Click Fix: How Digital Advertising Can Get Its Game Back
Jim Spanfeller is the outgoing president and CEO of Forbes.com. He is also treasurer of the Online Publishers Association and chairman emeritus of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Get clicks or build brand?
That question, long a hot topic within the online-media community, has taken on new urgency recently with the rise of horizontal ad networks. Most of the current online campaigns are completely focused on direct-response metrics with little to no chance of actually boosting the brand. In fact, recent research actually suggests that the current favored planning methodology for online campaigns might actually decrease a brand
This is the best statement of where the internet is in its development as an advertising medium that I have read. He has put into words what we have all known/understood for quite awhile. Finally, someone who knows the subject and can illuminate it in an evenhanded, informative piece that is not a polemic. Thanks, Jim.
its time to evolve away from the click-through model. actually, its been time for years now. we need to think more along the lines of highway billboards and print ads as far as engagement goes. no one clicks.
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No one clicks? That's like saying no one reads the obituaries. No one does read the Obits. Organic and PPC , PPL and CPA Search Traffic clicks, calls, populates leads and converts. See Google stock last 10 days.
This article is a sales pitch for engagement metrics. Destination traffic does not click. Destination does nothing. Long Tail Organic search traffic clicks and converts like nobodies business.
Brands are being marginalized. Pay for "whatever" is what advertisers are gobbling up. Of course when one has no "whatever", then this becomes the pitch. Buy online display and print.
Vertical ad networks are in their infancy, plenty of head room for all comers. Of course anyone who manages campaigns knows you can control your message with any number of filters. Its a red herring to scare advertisers that Pepperidge Farms will show up in a spam campaign or on socially fringe sites. One click eliminates those concerns.
We run content networks, we generate 8 million uniques from organic search each month. Our Ad Network CTR is over 5%, Adsense is 3.25, eCPM's are rich.
I have a view that differs from the author. Jim was all about getting Google to give him premier placement a few months ago. Now his new company will pitch Engagement metrics and Brand Building. He's inside baseball kinda guy so Paid Content gave him another trial ballon. His Salesmen will have his pitch nailed down and he'll sell some naive brand builders on engagement metrics. To the top of that mountain they will go, and then clear over to the valley.
Mike D.
Appreciate the counter concept no matter how ill informed or lacking in real data it is. The very idea that we generate debate here is good. Demand Creation vs. Demand Fulfillment is a core debate for the web at this time. As I said in my post, neither objective is wrong…my core point is that leaning too far in one direction (at the moment that is demand fulfillment) is bad.
So despite the fact that you missed the core precept here, I applaud your willingness to weigh in on the side of the mathamaticians. In this light, my guess is that, it will be an unpopular side of the discussion. But that side, given the weight of spending around it, it is an important side nonetheless.
Thanks for your courage Mike…
Jim
Jim, my writing style, and frequently my in-person style is abrupt and abrasive. It's something I strive to work around so that I can be more effective.
I admire your work at Forbes and the IAB, you were a pioneer. I do differ with your assesement of where the digital advertisement industry is. But I regret my tone.
Have a nice day, and good fortune with your new endeavors.
If the pop-over ads on the Forbes.com website are the future let's hope the future never arrives! They represent everything that is bad about advertising – over-bearing, intrusive and poorly targeted.
I'm tired of assessments that pit all of the parties of online against one another: publishers vs portals vs networks. Forbes runs a network, so does Martha Stewart, Time Inc. Google, Yahoo and AOL. It's the dog chasing its tail within the industry.
I also take issue at the notion that "every new medium gets it start in direct response." Television started with an integrated sponsorship model. Newspapers started with classified ads and developed display for the retail industry starting in the 19th century. Radio started with regular old ads. Cable was supposed to be a pay model — but we know how that ended up. Interesting thing is that chunks of TV inventory are now bought on a DR model and for smaller cable nets, the DR inventory can generate more revenue than CPM inventory. It's all how you manage it.
The real challenge in online for publishers is inventory control and management. They can take back power from networks by creating their own networks and/or participating in exchanges.
There's no going back from media as a commodity that is increasingly altered by how technology enables blocks of inventory to move. What we can do is focus on the creative that builds consumer relationships over time. Dynamic Logic issued a really good paper yesterday that showed creative best practices on a category by category basis. Let's hope the agencies use it.
I think balance is the key word here . . . we seek it in work/life and why not in our marketing and media plans? I agree with Jim in that we shouldn't let brand mktg on the web go down the tubes. We have been living in a dual-objective (DR vs brand) world since internet advertising began. The branding impact of internet advertising is well documented and while I support online branding as a media mix strategy, online publishers need to hit the web with some refreshing creative approaches and standards. Next there's a need to factor in the branding impact of direct response advertising and network buys as well. While ad network volume is way up in recent years I believe that some kind of placement transparency will be necessary to provide advertisers (the ones who pay the bills) with what impact measures beyond DR metrics. Finally, message management is a key theme for optimizing the mix between DR and branding creative. If behavioral targeting can be scaled way up we would be able to better parse out consumers who should get brand messages (demand state) vs those that get the DR pitch (activation state). At any given point in time there are far more consumers that are out of market vs in-market for products and services.
GB
Jim,
Good column, I think I would agree with you more if you changed the word "or" in your very first sentence to "and". Last I looked, actions (whether clicks, sales, whatever) actually were a part of improving an advertiser's brand. In fact, "the experiential aspect of brand consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is known as the brand experience". This is where online has changed the game versus traditional, because offline brand campaigns actually thrived because no one knew how much or how little advertising added to the brand. I have to say that the more people keep trying to separate DR with brand, it sounds a little like Madison Avenue sour grapes. I understand this upsets an entire industry, but the game is just plain different online. I work with tons of brand advertisers who actually like some metrics sprinkled into their brand campaigns. It helps them make decisions on a more effective brand spend the next time around. If you and others keep trying to make a distinction between the two disciplines, you'll be left in the dust because in actuality that's not what is happening anymore in practice.