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[ Viewing entries tagged with "Ad Inventory" ]
Premium Ad Inventory…Brand or Quality?
Today’s OPA study, "Improving Ad Performance Online: The Impact of Advertising on Content Sites," has the following to say about advertising on premium inventory:
1. Ads on content sites raise awareness, message association, brand favorability, and purchase intent more than portals and ad networks
2. Ad networks provide advertisers no significant impact on purchase intent
So, what is premium ad inventory?
Premium ad inventory is about the quality of the inventory available to sell, not about the top 100 branded site content. In the OPA study, Ad Networks are defined as “aggregators and sellers of non-premium ad inventory, typically across small to medium size third-party sites." But wait. There’s something inconsistent in the OPA’s study definition: OPA —aka, premium content sites—are the largest contributors of inventory to the ad networks. As we’ve said before, almost 85% of the inventory in the top 20 ad networks comes from the comScore top 100 (source: Adify Market Maps).
To understand this, we need to take a close look at some of the premium publishers included in the ad networks in the OPA study:
- Tribal Fusion: AETN, WashingtonPost, USAToday
- Vibrant Media: Gannett
- Broadband Enterprises: Gannett, Meredith, Fox, CBS
- Yahoo!: Comcast
When you look at the ad inventory supply, you have to consider a different conclusion than OPA’s:
1. Premium or “quality” inventory is better defined by the context/section/vertical where the ad is displayed.
2. The primary ad representation sales team captures the most valuable (impactful, influential) ad opportunities.
All online publishers have varying levels of ad inventory quality. Within the same publisher’s site, when you compare placement on the homepage vs. articles vs. shopping comparison pages vs. blogs vs. user-generated content, each position yields different performance, value, and varying impact for advertisers.
Large publishers and portals already know that contextual ad targeting is king, even above audience (demo, geo, BT), technical targeting, and so on. This is why they often sell their highly relevant content advertising through a direct sales team--at a higher CPM and with better impact and performance. These larger publishers and portals also know that premium inventory is often sold against better economics. It makes sense to offer their less-premium inventory to an Ad Network or Portal (rather than having their strategic sales team focus on representing it). The reality is that ad networks and portals know how to move inventory at scale, against different advertiser objectives (performance), which makes them a good choice as an incremental revenue opportunity with limited sales channel conflict. (Publisher sales and network sales go after different deals.)
It’s no surprise then that content sites selling their own premium ad inventory garner higher awareness, association, favorability, and purchase intent for advertisers. After all, the content sites have the first selection of the ad inventory to sell. It's only after the primary sales teams’ contextually targeted campaigns have reserved the highest quality inventory that the remaining unsold inventory becomes available for portals and ad networks to sell.
So what should an advertiser do?
1) Focus on the quality of the inventory you are buying from anyone.
2) Ensure your advertising is reaching your desired audience where they are paying attention and passionately engaged with the content.
Testing for Malware and Deceptive Ads
Malware is a serious threat to any premium publisher, ad network, exchange, RTB, DSP, or other online advertising marketplace. Alanna Clark provides some good recommendations on how to minimize serving malware in “It’s Time To Get ‘Real’ About Malvertising."
Transparency Can Defeat Invisibility
Today the Wall Street Journal ran an article about the newest form of fraud to hit online advertising – invisible ads. Harvard Business School assistant professor Ben Edelman discovered the ads, which were found on websites in several popular ad networks.
Improve sell through rates with inventory forecasting tools
Ad sales teams are often unsure how to use inventory forecasting tools. For some, their manual forecast process works well enough. Perhaps they tried using other forecasting tools in the past, and got bad results. Manual forecasting may work for today, but with more highly targeted campaigns and higher sell through rates, it breaks down. Forecasting tools can relieve the pressure, and produce more accurate results, if used correctly.
SmartMoney is…Smart: How Cutting Ad Spaces Can Increase Revenue
AdAge just reported that SmartMoney increased their click-through rate (much as we don't like that metric, it's still widely used) and re-engaged key advertisers. How? By studying the performance of each ad unit on their site and eliminating below-the-fold, low-performing/low-value ad space. The results were happier advertisers, better performance, and users who stick around longer.
Are You Buying Premium, Trusted Inventory? Three Questions to Ask Before You Buy
Three years ago, Adify created the first infrastructure to seamlessly create and manage vertical advertising networks. We recognized that quality, independent sites were attracting passionate audiences and we believed that if we provided the right infrastructure and services to motivated experts, they could attract the best independent sites into next generation networks. Turns out we were right. Not only does Adify's infrastructure ensure that the included sites are expertly curated for quality and relevance, but our services also ensure that Network Builders can monitor the content, design, and ad placement of their independent publisher partners on an ongoing basis. That's true transparency.
Second OPA Study Reaffirms Effectiveness of Buys on Original Content Sites
The Online Publisher’s Association has released a second study, using Dynamic Logic data, that shows how ads on original content sites are more effective at engaging audiences and driving purchase intent than ads on portals or horizontal ad networks.
2009 Prediction: Growth of the Curation Economy
Steve Rosenbaum, interactive media industry pundit and CEO of Magnify.net, has ventured several predictions about trends that will shape the media industry in 2009. His first prediction: “The Growth of the Curation Economy”. Curation refers to the selection, filtering, packaging & monitoring of online contact produced by numerous sources.
"Things I've Noticed" Blog Heightens Ad Review Power with Adify
In his Things I've Noticed blog, "UH2L" describes how he's achieved heightened control over which ads appear on his site by becoming a member of an Adify-powered vertical ad network. In contrast to Google AdSense (the "backup" network he uses in cases when a paid ad from his Adify-powered network isn't available), UH2L is able to set minimum prices for his ad inventory with Adify, and can review each ad campaign in detail (including the rate he'll get for the campaign) before it runs on his site. This is especially important for UH2L, who, for example, prefers not to run ads that promote the sale of meat products. In his post, UH2L ponders some of the ethical decisions that online publishers face, and notes:
Bain IAB Digital Pricing Research Released
Bain & Co. and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have released a new Digital Pricing Research report that address issues of price compression for large publishers who use third-party ad networks and exchanges.
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