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Berens: How would you define performance media?

Coffin: Performance media, in the way that I am using it, is that you pay for only what you get -- in the sense of some back-end conversion metric. Performance marketing, I think, is largely caught up with the whole Cost-Per-Action, or the Cost-Per-Lead, type of business. Paid search is performance marketing.

Berens: And, you would define BURST! differently.

Coffin: I would say that all of the advertisers that run on our network have some performance metric against which they are evaluating the strength of the campaign. That is not unique to the internet.  Television, print, radio… advertisers have a very clear understanding of what their performance requirements are. BURST! Media sells almost exclusively on a Cost-Per-Thousand basis; again, believing that where we enhance the targetability, or the performance, is by selling a hundred percent composition…by allowing advertisers to reach exactly the right person, in exactly the right environment, at the right time, and not have to worry about paying for extraneous reach.

Berens: And, how is that different than what the behavioral targeting people are promising? There are behavioral targeting networks, and, there are networks that have behavioral targeting. But, those two different concepts, I think, are colliding into each other, but the trains have not quite hit, yet.

Coffin: I think that they are compatible in many respects. For instance, we sell behavioral targeting across the BURST! Network, which is enabled by TACODA. So, TACODA is the provider of that technology to BURST! I regard that as yet another targeting feature that, again, helps us, for the benefit of the advertiser reach the right person --.this time, not in “the right place.” But, [as an advertiser] you know that you are reaching the right person. And, that has been predetermined on the basis of their observed media behavior. So, again, it is about eliminating that media waste.

This is about dialing in to who my best, most important customer is. And, behavioral targeting does that; as well as contextual targeting, as well as geo targeting. All of these are filters that the internet is uniquely well designed to provide, in a way that traditional media was never able to. I sold for Business Week for a number of years. I cannot tell you what today's real number are, but I can tell you that, on a pound-for-pound basis, BURST! managed to reach more risk managers than Forbes or Fortune.

Berens: Interesting.

Coffin: But, [at Business Week] we still made them pay for the other eighty percent of the circulation that had nothing to do with risk management, never mind that their messages would run in an environment that was, maybe, not talking about risk management that day. The internet has given both consumers (who are only concerned with certain issues at any given moment) and advertisers the chance to dispense with that waste, with that extraneous matter, and just focus on what matters most to them at that time. And, I think behavioral targeting helps do that to.

Berens: For an advertiser, the ad that doesn’t get a conversion, a click, or at least an eyeball, is waste.  But for the consumer, that ad is an annoyance. Or, at least neutral.

Coffin: It depends who you talk to. Consumers don’t mind advertising. They mind bad advertising. And, the internet has been replete with bad advertising.

Berens: Because people are engaged as they are using the internet, I think they take everything more seriously. And, that is both good and bad. But, I know that if you are a middle-aged guy who really likes college football, and you keep on getting advertisements for lipstick, that gets annoying.

Coffin: That is bad advertising, and if that is the case, then, yes, I completely agree. Relevant advertising matters. And reaching the consumer in the right mindset is additive all the way around. And then, what you have to hope is that the creative is compelling, and that the message is right, and that the offer is good.  Then, if they [the consumers] act upon whatever that message was, and go and test drive your car, and ultimately buy the car -- then it works, as the message said it was going to work. But, all of those things ultimately have to tie together.