Spur Interactive

Let’s get ready to rumble!!!

There’s a big debate raging in the interactive world about whether advertisers should purchase online ads from Premium Content Providers or their customers / competitors, the Ad Networks. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Premium Content Sites (aka Publishers) include CNN.com, WSJ.com, CBSnews.com, ESPN.com, SI.com, and countless others who have literally spent billions to provide great content.  The premium content, combined with the rigid advertising guidelines offers highly valued placement and brand-enhancing context for advertisers to reach and engage audiences.  But the premium content sites are relatively expensive and the reach beyond the site or small group of sites is limited.

Ad networks, which include advertising.com, google, valueclick, tremor media, specific media, audience science and 24/7 real media, to name a few, aggregate media across thousands of sites and apply targeting techniques to reach your audiences. Through an ad network you can serve ads to the same person (or group of persons) across multiple sites.  The ability to target and re-serve ads is very valuable, especially now that we know that impressions create awareness which improves online conversion rates. Because ad networks buy remnant inventory from premium content sites for a fraction of what advertisers pay, they generally offer much lower cpm rates, allowing advertisers to get more reach for their limited dollars.

Both ad networks and premium content sites have strong arguments as to why you should buy their media over others.  In recent days, a flurry of articles and points of view have emerged.  Here’s a summary:

The case for ad networks is made in “A Pricing Revolution Looms in Online Advertising” (Businessweek.com): “Demographic profiling and behavioral targeting by such companies as Google, Quantcast, and ValueClick is slashing ad costs and threatening Web publishers” To read the article visit http://tinyurl.com/con2lv

The case for premium content sites is made in today’s rebuttal “A Pricing Revolution May Loom, But Context And Content Still Rule” (MediaPost). “Lower-costs seem appealing in the post-recession world, but short-term savings are short-sighted. For advertisers who care about brands”. The article then lists several considerations that must be addressed when you get in bed with the devil (aka ad networks).

So which is right for your brand or your client?  Like most things in life… it depends.  My take is that the “right” medium depends on your brand, audience, objectives and budget. Each medium has its pros and cons.  While context and content are very important, so is cost and the ability to target.  If brand protection is paramount, go with the content sites. If you are seeking to maximize lead generation at the lowest possible cost per lead, start with the ad networks (in conjunction with paid search, of course).  Over time, their offerings will look more and more alike.

As AdAge reported in the 4/20/09 digital issue, “large publishers are looking more like ad networks” and ad networks are starting to look more like publishers by picking up premium content inventory and focusing on targeting and brand safety.  Over time I expect we’ll see these frenemies become more and more alike.  And who’s to say an ad network won’t become an attractive extension for a traditional publishing company seeking to expand its digital footprint (e.g. would Valueclick make sense as a subsidiary of News Corp?).

Media will continue to evolve and the mix of players will continue to shift.  But that’s what makes this such a fun industry and an exciting time to be in the digital marketing arena… even in this crummy recessionary market.

Comments are welcome!!!

p.s. – my apologies to those ad networks and content sites I omitted in this update.  I just wrote what came to mind.. if you were excluded you may want to invest in some online advertising.  I know a great boutique interactive shop that would love to help

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One of the most common mistakes that can be made to any search campaign is shutting down keywords without understanding the role it plays in your overall Search Campaign.  Imagine it’s Game 7 of the NBA Finals and Jerry Sloan sits John Stockton because he isn’t one of the top scorers.  Overall production for the team would fall because you are losing 10.5 assists a game.

This same scenario is what occurs in many PPC Campaigns during the Optimization process where advertisers pause terms that are simply not converting.  A common mistake is the lack of research into the engagement metrics and mapping of your conversion cycle. To understand the role that your keywords play, you must first understand the conversion process for search. The very basic search conversion funnel has three phases:

•    Browsing
•    Shopping/Researching
•    Buying/ Decision Making

Each phase will have a different set of keyword and ad copy strategy to help maximize your efforts from search.  By cutting off traffic from a portion of this cycle, you run the risk of cutting off your keyword conversion funnel.  An example of this, would be the following scenario:

1st search: cosmetics (browsing)
2nd search:  mascara (browsing)
3rd search: waterproof mascara (shopping)
4th search: Blinc brown mascara (Buying) * Converting Term

Reviewing the search funnel above, you see the branded term is what gets credit for the conversion, however the assist terms all played a major role in “assisting” the conversion process.  Many advertisers fail to take the assist terms into consideration when optimizing their account performance and see the end result, overall conversion falling.  In the 2008 Marketing Sherpa Shared Knowledge report it was stated that:

By tracking assist conversions, we determined that customers take about 2 days from the first time they click on a paid ad to the time they convert….many of our conversions consist of customers that have searched using 2 to 7 different keywords.  Customers are doing their research!

So in keeping with the metaphor being used, understanding each role of your keyword list (players) and using them for the greater good of your account (team) will allow you to maximize your returns (win the championship).  If not, you will be stuck with a team full of overpaid and underachieving Prim Donnas, just look at the NY Knicks under Isaiah Thomas…..

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