Forbes.com, the online advertising innovator that claims to have introduced the Skyscraper, has another intriguing new offering — the reach buy.
The site is selling advertising guaranteed to
reach 800,000 unique users twice during a thirty-day period. The buy differs from traditional impression-based online buys, which count impressions, not unique users. With impression buys, the
advertiser doesn’t know how many unique users actually see the ads.
"It’s like an offline buy, where they buy on reach and frequency," says Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com. "TV
has Gross Rating Points that reach a percent of the market and magazine has MRIs. Up until now, the majority of online buys have been made with impressions."
Forbes.com can guarantee 800,000
users because it has between 2 and 2 ½ million unique visitors every month who average several visits each month. "We cookie everyone who comes to the site to cap ad units," Spanfeller says,
indicating that is the way Forbes.com will insure users see advertisers’ spots twice.
The spots can be banners or larger size units.
When Spanfeller compares the reach buy with offline
media, he finds an advantage to online. Offline advertisers "don’t know who saw the ads, but we actually know who saw them," he says. But Forbes.com knows what computers view its ads, not which people
view them, unless they are the registered users, which Spanfeller says is 20 percent of the audience.
Forbes.com introduced the reach buy last week, but hasn’t signed up any advertisers yet.
The ads will be sold at a ten percent premium over the current rate card.
Jim Nail, a Forrester Research analyst, says it’s easy to guarantee frequency, with frequency capping available from
all major ad servers. "The bigger challenge is to guarantee 800,000 users," he says. "But they’ve studied their log files, so they know they get it on a regular basis."
Nail says reach buys are
"going in the right direction, but they’re stopping short of what advertisers want." Two impressions per month may not be enough and "they need to match unique user and frequency count to an
advertiser’s goal."
For instance, product launch and holiday sales advertising may need more than two, he says.
He also says TV’s rule of thumb is a frequency of three or four ads over a
four week period, so if online wants to be comparable it may have to increase the frequency.
"The industry hasn’t been around long enough and done enough research that gives an inkling of the
right frequency," he says, although he notes recent studies by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Millward Brown have touched on the issue.
Still, he sees the reach buy as a good thing and
a harbinger of things to come. "It’s absolutely different. You can buy a lot of impressions and who knows who sees them. From a marketing perspective you waste a lot of money. With the reach buy, you
can get higher frequency and reach, which advertisers want.
"The next evolution of online adverting will be these kinds of prebuilt packages around specific marketing objectives."