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Same Worn Out Answer: YES, Networks Matter

Written on
Jun 18, 2008 
Author
Kathleen  |
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Same Worn Out Answer: YES, Networks Matter

breakingnews.jpgADOTAS – Wenda Harris Millard’s warning that “We must not trade our advertising inventory like pork bellies” at an IAB conference in February launched an industry-wide discussion about the value of inventory and the industry sectors (networks, publishers and agencies) that manage it. The debate was continued at yesterday’s OMMA Publish program.

Millard, the newly minted co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia moderated a spirited discussion with five other industry vets that addressed the all-encompassing question: “Publishers and Ad Networks: Can This Marriage Be Saved?” and a host of other woes facing the online advertising industry.

“Is technology enough to sell an ad?” Millard asked at the beginning of the discussion. She posed another question: What’s more important — art or science?, adding that the oodles of inventory flooding the market (thanks to blogs and social networks) has made monetizing online ads a bigger challenge than ever. As cyberspace expands exponentially and the economy contracts, it’s clear that publishers and ad networks need to either oust one party out of the ad-selling ring or find common ground if they want to bring home the pork bellies, er, bacon.

The speakers – Brad Davis, SVP of online sales at Disney Online; Jarvis Coffin, co-founder and CEO of Burst Media; Matthew Boyd, SVP at ValueClick Media; Ed Montes, EVP and managing director at Havas Digital and Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com – were obviously betting on different horses in the game.

As employees of ad networks, Coffin and Boyd were rooting for networks, stressing their unparalleled ability to target (“it’s all about hyper-targeting,” Coffin said), build and maintain existing relationships and get their inventory up pretty much anywhere online.

Boyd also boosted the importance of art or branding, saying that technology is not a panacea for the industry’s ills.

“Thinking of technology as a solution is a problem because it’s completely disconnected from consumers,” Boyd said, adding that a brand’s value can’t play second fiddle to science and that relationships are king in the advertising industry.

Some publishers aren’t buying the spiel, forming internal staffs to handle advertising, and making do without the networks’ help. Forbes.com, of course, is one of the publishers heading down this route.

“Ad networks need to re-evaluate how things are planned” and sold, Spanfeller said, near the end of the discussion. For Forbes, providing “value for our users, advertisers and publishers,” is part and parcel of their recent restructuring.

Agencies, of course, are cast as the concerned child of separation, watching on in horror as publishers and networks battle it out. “I haven’t been home in three weeks,” Montes exclaimed, to groans of sympathy from the crowd.

“The biggest challenge is adapting to and using technology,” he added. “Traditional agencies weren’t set up” for the quickly shifting online market, forcing them to lean on one-stop networks when they’d prefer to stand on their own.

But don’t count agencies out, Montes said, adding that as they’ve increasingly manned up on the tech side, they’ve watched networks face the same kind of competition from search engines that agencies once faced from networks. “Yahoo is the world’s largest ad network,” Montes said, grinning.

Major and minor disagreements aside about whether art of science should take the lead in designing and executing a campaign, everyone agreed on one thing: the industry still has a lot to learn when it came to leveraging ad networks and online advertising exchanges in the most fiscally beneficial way possible.

But, the execs made it sound like with a little counseling and a lot more open communication, the marriage can be saved after all. Which is basically the same conclusion the industry reached circa 1997: YES networks still have “a lot to offer” in the marketplace.





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