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Do You Have Industry Déjà Vu? (Mediapost 1.18.12) 0

Do you have industry déjà vu?  I do!  Doesn’t it feel as though the primary issues of the day we face today are the same issues that we faced eight or ten years ago?  Is this a sign of the cyclical nature of the business or have we literally stalled?

Ten years ago, or somewhere thereabouts, we were dealing with the business based on click-through, we were dealing with the beginning of attribution models, and we were dealing with the development of brand advertising online.   We were faced with the questions of whether it’s best to be spending on content or via behavioral targeting.  We were dealing with our position as a media vehicle and how we fit into the overall marketing mix.  Over time one would think some of these questions have been addressed and that new questions would have risen to take their place, but it doesn’t feel as though it has!

In our defense, we’ve grown really fast and we’ve certainly accomplished a lot, but the business is still in need of some standards.  The business is still too complicated to command a leadership position in the marketplace, at least when it comes to a comparison against television and other media.  Its been stated time and time again, but its easier to spend $10MM on TV than it is to spend $2MM in digital.   And the fact is I wrote that exact same sentence last year, five years ago and ten years ago as well.  At some point we have to come to terms, make some decisions, and set the stage for growth and expansion.

If I can foresee a trend, it’s that the next year or two should be focused on the simplification of the models and the further commoditization of the business.  I personally don’t see commoditization as a bad thing.  I see it as a step towards maturity.  I see commodization as a way for brands to spend more money, for agencies to become more efficient with their time and for publishers to generate higher margins.  Of course the question remains, how do we do that?

The easiest way for this to happen is for everyone in the industry to come to a positive middle ground.  I spent the first 15 years of my career building digital ad agencies, and the last 4 helping publishers and start-ups, and in almost every situation I hear that, “what you have is close to what we need, but we need a little more”.  That “little more” is what keeps us from coming to resolution, and from my perspective that “little more” is not a necessity.  It is a hindrance more than anything.  Without that “little more” we could actually standardize and get a lot of things accomplished!

I was a culprit of this while on the agency side, so I admit to taking some of the blame.  Much of the time my job was to take something that a publisher had and “make it more tailored to our needs”.   Of course, “our needs” was attempting to generate differentiated positions between our agency and the competition, but looking back I think that differentiation should have been on the creativity of our brains rather than the minor differences in technology.  Every agency has a trading desk.  Every agency has a dynamic ad server.  Every agency has similar tools, but every agency has different people and those people are the defining element, whether it be in media or creative.  The people are what you can’t commoditize and their creativity is what will propel the business.

Knowing that people are the defining factor means the rest of the business can be standardized from a media perspective.  Industry groups like the IAB and others could probably help here by setting the stage for standards in reporting and the ever-discussed “digital dashboard”.  By helping brands and publishers come to a single agreement on what they should be looking at, how often, and where they should be looking at it, we could come to a standard on the media side of the business.  With that standard would come commoditization and that could help us become more efficient with our time!

Sometimes déjà vu is a nice feeling.  It provides comfort and it provides a sense of peace, but I don’t think that we as an industry are ready for comfort and peace.  We are a business that is driven by entrepreneurs and evangelists and we love to push things forward, so maybe we can find some new things to push forward if we can wrap up the loose ends that we’ve overlooked?

What do you think?

Posted on: 01-22-2012
Posted in: treffiletti.com

With Maturity Comes Simplicity (Mediapost 10.5.11) 0

The Internet advertising business is approximately 17 years old, depending on who you talk to.  You’ve heard that with age comes wisdom, but I also think that in an industry sense, with maturity should come simplicity – when is that going to happen for us?

When the business was growing, and growing rapidly, you heard the phrase “building the plane while flying it”.  That phrase referred to the frantic nature by which we were creating standards and norms for a business that didn’t previously exist and for which the blueprint was illegible at best, and relatively incoherent at it’s worst.  Now that substantial budgets have come to online, and more marketers are treating the medium as a core component of their marketing mix, its time to finally simplify the business.

Simplification may not be easy, but if we are to elevate the business to that next level of respect and spend, it has to be done.  Spending money online is not an easy task, especially when compared to other media (simple fact – its easier to spend $20 million on TV than it is online).  The system for implementing an online campaign, which includes tracking and reporting with site-side tagging, creative trafficking and manipulation of inventory is a very time-consuming, difficult undertaking.  Ask any brand manager what they don’t understand about the online ad business and they will uniformly say “implementation”.  It’s a difficult process and it almost always creates issues.

Agencies are probably the one area where this can be fixed, because they have the leverage to create simplicity in this process.  Agencies are the trusted advisors for most brands when it comes to online advertising, and agencies do almost all of this by hand.  That is not scalable, it is not practical, and it is not a recipe for success. 

Of course, agencies are not solely to blame here.  There has been created a cluttered mess of vendors, partners and solutions for marketers to execute online ad campaigns, with more popping up every day.  There is only one partner who has made it easier for marketers to spend their money online and that would be Google.  Google is effectively a one-stop shop for all your online advertising needs, so it’s no wonder they’re the “800 pound gorilla” in an otherwise chaotic, zoo-like landscape.  Companies like AOL and Yahoo have an opportunity to present themselves as “easy” to marketers with their cross-platform solutions and mix of content and audience targeting, but they need to jump on that bandwagon quickly.

We need to make it easy for an advertiser to commit a multi-million dollar budget to online.  Right now, that’s just not the case.  In traditional media like TV, a single media planner/buyer can easily manage $10-20 million in spend.  In online, a $10-20 million budget typically requires at least 7 people to plan, buy, execute and manage that campaign, and that can be considered conservative.  Anything less, and the team becomes overstretched and the work suffers.

How are we going to achieve this simplicity that should come with maturity?  The industry itself has to step up.  We have more than enough conferences and governing bodies to address these issues, and I think it’s time to do so.  We‘ve been hyper-focused against privacy for the last year or so, and we may have taken our eyes off the ball of simplification.  I think we can get back to that now.  Whether its events where everyone is together in a room, or whether its groups like the AAAA’s and the IAB, someone should take a look at the process of implementing online media buys and begin to simplify the process, maybe offering endorsements of companies that make it easier, or even creating an industry task-force to address simplification from a single platform integration.  In TV, there is Donovan.  In online we have Google and DoubleClick, but the free-market has made structural integration with them a pipe dream.   For those of you who remember the Aspen Group’s efforts to address Terms and Conditions, or the FAST group to address reporting and other items, it’s time for a similar effort.  It’s time for a Simplification group to address the business.

If you’re reading this article, please talk to those around you and help me try to create a groundswell around this idea.  Share the article, forward the article and let’s see what we can do to make it easier for advertisers to engage with online.

Trust me – you’ll be happy that you did!

Posted on: 10-9-2011
Posted in: treffiletti.com

Start-Up Watch COD: Inadco Delivers CPL at CPM Scale 0

Performance is the name of the game in interactive media – it’s one of the key reasons why digital’s growing faster than any other class of communications. But what we consider performance is evolving. While we used to live and die by the click, more and more companies are recognizing that we need to focus on business-relevant end results – performance that doesn’t always correlate with clicks.

is a start-up focused on delivering massive scale in business leads by converting standard banner units into lead collection “machines” that improve the number and rate at which real prospects are delivered to businesses. There’s a simple formula to this, but the most powerful ideas are almost always the simplest. Instead of driving people to websites and landing pages to collect contact information, Inadco delivers IAB-sized collection units across the web to environments with a high degree of likelihood to attract your prime customer types.

They assume the “risk” of this distributed lead collection system, by creating the units and paying the pubs that run the collector units. You pay on a cost per lead basis, so the performance risk falls on others.

They are betting – and winning – on the premise that their expertise in driving user response will make the process profitable.

Inadco says that the leads they generate are demonstrated to be high quality, and that this value is enhanced by three core business principles:

1.They are highly adept at identifying the best publishers on which to reach your audience
2.Leads are collected with forms that carry your branding, so respondents know who will be contacting them for follow-up. In other words, no surprises that might reduce closability
3.Their technology filters out respondes that are clearly of no value, so you aren’t purchasing information on people you have no ability to close
For publishers, Inadco promises that its form units drive significantly higher yield than standard ads. Pubs are paid on a bounty per qualified lead basis, and the revenue generated usually exceeds that made possible by CPM or CPC ad pricing.

Because the bounty per qualified lead can be relatively high, pubs are incented to deliver these units in locations and environments with a higher probability to deliver a qualified response. There’s a somewhat higher risk for a pub versus CPM, but as we all know most pubs simply cannot deliver the breadth and depth of content they want to under the existing CPM environment. With increased risk (usually) comes increased return.

As I said earlier, it’s simple, and that’s one of the things that makes it so powerful. The streamlining of the leads process is dramatic. No creative costs for you, no landing page development, no creative testing, no message testing. They manage all that, and can (they hope) do it better than you because they have so much experience in this field.

If leads are your business currency, you should definitely give them the onceover.

Posted on: 08-2-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: Addroid replaces the video middleman with a middleSaaS 0

Digital media is ridiculously complicated to buy and to develop creative for. Anything that makes that process simpler, faster, and cheaper is likely in a great place to get adopted and gain significant market traction.

Which is why is garnering more and more attention in our business. Addroid is a SaaS-based ad development environment and solution that makes it easy to make video ads to run in IAB banner sizes. Their goal is to replace expensive middleman technologies like the rich media providers with a drag and drop solution that creates an attractive add more or less immediately.

The cost structure of running video can be pricey. Serving a video ad is significantly more expensive than a Flash banner. According to Addroid, using one of the major rich media solutions companies (MediaMind, EyeWonder, PointRoll, and even DoubleClick) adds a cost of about 40 cents to the CPM versus a gif banner. Their platform takes that down to 15 cents.

Developed by an agency called Neoganda, Addroid is web-based, and provides an ad development environment where you quickly add creative elements and publish a video ad.

Here’s a video where their Founder explains the value proposition and shows the drop dead simple process of ad development:

from on .

If you watched the video, you learned that going after the rich media company business is only part of their vision. They believe that brands and agencies would develop a lot more video ads instead of Flash banners if they could. By significantly reducing the video markup, they believe that they have created a pricing sweet spot to drive a dramatic transition in the industry.

Lemme tell me why I think they are on to something big. There are entire industries like entertainment and auto that would surely drop Flash but quick if video were more affordable. But many of the categories that would be most interested in making such a change are very value-oriented.

Oh, let’s call a spade a spade. These categories are filled with cheap sumbitches, though I don’t mean that as an insult. Let’s take entertainment as a for instance. When you have only a couple weeks and a limited budget to hype a film, you need to make every impression and every dollar count. So we shouldn’t be surprised that their buyers don’t throw money around willy nilly.

Which is why, I think, we still see Flash banners for some movies and TV programs, even though video would surely be more compelling.

A reduction from 40 cents to 15 cents represents a big drop in cost structure.

And there’s another cool thing. By replacing Flash banners with HTML video units, advertisers can better reach and persuade tablet users, 99 and 44/100s of whom are on iPads that don’t run Flash.

The name threw me a bit. I was expecting a mobile solution. But no matter, it is clearly designed to communicate the idea that they have replaced the middleman with a droid – or rather a SaaS.

So adding that up. Cheaper. HTML 5. Cheaper. Faster. And cheaper. I would imagine that more than a few of those reading this are already dialing.

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.

Posted on: 05-28-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: HubPages goes further to appeal to advertisers and marketers 0

Say you’re a publisher — one that doesn’t have nine digits of uniques or a “founded” date of 1998. How do you compete with leading established players in the content space?

It ain’t easy. Most buyers have go-to publishers they use to reach and connect with certain audiences. These buyers tend to be satisfied with their choices — after all, if they weren’t satisfied with them, they wouldn’t be buying them.

I want to emphasize that this isn’t about buyer laziness. Rather, in a time crunched environment where results are essential, most buyers choose to go with media options that they know consistently deliver. Does that mean that something that might work EVEN BETTER may get overlooked? Perhaps. But in the absence of strong reasons to believe that a new choice will outperform the go-tos, buyers tend to stick with what they know.

So for newer media players, no matter how good their content, it’s tough to attract the attention and dollars of leading digital buyers. To break into that exclusive club of preferred advertising solutions, new entities need to do more for advertisers.

HubPages is a community of more than 200,000 writers who join to get a forum through which to discuss what they are passionate about. These enthusiastic writers have created more than 1.1 million topical “hubs” through the company’s easy-to-use page building tools and search-friendly architecture. The site reaches between 16-21 million uniques a month and its authoritative pages tend to score very well in the major search engines.

The topics covered by HubPages are legion, from Autos to Business to Games to Health to Personal Finance to Travel. There are, for example, almost 18,000 hubs about cars alone. From General Motors Corporation (18) to Vintage Cars (16) and Hot Rods (26). They range from slick and corporate to digital expressions of one person’s all consuming obsession.

As we all know, the search engines love content-rich pages that are updated often, and the HubPages community delivers. Essentially, these 200,000 “Hubbers” are super bloggers anxious to monetize their knowledge and expertise through HubPages’ revenue share programs. And the community offers a number of avenues to getting paid for your content.

HubPages feature a variety of ad formats from other companies, including Google AdSense, Kontera, Amazon, Advertising.com, Microsoft pubCenter, ValueClick and Glam Media. But it is with HubPages’ own ad formats that the company is working particularly hard to earn the attention and dollars of the buying community. In addition to the gimme IAB sizes, HubPages offers a variety of truly massive and multi-functional placements that born integrate from page content and stand out from it. Like this:

Their large units can combine text, Flash, apps, pre-roll, and interactive video in experiences that are very much “foreground.” I liken them to even larger versions of AOL’s Project Devil units.

Similar to a Federated, HubPages can also work with brands on content integration including Hubber endorsement and special sponsored content with more extensive information about a brand than may be available anywhere else. Their ad services team can also make custom, and assist in the production of creative for the company’s large ad sizes.

Why do they do all this? I think it relates back to my first point. In order to demonstrate that they can deliver more, they need to do more for brands and viewers alike. In addition to the creative freedom available, the community also offers a broad range of targeting options, including:

Channels
Seasonal
Audience Segments
Demographic
Behavioral
Geographic
Purchase
Keyword
Time/Day

So brass tacks. Will HubPages perform better than other content sites for you? Dunno. I would imagine it will depend upon the brand and the objective. But I do think they are offering the content, targeting, and creative options to warrant a look see.

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.

Posted on: 05-14-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: Adventive raises the bar on in-banner interactivity with drag and drop app integration 0

Banners are a much maligned advertising medium, and not without reason. Click rates for standard gif or Flash banners are just a hair above zero, and there appears to be validity to the idea of consumer banner blindness. Good creative, of course, can combat those sobering facts. Some online advertising delivers gangbuster clicks and the like. But good creative is easier said than done in a little square and a 30K max.

Another approach to improving results from banners is to bake in more functionality and interactivity. When there are more ways to interact, there is generally more consumer attention and interaction. A company called has developed a platform that enables marketers and agencies to capitalize on high quality creative executions with powerful interactive apps that can be drug and dropped into the units.

Functionalities like data collection in a banner aren’t new. But what Adventive does is offer template DIY versions of the best such technologies within a platform that makes it easier and cheaper to create and modify app-enabled banners. So for example, a brand could contract with an agency to design templates for lovely banners, and then have a different team of less expensive people build in app functionalities.

By leveraging multiple apps, the brand can create ads that eliminate the need for site redirects. Without getting engineers involved, you can offer a banner that:

•Collects a lead
•Requests a zip code and then delivers localized offers
•Offers multimedia
•Provides multiple pages of content
•Delivers traceable incentives to attribute sales more accurately

Brands can benefit by reducing costs and time required to field and modify creative. Agencies can shift some of the work of making and modifying banners away from expensive designers and art directors while still offering clients great creative.

Adventive ads are IAB compliant, and hundreds of sites have certified them for use on their pages. The list of certifying sites is growing. Adventive is a SaaS solution, minimizing initial outlays for brands and agencies alike.

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.

Posted on: 04-23-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: New West and the next generation of local media 0

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.

We live in an era where newspapers continue to fall in circ and close. We sorely need a new media model that can fill the void in local and regional news coverage. While on some level we all have access to more news than ever through the Internet, there really isn’t a proven model yet that can perform the vital public service that local media once provided.

There are certainly some being tested. AOL’s Patch, for example, provides local news via a special page each for hundreds of communities – each with a local editor in place in the community it serves.

Another model I’d like to tell you about is that of , a start-up based in Missoula, Montana which has just received its second round from Flywheel Ventures of New Mexico. New West was formed to serve the local and regional needs of the Rockies by combining professional journalists, bloggers, photographers, and community members in a digital offering that serves local news and information needs as well as those of the region at large.

It couldn’t come at a more opportune time. Lots of small local papers in the Rockies have gone under – and with them the important community information and advocacy that newspapers have traditionally provided to the communities they serve.

The editorial remit of New West is to analyze the top news in a six-state region with a focus on stories that affect the region as a whole, and deliver these in a manner that shows a unique regional perspective. Soon, the publication will debut six state-specific pages to cover the issues unique to each of those areas. Finally, the publication is working in partnership with FWIX to deliver localized news feeds for a reader’s location.

Sharing content across media outlets is of course nothing new to the newspaper business. AP and UPI were built on this very concept, and continue to provide an important set of news and information for offline and online media alike.

But New West is vertically integrated, based upon the compelling idea that there are news and issues unique to the Rockies that are best covered by people who are part of the region. Essentially, that there are a Rocky Mountain outlook and lifestyle that are unique, and fundamentally underserved by the national and international news syndicators. That there are critical regional issues of great importance to residents. Issues like:

• Regional politics
• Development
• Tourism and the “snow industry”
• Agriculture
• Water
• Energy

The Rockies are fascinating socioeconomically, and certainly the realities of daily life are rather different from those I experience in urban Oakland. By celebrating and working to protect that daily life, New West hopes to drive greater cohesion in a ruthlessly independent population.

In addition, New West seeks to help advertisers reach and connect with the demographically comfortable, culturally aware, and fundamentally active readership. Further, the audience stats for the site are rather impressive:

• 84% College grad
• 93% vote in local and national elections
• 20% CEO/President/Chair/Owner
• 31% Manager/Director/Supervisor

Stats better than many of the “go-tos” we traditionally choose when we want to reach an elite audience. Indeed, you would probably be shocked at the number of VC leaders that call Montana their second home.

In addition to IAB standards, the site offers interstitials, rich media experiences, sponsored content, and deep brand integrations.

One of the things that is clear based upon their editorial mix is that Westerners are anxious to be a part of this new company and model. The number of authors who post to the site, the number of business leaders who contribute, and the number and depth of community participation in the content are remarkable.

In addition to the website, the company has wisely chosen to develop multiple revenue models, including an events business and a web development shop that helps supplement revenue and incomes as the publication continues its growth trajectory.

The site itself has received a great number of industry accolades, including this from the New York Times.

By just about every measure New West, the online magazine, is a success: It features great writing and reporting, presented via a smart blend of magazine and bloglike articles covering the Rocky Mountain states. Traffic is growing. Critics are raving.

I like their pluck, and their commitment to doing well by doing good – helping community members and advertisers capitalize on the unique attributes of Rocky Mountain life.

Cheers? Jeers? Tweet ‘em to @CatalystaJim.

Posted on: 04-1-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

COD: Walk Light Media is saving rainforests one big square at a time 0

Thanks to the for publishing this first.

Now here’s an interesting concept: a new ad network that is helping companies make a positive environmental contribution through their normal operations. Not “reducing the footprint,’ rolling it back.

makes it clear that their focus is on delivering a highly valuable audience to advertisers — an audience that many companies covet. Specifically, they promise 22MM LOHAS and “green” uniques. Because these audiences tend to be affluent, aspirational, and influential, they represent a strong lure for advertisers anxious to demonstrate their conscientious cred. According to Walk Light, they also over represent in areas like Influencer/Early Adopter behaviors.

The “hook” is that Walk Light Media has a Responsible Media Program (RMP) that protects an area of forest equivalent to the area of the banners run through its platforms. So, for example, an area of equal size to a 300×250 is preserved for every impression you run in that ad size. That means that an acre of ground is preserved for about 400,000 big square impressions.

Now, you can say an acre isn’t very much. But the beauty of this model is that the acre is preserved without your lifting a finger — it happens as a normal part of doing your everyday business. This is a media play to reach a desirable audience, not a CSR-primary thing. The CSR comes as a side benefit of working with them. The passions of their audience run a fairly broad gamut of conscientious interests and lifestyles, including…

In terms of advertising options, they offer IAB standards, Video, interstitials, skins, content creation, deeper promo programs and more. A broad range of targeting solutions is available. They operate in the US and Canada. Not surprisingly, their sites tend toward leaders within the environmental, socially conscious, and LOHAS niches. The name appears to be a play on the myriad of quotes that enjoin conscientious people to “walk lightly” to preserve the earth. Quotes like:

“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.”

It appears that the company is built on the idea that the long road to a better future is made of many small steps.

Posted on: 02-19-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer