Category: Display
-
Singularity: AdTech and MarTech are Converging
Owners of first-party data are pioneering new and different sets of technical solutions to old advertising and marketing use cases. It is merging two markets previously separate, together as one. The results are expected to be something the industry has been waiting almost two decades for. A step-change in performance of digital marketing and advertising.…
-
The Decade of Display That Wasn’t 2007 – 2017
Act I: Crank That The year was 2007. Ten years ago. Microsoft bought aQuantive for $6.3B. Google bought DoubleClick for $3.1B. Yahoo bought Right Media for $680M. Display was poised to take massive amounts of advertising dollars from television over the next decade and become the dominant form of advertising. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo were…
-
Autumn for Digital Publishers…and Everything After
The digital media world was a rocked yesterday by news that Buzzfeed is going to miss revenue targets by 20% and Mashable was sold for $50M when its valuation last year was $250M. What is going on? The short answer is a lot. Buzzfeed is actually right in their statement where they put blame on…
-
End of the CPM Experiment
The flag bearer of display advertising was always Yahoo. Their massive sales force stoked 15 years of equity into “the web banner.” Yahoo arguably had the greatest hand in providing the economic foundation for the entire web for many of its formative years. That is why nothing better symbolizes the collapse of that foundation better…
-
Defending the Future of Mobile Ads
The first time I read Fred Wilson’s Mobile is Where the Growth Is I was disturbed. I commented. Not what I really wanted to say but I said something. The second time I read it I had to write a blog response. Now I agree there’s a shift happening. But… This is unknown. Foursquare hasn’t…
-
Talkin’ 2011 Publisher Revenue Blues
"Well, I finally started thinkin' straightWhen I run outta things to investigate." -Bob Dylan It’s been a while since I’ve posted here at Optimize and Prophesize and even longer since I posted regularly. As has been the tradition here in all but my first year blogging in 2006, I provide a yearly recap of my…
-
Building the Greenfields of Display
1990 marked 1 million cellular phones in the U.S. (there are over 300 million today). To support these phones the first cellular networks were created using very tall towers to operate. The purpose was to transmit large “cells” that could cover as wide an area as possible so subscribers could connect with the network. But…
-
Ad Wars 2011: The Publisher Empire Strikes Back
Intent is Timing When you mention the word intent in online advertising circles the first thought is invariably Search. Of course Search has thrived as a destination site for intent but intent is not generated in Search. Intent is generated many other places and is moved to Search. Most of all for advertisers, Search is…
-
CTR is the Web
My friend Darren Herman has reinitiated a debate about the validity of Click Through Rate (CTR) as an online advertising metric. On his blog he posted a great collection of quotes he obtained on the subject from some brilliant industry people. It's an important read. Interesting to me, of the 9 people asked only 1 was…
-
The Web is Not an Ad Supported Medium
The web is the greatest marketing channel ever created but there is incredible irony in that. It was not created as a marketing channel. In fact, understanding that fact and even leveraging it is one of the best strategies you can undertake in online marketing. Seth Godin said it best two years ago and I’ve…
-
Unlocking the True Value of Digital with User Flows
From 2003-2005 I spent a lot of time observing people of all ages and walks of life use the web across many different sites and verticals. I watched their facial expressions and body language as they surfed. I watched their mouse movements and the locations of their clicks. I asked them to put their brains…
-
Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Segmentation in the Age of Data Objects
Almost everyday of the past 12 years I’ve looked at web analytic data. It’s never been a completely satisfying experience. Log files don’t paint a vivid picture and javascript’s palette of data points is often a mess. At the end of the day, it is all “just numbers.” It doesn’t tell me what to do.…
-
Search’s Long Tail Rising
“When they kick out your front door, how you gonna come? With your hands on your head, or on the trigger of your gun?” Last week Google confirmed changes to their natural Search algorithm. In short, by giving more weight to site authority in the algo, long tail Search traffic should begin to rise for…
-
Display Advertising’s New Wave
This week I was supposed to be in Amsterdam giving a presentation at Sanoma Uitegevers MediaParade event. As luck would have it a volcano erupted and forced me to cancel the trip. Below is the presentation I was really excited to give. It’s 45 minute talk, history lesson, state of the union and crystal ball…
-
The Market Value of Supply Side Data
AdExchanger had a nice post from TRAFFIQ’s Scott Portugal about publishers using a Value-per-Customer metric for site visitors. As longtime readers know, I’ve been advocating publishers take this approach and measure site performance on revenue per visitor for years – most recently here. I especially liked this part of Scott’s post: “users interaction with a site…
Optimize & Prophesize 