Online advertising's 4 biggest problems

This is one of the best articles I have read on the toopic. We get a lot of hype about online advertising but no real depth of understanding about how the brand is managed. The communication models need to be looked strategically. Good detail and insight!

Nice article.

I want to agree with what Dan says regarding accountabliity and measurement. Because of the popularity of DR, people have come to expect metrics and measurement surrounding their online ad buy. Thankfully there is more being done in that area, and reports like this one by Comscore (Registration required: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2008/How_Online_Advertising_Works_Whither_The_Click) that demonstrate how brand advertising can offer a lift of 27% in online sales and 17% in offline sales are really going to help.

Another point that I think is important to make is that publishers could do a lot more to help. Along with providing more interactive formats, as you mention above, publishers also need to be doing more to qualify their online audiences. While online allows for deep measurement in terms of page views and time spent and uniques, many publishers have not done enough to qualify their online audiences and to prove exactly who it is that they're reaching. With this information available, display advertising becomes a much more attractive prospect to companies that want to create a brand campaign - as long as it's reaching the right audience.

Erin,

Thank you for an excellent article clearly articulating several of online brand advertising's biggest challenges.

I would also add that reliable, relevant measurement of the brand building impact of online advertising has been a major obstacle hindering the embrace of digital media by major brand advertisers.

For better or worse (and I think ultimately for better), thanks to digital media's DR heritage, advertisers have come to expect digital media to be the most measurable medium available to them. Given that perspective it is hardly difficult to understand why media buyers and advertisers themselves are reluctant to move money from "tried and true" offline media to online without a reliable way to measure how effectively they are building their brands at the upper end of the branding funnel.

Now that we can measure the brand lift of online media better than offline media can, we need to move the discussion away from clicks to quantifiable branding objectives in order to give brand advertisers the confidence to spend more of their media budgets online.

[Disclosure: I founded Vizu, a digital media measurement company focused on brand advertising.]

Andrew - thanks for your feedback.

You said: TV buyers must constantly steward their accounts and negotiare makegood & bonus packages for underdelivery.

While certainly this is necessary in both online and offline media, and I may have slightly overstated the point - the amount of work done in online display (or for that matter, even paid search) is orders of magnitude higher than traditional media. This is especially true once the campaign has been trafficked, but is also true for the research, planning, and buying phases (to a somewhat lesser extent.)

While in this article I brushed past this point quickly - that's because I covered it much more extensively in the article below:

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/23023.asp

Eric -

Thank you for a thoughtful tour through our collective challenges. I think you make a common omission in an area that has been, and will continue to be, a major issue impacting our overall ecosystem. Regardless of the strength of a campaign's strategy and the quality of the creative and the media plan, developing and delivering ads on-time and on-spec is a plague that has only gotten worse as complexity in our space has increased. Paid for and un/misused inventory is a loser for everyone. I have worked with the IAB (as a contributor to their On-Time Delivery Toolkit), Ad Monsters and directly with entities on various sides of the equation to help improve effectiveness and efficiency between the stakeholders from media & creative agencies, publishers, 3rd parties and clients. It's a rat's nest. Until a working engagement model is put in place that features clarity around roles and responsibilities, communication, activities and deliverables, results and people will continue to suffer.

For more on these topics see:

- http://pm2pm.blogspot.com/2009/03/media-and-creative-live-together-or-die.html

- http://pm2pm.blogspot.com/2009/04/ad-operations-our-industrys-connective.html

- http://pm2pm.blogspot.com/2009/02/best-predictor-of-project-outcome.html

Eric -

Thank you for a thoughtful tour through our collective challenges. I think you make a common omission in an area that has been, and will continue to be, a major issue impacting our overall ecosystem. Regardless of the strength of a campaign's strategy and the quality of the creative and the media plan, developing and delivering ads on-time and on-spec is a plague that has only gotten worse as complexity in our space has increased. Paid for and un/misused inventory is a loser for everyone. I have worked with the IAB (as a contributor to their On-Time Delivery Toolkit), Ad Monsters and directly with entities on various sides of the equation to help improve effectiveness and efficiency between the stakeholders from media & creative agencies, publishers, 3rd parties and clients. It's a rat's nest. Until a working engagement model is put in place that features clarity around roles and responsibilities, communication, activities and deliverables, results and people will continue to suffer.

For more on these topics see:

- http://pm2pm.blogspot.com/2009/03/media-and-creative-live-together-or-die.html

- http://pm2pm.blogspot.com/2009/04/ad-operations-our-industrys-connective.html

- http://pm2pm.blogspot.com/2009/02/best-predictor-of-project-outcome.html

Good article but I disagree that "in traditional media, the up-front planning and buying costs are much lower -- and there is no further work done once the campaign is delivered to the publisher until after it ends." TV buyers must constantly steward their accounts and negotiare makegood & bonus packages for underdelivery. Yes, stewardship is the key to making any campaign (online or offline) great.

Interesting article. I believe many ads do not evoke an emotional response from the viewer and fail to make a connection with them. This stems from preconceived notions based on "textbook” information and audience research, which in many cases buckets human beings into a set category of behaviors. There isn't much of getting to know the consumer on a daily basis and stepping into his or her life. I would love to see more marketers take off the "marketer” hat and try to relate to the consumer's needs as they would relate to their own. Another aspect not explored is history of the audience and their backgrounds as well as their past buying behaviors to gain a sense of WHY and not what they would buy in the future.
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