Archive for March, 2009
Content Wars
Looks like the tide is turning in the content wars. Even the talking heads, or in this case, the talking marketers are saying premium or professionally produced content is on the rise. Take a gander at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006935.
We’ve always maintained that if there is enough of the good stuff, or at the very least, recognisable or vaguely recognisable stuff, advertisers would prefer that. And the market is responding, at least according to eMarketer.
- Jayant Kadambi
More on Next Generation Ad Networks
So, this business about click through has me thinking. Why are most clients interested in click through? And why do ad agencies harp on click through? I’m beginning to think it’s because we in the ad network business push CTRs due to the fact it’s a metric we have access to easily and don’t want to do the extra work required to understand what the proper metrics are for the campaign. This may seem like a harsh statement, but it makes sense. If you’re only tool in the tool box is a hammer, you’ll use it as pliers, a hammer, and a myriad of other tools rather than using the proper tool for the job at hand. In the industry’s defense, based on the search world, CTRs became well known and a highly profitable metric and it carried over to banner and now over to video.
We in the video world, or at least at YuMe, have access to a real toolbox with dozens of tools, so the trick is just figuring out which tool to use for which job and then reporting on that. Not hard, me thinks.
- Jayant Kadambi
Wither the Ad Network
I’ve decided I like wither. I actually use the transitive verb more in my language, as in withering contempt. Yes, you were unsuspectingly reading a blog and you ran into an unneeded etymology lesson.
Businessweek, that publication that sorta sits between The Economist and Time (IMHO) wrote recently that Ad Networks are Transforming (with a capital T) the online landscape. It’s sorta a can’t live with them, can’t live without them story.
As far as I can tell, I have always had two choices to go buy that Ferragamo shoe. I can go to the Ferragamo store directly or I can go to a retail outfit such as Macy’s to buy it. Ferragamo have chosen to distribute their shoe in multiple locations for a whole host of reasons, which mainly include reach, but also include competitive reasons (I’m sure Macy’s also sells other shoes in the same class). They, (Ferragamo) have figured out how to avoid wholesale competition with Macy’s and they run a thriving private retail business themselves.
I’m not sure what all the angst is about from online publishers about ad networks. If you can sell it better yourself, please do. Everyone tries, and due to inefficiencies in the market, in the ad operational systems, and in whole supply chain, there is left-over inventory. Also, publisher reach at any given time may not be what is necessary for all advertisers, and ad networks can provide that. It’s not a question of devaluing the inventory, and most of what ad networks do (at least the one I can speak for) is net accretive to the existing business. Anything we do is.
To remind everyone, we sell publisher inventory on a non-guaranteed basis across vertical, targeted channels, much like the channels you see on TV. We list our publishers content and promise the customer that their ads will run on the relevant content in that channel and nowhere else. It’s transparent, not sleazy, and we don’t run any tricks. If the customer wants 4M impressions of a particular partner publisher of ours, we send them directly to the publisher. If the customer wants a 100M impressions and wants to target a range of content across many publishers, syndication points and formats, and wants real-time optimisation, we’re a good choice. It just like the Macy’s, Ferragamo argument above. There are reasons to shop at both.
Jayant Kadambi
Unavoidable Discussion of Politics
OK, other than the off-handed witticism, I’ve avoided politics on this trusty YuMe blog. But I figured the world could use another pundit. And given British movies about India and Bollywood dancing-as-a-form-of-exercise are all the rage, I might as well put in my two paisa. And I have been talking a lot recently about the recession, depression, or whatever this is we find ourselves in the middle of at the moment.
So, here we go. Mr. Friedman wrote in an op-ed piece in the NY Times a weekend or two ago that the Obama stimulus package should allocate more money to the venture community because the venture community is better at fostering innovation than GM or Ford. Now, I must say, stating that venture money will foster innovation better than GM is not saying a whole heck of a lot. In fact, I’m not sure that’s a compliment.
Also, I’ll take a bit of an exception to the statement in general. Stimulus to me has a sense of urgency. Spend the money, spend it now, and quickly so that the economy recovers. Giving money to VCs and having them fund innovation is one thing, but adding the caveat that an entrepreneur that receives the money needs to make more money on a 3-12 month timeline so the economy rebounds (and President Obama gets re-elected) is a tiny bit more than most entrepreneur’s probably want on our plate at the moment.
Jayant Kadambi
Marketing Accountability
As I’ve stated before, when times get a bit tougher, not only do the Las Vegas team-building boondoggles suffer, but real corporate spending is also scrutinised. (Yes, I showed my hand. I don’t believe in team-building boondoggles to Las Vegas). And usually, one of the first things to get questioned is marketing spending. I can just hear the comments, …. , “So, how many leads did that booth in Vegas get us, … , no I mean qualified leads that turned into a sale, not just booth inquiries!” I’m regularly worried about a system that only asks that after times get tough.
But back to the question at hand, which is accountability in marketing. Century 21 has been quite vocal in announcing the cessation of advertising and marketing offline and moving their whole budget online. eMarketer’s article “Shifting Media Dollars from TV to Digital” actually provides snippets of an interview with their SVP or Marketing, Beverly Thorne.
She basically states that their measure of success for marketing is the number of qualified leads generated, and further, the cost per qualified lead. And by that metric, based on the experiments and tools and data collection, online wins. Good for us, I guess.
What would be interesting to find out is why her leads online were doing better, is it because they are more measurable, is it because the publishers or agencies who helped her with the online campaigns target better than TV, is it because the online audience is more receptive to a real-estate broker than the offline audience, or is it something else. We in the online industry shouldn’t kick a gift-horse in the mouth, (it’s rude, or so I’m told) but it is something to think about, since her comments seem to be echoed by many, many people.
Jayant Kadambi
Beet.TV Roundtable: The State of Online Video
YuMe CEO, Michael Mathieu, is participating on a roundtable discussion titled “The State of Online Video” hosted by Beet.TV at Adobe’s office in San Francisco tomorrow. The event will be streamed live on uStream on Tuesday, March 3rd from 9:00 a.m. to noon Pacific. The event opens with a keynote from Jim Guerard, VP & GM of Adobe’s Dynamic Media Organization, followed by Tim Napoleon, Akamai Chief Strategist for Digital Media and Charles Tillinghast, President and Publisher of msnbc.com. The roundtable will be moderated by Liz Gannes, Co-Editor of NewTeeVee and Andy Plesser, Executive Producer of Beet.TV.
Check it out!
Molly Glover Gallatin
