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?

There’s a set of rules…

“There’s a set of rules that anything that was in the world when you were born is normal and natural. Anything invented between when you were 15 and 35 is new and revolutionary and exciting, and you’ll probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.”

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Douglas Adams (quoted by Faris Yakob in his Fast Company column on technology titles) (via chrbutler) (via infoneernet) (via himmelsblog)

Think about it!

AdGear preview

So we’ve been working on our ad management platform for a while now, here is a wee preview of it. Check out adgear.com too!

Microsoft and OpenX?

Online advertising start-up OpenX and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) announced a partnership to promote each other’s Internet technologies to their respective customers.The deal will significantly expand the distribution of OpenX’s technology for serving ads on websites, as the company seeks to boost its roster of large Web publishers, said CEO Tim Cadogan.

OpenX will also make it easier for its Web publisher customers to use Microsoft technology that analyzes the content of a Web page and matches relevant ads to the page.

Microsoft and OpenX forge Web ad deal | Markets | Markets News | Reuters

What is never clear to me is how many of OpenX’s 50 million publishers are relevant. What is the proportion of these that runs local installations versus hosted/market ones? Or does the local installation now include a market component?

Kind of an odd announcement for Microsoft, isn’t it?

Is data ever going to change the way TV inventory is handled?

“Data is going to begin changing the way some television advertising is purchased or managed — finally — and “tune-in” is quite likely to be first in line. It certainly won’t happen overnight, but the multiples involved are clearly too great to be ignored. 2% improvements won’t move markets, but 20% or 2X improvements will. This is going to have a lot of impact in TV measurements, metrics, processes and, very likely, business models. It will certainly be disruptive to many of the incumbents — and will also present many of them with extraordinary new opportunities — but it will certainly be crazy getting there.”

MediaPost Publications Analyzing TV ‘On-Air’ Promos With Online Ad Metrics 10/08/2009

Dave Morgan of Tacoda fame is getting his hands dirty with TV data (with this new startup) and explains why he’s onto it.

Professional Prism of Trust

(via ilovecharts)

NYT: a vision for agency demand platforms

“Demand side-networks move beyond the realm of performance marketing and begin to focus on delivering reach and frequency against a designated target, measured in GRPs (gross rating points). Clicks diminish in importance. The media plan matters a lot, because the affinity of audiences for specific websites deepens the impact of brand advertising. Marketers meaningfully shift their TV dollars online with greater confidence because online delivers something they understand and need to achieve their brand objectives. At long last, audience truly becomes the basis for both planning and buying online. This is the best outcome for publishers.”

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What The Rise Of Demand-Side Ad Networks Means For Publishers | paidContent

Very sensible post by NYT’s VP of R&D operations. The essence of agency demand platforms is extracting efficiency out of online by focusing on audiences, data and automation. It’s a good thing and this direction he imagines is where I would like to see it go. This is incredibly exciting as various ad serving systems finally get interconnected.  What is doubly interesting is that I predict publishers bypassing ad exchanges and plugging into agency demand platforms directly. Shameless plug: our platform for publishers, AdGear, is slowly but surely becoming more and more relevant as the market matures.

Ad week panel on agency demand platforms

ContextWeb Agency Demand Platforms Panel | Darren Herman

Video of a panel from advertising week. Probably the most exciting thing happening in media today — the new discipline of data-driven display advertising. Real-time bidding, ad exchanges, arbitrage. Right up our alley.

Online revenue-per-hour vs. internet revenue-per-hour

“The (non-search) time Americans spend online is actually monetized per user hour at a rate roughly equivalent to what television is, when you exclude search — and considering the interactive nature of the Web, this very parity means the online medium is far behind where it should be from an advertising and monetization perspective”

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Internet Evolution - Rob Leathern - Online Time Not Worth What It Should Be

“Trading traditional dollars for digital cents”, proven.