Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Standardized Advertising
One particular point stood out to me in last week's digital marketing class, and that was that display media is making a comeback. In 2008, I left Razorfish to go work for a small boutique web design agency, and at that time, paid search was "king". As an SEM manager, life was easy in the sense that budget was rarely an issue - it was hard to argue against devoting more $$ to paid search as it proved time and time again to the be the most efficient use of the advertising dollar. Sure, sometimes there was tension between display and search execs in this regard, but we just weren't at the point yet where we could leverage true synergies between the two forms of advertising. Clearly, since that time, things have changed as Professor Kagan explained during last week's class that display media has found ways to be highly efficient (primarily through more and more sophisticated targeting). What I find curious, however, is the willingness of companies to be "boxed in" to standardized IAB ad formats. I know I'm probably wrong, but I really don't believe I've ever clicked on a display ad unit. I don't even notice them. That is the downside of being a "pusher", and not a "puller". It is somewhat mind boggling to me that a group of marketers decided on some grid formats for the internet a while back and we're all subjected to these standard units now that are almost impossible to change due to the headaches created by attempted deviation. I worked on a project with Barry Diller and Tina Brown called theDailyBeast.com, a curated news aggregation site, and we tried to break the mold by refusing to partake in the standard ad unit model and instead created a production heavy, micro-site flavored ad serving structure where "engagement" was the primary metric. In theory, this approach was enticing, though in execution, it still couldn't compete with the CPM rates and efficiencies standardization brought. I leave the class with the question, how sustainable is it to force all display advertising to follow the IAB approach? Is advertising going to become really targeted, but really boring?
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2 comments:
Thanks Sapna for sharing insights. I some what agree with you and your question about sustainability is quite valid. As I see, it works well if you integrate online Ads (SEM) with other digital marketing tactics and make it as a complete goal base marketing campaign. The problem is that most of the marketers do a great job particularly on SEM but when it comes to integrate it into an iterative process, many fails.
You also mentioned that you hardly click on ads. This might be because we are all aware of the fact that most of them are inappropriate and not what they claim. Hopefully with the advancement in technology and algorithms Search Engine ads will become more and more refined.
I was also struck by the resurgence in display but (and I'll admit ignorance here) was even more struck by how dominant search still is. If display ads are something to be avoided at all costs while cruising online, so are search ads. We all know what we're looking at, right?
What's confusing about the rise in display share is that the price of display ads (CPMs) has fallen through the floor, which is one reason why publications like daily beast and others are having a really hard time making money.
I think I'm the only journalist in this class (anyone?) so I'm dying to know if there's anyone out there who is trying to pair content with advertising that is different than those standardized boxes that,frankly, add nothing to the user experience. I'd like to hear more from Sapna about why Daily Beast couldn't succeed there.
Ultimately, if content providers can't customize the advertising product, they'll be reduced to commodity producers, which is the last thing you want to be with a high marginal cost, huge overhead and a product that takes a long time to build up a customer base.
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