$250B Lost? Brands Are Still Getting Online Ads Wrong
In the 1990s tech bubble, one entrepreneur was famous for making incredible statements such as, “literally, people will die this year because they didn’t buy my software.” His name was Michael Saylor and he was CEO of MicroStrategy, a company that sold – let’s be honest – boring enterprise software.
I always thought that was a nutty thing to say, but recently in an animated discussion with some colleagues about the sorry state of online advertising, I found myself arguing that if half of the annual $500 billion in advertising spend is wasted, then something is massively wrong. Then I heard myself say “literally, people have died because of bad advertising.”
Why is online advertising failing to live up to its potential in the hands of brands and their agencies? Because they have not kept pace with the evolution of technology and consumer behavior. Here are three things main problems holding back the online advertising industry:
Online ad spend lags consumer behavior by five years.
You can’t swing a stick at an ad:tech conference without hitting someone familiar with the Mary Meeker chart showing that online ad spending is way below where it should be given the time people spend online. Considering people are shifting their entire lives online, advertisers are overspending on TV and print, and drastically underspending on Internet ads. Brands need to up their spend on online now, but do so with measureable metrics in mind. (In other words, just throwing more money at badly targeted and underperforming online ads won’t fix the problem.)
Read More: Forbes
Jumptap Delivers a Mobile First, Deploying Off-line Data at Scale to Create Audience Insights and Targeting for Mobile Advertisers
Partnerships with Acxiom, Datalogix, Polk, and TARGUSinfo’s AdAdvisor Deliver Improved Campaign Results for Advertisers
CAMBRIDGE, MA. August 17, 2011 – Jumptap, the leader in targeted mobile advertising, today announced partnerships with four leading providers of primary off-line data, helping mobile advertisers deliver highly-targeted and effective campaigns. These partnerships are the first in the industry to combine off-line audience insights and true network scale.
Jumptap’s advertisers have already seen great results from this deeper level of data. Jumptap recently helped a major auto advertiser target ads to ZIP codes including customers that show a high inclination toward its brand. Ads targeted to these ZIP codes showed lift over broadly targeted ads in virtually every campaign. One campaign showed an 85 percent lift over the control campaigns not using data targeting. For more information on this campaign and other data, download Jumptap’s June 2011 MobileSTAT report.
As part of these strategic partnerships, Acxiom, a leader in marketing services and technology that provides consumer segmentation and targeted direct mail solutions, supplies Jumptap with anonymous information to assist advertisers in reaching audiences in a specific demographic or life stage.
Datalogix, the leader at integrating database marketing and digital media, provides Jumptap with the ability to use anonymous purchase-based data in key verticals such as retail, consumer packaged goods, loyalty and more. Past purchases are the strongest predictor of future purchase behavior and the Datalogix database includes almost every U.S. household and contains over $1 trillion in consumer purchase behavior.
Read More: Jumptap
Media Contacts Partners with AudienceScience® to Enhance its Audience Buying Strategy
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM–(Marketwire – Aug. 16, 2011) – AudienceScience®, a global online advertising technology company, today announced that, Media Contacts, the digital communications arm of Havas, has selected the AudienceScience Gateway data management platform (DMP) to further enhance its audience buying strategy.
Following a comprehensive review of DMPs available, Media Contacts has selected the AudienceScience Gateway to help build more precise audience segments and add to the agency’s audience buying capabilities.
The AudienceScience Gateway will be used to identify and create specific audience segments relevant to the online advertising objectives of Media Contacts’ clients. It will also be integrated into Havas’ existing solutions, including Artemis™, its proprietary, cross-channel data reporting and analytics tool, and Adnetik, the leading data-driven Audience Investment Management (AIM™) company.
This move is part of Media Contacts’ continual investment in the area of data which it sees as fundamental to the future of media. This has seen Media Contacts establish a dedicated data and analytics team headed by Ciaran McGonaghy from Microsoft and Rogan Gilhespie who recently joined from data & digital specialist agency TMW.
Read More: Marketwire
The Next Network
It’s time for the ad network to move up the value chain.
The exchange-driven marketplace makes “inventory procurement”—the traditional role of ad nets—a thin value proposition. Ad networks need to bring technology and media services together to create higher-value connections with the people who matter most to an advertiser.
To do this, networks must do three things:
1) Invest in technology that creates tangible value, such as data-harvesting and ad-targeting engines.
2) Get in the mix with publishers to bring innovative, custom advertising solutions at scale to market.
3) Provide quality assurance in the niche, or long-tail of the web, sites that attract a disproportionate number of people with money and influence.
Why do I say this? Despite buy-side advances in targeting and efficiency, advertisers still aren’t meaningfully accessing some of the most interesting, powerful websites. What’s more, the financial equation is upside down. CPMs and ad-responsiveness are stagnant at best, and advertiser spend still severely lags behind time-spent with the medium.
Advertisers have built the engines to analyze campaigns and develop best practices for who, what, where and when. Now they need publishers to respond with what I call “smart” impressions. That’s shorthand for site-specific intelligence combined with custom content and creative capabilities. That combination is the key to advertiser satisfaction and higher CPMs.
Read More: MediaBizBloggers
Announcing Rocket Fuel’s Real-Time Brand Safety Shield
Brand Safety is a top priority for our brand advertisers and their agencies, and at Rocket Fuel we treat it as a matter of the utmost importance. So we’re proud to announce the details on how our Real-Time Brand Safety Shield provides the highest levels of brand assurance to our clients.
At Rocket Fuel we take a proactive approach, with three layers of defense that block bad sites and pages before we ever serve a single ad on them. By building additional levels of safety and security right into our platform and processes, we ensure our technology delivers both ROI and peace of mind for brands. We’ll have even more news in the coming weeks about the upcoming ad verification guidelines that we are helping to drive as part of a working group established to create brand safety verification guidelines. The working group is a joint effort between the IAB and the MRC (Media Rating Council).
Read More: Rocket Fuel
Casale Media Offers Advertisers Real-Time Bidding on Premium Online Media Inventory
casaleX Offers Premium Exchange for Publishers to Control and Choose Ad Campaigns; Grants Select DSPs and Agency Trading Desks Exclusive Access to Brand-Safe Inventory
NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – Aug 10, 2011) – Casale Media Inc., a leading premium online media company, today announced casaleX, an offering that gives select demand side platforms (DSPs) and agency trading desks exclusive access to premium inventory from leading online publishers. casaleX, the industry’s first true premium exchange with real-time bidding (RTB), expands quality advertiser demand available to its publisher partners by integrating real-time bids from select agency trading desks and demand side platforms (DSPs) while still leaving its publishers with maximum control over ad campaigns.
Casale Media is the first premium online media technology company to transform the ad exchange model into a high quality, brand-safe media marketplace. Demand partners are carefully vetted and hand-selected before integration with casaleX to ensure advertisers most appropriate for its publishers. In turn, marketers access the highest quality above-the-fold inventory from Casale Media’s premium publisher roster. Casale Media’s publishing customers utilize RTB for a head-to-head comparison between agency trading desks, DSPs and Casale Media-sourced advertisers to see who can best monetize inventory. Publishers have unprecedented control of campaigns, choosing which advertisers and campaigns can bid for inventory.
Read More: marketwire
