ImagineThat's SVP reviews Eyeblaster's new ad serving product and finds that, no matter who provides it, digital agencies need a tool like this.
On July 20, Eyeblaster announced it had expanded its business, competing with the likes of DoubleClick and Atlas, by launching its own ad serving system. The new product, ACM (Advertising Campaign Management), is designed to create, deliver and manage all interactive communications through one online administrative platform.
Why does ACM matter? And why did it generate so much news in the trade press? Because anyone who regularly designs, creates, manages and then reports on campaigns knows that Eyeblaster is on to something big here. You know who you are, you haggard agency types who never get to leave the office until 10 PM when you’re managing your insertion orders or putting together your reports. Good business is about solving problems and, whether Eyeblaster is about to do that or not, whoever comes up with the best tool that can do all of these things and make our jobs more efficient will garner a ton of the agency business.
That’s not to say that the existing tools are bad. It’s just that they are addenda to existing technology, and therefore not as up-to-date as what’s needed. Gone are the days when a five-figure media buy for banners on a single network or a few sites is considered a major campaign. Today, interactive agencies and media services companies like ours are expected to be able to turn around national campaigns with local targeting that include multiple banner rich media units and other creative assets across multiple platforms. The development of a single source system that helps plan, implement and manage such initiatives is sorely needed. The question is whether a brand known as a creative enabler is the right partner. And that’s not to say they aren’t.
I think the biggest challenge Eyeblaster or any other rich media partner could face starting this type of business is brand perception. Companies like Eyeblaster are seen as creative enablers and I question whether or not their brand has enough elasticity to stretch into the ad serving space. However, based on what I’ve seen of the new ACM system, if everything is delivered, Eyeblaster has got a legitimate shot to make it work. After all, if Google can go from being a simple Search Engine to being one of the largest media companies in the world in two years, Eyeblaster could follow suit in a different space.
The ad serving platform that wins more agency business in 2006 and beyond will be one that enables advertisers and agencies to see far beyond the single or even multi-channel digital marketing campaigns -- with increased efficiencies, cross-channel reports and reduced overheads all empowering us to take what we do to the next level. The trend in interactive today is toward consolidation of interfaces and reports across not just standard banner and rich media campaigns, but also integrating search, email, behavioral and any other sub-segment that will drive results for a client. Someone needs to provide enterprise-level ad serving that is designed to handle the largest volumes of interactive ad units while also serving standard banner and text ads.
The solution that will garner most of the agency marketplace will provide direct access for agency professionals, their advertiser clients and also publishers to communicate and manage campaigns in one platform interface. ACM provides easy ad creation tools, with video opportunities in every unit. The tool on our wish list will provide us with monitoring, optimization and tracking of campaigns of every sort, with an open API for ease of use across multiple publisher and vendor platforms.
The open API has been a sticking point for some time, but there is a movement among industry insiders to open more application programming interfaces to gain more efficiency. The fact is that, if most vendors in this space -- the rich media companies, database management companies and others -- opened the APIs to their titles, it would enable our industry to work far more seamlessly and save a lot of time for buyers, sellers and everyone in between. Just by enabling so many tactical and strategic elements in one open-API platform, Eyeblaster’s new ad server will likely get a look by most companies in this space.
We know how powerful having one simple system to integrate all of these elements would be and that’s why we applaud this initiative and look forward to reports on its progress.
So, here’s to Eyeblaster -- and anyone else out there designing better tools for us. Let’s see what ACM can do.
Derek Bonney is senior vice president at ImagineThat, a Warrenville, Illinois Digital Lifestyle Marketing agency that works with clients such as McDonald’s, Lexus, Toyota and Verizon.