SpectatorBytes

Over the past couple of weeks, I have heard several publishers and advertising industry participants state that the online advertising model is broken. Their concerns about online advertising are caused by more than just the softening of demand.  The advertising inventory glut (i.e., no scarcity), the downward pressure on display CPMs, and advertiser dissatisfaction with [...]

We are entering a new stage on the Web. Significant elements of the digital publishing, video, advertising and social media infrastructure have been laid out. Scale winners in each of these ecosystems have emerged such as YouTube, Wordpress, Facebook, MySpace, Advertising.com, Google’s Ad Sense, etc. Now, new players are emerging as a second wave [...]

As I evaluate how the display advertising environment is evolving, I have come to realize that the advertising agencies still have a significant opportunity to recapture their leverage in the marketplace. Today, ad networks have most of the leverage in the display marketplace. The display ecosystem has been built around advertising networks whose primary [...]

Today, the WSJ reported on an initiative by MediaVest’s Vivaki to work with some of the leading online networks to test and develop new standards for online advertising formats. This effort highlights the still nascent nature of the industry but also that online video is coming of age. Even in this economic downturn, advertisers [...]

The online display advertising business is likely to undergo significant changes over the next few years as key participants try to deploy new tools to enhance overall performance. First, the business is becoming increasingly tiered between premium advertising solutions and run of network solutions (RON). In this post, I will focus on the RON [...]

Last week, during a lunch with a former colleague and Jeff Ocampo-Tan, one of my associates at Velocity, we engaged in a discussion about the opportunity Facebook (FB) has in building its brand advertising revenues. The New York Times recently reported (see here) Facebook has faced some challenges in doing so far. However, these [...]

Today, I read that Yahoo plans to spend in online and offline advertising for its search product according to Search Engine Land (See here). I find this interesting given Ask.com’s experience with ad campaigns.
While this may work to help Yahoo mantain search query levels, this initiative signals that they have not been able to [...]

I recently attended an interesting “unconference” organized by WPP’s Mark Read and Yossi Vardi in Athens, Greece (Thanks to both of them for hosting this event). After reflecting about the many conversations I had in Athens about online advertising, I thought I would start outlining my thoughts on what is going in online advertising [...]

As I have discussed in previous posts, the Web is dominated by performance-driven rather than brand advertising. To explain my point, I have always cited the lack “Colgate Ads” around the Web. This is because growing up, Colgate was one of the leading brand advertisers on television.
So, you can imagine my surprise when I came [...]

The Online Publishers Associate just released a study which concludes that advertisers can boost the effectiveness of their ads by focusing their campaigns on branded content sites. Below are some of the key findings outline in the report (Full report here):
- Ads Placed on Content Sites Raise Brand Favorability and Purchase Intent Significantly More [...]

Venture Beat picked an interesting story from Ad Age which outlines the challenges facing the online advertising industry (See Here) which outlines the challenges facing the onlineadvertising industry. Below is one of the most interesting statement’s in the Ad Age piece.
“The inconvenient truth is that for all its new-media spin, display advertising is “old” [...]

This was a tough week for online advertising given Valueclick’s lower guidance for Q208 (see below), Google’s less than stellar performance and even eBay’s cautious outlook for Q3.

Valueclick’s Guidance - Fiscal Year 2008 Revenue by Segment

Year-Over-Year Growth

Affiliate Marketing2(excludes Search123)

+8%

Comparison Shopping and Search (includes Search123)

+19% pro-forma

Technology

+18%

Media, Total

-18%

Display advertising

Low single digit increase

Lead generation

High 20% decrease

While Valueclick’s [...]

I have written several posts about the need for offering innovative ad solutions to brand advertisers. I wanted to share a couple of solutions for brand advertisers that two companies in our portfolio have developed (obviously I have a vested interest in the success of these two companies). Nevertheless, I think that they are offering [...]

Recent report by Pubmatic (see here) over the past week indicate that online advertising prices are declining. This trend had already become evident as leading Web players announced their Q1 results.
The forces that have enabled the growth in advertising on the Web now seem to be working against it.
Direct Response advertisers have driven [...]

The online video revolution has certainly been on its way for quite some time now. YouTube’s skyrocketing audience numbers and overall video streams statistics from the Web indicate that video has become a core element of the Web experience. This trend will expect to continue as increasing number of traditional and new video content [...]