The Rise of the Audience Marketplace

The high-level disconnect in our conversation about online media and advertising – now in its 14th or 15th year – remains the notion that positioning matters to consumer brands but not consumer media.

Eric Picard’s thoughtful piece in iMedia today puts this on display again in his recounting of a panel discussion titled, “The Rise of the Audience Marketplace,” at ad:tech in New York a week ago. During the panel, participant Quentin George, Chief Digital Officer at Mediabrands, reportedly observed:

 ”In a world with such massive overcapacity, the only way for companies to differentiate and capture a disproportionate share of dollars is through building a brand.”

This was a very sensible assertion. Hold that thought.

The panel discussion then veered into talk about media planning and buying online with a great deal said about the rise of new buying solutions such as IPG’s Cadreon and Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi. These fall under the heading of demand-side buying systems, discussed in a recent post to this space.

Demand-side buying systems are energizing media buying companies with a renewed sense of empowerment. There is no harm in this. It represents a transfer of power from certain horizontal networks that have been conducting business this way online for a few years, and keeping the money. Now, the media agencies get to keep the money. The industry needs media agencies (all ad agencies) to feel energized and empowered, so to the extent that certain amounts of planning and buying can be conducted through demand-side agencies, there is no harm in this. Perhaps it will serve as a catalyst to help fix agency comp so that life can continue on a transparent basis ultimately favorable and necessary to marketers.

I digress.

In the midst of the panel’s enthusiasm it sounds like Bill Demas of Turn got up the nerve to suggest that most of the inventory wafting through the demand-side buying systems is non-premium inventory (much as it has always been through the horizontal networks) and that premium inventory is still making it to market thanks to human sales forces and their interactions with human media planners and buyers.

From Eric Picard’s recounting it then sounds like Bill Demas’s observations disappeared quickly under a pile of demand-side enthusiasts. Fellow panelists pointed-out that the idea of premium inventory is a relative concept. Brands care about quality content, but the quality of the audience is not measured by this alone. Basically, quality does not depend upon context.

This is the important question of our day: is the quality of an audience shaped by the context of its media environment.

Back to Quentin George who was on the panel. As he did, marketers will insist - with every justification – that brands matter, and the more complex the environment, the more imperative the need for brand. Brands differentiate.

What does that mean? It means context. Context is the differentiating agent. Context determines meaning. It is everything to brands. It says so clearly in the dictionary (from Answers.com):

con-text

 

n.

[Middle English, composition, from Latin contextus, from past participle of contexere, to join together : com-, com- + texere, to weave.]

1. The part of a text or statement that surrounds a particular word or passage and determines its meaning.
2. The circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting.

Brands are about meaning and circumstance. If they are not, then soap is soap. A car need only be black, as Mr. Ford would have had it, and get a traveler from point A to point B.  One smoke would be as good as another. Brands need positioning.

Yes, brands can certainly exist out of context for periods of time, like I can swim under water or a fish can flap on the ground. I use brands all the time unconsciously. But there are no unconscious brand champions and brand loyalists and there are no automated brands. In my house you will get one kind of vodka, which is an otherwise orderless, tasteless, neutral spirit with one purpose that can be met by any run-of-network vodka that will be (fall-down-drunk, for fall-down-drunk) cheaper. Yet, I am loyal to one brand. Go figure. 

Let’s be frank: really, the question is about money. The world is trying to impose cheap on marketing and context is not cheap. Neither are brands. Our world is hung-up on this problem and we know it. It is a dis-connect if ever there were one.

Truthfully, if there were enough great advertising creative in the world brands might be able to survive out of context. If every ad were brilliant, touching, funny, compelling – even simply polite – advertising could, perhaps, live and breath outside of a naturally supportive, media environment. We are not so fortunate. Advertising is hard. Great advertising is really hard. 

As we continue to bang around the miriad opportunities with which the Internet presents us in order to target our best customers let’s remember the obvious one, present from the beginning, the one that aligns us most with consumers, the one that made Google particularly rich: context. I don’t notice anyone else getting as rich as Google (or Google as rich from anything else).

The only thing I notice is the European Union and the FTC getting ready to drop a safe on our head. Then what?

FTC decides on a double standard for citizen journalists

As widely reported (but mostly slept-through) the FTC issued guidelines on October 5th subjecting bloggers to endorsement and testimonial rules that are different from traditional media. The IAB and it’s CEO, Randall Rothenberg, responded today (see links below).

Rothenberg’s open letter to FTC Chairman on his clog, quotes the FTC report, which says:

…that bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media. In general, under usual circumstances, the Commission does not consider reviews published in traditional media (i.e., where a newspaper, magazine, or television or radio station with independent editorial responsibility assigns an employee to review various products or services as part of his or her official duties, and then publishes those reviews) to be sponsored advertising messages. Accordingly, such reviews are not “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides…

Never mind the financial pressures that traditional media is under that might tempt them to say a few kinds words about their sponsors. We accept that the Captains of traditional journalistic integrity will go down with the ships without uttering a false endorsement. 

Double standards are just wrong, however, as Rothenberg and the IAB fairly point out.

Twitter your Congressman.

Randall Rothenberg’s Clog

IAB release.

FTC Urges Marketers to Self-regulate Consumer Privacy – or Else.

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.