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

Tags: Ad Networks

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.