Marketing Brainstorms, trickles and drizzles

Online advertising is dead (or dying under the weight of its importance)

So, there's this, if you haven't read it. Um, well, er, ah - at the risk of being told I'm attacking the author - why does he own an iPod if not for advertising? Would the first iPod have been sold without it? And, has he heard of classmates.com? Did a friend tell him or did he see one of the million of (don't know what to call them other than) advertisements online? Perhaps he didn't join classmates but knowing about (classmates, iPod) is the first step to (joining/buying). Demand generation begets the need for demand fullfillment.  Now, I've said that online brand advertising for demand generation that comes in the form of paid display ads or sponsorships on web sites won't work but, well, his view certainly is thought-provoking.

Ah, the music labels

Between trying to herd cats and reducing intellectual property, its a wonder they have time to figure out how to make music and money. Oh, wait, they're not doing that either.

And I'll say one (millionth) more time that price tends towards the marginal cost of delivery - which means music should be FREE! for consumers - licensed for use in movies, ads, shows, games, where ever - and as a way to get people into see the REAL scarce resource - a live performance by the band.

When the Internet had long hair ....

Hey, from the headline, does that make me a dinosaur?

Thinking more about the article, 1996 is also the beginning of the first bubble that popped in Feb 2000 and resulted in a 2 year ad depression. Post that bubble pop, we saw the rise of social nets, twitter, Google, ad networks - much innovation. What innovation lies at the heart of the current ad depression? Ad exchanges, brand conversations, audience-finding ad buying, real-time searches for consumer insights are some potentials.

World domination

Well, at least the world as defined on the Internet - aside from the provocative headline (though journalists seem to abhor capitalism defined as selling ads to pay their salaries - they sure are good at writing effective direct marketing headline copy), the point made in the article represents quite a large opportunity.

How do you effectively monitor live sources of information available online (blogs, social networks, web sites, twitter feeds, blah blah blah) so that you can tease out real-time actionable insight to the market's (or just your customer's) perception of your product/brand/book/song/company/government?

Channel conflict between ad networks and web publishers

I was prepared to rip into this when I read the title because I just endured the IAB member chant "Ad Networks are not important" for the last 3 days. BUT - the ideas are good - and, having run a publisher with a direct sales force who was concerned about channel conflict, can be implemented.

The only issue is that advertisers may not buy on blind networks (almost all the networks I work with require transparency from me) - so, it may be that the "fence" may be a modified version of the "no guaranteed delivery" and allow networks to dislose (not promote) a publisher's participation without guaranteed delivery to accomplish the same thing.

Google and the (nonsearch) Media business

Remember my post about Google and their non-dominance of display advertising? Well it also applies to other media like radio and print. The value that Google brings to the table doesn't (yet) extend to the business of making creative. And, hey, let's face it, all other media (even the lowly banner) offer greater creativity options than keywords and one line of text. Serious bottleneck there.

No, newspapers aren't going away - and neither is recorded music but any business focused on generating annuities from intellectual property that can be digitized is a much smaller business in the future than in the past. Live appearances, speaking engagements, meeting the real person who made the property so-called intellectual - that's the scarce resource of the future.

Wait I just said that yesterday.

No explanation needed - just read (this is a link to a WSJ article and you may not be able to read it if you don't have a subscription. You can see a blurb about the article here - title is "Performance-Driven Ads On The Uptick")

Goodbye Mass Market, Hello Market of Niches

Today pending housing sales were up in a surprise - and some equity traders feel it signals the tectonic shift from economic contraction to growth. I feel the same way about something different. Reading this I say, amidst the white noise of advertising recession, there are disparate groups assembing giving voice to a new era of online advertising.

I'm not talking about a battle between premium content sites vs ad networks or about whether online media is best suited for direct response vs branding - I'm talking about the very survival of the web media model that aggregates a specialized audience with content and then sells advertising space to marketers.

Here's my prediction - the opportunity for brand advertising, real demand generation advertising, online is in the past and in the future. The next five to ten years will see a decline in the value created - for both buyers and sellers. After that, the market for brand advertising online will begin to grow again. But, in the meantime, if you're a content website today, the revenue stream generated by brand (demand generation) advertising will dry up.

What? I'm not really that bright but here's what I see happening.

    - Emergence of huge supplies of advertising inventory available via ad exchanges and ad networks

    - Dozens of solutions continue to emerge to allow advertisers to find their customer in the midst of this huge supply

    - Consumers spending time talking to one another via social media

    - Brand marketers and the ad industry struggling with online media's market of conversations

Let me clearer. Online brand advertising for demand generation that comes in the form of paid display ads or sponsorships on web sites won't work. Online direct response advertising for demand fulfillment that comes in the form of paid display ads works and is only enhanced by targeting technologies working within huge supplies of ad impressions. So, the next 5 to 10 years will see continuing growth of direct marketing online, web sites will find themselves contributing their inventory (mostly) to some huge supply cloud and advertisers will be buying access to customers using targeting solutions not "content-as-a-proxy".

And online brand advertising for demand generation? That comes when brands figure out how to BECOME the conversation instead of sitting next to it as a display ad or sponsorship. And, if you think that commercialism can't be the conversation - then you don't live in the US or you haven't visited threadless. So who is going to break through with a revolutionary understanding of how to make the brand the conversation? Someone unknown to us today.

ecpm 2009 average

So someone landed on my blog after searching the phrase "ecpm 2009 average" on Google. So, I did the same search and here are the top five results:

View Poll Results: What's your average eCPM with AdSense?

Google eCPM Question - What Is Considered An Average "Average"

What is considered to be an average eCPM with adsense? - Webmaster ...

What does eCPM mean on my Google AdSense report? :: Free Tech ...

How to raise your Google Adsense eCPM

Why is the question "most relevant" in the context of Adsense? I mean, "Adsense" isn't part of the search phrase. Is it true that the conversation online is mostly centered around AdSense or is it just the Google search engine has a natural affinity for its own ad network?  Nick Carr had an interesting post on a related subject recently - its a pattern I've noticed as well.

Turning iron to gold

Um, greatest respect to the people involved but spending time talking about Yahoo's strategic direction seems like an alchemist exercise. Yahoo can't dominate search and they are the original "content-as-a-proxy to reach audience" site. Unless they do an "AOL" and move RightMedia up front (AOL did it with Advertising.com combined with Tacoda, others), they're kind of like the movie business in the late 1930's when TV was invented - their best years of market share and total revenue are behind them.