Yesterday was an exciting, fascinating day at the first-ever ADSPACE conference – an event designed for small to mid-sized publishers within AdTech. We sat on the State of Contextual Advertising panel with Paul Edmonson (CEO, YieldBuild), Jonathan Teo (VP, Benchmark Capital), Dave Jacobs (Senior VP of Publisher Services, Platform-A), Jay Sears (Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange), and Jennifer Slegg (CEO, JenSense). The panel drew a good-sized crowd and great discussion around the future of Contextual Advertising. 
Most of the discussion flowed from the idea that publishers should be out there testing multiple Content Ad solutions and varying configurations of those solutions in order to get the maximum returns. It was during this discussion that we announced that Microsoft pubCenter is actively seeking new publishers to join our Beta program. This announcement was well received by the panelists and audience alike as pubCenter was then offered up as a perfect candidate for exactly that kind of testing.
In order to build a robust product that fits the needs of publishers and advertisers in this demanding environment, we need your participation and feedback. These are exciting and challenging times and we very much look forward to hearing from you.
-Kevin
[cal]04/23/2009[/cal]