Tired of conferences promising professional education and delivering full blown sales pitches one after another?  How about those that keep repeating the same tired “best practices” (a.k.a. common sense from 3 years ago)?  AdTech blogger Carlen Lea Lesser isn’t tired of such sessions at conferences nor is she too ashamed to admit who really calls the shots when it comes to what gets discussed at Ad-Tech—sponsors.  While it’s common practice for sponsors to get stroked, issue strokes it’s another thing to have Sponsor Nazi’s (who’s business models are threatened by the real-life change sometimes discussed in sessions) stomping out valuable dialog.

None the less, Lesser wants more of that pat, dry drivel that you’ve come to expect from trade shows.  You know… the filler in between the parties and networking.  What’s more Lesser’s behavior (does she speak for AdTech??) would suggest the conference would rather run away from discussing the sometimes ugly and chaotic issues driving real change in online advertising. 

Lesser makes no attempt to hide the fact that her rebellious blog comments were inspired by an AdTech sponsor who was disappointed to hear a panel discussing so much gloom and doom (a.k.a. realities of a chaotic marketplace called online advertising; news flash, it can get ugly if you choose to actually discuss the real issues).  Nor does Lesser mention that the panel held every single audience member (with the exception of 2 clients of mine who needed to run for a flight) at the END of AdTech’s conference.

Rather than letting the audience cast its own vote on quality of discussion offered by panels at AdTech’s Chicago conference Lesser pummels away with her own take, setting aside the fact that AdTech puts speakers through a tedious, complicated, excruciating qualification processes.  Panel moderators are forced to repeatedly meet with panelists ahead of time and pre-qualify virtually every ounce of information they’re willing to share—thus ensuring a stellar session, right?  Wrong according to Lesser—time to pass the buck and hang the entire panel without review of attendee evaluation forms.

Not only does Lesser want to distance AdTech from its own responsibilities (insuring quality sessions) she goes further and calls for less reality-based discussion.  Quoting panelists loosely (and incorrectly quoting me) Lesser downplays serious issues by speaking cavalierly to them, ignores other critical issues discussed altogether and demonstrates shocking ignorance to the realities of the affiliate marketing industry. 

Says Lesser,

“In listening to what they were describing, it seems in that affiliate marketers are having problems with Google’s attempts to weed out trash like spam-blogs. And based on much of the conversation, it’s possible that many of the spam-blogs are affiliates.”

Spinning an issue into a “complaint” (that the panel dared express its opinion on) Lesser suggests that, “Apparently what’s bad for affiliate marketing is good for the rest of us.”

Lesser doesn’t stop there.  She goes on to belittle shock-waves made by Google in recent weeks—some of the biggest news to hit affiliate marketing, if not online advertising itself, in years (Google’s landing page quality announcement) and directs one of the smartest, most experienced (hello! she advises search engines) women I know in our industry (Amanda Watlington, phD) to MarketingSherpa for a brush-up.  What Ms. Lesser doesn’t realize is that Dr. Watlington is a source for MarketingSherpa.

Perhaps AdTech’s real mistake was inviting panelists who live and breathe the real world to speak on a panel that has “bring a pillow” written all over it.