In Focus

Media buyers reveal their favorite sites

Introduction

It's not easy to succeed in advertising. First, you've got to understand the product and/or the brand. Next, you've got to craft the strategy for communicating that understanding to the right people. Then you've got to implement that communications strategy by plunking down sizable amounts of money for advertising slots on specific media. And finally, you've got to analyze and interpret the results of all that spending and figure out how to tweak the whole shebang to make it work better.

In an effort to make life a little easier, we've assembled a panel willing to share some of their accumulated experience and wisdom regarding that third phase: plunking down money for specific advertising slots.

In a world where most advertisers have learned well the lesson of Prometheus, who was punished with chains and daily torture for giving his knowledge of fire to mankind, we've found a few heroes who will not only talk about categories of websites that are their best places to advertise online, but will actually name names.

Our panel participants include:

  • Stefan Bardega, director of digital strategy, MediaCom/BeyondInteraction.com, a global integrated planning and buying agency for international clients such as VW group and T-Mobile.
  • Steve Swasey, vice president, corporate communications, Netflix, a game-changing company that reinvented the way people rent movies at home.
  • Greg March, GMD, Weiden + Kennedy

This is what they told us:

 

Comments

Sean Cheyney
Sean Cheyney October 1, 2008 at 5:09 PM

Good points here, especially regarding the breakdowns of going big, wide, and deep. Each of these types of sites must be executed to have a well rounded results oriented plan.

One of the key factors, which you touched on, is the fact that the sites that work for my brand aren't necessarily the ones that work for other verticals or even other companies within my vertical.

The ease of testing by which online advertising provides, allows for large amounts of testing, gathering results, and pivoting all within an extremely short time frame.

Brett Sherman
Brett Sherman October 1, 2008 at 10:16 AM

good article- well done but I still don't believe so much in the power of adv on facebook / my space etc. It violates the trust and context of the experience for the of the user. Look at myspace -who owned the space forevever and then facebook came along and cut them to size. They delievered a much better experience with less ads and spam. Myspace is now well known for a spammy experience- i. but don't feel too bad -facebook with its new lame redesign is well on its way of joining them unfortunately. Nothing is sacred.