An article in today's NY Times focuses on the increased popularity of ad networks as opposed to traditional display advertising. With a weakening economy, it can no longer just be about branding, but about action.
Ad networks that target certain consumers or others that focus on sites with a common subjects may mean "less eyeballs" but "higher quality eyeballs" and "less leads" but "higher quality leads." This feels like the natural evolution of a new advertising medium. At first, it's about making your brand or company's present generally felt, but then, as usage and competition increase, it signals that it's time to go after the people the matter - the ones likely to make a purchase.
According to the article, home pages can still be effective, but the high prices can make them unappealing. And so, we've seen a number of the smaller ad networks scooped up by the big players (Yahoo + BlueLithium, AOL + Quigo Technologies)... but what will this lead to? Well, if the ad networks become the go-to place for ad buys (and they're all owned by the Yahoo's and Google's of the world), then prices will shoot up, just as they have for home pages. For the time being though, targeting with ad networks (which seems intuitively more appealing anyway) is the cheaper, and hopefully more effective option.
Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/media/21online.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=tyler+townsend&st=nyt&oref=slogin
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