people, hosted a mere 300 or so, according to attendees and exhibitors interviewed. And only 14 exhibitors were in the hall for the May event.
“Obviously the industry has contracted,” said H. Robert Wientzen, CEO of the Direct Marketing Association. He admitted he would have liked more exhibitors, but said: “It's a great program and there's a lot of new people here.”
“This show is meant to educate people,” he added, running for a cab to the airport after lunch on the first day. “This is a successful show.”
The exhibitors weren't unhappy.
“We've been very busy because there are so few exhibits,” said Josh Glantz, vice president of ePrize, a promotions company based in New York. “I think the leads we made here will pay for our participation over the next two weeks.”
“More for me, damn it,” quipped Deb Goldstein, president of IDG List Services in Framingham, MA, the only list company exhibiting. “What's good is anyone with a list question comes to me,” she said.
But some net.marketing stalwarts, such as DoubleClick and Worldata, were noticeably absent.
List company Worldata, based in nearby Boca Raton, canceled its exhibit, DMA spokeswoman Christina Duffney confirmed. Worldata corporate vice president Jay Schwedelson wouldn't comment.
Online marketing company DoubleClick never signed up, Duffney noted.
The type of exhibitors that had filled previous net.marketing halls has changed. The e-mail service providers that used to pass out premiums on every aisle have been replaced by search engine companies such as Google, Overture, FindWhat and Looksmart.
That's a sign of the evolving times — DMers have discovered that search engine marketing is the new prospecting channel, said Goldstein.
“Paid search is paid relevance,” said Steve Smith, CEO of San Francisco-based e-mail service provider Mindshare Design, who came to the show as an attendee. “You're buying relevance.”
“A lot of people are still not sure about search engine marketing,” said Gala Lawrence, marketing coordinator at Overture, fielding questions from attendees at her booth. Overture began exhibiting at net.marketing and the DMA Annual two years ago. Though curious, attendees visiting the booth were not necessarily deal-makers, said Overture director of sales Julie Greenhouse.
Attendees appeared avid about the conference program.
Greenhouse said a pre-conference session on search engine marketing had to be relocated to a larger room on Monday. Schwedelson said his pre-conference program on e-mail marketing had 200 people.
“Many of the people who are here are vice president-level or above,” Duffney said.
Still, whatever the good news, the anemic attendance could not be hidden.
Jeff Handler, the DMA's former director of interactive marketing, said in an interview in January that the association “would like to get over 1,000 attendees.” Handler left the DMA in January.
Previous net.marketing shows, such as the Seattle conference in February 2001, came close to that with 600 attendees, a source said.
The DMA has a policy of refusing to confirm conference attendee totals.
During planning for this year's net.marketing, some DMers criticized the DMA for holding the show in Miami, a city not known as an interactive hot spot. As budgets tightened, companies didn't want to spring for business travel, they said.
“I will be very curious to see how the DMA Annual does,” said Andrew Wetzler, president of search engine marketing company MoreVisibility.com in Boca Raton, an attendee at net.marketing. The DMA Annual — the DMA's biggest conference — is slated for October in Orlando.
