High-profile publishers calling for the demise of ad networks?

Premium online publishers are spreading a gospel throughout the online advertising space that is both misguided and could be destructive to the future of online advertising. In calling for the elimination of Ad Networks, they are disregarding the well being of both advertisers and mid-size publishers. In defending their position, they make arguments that serve their own short term interests, but harm the long-term interests of the industry as a whole.

MediaPost - news and directories for media, marketing and online advertising professionals

That’s just silly.  Publishers serve their own short term interests but harm the long-term interests of the industry as a whole? Really? 

Ad networks who can only show volume to justify their value add do  — and should — struggle. Ad networks who serve all these punch-the-monkey and free-credit-report crap, and do it on a large scale, deserve to struggle. That is ultimately what harms the industry as a whole.

Since volume can’t be used as competitive advantage, what can?

Here are some ideas:

- Ad networks could help advertisers and agencies to pick the right impressions, which would lead them into ad exchange and optimization territory. 

-  They can help agencies deal with data by selling technology

- They also have to work with other ad networks towards a scalable cascading infrastructure that would allow advertisers to hyper-target. 

And let premium publishers do whatever they want. They have enough problems to deal with, don’t they?

Misunderstanding Online Advertising’s $65 Billion Problem

A huge — $65 billion huge — part of the online advertising problem is that Web marketers know exactly how the Web works and how to engage its users — on their own.

Online Advertising’s $65 Billion Problem

This is true but only to a certain extent.

Mind you, I’ve been known to quote (when it suits me) Trevor Edwards, Nike’s corporate VP, where he says that "Nike is not in the business of keeping media companies alive, we‘re in the business of connecting with consumers."

But let’s keep things in perspective. At the simplest level, an average consumer will not wake up in the morning and visit a variety of brand-developed web properties. It’s just not going to happen, no matter how much they would all want that. 

The now infamous brand utility concept, like Nike Plus, has its limitations and no matter how cool and awesome it is, you still need to draw an audience to it. Which is what Nike has ultimately done, running TV and web ads.

This is somewhat similar to the display vs. search conundrum — of course what you want is clicks on ads generated by actual intenders. But you will never have a huge reach there. The more you put up in display, the more clicks from seach you will generate. Display is for reach, search is for conversions (let’s ignore the last click syndrome).

In this case it’s the same. If you want reach — and you always want reach as a marketer — you will have to piggyback on top of platforms that have it. Once you have reach, good things happen if you have value to add. 

The article also seems to mix up two concurrent trends. The first is that brands develop their own platforms. The other is brands doing their own marketing, including media planning and buying. 

The dotcom analogy in the article is also ridiculous. Eh.

Quote by Advertising will change forever

[…] digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years. Along the way overall advertising budgets will decline.

Advertising will change forever

Strong statement but ad dollars don’t have a choice but to follow people wherever they go. 

Online Media Growing Pains

Digital folks snicker when they hear advertisers make statements like “TV works”. Turns out, TV does work and there is plenty of quantitative proof that TV advertising drives sales. As much as digital marketers love to carry the ROI torch, what they don’t realize is that traditional marketers live and die by the same sword.

Getting Back to Basics – Why Web Advertising Needs Traditional Media Metrics - Microsoft Advertising Blog - Microsoft Advertising Community

Always great to read Young-Bean Song. And it’s really hard to believe that there are remnants of the awesome AtlasDMT crew at Microsoft now, following their acquisition of aQuantive.

That said, he makes very good arguments essentially in support of integrated media planning. Best positioned to bridge that GRP gap are likely people seriously working on online video, such as the fine folks of Blip.tv. The similarity in formats and basic interaction metrics are at least remotely similar to TV. If we can’t get online and offline video planning jive, there is no chance of getting anything done with an even broader scope, encompassing diverse formats with their range of interaction possibilities, and so on. 

What’s also interesting is that now really is the time for this gap to be bridged if digital is to grow. As media spend continues to pour online, the science and its simplest expression, ad serving technology, simply have not kept up pace.

Quote by MediaPost Publications EyeWonder Takes Takeovers To Another Level 07/09/2009

Taking attention-seeking to a whole new level, rich media company EyeWonder on Wednesday debuted a new home page-takeover ad that appears to manipulate a surrounding Web page by shrinking, stretching, crumpling or otherwise animating a real-time screenshot of the page.

MediaPost Publications EyeWonder Takes Takeovers To Another Level 07/09/2009

Whatever it takes to get noticed…

Quote by scottberkun.com » Calling bullshit on social media

Social media consultants writing about social media have inherent biases. It’s difficult to take posts like this about social media seriously, as it’s written by someone from a social media consulting firm without an ounce of humility or perspective. It’s hard to come across as authentic if you promote a revolution that you personally stand to benefit the most from. Much writing about social media is PR people writing about the importance of PR – see a problem of authenticity here? When did PR, like advertisers, become a reliable source for what is authentic? How is SEO optimization, or similiar techniques for twitter, authentic? When a system becomes popular the greedy will game it and social media is no different. We should be worried when people with PR and advertising backgrounds or consulting firms are leading us in the ways of authenticity or integrity.

scottberkun.com » Calling bullshit on social media

Awesome write-up by Scott Berkun, covering much more than this one "consultants" point. Quoting because it has been my pet peeve for a while now. 

Silicon Alley Insider: Hey, Online Display Ads Don’t Suck After All!

# 1) The Click Isn’t Everything - Currently, rich media CTRs average about 0.1%, with entertainment sites having the highest CTRs at 0.17% and Fin. Services having the lowest at 0.06%. Also, 80% of display ad clicks come from less than 20% of the Internet population, indicating that clicks are not necessarily as relevant to brand advertisers.

# 2) Display Impacts Search 4 Weeks After Exposure - According to comScore’s analysis, there was more than a 50% lift in ‘Net users conducting a query on a brand term one week after exposure to the display ad. After four weeks, the lift was around 38%, which is still significant. Indeed, a month after viewing the ad, 30% of ‘Net users actually visited the advertiser’s site.

# 3) Branded Display Improves Advertiser Site Engagement - Those who viewed a branded ad in this study spent around 34 minutes per unique visitor on the advertiser’s site, which was a 55% lift in time spent vs. the 22 average minutes per unique when they were not shown the ad.

# 4) Branded Ad Campaigns Improve eCommerce Spend By An Average Of 7% - When comparing the users who were exposed to the branded ads vs. those not exposed, comScore found a 7% lift in average eCommerce spend per ad site visitor. Specifically, travel spend was 9% higher among exposed users, CPG spend was 14% higher, and consumer electronics was 22% higher.

Hey, Online Display Ads Don’t Suck After All!

The 7% eCommerce lift is especially interesting.