I had the pleasure of visiting Manhattan last week with our sales rep Corey Grantham, to see whats hot and new at the CAT (Creativity and Technology) conference. Google, Microsoft and Adobe were in force, tooting their horns as usual, but I was fascinated to learn that Google and Microsoft seem to be developing a similar technology. There was also a lot of speculations on the future of the Ad Agency – could we see a drastic change on how they operate in the future?

My first eyebrow-raising presentation was Blaise Agüera y Arcas – speaking on behalf of Bing Maps. He has been fronting the development of augmented reality maps for Bing and Bing Mobile. If you have no idea what I’m talking about take a look at his video on TED. When Bing Maps was first launched I did what I think most people did, and that was to compare it to Google Maps. I was skeptical at first, but I think they’ve got an upper hand with their 45 degree view of the city.  I really enjoy this level of detail. But more importantly now, you can get a magnitude of information from all the images in street view. Using Flickr geo tagged imagery and Photosynth processes you can actually see photos that people have taken pop up within street view. My favourite was his example of popular tourist area that had a photo from the 1930s or 40s overlaid on top of the existing building – all done by analyzing the existing imagery. Pretty cool stuff.

Google is working on similar technology, but their product ‘Google Goggles’ will tell you everything you need to know about a photo – that you take yourself. It’s all really impressive… but also kind of scary. To think that we will be able to take a photo of a complete stranger with our smartphone, and then through facial recognition of photos (on Facebook for example) we’ll be able to find out everything about that person in an instant? Wow. But having them coin the term ‘just Goggle it’? Lame.

Aside from the show and tell presentations, there were a number of discussions about the future of the ad agency. As the web develops, companies are finding that it’s not easy to specialize in all the different tools and technologies that are available. From web creative, to television creative, to web development, and application development… there are many specialties that an ad agency has to sustain. Agencies either develop a relationship with a group of specialist companies, or they get left in the dust. We at DesignAxiom are finding that to be true, as we’ve been approached by creative agencies who are looking for a technological advantage. I think it’s a step in the right direction, as far as quality goes. We all have our strong points, and if we spend most of our time perfecting them the web in general will get better. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how things pan out.