You know the drill… See an ad, click it, and find yourself at a company landing page. Pretty easy, huh? Well how many other people did exactly what you did? That answer might not be so simple.

This past week the New York Times cited page hit and click tracking issues as one of the foremost problems facing our industry, one that could stunt the growth of internet advertising as an increasing number of companies become wary of these discrepancies. And who could blame them? Small differences can add up to big dollars, especially as larger and larger campaigns are making their way into the digital realm.

The problem arises from myriad companies putting out their own versions of the “correct” tracking solution, but nobody collaborating on a universal solution. Most buyers and sellers are operating on totally different platforms, with their own tracking technology or 3rd party product. These numbers usually don’t match up, with whose numbers to bill off of usually becoming a very sticky subject. It’s like trying to build a car with an engine from one company and a body from another in which neither party has talked. It just doesn’t work.

So with so many different options for reporting, coupled with the lack of standards in a fledgling industry, how can Advertisers, Publishers, and Networks protect themselves from the revenue consuming numbers game? They can start by uniting on a common platform.

An ad exchange utilizes the same technology to track performance, regardless of entity type: Publisher, Advertiser, Network, or something in between, everybody is linked through one system. The same methodology is used to track clicks, performance, and impressions. No more worries about whose numbers to bill off of, how to settle the difference, or why you have to take the financial burden of inaccuracies. Link to partners across the Right Media Exchange and rest assured that everyone is counting on the same trusted technology that has evolved over years of experience in the space.

Heck, we all know there are better games to play.

The IAB Annual Members Meeting in New York on November 29 was jam-packed with exciting developments and upbeat forecasts. Not only did the industry record its first ever $4-billion quarter (story here), but ad revenues for the first three quarters of 2006 are nearly equal to the total for all of 2005. When the counting’s done, 2006 online ad revenues will exceed $16-billion, nearly triple the tally at the bottom of the dot-com bust in 2002.

Speakers offered many reasons for our good fortune, but they also worried about our ability as an industry to support continuing rapid growth with outdated systems and processes and without measurement standards.

On the upside, nearly every major advertiser will increase commitment to online advertising again next year. Online as a whole still commands less than ten percent of total ad spending, in spite of the fact that consumers spend more than 25 percent of their media consumption time online. Individual advertisers are accelerating their internet spending dramatically, however. HP, for example, dedicated more than 20 percent of its worldwide ad budget to internet this year, while more than doubling the number of sites bought. (more…)

Currently, networks or advertisers sign up publishers, send them ad tags, and watch for impressions to grow. As networks or advertisers, how can you ensure the quality of inventory you get? How do you make sure that your ads only show up on content that you have approved? How do you make sure that publishers will only place ad tags where they say they will? What if you knew the URLs from which ad requests were made so you could track where your inventory was coming from? What if you could analyze how much is coming from each of those URLs? That’s what Right Media’s validated URLs (vURLs) does for our networks and advertisers.

(more…)

Mediapost published an update on the plans of an advertiser task force, championed by Julie Roehm of Wal-Mart, to test an eBay-like auction marketplace for buying and selling tv ad space. The article focuses a lot of attention on network resistance to the idea, based on the belief that an exchange commoditizes their inventory.

The article states:

In May, the President-COO of NBC Universal’s television operations, Randy Falco, was even more definitive in his opposition to the proposal. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “We’ll never do that. That commoditizes your product.”

The counter-point is presented in the article as well:

A top executive at the AAAA’s with ties to the task force said that he is hopeful the networks will reverse some of their initial opposition and opt to eventually participate. Michael Donahue, AAAA’s executive vice president, said the online auction could be a way for networks to boost revenue for lower-tier inventory. “Would I expect a network to put up a ‘CSI’ spot for auction? No,” he said. “I don’t think they need to sell it that way—and frankly, I don’t think the advertisers want to buy it that way. Is it possible they’d want to put up a 3-rated spot on a summertime re-run and maybe hope that they get a better rate than by selling it in scatter in the summer? They might want to do that—who knows?”

This is the one issue that will have the greatest impact on the future of exchanges for advertising. Will publishers be able to get over the fear of commoditization that goes hand in hand with exchanges? We hear this all the time: “Won’t participating in an exchange cannibalize my brand sales efforts and make it impossible to get advertisers to pay rate-card? If I allow any of my ad space to be commoditized, won’t it all become a commodity?”

Publishers are right to ask the question, and right to be wary. I may be a bit of a black sheep amongst exchange advocates, but a great deal of advertising inventory is not appropriate for sale through an exchange today, and may never be.

Yahoo should not be selling its home page or premium positions throughout its network via an auction, nor should The New York Times. Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of NYT Digital, said the following to me in a recent conversation: “There is something magical about a brand. That is a lot of what advertisers value. If we allow our inventory to be sold in an auction, don’t we risk destroying that magic by commoditizing the brand?”

Martin is right—there is magic in brands, and that magic needs to be protected. For many advertisers, that magic is the brands they associate their brands with. After all, how can Proctor and Gamble believe in the power of the Crest brand, but not believe in the power of the brands they associate with Crest? To these advertisers who buy based on brand value, a media auction is an utterly foreign concept.

On the other hand, there are many advertisers out there—spending huge amounts of money—who don’t think that brand magic is important. They believe in data and response metrics. They buy based on analytics, not based on the perceived value of a brand. There’s little that any publisher can do to convince these marketers to buy premium positions based on brand value. They simply don’t buy that way. To these advertisers, a media auction feels like Nirvana.

So how do publishers use exchange dynamics—which they know will make them more money on inventory they can’t sell at a premium—to sell to response-driven advertisers, without compromising their ability to sell premium to brand-focused advertisers? The answer is elusively simple: as long as a publisher creates a clear and consistent distinction between that which is “premium” and that which is “commodity,” the risk disappears.

Brand advertisers buy premium positions. They commit a budget, get delivery guarantees, and often receive other benefits such as first right of refusal and exclusivity. They get granular vision into exactly where their ads run. Premium targeting may be used such as demographic or behavioral segments.

Response driven advertisers tend to buy bulk positions, based on metrics such as cost-per-click, lead or sale. They’re usually comfortable buying without delivery guarantees, without vision into exactly where their ads will show up, without exclusivity or right of refusal.

In short, brand advertisers and response advertisers buy different ad products. Most large publishers just need to create that distinct product offering for response-driven advertisers, instead of sending non-premium inventory to ad networks or running house ads. The most efficient strategy is an open media exchange, where buyers can comfortably bid for inventory and each impression is auctioned in real-time to the highest bidder.

That distinct solution will ensure that publishers sell anything they don’t sell at a premium for as much money as possible, while never compromising the magic of a brand.

It’s becoming more apparent every day that advertisers, publishers and networks want a more open and fair way to buy and sell online media.

Two great examples in the last couple of days include “Google & eBay in Ad Industry Shootout” about the race to create “ADSDAQ” for trading media; and “Advertisers, Agencies Float $50 Million Plan For Media Trading System.” Also, two people prominent in our business have proposed creating a trade group dedicated to openness, fairness and standards for citizens’ media. At Right Media, we offer Jeff Jarvis and Jarvis Coffin a hearty hurray!

Jeff Jarvis issued a rallying cry to liberate citizens’ media from the tyranny of friction in the ad marketplace. His New England co-conspirator, BURST! Media’s Jarvis Coffin, has taken a principled stand favoring openness, measurement standards and research for all who oppose “Google’s growing hegemony over advertising.”

Right Media CEO Mike Walrath calls this revolution a chance to build a better new media worldview in which the market is “liquid and transparent, and more access to information benefit[s] the buyer, seller and value-adding intermediary who embrace an open marketplace for advertising.”  http://www.rightmedia.com/articles/92/1/The-Media-Revolution.

The Right Media Exchange already provides an open environment in which numerous advertisers and more than sixty ad networks – much like Mr. Coffin’s – compete among themselves to buy more than 60-billion impressions monthly on blogs, small websites and media giant sites alike. It’s a wide open auction-based marketplace that already does what Mr. Jarvis called for: It provides advertisers and media the ability  to “gain control and increase their effectiveness and their value,” free of the walled-in system approach favored by Google and other closed networks.

You can count Right Media in as a charter member of the trade group being established for citizens’ media. Among other contributions, we will make available our Media Guard advertising creative auditing system that assures publishers that any subscribing network will only deliver ads that meet their specific criteria for content. No more unfortunate juxtapositions of racy ads on kids’ pages or seizure-inducing animations on quiet content pages.

The media revolution is here. Forward-looking companies such as Right Media and BURST!Media plan to be among its leaders. We encourage everyone who has a stake to tear down your walls and let liberty and prosperity flourish.