I recently attended Advertising Week in New York City and had a lot to hear from some very eloquent speakers. Here are the top 10 moments that I found to be inspiring, provocative or at least original.

(10) Changing Roles: It seemed to me that change was a prevalent theme at the conference and that all participants expressed a willingness to reconsider what roles their companies should be playing.

• Given the freedom of digital distribution, marketers are beginning to produce their own content.
• Given commercial skipping and other market pressures, media companies are beginning to integrate marketing messages into their programming.
• Given the economic demands and their talented personnel, agencies are beginning to develop their own products or services, similar to “private labels” at department stores.

Everywhere the status quo is being questioned and resources are being redirected. Still, the norm is established for a reason and as Rob Norman CEO of GroupM put it, agencies exist for the creation, distribution and measurement of brands and messages across various media, and it seems to me that this is value that marketers will need for some time to come.

(9) Ad Spending: Subsequently, despite the economic downturn and cuts in certain media overall ad spending can still be expected to grow roughly along with the GDP at 1 to 2% per year. Ad spending will fragment however among more media platforms and channels, and this increased competition will yield a greater “purchasing power” for advertisers; a “bigger bang for their buck” in other words.

(8) Compensation options: A related subject to ad spending was how new compensation options were being considered, including performance-based compensation options and even equity stakes by the agencies in the projects they were involved with. All of these options sounded like they were still works in progress.

(7) Attention Deficit: At the Betawave panel a dynamic video showed how much marketing messages have flooded people’s lives while they’ve become more busy resulting in an “attention crisis.” “Is an impression an impression when the viewer doesn’t see it?” And if traditional reach is no longer a valid currency to trade, “why can’t clients buy attention?” It was a provocative presentation but it seems to me that the industry has yet to supply a satisfactory answer.

(6) Measurement Issues: This problem with attention ties into the dissatisfaction with media measurement. More than once I heard the term “archaic” used in reference to the current standards for media measurement which don’t take into account new media viewing. Carol Kruse of Coca-Cola also said that traditional demos are “not so useful” for the targeting that marketers now practice. The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) opened up their conference with a presentation by NBC President of Research Alan Wurtzel of the Coalition for Innovation in Media Measurement (CIMM), whose name pretty much explains its objective. As Alan Wurtzel succintly said, “We cannot not do this.” While instigating progress, CIMM is aiming neither to challenge or supplants Nielsen’s services. For their part, Nielsen has stated that online viewing will be added to their television measurement within a year, with mobile viewing to follow by around 2011.

(5) Forget measurement, let’s predict!: Another presentation at the ARF by Damon Ragusa, CEO of ThinkVine seemed to pique a lot of interest even among other panelists. The company offers a marketing simulation model called “The Emerging Marketplaces” that predicts customer transactions as a result of a product’s media marketing mix. The presentation cited an 8-9% M.A.P.E. between its predictions and actual transactions. The model could also account for short-term or quarterly changes in strategy, as well as for word of mouth and social media marketing. Impressive stuff.

(4) How much is that little show in the window?: At a panel titled “To Pay or Not to Pay?” with participants from MLB, the YES Network and FiOS an opening argument was presented that 1) the music industry failed since it “did nothing” and decided not to offer consumers its content via online channels, that 2) the newspaper industry made the opposite mistake by offering its content for free, and that 3) the television industry needed to find a middle path with a viable monetization strategy. Certain criticisms were levied against Hulu models that could end up cannibalizing television viewership and transforming FiOS and cable MSO’s into an industry of “dumb pipes.” At the core of this debate is how much to charge for content online, whether it’s through advertising or a direct audience fee.

(3) “Big” Opportunities: Marc Cuban also created a slight ruckus at MediaPost’s “The Future of Media” panel when he commented about how he attended a football game at the new Dallas Cowboys $1.2 billion stadium and the only thing people kept commenting about was the seven story tall screen. Given this attention, the current capacity or captive audience of 80,000 and the probable drop in the screen’s $40 million price, Marc Cuban declared that this was a ginormous media opportunity that the industry should probably think big instead of focusing on small screens, meaning mobile and laptops.

(2) The Three i’s: At the same panel Marc Cuban mentioned how any industry was populated by the “three i’s: innovators, imitators and idiots” and how participants should be honest about which role they were following, in order to neither decieve their customers nor themselves. This type of honesty is about being “authentic” company or brand…

(1) Authenticity: This buzzword was probably the most important one I heard, driven by how much the ad industry landscape has change as a result of social media’s effects. Advertising is no longer just about the message or the medium, it is also about the actual product, and how it has to deliver on its proposal to the consumer. If it’s not authentic, it will create a consumer backlash that will echo in social media and be too strong to control via any traditional means or channels. Consequently a lot of panel speakers recommended that companies bring in their PR departments under marketing, and that they also consider how agencies should be involved in their product development to help connect the good to the message.

As disparate as this list may seem, this last point actually ties back to the initial one of  how roles are changing and demonstrates how all of the issues affecting the industry are related.