Ad:tech is an annual conference that takes place in several cities around the world about digital marketing and advertising on the Internet and mobile networks.
This year’s China ad:tech kicked off this morning in Shanghai. The keynote speaker was supposed to be Robin Lı, the CEO of Baidu.com, China’s home grown competitor to Google.
But he didn’t show up.
If you haven’t been following Baidu’s recent travails, the links below explain possible reasons for his no-show.
It’s worth noting that the digital marketing mavens who did show up so far all appear to be somewhat bullish about 2009, with Hans Yu of Nielsen Net Ratings and Buzzmetrics saying this morning that digital ad spend growth over 2009 will probably be “between 30 and 40%”.
More coverage to follow.
Update: A source says that Mr Lı was at the conference but did not want to take questions from the floor, so was not included in the speaker line-up.
Update 2: We have received several inquiries about using the above photo for press. Click on the photo for a high-res version; any media may use the photo for free but please credit Danwei.org.
Update 3: Lots of feedback from mavens about the above saying it does not matter, Baıdu is going to do just fine.