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ADOTAS Conversations: Henry Vogel, Chief Revenue Officer, Quigo

Written on
February 13th 2007
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Why would a publisher want to be part of AdSonar?

Our AdSonar private-label platform simply makes them more money. Our publishers — especially the tier one, branded sites with quality traffic that we focus on — will make more money because advertisers will bid up the prices to be on their premium sites and connect with their high value traffic. We call this the ‘bid-to-brand’ effect. In contrast, when publishers are bundled into a blind network where advertisers can only bid on a keyword or group of categories and don’t know on which sites or pages their ads will be placed, they simply bid less because they have less certainty and no ability to optimize their returns.

We also help our publishers build a strategic asset and own their advertiser relationships. With almost every other ad network, the third party — whether it’s Google, Yahoo! or any number of others — sits in the middle between the publisher, advertiser and user. So, they own the advertiser relationships and all the insight and advantages that come from that. By outsourcing their performance marketing programs to these third parties, publishers get a check, but little else. They don’t build a longer-lasting strategic asset in one of the most important and fastest-growing segments of online advertising.

AdSonar provides publishers with a platform and enables them to own the advertiser relationship. Publishers can promote and sell into the program themselves. And, they can build experience and gain a tremendous amount of insight such as which advertisers are bidding to their sites, what budgets they set, which placements interested them, how consumers respond to their advertising and perhaps most importantly, what unspent budget they have.

Based on these insights and direct relationships, publishers can cross-sell and up sell other offerings. They can also inform their content strategy. Unlike the traditional media model where, like in Field of Dreams, companies “build it and hoped the advertisers come,” media companies can build new areas, promote various sections of their site, license additional content, etc. all with the knowledge beforehand that they have advertisers ready, willing and capable of monetizing those new properties. They can be profitable from day one.

Last, but not least, we aspire and believe we provide publishers a capable and committed partner with whom to innovate. Whether its new ad forms such as video, new performance pricing models, new distribution vehicles, or placement and aesthetic yield optimization, we focus on understanding our partners’ needs and aligning our innovation road map to address them.

What are the advertising benefits of listing with an AdSonar publisher?

We are often compared to other contextual networks like Google’s AdSense or Yahoo1’s content match, so let’s look at the differences. First, with the vast majority of our publishers, Quigo’s AdSonar network is the only way to buy content-targeted cost-per-click advertising on those sites. So if you want to buy on a cost-per-click basis on ESPN.com, FoxNews, CareerBuilder, any of over 150 local or regional newspapers like the Chicago Tribune, Newsday or The Houston Chronicle, or on any of the hundreds of other premium sites in our network, Quigo’s AdSonar is the only way to go.

Second, as we talked about, with Quigo, advertisers know exactly where their ads will run since they can bid on specific sites by keyword or pages or content sections (such as real estate). As a result they can more effectively optimize their results and get very highly qualified leads and customers. It may cost them a little more to generate that lead, but the higher conversion ends up delivering much better returns. And lastly, we pride ourselves on our full service account management and simple buying process. Because we also have an SEM business that buys advertising on our network and many others for hundreds of marketers, we know what the pain points are and how to help. Whether an advertiser has a problem or just wants help optimizing their campaign, they have a real person with expert knowledge who can help.

What key trends and challenges do you see regarding search and auction-based advertising in 2007? Who else offers auction-based, pay-per-click advertising and can you give us some sense of the size of the overall market compared to display advertising or search?

In terms of online advertising key trends in 2007, I see four key themes. Many are not new, but rather accelerations of or trends that will finally reach critical mass:

1. Online Advertising will Continue to Explode: online advertising in all its forms will continue gaining share of marketing budgets as the gap between audience/consumption and online spend continues to narrow. Advertising dollars follow the audience. And, consumers are increasingly time shifting, place shifting and device shifting where and how they consume their information and communicate — it’s all moving to a digital form that’s largely Internet enabled and in some fashion online.

2. Performance Marketing will become the standard: auction-based, highly targeted and performance-based pricing (cost per click, per call, per action,) advertising should become the plurality and probably the majority of online advertising spend in 2007. Marketers — whether brand equity builders or direct response advertisers — are increasingly sophisticated in measuring the value and returns they achieve from their marketing mix. They will continue to demand performance-marketing mechanisms across their online campaigns — search, contextual, or display.

3. Online Local and Video Advertising come of Age: sight, sound and motion will gain critical mass in terms of technology enablement, audience and advertiser adoption and targeting will become truly local.

4. Publishers Taking Back Control: in many respects, this is part of an evolution that’s been happening for the last 10 years. Large media companies have gone from experimenting online to growing via outsourcing to now realizing that they need to own their online advertising relationships and assets. Online is now material enough to their businesses and their futures for that to happen.

More specifically and related to our offering, I’d say there are several other companies out there that are attacking these trends and purport to offer what we do, but none of them have the same technology, approach or team that we do. Our staff comes from companies like Yahoo!, Time, Inc., eBay, PayPal, Avenue A|Razorfish, CNET, NBCi Snap, Juno/United Online, and most have advance degrees. And, we have a passion for performance marketing.

There are lots of different estimates and forecasts for the size of the market. Without succumbing to any late 90s-type hyperbole, I think it’s fair to say that online advertising overall is exploding and performance-marketing is the fastest growing and most dynamic segment of the market. It’s a very large, multi-billion dollar market. And most importantly, I think we’re still only in the early innings of the game. With the continued advances in targeting and optimization technology and new and ever-more engaging ways to connect with and offer value to consumers, we’re excited to be participating in this market.



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