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Mediasmith Anvil |
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Volume 8, Issue 4
August 19, 2009 |
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Brand
Safety Remains Top Concern With Ad Exchanges |
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AdExchange.com's John Ebbert interviews David L. Smith Editor’s Note: This
interview originally appeared on AdExchanger.com. View the original interview
here. AdExchanger.com: What trends can
you share with us regarding the media buying you're doing on behalf of
clients today? DLS: There is a lot of change
happening in the area of digital media strategy, planning, and message
distribution. Please notice that we've walked away from the term buying as we
are increasingly in the message distribution business. That includes media
buys, but also "owned media", a client's own assets, including
their web sites, blogs, newsletters, etc., and “earned media,” what
used to be PR but is increasingly in the hands of media as it is digital and
measureable. The incursion of social media
into the messaging that goes on to consumers, among consumers, and is also
driven by consumers back to the companies they do business with, represents a
whole different world than the world of push media. See my Fastcompany.com blog Media Tech for a look at this visually. Social messaging is rapidly
becoming the majority of impressions that consumers take in. So we must not
only be involved in using social media for paid messaging, we must figure out
how to become part of the conversation with the customers of our clients, as
well as monitor the discussion in the blogosphere, Twitter, social sites,
etc. There are a number of new tools that are being used to do everything
from deploy media (third party content servers) to measure media deployed and
also to measure the consumer conversation. As such, the world of metrics is
getting much more complex. Are ad exchanges changing the
digital media plan? Does brand safety remain a concern? Brand safety is absolutely a top
concern relative to ad exchanges. So is content relevancy and the reverse:
adjacency to content that is considered detrimental to the client message.
Overall, transparency remains an issue. Exchanges need to implement
technology solutions that block malware, negative content, and provide
greater transparency. Most of them claim they do this but the effect of their
efforts is poor at best according to some monitoring reports I have seen. For
the efficiency and performance parts of our plans, we feel more comfortable
with marketplaces (defined site lists) and transparent networks with proven
track records. |
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Mediasmith Morsel Paid Search Ads Bringing in
Buyers A
recent study found that those who entered retailers' websites from paid
search ads were 50% more likely to purchase than those coming from natural
search links. Source:
Internet
Retailer, “Paid Search is More Likely Than Organic to Bring in
Buyers” |
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Do you see the potential for ad
networks to disintermediate agencies? Not really. They cannot provide
the cross media strategic planning capability, account management (so much of
dealing with clients is not the annual plan or buy) or other service issues
required by a client as they generally represent only a small part of the
solution. They can be important depending on the strategy, but content
remains the gold standard in targeting against which you layer other services
and targeting methodologies. Lastly, the networks are not equipped to do the
kind of cross media or cross vehicle tracking, optimization and reporting
required by clients. Are you focused on media trading
yet? And your clients—do they "get" media trading or
do they just need to know that ROI goals are being achieved? ROI cannot be achieved in a vacuum. If content did not matter, we could run ads on porn sites which are very cheap and can be very effective. Media trading needs to be improved and made more transparent before it becomes mainstream for the advertiser concerned with their brand image. Do your clients accept view-through conversions as a metric? It really depends on the
sophistication of the client. If the client is a marketer, the odds are
better. But if they are a web group driven by Omniture or Webtrends, which do not do well relative
to advertising evaluation (view through, clickthrough and engagement), they
are sometimes against it. It is growing in acceptance, though. |
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Mediasmith Morsel Boomers Turning Off the TV,
Turning Online Not
only are boomers watching less traditional TV than they did a year ago, but
they’re now spending more non-business hours online per week than with
their TV. |
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Are you satisfied with
attribution models currently available? See any potential solutions out
there? Not satisfied at all with the
attribution models. They seem to have given us ten times as much data with
little to recommend in the way of proven algorithms by which to evaluate and
tweak the data. If someone has a methodology, we are all ears. Once that gets
solved between web and search, we'll need to rope in everything from
newsletters to mobile and digital TV. So there is a long, long way to go. Has your company been using data
exchanges? If so, have you been happy with their performance? Any insight you
can provide on the complexity of implementing a "data-infused"
campaign? We certainly use data relative
to our campaigns. In reality the most effective "data infused"
campaign is retargeting using our own cookie pool. This is an efficient way
to get that additional frequency needed against someone who has interacted
with our campaign in a contextually appropriate environment. That said, we
are about to begin testing Quantcast
for this purpose as well as some social targeting data options. For the right
client, there is also the capability to target current customers with upgrade
and additional item offerings. |
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Mediasmith
Morsel Mediasmith on the
Web Having fun reading our Anvils each month? Stay tuned with
Mediasmith updates by becoming a fan on Facebook
and follow us on Twitter at @MediasmithInc
for daily news about our agency and other industry news. |
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Do monopolies concern you as it
relates to online advertising? For example, there are primarily two major ad
serving companies - DART and Atlas. Do their "parents" pose a risk
to the agency? Or has it been blown out of proportion? Actually, we look forward to the
infusion of capital, innovation and technology updates that Google and
Microsoft can provide DoubleClick
and Atlas. Both platforms were
in need of serious makeover, in addition to integrating web serving
capability with that of other media, marketplace and exchange backbones, RFP
and housekeeping systems, dashboard for all media, etc. The stand-alone
companies simply did not have the capital to make the necessary improvements
in the category. And there are always a lot of other options out there,
including smaller agency/advertiser oriented ad servers, a new generation of
ad tagging (4G) that could eliminate the need to have third parties serve the
ads and more technologies that could leapfrog both services as they are
today. Out of proportion, definitely. BTW-prices are lower than ever. How can digital media planners
and buyers position themselves today for a successful digital media buying
career? Don't let them put you in a
silo. Learn how to be strategic and plan. Question everything, but back it up
with numbers. For example, for more than half of the clients that come into Mediasmith, we provide evidence for
them to refine or even change their target audience. This adds value to your
clients and ensures long term employment. This interview
originally appeared on AdExchanger.com on June 16, 2009. David
L. Smith is CEO and Founder of Mediasmith,
Inc. -- Mediasmith is an independent,
award-winning digital media agency, with expertise in media strategy,
planning, execution and metrics. With web expertise dating back to 1995 and
with the recent introduction of the M3 service suite encompassing
emerging technologies, social media and search, Mediasmith continues to be at
the forefront of the evolving media landscape. |
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