William Hesketh Lever once said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don't know which half." For over a decade, it's been promised that online advertising will fix that. On that note, we made nice with Brooke Hammerling, the bicoastal tech insider who observed that no one can agree on metrics, whether you're talking click fraud or online video downloads. (We've picked ours — pageviews — and we're sticking to it.) Companies like Kiptronic, which hosted the Revision3 party last night, have engineered interesting technology for counting videos, but in any case, you still need humans to move the inventory. At the Adroll party at Slide, silver-tongued founder Jared Kopf was seen giving his pitch — "price discovery algorithms" and "social discovery" — to Alan Cutter, CEO of ACLion, an ad-sales recruiting specialist. Cutter told us that he has a database of over 150,000 ad-sales executives; he's the guy you go to when you need to hire a salesperson in New York. Photos of some of the people who sell every last slice of the advertising pie, and convince you that the half that doesn't work tastes just as sweet:

The week of Web 2.0 Summit, with the industry converging on San Francisco, seems like as good time as any to throw a shindig. Everyone's in town for the schmoozefest, so you might get to meet quality people who normally avoid the party scene. While my boss hit the Reddit party, I hopped around town to some of the other events. Three, in fact. VC firm True Ventures held a gathering at their offices on Pier 38, a tech industry jam session — for charity, naturally — occurred across town at the Rickshaw Stop, and VCs Eric Chin and Mike Jung held a private party at Fluid for attendees of their intimate Alpha dinners in Woodside. Who needs sleep this week?

A tip for those of you trying to mingle with successful entrepreneurs and VCs: Attend more than just the standard tech meet-and-greets. The people who are really in a position to help you with your startup never go to them anyway. So where to go instead? Check out events like last night's Lotus Vodka release party at SoMa's Euro-inspired restaurant Supperclub. You'll find founders and the moneymen behind them willing to chat and unable to prejudge you based on your nametag. Refreshing. Bonus: The nontech people who attend these things make for a far better-looking crowd. Far better-looking. The full report, and a gallery of photos, follows.