In Focus

A primer to navigating the ad network landscape

Robert Moskowitz
Ad Networks Posted on October 29, 2008

Vertical and format networks

Category: Vertical networks
At first, ad networks grew horizontally across many industries primarily because no single vertical could offer advertisers enough reach or inventory. Today, the fragmentation and huge number of consumers on the internet, coupled with the proliferation of specialized websites, have made a variety of vertical ad networks eminently viable. As a result, advertisers now have opportunities to focus on women, sports, automobiles, healthcare, technology, pets and many other verticals.

Where they fit: A good choice for campaigns seeking to create significant entry into a new segment of the market, vertical networks also work well for advertisers with niche products and services. The better you know your prospects, the more you can benefit from a narrow-cast campaign into carefully chosen verticals.

Category: Format networks
As the internet has developed, so has the advertising it carries. With recent upgrades in content, credibility and consumer attention, brand advertisers now find they can make cost-effective buys online. Coupled with steadily advancing technologies, this inflow of money has led to new advertising opportunities at the richer end of the media spectrum, including video programming supported by video advertising.

Where they fit: Networks that offer rich media availabilities can work well for branding campaigns and for delivery of product demos or samples of entertainment experiences. Display and text oriented networks, meanwhile, offer contextually relevant ads that still work well for such purposes as lead generation, customer acquisition, immediate revenue generation and lead-ins to more sophisticated branding campaigns.

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Comments

Andy Atherton
Andy Atherton October 31, 2008 at 7:00 PM

I enjoyed this article and have a few points to add, referencing specific points you made:

"However, ad exchanges typically do not guarantee flight times, target audiences or even campaign launch dates, making them too unpredictable for many advertising campaigns.”

>>This is a great observation and an important point. Too many of the solutions on the market - particularly exchanges - do not accommodate forward planning and other important requirements for Brand (non-Direct Response) campaigns.

"For example, reaching in-market buyers -- in categories like automotive, financial services, travel and retail and shopping -- via behavioral targeting can be tremendously beneficial to a campaign. It enables direct response message delivery to an exact core audience, which can then be supported by a branded push using rich media like video.”

>> This is also very insightful. You are one of the few folks that I have seen come out and say BT is primarily a DR tool. Lots of networks position BT as a tool for branding.

"Transparency. It matters greatly. Although networks promise to get your ad delivered cost-effectively on a large scale, their ability to do so requires more than just running ads on brand-friendly content. It's important to know which sites are delivering what audiences, and how much those audiences cost. When networks keep advertisers blind, they encourage a cycle of inefficiency and withhold the data necessary to make effective long-term marketing decisions.

>> I disagree with this point though, for 2 reasons:

1) Transparency to individual sites limits the operational efficiency and therefore scalability of a network and those are two of the reasons folks buy from networks in the first place. Metrics on audience composition, reach and frequency are very important and can be shared without visibility to individual site delivery.

And, more importantly,

2) Transparency to individual sites creates channel conflict. Top quality publishers will not take advertising from top quality advertisers through a network that is transparent – this would undermine their direct sales efforts. Site-level transparency creates a situation where the only buyers and sellers are of lower quality and the high-quality players stay away from the market. Blindness is necessary to make sure all players can participate without generating channel conflict. The trick is specifying rigorous standards and metrics such that transparency isn't necessary.