“Online display advertising, viewed as inefficient and time-consuming for many marketers, has been a tough sell in recent years. Google aims to change that.”
Display is far from being dead. Another proof.
“Rather than try to reach every conceivable person who fits a particular demographic, marketers will be looking for technologies and ad solutions that allow them to reach only the people who—by their past surfing behavior, search queries, online purchases, social connections, Twitter posts and other digital footprints—indicate that they are likely prospects.”- Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO - eMarketer
There is a slew of challenges there, namely for publishers, but this is the trend we’re very fond of.
“The basic paradox of the Internet can be framed very simply: The very platform that makes advertising both more relevant and more measurable is the same platform that longer-term will challenge and ultimately undermine the basic role of advertising in communicating with customers”
John Hagel, a long time ago
I try to keep that in mind at all times. But the big questions are when and how. If it really goes the way David Koretz claims it has to, we’re closer to this than ever. Because CPC sure as hell will not save publishers, no matter how hard they try at generating clicks. You can’t just ignore the fundamental difference between a click on a search engine and a click on another web site. The context of clear intent is simply not there. In order for publishers to harvest intent the way search engines do, they’d have to create applications where consumers manifest it. Otherwise we end up with CPC punch the monkey ads.
It is also possible that the web consumed in a web browser is doomed to become the cesspool of digital advertising, while other digital distribution channels (like the rumored Apple tablet) will be where advertisers pay the premium.
“For the first time, beginning Jan. 4, innkeepers and hotels can list their URLs, phone numbers and e-mails for a flat monthly fee within their property displays on TripAdvisor so consumers can navigate directly to the properties’ websites.”
TripAdvisor is changing their model a bit. Hard to believe they haven’t been doing this until now.
Dan Frommer is 27 years old and works as a writer for a technology Web site. Frommer pulled the plug on cable TV in May 2008 and instead gets shows from the Internet via a Macintosh computer hooked to his LCD television. He can’t get everything he’d like to see, but he’s saved $1,500 on cable-TV fees. “I’m not going to let myself get ripped off for a bunch of garbage that I don’t watch anyway,” he says. Many of his 20-something friends have also pulled the plug. The next generation—today’s teenagers—will likely never sign up for cable TV at all.This is dreadful news for cable companies. For decades they’ve had a glorious business model, running the tollbooth that stood between you and the shows. Now the Internet provides a way to get around that tollbooth, and cable companies are faced with a dilemma: do they embrace the Internet and try to make money online, or do they fight the Internet and try to hold off the destruction? The answer is to do both—holding off the rising tide with one hand while racing to devise workable Internet business models with the other.
- Lyons, explaining the Comcast-NBC deal (via newsweek) (via mikehudack) (via xxxjustinralconxxx) (via evangotlib)
That’s kinda funny. It’s not that now there is no more tollbooth. On the internet it’s other tollbooths - and for better of worse, they’re also technology companies, like Apple, Amazon, Roku, etc. Distribution is still key.
“In some ways RTB may be a red herring that might distract us from the underlying goal of creating a centralized market mechanism that provides quick access to inventory that gets the owner of the inventory the best price for it – RTB could cynically be seen as a way for ad exchanges/hubs outsourcing their decisioning and infrastructure costs to others.”
The Real Costs of Real-Time Bidding (RTB)
Perhaps - but let’s not forget that this is a lot about agencies and the value they try to bring. And agencies have been badly hurt by behavioural ad network thingamajigs that were OK at best and a scam at worst. Having spent 5 years managing an agency’s ad serving farm, I’ve seen my share of networks doing nasty things.
Agencies want their strategic control over their customers, advertisers. But for data to make sense you do need to make decisions on each impression.
Real-time reporting is also not what is used to be. There is a number of technologies that facilitate real-time reporting that weren’t there (or at least not inexpensively) even a year ago.
Another great thought-provoking post by Rob Leathern.
“Mark Beccue, a senior analyst at Abi Research who studies consumer mobile technology, also has reservations. “What puzzles me is, what market we are addressing here?” he says. “I saw a video of using [Square] in a coffee shop and thought, ‘Don’t they have a cash register?’ ” Beccue concedes that the product may work for certain niches, such as markets or art fairs, but he doesn’t think it has mainstream appeal. He suggests that most small businesses will prefer traditional point-of-sale systems for managing credit cards, and that ATMs are convenient enough that individuals aren’t likely to turn to Square to pay each other.”
Technology Review: New System Swaps the Cash Register for an iPhone (via kevintwohy)
Oftentimes people fail to see beyond the first version of the product. What I like in this prototype is the transformation of a simple monetary transaction into an application that leaves a trace.
That application may eventually include a request for the payer to review or rate the restaurant, etc. So for that article to talk about how “the device won’t be sturdy enough in the long-term” is kind of ridiculous. It’s a first version. It adds meta to monetary transactions. And think of the advertising opportunities! It’s cool, aight?
“Imagine a world where only half of the visitors to FoxSports.com had watched a sporting event in the past week, or where students comprised less than 5% of visitors to MTV.com.”
That’s going to be interesting.
“With a lot of prodding from the Federal Trade Commission, the Internet advertising industry has committed to telling Web site users about how they collect and use data to customize the ads they display. And it has agreed to find a more prominent and clear way to do this than the cryptic privacy policies you can find if you click a tiny link at the bottom of many Web pages.”- Seeking a Symbol for ‘This Ad Knows About You’ - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
Good idea but let’s think here. An agency runs ads on many, many sites some of which are individual, direct buys while others are network buys. In some cases ad networks collect data and target, in some they don’t. The agency typically collects data and may target as well. The icon should include privacy info from both - but how can this be managed? My gut feeling is that everyone will just slap the “we do everything” icon on the ads and the icon itself will lose its meaning. But this is still a step in the right direction.
The best newspapers have always held up a mirror to their communities. Now they can offer a digital place for their readers to congregate and talk. And just as we have seen different models of payment for TV as choice has increased and new providers have become involved, I believe we will see the same with news. We could easily see free access for mass-market content funded from advertising alongside the equivalent of subscription and pay-for-view for material with a niche readership.I certainly don’t believe that the Internet will mean the death of news. Through innovation and technology, it can endure with newfound profitability and vitality. Video didn’t kill the radio star. It created a whole new additional industry.
Eric Schmidt: How Google Can Help Newspapers - WSJ.com
It may very will be that new ways of consuming online content will bring a new life to advertising. One of the biggest problems with online is lack of context — but consuming a magazine on a digital tablet of sorts may bring context, reduce content ADD, and even bring some richness to formats (ex. size).