AdAge Article: Memo to Steve Jobs

An interesting article: "Memo to Steve Jobs: the IAd Is No Miracle Worker" by Kathryn Koegel

Nice piece! but might be not-so-nice piece for Steve admirers!

6 Lies You've Been Told About Ad Networks - by Michael Estrin

My colleague sent me this article earlier this week and I found it intriguing. Here're the highlights of this article:

• Ad networks aren't dying - the unique and value-driven will survive
• Common to popular belief, ad networks work with premium sites and often have access to the first impression during non-peak hours
• Ad networks can create channel conflict - but not all of them

Here's the article itself:

Sifting through blanket criticisms

Mention ad networks to someone who doesn't work for an ad network, and you're bound to get an earful -- and chances are most of it won't be positive. Publishers, many of whom use ad networks, often bash the business model because it doesn't generate enough revenue to support quality content. But the low prices for advertisers aren't always met with high praise.

Media buyers, nearly all of whom use ad networks on a regular basis, frequently give mixed reports. On the one hand, many media buyers say ad networks represent a great way to make a targeted ad buy across a lot of sites without going over budget. But those same media buyers often criticize ad networks for a lack of transparency, and in some cases they point to specific instances in which a campaign ended up on the entirely wrong site with disastrous results.

But criticizing ad networks en masse is about as useful as saying you don't like weather -- any weather. In other words, blanket criticisms of ad networks just don't make much sense.

As with any vendor, due diligence is critical. There simply is no substitute. But given the wide-ranging criticisms leveled at ad networks, we wanted to give the industry a chance to rebut some of the more common "lies" as they see them. Here's what some ad networks told us they regularly hear, and here's what they had to say about those complaints.

Lie 1

Ad networks are dying.

Remember a few years ago when everyone, myself included, predicted the great ad network shakeout? You know, that was back when people said things like, "Only a small handful of ad networks will survive because..."

Well, that didn't happen. And since then, those who are continuing with that narrative have adjusted the message. While no specific date has been set, the rap on ad networks these days is that they're dying, not a certain, immediate death, but a death nonetheless. Which means that if you rely on ad networks for your media buying, you better find a new strategy -- ASAP.

Well, not exactly, according to Seevast CEO Jaan Janes.

"Sure, the ad networks that have no standards and 'cookie-cutter' networks will be the dying breed," Janes says. "Those networks that are built on solid partnerships and offer results-driven technology for its advertisers and premium publishers will prevail. The ad network must offer unique selling points and a differentiation in the marketplace. The network must leverage consumer data and insights to satisfy advertisers' goals and objectives. The network must use targeting to drive a proven higher revenue return than the competition. They must do all of these things and more to be an essential part of the media buying/planning process to survive."

Lie 2

Only a few ad networks matter.

There are probably several hundred ad networks out there. Nobody really knows how many for sure. But one thing you often hear people say is that only the top few really matter. But that's simply not true, says Kaley Dobson, marketing manager for LookSmart.

"It's true, there are a lot of ad networks out there, and not all of them are going to flourish this year, or even five years from now, but even inevitable ad network consolidation will still leave us with more than a handful of ad networks," Dobson says. "Want proof? Look at the search advertising industry. Search networks thrive because many savvy search marketers choose to complement their existing campaigns on larger engines like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft with supplemental campaigns on ad networks in order to expand their reach and increase their ROI. Many marketers don't want to be limited to a one-stop-shop advertising channel, and multiple ad networks provide them with the power of choice."

Lie 3

Ad networks only sell junk.

Want to buy inventory on a top-tier premium site? You won't be able to do it through an ad network.

That's the conventional wisdom out there -- that ad networks can only deliver inventory that lesser sites were unable to sell themselves. But nothing could be further from the truth, according to Jim Waltz, president of Traffic Marketplace.

"Almost every publisher in the comScore 500 works with top ad networks," Waltz says. And, he points out, ad networks often have access to the first impression on a premium site during non-peak hours.

Lie 4

Ad network traffic is unreliable.

Ad networks are no strangers to stories about dubious traffic. It simply comes with the territory. And in the early days, traffic horror stories seemed almost commonplace. But those stories usually aren't accurate -- at least not as applied to the industry as a whole, says Steve O'Brien, VP of marketing at Click Forensics.

According to O'Brien, many of those stories stem from a perception that ad networks buy and sell traffic amongst themselves, which often results in a very murky picture for their clients. But that shell game -- which might benefit a handful of shady ad networks in the short-run -- isn't standard across the industry, says O'Brien, who adds that, "Most credible ad networks have internal quality standards and controls to filter/block poor traffic from advertisers. Ad networks hate underperforming traffic almost as much as advertisers do!"

Lie 5

Transparency is unavailable.

One of the earliest knocks on ad networks was that they didn't offer transparency to their clients. Naturally, this criticism was compounded by the fact that there were -- and still are -- a number of so-called "blind" ad networks. While the terms vary a little, the general idea is that buyers won't know exactly where their ads will end up. But when speaking about ad networks in general, Andy Smith, VP of Marchex, says the industry, driven by media buyer demand, has gone a long way toward improving transparency.

"When working with ad networks, advertisers and agencies have become increasingly more focused on transparency and ROI," Smith says. "[Many ad networks] offer site-specific targeting for advertisers and agencies, giving them full transparency into the placement of their ads. With full transparency down to the page level, brand advertisers can protect their brand image by controlling the placement of their ads while only paying when a consumer clicks on their advertisement."

Lie 6

Ad networks create channel conflict.

File this one under the heading of "sometimes." In a nutshell, there's a school of thought that says ad networks create a conflict in a given channel because they undercut the price of the inventory. That is, advertisers often decline to buy directly from the publisher when they know they can hold off and pick up the same inventory for less by working with an ad network. While that might be true in some instances, it isn't true for at least one type of ad network, says Ben Cohen, director of sales for the ZEDO Ad Network.

Here's why: "Some ad networks sell only behavioral and DMA targeting," Cohen says. "They don't sell sites, so advertisers can't buy impressions from a site -- at any price"

In other words, ad networks that sell based on technology innovations like behavioral or geo-targeting aren't really selling an impression that can be bought elsewhere because the advertiser didn't buy an impression from a specific site -- they bought a user at a specific site (or sites) based on a predetermined set of criteria.

Conclusion

Ad networks -- like the weather -- are an inescapable reality, and just as there are all kinds of weather, there are all kinds of ad networks. Heaping complaints on ad networks for existing might be fun cocktail conversation, but in practice, those statements don't get you very far.

Even more worrisome is the possibility that many of those complaints might only be valid as to a specific ad network, but inaccurate as to the rest of the industry. That might be bad news for the ad networks, but it might also be bad news for those in digital who shy away from them because of bad information. After all, if you're steering clear of a particular type of resource because you've bought into some bad information, there's a distinct possibility that you're missing an opportunity.

AdAge on Apple vs. Google

Ad Age dissected where exactly the two giants of Silicon Valley compete.

Apple vs. Google

Apple

Handset:

iPhone

Launch date: June 29, 2007
First-month sales: 600,000**
Tagline: "There's an app for that"
Price: iPhone 3GS $199-$299; iPhone 3G $99
Sold: Online and in Apple and AT&T retail locations
The effect: The iPhone, with 42 million units sold worldwide since its launch, has undoubtedly accelerated smartphone adoption in the U.S. What's more, it's created an entirely new content economy with apps. Incidentally, the iPhone is great for Google -- with more consumers on the web using their phones, that's more eyeballs for Google's search ads. Right now, Google search and maps are default on iPhones. For Apple, the iPhone is a direct extension of the company's existing product business of computers, laptops and iPods.

Mobile Operating System:

iPhone OS

U.S. Smartphone market share: 25%***
Distribution: The iPhone OS runs on iPhones and iPod Touchs worldwide and will soon be on Apple's new iPad. The iPhone OS is only second in U.S. smartphone market share to Research in Motion, which makes BlackBerry.
Number of apps: More than 140,000
Number of app downloads: More than 3 billion
Developers: More than 120,000

Mobile Ad Network:

Quattro Wireless

Price tag: $275 million
Gross revenue for 2009: $20 million*
Market share: 7%*
Leadership: Quattro CEO Andy Miller is now VP-mobile advertising for Apple, reporting directly to Steve Jobs.
Market position: Quattro specializes in rich media and brand mobile ads. Generally, Quattro ads demand a higher cost-per-click on more sophisticated publishers, like on a media company's app.

Quattro marks Apple's first foray into advertising. Why would it want to get into the service business? To keep the developers that create the apps that sell iPhones happy. "Apple can now provide 360-degree services for its developers," said Nihal Mehta, CEO of local-search and networking app Buzzd. "Developers have an easy way to serve ads and monetize their apps without having to maintain relationships with ad networks."

Web Browser:

Safari

Browser Market Share: 4.53%****
Distribution: Safari comes pre-installed on all Apple devices, from Macs to iPhones. It can also be downloaded for Windows machines. Before Apple launched Safari in 2003, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape were the pre-loaded web browsers on Apple machines. Safari curbed Apple's dependence on Microsoft for web browsing.

Google

Handset:

Nexus One

Launch date: Jan. 5, 2010
First-month sales: 80,000**
Launch tagline: "Web meets phone"
Price: $179.99 with T-Mobile 2-year contract; $529.99 for unlocked phone
Sold: Only online

Sales of Google's first-ever handset have been slow, and might be a symptom of Nexus's online-only marketing and distribution strategy. Verizon's Droid, the first Google-branded handset, sold 535,000 handsets in its first month.**

The effect: With Nexus One, Google is trying to diversify its business beyond search, a paradigm of the wired web that may be rendered obsolete if apps become the primary discovery tool on phones. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said the mobile web is his company's best opportunity for growth. A Google handset is seen as a way to up appeal and adoption of Android, as well as a way to destabilize Apple's leadership in mobile.

Mobile Operating System:

Android

U.S. smartphone market share: 5%***
Distribution: Android has the smallest U.S. smartphone penetration, but the strongest growth in the last quarter of 2009; it's now on more than 12 devices in 26 countries with 32 carriers in 19 different languages. It's free and open-source, which means anyone can take Android and add code or download it to create a mobile device without restrictions. Android is Google's strategy for getting a toehold on lots of phones in lots of places.
Number of apps: more than 20,000
Number of downloads: Not disclosed
Number of developers: "Thousands," according to a Google spokeswoman.

Mobile Ad Network:

AdMob

Price tag: $750 million in stock
Gross revenue for 2009: $31 million*
Market share: 11%*
Leadership: AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui founded the company while in the MBA program at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Market position: AbMob is one of the biggest players in mobile advertising; it has more inventory and a self-service, high-volume model that would dovetail nicely with Google's AdSense. "AdMob was born to be acquired by Google," said one mobile-ad executive. Initially, AdMob built its business on cost-per-click campaigns, but has since expanded to premium CPM for brand ads.

The Federal Trade Commission is still reviewing the acquisition. The deal, with its exorbitant price tag -- triple what industry bankers and execs had projected -- makes Google the mobile-ad leader with 21% mobile search market share.*

Web Browser:

Chrome

Browser market share: 5.22%****; 40 million active users in September 2009

Google launched Chrome in late 2008 to make browsing faster, the idea being that it would help internet users search more and, presumably, click Google ads more. Google is in conversations with various PC manufacturers to get Chrome pre-installed on machines; some Sony computers already ship with Chrome.

*According to market research firm IDC.
**Sales data projected by app analytics firm Flurry.
***Market Share data is according to ComScore.
****According to Net Applications, January 2010.

The 10 Most Innovative Viral Video Ads of 2009

More on Viral Video Ads. Not sure if you've seen this list. Josh Warner of Feeb Company pulled together this list late last year for the most innovative viral videos with creative approaches to the social video Web.

"Regardless of the approach, the key for marketers is a solid understanding of what a brand is, who is the brand’s audience, and what moves them. Strangely enough, this formula sounds like traditional advertising. This year’s Top 10 is certainly a glimpse of how the viral video ad business is evolving, and as marketers, what we can learn from that evolution."

Here's the list:

1. Inspired Bicycles



Advertiser: Inspired Bicycles
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: Inspired Bicycles’ team rider Danny MacAskill scales fences in and around Edinburgh, Scotland. The video is as mesmerizing as its hypnotic soundtrack from music group Band of Horses. It’s a solid example of how a brand pursuing a niche market – mountain bike trailblazers – can reach the masses with a brilliant viral video execution.

2. Signs



Advertiser: Schweppes
Ad Agency: Publicis Mojo and @RadicalMedia

Why it works: A love story with few words, Signs compels you to watch until its poignant end. It conclusively dispels the myth that viral video executions must be short and gimmicky to grab your attention.

3. Piano Stairs



Advertiser: Volkswagen
Ad Agency: DDB Stockholm

Why it works: “Take the stairs instead of the escalator and feel better” is something we hear but didn’t often see until this sly video from Volkswagen appeared on the Web. It’s part of an inspiring campaign, The Fun Theory, that encourages people to come up with fun ways to “do good.” The video itself did well indeed, imbuing Volkswagen with a fun new ethos and racking up millions of views in the process.

4. BooneOakly.com



Advertiser: Boone Oakley
Ad Agency: Boone Oakley

Why it works: Boone Oakley, an ad agency from Charlotte, North Carolina, uses an interactive YouTube video to tell its story and showcase client work. Audacious and attention-getting, it puts the young company on the short list of ad agencies who get it.

5. Hosting Your Party



Advertiser: Microsoft
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: This is the ultimate anti-viral: a video that generates millions of views simply because of how profoundly it misses the mark. Comments have been disabled, but all you have to do is talk to someone you know who’s watched it to know why it was so generously passed around.

6. YouTube HD Camera Trick Challenge



Advertiser: Samsung
Ad Agency: Viral Factory

Why it works: One cunning way to get people talking about and sharing your video is to make them wonder how you shot it in the first place. Samsung went to great lengths to protect the “trick” in the video for their new HD camera phone, which got tech geeks riled up to try solving the puzzle. Geeks happen to be the audience most likely to buy the HD new camera phone, which is why this video makes our Top 10.

7. United Breaks Guitars



Advertiser: Dave Carroll
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: A traumatic experience for one flyer becomes a public relations disaster for United Airlines, when musician Dave Carroll uses a YouTube video to vent frustrations after his guitar is damaged at Chicago O’Hare airport. The takeaway: Viral video is a wonderful tool for consumer advocacy because chances are you’re not the only one who is upset. In this case, United was inundated with additional complaints after United Breaks Guitars.

8. All The Single Babies



Advertiser: singlebabies.com
Ad Agency: User Generated

Why it works: The huge popularity of this video, a baby dancing to a Beyonce (beyonce) song, is channeling ad revenue and donations into his college fund. This quick reaction to a YouTube hit shows us the toddler’s dad has moves of his own — something sluggish advertisers can learn from.

9. Guy Catches Laptop With His Butt



Advertiser: MSI Computers
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: In much the way Airplane parodies disaster films, this cheeseball video spoofs last year’s viral video hit Ray-Ban’s Guy Catches Glasses with Face. The inside joke is why we picked the video for this year’s Top 10. If you’re not on the web, you don’t get it. But for the millions who saw Ray-Ban’s video, it’s a wink and a nod, and an ironic sign that the viral video medium is maturing (or not).

10. JK Wedding Dance



Advertiser: Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz
Ad Agency: N/A

Why it works: A couple’s wedding entourage dances down the aisle to Chris Brown’s (chris brown) song “Forever,” springboarding this video into viral history (at least for ‘09). Instead of stripping the video of its music — something copyright owners are permitted to do on YouTube — Sony used its popularity to sell more Chris Brown albums.

The AdAge Viral Video Chart

AdAge provides a weekly viral video chart to rank the top videos people watch (in the US) for that given week. Last week Walmart made it to the top, a major marketer that's not know for online antics. Now even viral video is measurable and being tracked for its effectiveness (popularity). Watch out for more advertisers to jump in.

	Last Week	Brand	Campaign	Agency	Current Week Views*	% Change in Views**	Watch the Spot
1	New	Walmart	Clown	Publicis & Hal Riney	1,684,796	New
2	1	Evian	Live Young	BETC Euro RSCG	1,082,574	-13%
3	New	Bridgestone	Your Tires? Or Your Life?	The Richards Group	959,213	New
4	3	Google	Nexus One Vlogger	N/A	552,247	-24%
5	6	Microsoft	Xbox Project Natal	World Famous	539,669	-8%
6	5	DC Shoes	Gymkhana Two	Mad Media	521,466	-11%
7	9	Axe	Cleans Your Balls	BBH	427,300	-2%
8	New	Nolan's Cheddar	Seriously Strong Cheddar	John Nolan Films	423,358	New
9	Back on Chart	Nike	Most Valuable Puppets	Wieden & Kennedy	269,287	Back on Chart
10	4	Coca-Cola	Happiness Machine	Definition 6	251,606	-59%
Source: Visible Measures *The Visible Measures Top 10 Viral Video Ad Campaigns Chart focuses on brand-driven viral video ads that appear on online-video-sharing destinations. Each campaign is measured on a True Reach basis, which includes viewership of both brand-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 100 million internet videos across more than 150 video-sharing destinations. Note: This analysis does not include Visible Measures' paid-placement (i.e., overlays, pre-/mid-/post-roll) performance data or video views on private sites. This chart does not include movie trailers, video-game campaigns, TV show or media network promotions, or public service announcements. View-count results are incremental by week. **Indicates percent change in views compared with the same period the week before. To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming video ad campaign, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign's overall performance, please contact Visible Measures directly.

AdAge Article - Think You Know China?

There's a recent article on AdAge by P.T. Black on "Eight Things Foreigners Get Wrong" about China. This is an intriguing perspective on how people who think they know China but actually got them wrong. Must read.

Consumers Demands Engagement - an eMarketer article

As we see more and more marketing dollars are shifting from traditional to digital media, we notice simple including online ad campaigns and social marketing efforts is not enough for an effective marketing mix. According to the Alterian "Annual Survey 2009" report in an eMarketer article, the maturity of digital and social media requires integration of marketing strategies. It is time for marketers to listen to consumers and communicate with them across all channels.

As you can see in the above chart, more than half of the marketers being surveyed reported at least a "fair amount of effort" toward integrating their communication strategies to emphasize multichannel engagement.

Another form of engagement for online ad campaigns is by interactive ads. Interacting with online audience on an ad level will create the one-to-one communication thus engaging with the marketing message and the brand. That is why with effective interactive creative, we see more offerings in forms of CPE (Cost per Engagement) or CPI (Cost per Interaction). This is ensuring the effective ROI for marketers when buying online.

Why Most Digital Ads Still Fail to Work, by Philip W. Sawyer

This is an interesting, yet so true, article on AdAge by Philip W. Sawyer. He claimed that the reason why most digital ads still don't work, digital medium isn't to blame. The problem are due to creative efforts that do not suit the medium and refusal to employ research tools that can identify creative problems and how to fix them.

He went on listing the seven mistakes that research tells us we're making today:

1. They are too complex

2. They take too long to get to the point

3. They are ambiguous

4. They are visually bland - or, worse, ugly

5. They use Flash for the sake of Flash - not for a clear purpose

6. They are often difficult, if not impossible, to read

7. They are bereft of benefit statements

View the FULL ARTICLE.

This is why it's important to employ web analytics, optimization tools, and targeting technologies to understand the real effectiveness of your creative and campaign. And ultimately making a move to improve them.

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads

Video In Rich Media Ads More Likely To Lead Customers To Purchase

Video in rich media ads can make or break a campaign. The DoubleClick benchmark study released by Google recently suggests that rich media ad formats that contain video "overwhelmingly" outperform other types of creative media ad, such as images and simple animation Flash.

The study, "The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads", measures purchase intent, but not necessarily through the ad. Findings suggests that people who see a video in a rich media ad are more likely to make the purchase.

This study tapped Dynamic Logic data - market data from thousands of campaigns - to determine the type of creative ad formats that produce the best results. Dynamic Logic serves up surveys to a consumer after they see a random ad, and correlates the results to whether or not they viewed the ad.

Rich media ads containing video on average appear to increase purchase intent by 1.16%, compared with a controlled group that did not see an ad. Compare that with simple Flash at 0.26%, and there's a huge difference.

The study suggests that driving purchase requires advertisers to run more rich media with video and fewer simple Flash units. The fact that simple Flash ads dominate the Web ad content demonstrate "a misalignment" of ad formats when it comes to brands setting and reaching ad goals. Rich media with video drives success more than four times that of Flash.

Interestingly, people who see rich media ads on average seem to favour the brand with the video, according to the study. Exposing audiences to one rich media ad with video seem to result in a 2.30% increase in favouring a brand. In contrast, simple Flash shows the poorest results - 0.15% - at driving favour for the brand.

The study suggests delivering a rich media ad with video as the first ad exposure to the online audience, and when budgets are tight, switching to simple Flash or image formats to get positive results. Use DoubleClick DART for Advertisers (DFA) to swap creative ads without having to send new ad tags to publishers. And don't let arbitrary ad-serving budget allocations, such as 15% of media, prevent you from running the most effective ad formats. Instead, factor media fees and rich media fees in together and optimize from there.

Brand metrics were compared for more than 4,000 campaigns across a wide variety of industry verticals through 2008, as tracked via Dynamic Logic's MarketNorms marketing effectiveness database. Campaigns were included in the study if they met two criteria. The first: the assets included at least one of four ad formats: simple Flash, JPG/GIF, rich media with video, and rich media without video. The second: the questionnaire used standard MarketNorms branding questions.

Download the full report HERE.

影音廣告多元化解決方案 - Interesting Blog Article from Taiwan

http://www.wretch.cc/blog/kangjim&article_id=10571587

DoubleClick Exec: Video Hot-Spotting on the Rise

an Article from ClickZ - http://www.clickz.com/3626653