The Machines Keep Getting Online Advertising Wrong

By Marta Wohrle

Thursday, July 2, 2009 The other day, I was at the paidContent EconAffinity conference fighting the urge to fiddle with my BlackBerry when an entertaining spat broke out among the panelists. The session was called “Online Advertising: Is Turning to Behavioral Targeting and Bigger Ads the Answer?” and was ably moderated by the exuberant Wenda Harris Millard. She was, like the rest of us, rather enjoying the ruckus, which was sparked when Mike Keriakos of Waterfront Media told Andy Monfried of Lotame where he could stick his ads, and Andy addressed the audience with a dramatic (although not terribly original) soliloquy about buggy whips. Things then got a little heated.

Underlying all of this was a number of serious points about the past, present and future of advertising online. Partly to avoid putting the wrong words in either Andy or Mike’s mouths, I’ll proceed with my take on the issue.
When I think about old media, it strikes me that it has been very good at relationships with advertisers and rather poor at cultivating relationships with its consumers. The thing about digital media is that it has gone way too far the other way. Audiences are center and front of successful Web sites and, of course, the whole kit and caboodle when it comes to social media. Advertising, on the other hand, has been commoditized.

We are now in a situation where ad networks have aggregated so many undifferentiated eyeballs that they have become almost valueless. Web site publishers wait for RFPs to come in—that’s hardly cultivating advertiser relationships. The only truly successful online advertising business model right now is search. Mike was saying that it’s enough already and he’d rather forego all the remnant revenue in the world in favor of building strategic relationships with marketers.

I think he’s right. Relationships are irreplaceable. They are a competitive advantage. Technology, even smart technology, is not. The machines needed for behaviorally targeted ads are very clever, but they are still selling a commodity. Google is a very, very clever machine, but it still gets things wrong and creates a lousy user experience.

For example, I have a Web site called Truth In Aging, which reviews beauty products. Mostly, I am very happy with Google—it gives me a high effective CPM because my audience is in-market and I am usually impressed with the accurate targeting of advertising to content. I frequently sigh happily while entertaining the thought that this is what the Web should be good at: serving discrete ads at specific audiences in a way that is affordable. When Google gets it wrong, though, everyone loses. Like when an article on a sunscreen product called Solar RX attracted advertising from a solar panel maker. Or when we wrote about facial masks, the kind that women smear on for that at-home spa-like experience, not—as Google thought—Halloween masks.

Advertising online needs a big rethink. The Online Publishers Association (OPA) has an initiative to try out a new ad size that could sell for a premium. It’s a start. We need less advertising, not more, in the hope that scarcity will bring some value back. Oh, and perhaps some creativity. Let’s face it, as Noah Brier said in Ad Age, online advertising sucks. There are some ads running on my site right now that make Oprah’s beloved Dr. Oz look like a snake oil salesman.

What is going on? Why are so many Web sites assaulting their customers with home pages that look like the Las Vegas Strip? This is beyond clutter. What is especially scary is that while the industry has made online display an unprofitable mess, it has barely even begun to think about how marketing needs to evolve to leverage social networking, video, Digg or new platforms such as Twitter.

I am heartened, nonetheless, by a few isolated examples of advertisers attempting to have a dialogue rather than a monologue with their customers. Nestle’s Juicy Juice is a case in point. An ad unit currently running on mom-oriented Web sites allows users to post tweets within it that can appear anywhere on the Web. Paid media generating organic media! Now there’s a glimpse of the future.

Minsider Marta Wohrle is president of Accord Media.

Take min's fun quiz and find out how magazine-savvy you are!

And raise your digital IQ at the annual Min Digital Summit.

A day specially designed to help you master the changing world of digital media. June 5, 2012 at the Marriott Marquis, NY. Please join us at min's Digital Media Summit June 5, 2012.

This all day event is specially designed to help you master the changing world of digital media.
Read more.

COMMENTS

Post a Comment

Name:

Email:

Comments:

Please enter the letters or numbers you see in the image.