We used NetBase to analyze tweets from last year’s ad:tech show and want to share what we found. You may be able to use some of these insights to help shape your plans for the show next week.

About Those Giveaways

@MeetingBoy tweeted about what types of things were best for brands to give away, and his tweet got 12 retweets and 15 favorites—a lot for a B2B conference. The takeaway? If you’re a marketer in charge of finding ideas for schwag, stay away from “awful branded giveaways.” Better choices are good pens or USB drives over 1GB.

The Engagement Is Off

Companies like to use serious-sounding but kind of vague words like “engagement” to describe exchanging emails or tweets with customers, answering questions, posting to forums, etc. But the word can get overused to the point where it irritates audiences. For example:

So let’s try to use a specific name for what we’re doing and give “engagement” a rest.

Most-Used Hashtag: #adtechsf

It makes sense to use the most popular hashtag for the conference to make sure your tweets get the widest audience. Last year’s winner was #adtechsf. Good chance it’ll be the same this year. Note that #adtech wasn’t used much.

Where Did Attendees Come From?

Only 24 percent of conference attendees were local last year. Hey, if you’re one of the out-of-towners, come by the NetBase booth and pick up the list of our personal favorite places to eat in San Francisco.

Thanks for reading. We look forward to meeting you at the show. And be sure to stop by Booth 2642 and check out our new Brand Pulse social dashboard.