10 Years Ago…Déjà vu All Over Again
February 24th, 2009 by Kathryn Koegel
What a blast from the past. Richy Glassberg – one of the founders of the IAB and the person who lead various initiatives to standardize ad sizes – was back commenting about online advertising at the IAB conference that is going on today. Those who know Richy appreciate his candor, intelligence and shall we say…”loud” viewpoints on the media industry. He went back to cable TV during the bust, but he was back in fine form like a fist shaking Jeremiah.
“It’s like nothing’s changed because no one has faced the fundamental issues to make this a viable marketing medium,” said Richy Glassberg, senior VP at TV Guide Network. “The last five years there’s been a growth curve and all of a sudden they’re realizing this is an across-the-board downturn in every sector.” (The complete Ad Age article: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134833).
I worked with Richy 10 years ago when he started the first brand focused ad network, Phase2Media. One of the highlights of that Bubblicious era was a speech he gave to Ad-Tech (then with an “@” sign) which actually said something other than hype. He addressed fundamental problems which would prevent online advertising from developing. Since clearly so many of those issues have scarcely been addressed – metrics, complexity of the buying process — we’re back where we started 10 years ago. I can’t go to another conference and have industry wonks say: fix the creative, come up with metrics that create bridges to other media… Read the text of the speech for his complete 10 ways to fix the problem.
Why should we care? Online advertising – and by this I mean display and not search — supports content that consumers like and need. A whole crowd of journalists with no knowledge of the history of media are espousing either micro-payments or non-profit status strategies in order to support the newspaper. Consumers are voting with their eyeballs in favor of getting news online and that process is not going to stop. The powerful media brands that exist need to derail the click-train and focus on selling audience and delivering smart, relevant packages for advertisers. They have fed the beast by dumping inventory on a multitude of ad networks who all compete and as Michele Madansky in her Pubmatic survey (http://www.pubmatic.com/adpriceindex/) has proven, all those ad networks are flooding the market and lowering price.
The giant mistake of online ad reporters is taking the info from that data and assuming it applies to all of online advertising. From researchers – including the companies that have vast amounts of data on ads online – there is a softening of display, but volumes have not dropped significantly and the declines that are seen are likely due to smaller ads vanishing from pages and more large, dynamic units. This is a good thing for consumers and for publishers. We can take one of the most cluttered media out there and improve the experience. (Please see Jon Gibs of Nielsen Online’s excellent research which introduced a clutter metric to the industry: http://www.nielsen-online.com/resources.jsp?section=preso_lib&nav=4).
I am ashamed to admit that last night was the first time I hooked up my laptop to my TV to watch a Hulu download of 30 Rock – I had missed the episode with the first Salma Hayak appearance and the first McFlurry product mentions. I am a desirable (in the adverting world at least) above average income mom, with two small kids living in an A county. Yes, I remember that Bertolli Oven Baked Meals sponsored the episode and these very funny Alpo :15s that matched the tone of the show appeared after the episode. Please tell me that NBC sold that inventory at more than a $1 CPM.