—Luxury brands: On the other hand, many high-end advertisers, such as those representing luxury retailers, remain cautious about online because print is what they and their target audience understand. Gucci’s worldwide media director Nikolas Talonpoika told a separate session on advertising (via Guardian.co.uk): “I’m probably going against the grain here but I think 2009 will see a decrease in online spend from the luxury sector.” The problem? “The sector is very behind in a lot of areas of digital…The real problem is replicating that reader experience online.”

—Google (NSDQ: GOOG) as frenemy: It didn’t take too long for speakers to accuse the world’s biggest search engine of compromising their companies’ ability to make money from online content. GMG CEO Carolyn McCall said it was “crazy” that her company should spend so much on content when Google reaps more financial benefit from it without spending anything on its creation— she said the payback in traffic was “no longer a fair swap”. BBC Worldwide CEO John Smith added: “They have 63.7 percent of all web search and that goes up every month. Unless Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) can get together, which would be 30 percent, everyone else is an also-ran. It’s very dangerous for all of us in the media world—it’s a great company but having so much money, power and eyeballs all in one place is a dangerous thing.”