Mobtown Labs

Image via Wikipedia

The more I think about attribution the more it leads down the road of connecting the ads with the true direct response vehicle.  I’m not particularly talking about direct response advertising as it has evolved to today as that is really just optimization of the bottom of the funnel.

And contrarily brand marketing has still done a good job of keeping itself disconnected from direct response.  So what would happen if you started cutting that branding budget and relying on just direct response advertising?

Or what if you cut the direct response dollars and just tracked all the brand impressions back to the direct response mechanisms i.e. call centers, sales people, and online commerce carts.  We can do this.  So why don’t we?

Well I have to give google credit.  They passed up the brand dollars. In their earlier days they offered cpm advertising at the top of keywords.  They later cut this out and moved over to an all cpc model.

Now we are seeing facebook doing this as well.

So these are the two biggest marketing vehicles of our recent history and they are passing up the branding dollars which could have a major backlash on our industry.

We already saw the compression of ad dollars when google swooped in and captured massive ad budgets.  Well arguably they are getting the same results as when people would spend 10X what they spend on google on TV, Newspaper, and Magazines.  Now Facebook is coming in and offering the best targeting our industry has ever seen and is passing up the brand dollars.  

I think we will see another wave of ad dollar compression industry wide from the facebook price change backlash.

Also, I think it’s time for disruption at the big agencies and starting to use some of the tools that we have with ad servers, scoring, data warehouses, and call tracking to connect the brand dollars with the call centers, sales channels, and ecommerce carts.  

Maybe a new smarter view thru metric will be the catalyst for this…..

Related articles by Zemanta

• Report: Location Coming to Facebook Soon, McDonald’s to Be First Marketing Partner (insidefacebook.com)
• Advertising: Proactiv Tries to Shed the Hard-Sell Approach (nytimes.com)
• Twitter - The New Age Direct Marketing Tool (wealthyways4you.com)

Image via CrunchBase

I kind of hope Twitter has a cool and useful revenue model.

I was thinking about this today after talking to a friend of mine at the wharton school about the life sciences startup world vs the tech startup world and how a lot of the life science startups take a lot more money and a lot more time to produce an exit or value whereas you could have a web app startup company 3-5X over in the time it takes to evolve a drug or procedure or piece of technology in the life sciences field.

This lead me to think about Myspace and Facebook.  Myspace, first to get huge and basically just plugged in ad networks and then sold brand advertising and then tried to cobble together targeting methods.  Facebook, now with an ad platform with pretty solid targeting and a lot more scalable for small to medium advertisers.

But are these really useful and interesting.  I mean Myspace has a massive database of bands and comedians and entertainers that use their site as their homepage and their portfolio.  Why haven’t they evolved enterprise tools for these users that are more useful.  Facebook with its apps and api and facebook connect, why have they stalled on peer to peer payments and are going toward the ad model.

Is the ad model the easy way out?  Are ads and ad networks a conduit to not having to innovate?  Is facebook and myspace short selling themselves when it comes to being useful to the world and it’s users?  Are they stopping short of disrupting companies like Ticketmaster, Paypal, Bank of America?  Could Facebook go head to head with Bank of America?

Now what for Twitter?

From ReadWriteWeb quoting Peter Kafka:

• Ads will be tied to Twitter searches, in the same way that Google’s (GOOG) original ads did. So a search for, say, “laptop”, may generate an ad for Dell. The ads will only show up in search results, which means users who don’t search for something won’t see them in their regular Twitterstream.
• The ads will use the Twitter format — 140 characters or less — and will be distributed via the third party software and services that use Twitter’s API. The services will have the option to display the ads, and Twitter will share revenue with those that do.
• Twitter will work with ad agencies and buyers to seed the program, but plans on moving to a self-serve model, like Google offers, down the road.

Read full ReadWriteWeb Article http://loca.ly/ade2jo

I mean surely they will make money from an ad platform but really…..is this the best that they can do?  Isn’t there an opportunity for them to put Reuters and Associated press out of business and revolutionize real-time news and real-time headlines?  C’mon now, lets be useful!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mobile Facebook, Twitter Growth Explodes (marketingvox.com)
• On Android, MySpace Reigns Supreme (mashable.com)
• Ad Slant: There are more FarmVille players than Twitter users (trueslant.com)

Image via CrunchBase

So all of this buzz about DSP’s and Realtime Bidding has gotten me thinking.  Why exactly are we so obsessed with these standard IAB sizes?  What’s the deal with banners anyway?

Anyone who knows anything about programming, flash, html, and javascript knows that the size and shape of the banner really doesn’t matter when it comes to scheduling and the technology behind adserving.  It’s probably the business people and management that are so detached from the technology and mechanics of online advertising that have painted us into this corner.

Well Facebook is not so dumb.  I guess that’s one of the benefits of having a twenty something developer as a CEO.  For what they lack in big business management experience they sure are creating a massive revenue and profit machine.

“The biggest income stream seems to have been performance advertising, which likely accounted for more than half of Facebook’s 2009 revenues at $350 million. Next was brand-based advertising, which accounted for an estimated $225 million in revenue. Microsoft advertising came in at $50 million and virtual good income was only $10 million according to these numbers.”

From Mashable Article - Facebook Could Surpass $1B… http://loca.ly/bfA3ho

So why are all of these data companies like Blue Kai, eXelate, and DSP companies like Invite Media, MediaMath, Turn, Triggit so obsessed with the banner?

It sounds like the real value is outside the banner!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Facebook Made Up to $700 Million in 2009, On Track Towards $1.1 Billion in 2010 (insidefacebook.com)
• Strategy Analytics: Global Online Ad Market Rejuvenated (eon.businesswire.com)
• Ownership Targeted Media OwnerIQ Hires Ad Executive Stephen Tschosik as Midwest Sales Director (eon.businesswire.com)
• Online Advertising Begins to Stabilize in the U.S. (seekingalpha.com)

Working in the online ad space we like to fantasize that we are head and shoulders above the TV, Newspaper, and Radio ad world (collectively known as ‘offline’).

That said we still conform to their old processes.  Why do we budget, RFP, issue insertion orders all on paper and on a monthly or quarterly basis?  This is all hinges on the old way of doing things which was rooted in the fact that it takes a day to write up and print a daily newspaper and a week to curate, edit, and print a sunday edition newspaper.

The same goes for TV.  TV is on a standard programming schedule that would need to be disclosed out to the TV Guides of the world in order to get viewers.  Then the ratings would come out on a similar time period.

Now we are dealing with Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, blogs…..all real-time.  Even web 1.0 like yahoo and aol’s homepage are published in realtime with updating links and stories and customizable designs.

To replace ratings we have Google Analytics, Omniture, Chartbeat and various other analytics tools that give you indications of how your advertising is doing in near-realtime or in some cases truly realtime.

So why are we still stuck on this Insertion Order, RFP, Monthly, Quarterly, and upfront buying cycle??

Somehow google circumvented this [I guess because the results are so astounding] and get advertisers to just allocate a certain budget to search and advertisers are comfortable changing bids and adjusting budgets and pricing and their ads on the fly.

This needs to happen for the rest of online…..or at least social media.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 28% of Websites Use Google Analytics, 12% Have Adsense [Interesting Stats] (techie-buzz.com)
• A 12-Step Strategy to ReFit Your Blog to the Social Web in 2010 (successful-blog.com)
• The disconnect between newspaper execs and readers over paid content (reportr.net)