Who would think that staring at the Pacific Ocean for the last five days could be so exhausting? The drive down from San Francisco to Santa Barbara for CJU went as planned making the entire trip very enjoyable. There was even an unexpected trek to Los Angeles on Saturday.

But right now it’s back to work. CJU kicked off on Sunday night with a welcome reception at Commission Junction’s headquarters. Locals say the city of Santa Barbara is normally relatively quiet on a most Sunday nights. I guess no one told that to the more than 500 advertisers, publishers and online marketers that descended on the beautiful seaside village. Good times, my friends.

Monday was the first full day of sessions and festivities. ValueClick CEO Jeff Pullen kicked off the conference with a talk about being in the right place at the right time. There were lots of gridiron analogies from the ex-footballer. He also tossed out some Nerf footballs with $100 dollar bills attached to illustrate his point. Another CJ executive later pointed out that following those folks with the footballs to the bar later in the day would truly be a case of being in the right place at the right time.

Pullen brought some key clients on stage – Circuit City and eBay to talk about the joys of working with CJ and leveraging a multitude of ValueClick properties to get the most out of online marketing and advertising. Pullen’s keynote was short and gracious, but not heavy on specifics of where CJ is headed in the future.

In contrast to Pullen, the next keynote by John Battelle was very much about the future. Battelle, best known as a co-founder of Wired Magazine and the Industry Standard, just wrote a book about search. He discussed a lot of exciting concepts about media, search, online marketing, Web 2.0 and blogging that had attendees buzzing. There was a lot to think about after Battelle’s speech.

Tom Vadnais, senior vice president at Commission Junction and MediaPlex, offered a quick overview of CJ’s growing business, but also without getting too specific. It wasn’t until the CJ roadmap session after lunch that I started to get some details about what CJ has planned going forward.

I’ll post another entry tomorrow morning with the details as well as the winners of the Horizon Awards.