Re: Defining Rich Media banners for the purposes of Pricing

From: Robert B. Knight <rknight_at_corp.ru4.com>
Date: Fri 23 Feb 2001 12:06:17 -0600

ROBERT KNIGHT <rKnight_at_corp.RU4.COM> WROTE:

> The power of using a real-time ad serving solution is that
> you can then substitute content and different media types
> without re-approaching the publisher. Less work for the
> publisher and dramatically less work for advertisers as
> well! There is no reason in this case that a publisher
> should charge more based on the type of content you are
> showing, unless the publisher is covering the bandwidth
> cost of serving the object (see below).

TO WHICH BRAD JENSEN <brad_at_elstore.com> RESPONDED:

> Or because he knows that he loses a certain percentage of
> repeat visitors by allowing rich media so he has to replace
> them with new users, and meanwhile he has lost their ad
> revenue forever.
 
> I wonder if anyone has done an a-b test on a large-hit site,
> showing rich banners to visitor A, then GIF to visitor B, and
> then tracking them for repeat visitation over 30 days. How
> soon do they leave the site? How many page views do they do
> on the average? How many never reach the second page?
> What's the dropoff.

> I have a guess what the answer is, and it says that the
> publisher showing rich banners makes more money today - and
> loses more revenue over time.

Technology exists today which allows a user's browser to be
"sniffed" prior to receiving an ad. This allows an ad server to
only serve rich-media content to users who have the technology
to view the ad and whose bandwidth is high enough to receive
the ad in a short period of time. In addition, rich-media content
can be loaded in the background, after the rest of a page has
loaded, thereby not affecting publisher site performance and
leaving a viewer indifferent with respect to site performance.

Furthermore, our company (and others) can track "latent-clicks"
and has conducted the exact tests you describe for several
large advertisers. The results are not as you expected! Not only
does rich-media achieve higher click-thru rates, but it also
achieves equal or better "latent-click" results (visitation without
a click after a period of time).

I would be happy to provide you with some actual results for our
clients on an anonymous basis or to set your company up with
a campaign to run exactly those tests so that you can see for
yourself!

Regards,

Robert Knight, ru4, Inc.
AD, Finance and Operations
435 Hudson Street, Floor 7 / New York, NY 10014
phone 212.741.4222 / fax 212.741.4224
email: rknight_at_corp.ru4.com



Received on Fri Feb 23 2001 - 12:06:17 CST