The Adify Blog
[ Viewing entries tagged with "online advertising" ]
Media Decision Makers Optimistic for an Online Ad Rebound
A poll of 200 "media decision makers" conducted by Advertiser Perceptions Inc. in early July shows soaring optimism for a rebound in online advertising, including online display.
Adify Media for Advertisers – Top 5 Differences with other Ad Networks
- Adify Media serves 100% of your ads on sites within our network, with no brokering.
- Adify Media is fully transparent: You see a full site list before campaigns run, and view delivery and performance on a site and line item level, anytime.
- Adify Media audiences are more engaged. comScore shows that audiences on Adify Media sites spend twice as much time with our publishers than comparable portal sections.
- Adify Media delivers high impact ad campaigns – IAB standard plus overlay video, expandables, interstitials, and more.
- Adify Media puts your brand in front of passionate influencers – the publishers of over 10,000 quality, independent sites.
Adify Media for Adify Network Builders – Top 5 Differences with other Ad Networks
- Adify Media shares its pipeline, in real time, with all Network Builders using the Adify Network Builder platform.
- Adify Media enables Network Builders to opt in or out of every campaign or line item.
- Adify Media campaigns are only offered to publishers whose price minimum is met.
- Adify Media campaigns enable publishers to preview the creative and accept or reject content – providing an extra layer of publisher control.
- Adify Media campaigns deliver IAB standard banners and breakthrough creative such as expandables, overlay video, and interstitial ads.
Portals Trending Downward in Razorfish Annual Report
Razorfish's annual digital outlook report went out this week, and it reveals a notable shift of budgets away from portals to alternative sources for reaching niche target audiences at scale, specifically vertical ad networks. According to the report, portals claimed only a 16% share of Razorfish clients' ad budgets in 2008 (down from 19% in 2009), compared to a 37% share for networks. Meanwhile, as the report notes, "...advertiser concerns about transparency and efficacy have resulted in spending growth within broad premium environments or 'branded networks.'"
Art is Back: Can Creativity Save Us?
Since its inception, the Internet has been billed as “the most measurable” environment for advertising. What that has translated into, in recent history, is all science and no art. Advertisers are stuck in “short-termism” (to quote Rob Norman, Group M CEO), as though every consumer of content is ready to buy now—or will be in the next 30 days.
It is ironic that during an economic downturn—with DJIA down, Consumer Confidence down, and extra money going to pay bills—advertisers are doubling down on tired direct response networks, as though content consumers hadn't tightened their pocket books. Building a consumer's relationship with a brand seems to have all but disappeared.
Waste Not, Want Not? Better Think About Ad Ops
ClickZ quoted me this week on a topic near and dear to my heart: the power of ad operations to make or break waste. According to ComScore research, a paltry 20 percent of impressions may reach their intended audience. The wasted remainder? Often the result of ad operations failing at their responsibility to "just think" about what’s being placed, where. Read the full article here.
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.
Don’t Take Sloppy Seconds. Understand What “Remnant” Really Means.
Today I was talking to a media buyer who was struggling to understand the difference between buying on vertical ad networks, like those powered by Adify or sold through Adify Media, versus traditional ad networks. This media buyer’s confusion lay in the meaning of remnant inventory. He said he had asked a traditional network whether it delivered remnant inventory. That network, which aggregates inventory from the top sites on the Internet, claimed it wasn’t delivering remnant inventory because the network paid for the impressions.
Huh?
This is a misleading way to determine whether a network offers remnant inventory. Of course that network pays for the impressions—the sites they sell are not sites they own.
Here at Adify, our founders created the first large ad network with Flycast, and we’ve been in this business for a long time. The easiest way to understand whether a network is offering “remnant” inventory or not is to ask this question: Does your network give you the first impressions on the sites it represents, or does it only offer the impressions those sites couldn’t sell through their primary sales teams? If you’re getting impressions that a site couldn’t otherwise offload, you are getting remnant inventory, plain and simple.
Why does this mean for your brand? When you buy on a network and you see the names of large sites that call on that network directly, you need to be aware that the inventory those sites allocate to the ad network is NOT the same inventory they would sell you in a direct media buy. Instead, you’re getting the publishers’ remnant, unsold, sub-premium inventory.
In contrast, when you buy on vertical ad networks—or through Adify Media, our in-house trafficking team, which creates customized placements across verticals—you are buying through the primary sales team that represents the niche, independent sites in those vertical networks. More importantly, you’re buying the first impressions on those premium pages, making vertical networks a smart buy.
How Vertical Ad Networks Can Help Interactive Marketers
Forrester Research's recent report detailing "Online Advertising Predictions for 2009," forecasts a rough and tumble year ahead for interactive marketers. Here are three key issues that interactive marketers will face -- and a look at how vertical ad networks (like those powered by Adify) are uniquely poised to help:
Issue 1: Proving budgets and moving the needle. "In 2009, interactive marketers will be charged more than ever with proving their online budgets, driving sales, or moving the needle on key brand metrics." To prove their value, says Riley, savvy interactive marketers will need to "turn to ad networks to find bargains."
She's right: Vertical ad networks, like those powered by Adify, can deliver the premium audiences of quality mid-tail publishers, at a significant savings compared to portals. Consider Martha's Circle, a collection of interior-design-related publishers, marshaled together under the flag of Martha Stewart, the doyenne of home décor. As noted in the February 17th Forrester report "Ad Networks for Brand Advertisers," vertical ad networks like Martha's Circle offer "access to quality inventory at prices below premium brand name publishers' with the service level of a direct sales force." Premium audiences with less waste? Clearly that's a smart buy.
Issue 2: Data ownership as a means to manage efficiency. Riley forecasts that interactive marketers will want to move data ownership in-house, for optimal analysis. This is another area where working with the Adify platform offers advantages, as we clearly recognize that the party that generates the data owns the data -- whether it's the publisher or the advertiser -- so there's no difficulty in doing the analysis you need to do with the numbers you own.
Issue 3: Testing early forms of attribution measurement as a means to keep tabs on ROI. It makes sense that in today's tight economic times everyone is focused on making dollars go as far as possible, with minimal waste. That's why upcoming releases on the Adify platform will include features that give interactive marketers the kinds of insights they need to understand the value of their campaigns on the network. We can't reveal everything yet -- but stay tuned for exciting announcements in the coming weeks and months.
Clearly it won't be the easiest year we've faced as an industry, but as attention swings to stretching the dollar, vertical ad networks are delivering on the promise of budgetary value, data ownership, and ROI analysis in a way that the big portals simply can't match.
That Next-Gen Portal Is Closer Than You Think
The rise of Google fundamentally changed Web navigation, nearly making late-'90's-style content portals obsolete. Who would go to a portal to get stale content that doesn't quite fit your interests, when you could search for personally relevant content by keyword? At least that was the idea. But there's still a need for a next generation portal. Let me explain:
Today's content has gone beyond mere Google searches to an on-demand paradigm. Once I find content I like, I can Digg it, Facebook it, MySpace it, and share it with my friends at my virtual water cooler. However, while spending time in social networks has great appeal, ads displayed there aren't any more effective because they show up next to friends' profiles. That leaves a gap between the needs of social networking audiences and the advertisers who fund them.
A truly next gen portal would better serve audiences and advertisers alike. What will that portal look like? It will manifest inside vertical networks or category-specific networks, where you can read the content that matters to you most and discover new content organically, whether or not you know the keywords to bring it to light. For deep engagement, the next gen portal will do some things for you seamlessly, like aggregate all the content in the network and refresh it continuously based on what other users are viewing and on what content topics matter most to you.
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