The Adify Blog
Online Display Ad Market Rebounds, According to comScore
May 13th 2010, comScore reported its findings on Q1 2010 data in the US online display advertising market. Total ad impressions, excluding video ads and house ads, tallied in at 1.09 trillion. This represents a 15% increase in ad impressions over Q1 2009.
Above The Fold
We posted last week about a yearlong study conducted by comScore, Microsoft, and Eyeblaster that revealed that the key to attracting and keeping eyeballs is to pair innovative creative with relevant content. This probably isn’t a huge surprise to anyone, but it should validate the fact that knowing your audience and targeting to relevant users with compelling creative is of utmost importance.
Place Ads Where People Spend Their Time on the Web Page
comScore, Microsoft Advertising and Eyeblaster announced the results of a yearlong study to find out how conversion results were impacted by ad interactivity, associated content, and viewing time. The study was designed to demonstrate the impact of Eyeblaster’s Dwell analytics capabilities. The research proved, once again, that the winning combination for online advertising success is to pair quality creative with relevant content that keeps users engaged. It’s simply not about the algorithm.
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.
Behavioral Targeting, Not for the Faint of Heart
It sounds simple, “Offer Behavioral Targeting and the advertisers will come.”
A recent study by Howard Beales for the NAI, “The Value of Behavioral Targeting,” professed the value of behavioral targeting, quoting higher CPM rates and higher success rates (CTR and Conversions). Immediately articles began circulating quoting the study’s revelation and touting the value of BT. These articles validated their assumptions based entirely on feedback received from top networks (9 of the top 15 according to comScore).
Digital Throttle launches
Congratulations to Digital Throttle, the newest network to launch on Adify's Network Builder platform! Digital Throttle helps marketers reach the automotive aftermarket audience by uniting select, passionate publishers in subcategories such as motorsports racers and fans, off-road Jeep®, muscle cars, motorcycle riders and the aftermarket trade community. Read today's release and find out more about Digital Throttle at www.digitalthrottle.com.
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.
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