Posted by Jed Alpert on Thu, Jan 07, 2010 @ 11:45 AM
In today’s society, especially in the world of the entertainment industry, today’s hero is tomorrow’s lesson learned. Case in point? Tiger Woods. What’s interesting to note, and the reason for this post being written, is how the dynamic nature of endorsements quickly impacts online advertising and brand safety in particular.
For those of you who have been living under a rock, here’s the scoop. In the past few weeks, advertisers, such as
Gatorade and Accenture, have pulled all Tiger Woods advertisements from prime-time television broadcast networks and 19 cable channels following reported extramarital affairs. In addition to pulling ads featuring Tiger himself, advertisers are concerned with having their brand associated with Tiger during this controversial time. Yet, ads are running on most pages with articles on the Tiger Woods scandal.
As a brand, would you want your ad appearing in the context of 10 or more alleged mistresses? Why is it that with respect to online advertising, it is much more difficult for advertisers to be given the guarantee that their ads will not appear next to any content concerning Tiger Woods’ affair and deteriorating marriage?
Page-level contextualization, one of ContextWeb’s core competencies, allows advertisers to ensure that their ads will not be associated with ‘scandal-plagued’ golfer Tiger Woods during a time when his name & reputation are being dragged through the mud. Rather than reading the content of the parent site, page-level targeting breaks down the larger site into individual pages, and applies the contextualization process to each of those individual pages. For example, it might be relevant for a golf advertiser to run their ads on ESPN.com next to an article about an upcoming PGA tournament, yet not next to content regarding the Super Bowl. With ContextWeb’s page-level contextualization, advertisers are given the ability to target only the specific types of pages of interest to them on a particular site.
In addition to page-level contextualization, the
ADSDAQ Exchange run by ContextWeb extends the reach of our marketer’s brand messaging safely by applying up to four levels of protection:
Quality Exchange, Page-Level Ad Serving, Negative Keyword Filter, & Brand Keyword Filter. Together, the levels offer unmatched brand safety among competitive exchanges, networks, portals – even single sites.
Other exchanges, networks and websites may say they provide contextual placement for ads through their vertical categories, but no one can provide desired content like the ADSDAQ Exchange. The reason is simple: no one else has page-level targeting capabilities. ContextWeb’s technology dynamically places ads only on pages based on targeting that is set forth by the advertiser.
You can learn more about ContextWeb and our page-level contextualization technology at
www.contextweb.com.
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Posted by Ken Lauher on Thu, Dec 03, 2009 @ 08:44 AM
ContextWeb, Inc., operator of the ADSDAQ Ad Exchange, announces today that Jay Sears, Executive Vice President of Strategic Products & Business Development, will be speaking at UBS 37th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference to be held at the Grand Hyatt New York in New York City on December 7 - 9, 2009.
Sears will speak on the panel "Media Measurement and Next Generation Advertising" on Monday, December 7th at 1:00 p.m. ET. The panel will be moderated by Sam Powers, Managing Director of UBS. Other panelists include Gian Fulgoni, Chairman of comScore, Joe Davis, President and CEO of Coremetrics, Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, President of Magna Insights (IPG) and Konrad Feldman of Quantcast.
UBS's 37th Annual Global Media & Communications Conference will feature presentations and panel discussions by senior management from more than 100 leading companies in the media and telecommunications industry from around the globe.
WHEN:Monday, December 7 through Wednesday, December 9, 2009
WHERE:Grand Hyatt New York, Park Avenue at Grand Central, New York City
WEBCAST:Live audio transmissions of company presentations will be accessible via the UBS Investment Bank website at
www.ibb.ubs.com when the conference opens. Replays will be available starting approximately three hours after the initial presentation and will remain accessible for four weeks.
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Posted by Ken Lauher on Wed, Nov 18, 2009 @ 02:57 PM
ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange is proud to announce
Anand Subramanian as a Keynote Speaker at New York Entrepreneur Week. The Keynote, "
Conceptualizing, Founding and Launching a Successful Business in a Nascent Industry," will take place on Thursday, November 19th from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm and will be located at Columbia University, Faculty House, 64 Morningside Drive (at 116th Street), New York, New York 10027.
New York Entrepreneur Week (NYEW) is the largest entrepreneurial movement throughout New York State. For the first time, thousands of entrepreneurs across New York State will have the opportunity to actively engage the foremost entrepreneurs, investors and dealmakers both in the State and from around the world.
Taking place from November 16-20th, 2009, NYEW is a unique 501(c)3 non-profit holding over 350 events, which encompass five days of innovative and hyper-targeted events, including:
* Inspiring keynote speeches from recognized business leaders
* Riveting panels delivering relevant mission-critical advice
* The flagship RELENTLESS business plan competition
* Third party events
With 120 speakers from 50 cities, 18 states and 3 continents, NYEW unites the state's diverse entrepreneurial community, providing an exclusive educational experience for all entrepreneurs- from enterprising young idea-stage innovators to hundred million dollar revenue generators. We are the movement makers, change agents, people helpers and problem solvers.
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Posted by Jay Sears on Fri, Nov 13, 2009 @ 10:41 AM
ContextWeb, Inc / ADSDAQ Exchange recently participated in the round table discussion, The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices for CRS: Content Revenue Strategies, a part of ad:tech on November 5th, 2009.
This panel discussion features some of the top minds in contextual advertising sharing their insight on the state of the industry now, and in the future. Companies represented included Microsoft, Yahoo!, AdKnowledge, AOL Advertising, Google, AdSide and ContextWeb, Inc / ADSDAQ Exchange. The informative discussion helped answer questions like where contextual advertising is going, what's hot and what's not. And provided valuable insight into what you can do today to make your content buys massively profitable.
The round table discussion was moderated by Jay Sears, EVP of Strategic Products and Business Development at ContextWeb, Inc / ADSDAQ Exchange.
Panelists included James Colborn, Director of Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft, Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO of AdSide, Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!, Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising, Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc., and Brett Brewer, President of AdKnowledge.
Video: View part 1 of this thought-provoking and insightful round table discussion.
Audio: Listen to Part 1 of this round table discussion below or
download the audio. (Note: Please allow 17 seconds to play before hearing the audio from the event.)
Photos: View photos from the event.
Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.
We'll be posting Part 2 of this round table discussion plus additional industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates, so make sure you follow the links below.
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Posted by Jay Sears on Wed, Nov 11, 2009 @ 08:35 PM
On Thursday, November 12 at 11:30 am, Isai Shenker, SVP of Product Management will join the PubCon 2009 discussion titled, “
Optimizing Your Site for Contextual Ads.” The panel will discuss the tricks of the trade and help you optimize your site for money from any contextual advertising program.
The panel will be moderated by Heather Lloyd-Martin who is the President and CEO of SuccessWorks. Isai is joined on the panel with Aaron Wall, a search engine marketer, blogger, and author of a popular SEO book, Matt Tuens, Founder & CEO of AcuVox.
The PubCon Las Vegas 2009 panel discussion will take place at the Las Vegas Convention Center in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada on Day 3 from 11:30 am to 12:45 pm. PubCon is four days of leading edge education and networking in over 90 sessions featuring 200 expert speakers in Social Media, Affiliate Programs, Search, and SEO/SEM. In its 8th year, PubCon was founded out of the rich and diverse base of WebmasterWorld forums. These aren't people who just talk about this stuff - these are people who do this stuff.
The A-List alpha attendees to PubCon are among the most highly pursued demographic in the online marketing world. Highly educated and computer savvy, they're early adopters of the latest web technologies and trends. These are the folks that any forward thinking company wants to reach and network with.
If you plan to be in attendance, be sure to say hello and attend our panel, “
Optimizing Your Site for Contextual Ads” on Thursday, November 12th from 11:30 am to 12:45 pm.
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Posted by Jay Sears on Mon, Nov 02, 2009 @ 07:00 AM
As part of the run-up to the Context Revenue Strategies conference next week (on Thursday, October 5th only and FKA AdSpace at last Spring's adTech in San Francisco), we'll be running some terrific Q&A with some of the panelists from the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.
Today, here is a Q&A between panelist Brett Brewer, President of AdKnowledge and moderator Jay Sears, EVP at ContextWeb, Inc and the ADSDAQ Exchange.
Your Name: Geri Guillermo
Your Job: I'm the Director of Sales for AOL Sponsored Listings (formerly Quigo), AOL Search Marketplace and BidPlace Pro at AOL Advertising. I oversee a team of 9 product specialists in the East and Southeast regions. BidPlace is a new platform where large advertisers can bid on AOL packaged inventory.
Your Company:AOL's mission is to inform, entertain and connect the world through premium content and mass scale. AOL.com provides top news, movies, music, weather, finance, sports, horoscopes and more. Advertisers can engage consumers by integrating their brands into AOL content and extend their message by targeting audiences across Advertising.com's trusted network. AOL works with Fortune 500 advertisers as well as the top agencies, networks, direct marketers and SEMs.
I work in the Product Sales group. My team is comprised of SMEs (subject matter experts) that support the national sales team in one or two product categories.
It used to be contextual advertising was the "step child" of search, living in its shadow. It finally seems to be coming into its own. Do you agree or disagree and what are the macro forces contributing to this shift?
Agree - but that's because search has always performed best in the marketing mix. But, everyone is looking to diversify once they have exhausted their search budgets and contextual is a natural complement.
Why does content and context matter?
Advertisers are always looking for good sources of traffic where they can associate their brands with premium content. With the overlapping of media channels it's important for your brand message or product offering to be aligned at various touch points of the consumption cycle.
How does behavioral and demographic targeting tie in with content and context? Or does it? Mutually exclusive or best used together?
They tie in as part of the continued evolution of contextual. Primarily in two ways -
AOL's content targeting, or AOL Sponsored Listings, is about reaching a desired demographic through the premium vertical sites in our network (AOL Money & Finance, CNNMoney.com, TheStreet.com, and many more).
Content targeting has evolved. You can now reach that site-defined demographic (DemoMatch), but you can also add a layer of demographic and behavioral targeting to ensure you really are reaching your desired audience.
The caveat here is not to slice and dice too granularly because you need scale with content targeting. We (AOL Sponsored Listings) have the tools and scale to accomplish both.
The Long Tail and media fragmentation. More than 80% of Internet sessions start with search-the advertiser's customer is now everywhere. Adsense has one million publishers carrying its ad tags. How do you compete in the Long Tail and against an installed based such as Adsense?
We don't. We have created a unique value proposition in the premium publisher space which makes us a "must-buy". Our publisher relationships are primarily exclusive, so advertisers need to come to us to reach a desired audience - if you want to advertise on ESPN.com on a text link basis, you have to work with ASL. If you want the AOL audience, you have to come to us.
I've seen this with other networks too that are carving out a differentiated niche. Often they evolve into specific demographic and are successful because of that.
Search has benefited enormously from last click attribution. More recently, Microsoft has published Atlas Institute research on engagement mapping and more advertisers are considering multiple attribution protocol when determining media mix. What are some of the macro "forcing functions" you see behind multiple attribution models and how will this benefit contextual advertising?
Not every conversion should be measured off the last click. Contextual can benefit from this new research because search has traditionally gotten all the credit for conversions.
Marketers need to become more savvy and not just allocate budget to search. They need to look at their marketing strategy holistically, and the entire customer lifecycle, including offline. How should a billboard on the highway get credit? Many cycles start offline and transition online where conversions are eventually captured.
The better we get at measurement, the more mainstream it will become. We are currently conducting research that ties into this theory as well.
Site targeting. When you move into the Long Tail (or even past the top 1,000 or 2,000 publishers), can site targeting deliver scalable solutions to advertisers? Is content a better answer because it is a common currency across all web pages?
Not necessarily. AOL Sponsored Listings' network has only ~ 500 publishers, but we served over 60 billion ad impressions last month. Site targeting can deliver scale in the premium publisher environment, even without the long tail.
Dynamic content. Web pages change constantly. How important is real-time - real time valuation, allocation, optimization? Many folks who talk about real-time talk about "audience aggregation" and re-targeting, but how important is content as one element of a "real-time" decision?
For us (AOL Sponsored Listings), the dynamic nature of news does not play a large role in our optimizing towards content as we do not work on a keyword basis. However, advertisers in our network can still take advantage of breaking news as those advertisers deemed "most popular" by our users will appear most often. Our system will naturally start to serve those ads with the best performance on these pages - those that yield the best.
Keyword vs. category targeting. Keywords are the holy grail of search. But are keywords effective in content targeting? Are they a destructive vestige of search-too granular or sometimes out of context to be impactful for content targeting? Is category targeting the answer?
This fits in well with our offering.
Mapping keywords contextually is definitely effective but also potentially limiting. Having the opportunity to site target allows you to demo match and increase your scale. For example, Golfsmith.com can promote their new Nike irons to the male user, between 18-34, who reads their news in AOL News, checks stocks in AOL Finance, updates fantasy football leagues in ESPN, all without keyword targeting.
Pricing Models. CPM. CPC. CPA. Cost Per Whatever-engagement, order-Cost Per Flowbee. Is this the direction we are headed? Good or bad?
That's funny - I heard this one the other day - CPHM - cost per half impression. Don't ask me to elaborate but something about splitting the impression.
I think these pricing models will always be at the root but evolving into new models is a good thing. Advertisers like P&G spend so much time talking about their ideal customer and how to reach them and how they should measure positive return, this flexibility can only benefit them.
Can you sell content ads alongside search ads-1. With the same value proposition? And 2. To the same SEM buyer? Or is it more sensible to sell to agencies?
Yes, as long as it's relevant. If it's rooted off the keyword search, the same value proposition holds because the user experience is retained. You could sell this to both the SEM buyer and any agency.
Tell us about you.
What did you do last Saturday?
Golfed in 103 degree heat (celebrated my one year anniversary in Scottsdale). At least it was dry heat. I don't recall breaking a sweat which was lovely, and I beat my husband by 6 strokes.
What's the best conference you attended in the last two years (besides AdTech and CRS, of course)?
Well, CRS is my new favorite conference....but I find Search Insider Summit/Mediapost highly valuable. The group is smaller, setting is more intimate which makes the panels more thoughtful and interactive, the activities are fun and the networking is productive.
If you could be appointed to any position in a US Presidential cabinet post, what position would it be and why?
Reggie Love! His personal aide must get more info from anyone in his cabinet, probably even more than the First Lady.
Your LinkedIn profile: http://linkedin.com/pub/geri-guillermo/0/b43/287
Your Twitter account: believe it or not, I don't tweet
Your Company's Twitter account: @AOL_Advertising
Thanks, Geri!
Geri's Bio:
Geri Guillermo is the Director of Sales for AOL Sponsored Listings (formerly Quigo), AOL Search Marketplace and BidPlace at AOL Advertising, where she oversees a team of product specialists in the East and Southeast regions. Geri was responsible for the successful integration of the Quigo sales team into her organization and continues to scale the business. She also manages product sales for BidPlace Pro, a new platform where large advertisers bid on AOL packaged inventory.
Before AOL, Geri spent two years in the sales organization at Microsoft, assisting in and promoting the launch of adCenter, Microsoft's new search platform to direct clients and agencies. Prior to Microsoft, Geri spent four years in Search sales at Yahoo!. She began her advertising career at US News & World Report and The Atlantic Monthly. Geri is an avid golfer and resides in Manhattan with her husband.
About CRS
Produced by Marc Phillips and David Rodnitzky in conjunction with adTech, CRS is a "conference within a conference" is 100% focused on contextual advertising-an area that has needed its own conference for some time. Please join us for the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.
Our panel looks like:
ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices
Where is contextual advertising going? What's hot, what's not? What can you do today to make your content buys massively profitable? This roundtable discussion features some of the top minds in contextual advertising sharing their insight on the state of the industry now, and in the future.
MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange
PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft
Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide
Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge
Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising
Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!
Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.
Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.
We'll be posting additional CRS, industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.
Subscribe to our
Internet Advertising blog, follow
ContextWeb on Twitter and join the
Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.
Posted by Jay Sears on Sun, Nov 01, 2009 @ 07:00 AM
As part of the run-up to the Context Revenue Strategies conference next week (on Thursday, October 5th only and FKA AdSpace at last Spring's adTech in San Francisco), we'll be running some terrific Q&A with some of the panelists from the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.
Today, here is a Q&A between panelist Brett Brewer, President of AdKnowledge and moderator Jay Sears, EVP at ContextWeb, Inc and the ADSDAQ Exchange.
Your Name:
Brett Brewer
Your Job: President, Adknowledge I live on Southwest Airlines, spend more time on the road with advertisers and publishers than in the office, and work closely with Board and CEO. I'm one of two inside Directors.
Your Company:Adknowledge is an ad network, one of the largest in the world, and has developed a leading targeting technology. It all started in the technology center of the U.S. -- Kansas City, MO. We're a performance solution, so it figures we have our roots in the Show Me state.
It used to be contextual advertising was the "step child" of search, living in its shadow. It finally seems to be coming into its own. Do you agree or disagree and what are the macro forces contributing to this shift?
Agree. We think the PPC's in search have pushed advertisers and marketers into the world of display and we love that. We see SEO/SEM practioners as more knowledgeable about contextual and display in general than ever before
Why does content and context matter?
Environment, qualified audience, fit, engagement. But . . . I would raise the question whether, over time, ad-serving solutions that emphasize the targeting of users, not content, will prove to be more successful.
How does behavioral and demographic targeting tie in with content and context? Or does it? Mutually exclusive or best used together?
Speaking of targeting . . .so, yes, they do tie in to some extent. Content in the form of the advertising format - a social network app, inventory on this publisher, an email ad in this category - can factor into targeting.
The Long Tail and media fragmentation. More than 80% of Internet sessions start with search-the advertiser's customer is now everywhere. Adsense has one million publishers carrying its ad tags. How do you compete in the Long Tail and against an installed based such as Adsense?
In short, targeting technology and multiple channels. Deepen the targeting technology and broaden the channels. I think that's a good competitive position.
Search has benefited enormously from last click attribution. More recently, Microsoft has published Atlas Institute research on engagement mapping and more advertisers are considering multiple attribution protocol when determining media mix. What are some of the macro "forcing functions" you see behind multiple attribution models and how will this benefit contextual advertising?
The challenge with "MAP" is how many advertisers will use it, how big do they have to be, and will the large segment of SMB's incorporate it into media-mix decisions? I am optimistic that MAP will have significant penetration.
Site targeting. When you move into the Long Tail (or even past the top 1,000 or 2,000 publishers), can site targeting deliver scalable solutions to advertisers? Is content a better answer because it is a common currency across all web pages?
I don't have a long view into site targeting . . .but I have a point of view that common currency of content does provide value. As content continues to benefit from targeting technology improvements, that creates separation vs. site targeting.
Dynamic content. Web pages change constantly. How important is real-time - real time valuation, allocation, optimization? Many folks who talk about real-time talk about "audience aggregation" and re-targeting, but how important is content as one element of a "real-time" decision?
Depends on ROI. The change in web pages reflects growing importance of 1-to-1 approach to consumer. How far does customization need to go to be effective? We are all going to find out.
Keyword vs. category targeting. Keywords are the holy grail of search. But are keywords effective in content targeting? Are they a destructive vestige of search-too granular or sometimes out of context to be impactful for content targeting? Is category targeting the answer?
Category targeting, done right, presents greater opportunities. The out-of-context challenge for keywords can create problems.
Pricing Models. CPM. CPC. CPA. Cost Per Whatever-engagement, order-Cost Per Flowbee. Is this the direction we are headed? Good or bad?
Good. Pricing varies with the advertiser's needed action or result, and varies with the business categories of advertisers. Credit card companies have different needs from dating sites who have different needs from entertainment companies (think viral). Multi-pricing options will increase total online advertising spending.
Can you sell content ads alongside search ads-1. With the same value proposition? And 2. To the same SEM buyer? Or is it more sensible to sell to agencies?
I think it depends on advertising category. Selling alongside can require more testing and tweaking by SEM buyer. But sure . . . can sell to the same SEM buyer.
Tell us about you.
What did you do last Saturday?
Played in a beer pong tournament at an event we hosted for publishers and developers of social games. I can talk all day about my pong-playing prowess.
What's the best conference you attended in the last two years (besides AdTech and CRS, of course)?
It has to be one of our own. Australia Social Media conference. Whether in U.S. or Australia, I love talking with advertisers who are still figuring out the social advertising space. The flight over was not part of best . . . was in middle row, in coach.
Thanks, Brett!
Brett's Bio:
Brett Brewer is a leading Internet pioneer and executive. He co-founded his first company, Intermix Media, just two years out of college. Intermix Media was the parent company of several businesses including Myspace.com. Intermix was sold to News Corporation for $673 million in October 2005.
Brett joined Adknowledge in 2006 and serves as President and Board of Directors member. He played a key role in attracting a $48 million investment from Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) and in completing several acquisitions that have helped make Adknowledge the largest, independently owned ad network in the world.
Brett is active with many charities and education-related organizations. He received a BA in Business/Economics from UCLA in 1996.
About CRS
Produced by Marc Phillips and David Rodnitzky in conjunction with adTech, CRS is a "conference within a conference" is 100% focused on contextual advertising-an area that has needed its own conference for some time. Please join us for the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.
Our panel looks like:
ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices
Where is contextual advertising going? What's hot, what's not? What can you do today to make your content buys massively profitable? This roundtable discussion features some of the top minds in contextual advertising sharing their insight on the state of the industry now, and in the future.
MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange
PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft
Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide
Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge
Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising
Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!
Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.
Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.
We'll be posting additional CRS, industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.
Subscribe to our
Internet Advertising blog, follow
ContextWeb on Twitter and join the
Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.
Posted by Jay Sears on Sat, Oct 31, 2009 @ 03:00 PM
As part of the run-up to the Context Revenue Strategies conference next week (on Thursday, October 5th only and FKA AdSpace at last Spring's adTech in San Francisco), we'll be running some terrific Q&A with some of the panelists from the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.
Today, here is a Q&A between panelist Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO of AdSide and moderator Jay Sears, EVP at ContextWeb, Inc and the ADSDAQ Exchange.
Your Name: Oded Itzhak
Your Job: Founder and CEO of DOCLIX - Operator of the AdSide advertising network for premium publishers and advertisers.
Your Company: AdSide is a premium pay-per-click ad network, serving tier-1 content publishers, advertisers and media agencies. The network delivers highly-targeted text ads within a controlled environment of pre-screened content sites.
AdSide's Two-Step ClickTM model ensures advertisers pay only for twice-qualified clicks, and only from high-performing sites. Advertisers benefit from a powerful combination of qualified leads, premium sources of traffic, flexible targeting, and ad placement control - at optimal price points. Customers are top-50 and regional interactive agencies, performance advertisers and large brand publishers.
It used to be contextual advertising was the "step child" of search, living in its shadow. It finally seems to be coming into its own. Do you agree or disagree and what are the macro forces contributing to this shift?
Contextual Advertising started as an extension to SEM, allowing search engines to display paid listings on content pages using keyword-based relevancy algorithms. In recent years we've been seeing content-targeting evolving beyond the keyword and taking a separate path from search. Today marketers can place text-based CPC ads while also taking into account the demographics traits and interests of their target audience, making targeting a more accurate process.
Why does content and context matter?
Content and context are indicative of the users' interests and state of mind when they click on an ad. This benefits both the advertisers and the publishers. Advertisers benefit from higher conversion rates and publishers from a higher CTR.
How does behavioral and demographic targeting tie in with content and context? Or does it? Mutually exclusive or best used together?
I believe that demographic and behavioral targeting make more sense with certain types of content where a pure keyword-based contextual algorithm might not work so well. For example, on content pages such as a news article about a car accident, where a pure algorithmic model could lead to ads like: "Get your degree in car accidents."
The Long Tail and media fragmentation. More than 80% of Internet sessions start with search-the advertiser's customer is now everywhere. Adsense has one million publishers carrying its ad tags. How do you compete in the Long Tail and against an installed based such as Adsense?
Long tail provides great reach but might not offer a good fit for some marketers. For example, marketers that look for a brand-safe environment should rethink long-tail. Other problems associate with long-tail include click fraud, accidental clicks, lack of transparency and the lack of ability to optimize on a per site basis, concerns that are less of an issue with premier, large sites .
Site targeting. When you move into the Long Tail (or even past the top 1,000 or 2,000 publishers), can site targeting deliver scalable solutions to advertisers? Is content a better answer because it is a common currency across all web pages?
I believe that it's impractical to manage site- (or placement) targeting with a long list of long-tail sites. Beyond the premium or well-known mid-tier list of sites, content targeting is better accomplished on a category level, allowing advertisers to place ads across a large number of sites that cater to users with similar interests and demographic traits.
Keyword vs. category targeting. Keywords are the holy grail of search. But are keywords effective in content targeting? Are they a destructive vestige of search-too granular or sometimes out of context to be impactful for content targeting? Is category targeting the answer?
Category-based targeting is an effective subset of contextual targeting. It allows advertisers to reach audiences on their go-to websites, and deeper within the same demographics - beyond what is accessible through keyword targeting.
Pricing Models. CPM. CPC. CPA. Cost Per Whatever-engagement, order-Cost Per Flowbee. Is this the direction we are headed? Good or bad?
CPA is a no-brainer for DR advertisers. It ensures positive ROI; however it places all of the risk on the publisher, which many quality publishers will refuse. The CPC model shares the risk between advertisers and publishers, but doesn't provide the branding benefits of display ads. CPM is the de-facto standard for branding campaigns, however it assumes that all impressions are created equal. It also incentivizes publishers to artificially create lesser inventory by adding more units per page, republishing 3rd party content, or creating photo galleries, etc. For pure branding campaigns, a new model should be developed to replace the CPM model.
Tell us about you.
What did you do last Saturday?
Sunday pumpkin picking with my kids.
Your LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/oded-itzhak/0/a07/4b2
Thanks, Oded!
Oded's Bio:
Oded Itzhak is part of a leading group of performance advertising experts. Prior to founding AdSide, Oded was Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Quigo, a leading pay per click ad network which was acquired by AOL in 2007. Oded was responsible for developing Quigo's PPC technologies and owns several search marketing and content targeting patents. Prior to launching Quigo, Oded held senior engineering and management positions at Electronic Arts, and was Chief Technology Officer at WorldImaging, Inc. Oded holds a BSc degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences.
About CRS
Produced by Marc Phillips and David Rodnitzky in conjunction with adTech, CRS is a "conference within a conference" is 100% focused on contextual advertising-an area that has needed its own conference for some time. Please join us for the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.
Our panel looks like:
ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices
Where is contextual advertising going? What's hot, what's not? What can you do today to make your content buys massively profitable? This roundtable discussion features some of the top minds in contextual advertising sharing their insight on the state of the industry now, and in the future.
MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange
PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft
Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide
Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge
Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising
Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!
Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.
Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.
We'll be posting additional CRS, industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.
Subscribe to our
Internet Advertising blog, follow
ContextWeb on Twitter and join the
Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.
Posted by Jay Sears on Fri, Oct 30, 2009 @ 02:00 PM
As part of the run-up to the Context Revenue Strategies conference next week (on Thursday, October 5th only and FKA AdSpace at last Spring's adTech in San Francisco), we'll be running some terrific Q&A with some of the panelists from the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.
To kick it off, here is a Q&A between panelist Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager at Yahoo! Content Match and moderator Jay Sears, EVP at ContextWeb, Inc and the ADSDAQ Exchange.
Your Name: Jeffrey D. Arena
Your Job: Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Content Match. My job is primarily focused on defining and executing the global product vision for Yahoo!'s Content Match contextual advertising platform. In this capacity, I oversee the global Yahoo! roadmap for contextual PPC text ad serving platforms that support Yahoo!'s Content Match text ad network.
Your Company: Yahoo! I work specifically within the Sponsored Search Advertising unit of the Advertising Product Groups (APG) at Yahoo! Sponsored Search Advertising as a group contains both of our global text ad products, specifically our Sponsored Search and Content Match products. Our primary customers are Sponsored Search and Contextual advertisers, advertising agencies, and advertising tool providers.
It used to be contextual advertising was the "step child" of search, living in its shadow. It finally seems to be coming into its own. Do you agree or disagree and what are the macro forces contributing to this shift?
I do agree with the premise, which is that contextual advertising has long been an afterthought in a larger PPC, textual advertising campaign. However, a combination of factors is fundamentally changing the relationship between Search and Contextual. Specifically, these factors include:
- Decelerating growth in algorithmic search query volume is causing advertisers to look elsewhere for additional volume (at some point, search growth will be bounded by growth in overall internet adoption)
- Maturing reporting and distribution controls specific to Contextual advertising (and not Search) are allowing advertisers to unlock pockets of value within these large ad networks
Why does content and context matter?
Delivering ads alongside related content (e.g. in-context) allows an advertiser to get exposure to an audience he/she believes to be a target for their products. So, content and context matter as a proxy for delivering audiences directly to advertisers. For example, if I'm selling sporting goods to a college-aged audience, I might choose to contextually target fantasy sports sites for my advertising, as these sites tend to aggregate the same audiences as my product. Over time, this disconnect between buying ads by context and buying ads by audience will close, as new and unique targeting capabilities emerge to allow advertisers to buy these audiences more holistically and more directly.
How does behavioral and demographic targeting tie in with content and context? Or does it? Mutually exclusive or best used together?
Building off of my previous answer, behavioral and demographic targeting are targeting methods that allow an advertiser to buy audiences more directly, as opposed to contextual targeting, which is a more indirect method of buying audiences. I do not believe these targeting methods are inherently mutually exclusive, as there are a number of ways they could be creatively used together to access a very specific audience. That said, if I were a contextual advertiser just starting out with behavioral or demographic targeting, I'd likely be testing the performance independent of other targeting methods before I introduced the complexity of combining multiple targeting types together.
The Long Tail and media fragmentation. More than 80% of Internet sessions start with search-the advertiser's customer is now everywhere. Adsense has one million publishers carrying its ad tags. How do you compete in the Long Tail and against an installed based such as Adsense?
As an Advertiser, unfortunately, this dispersal of audience to the far corners of the web increases the friction in the buying process. Since users are visiting increasingly diverse destinations on the web, advertisers are forced to deal with such audience fragmentation and chase those users across multiple ad network and advertising tactics. Clearly, someone will benefit from the consolidation of such fragmentation at some point, but such advertiser complexity is an ongoing reality in the short-medium term.
Search has benefited enormously from last click attribution. More recently, Microsoft has published Atlas Institute research on engagement mapping and more advertisers are considering multiple attribution protocol when determining media mix. What are some of the macro "forcing functions" you see behind multiple attribution models and how will this benefit contextual advertising?
The general convergence of display advertising and search advertising, as well as the maturation of the performance display market, are both drivers for better attribution modeling. When advertising online, large online marketers are typically spreading their budges across a number of buckets, such as guaranteed displayed, non-guaranteed display, search, contextual, etc. Search and Contextual advertising, by virtue of being sold CPC to advertisers, have benefited disproportionally when being measured, from an overall ROI perspective, against non-CPC ad buys (e.g. guaranteed display sold as CPM and non-guaranteed display sold as CPM). There is inherently too much friction in the advertiser processes associated with determining ROI across various online advertising tactics and such friction needs to be eliminated from the system as search and display advertising converge on the buy side.
That said, contextual advertising will not necessarily benefit from multiple attribution modeling. Today, search and contextual ads that are clicked on by a user receive 100% of the credit for driving that click. Distributing the value of that click across other ad buys will inherently lower ROI for contextual advertisers. The devil is in the details, but such a paradigm change will have winners and losers, and contextual advertising is not a guaranteed winner.
Site targeting. When you move into the Long Tail (or even past the top 1,000 or 2,000 publishers), can site targeting deliver scalable solutions to advertisers? Is content a better answer because it is a common currency across all web pages?
I see Site Targeting as an extremely valuable tool in a successful contextual advertising optimization process. Advertisers are not at all concerned with the scalability of site targeting in the context of a large ad network. Ad Networks are the ones who are scared of this targeting technology because it threatens the subsidy they currently collect on low-quality traffic at the expense of high-quality traffic. Advertisers should see these "scalability" concerns for what they really are and not second-guess the value and criticality of site targeting in managing a successful contextual advertising campaign.
Dynamic content. Web pages change constantly. How important is real-time - real time valuation, allocation, optimization? Many folks who talk about real-time talk about "audience aggregation" and re-targeting, but how important is content as one element of a "real-time" decision?
As with any targeting, having a "real-time" understanding of the context against which you're targeting ads is essential to long-term success. But, by that same token, having a "real-time" understanding of your user, including where that user has recently been on the web or what things that user has recently been searching for, are similarly critical to long-term success. That said, these are not necessarily new problems that have emerged alongside the "real-time" web 2.0 meme. So, to a certain extent, both the newness and criticality of these concepts are a bit overblown, in my opinion.
Keyword vs. category targeting. Keywords are the holy grail of search. But are keywords effective in content targeting? Are they a destructive vestige of search-too granular or sometimes out of context to be impactful for content targeting? Is category targeting the answer?
Keywords have a limited value in the world of contextual advertising simply because very few parties attribute clicks and conversions to individual keywords. Optimizing your keyword lists for a contextual campaign is fraught with trial and error, as advertisers cannot determine which keywords are having a positive influence on their ad group versus those keywords that are not. Keywords would be more valuable for contextual advertising if keyword-level reporting and attribution were available for purposes of optimization.
However, keyword-level reporting and attribution are inherently problematic in the contextual advertising space as no single keyword is responsible for driving a particular ad-to-page match. In this sense, categories are a more appropriate concept for purposes of reporting and attribution as many contextual matching technologies internally leverage categorization for determining contextual advertising matches. That said, category-level targeting and reporting, although easier from the perspective of new online advertisers, does indeed offer less control in cases or both positive and negative keyword targeting.
So, clearly there are trade offs here when any ad network is considering this question in regards to their advertiser offerings. In general, I think you should expect to see keywords used in contextual matching for some time. Meanwhile, I would expect a number of distinct targeting capabilities to be added to standard contextual advertising offerings. Among the candidates for such new targeting are: behavioral targeting, demographic targeting, user re-targeting, and category targeting.
Pricing Models. CPM. CPC. CPA. Cost Per Whatever-engagement, order-Cost Per Flowbee. Is this the direction we are headed? Good or bad?
I think these concepts are valuable as applied today, but the well established offline concepts of reach and frequency are not going away and will likely finder broader application within online advertising over time. In the end, advertisers need a single, consolidated mechanism for evaluating the success or failure of marketing efforts and a single, high-level approach for allocating marketing resources across advertising tactics, both online and offline.
Can you sell content ads alongside search ads-1. With the same value proposition? And 2. To the same SEM buyer? Or is it more sensible to sell to agencies?
Absolutely! Contextually matched ads can be and, in fact, are sold to the same advertisers with the same goals and with the same value proposition. Whether or not one's product can deliver on those promises is a different matter altogether. That said, it is completely reasonable to assume a properly priced contextual advertising click or conversion can deliver the same value as a properly priced search advertising click or conversion. The key, obviously, is recognizing these are two different methods of advertising that have unique characteristics in terms of end-user response and then pricing the products differently, to account for inherent performance variations.
Tell us about you.
What did you do last Saturday?
My wife was out of town last weekend. So, I spent several hours on Y! Sports, tweaking and tuning my fantasy football team, while watching several college football games simultaneously! That agenda will quickly be replaced when she returns.
What's the best conference you attended in the last two years (besides AdTech and CRS, of course)?
I always enjoy Search Engine Strategies, San Jose, as there are typically some good sessions related to contextual advertising. That said, I've seen more growth in the publisher-side content on contextual than on the advertiser side, so I appreciate the fair-and-balanced approach that CRS has taken.
If you could be appointed to any position in a US Presidential cabinet post, what position would it be and why?
Secretary of State - because I find diplomacy a more interesting and fruitful potential lifetime endeavor as compared with politics at almost any level. Oh, and all the free travel would be pretty cool, as well.
Your LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffarena
Your Twitter account: http://twitter.com/jeffarena
Your Company's Twitter account: http://twitter.com/yahoo
Thanks, Jeff!
Jeff's Bio:
Jeff Arena is a Senior Product Manager at Yahoo!, focused on defining and executing the global product vision for Yahoo!'s Content Match contextual advertising platform. In this capacity, he oversees the global Yahoo! roadmap for contextual PPC text ad serving platforms that support Yahoo!'s Content Match network.
Before joining Yahoo! two years ago, Jeff was a Senior Product Manager for Ad Serving at LookSmart, Ltd., and also held a Product role at Neverfail, Inc. Complementing his Product roles, Jeff has held product development and IT consulting roles for Fortune 500 Financial Services companies while a Manager at Accenture, as well as a Software Engineering position, developing systems management software for Dell. Jeff graduated from The College of Engineering at Cornell University with a degree in Electrical Engineering.
About CRS
Produced by Marc Phillips and David Rodnitzky in conjunction with adTech, CRS is a "conference within a conference" is 100% focused on contextual advertising-an area that has needed its own conference for some time. Please join us for the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.
Our panel looks like:
ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices
Where is contextual advertising going? What's hot, what's not? What can you do today to make your content buys massively profitable? This roundtable discussion features some of the top minds in contextual advertising sharing their insight on the state of the industry now, and in the future.
MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange
PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft
Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide
Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge
Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising
Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!
Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.
Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.
We'll be posting additional CRS, industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.
Subscribe to our
Internet Advertising blog, follow
ContextWeb on Twitter and join the
Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.
Posted by Jay Sears on Thu, Oct 29, 2009 @ 06:30 AM
We are looking forward to adTech next week. Lots of folks from ContextWeb, Inc. and the ADSDAQ Exchange will be at the show and conference, so keep a look out. Chairman of adTech programming Drew Ianni always delivers. This year the lead off keynote is "Mr. Frenemy" himself, WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell.
Sir Martin aside, we are particularly excited because this show number two for Context Revenue Strategies (on Thursday, October 5th only and FKA AdSpace at last Spring's adTech in San Francisco). Produced by Marc Phillips and David Rodnitzky in conjunction with adTech, this "conference within a conference" is 100% focused on contextual advertising-an area that has needed its own conference for some time.
The Content Revenue Strategies programming looks terrific including David "Mr. Contextual" Szetela from Clix Marketing (who I hear is coming out with a book on the topic) and David Jacobs, SVP of Publisher Services at Advertising.com and my co-chair on Standards Working Group of the IAB's Network and Exchanges Committee.
Most exciting for me is moderating the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th. We'll be running some excellent Q & A with our panelists on the CRS blog in advance of the conference (we'll also post it here as well for any of our readers). The panelists are a real cabal of contextual advertising-we should probably keep at least one of them in an undisclosed location for security purposes.
Our panel looks like:
ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices
Where is contextual advertising going? What's hot, what's not? What can you do today to make your content buys massively profitable? This roundtable discussion features some of the top minds in contextual advertising sharing their insight on the state of the industry now, and in the future.
MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange
PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft
Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide
Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge
Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising
Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!
Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.
Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.
We'll be posting additional industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.
Subscribe to our
Internet Advertising blog, follow
ContextWeb on Twitter and join the
Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.