Ad Ops Complexity

“The new IAB audit will go a long way to standardize the industry. An overwhelming amount of impressions are audited throughout the web, and verification systems will need to help the ecosystem and not hurt the process. According to a survey Dan initiated, “Ad Ops is 50% more complex than it was 3 years ago”. Fragmentation is out of control right now because of the different sites and structure in the marketplace. While innovation and growth are not slowing down, the largest concern for media companies is “Inventory and Yield Management”. A close second is “Billing Discrepancies.””

“Ad Ops is 50% more complex than it was 3 years ago”- IAB Ad Operations Summit | Operative Blog

What an exciting year 2010 will be. Ad exchanges, data decoupled from media context, real time bidding… Publishers trying to figure out what to do with ad networks… Ad networks trying to figure out what it is that they’ll be selling… Agencies trying to make sense of data they’re collecting… And that’s all before even thinking about formats and experiences that need to be delivered to brands.

Advertising has never been this complex.

RightMedia rebranded as Premium

Yahoo Rebrands Its Right Media Exchange as Premium

Move Hopes to Capitalize on Agency Dollars Entering Exchanges, Shed Bad Rap of Ad Networks

Digital: Yahoo Rebrands Its Right Media Exchange as Premium - Advertising Age - Digital

I’ve been trying to get in touch with someone there for months. You can’t leave a phone message. Emails go unanswered. Forms on web site as well. Emailing the top guy through LinkedIn didn’t help either.

Sorry Yahoo, but as far as I’m concerned, rebranding RightMedia as Premium will not help you at this pace.

Mobile ads - wait until when?

“What’s more, targeting ads to mobile phone users is still in its infancy. The carriers sit on a trove of user information and location data that is largely unavailable to marketers. Brightkite hopes to change that by showing ads to users based on their physical location. In a campaign launching this month, it’s combining location and prior user behavior with augmented reality to show users on-screen product offers from nearby retail outlets.”

Mobile Ads: Wait Until Next Year

Agreed.

One of the problems with display advertising is the lack of context data. Unlike with traditional media, where a billboard is always a billboard and is seen by someone in the car while in traffic, online ads have no context attached to them.

In mobile, at least there is (in theory) location info. But because of privacy issues I’m not sure how that can scale. So what’s left for mobile advertising, then? Brand ads, 50 pixels at a time?

Does advertising decay exist?

“Though we’ve been doing advertising effectiveness analysis for over a year now, we’re continually learning new things about online advertising. The newest learning? The time-honored concept of “advertising decay” is a myth.”

The Myth of Advertising Decay

A really interesting case study from Compete for Banana Republic, and incidentally, for intrusive big-ass ad formats on major media properties such as NYT.com

Motorola Droid on cnn.com

This is the homepage of cnn.com right now. I’m sorry, social media douchebags, but a twitter account does not have the same advertising impact. But that’s besides the point. Cool ad unit.

The not-so secret media buying revolution

• There is a vast shortage of opportunities to expose advertising messages to actual potential customers
• Early participants in new online display marketplaces are finding steep discounts on highly targeted audiences — but this is bound to change
• Going forward, premium publishers will get ultra-high eCPMs on highly targeted impressions of quantifiably valuable audiences”

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The secret media-buying revolution - iMediaConnection.com

Not sure how this is “secret” but it’s definitely true. This it the most exciting time for ad technologies since a long time. Happy to be part of it.

The roster shops

“The roster shops, especially Firstborn and Big Spaceship, have a heritage in digital production work and have often partnered with lead agencies to execute highly technical creative ideas. Recently, these small independent operations have been winning increasingly more direct-to-client work. Most recently, Firstborn won direct-to-client digital responsibilities for PepsiCo’s Sobe.”

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Wrigley Drops Tribal DDB, Digitas and Agency.com for Digital - Agency News - Advertising Age

Firstborn and Big Spaceship are the best agency names ever

More on OpenX and Microsoft

“Under this partnership OpenX and Microsoft will cross-market and promote products to our respective publisher bases. Specifically, Microsoft will refer publishers for enterprise ad serving solutions to OpenX and OpenX will promote Microsoft’s Content Ads service (which is a contextual advertising product) to OpenX publishers.”

OpenX Blog » Partnering with Microsoft to bring more choices to publishers

This just in: Microsoft will refer publishers for enterprise ad serving to OpenX.  To rephrase the meme — at first I was like and now I’m like :-O

Ad Spending Across Four Benchmark Sites

Target Markets: Ad Spending Across Four Benchmark Sites (via socialinfographics)

This is fascinating.

The Serial Position Effect

The Serial Position Effect first documented by a German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus may help explain why, all other factors being equal, promo position within a carrier program has an important effect on subsequent response rates.

Ebbinghaus found that people are better at recalling items from the beginning (“primacy effect”) and end (“recency effect”) of a list rather than the middle. Primacy effect is attributed to the fact that the short-term memory is less crowded by additional items and more attention may be dedicated to processing the first item and storing it in the long term memory. Recency effect is explained by the easy retrieval of the last item still from a short-term memory.

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Simulmedia: Lessons Learned from Promo Positioning

How does this relate to display (and video) ads online? Does the first ad seen in the day generate better retention rates?