NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Adbot's experience proves NOTHING
ONLINE-ADS>> Adbot's experience proves NOTHING
Mark J. Welch, Esq. (markwelch_at_ca-probate.com)
Fri, 18 Jul 1997 10:23:16 -0500 (CDT)
At 12:03 AM 7/17/97 -0400, Pesach Lattin wrote:
>However, I had assumed that Adbot, as a broker would know the market, and
>know who would be interested in my site.
This is a misconception about how a broader "market" works. Adbot,
with its roots in the trading of limited partnerships, is a passive broker.
They make some effort to create recognition of the existence of the
"market" and their availability to buy and sell in that market, but they
are NOT like "advertising representatives" or "ad brokers" who actually
go out and SELL sites. Instead, Adbot assumes (incorrectly, in my
opinion) that ad buyers will leap at the opportuntity to buy ads and will
seek out opportunities through Adbot. Unfortunately, Adbot does NOT
provide a useful market mechanism due to its flawed category system,
so it even fails as a trading agent.
I can call a securities broker and ask to buy some securities based on
the specific company name, or based on general criteria (industry,
company size, P/E ratio, dividends, trend lines, etc.). If I want to
buy TV advertising, I can place an order for ads to run in specific
time slots, specific geographic areas, or during specific programs.
Likewise, If I want to buy advertising impressions, I can call
DoubleClick or Petry or FlyCast, or I can use MarketMatch, and
identify specific sites and even demographic slices within those
sites or across a broad network. Adbot, in contrast, sells only
broad impression traffic across five imprecise and overbroad
categories. Therefore, Adbot is not "making" or "serving" this
market as anything other than a "liquidator" of excess inventory.
Adbot is the place you go to sell "remainder" ad inventory, which
means inventory you COULD NOT SELL any other way. In my
opinion, given a choice between Adbot and FlyCast, I would go with
FlyCast because it offers much more flexibility and promises similar
levels of payment ($2 to $3 CPM at present), but FlyCast (unlike
Adbot) does actually allow for true targetted or even site-specific
placement of ads at higher rates.
I find myself in a strange position: I agree with Adbot's general
conclusion that the "true market price" for untargetted banner
advertising impressions is in the range of $0.50 to $5.00 CPM
instead of $10-50 CPM, but I disagree with their assertion that
their experience proves this conclusion. Their experience proves
only that they are utterly and completely incapable of running an
effective market trading system for banner advertising impressions.
In addition, their experience shows that if you run an ad "network"
that sells at low CPM rates, you will continue to draw lousy sites
and lose good sites, which will drive the CPM rates down further.
It is also worth noting that I have received many emails from
Adbot affiliates complaining of slow network performance and
ads coming up blank or with broken-picture icons. This would
also tend to drive away the better affiliates AND advertisers.
I am NOT saying that Adbot's service is not a useful service:
obviously, many sites have excess unsold ad inventory and do
appreciate the extra revenue Adbot generates. It's just that Adbot
has held itself out as providing a more comprehensive level of
service than it actually provides, and is attempting to extend
its experiences far beyond their context.
Dr. Kenneth J. Henry, wrote:
> Anyone here have any experience with the Flycast Network?
I have placed 4 pages with the FlyCast network over the past 30
days, and as Lawrence Braitman notes, FlyCast serves two roles:
as an agency to manage traffic sold at your regular "rate card"
rates (thus far they have not sold any of my traffic at these high
rates) and also as a remainder network through their "blind buy"
system (in which advertisers bid for impressions at rates as low
as $1 CPM, with an average just under $3 CPM at my site).
Unlike Adbot (which demands that you provide traffic at their
rates in order to participate), FlyCast allows you to shift your
traffic to higher rates when higher-paying advertisers are available.
(They also allow sites to create their own ads to run on their sites
in lieu of low-paying or charity ad banners.) It remains to be seen
how well FlyCast will actually be able to sell advertising.
-- Mark J. Welch (510) 462-8483 http://www.ca-probate.com/
-- Web Site Banner Ads (Networks, Brokers, Exchanges, Software, PSAs):
-- http://www.markwelch.com/bannerad.htm
-- Web Counters: http://www.markwelch.com/counter.htm
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