Every day the internet universe grows larger and larger. The low cost of entry and the proliferation of tools to create content and share it with others, allows everyone from your grandma to your younger sister to use the web. We have all been hit over the head with the overwhelming stats and daily reports of broadband penetration and increased internet usage by almost every demographic. With the proliferation of PVR, DVR, TiVo, Brand advertisers and marketers are rightly concerned about their ability to use traditional broadcast and cable networks, print, radio and outdoor to reach their audience and get their message seen and heard.
In the past six months in my talks with brand managers and heads of marketing at Fortune 100 companies, there is a pervasive concern about what to do with the web. They all concede privately, and some more publicly, that a greater and greater percentage of their marketing budgets are moving online. This is great news for our industry.
As more money moves online, where do advertisers spend it? They will obviously continue to buy media on larger portals, branded web destinations like MTVOnline, iVillage, etc., but there is a limit to inventory on insular destinations, which in turn produces pricing pressure. So these larger web properties have two choices: raise CPMs and minimum budgets or continue to acquire and gobble up smaller web sites and then package and sell them under one "branded" corporate moniker. These conglomerated web destinations can continue to advertise and market themselves at a price cheaper than they can sell ad inventory to brand advertisers, thereby arbitraging the acquisition of audience around the web and the sale of brand advertising on their destination. However, they can not keep pace with the advertising dollars spent online and the demand by advertisers and marketers to use the web to effectively reach broader and broader audiences where they truly live and breath -- across the long tail of the internet.
The ever expanding long tail of the internet.
Traditional ad networks have always been a play on the long tail, delivering ads run-of-network (RON), with no transparency to the advertiser and little share of voice or integration of the advertiser's messaging within the context of the web sites they distribute across. Search has been a very effective way to bring the long tail to the advertiser, but in a low impact manner of messaging. Both ad products are great for direct response and performance-based advertisers and marketers.
AOL may acquire WebBlogs, Fox may acquire an IGN or a MySpace, but at the end of the day they are still limited, to a certain degree, in terms of providing true reach across varied demographical or psychographical targets, share of voice, integration, etc. They can still only sell so many sites, into so many brand media buys for only so many dollars. An advertiser or their agency (especially) is never going to spend all of their money with one vendor, even if that vendor's name is Yahoo! or AOL. In a universe as broad as the web, with as much fragmentation and user disloyalty as there is, it is very difficult for large web conglomerates to be the "all in one" solution or a one-stop shop for every brand advertiser or marketer.
With the introduction of Google's Ad Sense display ad program, Google is attempting to bring the long tail to brand advertisers. Others need to and will follow. However contextual the advertising may be (and that is subject to heated debate), this ad product still does not deliver transparency of ad placement, guaranteed share of voice and true integration (sponsorship, advertorial, promotions) that brand advertisers so desire. The text of a webpage, in many instances, does not accurately reflect a site's true demographic. A quiz site may have a thousand different quizzes that deal with a myriad of topics form love, hate, cars, pets, etc., but audience still is female 13-20. Do Google or other contextual ad products accurately get the advertiser's message in front of that audience? I don't think so.
Brand advertisers need and demand share of voice, integration of message with content, media and promotional opportunities that connect the message with an audience in a way that will improve brand association, brand retention and purchase intent. This is difficult to do if you are not working closely with a publisher and "building" a media and promotional program. Web publishers, or the firms that represent them and the products that seek to effectively reach across them, need to be able to deliver on these key branding metrics. Our firm, Gorilla Nation Media, has for years been providing brand advertisers with reach, ad visibility, optimization and integrated media and promotional opportunities across fragmented audiences online. Whether an advertiser is buying MTVOnline, ESPN or IGN, they are buying it for each property's ability to deliver reach, share of voice, and integration that delivers on these brand metrics. It is possible to deliver on these critical brand metrics while representing or delivering reach across the long tail of the internet.
The majority of ad products in the marketplace leverage technology to efficiently connect the advertiser with the consumer. Some of these products manage to do so in a highly contextual environment. This is good. However, because they are predominately a technical versus service play, they all fail to deliver the type of high impact display advertisements in a manner that brand advertisers are accustomed to. Without having true control over the publisher and the webpage, these various ad products, whether Google' Ad Sense, Revenue Science, Kontera, Claria, etc., have no ability to guarantee an advertiser share of voice, provide advertorial or other integrated promotional programs or even high impact rich media opportunities.
The brand dollars are coming, are you ready to answer their call? Everyone wants a piece of the brand pie, but is your company prepared to overhaul or reengineer itself to service the demands of brand advertisers. If your business is a play on the long tail, then you better look at how you are managing inventory, servicing clients and delivering relevant, high impact campaigns.
Prior to founding Gorilla Nation Media in 2000, Brian Fitzgerald was an Intellectual Property attorney practising in Los Angeles, representing small to large film production and distribution company, music companies and talent, dealing wth copyright, trademark, contractual and litigation issues.
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