Comments on: Buzzfeed’s Jonah Peretti: Display dollars aren’t coming back

By: brand guy

brand guy — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:54:54 +0000

the next time you need an operation ask your neighbor..he’ll know the answer.the next time you buy a house ask your cousion he’ll have all the answers.the next time you have a sex problem with your wife ask the 20 yr old stud he’ll know the answer. Thats how stupid social is..opinions that are worthless.and thats the revolution?
display ads are dead? what about branded disply ads and corresponding content and domain names? I have stated that for 12 yrs with real estate people and they still buy newspaper ads..thats how stupid they are.

By: Sam Bonfante

Sam Bonfante — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:03:27 +0000

Interesting article indeed, but the concept that human commercial endeavors such as advertising follow the same patters as scientific evolution is far-fetched, especially as related to to the development of the web. Rates of adoption vary, and are dependent upon product development, innovation and economic conditions. However, when you look at digital product and service development over the arc of time you discover that the major disruptor (the web itself) has been followed by a fairly steady stream of incremental product innovations.

I’m not arguing against Peretti’s main premise: display, as a stand-alone pillar of web advertising is dead. But the fact that it was able to hang on for so long is evidence that there was a slow and incremental advertising evolution.

By: Jim Spanfeller

Jim Spanfeller — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:28:58 +0000

Great points Kirill! I could not agree more. Sure online display is broken. Sure it can and will get a lot better and sure “earned” media has some interesting legs to it. But that said, Jonah’s points while interesting (and I love the allusions to social ecosystem theory) are at the very least REALLY self serving and as such should be taken with more then a grain of salt. And most importantly we have literally warehouses full of high quality research that shows that advertising works and specifically online display advertising works. Empirically there really is no discussion to be had here.

Now that all said we have to fix the system which is woefully broken…attribution is wrong, the metrics we track are wrong and the very infrastructure we use to transact is archaic…At some point we will in fact start to focus on the right issues and not get all excited about these side discussions.

By: Databanks

Databanks — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:14:19 +0000

I have to disagree with Peretti’s assertion that display is going the way of the dodo. eMarketer suggests that display will pass search spending by 2015. Who to believe? Why would we think that “social” sharing and what not, which is a digital analog for “word of mouth” marketing, will ever have more share of voice than it did before the Internet? Important, yes. Besides which, the notion that the primary value of display ads is “clicks” has been thoroughly debunked.

By: media_exec

media_exec — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:04:17 +0000

Buzzfeed’s “solution” is branded content, delivered in stream with editorial. The branded content is highly shareable so you get “earned” impressions, sure, but it’s basically just a microsite. http://www.buzzfeed.com/toyota Not exactly cutting edge.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:53:04 +0000

hmmmmm…”it’s all going social”

yet the gabillion $ valuaton for Facebook (see social media) is based on…what? display ads.

* rests case *

By: Kirill Titievsky

Kirill Titievsky — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:51:08 +0000

The social revolution may be real, but it has little to do with “display.” More importantly, the artificial conflict between the two hurts the industry by focusing on the medium not on proper use of creative and context or the unfortunate business models that have emerged around the medium. In fact, the sensational headline here draws attention away from this very point made by Peretti.

Bad display creative execution and media buying is a pervasive problem. But just as pervasive is the opportunity for brands to benefit from display ads properly paired with content — be it classic editorial or the newest iteration on social and local. That is why BuzzFeed and any other clever packaging medium will remain a platform for making better display ads possible, not irrelevant. So long live display and long live great advertising. Now go figure out how to put the right display creative and the right content together.

Kir Titievsky

By: Jeff John Roberts

Jeff John Roberts — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:46:11 +0000

Appreciate your comments.. Greg, I agree there are parallels to the music industry but I’m not sure iTunes is the appropriate analogy for a solution.. (though if we’re using “iTunes” as shorthand for a radical new distribution model, then yes..)
Gregg, agree that surveys or new ad models are infinitely preferable to display and paywalls .. Adweek has been asking readers to answer a poll before reading an article.. The model is quick and seems intuitively fair to the reader and useful to the advertiser.. Onwards..

By: Greg Golebiewski

Greg Golebiewski — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:53:06 +0000

Gregg, the iTunes of publishing is already out there in the form of micro-syndication and on-demand micro-payments. Some of those systems, like our Znak it!, for example (http://www.znakit.com), work well with online advertising the way the NYT’s Ricochet works — the NYT did not invent it — or allow users answer brief market research polls to “pay” for content they want to access. These systems are a lot more effective than traditional display advertizing, and they can generate 8 times more revenue (per UU) than paywalls.

By: bob

bob — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:49:02 +0000

The minute you mention clicks and display media you really don’t get display media.