Microsoft gets it

by Andy Atherton
January 26th, 2010

More great stuff from Microsoft’s Young-Bean Song at the OMMA performance show Monday in San Francisco.  Microsoft has made no secret of the fact that they are focused on the brand advertising market and clearly the push continues.

I would encourage you to watch the embedded video of Young-Bean’s talk.  The content is fantastic and well-delivered, particularly the planning example at the end.  Building from earlier Atlas Institute research, Young makes the argument for the utility of offline metrics for online Brand campaigns.  I couldn’t agree more.  Reach, composition and pricing guarantees that back into guaranteed GRPs, TRPs and CPPs are exactly what online Brand advertisers need for cross channel planning.  As he points out, ROI tradeoffs happen throughout the funnel, but that shouldn’t always mean just “CPA”.

The discussion about the importance of complete attribution models vs. the too common last click / last view approach, while also not new, is very much worth hearing again (and again).  Working – and measuring – the full funnel is just as important online as offline.

Microsoft understands this market extremely well.  Don’t underestimate them.

Filed under: Branding, Display Advertising, Measurement
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Rethinking Retargeting

by Andy Atherton
January 18th, 2010

Just a quick post to make sure folks saw Richard Frankel’s article today on AdExchanger.

A couple solid, related tidbits in there.

The first point is about attribution.  Richard cautions that retargeting often “steals” attribution from other tactics unless careful steps are taken to prevent it from happening.  DR tactics stealing attribution from upper-funnel tactics is an important topic on which we have written before.  As we mention in that article, it’s also the subject of an entire body of work by Microsoft’s Atlas Institute.

The second point is about the importance of finding new prospects and customers, not just retargeting old ones.  This difference between “demand creation” and “demand fulfillment” (as Forbes.com’s Jim Spanfeller has somewhat famously put it) is something that needs to be understood and carefully considered when developing a comprehensive marketing and media strategy.

As online media marches past a 30% share of total media consumption, new technologies are eroding offline media like TV and print.  Both demand fulfillment and demand creation budgets alike must follow consumers online.

Filed under: Ad Networks, Branding, Display Advertising, Industry News, Measurement
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Online Video: Our Opportunity is VAST

by Andy Atherton
January 11th, 2010

In my guest article today in Ad Age, I state that the IAB’s new video ad serving standard (“VAST” for short) has serious implications for video-only ad networks (e.g., Tremor, Brightroll, etc.) for two reasons:

1. A significant portion of the engineering work in which the incumbents have invested enormous time and money will effectively be marked to zero by the market

2. Existing, technically sophisticated display ad networks will enter the video market quickly and effectively.

To be clear, when i say “video”, I’m not talking about in-banner video or overlays, “bugs” etc.  I am talking about :15 and :30 second pre-, mid- and post-roll video.  This is the video advertising format where the environment is most similar to TV and the creative is directly transferrable from TV.  As such, it represents >90% of advertiser demand for online video and will continue to be the lynchpin in moving TV budgets online.  VAST effectively hits the “reset” button on this market in 2010 and while many current players will face serious trouble, for some companies this is an enormous opportunity.

Brand.net is one of those companies.  Melissa, Elizabeth and I have been astonished how often and emphatically during the past year the top agencies, as well as Top 100 advertisers directly, have asked us to extend our market leading brand display platform capabilities (SafeScreen, SmartScale, etc.) to video.  So our sales force is out taking orders for a platform extension that does just that.

Top 100 advertisers want online video to explode as an advertising medium.  It’s the obvious, and (to stay in front of their target audiences) necessary, successor to the $60B they spend on sight, sound and motion brand-focused TV buys each year.   But today’s video ad networks simply don’t provide the brand-focused capabilities Top 100 advertisers require.   What have they told us for the past year they want from online video?  The ability to guarantee Quality, Scale and Value.

Music to our ears.  Stay tuned.

Filed under: Brand.net News, Branding, Display Advertising, Video
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