This is my "What's Next... in Media" presentation for Ad:Tech London 2012.
It tells the story of fragmenting content and digital services against the backdrop of the audience and the need for relationship building.
David McMurtrie, Head of Publisher Solutions at Google UK/Benelux thinks so... He used to be the MD at 24/7 Real Media and at ad2-one. He said so at the Criteo (retargeting) event in 2011. Image credit: http://sakimichan.deviantart.com/art/Battle-of-Giants-284051957
There’s been a growth in content. The result? A drop in the CPM rates – just ask newspapers, MySpace and many others
The result of this: Ad Exchanges, Retargeting, Demand Side Platform, data trading, real-time bidding and more. It’s about targeting audiences.
Here’s a great example of audience targeting; Facebook. It’s now open to DSP but has native ads too.
Which digital media service is best placed to deal with Facebook? Likes and spreading content help with SEO. It’s social surely? Ah; but the native ads use a PPC metric… except the others use DSP technology. Many of the most wide spread ads are Affiliate deals anyway. Facebook games are even more complex.
What’s the common theme here? Platforms are fragmenting, now requiring a broad range of skill sets to operate on – but the audience is the constant.
The challenge for brands and agencies is how to connect with these audiences and do it on any scale
You can pay your audience to act on your behalf – The Fancy and Fab as examples
Refer.ly brings affiliate programs to the mass – even if you’re not promoting a members reward program yourself; someone else may enable it.Samba Broadband provides a service in return for watching ads.
While traditional CPM rates have dropped outside the Premium space (whatever that is) and the evolved Display space – CPA have remained static. Okay; lots of CPA people will disagree; fashion has shot up, some finance as dropped like a stone but for the sake of argument, on average, its fairly static.
ASA has no concept of individuals as a company. Is a paid for recommendation worth the same?
If someone is watching your video simply to get Facebook coins – what was that video worth to you?
You can earn those relationships instead – better, stronger, SEO boosting, ASA free --- just much harder to do.
Loyalty is one way to go – a middle ground. The discount culture of 2009 to 2010 hasn’t worked very well for everyone. More of a loyalty move in 2013.
Agencies are building communities. These communities act as one-to-many proxies and provide the much needed scale. This approach works for agencies who represent many different brands and therefore talk to interest groups rather than brand loyalists.Photograph by Jack Dorsey
The key to all of this – is the relationship building. You need to recruit for your communities. You need successful communication for your outreach and CRM.