This is great data if you’re a display advertiser trying to understand the full value of your display ads to help guide your ad budget.

If:
1. You buck the trend and get your Display’s creative mojo back (which I believe you bucking can).

2. You rethink your creative, tech, and production options BEFORE you spend a media nickel.

You re-read Emily Steel’s around-the-corner WSJ piece (5.6.09, Marketplace) on display advertising about to have their bandages unwrapped for their extreme makeover.

“Some Web Companies are trying to breathe new life into the format,” Steel writes, “Businesses from ad-technology start-ups to Web publishers are increasing the size and beefing up the quality of display ads, which border Web pages and can include pictures or video.”

Steel goes on to report, “They are also changing payment models and measurement systems…and commissioning research…to document their impact.” Eyeblaster, for one, will allow advertisers to track how their display ads perform in comparison with TV. PointRoll, another one with six-pack tech abs, will allow advertisers to change featured products based on what they have in stock.

Her article shows how this is working for New Balance ZIP athletic shoes. VideoEgg’s “engagement” ad replaces the usual slot for the display ad at a “cost per engagement” pricing model, in which marketers pay for an ad only when a consumer reacts to it (expands across the page) vs. the typical model of payment based on “ad impressions” delivered – or the times an ad is shown on a Web page.

Naturally, in a recession, marketing execs are seeking such innovative models. But, as you would guess, there are those marketers who are quick to offer reasons why They Think this may not work. So, naturally, it’s your job to rethink each one:

#1: It’s hard to fit the new pricing models into existing budgets.

ReThink: So, it’s hard! That’s a reason for not making it work? Last I checked, things that came a little hard paid off.

#2: Major Web publishers have yet to adopt the new model, so it’s limited to a network of sites on which VideoEgg sells ads unless and until marketers create new ads to run on other sites.

ReThink: So, we get it: another hard one — “create” something new again. Think we can handle that? I rethink so.

“The onus is on the creative to be interesting, engaging. If your creative isn’t good, then you aren’t going to create engagement,” says Jeff Marshall, the managing director at Pixel, a digital creative agency owned by Publicis Groupe.

Jeff is absolutely right of course, but, excuuuuse me, did he say, “if your creative isn’t good”?!! Hell, while we’re at it, just because we’re talking real money here, let’s go crazy and go for flat out Remarkable, Freaking Fantastically Great. Of course, that may be a hard one, too.

But that’s why we all have cell phones. To call someone who’s up to it. At a great price, to boot.