Tag Archives: advertising

May 23, 2013 · 9:35 am

Off The Social Rails

One of the things I made a note to rant about was some data that came out of the 2013 Doremus Decision Dynamics study.  This is an annual survey of senior marketing executives and one of the things it found is that these folks aren’t that enthusiastic about social media marketing.  In fact, 51% of respondents feel that advertising in social media is more intrusive than advertising in a magazine or newspaper, while only one-third believe that a social media presence enhances a company’s reputation.  I find  a certain amount of irony in those results since the respondents are, in most cases, the people responsible for their company’s efforts in social.  If those efforts are lacking, maybe we ought to think about it for a second before we shoot the messenger?

My thinking is that marketers don’t like any medium they can’t really control.  Social media is a mirror and I suspect that a certain portion of the negativity about social is the result of some poor effort on the brand‘s part which is just being reflected.  As we used to say in TV, “due to circumstances beyond our control” Facebook pages get hijacked, Twitter feeds get overwhelmed, and other channels are filled with comments from consumers that may not be on brand message (to say the least).  Yes, ads in social are more intrusive but unlike those other media they’re not viewed as welcome because they’re not easily avoidable.  Which is entirely the point.

Social media evolved as ways for people to connect with one another.  Smart brands spotted that and began to use the various social channels to interact.   They listened and replied when appropriate with useful  helpful information.  In other words, brands became humanized and engaged in conversation.  At some point, it went off the rails and social became just another place to fire up the ad megaphone.  This is the equivalent of using a shoe to drive a nail.  It might work but it’s clearly not as effective as using the right tool in the right way.

I’m not surprised most marketers don’t think social is helpful.  It’s resource intensive, it’s out of their control to a large extent, and most are using it badly.  Would you agree?

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March 4, 2013 · 11:22 am

The Natives Are Restless

Today we hit once again on the “everything old is new again” theme that we touch upon from time to time. One of the best media analysts in the business is my friend Dan Salmon at BMO Capital Markets. He released a report on a “Native Advertising Summit” he attended. It made me smile and I’d like to share why that was.

First, what the heck is native advertising?  Way back in the olden days of the web, we used things such as  banners, boxes, buttons.  This ad units sat on the web page hoping a user would notice them.  Others, such as pop-ups, interrupted users’ content experiences.  These units are still the purview of all of the programmatic buying found via ad networks and other RTB platforms.

So-called native advertising is way more integrated.  Sponsored Stories, promoted Tweets,  and sponsored videos are just a few of the  formats sprouting up across the web, giving brands a channel to connect directly with consumers through content and publishers a new opportunity for revenue.  As Dan wrote in his report:

It is increasingly clear that the native trend is becoming a pressure point for publishers pushing back on recent digital ad innovation that has mostly centered on real-time bidding, programmatic ad buying, and improved yield for buyers much more than sellers. At the same time, these publishers are finding a willing and hugely important constituency on the buy side, but one that is traditionally under-represented in digital marketing: branding-oriented advertising budgets.

In other words, publishers are sick of the dive to the bottom CPM‘s are taking and so we’re going to use something very old:  sponsor integration into content.  It’s Your Lucky Strike Theater all over again!  I’m sure there will be all sorts of technologies sprouting up to make this happen in a more efficient way, but the activity is the same.  Sponsors are trying to gain both visibility as well as shared brand equity with the content they’re sponsoring.  You see this in sports all the time (and it dates back to The Gillette Cavalcade Of Sports in the late 1940’s).

To touch on my favorite theme – the tools change but the basic business doesn’t.  We can call it native advertising or we can call it sponsorship   I call it smart, even if it isn’t really new.  How about you?

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January 23, 2013 · 10:10 am

RTB Means Really Tough Business

The always reliable Digiday did a piece yesterday on Real Time Bidding (some folks say Buying) and the effect it’s having on web publishers. Entitled “Publishers Face RTB Pressures,” it’s an excellent though depressing overview of what’s happening in the digital publishing business due to the steady growth of programmatic ad buying. I can’t sum it up any better than this:

The drive for more efficient buys in RTB is putting pricing pressure on the entire display ad market. According to Magna Global, display advertising globally rose just 1.5 percent in 2013. That’s not very good in a market that expanded 14.4 percent overall for the year. In fact, the reason Magna identified: price drops.

That’s the situation today, when 17 percent of buying is through exchanges. In five years, Magna director of global forecasting Vincent Letang expects 43 percent of display advertising to be bought and sold via exchanges.

In other words, there’s too much inventory and these formulae don’t give the quality of your content enough consideration.  Heaven forbid that humans actually enter the equation!  Before all of my friends who sell non-digital media get too smug, one can rest assured that when the efficiencies of this buying protocol become evident that someone will push it on TV and print just as sure as the sun shines.  So is this a bad thing?

If you’re buying audiences for your marketing messages, no, it’s not.  It is, however, if you’re a content creator who tries to make money off your content by selling the audiences it attracts.  I suppose that means that if I were in the content business I’d get the hell out by selling off my audience monetization to someone else – a publisher or distributor.  I’d give up some of the upside in return for protecting the downside push to the bottom RTB is forcing.  As the article says “Efficiency is a great thing unless what you do is what is being made more efficient.”  It’s not going to be long (and it may be here already) before the quality of the content is impacted as the resources to produce consistently great stuff just aren’t there.

If I were back being a publisher, I’d be spending a lot of time having someone think about our syndication strategy and fast.  Let  someone else ride the ad wave down to the bottom.  My content – and yours – is worth more than that.

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