As the founder of AdMonsters, I’ve been to just about all of our conferences over the years. At this point I’m used to the fact that you all aren’t there to talk to me, but people do often ask me why and how I started the company.
The simple answer is that early on in my own career on the Web, I went to some ad tech-related conferences, and for me the experience was just miserable – not just boring, but also disorienting and depressing. Borrowing some of the basics from a group of Web CIOs and CTOs that I had been part of, I struck out on my own and created the event that I wanted to go to: a tightly focused, super high-quality conference built around an intimate community of professional peers.
This became AdMonsters, which grew from a first meeting in the summer of 1999 of less than 20 people to full-fledged conferences approaching 100 participants by the mid-2000s. As time went on, I hired some staff, firmed up the content and sponsorship model, and AdMonsters continued to grow and thrive while serving the constantly evolving and growing field of “ad ops.”
Even so, the business remained fairly small, and we experienced all the difficulties that small companies go through. Most of all, it’s hard to fund growth and new initiatives, and there isn’t much room for variations in the business cycle, let alone for outright mistakes, of which I made plenty.
And so, it is with great pleasure and pride that we are announcing today that AdMonsters and OPS have become part of Access Intelligence. With the backing of a larger parent, AdMonsters will have the support it needs to grow in new ways and to serve the ad ops and surrounding digital media business community better than ever before. I would say that our conferences will stay the same, but the fact is that they will continue to improve, and now even more so.
The AdMonsters team, including myself, remains fully engaged and dedicated to making awesome our top priority, and to making each one of our conferences the best yet.
Thank you – the AdMonsters community – for your support and participation, and to the AdMonsters team for doing such excellent work and for being such a pleasure to work with. We are all looking forward to the next chapter of the AdMonsters story, and we hope that you join us!
Sincerely,
Bowen Dwelle
Founder, AdMonsters