Reptide Media

Yahoo to sell ads around content

Recent report: 61% of ad execs say they check in with work once a day while on vacation. In other news: 100% of Reptide Execs could not identify a vacation from a lineup.

From MarketingCharts.com

More than six in 10 (61%) marketing and advertising executives surveyed say they check in with work at least once a day while on a vacation or holiday break, according to a recent study by the Creative Group.

This compares with 47% who checked in at least once daily in 2006 and 38% in 2001. Within this group, the percentage of respondents who now check in with work several times a day has risen the most dramatically, from just 11% in 2001 to 30% today, the Creative Group said.

At the same time, the number of execs who say they “never” check in with work while on vacation has fallen from 19% in 2001 to just 8% today.

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Social Media Usages Surpasses Email

According to a weekend NYT article:

Alongside the explosive growth of online video over the last six years, time spent on social networks surpassed that for e-mail for the first time in February, signaling a paradigm shift in consumer engagement with the Internet.

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Click or Search?

According to iProspect:

More than half of internet users (52%) actively respond to display advertising on ad-supported websites, and among them, almost as many initially respond to an ad by conducting a search as those who click on the ad...more

Short-term solutions work now, but marketers need to escape the constraints of traditional campaigns

CEO of Heavy:

"What happens is, nine out of 10 people say 'f*** this, I don't want to watch this ad,' and they go find the content someplace else," Simon Assaad says. "The advertiser paid for delivery, but people are not watching the ad, and the publisher actually loses the consumer. Nobody wins out of that." more

Silverlight experience on CBSSports and NBCOlympics

MSFT Silverlight making some gains while taking a big hit this past week.  Both CBSSports and NBCOlympics have impressed me with their respective user interfaces.  I really enjoyed the text commentary positioning of the NBC Olympics player and I think the 'choose your own quality' buffering option on the CBS player is very clever.  

As one that know exclusively only watches video online, I'll be watching with a keen eye on which video streaming solutions step it up.  It seems to be that MSFT is pushing to target professional broadcasters while Flash has remained catering to the masses.

Click thru rate data

Interesting report on click through rates in Europe against 10 billion impressions. The rate range was from 0.11% to 0.19%, settling in at 0.12% after the holidays. What was interesting to me is that in 2004, click through rates were at 0.33%. The article also speculated that although online video click through rates were markedly higher, that they would also face a decline once the "novelty" wears off. 

Publishers would be wise to pay attention. The more they can integrate an advertising experience that yields high click through rates that don't bastardize the user experience, the more likely they will be left standing as the market continues to mature.

Dynamic ad insertion for live stream - its about time?

ESPN360 announces dynamic ad insertion in its live simulcasts starting with March Madness. I'm kind of surprised it has taken this long to work this out. Cable still not there...

Ad dollars skewed towards search and niche sites

According to a newly released Razorfish report:

"As the economy began to soften toward the end of the year, we witnessed a renewed focus on search because it delivers a stronger ROI than many other tactics," said Sarah Baehr, vice president and national media lead at Razorfish. "We also saw a continued shift in digital ad spending toward niche sites as clients realize the value of targeting precise audience groups."

Focusing on effective campaigns on niche sites is exactly what we are striving to do here at Reptide!

Content companies can't rely on ad revenue alone

Last week, I started to write about a recent report that stated that only 10% of a publisher's inventory is directly sold, the rest being left to the mercies of ad networks. While recent efforts to optimize placements within ad networks will likely continue to enjoy incremental eCPM rates for many publishers, its not going to be enough to change the fact that display ad revenue alone cannot make a content company into a real, profitable business. 

Late last year, I wrote:

If you are an online web property with aspirations to grow into a large, profitable business, you have some serious challenges to overcome. If you are a content-centric company, your revenue growth increases linearly with your audience growth but so does your cost structure. So the more money you make, the more money you lose. What major stand alone content-centric site or online magazine is actually a viable business today? (There may be some, please point them out) 

For social networks, the problem is more difficult. Like content companies, your revenue growth is also linear to audience growth but your cost structure may be exponential. I hear that Facebook has significant cost issues see (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/31/facebooks-growing-problem/). They have a plan to buy an additional 50,000 servers - is revenue growing at the same y-axis rate? Um, not even close. 

What does this mean for online companies? There needs to be some variable on the revenue side that makes an exponential difference to get to profitability. A significant jump in average CPM for a site's entire inventory (not just small discrete campaigns) is the most obvious. Can you get from sub-$2 eCPM to $10 or $20? The market is not big enough yet for the numbers to add up for that to happen quickly (online ad spending is not going to jump 400% overnight). 

The stat that only 10% of a publisher's entire inventory yields premium eCPM's underscores this whole point. You can't rely on ad dollars alone to build a business. The 10% number faces downward pressure as the growth of publishers exceeds that of ad spend growth (I think).  Although this revenue should represent one of the strongest revenue streams for the publisher, it can't be the only one.  I think there is a big opportunity for products that help online publishers monetize their audiences in other ways.