Draper not in character at Yahoo! conference

Since I've opted out of Advertising Week this year missed a thing or two I would liked to have seen, including yesterday's appearance by Jon Hamm (aka Don Draper), as emcee of Yahoo's press conference announcing Amp. So far have only been able to find this picture of it, and find it a bit odd that they didn't have Draper come in character. Oh, so Yahoo was holding a press conference to announce the platform that used to be called Apex, and then was called Amp, and now is called Apt, aimed at networking ad inventory across Yahoo and other sites and making sure that the whole process is smoother and doesn't involve faxing (faxing? how 1992!). Apparently, Hamm/Draper said stuff like this: “If Don Draper were standing before you today, he would still be smoking and drinking. But he’d recognize that what my friend Jerry Yang is about to share with you will rock the media world in the way that radio and TV did." Yecch. As for the platform, online advertising does need to streamline its processes, and pooling inventory and letting advertisers focus more on who they want to target instead of dealing with individual properties isn't a bad one. But Yahoo's real hope in making this work is to get all of the non mega-sites on board. My guess is that, unless there were financial dealings between the two, no other major property would want to get on Apt. Instead, they'd want to use their own version. To that point, CEO Jerry Yang wouldn't comment directly yesterday about a rumor which appeared in the Financial Times (subscription required to read all of article) that Yahoo might buy AOL. To get Apt off the ground, wouldn't be the worst idea.