CBS Interactive will reportedly announce that it is dispensing with most ad networks today according to a report in Ad Age. Excellent. If they stick with it, it means another blow struck in favor of selling value online.
The formula used with such success by many ad networks over the last few years has been selling discounted space on the top 100 – 200 web sites, like those owned by CBS Interactive. The sales pretense has been rescuing excess inventory and leveraging data, which is balderdash. For buyers, it’s been about price. The importance of where the advertising runs has existed alongside the importance of who the audience reaches, unabated, and networks have provided plentiful access to those preferred places. If it were otherwise, the tension between networks and large publishers would not exist as, indeed, it does not exist in the mid- and long-tail of the market where ad networks and representative firms succeed in creating value, not discounting it.
For help understanding the not-so-hidden forces at work it will be interesting to see what happens with CBS Interactive’s replacement strategy, which is its internal ad platform, Madison (a very cool name). If the same discounted opportunities continue to exist through Madison then CBS Interactive will start fighting with itself instead of third-party networks. In the final analysis it doesn’t matter who sells it; it matters only what it sells for. So they should proceed carefully, because internal fights are far more destructive to a host than fights with third-parties.
We should expect a surging fourth quarter to embolden others besides CBS Interactive to see the glass half full again. Then what? Whither all the business plans that have been counting on ad network models to pig out at the buffet?
Companies that accepted TARP bail-out money need to get a back-bone, says the editorial in Advertising Age this week, and dig-in against pressure from government minders who question the value of using those funds to pay for advertising and other marketing practices. Those companies also have to get their priorities right and stop flying around on fancy corporate jets, taking fancy retreats and paying excessive incentive bonuses, say the editors. Advertising is a necessary and important component of growing businesses and creating shareholder value and must continue.
How do we turn this editorial into a clarion call to the marketing industry as a whole? Get a back-bone. I’ve heard the John Wanamaker expression — you know, the one about which half of his advertising budget is getting wasted — so many times since the Internet appeared on the marketing scene to “solve” that problem that I’m convinced it’s become destructive. In the same issue of Ad Age this week, on the front page, is the report that Anheuser-Busch InBev is looking to trim $1.5 billion in agencies fees – roughly 25% – 30%. I referenced this issue in my blog post yesterday (“What would J. Walter Thompson do?”): we’re eating our young. Over the years, through quiet acquiescence as an industry we have enabled those who would destroy us.
In the final paragraph of its editorial Ad Age exhorts businesses to take the fight to Washington. “Even if it means marching up to Capital Hill, you must make the case for good businesses practices. And if you need some help doing so, know we’ll be right there with you.”
Ad Age is right. Unfortunately, it’s hard to think how the value of our business – that is, advertising - can prevail in Washington if it has failed to prevail in the corner offices of our own companies. I have this awful image of a Congressional hearing on the matter:
Congressman: “Well, what about that so-called Internet advertising? Is it true that you can count the number of times a person points at – or, what is it? – clicks on an advertisement?”
CEO: “Yes, Congressman.”
Congressman: “There you go then. Problem solved. All this other advertising voodoo we can take out back and - you know - shoot it. Who’s for lunch?”
I still wake-up nights haunted by a telephone call we got at home sometime early last year. It was evening, around 7:00 p.m., and my wife and I were cooking dinner and having a glass of wine. The telephone rings. I answer. “Hello, George,” the caller said boldly (my first name is George, but I never use it; so when someone addresses me as George, I know we’re not on a first name basis), “This is Mitt Romney and I am calling to ask for your support next week in the primary election. This year, the stakes have…” Who knows what came later. I hung-up. I turned to my wife and explained. “How did he do that?” she asked. “Your name and everything?” Good question, especially since we had long since registered on the “Do Not Call” list with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
So, interesting that the FTC released guidelines yesterday that gave marketers room to self-regulate around the issue of consumer privacy, dangling the “R” word in plain sight to make it clear that if the industry can’t do something to stop all the calls and letters Government keeps getting from angry consumer advocates, then they will. I would like to register my desire to see the calls stop from Government (and candidates).
Most of the brouhaha about privacy points to online behavioral targeting. But honestly, I have never been bothered by an online marketer at home during dinner using my first name. Most of us recognize that the grocery store down the street has more information about us, personally, than virtually any online behavior marketer, so - with apologies to Butch Cassidy - what’s the matter with those guys? It is impossible for me to wrest control of my wife’s merchant cards from her hands. I would appreciate some help at the point-of-purchase heading-off future mailings and offers. It would save a ton in the “George” household.
One of the FTC commissioners, Pamela Jones Harbour, gets it, and according to the report on the subject in Ad Age this morning, she acknowledged and expressed concern that the FTC’s report was too narrowly focused on online advertising.
Burst offers behavior targeting as a standard component of its advertising sales product lines and is rigorous about policing the privacy policies governing it and any other remarketing features we use relying on cookie data, all of which is non-personally identifiable. Behavior targeting is a great tool for extending the reach of relevant campaigns against a target audience. Our business relies as much on contextual advertising (e.g. Travel advertising on Travel web sites), which the FTC said does not pose a problem and is not covered by the principals in their report. Good to know in case they invoke the “R “word down the road, but as a consumer I would be more interested to know what the FTC can do about keeping Mitt Romney from calling me at home.
As reported by both Advertising Age and The Wall Street Journal today, Bob Lachky, Chief Creative Officer of Anheuser-Busch is leaving the company after 20 years. Mr. Lachky was the person behind many celebrated Anheuser-Busch campaigns, including “Wassup?!“, the Budweiser Frogs and the “I love you, Man” commercials.
Mr. Lachky’s commercials, created in partnership with long-time agency DDB, won numerous awards and wove themselves into our culture. Before the term ”social network” was popularized by the Internet, his commercials were creating social networks around water coolers – social networks that then got together after work for a beer.
Watching these commercials again on You Tube this afternoon all my thoughts were about the risks that Bob Lachky took with the Anheuser-Busch brand messages. I watched “Wassup?!” and thought, “How did he get to ’yes’ with that?” The frog’s? I can clearly remember my reaction the first time I saw the frogs commercial; it was, “Huh?” They grew on me. Looking at them today, I love them. But, it is interesting to note that both Ad Age and The Journal essentially summarized the career and success Mr. Lachky had at Anheuser-Busch with a quote from him at the end, as follows: “I was fired more times than Billy Martin.”
You see, in the creative business risk is everything. Great creative does not emerge risk free. That is why Ad Age and The Wall Street Journal summarized Bob Lachky’s career as they did, in my estimation, because intuitively it is known that what made Mr. Lachky great were the risks he took, risks that nearly cost him his job as many times as Billy Martin (who was fired five times).
Now, let’s talk about media as the “new creative,” a popular term today. How much media risk takes place in the world today? Executional risk such as video and widgets and layer ads doesn’t count. That’s creative. Not media. I’m talking about planning risk: TV v. Internet. Satellite Radio v. Broadcast. Branded Content v. the Long tail. Actions attributable to less than 1% of an audience v. Impressions attributable to 99% of an audience. What’s our gut about media value? What bets have we made on it? Who’s bet their job on a media instinct?
Advertising.com, before it disappeared inside Platform A, used to talk about “risk free” advertising. No surprise – and very much to the point being made here – they got big. But what has it done for us online all this talk about risk free and results? Reading Randall Rothenberg’s exceptional piece on Interactive Creativity (featured on this blog yesterday), the answer is not much. As the new creative, media is simply failing to inspire those who would take their cue from it in order to develop messages that move people and brands online.
We have to kiss some frogs here. We have to take some chances and say “I love you, Man.”
Posted by Jarvis Coffin 
Posted by Jarvis Coffin 
Posted by Jarvis Coffin 
