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[ Viewing entries tagged with "brand" ]
Why Facebook Can Be Risky For Brands
Earlier this week Pace Lattin wrote on Industry Pace about the lack of brand advertising on Facebook, concluding that brands aren’t flocking to campaigns and fan pages on Facebook because of concerns over brand safety and lack of control. The risk for customer backlash is just so high, that Facebook promotions are, as Pattin says, “really stupid.”
Peer Influence and the 80-20 Rule
If any phenomenon ever followed the 80/20 rule, it’s word of mouth marketing. As described in Laurie Sullivan’s recent article in MediaPost, only 11 million people (just 16% of the US online population) are responsible for 80% of the 500 billion “influence impressions” seen in 2009. An influence impression is a consumer’s exposure to another consumer’s reaction to a brand or product (positive or negative).
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.
Time to rethink your pricey TV spot
A new study out from Nielsen this week shows that online video ads have surpassed TV ads for general recall, brand recall, message recall and likability.
Is Word-Of-Mouth the Same in the Digital World?
On the heels of my blog post that puts into question the value of Facebook for brand advertising, today Facebook released a study in partnership with Nielsen which reveals that both paid and earned media on Facebook increase ad recall, awareness, and purchase intent.
Is Facebook the right place for brands?
News yesterday that brand advertisers are moving spend to Facebook, and that prices for certain ad products are rivaling those of big portals like Yahoo! and MSN - up to $300K per day. So how is Facebook commanding these rates? Targeting.
Transparency Means Trust
Lack of transparency is keeping advertisers from spending an additional $2B annually on display advertising, reports AdSafe Media in MediaPost, based on a study "Beyond the Grey Areas: Transparency, Brand Safety and the Future of Online Advertising," which was released Wednesday by the Winterberry Group. The study cites examples of “message misalignment” (being out of context) and “dangerous” placements as the fears of advertisers.
A Dirty Secret, A Double Life: Part 3
In my previous two posts, I described how major branded sites compose the majority of impressions in the top ad networks, and I posited that branded publishers who pursue a hybrid premium/commodity strategy will erode their brand equity and pricing power. The imperative for branded publishers is to embrace one of these two strategies:
A Dirty Secret, A Double Life: Part 2
If you were in the market for a premium computer, and you were presented with these two options…
A Dirty Secret, A Double Life: Part 1
I’m going to give you a secret statistic that may surprise you. And, if you’re a publisher of a branded web property, the statistic should trouble you. It’s the answer to the question:
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