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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Ad Nets Bite Back at OPAMonday, August 17, 2009 It was only a matter of time. When the Online Publishers Association issued its research on the special effectiveness of ads within branded media environments, the target was clear: ad networks. At the time OPA president Pam Horan said provocatively in a statement accompanying the report that ad network performance was trending downwards. “Brands see a flat line on purchase intent if they do not advertise versus if they advertise on advertising networks,” she added. In two statements late last week, representatives of the ad network world took the bait and bit back. Burst Media CEO Jarvis Coffin argues that the OPA was following a scorched earth policy of attacking the advertising efficacy of all but the 50 or so media brands it represents. According to OPA logic, he chided, “there are 10 billion web sites on the Internet and only 50 on which you can advertise your brand successfully. They must be reeeally goood. Unfortunately, this is a problem for anyone rooting for the Internet to get to $50 billion.” Coffin argues that by focusing narrowly on the immediate interests of a select few, the OPA misses its opportunity to lead. “The OPA should be the representative for all quality content online including content touched by ad networks and rep firms.” He says on the Burst Media blog. “It needs to get over the ‘branded’ content thing and identify with millions of consumers online that have abiding relationships (some might call these brand relationships) with plenty of sites the OPA has never heard of.” In a guest editorial on AdAge, Rajeev Goel, CEO of ad optimization firm PubMatic argued that the OPA study depicted brand marketer goals too simply. In reality, marketers have blended objectives, branding and performance, which requires more nuanced planning that involves both premium and network ad buys. And in truth, few if any premium publishers actually fill the entire inventory they represent. Goel suggests the OPA study may have misrepresented the goals of the ad network buys. The OPA report purported to show that brand ads on premium sites produced better brand recognition and purchase intent metrics than the same ads running in ad networks on non-premium content. Goel says, “The campaigns the OPA refers to in its report are branding campaigns sold from the first channel, with guaranteed delivery around premium content. The ads that performed poorly were not in the same environment and may not have been purchased for the purpose of providing brand lift. If direct-response ROI metrics had been part of the study, the results likely would have been better for ad networks.” Most premium content sites should be relying on ad networks not just to sell excess or remnant inventory but to satisfy their clients’ multiple goals,” says Goel. Whether and how major media sites manage their ad inventory has become a hot topic of internal and public debate this year. A publisher’s own ad sales force generally can sell their premium placements at much higher CPM rates than ad networks repping that inventory. And yet, as Goel points out, few sites even come close to selling through their entire inventory. While sites can realize incremental revenue by letting networks sell these remnants, the practice allows media buyers to purchase ads on premium site at a much lower cost that can also drive down CPMs for in-house sales. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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