By Mark Whittaker

SAN FRANCISCO — I’m at the OMMA Global conference here in the City by the Bay, soaking up all kinds of comments and information about light-speed-changes in marketing and advertising.

Maybe I don’t get out enough, but I love coming to conferences like this because they’re usually full of really smart people with some really good ideas. But it took some time and thought to understand why a conference like this is important to AIM Group’s clients and potential clients.

Here’s why. Everyone here at this conference wants to help business — a.k.a. advertisers — make money. That description fits most of our clients, too. And the folks here at OMMA — probably a couple thousand because the conference registration was free — are hoping to learn about the newest and coolest tools to solve the advertising / marketing problem for their clients.

Not surprisingly, the main topics here are mobile and social media marketing. A few years ago I attended an OMMA conference in New York, and mobile marketing might have been the topic of one or two sessions. Now, nearly the entire conference is devoted to it. Although 2010 might not be the ever-ballyhooed “year of mobile,” it will be the year “that we’ll prove out the business model with case studies,” said Amielle Lake, CEO of Tagga Media, recently hired by Hearst to provide mobile marketing solutions for Hearst advertisers.

As far as social media marketing, Mark Kvamme, a partner in Sequoia Capital, said “If you can harness social media marketing, you don’t have to pay for advertising anymore.” It’s both a terrifying and thrilling notion for publishers.

Here are some more notes and comments from the first day of the conference:

How times have changed: Kvamme told his audience one of his favorite TV shows is “Mad Men,” but he’s never watched it on a television. He views it on his computer on his own time schedule.

Making the pie bigger: James Min, managing partner of Montgomery and Company, said that mobile marketing gives marketers a chance to actually grow their business instead of just taking share from one medium or another. It’s an ad spend that hasn’t been tapped yet.

From ethereal to solid: Min also said that mobile coupons are a way to connect the digital world to the physical world.

Whither the salesperson?: Purchasing advertising will become more and more automated and self-service, one panel agreed, but there will always be a need for a knowledgeable and helpful salesperson. They compared the growth in “commoditized advertising” to the financial services industry, where folks can buy stocks themselves if they want, but there are still a lot of salespeople. “There’s still value to help customers put together the right package. There’s a lot of opportunity add value even when you have real time bidding,” said Nick Johnson, vice president p of digital media sales at NBC Universal.

I’ll have more from the conference as time allows.

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