Posts by Emily Riley (bio)

Emily Riley | May 05, 2008, 03:13 PM
Facebook moving away from Groups?

I really don't want to get in the habit of repeating information from other blogs, it already happens too much. But just this once, Valleywag reported over the weekend that Facebook is encouraging marketers, bands, and the like to migrate from Groups to Pages. Apple has made the move, and now has 400,000 fans of its Page.
The idea is that the traffic to and from the Pages will generate enough ad revenue to offset the previous revenue that Facebook charges for sponsored Groups. This model has not been proven yet, and I am a tad skeptical due to the fact that Facebook is still relying on text ads. Potentially competitors will pay to show up on competitors Pages?
Ad revenue aside, there are positives for marketers, as told by a developer and blogger:

- Pages are more customizable than groups. You can add HTML, Flash, or even Facebook applications to your pages to extend their functionality and the depth of experience users can have with your brand.
- Pages get more prominent “Bumper Stickers” real estate than groups on the profile pages of your fans.
- There is no limitation to the number of fans in your group that you can message.
- “Fans” who join your group are NOT able to invite their friends to be fans of your Page. Fans must either “Share” your page with their friends, or their friends must observe that they “are a fan” of your Page either via their profile page or News Feed.
- Facebook has taken an active role in cracking down on Pages not created by authorized agents.

So what's maybe good for Facebook is probably good for marketers, or something like that.

Emily Riley | April 30, 2008, 02:46 PM
Adify snapped up

Adify got snapped up by Cox a few days ago for a reported $300 million. You may recall that I mentioned Adify in a recent post about vertical networks being all the rage right now.
Cox will use the Adify platform to help its own media outlets and partners build out networks online, a way to increase reach and revenue for all involved. Each partner will have a different group of little sites to manage, from blogs to fan sites. These small sites don't necessarily have the panel data available that newspaper and TV advertisers typically want, so there might be some difficulty for the sales department. The CPMs could be low until this is figured out.

Emily Riley | April 24, 2008, 03:19 PM
Will we finally get pricing information?

I was recently briefed by SQAD (pronounced like squad.) They have been around in the offline world for a while, and provide pricing data to advertisers. They recently briefed me on a new project they are working on that would bring this service to the web. You might be thinking it's great that someone finally will report the CPMs for thousands of websites. And it is...however...

"What is the CPM for...?" is the most common inquiry I receive. And almost always, my answer is, "It depends." Even with a service that reports on average CPM by site, the answer will still be "it depends." Sites are complex, and pricing varies widely from sponsorship spots to remnant inventory. An average number is always going to tell an incomplete story.
Despite all this, I am looking forward to this service and do think it might help advertisers at least compare overall pricing for different sites. It will also shed some light on which sites sell more at premium rate card prices and which are being dragged down by lower remnant pricing. So now I'll say "It depends, but if you are looking for an average, there is this new service..."

Emily Riley | April 16, 2008, 02:53 PM
New networks in the news

Our president, David Schatsky, pointed me to a Wall Street Journal article this morning that highlights one of the themes from my recent Ad Networks report. While the online conglomerates are busy tying all of their acquisitions together, big media companies are fighting back with network plays of their own. The WSJ reported that Disney is creating their own premium ad network by coordinating ad spending with other content sites. Much the way Adify works with sites like the Washington Post, Disney is using a branded vertical network approach to increase relevant impressions for its SOAP site and hopefully command higher CPMs and more premium advertisers than a traditional network. (Adify may well be behind this announcement, but it wasn't mentioned.)
At the same time, ComScore announced the top ad networks for last month. Not surprisingly, AOL's new Platform-A is the largest. About 98 percent of the volume comes from Advertising.com. That makes it obvious that other acquisitions like Tacoda and Quigo did nothing to increase reach, but hopefully added new clients and new technologies to the offerings.

Emily Riley | April 15, 2008, 03:21 PM
Behavioral limitations

On the 10th of April, the Network Advertising Initiative floated some guidelines they'd like to use to make peace with the FTC and potentially with advocacy groups as well. I saw the New York Times write-up of the guidelines, which focused more on the cheekiness of the whole operation. Obviously anything that promises not to target people based on things like incontinence and death is a bad joke waiting to happen, but it is also so important to the future of online advertising. More personal information is known about individuals than ever before, and it's very valuable stuff...SO what to do?
Forget the laundry list of taboo subjects for now, today I'm thinking about their proposal for self-regulation.

The NAI includes all of the big networks, so they argue that self regulation is good enough. But why blow the whistle on a competitor if your own targeting has problems? These operations span many offices, hundreds of employees, and billions of impressions - so there is always a risk of a mistake.

The best solution is to create a combination of self-created technology and third party audit. Targeting technology is constantly evolving, so it would have to be the responsibility of each member to design its own monitoring system, then have it be approved by the third party, who would also perform random spot checks.

Advocacy groups should have access to the results of the checks and the ability to request audits for specific circumstances.

Emily Riley | April 14, 2008, 03:01 PM
Back to the grind

I am now officially back in action after 3 months of maternity leave. It seems that the report I wrote about the future of ad networks was timely to say the least - the uproar that is currently occuring over Yahoo proves how much is at stake.
I also hope that the new announcements around Platform A's leadership jumpstart that effort, as it is the closest to living the dream of the "new ad network."
I'd love to hear updates from everyone as I get myself back up and running.

Emily Riley | January 11, 2008, 04:28 PM
New Beginnings and a Brief Hiatus

2008 - A new year, a new chance to regroup and rethink our strategies. For me, it’s also a new beginning. Today is my last day before I go on maternity leave. (Wish me luck.) While I’m gone, my boss David Card, as well as the other members of our Marketing team will be filling in for me. We’ve also got some good reports in the hopper to tide you over, including the Category Advertising Forecast.
When I come back, I imagine not too much will have changed. Perhaps Google will own Doubleclick. Perhaps the writers strike will be over. Hopefully, one or more of the Big 4 will offer some great new options in the wake of their costly acquisitions in 2007. In any event, I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground, so send any interesting tidbits my way.

Emily Riley | January 03, 2008, 02:44 PM
2008 - Another Year, Another Crop of Viral Campaigns

Just as I was about to sit down and write out my prediction that fewer advertisers will spend money on obviously forced social marketing campaigns, I get an email that Chick-Fil-A is running a “make your own video” contest to find their biggest fan. Then, hours later, I read that McDonald’s has basically ripped off Ray Ban’s Wayfarer video with a viral video that depicts two cool dudes catching French fries in their mouths as they do cool dude type stuff. So maybe I was jumping the gun; a valuable thing to realize as we’re just getting ready to send out our Social Marketer Executive Survey, where we’ll get a great understanding of just how many marketers are still trying for instant word of mouth fame and fortune. I fear that there are many. Social Marketing is still very new to many marketers, but hopefully the learning curve will be fast. This coming year, we will be focusing not only the hype-y stuff like viral marketing and using widgets, but the evolution of brand advocacy, successful product launches, and how to deal with fragmented audiences. These last topics seem to me to be the ones with the lasting themes that will define the next phase of social marketing. In the mean time, I will keep my eye out for more viral shenanigans.

Emily Riley | December 21, 2007, 04:06 PM
More than one Googleclick

Now that the FTC has cleared Google’s acquisition of Doubleclick, we have only to wait for Europe and it will be a done deal. That makes it sound easy. In reality, Europe will probably be the toughest fight, particularly because much of the concern surrounding the deal is around privacy. For those who read John Lovett’s blog this week, note that Google already has plenty of places to track behavior, albeit all on Google properties. Doubleclick has the potential to expand that far beyond such boundaries. But I have to admit that I do see the FTC’s point that many other large properties have recently been allowed to acquire far reaching ad networks that provide similar opportunities. This week Microsoft announced its new partnership with Viacom, which will include replacing Viacom’s Doubleclick software with Atlas as well as an ad revenue deal. There is no reason why Microsoft can’t benefit from relationship the same way Googleclick would have if Viacom hadn’t made the switch.

Emily Riley | December 10, 2007, 09:15 PM
Writer’s Strike, Opportunity for New Video Formats?

With the TV writer’s strike likely to last into the new year, it has been noted that advertisers will be left with open ended budgets to re-allocate, not only for the rest of this season, but potentially into next season. The Jack Meyers report estimated $600 million at stake this season, most of which they predict will go into other TV forms including cable. Additionally, Mediaweek reported that NBC and others are starting to give refunds to advertisers in the case of low ratings, some checks reaching $500k or more. For networks with decent-sized web properties interested in keeping their money, it would seem that now would be a good time to push their Internet play to a new level. To be sure, many of them are trying, but there are still major obstacles to getting a one-season $500k advertiser budget to work on a single online web property, let alone multiple budgets of that size or more.
That advertisers have more money than they can spend is a good problem for publishers to have. While there isn’t nearly as much consumer video watching online as on TV, formats are small and content is light, there certainly is enough consumer activity online to warrant an attempt at filling the gap. I think publishers need to reassess the true value of their web properties in a time where TV is rapidly losing value.
The web needs a better case for offering impact, reach and frequency. Can the industry come up with ad formats that give more advertisers more inventory or more bang for their buck? I know Adify is trying that one. Is the full screen commercial taboo unless the user is watching Joost format video? Ultramercial has been quiet lately. And why is high frequency always a negative online? Anyone watching Sunday night football will know that “more is more” when it comes to frequency on TV lately. Maybe we have what we need after all.

Emily Riley | December 07, 2007, 04:05 PM
Building on the Social Network's Behavioral Targeting

It’s good to hear that MySpace is actually selling a serious chunk of advertising direct now, rather than through networks. According to a report on MediaWeek, 60 percent of MySpace’s inventory is now sold directly, 30 percent comes from Google, and only 10 percent goes through AdNetworks. The entertainment channels on MySpace are advertiser friendly, but the vast number of impressions on user’s profile pages is no more interesting than previously. For them to be at the 60 percent in-house mark, I am willing to guess that some of the direct response banner advertising that used to run through ad networks is simply direct now.
In order to really lock in big revenue growth in the future, MySpace may to need a breakthrough advertising system that makes the most of the long tail of low value impressions. Granted, MySpace was the first big social network to announce a new method of display targeting not so long ago, namely, categorizing influential groups into 10 or so large verticals. However, this is really the tip of the iceberg. Just because someone has a picture of a car on their page or says they like to travel doesn’t make them the ideal ad target. More recently, Facebook has grabbed the spotlight with their Social Ads, which allow for some level of ad targeting based on user generated content as well. Still, the targets are based on the networks someone belongs to and the preferences they state when registering. What I’d like to see is true UGC targeting that goes beyond contextual and looks more like next-generation behavioral. If the social networks make this play, they’ll go a long way to increasing their inventory’s value, but advertisers will still be limited to the one website. If behavioral targeting does evolve to include UGC across vast numbers of sites, it might need to be a behavioral or other banner network that does it. Many have some capability to monitor UGC and target against it, but no one has decided how to make it scalable or how to categorize such wide variations on themes.

Emily Riley | November 30, 2007, 04:19 PM
A few of my favorite ad formats

So it looks like Facebook took the criticism to heart and is altering their Beacon product to become opt-in. I definitely got plenty of eager calls asking if this will signal the downfall of the site, or if they will have to switch to a new business model. Their tenacity leads me to believe neither is the case. Again, my main concern is the growing clutter on the site.

In fact ad clutter is a top concern for online advertisers in general. With the increase in popularity of widgets, in-text advertising, and pre-roll ads with no frequency cap, it might seem like the problem is growing worse. Jupiter conservatively estimates that consumers see about 50 or 60 online ads per day. It sounds like a lot, but compared to television commercials, it’s not so crazy. The problem is that the ads are in so many formats, sometimes 5 or more to a page, that the messages seem to bombard a consumer from every angle. It makes sense: Many online studies have shown that consumers quickly learn to block out ads that appear in the same spot from page to page, like with banners on the perimeter. Efforts to counteract the effect such as blinking or trick banners have long gone by the wayside. So what’s a decent online advertiser to do other than test a lot of new formats? I say that as an industry we need to select a more limited number of formats that might be more intrusive at first, but will be able to streamline the media buying process and reduce clutter on websites.
My favorites include:
Interstitials: I think nytimes.com does a good interstitial. It’s like a “content commercial” that consumers should be able to deal with at a broader level, especially when navigating to content that they already know is valuable. I think it will have to be necessary to make consumers sit through it, with no “close” button feature.
Across the page banners: Forget the 728x90 at the top of the page, bring a full horizontal banner into the middle of the page.
Ad supported widgets: If publishers are forced to offer content in widgets, they will need to earn a living.
Mid-roll and expanding ticker video ads: Pre-roll is fine for long content from the networks, but consumers grow wary of waiting for a video to load if they don’t know what they are going to see such as with UGV.

Things that need work:
Rollover expandable banners: A mouse-over is not a click. (User initiated rollover is great, however.)
Floating ads: Publishers need more discretion here. The coolness factor weighs heavily with me when determining if it’s annoying or OK.
In-text ads: I am a firm believer in keeping “church” and “state” separate.

Emily Riley | November 21, 2007, 03:52 PM
Improving Behavioral Targeting for Consumers

MoveOn.org is collecting signatures to require Facebook’s new Beacon advertising platform to be opt-in for all purchase notifications (currently it’s opt-out.) Purchase behavior is pretty personal, so that makes sense to me. I don’t agree that all behaviors on Beacon should be opt-in, however.
In related news, not much seems to be coming out of the FTC talks around behavioral targeting, although Google’s battle for Doubleclick may increase the momentum. After recently talking to Steve Smith at OMMA about the privacy issues surrounding behavioral targeting, it became evident to me that in order to be effective over the long term, marketers will need to come to some sort of agreement with consumers sooner rather than later. While consumers today are not necessarily worried about behavioral targeting (only about 4 percent are worried about websites spying on them,) as targeting becomes more accurate, and therefore more intrusive, users may begin to take note. Facebook’s Beacon is an example; reporting purchase behavior to other friends as a way of advertising might be crossing the line of helpful and intrusive. Similarly, targeting users based on their own posted content regarding personal financial or health issues seems to be pretty intrusive. I’m not an advocate of 100 percent opt-in. Not only would the pool of data shrink, perhaps to extremely small levels, but users would probably be opting out of an overall better advertising mix. Instead, I think that in matters of money, health (including sex and dating), and family, users should be prompted to opt in, while all other product research and general content browsing behavior should be automatically used with a potential opt-out that’s located at the level of the website or network. Just as importantly, I think the issue of clutter needs to be addressed. One reason why marketers are so eager to use new forms of behavioral targeting is to counteract the terribly low response rates on the banner ads across social sites. If we could reduce clutter due to high impression levels, a lot of the problem might be solved on its own.

Emily Riley | November 07, 2007, 02:38 PM
Facebook's Social Ads

It seems that the most high profile announcement so far this week was the new Facebook advertising platform. I had the good fortune to not only attend but to moderate a panel that was filled with flagship advertisers. The hype surrounding the event was a little over the top, but I do think that their new offering is a kinder, gentler way for advertisers to “join the conversation” on social media. Essentially, advertisers bid on the rights to send targeted ads to Facebook users - who can through the ads - become “fans” of the product or brand. Once they are fans, information will be sent to their own friends through the Facebook feeds. Through a few different options (called “Pages” and “Beacon”) advertisers can create their own fully working profile page complete with widgets as well as offer some Facebook feed information to be sent from their own pages based on fan activity. Ebay is an early Beacon partner, which allows for long term opportunities for “fans” to alert their friends whenever they have something for sale on the site, for example. When used wisely, the features can actually be very practical. For example, being able to buy the same movie ticket as a friend you plan to go out with on Saturday. Some advertisers will have to try harder than others to generate their initial fan base. Obviously movies, games and the like will spread more easily than financial services. But in the face of that, Chase is actually one of the first advertisers, and made a good point: For the money, even if the reach stays relatively small, the interactions are genuine and not easily replicated with any other form of advertising at this point.
For the record, Facebook also will allow for much more interesting targeting, not just on initial registration information like demographics, but also stated likes and dislikes, etc.

Emily Riley | November 02, 2007, 07:06 PM
Anticipating AdTech

The agenda for AdTech New York has a definite bent towards social media and consumer experience this go around. It looks like the industry might be tired of too much tech speak and is happy to connect with their touchy-feely side. There are also more brand advertisers online than ever before. A consumer-centric approach to marketing and media is definitely a good move forward for the web, but I am hoping to learn about ways in which more dollars will exchange hands as a result, as so much in the social marketing space is either free or really cheap. I also expect to hear about even more emerging social networking startups now that Google and MySpace are working together on the OpenSocial platform, which will essentially allow for easier application development. Stay tuned.

At AdTech, I will be moderating a panel called 360 Degree Measurement (again with the consumer-centric idea.) The panel includes both the buy and sell side so the discussion should be pretty comprehensive. It won’t be all touchy-feely of course, we’ll also be looking at what it takes for marketers and publishers to be able to compare campaign results across media buys, and to get away from the “last click” standard (attribution management is gaining momentum.) Ominiture has been vacuuming up competitors and compatible technologies lately. Perhaps they can steal the limelight from Atlas and Doubleclick?

Emily Riley | October 26, 2007, 08:11 PM
Takeaways from Nielsen's CGM Event

I’ve been traveling lately, and will be for another few weeks. But I did have time to go to the Nielsen BuzzMetrics CGM conference yesterday. Both Fox and CBS were on the publisher panel, and agreed that for media companies, social sites and features are optimal ways to spread word of mouth, but also to get consumer feedback. I was heartened to know that outcry about cancelled shows is actually listened to. Meebo’s Martin Green had a nice observation that today social content is a lot like a collection of post-it notes. Hopefully one day it will become “live;” as in IM, phone, something else?

The other side of the fence included some very large brands as well as Naked, a strategic marketing firm. Both Toyota and Sony considered themselves cutting edge for having a corporate blog. It seemed that for them, internal politics were the biggest barriers, but that executives were fascinated by consumer feedback once they were in place. Naked’s Noah Brier admitted that some products don’t inspire passion, and that associating with a wider subject can help that. He even mentioned lackluster hand soap but neglected to cite Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty as a case in point.

Les Izdebski, who runs the advertising group at Cisco mentioned a great example of the increased circle of influence that comes as a result of social marketing that Adidas gave at the ARF conference. They were able to measure that while about 600,000 people downloaded design elements to put on their MySpace pages from a recent campaign, those elements were seen by over 20 million people. This allows one to start thinking about social marketing campaigns in terms of the same reach as an inexpensive banner campaigns (sometimes.) I hope they have more of an impact.

Emily Riley | October 26, 2007, 08:11 PM
Takeaways from Nielsen's CGM Event

I’ve been traveling lately, and will be for another few weeks. But I did have time to go to the Nielsen BuzzMetrics CGM conference yesterday. Both Fox and CBS were on the publisher panel, and agreed that for media companies, social sites and features are optimal ways to spread word of mouth, but also to get consumer feedback. I was heartened to know that outcry about cancelled shows is actually listened to. Meebo’s Martin Green had a nice observation that today social content is a lot like a collection of post-it notes. Hopefully one day it will become “live;” as in IM, phone, something else?

The other side of the fence included some very large brands as well as Naked, a strategic marketing firm. Both Toyota and Sony considered themselves cutting edge for having a corporate blog. It seemed that for them, internal politics were the biggest barriers, but that executives were fascinated by consumer feedback once they were in place. Naked’s Noah Brier admitted that some products don’t inspire passion, and that associating with a wider subject can help that. He even mentioned lackluster hand soap but neglected to cite Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty as a case in point.

Les Izdebski, who runs the advertising group at Cisco mentioned a great example of the increased circle of influence that comes as a result of social marketing that Adidas gave at the ARF conference. They were able to measure that while about 600,000 people downloaded design elements to put on their MySpace pages from a recent campaign, those elements were seen by over 20 million people. This allows one to start thinking about social marketing campaigns in terms of the same reach as an inexpensive banner campaigns (sometimes.) I hope they have more of an impact.

Emily Riley | October 26, 2007, 08:11 PM
Takeaways from Nielsen's CGM Event

I’ve been traveling lately, and will be for another few weeks. But I did have time to go to the Nielsen BuzzMetrics CGM conference yesterday. Both Fox and CBS were on the publisher panel, and agreed that for media companies, social sites and features are optimal ways to spread word of mouth, but also to get consumer feedback. I was heartened to know that outcry about cancelled shows is actually listened to. Meebo’s Martin Green had a nice observation that today social content is a lot like a collection of post-it notes. Hopefully one day it will become “live;” as in IM, phone, something else?

The other side of the fence included some very large brands as well as Naked, a strategic marketing firm. Both Toyota and Sony considered themselves cutting edge for having a corporate blog. It seemed that for them, internal politics were the biggest barriers, but that executives were fascinated by consumer feedback once they were in place. Naked’s Noah Brier admitted that some products don’t inspire passion, and that associating with a wider subject can help that. He even mentioned lackluster hand soap but neglected to cite Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty as a case in point.

Les Izdebski, who runs the advertising group at Cisco mentioned a great example of the increased circle of influence that comes as a result of social marketing that Adidas gave at the ARF conference. They were able to measure that while about 600,000 people downloaded design elements to put on their MySpace pages from a recent campaign, those elements were seen by over 20 million people. This allows one to start thinking about social marketing campaigns in terms of the same reach as an inexpensive banner campaigns (sometimes.) I hope they have more of an impact.

Emily Riley | October 08, 2007, 05:03 PM
Marketing for Global Warming - a twist

Well it’s another lovely 80 degree day in New York. That would be great if it were, say, August, but it’s October (let's just go with the assumption that this is being caused by global warming for the sake of this post.) As a result of the warming frenzy, a lot of marketers have been careful to show how earth friendly they are. But global warming is causing another issue with marketing. The marketing coming out for the changing seasons obviously hasn’t been updated for the heat wave. I was in a gas station last week where the temp was in the mid 90’s but the loudspeaker invited people fueling up to “Warm up with a coffee drink or hot chocolate.” Weather.com is already promoting their “ski forecasts” for the east coast. I know they can do geo-targeting, and us New Yorkers are still looking for beach updates. I hope that marketers catch up soon, because they just serve to remind me what I'm missing about Fall.

Anyway, in the spirit of such earth-oriented talk, here is a link to sign up to stop receiving another kind of bad marketing - junk mail – a VERY SIMPLE way to start feeling better about yourself and your “carbon footprint.” http://www.ecocycle.org/junkmail/index.cfm

Emily Riley | September 26, 2007, 09:51 PM
Quotes from OMMA and MIXX

I got to run back and forth between OMMA and MIXX on Monday as many did this week. I saw a lot of the same companies, although MIXX does bill itself as more advertiser and agency friendly. I can’t say I noticed a huge difference. Both events had a dose of measurement and technology and a big heaping of social marketing. Among the interesting things I heard in no particular order were:

- “In order to evaluate the quality of consumer generated content, you need real eyeballs looking at it on a regular basis. If you are in charge of a brand, don’t expect your partners to do this for you.” I would argue that a good buzz monitoring service can do this for you as well, but its always a good idea to keep your finger on the pulse, although NOT to make overarching decisions if its not significant data.
- “Leverage a small group of contributors to a UGC campaign into a much larger brand campaign by interviewing sweeps winners, allowing large audiences to vote, etc.” Especially if you are paying a pretty penny to set up a very involved contest on a big brand site (such as CondeNet.)
- “This is the best time ever to be a content creator.” As this was spoken by someone from a major TV network who was asked about how fearful he was of YouTube and other sites taking eyeballs and ad dollars away from him, it was poignant….I’ll give him the “free PR” angle, its true that those sites spread awareness of new shows. However, as for the “best time ever,” I’m assuming he knows a way to make money from third party sites that he hasn’t told us about.
- “Unfortunately there is still a major problem with quality control in the affiliate space.” As long as advertisers pay for leads without discounting for bad quality, I think this will continue to be the case.
- “Predictive modeling is the next generation of behavioral targeting.” I would love that to be true. If you have a good technology that can also provide reach, give me a call.
- “80 percent of publisher server data is wrong.” Spoken by Magid Abraham of comScore. Needless to say Omniture begged to differ.

The overall themes that panelists spoke about included the need for careful planning and standard measurement in the social space particularly, ways to target potential customers that cut through the clutter, and general fear. Specific fears included the fragmentation of content, loss of control over brand, and ad immunity, all major themes coming up for Jup in 2008.

Emily Riley | September 19, 2007, 10:11 PM
Pangea Day and Platform A

Avenue A, for a special charity project, released a video on YouTube for their PangeaDay event, which invites international filmmakers to submit entries that will be broadcast around the world. The video has gotten almost 300k views over the course of the last week. Within the same time period, the crying Britney Spears fan has gotten almost 8 million views. So I wonder, what does success mean in this case? 300k sounds like a lot to me, but not compared to 8 million. Should we all hope to be the next creepy crying teenager?

In other news, AOL announced their newly formed Platform A. AOL has so far done reasonably well keeping their acquisitions (Ad.com, Lightningcast, 3rd Screen Media) at arm’s length while simultaneously allowing them to cross-sell for each other. Platform A takes these companies and incorporates an ad-server (Adtech) and another network (Tacoda) - becoming a slightly ungainly collection of media and technology. (Comparisons to MSFT/aQuantive anyone?) I would like it a lot more if Adtech weren’t included and it was simply a cross-media network. I’m just not sure how AOL’s newly aggregated sales teams will be selling so much stuff, and how much they will service their giant owner vs. their 3rd party advertisers and publishers. The best scenario currently would be to simply allow the new aggregate network use AOL’s inventory and ignore Adtech. If AOL could manage more premium inventory, then package deals for brand advertisers and great behavioral targeting could up the ante.

Emily Riley | September 12, 2007, 04:13 PM
Brand advertisers get their day

Many of my most recent briefings have been with companies who are focused on making online advertising more enticing to brand advertisers. I don’t think there is a pattern yet though; each seems to be focusing on a different need and offering a different solution. I’m probably most excited about MySpace’s new offering, since it breathes some life into the puffy and overtired social network category. MySpace has done a comprehensive keyword categorization of member-posted content and found enthusiasts in ten major verticals (travel, auto, etc.) They now allow advertisers to target banners to these groups as they move around the site. The offer, currently in a “charter period” with about 40 advertisers, really does seem to target only the most enthusiastic MySpacers, but still manages good reach.
Next up, Glam.com showed us their ad strategy, which is really the opposite of a massive free-for-all site like MySpace. They’re one of the very few sites out there that refuses all performance based (i.e. non-premium brand) advertisers. They have decided to take the high road and model themselves after top tier fashion magazines, where the advertising itself helps define the entire brand. Sure, they still use banner ads, but they’ve managed to convince luxury goods, couture and cosmetics companies to pony up, so it seems like its working.
Finally, a technology company called Traffiq. These guys bill themselves as an exchange (currently in beta,) but are really more like a contract management platform with a bidding structure. They allow sites to join and publicly offer slots on their sites, which advertisers can browse and bid for. It has the same appeal as Atlas or MediaVisor rolled up with site panel data, pricing, and other important bits of info. If many good publishers choose to offer their inventory, it could improve the lives of media planners everywhere.

Emily Riley | September 06, 2007, 03:39 PM
Yahoo strikes again

The buying spree continues with Yahoo!’s acquisition of Blue Lithium. Is Right Media really three times more valuable? Anyway, now with a real network which has publisher relationships and behavioral targeting in addition to the Right Media exchange, Yahoo! might be in good shape. They are definitely in need of better monetization of their banner impressions, especially on Yahoo! Mail (no contextual targeting there like g-mail.) They can now use external behaviors to improve targeting. And to carry on a theme that I’ve heard from their biggest competitors, someone is going to be serving all of the ads out there eventually, so no one wants to think it won’t be them.
The major purchases by all the big portals have served to take the spotlight away from social networking sites and plant it squarely on technology companies. Based on where the money is made, this is certainly reasonable. Social networks are still struggling with how to make their impressions worth more, and relying on the expertise of the networks in the mean-time.

Emily Riley | August 29, 2007, 02:55 PM
Not McDonald's best effort

I got my first viral ad on Facebook yesterday, and can’t say that I was overly impressed with it, although I hardly blame Facebook. It looked sort of like a friend request from a guy named Dan, with a nice little image and a note in my feed. When I clicked to check it out (knowing full well it was an ad from the start - not a bad thing,) I got to a microsite featuring “Chef Dan” from McDonalds. The layout and copy were advertising the rewarding careers at McD’s, and looked like the designer simply scanned in a pamphlet from 1986. There was little to interact with, although there was a small, seemingly unrelated quiz at the bottom asking “Who is your mentor?” Now, Dan really did seem to have a pretty cool job designing new 700 calorie burgers and the like (check out Card’s blog today) for the masses, but I am hardly the right target audience for a McDonald’s careers ad. Not only do I not want to be a chef there, but there was no incentive to forward it along or truly interact.

Facebook has actually done a good job of encouraging viral advertising on their site. Not only is their widget platform open to all takers, but their feed system is subtle and easy to manage if you don’t want to be bothered. In fact, in order to rid their widgets of opportunists, they have even taken steps to eliminate such things as automated emails or massive friending. Sadly, it doesn’t look like every advertiser knows how to take advantage of the process yet.