Collective Media CEO Joe Apprendi gives his take on what networks need to do to get brand ad dollars.
Joseph Apprendi is Chief Executive Officer of Collective Media, a leading online advertising network specializing in audience targeting and optimization.
If you look through our extensive archive of articles about ad networks, you'll find a fair number that raise the question about how advertisers can -- and whether or not they should -- use networks for brand advertising in addition to direct marketing. Last month, ad network Collective Media did a site-relaunch as one part of its effort to clarify its message specifically about this subject, so I reached out to Collective CEO Joe Apprendi to chat.
Brad Berens: Even though we've come a long way since the dark days of the big bubble pop, there are many brands that are still afraid of ad networks. Why is that? What are the differences between brand marketing and DR when it comes to both goals and hurdles?
Joe Apprendi: Without question this is still an issue that today’s ad networks are dealing with. However, I think the smart brands have re-entered the market, just subject to specific policies that ad networks have to live up to. This customarily involves 100 percent transparency into the publisher list and the ability to opt in/out of certain sites for whatever reason. Doesn’t sound like much, but many ad networks, especially those that have existed for a long time, cannot instantly change the nature of their ad inventory/site roster and provide full visibility into what may be an unwieldy list of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of affiliated properties. Here you see the big ad network players, creating premium networks, et cetera, carving out a subset of their overall network to address these concerns. From Collective’s perspective, we thought starting from scratch was the best way to address this opportunity and ensure compliance.
So, on the DR versus Branding subject, you’ll find that brand marketers are far more selective about the ad networks they do business with and how they work with them. Also, brand advertisers are not just focused on a straightforward CPA objective. Their evaluation criteria are far more complex, but proof of audience quality, above all, is at the top of the list. And for a long time ad networks could not quantify/qualify how they deliver target audiences. This is changing. However, I’m finding that Fortune 1000 marketers that have direct response objectives are getting pickier as well. They recognize that quality matters whether you have a CPA or Brand metric objective.
Berens: If you're a brand marketer, what do you think the chief criteria are when you're evaluating whether or not to do business with an ad network?
Apprendi: I touched on a few of these points earlier, but let me expand on what matters to brand marketers. I think there are five (5) fundamental factors with numbers one to three paramount:
- Inventory Transparency
- Site Accept or Decline
- Trusted Audience Targeting and Reporting
- Ad Format Flexibility
- Reach and Efficiency
When we talk about transparency, what marketers are really asking for is content/editorial quality.
What I think many ad networks overlook is that no matter what type of reach, targeting, optimization and pricing you offer, if the physical site roster is not up to snuff the rest doesn’t matter to brand advertisers.
Once you provide transparency, you need to give control to the marketer to opt in or out of certain sites/placements. This doesn’t mean you’re allowing marketers to cherry pick to an unreasonable degree, but you are giving them a high level of flexibility to complement what they are buying directly and avoid overlap/audience duplication as well as just eliminate sites that don’t make sense.
Audience targeting is what really has changed since the early days of ad networks. We are finally finding brand advertisers getting comfortable with alternative ways of reaching their audience beyond conventional content targeting (site, section, page, et cetera).
However, how you target and whatever your particular targeting solution (behavior, context, demographic, et cetera), your methodology will need to be trusted and transparent as well. Here’s where many ad networks miss the mark. On top of this, great audience targeting on top of sub par sites doesn’t do the trick either.
Ad format flexibility is key for brand marketers as well. They are accustomed to using rich media ad formats, including pre-roll video, custom sponsorships as part of their media plans. While integrated sponsorships will continue to be the secret sauce of individual sites, ad networks can do a better job of offering more than in-page ad units and pop-unders.
Lastly, you need to provide reach and efficiency against some sort of target audience. This is the intrinsic value proposition of doing business with an ad network. However, when it comes to doing business with brand advertisers, quality and targeting take precedence over quantity and efficiency.