It gives me great pleasure to say that Nicole Pruess has joined the Admeld team as Director of Platform Partnerships for EMEA. Nicole, who is based in Admeld’s London office, is charged with helping European publishers make sense of the quickly evolving technology landscape, and developing deep and fruitful relationships with our buying and data partners.

I had my first opportunity to work with Nicole in ‘99, shortly after joining DoubleClick. Nicole was working with Mail.com at the time, and as a vocal, passionate ad ops professional, she helped us mold our offerings early on, ensuring we were developing the services that met the needs of the industry’s premium publishers.

Between those early days of online advertising and now, Nicole has worked at MTV where as Director of Ad Operations, she oversaw post-sale implementation of advertising campaigns for 12 premium branded sites, followed by 5 years at DoubleClick/Google, where as a consultant and product specialist, she helped to roll out the DART Network Builder, along with other DoubleClick products and tools to the EMEA client base.  Most recently, she headed up International Product Management for Adify.

For publishers to stay ahead, we think it takes a combination of great technology and services delivered by empowered, passionate, and savvy individuals like Nicole. We’re thrilled to welcome her on board.

As promised, here's some more video goodness from the forum:

RTB Hits the Mainstream
By Michael Greene, Analyst, Forrester
In the day's opening keynote, Michael presented the findings of "RTB Hits the Mainstream", a trend study that includes the industry's first market sizing of RTB in the US. (Get the PDF) Michael also spoke about the roadblocks that stand in the way of an even more agressive expansion of RTB, and what premium publishers should do to stay ahead of the curve.

What's Next For SSP Technology? 
By Brian Adams, Co-founder & CTO, Admeld
We previously posted the slides for Brian's presentation, but here's the full video. Brian spoke about the ways Admeld is approaching the opportunities and challenges brought on by the rapid pace of change in the industry. 

The Mobile Panel 
Moderated by Marc Theermann, VP of Mobile, Admeld
Mobile display saw tremendous traction in 2010. In this panel, top mobile publishers and buyers discussed their perspective on what 2011 will bring, the emergence of mobile RTB, cross-platform audience sales, and the possibilities of location-based targeting.

Here's the second batch of content from the Partner Forum. Stay tuned for the next, and final group of videos.

The Agency Panel
Moderated by Joanna O'Connell of Forrester
In the opening panel, Joanna interviewed top trading desk executives to explore their points of view on the shifting display landscape, industry predictions, and what publishers should do to capture additional budgets in 2011.

The DSP Panel
Moderated by Ben Barokas, Co-Founder & CRO, Admeld
A frank discussion with the industry's top algorithmic buyers about an array of issues: how their relationships with agencies have evolved (and where they're going), the growth of brand dollars in RTB, the potential of mobile and cross-platform buying, and more.

Privacy 2011: A Turning Point For Publishers
By Jules Polenetsky, Co-Chair & Director, Future of Privacy Forum
An insightful, provocative, and pragmatic exploration of the current privacy landscape, including the implications of impending federal legislation and Do Not Track.

With the 2011 Admeld Partner Forum in the rear view, we wanted to start getting content from it into your hands. It's not all here, so expect more in the coming days. We'll be adding the full videos of every session. Update 1: The second group of videos is available here.  Update 2: Watch the third group of videos.

RTB Hits The Mainstream -  A Forrester Report
This report, which we commissioned by Forrester, is the industry's first market sizing of RTB in the US. It was based on a series of in-depth interviews with ad agencies, publishers, and Demand Side Platforms (DSPs), conducted by Forrester over the last two months. Download it here.

The Agency RTB Landscape
A map of the agencies and advertisers we're seeing purchase our clients' inventory via RTB of right now. This version has been updated since we distributed it at the Forum. Get it here.

The Videos
More of these to come, but in the meantime, here are the rough cuts for The Publisher Panel and the interview with Mike Kelly, President & CEO of The Weather Channel.

What's Next For SSP Technology?
In the afternoon, Admeld's CTO & Co-founder, Brian Adams, spent some time speaking about what we see as the role of the Sell Side Platform, the problems's he's looking to solve for our clients in 2011, and more. We'll be posting the video of Brian's speech soon.
 

We're extremely excited about this year's Partner Forum, which will kick off in about an hour. With more than 350 attendees and a roster of 25 speakers from all sides of the industry, it's likely to be as thought provoking and fun a day as ever. That said, there are a few things that particularly stand out as highlights.

First, we're debuting a report by Forrester, presented by analysts Michael Greene and Joanna O'Connell, which will be the first definitive market sizing of RTB in the US. The report will be available for download on the site later this morning. In addition, we'll be hearing from Mike Kelly, President & CEO of The Weather Channel, Pete Longo, CEO of The IDG TechNetwork, and a variety of others. You can visit the Partner Forum site to see the full list and agenda.

Lastly, for those of you who couldn't make it today, we'll be tweeting the event with hashtag #APF11, and we'll also be taking video of the entire program and posting it on our site in the coming days.

You may have noticed things look a little different around here. Over the past few months, we’ve been working hard to remake our brand so it’s closer to who we are as a company. Our old look and feel, while near to our hearts, seemed more appropriate for us in 2007, when we were four people working out of the old KickApps offices on 38th Street.

In terms of the website, we’ve also taken efforts to build a platform we think will grow with us. Though we’ve made an effort to seed it with good content at launch, in the coming months we plan to take advantage of all this space to bring you more in the way of thought leadership, whitepapers, and in the case of the blog—a view on what’s on our minds.