Live blogging Eric Schmidt at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting

I’m one of the four hosts of this year’s IAB conference, and kicking off the event is a keynote from Google’s Eric Schmidt. I’ll be updating this post as he speaks, so stay tuned….

Eric is wearing a vneck sweater and looks quite dapper. Executive Chairmanship agrees with him (not that I know anything about that…).

Eric starts by hitting “Morning Joe” who said that computers are “cold companions.” Eric says he’s wrong. “Computers do what computers do best, humans do what humans do best.” A “net win for humanity.”

Cites “Speak to Tweet” wrt Egypt, Ushahidi as examples.

Turns attention to advertising. Avg. American spends about a third of their media time online. Kids will be always online. Media will mean digital media. Smart phones surpassed PCs two weeks ago. “Mobile first.” Build first for them, then worry about web.

(So far, this is stuff we’ve heard from Eric before…)

Here’s something new: Mobile searches spiked 200% for Chrysler during Sbowl, only 48% on PCs. Interesting. Union of mobile devices and advertising is big…”especially display.” Current size ad market $26billion, 9 of which is online display (US). Eric says he thinks display can be $200bb globally.

It’s too complicated to get a campaign up, that’s limiting growth to that $200bb number…we can automate this.

Need to address measurement (no sh*t!) and give more choice/control to all parties (indeed)

Three bets: 1. Everything is changing. Our intuition about future is linear, but IT grows exponentially. The new online advertising model is real time, iterative, not press the button and see what happens in the week, it occurs live.

He notes Chrome is growing as fast as Twitter, and Android has beaten iPhone “and it looks like that will continue.”

Eric is now promoting ad networks (adsense) as good for publishers. And onepass, payment for content…

We’ve never fundamentally solved the problem of “mass engagement” in this medium. Need to … does not go into really how.

Now talking about hyperlocal…phones and tablets are perfect for this. Ex: RadioShack does this with mobile…pushing NFC as solution for closed loop. Agree this is a big deal.

Now Eric is pretty much talking “The Gap Scenario” … we’ve spent 20 years getting there and we’re nearly there now…

Eric is now talking near future world scenario: Computers are very good at remembering things, they remember you don’t…you’re never lost. You can predict where you might want to go. And with statistical translation, it’s good for the world.

“The computer can help me.” You’re never lonely, you’re never bored….computers can connect you to others….you’re never out of ideas, always something new to learn…

“What I like most about this future is the biz of information has always been the biz of elites….but our vision covers everyone…”

End of main speech, now to Q&A

QA time. Martin N. of NYT asks about “native apps” closed v. open – Eric does not like “closed apps” (IE Apple..) No kidding…Closed has worked because it’s simple, works well, easier to work with. But ultimately the world wants more choice and more openness. Ultimately scale wins. Apps should be able to know what container they are in and then optimize to that container…sounds like Java then Flash, no?!

Question about DSPs which I admit I missed….but had to do with Google’s position as both a DSP and an ad exchange/network. Eric said he was not going to become a monopoly.

Question: From Dave M. Simulmedia: What about TV? What about TV? Eric talks about ads product (tvads) and Google TV, which he said is “controversial”. Said that TV industry is mad that Google is taking “dumb TV and making it smart”. Indeed….

Q: privacy…”industry has to get our act together fast.” Goog working on this. Concerned abt early govt. reg. b4 innov. plays out

Q: M&A: We have been acquiring a lot of small companies very quickly.

Q: How long till we get to $200bb in display online? Eric says it’s going to be faster than we think…5-10 years

And he’s off…