NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Ad Banner Campaign Jam
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Ad Banner Campaign Jam
Joel Gehman (jgehman_at_creativelabs.com)
Wed, 12 Aug 1998 13:46:22 -0500 (CDT)
On Tue 8/11/98 5:18am, mark_at_criticalmass.com wrote:
>"I for one have turned down RFP's from Creative as they are *below
>my cost* of creating and hosting my content."
One, Creative Labs doesn't submit RFPs for online advertising--never has.
Everyday, we filter vendor solicitations for meetings. There are simply
too many vendors chasing a finite pool of online ad dollars for us to meet
with everyone. Any media buyer out there can no doubt tell the same tale.
Two, Is this guy for real? I've never before heard of or spoken with him.
According to his Web site, Critical Mass is "Orange County's premiere web
development and hosting service." Hmmmm...where's that gaming audience???
Three, Economics 101 tells us that "Sunk costs are irrelevant." Just
because he spent a pile of money creating and hosting content, doesn't mean
that it is worth something to an advertiser. I am only one of many online
media buyers. I do not make the market. Collectively, buyers and sellers
make the market. Unfortunately, his post seems to concede that his
competitors' have found a way of doing things better, cheaper, faster.
Four, To expand my earlier post, a cheap CPM alone does not *necessary*
make a good deal. However, within a given genre--let's take gaming
sites--there is no data to indicate that the eyeballs on IGN, Gamecenter,
Gamespot, Happy Puppy, UGO, AGN, TEN, PGL, Mplayer, Heat or IDG are any
different (Hey, I've got an idea--Let's start another gaming site and build
our business model around a $30 cpm).
Seriously, by even *being* on one of these gaming sites, we can infer 1)
the user has a PC (only 45% of US HH do); 2) they are on the Internet (only
20% of US HH are); 3) they visit gaming related content sites (estimated at
less than 5% of US HH). These eyeballs are so many standard deviations
away from a typical American, that as a group, their behavior is very
homogenous. To say that "my eyeballs are better than their's" is a bit
naive.
Sites with competitors should do themselves a favor and figure out things
like: what is the total unduplicated reach if an advertiser bought all
these sites in equal proportion, how about effective frequency with media
plan X or what happens if I buy a million impressions on half of the sites
and 2 million on the other half? No one knows! Any good marketeer knows
the 4P's. Will somebody please learn to differentiate? Don't tell me your
users are better, unless you've got a serious piece of 3rd party research
to back it up. Otherwise, it just ain't so. An eyeball, is an eyeball, is
an eyeball. That said, cheaper is better. With the current inbalance in
supply and demand, the CPM erosion will continue.
Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, I dropped Mark an offline note
in response to his post. It seems he does run a gaming site--PlanetQuake,
though he fails to mention it at criticalmass.com (what's the big
secret???). Apparently, at some point in the past he had IDG repping his
site, but has now brought ad sales in house--guess IDG couldn't cut
it--perhaps he found a *cheaper* way of doing it :) During this time, Mark
maintains that Creative Labs submitted an RFP to PlanetQuake, via IDG. See
my first point--no RFPs.
Mark, before taking a public jab at my company, why not give a call first.
You may find there's room for yet one more gaming site in my media plan :)
Thanks for the lively banter, $5 Joel
Joel Gehman
Internet Marketing Analyst
Creative Labs, Inc.
mailto:jgehman_at_creativelabs.com
http://www.soundblaster.com
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