Google unveils today its DoubleClick Network Builder, which allows publishers to build out and operate a partners' ad network. The product, which sits on the DART for Publishers platform, launched in private beta with 10 companies in late October. It aims to support a growing trend for publishers in the online ad industry. It has become a challenge to grab the attention of consumers as more hop from Facebook to YouTube to Twitter looking for news, reviews and video clips. While advertisers view the uptick in online traffic as good for business, the fact that consumers now share their time among many more Web sites across the Internet creates a challenge. Finding ways for publishers to remain competitive means partnering with smaller Web sites that can help broadcast brand messages. But that creates other issues, too. Real Girls Media, a group of social communities connecting millions of women online, is one of DoubleClick's test customers. The network, owned in part by Meredith, has begun to partner with between 30 and 40 smaller sites to tap into a direct sales force and sell content, according to Rany Ng, senior product manager for DoubleClick. The idea is to provide a "one-stop shop for advertisers" -- especially for those in vertical markets such as entertainment or finance, she said. DoubleClick Network Builder provides publishers insight into inventory, forecasting, sales and reporting, and integrates with optimization tools. The application has a tool that focuses on financial revenue reporting and partner payments. Ng said DoubleClick chose to automate this feature because publishers typically rely on spreadsheets to work through complex financial terms, as well as adjusting billing discrepancies. Most applications typically lack a "rules engine" that can automate the process. Having access to the data allows publishers to optimize the network and manage hundreds of partner sites. "We have had beta customers tell us it takes two full days at the end of the month to figure out revenue that's being generated, aggregate reports, send them to partners and determine how much to pay them," Ng said. One beta customer who has been using the product for the last few months told Ng that what once took two days to accomplish now takes two hours because they log into the system and download the reports. DoubleClick also built a Web portal into Network Builder that gives publishers' clients access to the data. Some of the data shared through the "partner's portal" includes effective cost per thousands, line-items data or a sample of the report with impressions, clicks and revenue numbers. As part of the portal, the partner can pick up an ad tag to place on their Web site. The ad tag let publishers define and target specific campaigns.
A court has handed Blockbuster a preliminary defeat in a potential class-action lawsuit filed as a result of its participation in Facebook's ill-fated Beacon ad program, which notified members about their friends' e-commerce activity. U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Lynn in Dallas ruled that the case could proceed in court even though Blockbuster's contract with users calls for any disputes to be heard by an arbitrator rather than in court, and also says that users waive their right to file a class action lawsuit. Lynn determined that Blockbuster's contract with users was "illusory" because the agreement said that movie rental store could change the terms and conditions at any time. A Blockbuster spokesperson declined to comment on the case or state whether the company will appeal. The decision is a blow to Blockbuster because individual consumers would have had a difficult time bringing cases one-by-one against the company. But the decision paves the way for attorneys to argue that all consumers affected by Blockbuster's participation in Beacon should be able to proceed as a class. Internet law expert Venkat Balasubramani said Lynn's decision invalidating Blockbuster's user agreement was potentially far-reaching because many Web companies reserve the right to make changes to their terms of service. "It seems broad and could have impact on the terms of service used by a lot of different companies," he said. In the year-old lawsuit, Dallas County resident Cathryn Elaine Harris alleged that Blockbuster violated the federal Videotape Privacy Protection Act by sharing information about her movie rentals and sales with Facebook without first obtaining her written consent. Harris is asking for at least $2,500 for each violation of the statute, a law passed in 1988 after a newspaper obtained the video rental records of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. When Facebook launched Beacon in November of 2007, the program operated by default. Unless members opted out, information about which Blockbuster movies they rented was sent to other Facebook users.
AutoTrader.com has launched a vertical ad network dubbed AutoTrader.com Access aimed at allowing advertisers to target in-market car buyers even when they're not browsing auto-focused sites. To that end, the new ad network powered by Adify includes not just AutoTrader.com and other car sites but those in related categories including locally focused, environmental, sports, outdoor, and eventually luxury and women-oriented Web properties. "The idea is finding consumers in the market for cars as they go about the rest of their online media consumption," said Anne Steinhauer, vice president of national accounts at Atlanta-based AutoTrader.com. A key to that effort is retargeting AutoTrader.com's 16 million monthly unique visitors with auto ads when they pop up on other sites. In addition to behavioral targeting, the platform lets advertisers segment consumers demographically and geographically. Steinhauer said a fuel-efficient carmaker, for example, could advertise on AutoTrader.com to reach in-market shoppers, and through the Access network could target eco-conscious buyers on specific environmental sites or others tied to a particular region. So far the network spans 170 sites including auto sites such as AskPatty.com, NADAGuides.com, AutoMart.com, TopGear.com, Care2.com and Greencar.com. A common thread throughout the initiative is Cox Media Enterprises, which through subsidiaries owns AutoTrader.com, ad network-building company Adify, and 40 local TV, radio and other media sites that are part of the Access network. AutoTrader.com sees a natural fit between those sites and the 20,000 local auto dealers it already works with as an extension of their advertising on the company's general market site. The advantage of launching the ad network with a national sales force already in place has quickly become evident, according to Joelle Kaufman, vice president of marketing and corporate partnerships, at Adify. "We've never seen a network come out of the gate with such strong sales," said Kaufman, whose company provides the back-end technology for 162 vertical ad networks to date. Auto ad spending online increased only slightly in 2008, from $2.5 billion to $2.8 billion, according the most recent IAB/ PricewaterhouseCoopers Internet ad report, as the industry overall was hit hard by the credit crisis and slumping car sales. While acknowledging the impact of the downturn on the auto market, Steinhauer said AutoTrader.com has seen an uptick in advertising in the first quarter of 2009 after a period of retrenchment at the end of last year. The site has also added 2 million of its 16 million visitors in just the last two months. Earlier this year, Cox consolidated most of its print automotive publishing operations into AutoTrader.com.
Erik Matlick is attempting to fill a niche in the lead-generation biz. The founder of IndustryBrains and MediaBrains is launching another startup, Madison Logic, along with LeadFocus, an automated lead-generation ad-serving platform. The entrepreneur calls it an "aggressive step" toward cornering the market on services for publishers that want to sell leads to advertisers. It took Matlick about a year to perfect the platform and line up publishers including PC Magazine, iMediaConnection, ClickZ and DMNews. Madison Logic's LeadFocus provides lead-generation programs to advertisers and helps advertisers target publishers' readers. The platform offers a full suite of tools such as serving up ads, behavioral targeting, inventory management, reporting, analytics and lead delivery and management. The technology relies on algorithms to place the correct advertiser in front of the perfect buyer, according to Matlick. Advertisers produce white papers, Webinars, and other research to use as marketing tools for attracting potential sales leads. Publishers can now focus on selling their own programs without having to qualify, manage or deliver leads. Historically, the lead-gen process lacked automation and "ad-serving intelligence," Matlick said. Publishers that wanted to sell leads to advertisers would take a lead-generation order and hardcode it to their Web site and emails to capture potential leads. The publisher would forward the leads to the advertiser. A publisher that sold 20-30 different offers to advertisers would have a difficult time managing the process. Think "DoubleClick and graphical advertising" versus "Madison Logic and lead generation advertising." The platform allows publishers to see the number of impressions, downloads, qualified leads and cost per thousand impressions (CPMs). And while the first round of tools focuses on publishers, during the next few months Matlick said to expect a series of tools for advertisers. Matlick believes the market for lead-generation services exceeds the 8% to 10% of overall online advertising spend estimated by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). His reasons circle back to search. "A lot of advertisers do lead gen, but they do it via search through pay-per-click, Google and Yahoo," he said. "If you look at search, certainly a portion of the 47% spend is done for lead gen. At the bare minimum, it's about 10% of the market." Madison Logic's initial investors include William J. Benedict, Jr., founder and CEO of Alpine Meridian; SoftBank Capital's Mike Perlis; Geoff Judge, an investor in early stage companies and an active member of The NY Angels; Mark Walsh, the chief technology advisor for the Democratic National Committee and former chairman and chief strategy officer at VerticalNet; Internet Capital Group's Ivan Inerfeld and Elke Wong, who serves as the company's COO and also former co-founder of Industrybrains.
YouTube isn't the only one going Hollywood these days. Video hub Metacafe has overhauled its home page to showcase the professional content it offers, focusing initially on movie trailers, music videos and sports highlights, with other categories to follow. The revamped home page also features an oversized billboard ad unit geared toward rich media and video-centric campaigns. Sponsoring the new front page at launch is Universal Pictures to promote the upcoming Will Ferrell adventure-comedy "Land of the Lost," opening June 5. It's the first of a four-movie ad deal that Universal has struck with Palo Alto, Calif.-based Metacafe in connection with the site's new HD-capable movie trailer section. The site is also touting an exclusive clip from "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane's "Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy," coming out May 12 on Blu-ray and DVD. Metacafe's makeover follows on the heels of YouTube retooling its home page to highlight the host of TV shows it now boasts through a spate of recent deals with entertainment companies including Sony Pictures, CBS and MGM. For sites built on viral video like YouTube and Metacafe, premium content is the new focus as they seek a more reliable path to increased ad revenue and profitability. "This shows where our space is evolving as entertainment," said Erick Hachenburg, CEO of Metacafe, which already distributes video clips from some 80 content providers including The Onion, Playboy and Howcast. Fox Sports and entertainment site Fuel TV are the latest partners to join, adding sports clips to Metacafe's existing NBA videos. Hachenburg said user-submitted clips still generate the vast majority of views on Metacafe, but he expects more prominent play on the home page will build the audience for premium video. Unlike YouTube and Hulu, however, shifting toward full-length TV episodes or movies still isn't part of the picture. "This is very much a media-snacking environment where people move from video to video," he said. Gartner Inc. last year estimated that the "protail video" market of higher-quality niche content found on sites like YouTube and Metacafe would reach $75 million in 2008 and hit $1.5 billion by 2012. Key to such growth is establishing "clean, well-lit" places for both advertisers and consumers, according to Gartner. Hachenburg said Metacafe's revenue had doubled in the last year (without specifying actual figures), while its U.S. audience as of January had grown 61% to 11 million from a year ago, according to comScore. Founded in Tel Aviv six years ago, Metacafe had a much larger worldwide audience of almost 47 million at the start of 2009. That figure is also up about 60%. But even with a growing audience, Metacafe's U.S. viewership is still dwarfed by YouTube's audience of more than 100 million. And with the video giant now offering a wider range of content than ever, smaller players like Metacafe will have an even bigger challenge remaining viable. For his part, Hachenburg stresses that the company's carefully curated offerings, filtered both by user input and its own editorial staff, help distinguish it from YouTube and other video sites. "Ninety percent of the content we get never gets on the site,' he said.
Online video network BBE -- formerly Broadband Enterprises -- announced Friday that Joe Gallagher, EVP of U.S. Sales, has assumed the additional responsibility of EVP of international sales. Prior to joining BBE in February, Gallagher led multimedia sales as vice president at The Wall Street Journal, and was national sales director for the Dow Jones online division. Last week, Online Media Daily broke the news that BBE is losing its president, Danny Fishman, to an as-yet-unnamed rival in the online video space. Based in Los Angeles, Fishman's responsibilities included growth of sales and marketing initiatives, as well as oversight of operations. BBE CEO Matt Wasserlauf said he believed that having the BBE executive team centralized in New York will be an important enhancement to "cohesiveness and productivity." Filling the void left by Fishman, Matt Timothy -- who joined BBE in late 2008 as EVP of platform and delivery -- will continue to have responsibility for technology sales, including building on BBE's network of Web sites and the Vindico ad insertion and tracking platform. BBE is presently seeing strong results with its original Web-based entertainment programming like "The Fantastic Two" -- a mockumentary series that chronicles a pair of sports fanatics and their fantasy football wars -- and a celebrity news-focused "Access Hollywood"-like series named "Hollywood Fast Track." The company claims roughly 200 brand partners, including SC Johnson, Coke, McDonald's, AOL and Toyota -- many of which are participating in the original content realm. AOL, for one, paid over $1.5 million to sponsor one of BBE's original Web-based programs.
Making a lasting impact for the planet isn't about what you do once a year on April 22 -- it's about what you do every single day, according to Grist, which has launched a campaign entitled "Screw Earth Day!" Grist, an online source for environmental news and information, says while Earth Day -- celebrated every year on April 22 -- played a critical role in launching the modern-day environmental movement, its message has become watered down. Grist's promotion highlights the changes people can make in their everyday lives to help the Earth. "Too many people tokenize Earth Day, using it as an excuse to hug a tree one day and ram it with their SUV the next," said Chip Giller, founder and CEO of Grist. "We say, screw that. One day is for amateurs. We can do better." The irreverent campaign coincides with the start of a year-long 10th Anniversary celebration for Grist and the launch of its new Web site at grist.org. Grist is encouraging new users to sign up for daily and weekly news updates by providing two incentives: a free download of its book "Wake Up and Smell the Planet: The Non-Pompous, Non-Preachy Grist Guide to Greening Your Day" and a free trip for two (including round-trip airfare, full festival passes and carbon offsets) to Bonnaroo, the popular music and arts festival that has a long-standing commitment to sustainability.
Controversial ad company Phorm suffered another blow last week when online encyclopedia Wikipedia opted out of the company's behavioral targeting platform. "The Wikimedia Foundation requests that our Web sites including Wikipedia.org and all related domains be excluded from scanning by the Phorm/BT Webwise system, as we consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors' behavior by a third party to be an infringement on their privacy," the company said in an email sent to Webwise. The move came just one day after retail giant Amazon also said it was opting out of Phorm's system. Phorm serves ads to Web users based on information about their online activity gathered from Internet service providers. Privacy advocates view the platform as alarming because broadband providers have access to all Web activity, including queries at search engines and visits to noncommercial sites. Older behavioral ad companies only glean information from specific sites within a network. Phorm says that it doesn't store people's personal data or browsing histories. Authorities in the U.K. cleared Phorm to operate, provided that it obtains users' consent. The Internet service provider BT Group, which is working with Phorm, is enabling consumers and Web sites to opt out via an online link. Last month, the U.K. digital rights organization Open Rights Group urged major Web companies including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, AOL, Yahoo, Amazon and Ebay to opt out of Phorm. "You may have concerns of your own; that a third party will be processing the contents of your website, without asking your permission, in order to construct profiles of your customers," the group wrote in an open letter to the companies. "We strongly believe that it is clearly in your company's interest, it is in the interests of all of your customers, and it will serve to protect your brand's reputation, if you insist that the Phorm/Webwise system does not process any data that passes to or from your website." The decision by Wikipedia and Amazon wasn't the only bad news Phorm received recently. European regulators said Tuesday they commenced legal action against the U.K. government for failing to enforce E.U. privacy laws. The Internet service provider BT and Phorm conducted secret tests of the company's behavioral targeting platform in 2006 and 2007, which arguably violated Europe's sweeping privacy laws. Phorm, which has offices in New York, London, Moscow and Seoul, has not deployed its system in the U.S. yet. Rival ad company NebuAd conducted U.S. tests last year, but shelved plans to roll it out broadly in response to pressure from Congress.
In the increasingly influential blogosphere, wholesale and club stores receive the most favorable coverage among retailers, while traditional department stores and mass merchandisers trail far behind, according to a new study from media analysis company Carma International, Praised for its low prices and quality product offerings, wholesale giant Costco receives the best coverage from bloggers -- while mass merchandisers like Walmart and Sears, along with traditional department store Macy's, emerged as the retail industry's laggards for the medium. Walmart was the subject of the largest number of negative blog posts across the industry, and many of these posts were highly critical of the retailer, calling Walmart "evil" or other similar invectives. "We thought Walmart's financial coverage in the mainstream media would foster positive attention overall from the blogosphere, but that wasn't the case," said study author and Carma vice president Christopher Scully. "We were surprised." Carma's analysis, meanwhile, showed that only Kmart witnessed a larger share of intensely negative coverage than Walmart among retailers that appeared frequently in blog coverage, with 12% of blog posts on Walmart depicting the retailer with intense negativity. Only the wholesale and club store sector received favorable blog coverage overall, with few aspects about wholesalers coming under criticism. Nearly 60% of all blog posts on wholesale and club stores were favorable, while only 9% of posts were unfavorable. In contrast, the blogosphere published unfavorable reporting overall on mass merchandisers and neutral reporting overall on traditional department stores. Both faced significant negative attention from bloggers about their financial struggles in today's economic climate. With the help of social media monitoring company CyberAlert, Carma searched more than 50 million blogs each day during the first two months of the year for mentions of selected retailers, finding and examining some 3,700 blog posts containing relevant discussions about 17 key retailers. Carma analyzed a sample of these posts using its research methodology to determine the focus of this blog coverage, the reasons that bloggers praised and criticized the retailers, the frequency with which bloggers discussed the current economic environment, and the favorability with which bloggers depicted the retailers. Carma included in the study the largest chains from the selected retail sectors as determined by number of stores nationwide, along with several high-end traditional department stores, such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman-Marcus. Other retailers examined for the study included BJ's Wholesale Club, Bloomingdale's, Bon-Ton, Dillard's, JCPenney, Kohl's, Lord and Taylor, Nordstrom, Sam's Club, and Target.
Out of all the quotes to choose from, I have to chuckle that I'm referencing Chris Farley and the 1995 movie "Tommy Boy." In the classic 1995 comedy, Tommy Boy (Farley) asks, "...why would somebody put a guarantee on a box? Hmmm, very interesting." This is indeed very interesting. To me, a guarantee means to devalue or to assume something is cheap or that a business doesn't believe its offering is strong enough on its own, therefore it needs to offer a little something extra. It's been a long time since I flipped through late night TV, but when I have, I recall seeing infomercials pushing offerings like "buy one couch cleaner and get the other for free" or even better "buy our closet hanging set and get another one free, if you call now." These guaranteed offers, almost always include the 30-day money back guarantee. On the latter note, if you've returned something within 30-days, I'm betting it hasn't been a pleasant experience. A guarantee (I'm hearing about these offers more and more as of late) in digital marketing might sound like a pleasant proposition, but marketers beware. While it might make you "feel all warm and toasty inside," according to Tommy Boy, there are no real guarantees when it comes to Internet users' behavior -- they are fickle creatures. Fine, buy the safety of knowing what the results will be, when running basic, well practiced programs, such as banners. Today, however, the landscape, especially as it relates to social media, isn't about forced, predictable results. It is about engaging the user in contextually-relevant ways that add to the conversation, rather than detract. Doing so, you can't -- unless you're remarkably gifted at predicting user behavior -- guarantee a result. However, if you're in the mindset of creating or offering something that social media users want, they will interact, share and generate results that produce campaign headlines that deliver desired, not guaranteed results. When spending in social media, advertisers should consider who the audience is, how they can connect and speak with them relevantly, and how they can engage the audience and better their user experience? They shouldn't be considering reach. For example, if you are selling baby products you should be looking for audiences that attract moms or families. If you are trying to reach new viewers to watch your new comedy TV show you should advertise to people interested in TV and looking for new shows. If you were approached with the ability to buy 100,000 moms talking about baby products or 80,000 people that love the show "Friends" wouldn't you consider these options over buying a million guaranteed "people" to install, click or come to your site? The reason being is those one million guaranteed people don't translate into one million people who care about your brand, will talk about your brand or more importantly engage with your product. I'm not saying you shouldn't align yourself and business strategy with the best opportunity for distribution, reach, impressions and engagement, but you can't simply buy guaranteed results in social media. So, beware of the guarantee online. Of all people, Tommy taught us the lesson of the guarantee. Not bad for a guy who graduated college in "...just under a decade..."