Friday, June 19th, 2009
Interactivity & Resonation
I attended OMMA Video earlier this week. There was a lot of interesting conversation, especially around the Vivaki initiative.
Calls for “Death to PreRoll” backed by claims and data supporting the notion that pre-roll ads do not resonate well with viewers have been the norm for years now. Perhaps it was too early to make that assumption without full advertiser penetration. I recall being exposed to the same 4 video ads when watching Olympic Highlights or a show on Hulu, while today I would see at least a dozen different ads before being exposed to a repeat.
Without a doubt the newly proposed units will involve some sort of interactivity for the sake of measurement, I’m curious to see how these new ads will resonate with viewers once the new factor has worn off.
Danny Lebron is a Manager of Product Development at Undertone Networks
Posted in: General, Ad Networks, Video, Ad Spending by Eric Franchi @ 2:01 pm Permalink | Comments (0)
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
The Great Debate
I participated in a panel at OMMA Publish today that discussed the ongoing debate of whether ad networks are good or bad for branded media. I shared the consensus on the great debate, or at least my last words, on Media Post’s Raw and also wanted to include some thoughts here.
Turner and ESPN are 100% correct for not using ad networks and are in a unique position to not need ad networks as they drive sales and traffic from multiple sources. Many brands in their respective parent companies utilize networks and do so effectively. When several top brands announced they would “fire” networks, the networks’ space did not contract, it blossomed. For the most part, these brands are sold, resourced and did not rely heavily on networks to begin with.
There is agency-side demand for networks because networks do deliver value that individual publishers don’t (not a bad thing -not everyone can do everything). Or simply put, direct publisher relationships are incredibly important but they do not satisfy all of the needs of the brand. There is a very good strategic argument for using networks.
Networks fairly distribute revenue to sites less well positioned or resourced than Turner or ESPN. That plan supports the democratic Web and that’s a very good thing. Networks are good for most, not all publishers.
Networks are not created equal (neither are media brands). There is a range from exchange-dependent networks to direct-to-publisher networks. A meaningful debate needs to recognize that fact. Publishers should develop a business relationship with the networks they choose to work with and understand in the round, the network’s business model and policies.
Traditional media markets have always had multiple sales tiers - think TV which has a primary upfront, a scatter market, tiered programming and a remnant/DRTV market. Online publishers should incorporate those same strategies into most effectively driving revenue.
Finally, the big debate we all need to have is whose data is it anyway? Is it the publisher? The brand? The holding company? The user? And assuming we all end up agreeing, how can that data be used to build great brands, successful business models and a terrific user experience?
Posted in: General, Ad Networks, Agencies, Ad Spending, Industry Consolidation by Alan Schanzer @ 4:46 pm Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
What Walmart can Teach Us about the Recession
A June 6 New York Times article recently discussed how major industries are seeing that customers are no longer browsing but becoming increasingly disciplined in how they shop. The effect of a more selective consumer is being viewed anywhere from the necessity markets, such as grocery and retail stores, to the luxury markets like electronics and entertainment.
The article provides a view of everything our clients are giving more consideration to in the challenging economic times. It gives insight into how product managers think and into what keeps them up at night. It also provides insight into what’s driving their marketing strategy as intent and purchase behaviors are constantly changing.
We encourage our team to put themselves in their clients’ shoes to get a better idea of what the clients’ concerns may be. As we train on our presentation, we are putting our focus on speaking about the client and their needs and less about our own company. We are focusing on the benefits of our inventory, ad products and service only in how it relates to them and their success.
Posted in: Behavioral Marketing, Ad Networks, Ad Spending by Peter Green @ 12:41 pm Permalink | Comments (0)
Monday, June 8th, 2009
Addressing Click Fraud
While certainly not a new issue, the New York Times covered click fraud recently and referred to an example from advertiser Cars.com. This article sparked some discussion at Undertone, mostly focused on whether our position as a “quality content network” helps protect us from click fraud. While our deep relationship with only top publishers does put us in good company, no publisher is immune to this problem. Certainly these publishers have better protection in place than many of those in the long tail, and we have additional protections in our ad serving system as well. Still, the problem persists.
I look at this problem a little differently. Being well aware that click based advertising like Google AdWords is a huge growth segment in the industry, I question the real value of the click itself. First and foremost, what nearly all advertisers want is for users to visit their site and interact with their brand. Whether that interaction is an actual purchase, signing up for a newsletter or simply playing an online game, it’s still about that interaction. Delivering clicks certainly is part of this process, but as a raw metric, the click is really meaningless. By way of example, there are sites that have click through rates that well exceed the industry norm, but if those clickers are all teenage gamers and you are advertising an investment opportunity, did the advertiser receive any real value?
Instead of driving a high volume of low value clicks, advertisers should truly be focused on the desired interaction they are looking to achieve. It is that action, and that alone, that should be used to measure the success of campaigns. In this model, purchasing on a CPM basis will drive the best results; assuming that your media partner has clear and measurable goals. Media partners running a CPM campaign with a CPA goal, for example, know that they can’t wastefully burn the impressions (even if they get paid for them) since the advertiser will not renew or, worse, will cancel if the CPA goal is not met. Therefore, the media partner works hard to drive the best performance toward the actual client goal rather than simply driving clicks.
Where this most combats click fraud is when the advertiser firmly believes that CPC is the success metric. In this case, buying the media as CPM and requiring a strict CPC goal is the way to go. The media partner still needs to drive the clicks the advertiser requires, but now there is no incentive for click fraud since there is no direct fee paid for the individual clicks.
Posted in: Ad Networks, Business by Jared Skolnick @ 11:30 am Permalink | Comments (1)
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
“Brand Safe” Does Not Mean “Brand Worthy”
In an effort to be all things to all advertisers, many ad networks and exchanges are claiming “brand safe” inventory. The process of deeming inventory on a network or exchange “brand safe” generally involves an engine that scans the page for content, relevancy and anything offensive such as nudity or profanity. Some of these technologies work well, in that they can avoid the potential firestorm of a brand advertiser running adjacent to inappropriate content. However, “brand safe” does not mean “brand worthy.”
Branding campaigns have a completely different set of goals than direct response campaigns. They are measured on metrics that are usually longer-term, and are as much insights-driven as they are results-driven.
1. Is it aligned with media that enhances the brand’s equity? Part of the reason why advertisers spend major dollars with familiar names is for the association with a global media brand (an NBC or ESPN, or a sports league like NASCAR).
2. Can a network measure brand metric performance (not clicks or post-click actions; things like brand lift, purchase intent, etc.) or derive meaningful insights, when the focus is on page content and not balancing impressions across a site list that is carefully selected for relevancy and audience?
3. If rich media is being utilized, can an exchange drive high rich media interaction rates when the ads are potentially not in view? Many suboptimal placements on publisher pages are devoted to exchanges due to the low yield they provide.
4. How can a daisy-chain of networks provide a high rich media fulfillment rate with the lag time of calling multiple ad servers?
These are just some things to consider when a network is promoting a “brand safe” environment. “Brand safe” does not mean “brand worthy.”
Posted in: Ad Networks by Eric Franchi @ 10:00 am Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday, April 10th, 2009
Ad Age Digital Day 2: Predictive Modeling and Facebook Admits Banners Dont Work
Ad Age readers might have caught an article a couple of weeks ago about Chrysler and Organic’s predictive media spend modeling. Quite frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t generate more discussion. The article told the story of how Chrysler (who during the conference told the audience about its culture change toward accountability) challenged its agency, Organic, to come up with a predictive econometric model that could help optimize media spending for Jeep. Organic’s Steve Kerho and Chrysler’s Chuck Sullivan presented the case study in more detail for the Ad Age Digital Conference.
Hopefully, the presentation will make its way online via video soon. It was easily one of the most impressive of the conference. The model took into account a variety of marketing spend, online data, auto-industry and macroeconomic factors (too many to list here). It was presented in July 2008 - pre-financial Armageddon, mind you - and ended up predicting total U.S. 2008 Jeep sales within 1% of the actual sales generated. Generally automakers are happy to predict within a range of 10-15%, according to the Ad Age article. Incredible. It remains to be seen if this system can deliver a repeat performance in 2009, but the lesson learned here is that the data is out there and should be harnessed.
Another impressive item from the Chrysler presentation was that they created their own media attribution model with 11 total user touchpoints, including TV, search and display, and assigned a dollar value to each one. Included in this model is, “viewed a display ad.” As we’ve discussed several times on this blog, attribution should be looked at more closely by marketers who want to maximize results. The last-clicked-wins model doesn’t tell you anything. Count Chrysler as being on the leading edge.
Day 2 also included a presentation by Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, called “How Many Friends Can You Have”? This presentation received a lot of coverage online, so I won’t do a full recap. The most interesting takeaways for me were the highlights of a few successful ad campaigns on Facebook. It was at this point during the presentation that I noticed none of the campaigns featured display advertising.
During the Q&A, someone asked her about the commonly held notion that advertising on social networks does not produce a good ROI. Here was her exact quote:
“Social media has had to do some evolution, some work to come up with the right ad products, and we find that we are really first on that path now,” she said. “Banner ads that interrupt your experience, or text ads, we don’t think work as well in this environment. It’s actually just in the last year that we were able to launch ads on our site that behave the way the rest of our site behaves.”
Bravo to Sheryl and Facebook for staying on the path of innovation. Banner ads on social networks do not maximize the potential of the medium, particularly on a site like Facebook. Here’s a further explanation of the direction that Facebook is heading from paidContent.org for their advertising opportunities.
Marketers should look at advertising on social networks with standard display ads with a very critical eye. If the #2 at Facebook says they don’t provide the optimal ROI, why buy them in the first place?
Posted in: Business, Social Networking by Eric Franchi @ 5:14 pm Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
Earned vs. Paid Media (aka, what I learned at Ad Age Digital, Part 1)
This Tuesday and Wednesday, I had the opportunity to attend the Ad Age Digital Conference here in New York City. Leading up to the show, I was very excited for the A-list speakers and content description, and the sold-out attendee list. The Ad Age team surely delivered; from the venue to the content to the attendees, everything was top-notch. Unfortunately, I was unable to catch all of the content due to a hectic meeting schedule. I did, however, get to see the topics and presentations that were at the top of my list.
Well-known venture capitalist, Fred Wilson, kicked off on Day 1. I’ve been daily reader of Fred’s blog for some time now and respect his track record of successful investments and his general support of the New York City tech/media economy. Fred presented an interesting discussion on “Earned Media,” media that you do not pay for, but that you earn through various forms of user engagement. Examples of earned media are at the midpoint of the presentation located here.
Fred is known for his excellent presentations and he did not disappoint. The most thought provoking part, for me, was the second-to-last slide of the presentation: slide 27. Fred theorizes that in four years, if the economy (illustrated by the chart of the S&P 500) turns up, total marketing budgets will go up as well. Simple enough. This slide then proposes a shift in the way budgets are allocated: a significant decline in online media spend (paid media) and an increase in creative and technology, partly due to a focus on earned media. Keep in mind that Fred’s company, Union Square Ventures, invests in many of these types of companies so clearly he believes in and is funding this effort.
I happen to disagree that we will see a massive shift as the slide predicts (and it was less of a prediction than a wild guess) for a couple of reasons:
1) The examples of earned media successes included some viral hits such as the Jonas Brothers. Viral hits, when they happen, clearly have significant impact. But they are few and far between and are never guaranteed. Most marketers will continue to utilize paid models to drive awareness and response as the cornerstone to build scale, awareness and response. I do believe that earned media efforts will become a part of every marketer’s overall media strategy, but as a complement to paid media efforts.
2) Paid media will continue to see success due to creative and technology - the very things that Fred thinks will drive further investment into earned media.
On the creative side, rich media will continue to be a focus for major marketers. While rich media has been around for more than a decade already, we are still in the early innings of rich media adoption and investment. There are many companies that are on the edge of delivering incredible experiences for users within standard ad sizes and using technology and analytics to show a variety of success metrics. This will only increase over the next few years.
On the technology side, the advent of attribution models such as ATLAS’s engagement mapping project will have a major effect in the validation of properly executed paid media. Right now, display advertising suffers from the last cookie or ad clicked stigma. One day in the near future, we’re going to see major advancements in attribution that prove the value of a well targeted and placed online display advertisement in the purchase funnel. In fact, Chrysler presented just such a thing on Day 2 of the conference.
To be continued….
Posted in: General, Business, Ad Spending by Eric Franchi @ 6:49 pm Permalink | Comments (0)
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
SEO
There was an interesting article yesterday from eMarketer that analyzed recent search spending statistics.
According to SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) and Radar Research, search was a $13.5 billion market last year. If you dig into the stats, it’s apparent that “search” really means “SEM”, with almost 90% of spending going toward paid search placements.
SEO, while still a billion-dollar market, receives vastly less spend and attention by marketers according to these stats. What is interesting, however, is that “Internet users prefer organic listings to paid search. They generally find them more relevant—or simply more acceptable—than advertising,” according to eMarketer’s senior analyst David Hallerman. “Therefore, they tend to click on organic results more often than on paid search ads.”
While SEM is still projected to grow this year and beyond as marketers shift more budget online, user preferences appear to be highlighting a good opportunity for SEO. Watch for this trend to unfold over the next few years.
Posted in: Business, Ad Spending by Eric Franchi @ 3:17 pm Permalink | Comments (0)
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
CBS Takes it Up a Notch with the MMOD iPhone App
Last week, my Media Post Video Insider article discussed the success of CBS’s online ad sales efforts for March Madness. CBS announced a near sell-out of all sponsorships two weeks before the event, with estimated revenue up 20% from 2008.
This week, CBS Interactive released an application that allows for real-time streaming of the event to the iPhone or iPod touch via Wi-Fi. Users can watch games either in real-time or anytime afterward through April 9th. The only difference between the PC and iPhone/iPod experience is that the PC is free and ad-supported, while the app must be purchased for $4.99.
In last week’s article, I wondered if the future in live streaming monetization is a paid model like Apple has created with iTunes. Now we don’t have to wonder: the “future” is now.
Posted in: Video by Eric Franchi @ 2:52 pm Permalink | Comments (0)
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Larger Ads in OPA Sites’ Future
On Tuesday, the Online Publishers Association announced an initiative by two dozen of its member companies to launch a new ad unit set come July 1. The new ad units will be larger and have more functionality than the typical IAB standards. More details can be found here.
While the news media did a great job getting the word out, I thought it would be interesting to take a quick poll of what the agency community thinks. The day the article made the rounds, I sent a note to some of the sharpest agency execs I know on Twitter asking for their opinion. What was interesting was that each had a different take (keep in mind that these are not full opinion pieces, and they had to conform to Twitter’s 140 character limit):
Jennifer Kim (Sigma Group): “Bigger banner ads could offer greater exposure but not necessarily greater creativity nor experience. Need to also factor in $$.”
Jim Meskauskas (Icon International): “Bigger really is better. The banner, in one form or another, is here to stay. Might as well make the most of it!”
AdamBroitman (Crayon): “Tread lightly; bigger ads do not = better experience.”
My take? This seems like a good idea. More surface area/real estate always allows for more creativity and impact. It also gives the publishers’ direct sales teams something new and exciting to bring to market. But with CPMs experiencing downward pressure and brand budgets being scrutinized, is now the optimal time for a full rollout? We’ll see what kind of campaigns kick off when the ad units launch this summer. Either way I applaud the OPA’s innovation on this bold move.
Posted in: Business by Eric Franchi @ 10:27 am Permalink | Comments (0)
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