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Will The New IAB Ads Really Be Rising Stars?
Karen Macumber
Thursday, May 19, 2011
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| Karen Macumber |
There is a new ad unit in town. In fact, there are several, and they are big, bold, and a brand marketer’s dream. They are the Interactive Advertising Bureau “Rising Stars” - a series of cutting-edge branding ads designed by such leading technology firms as AOL/Pictela, Microsoft and Google/YouTube. The primary goal of these units is to allow the site visitor to engage with the brand without leaving the site (think rich media banners on steroids). The added benefit for publishers, advertisers and readers alike is the elimination of clutter since only one ad appears on a page, generating as much--if not more--revenue and value for all constituencies as the multiple ads they replaced.
At first glance, this makes perfect sense since everyone wins. However, when I put my agency hat on, I can already see some potential roadblocks. Will these units be considered true rising stars by media buyers or will they be perceived as yet another new ad format that requires hours of education/selling in to the client, more complex (time, dollars) production, and a whole new set of performance metrics?
To be clear, I do think savvy media buyers and cutting-edge digital agencies will readily embrace the Rising Stars. They’ve already pushed the limit with rich media and LOVE the idea they don’t have to rely on the client’s site, which they may not have creative control over, to engage a visitor with the brand. In my opinion that is the greatest benefit of these ads for agencies and publishers alike – it eliminates the reliance on the client’s own site, often not optimized for the campaign, to perform as part of the advertising process. And creative directors and account managers will all rejoice at the additional fees billed for designing the units since it can be as complex as a Web site.
However, there are many agencies that increasingly treat online media buying as a volume sport, especially with the rise of demand side platforms. Their staff is up to speed and comfortable with the idea of “bidding for banners.” With buying automated, margins are looking better. And their clients just love the way ROI can be backed into from the initial media buy.
So for those considering the addition of Rising Star ad units to their ad sales portfolio, I offer the following potential barriers that your sales team should be prepared to address when meeting with agency media buyers:
Valuation
Stronger engagement and more exclusivity should demand a higher CPM: Correct? However, put yourself in the shoes of a media buyer. If the same set of targeted eyeballs can be exposed to a brand in a rich media (high engagement) format for a quarter of the price, how do you justify the unit cost? And while we all know how dismal click rates are, the potential to get the consumer to the client’s site still exists at a lower CPM, while the higher cost ad is designed specifically to avoid delivering the consumer to the client’s site. Try explaining that to a client that has been trained to pay the lowest possible price for the eyeballs most likely to visit his or her site.
KPIs
As Steve Smith suggested in his article, the key performance indicators for these ads are much closer to site analytics than standard ad metrics of success. If that is the case (and I completely agree with Steve), then reporting on these units now goes from including relatively simple stats from rich media ad servers into the equivalent of a full Google Analytics report. For the agency – media buyers and account managers alike – that means more time to prepare reports and therefore diminishing margins. Furthermore, how do media supervisors instruct their staff members to optimize when the KPIs for the Rising Star units are so different from those of rich media banners and pre-rolls?
Production
There are two potential issues with production of the Rising Star units. The first is the lead time. Media plans are often done just in time once budgets are approved. A standard ad might require two-to-three weeks of creative/production time. So if a plan is approved, the banners can be in market within a month. I’ll guess the lead time for Rising Star ads will be twice that, at least to start. So, if the client is in a hurry to get online, these ads might not make the consideration list.
The second potential issue is selling in the cost to the client. According to an AOL source, the cost of “production” is included in the CPM. However, the extent of that production and the type of “assets” required from the agency will vary greatly depending on the ad. It is safe to assume it will require more billable time to create a Rising Star ad given the level of complexity. If ads suddenly become as expensive as landing pages and microsites, will clients accept the charge?
In Conclusion
To be clear, I strongly support the Rising Star ad formats and applaud the IAB for its forward thinking, collaborative approach to creating new branding units. I just hope the agency folks out there can think beyond “immediate margins” and look at the long-term value and importance of supporting these units. It is the best shot for all of us to maintain some level of creativity in an increasingly commoditized online advertising marketplace.
Advertising consultant Karen Macumber was most recently SVP, media services at the AMP Agency. She was the first director of marketing at Monster.com and founder of Fulgent Media Group.
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The KPI question is a great one; the iab is tackling creating consistent "engagement" metrics with its Making Measurement Make Sense initiative, now underway in conjunction with the ANA and 4As.
On the production question, the hope is that since an agency can create a Rising Star unit once and have it accepted the same way across a broad swath of the web, it will actually be more efficient than having to create multiple versions for different publishers--even despite the higher initial production cost.