I agree with some that we need to move out of our industry jargon-laden world and start using words and ideas that we can understand as consumers. Behavioral Targeting is one of those phrases I love to hate – and despite the name of MediaPost’s pub on the matter, Behavioral Insider, today’s article by Steve Smith is well worth a read.

His piece discusses Google’s new behavioral offering and the access it provides to consumers to customize their interests, which has gotten some press recently. Mark Zagorski of eXelate also mentions in the comments that not only does Blue Kai offer a feature that lets users express their data preferences but so does eXelate [disclaimer: we work with both companies and Google of course] — apologies guys, but hate to break it to you that you could offer almost anything to users and it still isn’t Google. So it’s newsworthy. That being said, Google more than almost anyone has to dance around and think very long and hard about how any cookie- or data-related policy or product they adopt/launch. Makes sense.

In general, hopefully everyone will realize that more accurate (and not necessarily, more) data can make a big difference and actually turn ads into something of value for people. But I wouldn’t count on this, from Steve’s article:

In response to last week’s exploration of BlueKai’s system, Scott Milener of AdRocket said “These dreams of consumers managing their ‘ad’ profiles is absurd – will NEVER happen en masse. People just want to ignore ads.” This is true now, of course. And in the end, these sorts of preferences sites may just be like privacy policies, more for show and ass-covering than for real use.

I don’t think it’s that people want to ignore ads – they just do because they are not compelling enough, AND they interrupt people actually looking for things and consuming content. So we need to get smarter about figuring out which ads people think they ignore but have a real effect, and the places where ads can go and actually deliver real value to people. Targeting is part of the puzzle, but please let’s stop calling it Behavioral and start thinking how we can get the consumer to be part of the discussion.

I would like to invite you to join Advertiserbase, a social network for advertisers and their partners to network and share best practices with one another. It is a private network and all applications will be reviewed. If you are a publisher or network, (or technology vendor) feel free to join as well.

http://advertiserbase.com/?xgi=33UwHfc

We will be getting prominent industry I don’t think this will replace LinkedIn or Facebook by any means, but might be a good place where like-minded online advertisers can come together.

We want to have this platform have some independence from what we are doing, so right now we are looking for potential advisory board members for it. Email Rob Leathern at rob at cpmadvisors.com to find out more if you are interested.

I stumbled across this:

http://adkit.yahoo.com/

So apparently banner ads are awesome – this clearly wasn’t written last week (not that it’s wrong except for that part about being noticed more than TV advertising – that’s clearly BS, but realize, this site was their entire media kit):

1. A single banner exposure can generate brand awareness, ad awareness, product attribute communication, and purchase intent.
2. Nearly all of the ad awareness impact measured (94%) was generated without click-through to the advertiser’s site.
3. Online advertising is more likely to be noticed than television advertising and compares favorably to television in its ability to create a brand-linked impression

Note that depending where you click, it also redirects you to the “new, updated” Fusion Marketing collateral which is also pretty old. This gives some good insight into how Yahoo! used to sell its ad services. Or might just be funny nostalgia. But it came up pretty high in Google search results, which just goes to show that anything you leave out there that’s not the newest version can be found.

It’s no news that Yahoo! is hurting right now and beset with a lot of internal issues. We still consider them an important partner and appreciate the real value that exists in their online ad inventory. We’ve been able to drive some very positive results for our advertising partners there recently, and will continue to do so.

Platform-A (Advertising.com) has quietly turned live Bidplace, which got some press back in September 2008. (a current news search on Google for “bidplace” currently produces no results) The product manager for Bidplace SB comments on the product in the posting above as follows:

- The “SB” in BidPlace SB stands for “Small Business”. BidPlace SB is a self-service tool for smaller advertisers who are looking to spend anywhere from $300 – $15K per month on display advertising.
- You guessed correctly – BidPlace SB is offering direct access to the 90% reach of the Platform-A / Advertising.com network.
- BidPlace SB lets users target by geo (at the state or DMA level) as well as by site content (26 categories to choose from). We’ll also be offering demographic targeting in March.
- We’ve launched with CPM pricing, and soon we’ll also offer CPC bidding.

By the way, Platform-A will also be releasing BidPlace Professional later this year. That product will be geared towards larger advertisers who want a combination of self-service and account support.

The platform at first glance looks less like an ad exchange, and more like a self-service ad platform that simply plugs in campaigns into the existing Ad.com network, attempting to cater to smaller buyers who want to purchase display ad inventory. Starting out as a CPM model, it biases towards higher CPMs and less transparency on pricing. The typical bid-based ad exchange model benefits buyers by running a second-price impression auction, where advertisers set a ceiling average bid and then paying the second highest price + 0.01 CPM. This means that the publisher doesn’t get all the “surplus” in the transaction, and the market is more competitive.

We will play around with the platform and provide some more comments later, but for now it still looks pretty fresh, new and will probably have its issues, for example in the help section:

There is no minimum contract length in BidPlace SB – you can pause your campaigns any time you want. A minimum daily spend of $10 is required. BUT:

Why am I being charged more than my daily budget on some days?
To ensure maximum reach, we may allow more impressions on certain days, based on the day-to-day fluctuation in traffic on our partner sites. Because of this, you might find your campaign being charged more than your daily budget on some days. However, your monthly bill will never exceed your daily budget times the number of days in that month.

So it seems, you can spend as little as $10 a day, except you should be willing to spend $300 in a day just in case. It remains to be seen how small business react to a more uncertain budget plan such as this.

We do expect to see this platform improve, and hopefully APIs, cookie-based retargeting, proper frequency capping and other goodies are in the planning stages too…

LeadsCon 2009 Las Vegas (March 3- March 5), is a conference and expo aimed at increasing the effectiveness of companies in the online lead generation industry. Rob Leathern, CPM Advisors’ founder and CEO will be moderating the “Ad Networks and Display” panel at LeadsCon 2009. The panel is from 9:45am – 10:30am on Thursday March 5th, and will feature a great group of speakers:

• Dilip DaSilva, CEO and Founder, Exponential
• Rob Deichert, SVP of Publisher Operations & Yield Management, Platform-A
• Murthy Nukala, Founder & CEO, Adchemy
• Dave Zinman, Vice President, Network Management, Yahoo! Inc.

Last year’s LeadsCon event was a great success by all reports, sold-out with over 600 attendees.

Here is the abstract for the session:
For a variety of reasons, those in the online customer acquisition space buying display still feel like second class citizens despite their being among the most successful of all buyers. With online media spending forecasts, especially for display, continually being lowered, roles reverse, and the shunned become accepted. It’s a recipe for limited success in good times and bad. The task before this panel – to start a dialog with display ad networks and major display inventory providers to see our dollars become more than advertiser of last resort and have more advertisers see success.

With all the turmoil over the past year, lead generation has started to look attractive again to many online industry participants.
This event should provide some good insights into what the market and near-term future for the space looks like. See you there!

About the only time I will willingly run on a treadmill is if I’m on a business trip in a strange city, staying at a hotel that has one of those tiny ‘workout facilities’ that has two treadmills, a stationary bike and a multifunction nautilus machine, and it’s too late/cold to get out for a run.

I like running – and have been doing more of it recently. I love analogies that involve sports or driving, so here goes. This week I went for a quick run around 5.45pm on the streets of San Francisco and it made me think of why I like running on the streets among people, cars and buses instead of in a gym on a treadmill, and why that reminded me of what we are doing in our startup company world.

Urban running is a contact sport; you are in the mix and have to pay attention not to get hit by a car, run into pedestrians or cyclists. It’s nice to add your own soundtrack to things and listen to music, but you have to stay pretty aware of your surroundings. You can’t tune out and watch TV while you run. Also, running is one of those things that both tires and energizes you, seemingly a paradox. And of course, like many runners I find it boring to be in one place all the time – much better to run with a goal, seeing your progress in real terms not just a clock and a counter. Keeping score is great, but it’s cool to see and “feel” progress as well as measure it.

So don’t build your system in isolation; go ahead and get out into the world – as a company I like being in the market, understanding how things work and what doesn’t work. We want to use the technology we build and prove to ourselves we can use it to make money before we go out and try to convince other people we can improve their process and help them make more money. The market we play in is bigger than we believe, and competition is not as bad as we think it is – there’s lots of room and even if the street I’m running on is busy, I can usually switch my route slightly and go another way. I don’t have to limit myself because a sign says “20 minutes max at peak times” for the treadmill.

And never forget: the fact that you are running at all already puts you ahead of 97% of everyone else, whether it is outside in the cool, damp air or inside in the heated gym on the treadmill…

Some of these may be no-duh, but I jotted down some quick thoughts for 2009:

• Macro: the economy’s pain continues for a while – some positive signs perhaps start to emerge in Q2 perhaps? Commercial real estate and retail suffer really badly in Q1. Okay so basically my guess is as good as yours.
• New exchanges, behavioral targeting exchanges and quasi-exchanges emerge, creating (some) new ad compensation models, and of course leading to some associated weirdness as usual – the Google Exchange which is supposed to supplant the Doubleclick exchange in Q2, AOL, OpenX, Pubmatic and Rubicon doing some interesting things, and other guys entering the market… these increased linkages create more problems and opportunities. Of course Yahoo! has APT; both rollout and the prospect of an API integration therewith will be a trip/adventure most probably.
• All of this leads to more market confusion as the media choices abound and the economy continues its rough road. APIs are the vogue, but workflow gets even messier and more difficult for advertiser s and agencies to handle. Buyer’s market, and yet many agencies have a hard time. Some are prepared, and do very well – and some lines start to be blurred.
• Social media data is increasingly valuable but also regulatory scrutiny increases (see next point) and self-regulation discussions continue – though you would think the administration has bigger fish to fry. There is a lot of value that is being created with behavioral targeting and even just “lite” versions thereof like better demographic targeting.
  

  “The overall message was that the Bush FTC gets an ‘F’ on privacy,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “We’re expecting the Obama team to take a better approach.” (article here)

  And what will Obama administration do? It is so difficult to understand and explain this area to the general public that undoubtedly this will be an area of continued confusion and hair-pulling.

• The industry struggle continues between accountability and advertiser control vs. whatever it takes to make it through the night. A couple of industry initiatives will fail in this area. Look for porn, spyware and adware to continue their unfortunate rise as times remain tough. Government folks and states attorneys general would do well to focus more on the deceptive computer hijacking types and security issues that are really annoying and rob one of productivity . Something that is actually far more damaging than getting targeted by a diapers ad because I visited a new moms website. As usual, offline privacy practices of companies continue to receive far less scrutiny, and the knee jerk reactions to the uses of online data continue.
• Online should continue to become a more important part of the media mix because it’s more measurable (though not totally so) and can be consumed in smaller bite sizes.
• Retail – over 10% of retailers in the US will fail; online becomes a new more dynamic way to buy and find products! A greater shift to online buying and models, and resulting new customer opportunities.Random Link:
  Blodget on 2009 display ads – I won’t say he is wrong, but we will see:

There have been several interesting stories and posts on ad networks and the online ad space recently that are worth mentioning:

• The Economist wrote about why online advertising will emerge “relatively unscathed” from the downturn
• I agree with many points in this post from MikeonAds.com on 11/10/08:
  

  This combined with all of the above show a great picture for technology focused ad networks….. — it is the difficulty of integration that has limited many an online ad technology startup from succeeding. With supply becoming more and more available in more and more programmatic manners — a time is coming when the guy with the best algorithm will actually stand a chance competing against the guy with the best relationships at WPP.

  Relationships like these are not going to go away any time soon. In fact, a lot of the integration work that needs to done can often be sped up when the vendors know the people who make API/integration decisions at some of the big players. Such is our small ad world, still. But I agree, that we should be moving to a world where ad effectiveness can be driven by technology in a much purer, cleaner way than ever before. The results will be a bigger, more efficient market for us all.

• Ashu Garg has a great perspective on the online ad space – here are some of his thoughts on the ad network model