If you haven’t seen the article from last week titled “Forbes Expands Ad Guarantee Program“  it got me thinking and writing. So here’s my post.

Forbes is “guaranteeing reach and frequency” for its ad buys. But only if you are part of an elite group who spend a serious amount of money on Forbes per year. Hmm, so Forbes doesn’t guarantee reach for the proletariat? If we don’t deliver the reach we promised (as per the IO), we either continue the campaign until it delivers or refund the money. I’m not sure what it means to guarantee it. Guaranteeing frequency? Well, we do that (as I’m sure others do). We’ll frequency cap the ads so the user doesn’t tire from seeing the same ad, if that’s what the advertiser wants. Basically, I’m confused about the point of the article or what Forbes was trying to say.  
 
The article goes on to state that Forbes is against the proliferation of ad networks. I guess it’s ok to say that. It’s their opinion. But the article didn’t spend enough time on why. Let me open on a couple of reasons why Forbes could think this is a good idea (and then quickly plug YuMe while doing so…)

First - Ad Networks take away business from Owned and Operated (O&O) sites such as Forbes. Well, Forbes of all magazines should be OK with a bit of friendly competition. What are they afraid of?  That we’ll outperform them because we have a far larger set of content, uniques and publishers so we can optimise and spread the ad around better to make the campaign perform better?

Second - Ad Networks are devaluing O&O inventory?  Maybe the display and search businesses sold their inventory blind, but we don’t. Everthing is transparent and we sell inventory at premium prices, while have the ability to blend in other inventory to lower the effective cpm for the advertiser, yet maintaining the campaign metrics and goals.

Third - When advertiser go to the O&O publisher and the publisher is sold out, they shouldn’t have another choice, so they simply book their ad campaign next month or next year, instead of finding another alternative. See the first point above. Sounds pretty anti capitalist to me.

- Jayant Kadambi

We all subscribe to some sort of e-mail trade newsletter (i.e. Online Media Daily, OnlineSpin, eMarketer, Brandweek, and the list goes on) and get our dose of industry news. This week there was a lot of buzz around online ‘ad networks,’ from vertical to behavioral to the conventional ones.

Headlines like:  “Forbes Joins Ad Network Fray,” “ESPN Turns Off Ad Nets,” “AOL Ad Project, ‘Platform A,’ Plots Plan B,” I know, I know. I hate to just re-cap and link off to these stories. But I thought if you missed the boat, these were some of the articles worth reading.

With all that said about ad networks, I came across Avenue A’s Digital Outlook report that highlighted their $735 million in billings in ‘07. No secret that every year more money is being spent overall online. Now looking specifically at the ‘ad networks’ line, which accounts for 11% of their ad spend, ad network expenditures were up 36% from ’06 – ’07, which is a trend I expect will continue. What I’m anxious to see over the next few years is the trend between banner and online video expenditures…

- Lynn Cayabyab