NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Petry Rep Agreement
ONLINE-ADS>> Petry Rep Agreement
Robert Hoffer (rhoffer_at_nerds.com)
Tue, 28 Jan 1997 14:41:51 -0800
Hi People
I have had a great deal of personal dealings with Petry and with Petry
Interactive at its highest levels: I've personally spent hours and hours
with the ownership of the company and with its top brass discussing the
potential of an advertising network. This was the brainchild of David
Moore and Jim Ganley, both very nice, very intelligent business people -
neither of these guys are particularly experienced in the WWW or in
technology, but both know the rep business very well and I like and I
respect these guys for what they do know. The bottom line is that these
are nice guys working hard and making a living in a tough and mature
industry (I don't mean the Web, folks, I mean TV advertising
representation). TV Advertising sales is very much different than the WWW.
TV Ad sales requires an exclusive relationship with the local station. If
you don't have that, as a rep, you don't have anything. They (meaning TV
space sales reps) really have had a business model for years that has
required this. While it's true that they do their job selling ad space,
it's a lot easier for them to do this job if they have as much control as
possible over what they can and cannot sell. This is why the contracts
seem so tough - also, they are constantly getting burnt by stations and
groups of stations which have internal sales forces. The bottom line is
that if a rep does a great job building a market for a property, that
property than has a better than average chance of taking the job away and
starting an inhouse sales force.
That's what has happened at Infospace. As VP of Marketing for Infospace I
hired Petry to rep a popular site and they were unable - in four months -
to sell a single advertisment (from June through September of 1996) - the
founder of Infospace, Naveen Jain, was ballistic about this. He felt that
the Petry people were incompetent. I went to numerous sales appointments
with their reps and for the most part, with a few notable exceptions, such
as Karen Davidson - who is no longer with the firm, and Greg Ekstrom out on
the West coast (who was one of Infoseek's first sales reps) Naveen was dead
on the mark. I discussed this at length with some of the other sites they
were working for and this opinion was upheld by them.
While it's true that at that time Petry's Interactive sales force didn't
really understand the Web space, it's hard to blame them - almost nobody
did. More importantly the sales reps were dealing with an even more
serious problem: that is, the people who buy ad space and make media
decisions were completely clueless. Never in my life have I seen a group
of people so undereducated about the ramifications of the World Wide Web
and its impact on direct marketing and media than the buyers of traditional
media.
The Bottom Line? Negotiate with Petry. Force them to make a committment
to you. The much heralded, over-promised and underdelivered Commonwealth
Network should by now have demonstrated how daunting a task it is to manage
a vast network of web site advertising availabilities, both logistically
and technically. Don't take for granted the assurances that the sales
person provides that the contract is just a formality - it isn't. If you
sign a pact with the Devil for eternal life and the fine print says he gets
to control how you live it and you end up in jail for the term - it's your
fault, not his, for you didn't read the fine print!
Also, let's not forget that of the thousands upon thousands of web sites
that are out there, an enormously small number have every made a profit
advertising ... it's not a great model folks, but that's a whole other
discussion!
Regards,
Robert Hoffer
CEO/NERDS Inc.
Robert Hoffer
rhoffer_at_nerds.com
201.666.nerd (6373) ext. 1
___________________________________________________________
======> http://www.identity.net - be yourself!
___________________________________________________________
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This week's Online Advertising Discussion List sponsor:
ADSmart.net is the best way to buy or sell online advertising space.
ADSmart's TrueTargeting methodology accurately pinpoints target audiences,
matching campaigns to the most appropriate ad spaces on the Web.
http://www.adsmart.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Online Advertising Discussion List To Unsubscribe send UNSUBSCRIBE
http://www.o-a.com/ to online-ads-request_at_o-a.com
