Ajax Puts Web Ad Sales in Peril
I ran a couple of sessions for a major publisher the other day on new business models under ‘web2.0′ (or “the modern web” as I’m now taking to called the webinet: not sure what the ‘post-modern web’ will be, though…). Now isn’t the time to cover those new business models, rather I was thinking over the very real concern over the maintenance of the current ad sales revenues while the new options build up.
The Mediaweek article gives a good summary of the position and concerns, but overall is too ‘hands in the air’ for my liking. There’s an opportunity for media and retail property owners to work more closely with brands and advertisers to investigate the value points in the customer cycle and to then divvy up the proceeds accordingly.
The following quotation sums up “old think”:
Some buyers say that regardless of how the Web is sold, all that matters is that their clients’ ads are seen. “Everyone in our industry is very focused on scale and impressions,” said Alan Schanzer, managing partner, MEC Interaction. “Until we have real-time measurement of engagement for brand ads, I want to know that my target audience is spending time on a page that displays my ad.”
ie ‘never mind whether the ad converts to sales or actions – just so long as it’s waved in front of people’s eyes’.
If anything shows the unsustainability of our current model it’s a quote like this. We’ve measured hits and page impressions simply because we could, and build an inference of value and inference upon these metrics. There’s no substitute for sales information, though, and a combination of campaign-level ROI tracking and improved measures of “influence” will in time make page/hit tracking as antiquated as the belief, prior to anaesthetic, that the pain of the operation kept patients alive. Indeed.
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Comments
One Comment so far. Leave a comment below.Unfortunately it’s not always as simple as ROI – banners etc are about more than direct marketing, there’s also a strong branding element.
Or so I get told by marketeers when I complain about them spending more on traffic aquisition than we make from selling that traffic…
If you’re trying to build or maintain brand awareness then your KPI isn’t leads or sales.Particularly key for FMCG advertisers for example, who aren’t selling their frozen peas or soft drinks online.
But I think we’re in agreement in hoping CPM stops being the standard ad currency soon… In theory “eyeball minutes” would be a good metric for anything not sales or lead based (which should really be CPC or CPA).