Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: online advertising (Page 2 of 2)

How the Top Ad Networks Rank

Do you ever wonder how the various online advertising networks compare in size to one another? How much traffic each gets? Well, comScore does a monthly report, and the July numbers just came out, as part of this August 17 press release. (See table 4.) They call this report their “Ad Focus Ranking,” which they define as “top entities supporting online advertising” (it’s U.S. only). Note that not all sites listed in the table are ad networks, just those marked with a double asterisk.

The top five ad networks are (1) Advertising.com, (2) ValueClick, (3) Google Ad Network (yes, it’s true — they’re not first in everything), (4) Tribal Fusion, and (5) Blue Lithium. The “reach” of these five sites — meaning the percentage of the entire Internet population that visited each site at least once in July — ranged from a high of 88% down to 66%. That represents some mighty big numbers, folks — 158 million and 119 million uniques, respectively. These sites are the current top-dogs in the ad network world.

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Of the 50 sites listed in comScore’s Ad Focus Ranking, 21 of them are designated as advertising networks.

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The New Age of Advertising Is Upon Us: Opportunity Abounds

We are in a major period of disruption in the advertising industry. I have never been more convinced of it. Getting into the middle of the ad:tech conference last week (see previous posts) just helped me experience and understand it even better, up close. The online portion of the industry is on a trajectory that cannot be stopped. (See graph in previous post.) The movement toward a new world order in the ad business is a major, ongoing story, and I can’t help but get excited about the changes and the opportunity it holds for so many of us.

Let me digress a bit. This story isn’t about me, but a little background: I began my career in an advertising agency — at what was then a top Minneapolis firm, which had many people who went on to ad fame and fortune. Nothing beats starting in the mailroom, that storied beginning in the business, where you learn so much, so quickly. And I danced in and out of the agency business for several years, even joining a top-ten worldwide ad agency as an account exec for a time, on a major, Fortune 500 piece of business. Later, in mid-career, I launched of my own marketing consulting firm, actually serving as an ad agency for several of my small tech and B2B clients, among my other duties, for quite a few years.

The reason I had earlier left the traditional agency business was because I thought it was mired in old ways of doing things. It didn’t get technology. It didn’t understand systems and productivity and stuff — you know, being out in front with new techniques and computer-driven processes. It relied only on the ethereal “creativity,” and, of course, the old boy network of expense accounts and golf and long lunches. It was living in the past, on old glory. It lived and died by winning and losing accounts, of course (it still does). But where was the innovation that would move things forward? It didn’t take me long to know I had to get back into tech, which I’d gotten a taste of soon after moving on from that first job in an agency. (I had graduated to being a copywriter on the client side. Computers and software were so much more exciting.) Once I finally left behind the idea of working for a large agency and went whole hog into tech, I never looked back (though I was certainly able to apply some of what I’d learned in running the business I later founded, especially how to manage client accounts and make a profit).

Today, traditional ad agencies still control a majority of the business, and traditional media still account for the vast majority of spending. But, boy, are things changing. The light is getting brighter at the end of the tunnel. The newer breed of tech-savvy, interactive, digital agencies is on the rise, along with new technology-based services, ad networks, exchanges, behavioral-targeting technology companies, widgets, and much more. Acquisitions are flying about everywhere. The dynamics of the industry are in major flux. The old ways, the old agencies die hard, but they do die. They must evolve, or new players simply step in. I liken much of the plight of the old guard today as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Sadly, some will surely go down. But so many new players will attain leadership positions in the industry.

Nowhere is this trend more evident or interesting, I think, than in the acquisition earlier this year of Digitas by Publicis (say it with me now: poob-li-cees), whose leader, Maurice Levy, claims he started the whole recent big-acquisition binge. Digitaslogo It’s hard to argue that the man doesn’t see the big picture. This recent article in the New York Times tells the story very well: It’s an Ad, Ad, Ad World. And the larger story about Publicis even has a local angle of sorts, in that famed Minneapolis agency Fallon is part of that holding company. Publicislogo On hard times lately, the agency recently announced that its chairman, Pat Fallon, was handing over the reins to Publicis sister agency Satchi & Satchi. The Fallon agency was a strong player early-on in interactive, but later jettisoned that department to refocus on the traditional part of the business. I never understood why.

Today, there’s no denying the ad game is changing — big time. Online is the new sheriff in town. GOOG and MSFT advertising companies? Who would have believed such a statement even six or seven years ago? Are they agencies? Well, they’re being very careful to hedge on that question. Perhaps they never will be. Meanwhile, the old guard is desparately trying to protect its flanks, preserve its share, posturing and manuevering at every turn, trying to out-smart competition coming at it from everywhere. The dollars are major, so it’s a fight worth watching.

But in this whole mix, of this there is no doubt: technology is finally coming to rule the advertising business. The Internet changed everything, and keeps on changing everything. And opportunity is adundant for new careers, new companies, and new wealth beyond our wildest dreams.

It’s about time!

Update: To add the pronunciation of Publicis….only because I love to talk Francais once in a while.

PC Forum: Behavioral Targeting Goes to the Next Level

Behavorial targeting 1.0 got a bad name, and for good reason. Collecting consumer information without permission was a sure-fire way to get flamed and trashed. It’s not that the hearts of these vendors weren’t in the right place — after all, we’d all prefer more targeted, relevant ads. But, lo and behold, as online advertising has taken off on such a rocket growth trajectory over recent years, a lot has been evolving behind the scenes in this space — including even by some of the original transgressors. I’ve been impressed by what Esther Dyson and her organization bring to helping us understand this 031306behavtarg changing world of advertising. Four of their hand.pngcked participants for this morning’s “Behavioral Targeting 2.0” panel gave us a great overview and quick education on the topic. Don McLagan of Compete told us his company has been doing permission-based behavioral targeting for more than 4 years, and now has 50 terabytes of data under its care. He says his firm is “the eyes and ears of what consumers are doing and saying online.” How permission-based is his service? He says it’s actually not a dual, but a tri opt-in system. Arvind Rajan of Grassroots said his firm began life as an ASP for political organizations but now has corporate clients, due to its understanding of the individual activist. Release 1.0 said in its current issue that it “is perhaps the most effective, most one-to-one marketer” here. Dean Thompson of mSpoke offers a service for online publishers based on what it calls its “adaptive personalization engine,” which lets users manage their own content and ad preferences. These preferences are represented in something the user can see and edit, which it calls “memes.” Dave Morgan of Tacoda also is pushing the notion of showing consumers their own information, and letting them change it. They don’t have a direct relationship with the consumer, but implement their service through publishers. Morgan was quick to remind is that “advertising pays for 99% of what’s on the web.” The newspaper industry, in which he once worked, “is dying because it thought it could sell online subscriptions.” But there’s a lot of room for more growth in online advertising, since he said “40 percent of online search results pages still have no ads on them.” And yet 90 percent of online ad revenues go to just those search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL.

After the session, at lunch, I ran into the CEO of another “behavioral 2.0” company — Bill Day of When U (formerly head of About.com) — and I asked him for his reaction to the panel. Esther Dyson had even mentioned near the end of the panel that Bill could have been up on stage himself. He said the 2.0 version of behavorial targeting is definitely characterized as being more consumer centric. He said there are three things central to this new generation of the technology: the privacy model (from a technical standpoint), disclosure, and user value — meaning what consumers get in return. In the 1.0 version, he said the latter “was basically nothing.” Regarding his firm’s privacy model, he said they save no data — it’s all on the consumer’s local machine — and they disclose everything. The user value WhenU provides is all about relevancy. His customers include car companies, ABC-TV, LowerMyBills.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, and the firm has a partnership with Overture (Yahoo). “Eighty-five percent of the web is ripe for a new kind of advertising,” he said. “There are large opportunities.” His firm’s model is direct to the consumer, and there aren’t many in this space, he noted. “And ours is the most realtime solution, too” which is critical, he says, because the life of behavioral data is very short — maybe 24 hours. “So advertisers need us to provide the ability to suggest ‘at the moment’.”

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Screw AdSense – Bloggers Deserve a Buck a Word!

That’s the new mantra for bloggers seeking decent ad revenue according to online marketing guru Mike May, writing for MediaPost’s “Online Publishing Insider”. In his rabble-rousing piece, which went online today — “Compensate Citizen Publishers Like People, Not Web Sites” — he makes an interesting case. How did he arrive at a buck a word? That’s the going rate for freeelancer writers. And Mike’s proposal is based on this key notion: “The value of citizen publisher content to advertisers or sponsors should be no less than the value of freelance writing contributions to publishers.” Hey, I like it, Mikey likes it…what’s not to like?

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