Ad:Tech, DoubleClick, Google and Cookies -- Masha Geller reviews the week's happenings from San Francisco.

Now that thousands of people are back in their offices after three grueling days of Ad:Tech San Francisco, let me take this opportunity to separate hype from reality and calmly recount the major happenings of this very hectic week. In addition to attracting a record crowd of thousands, selling out the exhibit hall so there was hardly any room to breathe, and putting together informative and interesting sessions, Ad:Tech managed to get many of the biggest players in the business to time their news announcements to the start of the show, which has rarely happened before.

First, to the surprise of few, the DoubleClick sale was finalized early on Monday morning. The facts of the deal are: Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity will shell out $1.1 billion in cash for the company by the end of Q3 2005. At that point, Kevin Ryan will step down as CEO to “pursue other opportunities,” while David Rosenblatt will continue to oversee the TechSolutions division as its CEO, and Brian Rainey will continue to lead the DataSolutions division as its CEO. A new chairman and board of directors will be appointed after the close of the sale.

What this means to the company isn’t quite clear, but the announcement comes shortly after DoubleClick’s Q1 earnings release, which left investors less than thrilled. One of the Ad:Tech speakers explained that Hellman & Friedman will take DoubleClick from public to private, clean it up, and bring it back in better shape. What we do know for sure is it will be a while -- at least Q3 -- until we see any huge changes at the company.

Another huge Ad:Tech announcement came from Google. Also on Monday, the search giant that has always been hesitant of anything other than text ads, announced that it would allow advertisers to target individual publishers on the Google advertising network with animated ads. Advertisers will be allowed to bid on placements on a CPM basis instead of a cost-per-click basis, with a minimum bid of two dollars.

Everyone takes notice if Google so much as sneezes, but so far it looks like the experts are taking a wait-and-see stance on this announcement. Some have said that major advertisers will be reluctant to try the new offering, while others have posited that it will be a great gateway for smaller advertisers to try online advertising. As for publishers, the consensus seems to be that major publishers will be reluctant to change their display ad ways because their inventory is simply too valuable to be diluted by Google ads, but at the same time, it would be a great way to monetize unsold inventory.

I’ll let iMedia’s search experts figure this one out.

Also at Ad:Tech, Atlas quietly updated the data in last week’s cookie report -- the report that initially showed that Jupiter’s cookie deletion numbers were too high, and now shows they’re just about right.

Let me clarify: based on Jupiter, Atlas and Nielsen, lots of consumers delete cookies, and yes, that does mean that ad tracking and site analytics data could be inaccurate.

Jupiter’s Nate Elliott, who was the lead analyst on the report that started this whole brouhaha, said that Atlas found even more cookie deletion activity than Jupiter did. “We say that 27 percent of consumers delete cookies weekly, while Atlas says 32 percent do. We say 39 percent of consumers delete cookies monthly, while they say 48 percent do,” Nate wrote in a blog introduction to Jupiter’s latest cookie report, which compares all three sets of data.

Yes, folks, Jupiter analysts have blogs, and if you’re not a Jupiter subscriber, I recommend you read Eric Petersons blog for more details on this cookie thing.

Now that the three companies are in agreement, Nate says, it’s time to focus on the real issue -- “the real point is, cookie deletion is a big problem. Everyone agrees. Let's get back on topic, and figure out what cookie deletion means to marketers, and what they can do about it.”

In the meantime, an update on Safecount.org -- a coalition of 19 ad agencies and media companies dedicated to preserving the cookie. Carat’s Cory Treffiletti and Dynamic Logic’s Nick Nyhan started the group in light of research that shows that web users are deleting cached cookies at a greater frequency than expected. Within a few days, Safecount had the support of the likes of MSN, About.com and Carat.

Check out their website at http://www.safecount.org/. They’re looking to gather support and raise public awareness that cookies are not to be lumped in with spyware and spam. This is a topic we all need to address before things get worse.

I have to add just one more thing about Ad:Tech -- thankfully, despite the attendee list showing an unprecedented plethora of new faces, the content steered away from old topics, such as clickthrough rates being an ineffective measure of success and the like, and focused instead on more important issues. But when you consider the fact that only about 800 people paid for full conference passes and attended the smaller sessions, while the remaining thousands were only allowed into the keynotes and walked the tradeshow floor, it’s no wonder many people walked away from Ad:Tech thinking our business is all about measuring ROI with direct metrics.

Don’t misunderstand me: there were plenty of companies showcasing truly innovative offerings, and direct metrics are still important, but overall, without the input of brands and agencies, the exhibit floor painted a very incomplete picture of the online advertising industry (or the digital marketing industry, for that matter.)

If you’re sending your people to these shows in the future, buy them a full pass and make sure they go to the sessions. Otherwise, they may come back only talking about clickthroughs, there’s more to life than that.

iMedia editor-at-large Masha Geller is the founder of interactive marketing and corporate communications consultancy Geller Public Relations in New York. She has been covering the interactive advertising industry since 1999 as the former editor-in-chief of MediaPost.com, and is a widely-published thought leader in the interactive arena.