The Death of the Rate Card

Interesting article by David Honig - few excerpts

The Tribune Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, posted a 5% drop in advertising revenue in their first quarter of 2007. Gannet Company Inc., owner of USA Today, and the New York Times Company both posted a 3% drop in national advertising revenue.

I hadn't expected this to happen to such a large extent. What is not surprising to me is the newspapers. While we do know that more advertising money is moving online, I would have expected a smaller drop.

Part of the reason why this is happening, is, of course, because it’s so much easier to buy an ad online through an automated system. The other reason is because a good chunk of online media is competitively priced through an auction and comes with better performance tracking than a newspaper ad.

Google is helping the newspapers sell ads, by making it easy for small advertisers to buy space via their automated system and applying the competitive, auction-based pricing model.

While I never quite understood Googles interest in going into print (it's all about the money?), I also never understood how they would end up offering to their online advertisers what they have got use to - relevant context, flexibility, measurability, scalability, etc. Of course is Google figures out a way then there will be nothing stopping them from taking over the world.

Once they let the rate card go, and let the market set the price, they might be able to create innovative services that would make them even more money than the rate card could ever dream of.

For example, if the paper could marry a user’s online site behavior with his or her offline delivery address, advertisers could well bid very high prices for the chance to target behavioral segments with inserts. If I log on to the New York Times online and look for Manhattan real estate, and the Times can marry that behavior with my delivery address, I bet there are hundreds of realtors that would love to show me an ad about an open house. In this way, the death knell of the rate card could start to make newspapers and magazines look healthy again.

This bit is VERY interesting and I feel like kicking myself every time I come across something like this (because I never thought of it). The scope of even search is so much larger than we think and this is amply shown in the above example.

There was also something similar about print being 'relevant' that I read a few years ago. Over there the user wasn't even talking about integration of online and offline so strongly. What he mentioned was how print can be highly relevant in terms of demographics. Newspapers though he mentioned have to give advertisers lots of flexibility though (which currently the logistics do not support I believe). He said that newspapers should allow advertisers to micro-target by address if one knew who lived where.

The full article can be read at WebProNews

"Google's aim is to give our users the most valuable and relevant search results"

Apparently this should be the SEO mantra.

Google has always stated and I believe will keep stating that relevancy to the user is of utmost importance.

Targeting the Demographic Way

Facebook seems to be wanting to go the demographic way to target ads to users.

Facebook is working on ways to target ad delivery based on information in user profiles, reports the Wall Street Journal.

This makes a lot of sense because traditional advertisers some times like knowing that they are reaching not only people interested in their product (contextual marketing) but also those who they profile as prospective customers.

Ads in YouTube videos

A number of YouTube users have spoken out with their frustration and disappointment over the ads now appearing on their videos, reports ComputerWorld.

Some respondents have voiced their opinions in the comments on the blog post announcing the appearance of the ads. One person made a video wherein he shared his opinion.

Reasons cited by those against the ads range from a lack of creativity to the loss of control the uploaders now have. At least a few people did point out that YouTube hosts their videos for free but it still has to pay for the server space, so ads aren't all that bad.

Across the pond, tolerance was more forthcoming. Conchango's latest New Media Landscapes study found users are happy to deal with advertising as long as they get free content along with it. And one in five are prepared to pay for premium content if they must, with a strong preference for video-based content because it is faster to absorb than text.

Source : www.marketingvox.com


So finally I see something about ads in YouTube videos. I think Google isn't silly or stupid and that buying YouTube was a very smart move mainly because ads in YouTube videos can bring in relevancy into audio visual ads. Television is a purely demographic games - you find what kind of shows your Target Audience would be watching and then show ads to them (which they most probably don't even catch cause channel surfing starts right away). Over here there can be such a strong tie in of the advertisement with the content the user is already watching (sure there will be a lot to be done to match content with ad message but I am sure Google is going to move only in that direction). There is also no question of not watching / listening cause if they embed an ad in the middle of a video (which I think is a bad idea) then everyone will at least catch a little of the product message.

Anyway it will be interesting to see how this develops.

Study: Agencies’ Size Matters Little to Marketers

[Found this article pretty interesting- it has got more to do with the CS and less about actual marketing. Also it's not specific to online but could apply equally for it I think.]

Rainmaker Consulting conducted a poll amongst 150 major US brand spenders.

The poll sought to determine what prompts brand spenders to search for a new agency, the most effective ways for agencies to engage with clients, and the reasons they choose one agency over another.

Among the study’s findings:

* In general, clients don’t feel that size matters, but agencies tend to believe it does.
* The majority of clients (83%) don’t feel geographical location is an issue, but many agencies think it is.
* 85% of clients say agencies don’t prepare enough.
* Most clients (75%) are seeking to buy actual solutions to business problems - whereas most agencies think the client is looking for advertising, PR, design or some other silo-fit.
* Clients want agencies to be far more proactive, whereas most agencies like to sit in the bunker.

Examining the reasons for choosing one agency over another, the study found that though “chemistry” and “strength of creative work” scored highly, as might be expected, so did “quality customer insights.” Respondents ranked the various factors as follows:

1. Quality customer insights
2. Chemistry
3. Creative work
4. Service level / response to needs ongoing
5. Cost control
6. Innovative / strategic thinking
7. Case for ROI
8. Client list
9. Strict adherence to brief
10. Seniority of account team
11. Location
12. Size

At least 8 - 10 points are very important for any agency. Also the priorities for each client would vary vastly. But some things that traditional media agencies seems to forget or ignore are things like ROI and Cost Controls.

I am surprised that 'client list' is so low on the scale as is 'seniority of account team'. Not that I would like them to be higher up and replace some of the other reasons but it shows that companies today expect more from marketing budgets in terms of real returns.

Source - MarketingCharts.com

iSpy

Well guess what - ads on iGoogle.


Don't know why I didn't think I would find some.

It doesn't seem keyword based for the spell check cause the word I put in was 'test' and the ad that showed is for hotel deals.

The 'fitness tip of the day' section seems to be contextually targeted though.

Anyway what is very off is that there are no Display URLs showing. It's pretty upsetting and annoying as we thought this use to happen only on a few content partner sites but here it's happening through Google itself.

Google Buys into Social Site Tainya

Tianya is a social network that allows people to post blog entries, photos, classifieds and more to their profiles.

Expanding its content network?

There has been some talk on the 'quality' of visitors from social networking sites since these will mostly be young people and may not be decision makers.

Google obviously sees value in SNS's - which are surely here to stay but a few issues like people 'growing out' of SNS's are issues because not all advertisers would have TAs who are young people.

Also while Orkut has popularity (in certain geographies), I don't see much changing on it, in face of competition. I just registered at Facebook yesterday but I have been hearing about it for months now. Also the amount of 'things you can do' on a Facebook is crazy. It has nearly all the features of an Orkut but there is so much more. If Orkut would like to keep its market share alive and active, I would assume they would have to do radical stuff on their features & UI - allowing personalization is a mandatory I would think.

iGoogle

For a long time I didn't bother with iGoogle even when I saw it on machines of colleagues. Simply because Google is search and I am so use to the search box only.

Today I finally couldn't resist and created my personalized google page. It's unbelievably cool, user friendly, has tons of features...stuff that you would surely want to want.

Anyway this post isn't about iGoogle as much as it is about how Google gets what it wants.

MSN has for the longest time touted about demographic targeting because 60% of searches happen when users are signed on. I don't see why many people will not sign onto Google if they have personalized their Google (search) page to this extent.

[In terms of interface also its very sleek - drag and drop functionality, nice clean boxed areas, good links where needed - typical Google UI (friendly, easy, near perfect)]

While most people might think I have a super imagination that I let run wild, I do think that Google has the ability to make you do what they want you to do without you realizing that you are doing what they want.

Another case in example is the 'Find Edit Tool' in the Adwords interface (tool section). They have taken it off and are saying that the functionality is now available in the Adwords Editor. It's the best way to get people onto the Editor right? Not that I have anything against the Editor, I think it's a fantabulous application but people should have the option of making changes online if they want to.

Anyway it would be very interesting if Google brought in a 'bid boost' targeting functionality (based on demographics) sometime in the next year or so.

यह तोह ला जवाब है

पता नही कैसे करते है पर यह बहुत ही कूल है

Google is now offering an easier way to search in 14 Indian and South Asian languages. You don't need a special keyboard or software; all you need is a web browser, a mouse, and a Unicode font for your language.

Check out http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic/

It's SUPER COOL.

Important Note

What you need to understand: The real battle is not on the Web
page, but in the mind of the user. What is he looking for? What does he
want?

Source : marketingexperiments.com

I think in worrying about QS / relevancy, we sometimes forget that marketing is about persuasion (and education, information, etc etc). It is important to remember that it's about convincing a person not an algorithm.

A lot of us forget this every now and then.

New Google Analytics Interface

Personally I don't like it much.

While getting use to it is one thing, which will take a little time, the interface I think lacks the UI greatness that most google products have.

Not only is it difficult to find exactly what you want (I am not even sure it is being offered), the data that you get upfront is not presented very nicely.

While most users I know prefer the new interface, I miss the previous version. Since the were offering both options till recently, I didn't even take screen shots etc, to help figure what use to happen and how before.

The feature that they didn't have before though is 'Navigation Summary'. Never played around with 'funnels' in the previous interface but I believe those were very specific to various goals that were set. Over here Google seems to be providing some sort of click path information. I am still struggling in trying to figure it out.

Once I have seen the interface more in depth, will write a little more about the new interface.