NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Yippee For Yahoo!
ONLINE-ADS>> Yippee For Yahoo!
William Greene (William.Greene_at_Grizzard.com)
Tue, 6 Oct 1998 17:49:49 -0500 (CDT)
In the most recent "ClickZ Alert", published by branding
maverick <g> Andy Bourland, I read with a mischievous
twinkle in my eye the following blurb from the Forrester
Forum in NYC last week:
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>Yippee For Yahoo!
>
>Publishers in the audience felt buoyed by Yahoo! President
>and CEO Tim Koogle, who takes the high road with Yahoo!'s ad
>inventory. Even if 80 percent of Yahoo!'s inventory is
>unsold, reps are directed not to sell what can't be sold on
>rate-card prices.
>
>"There's no discount to fill out inventory," Koogle says.
>Cheerleaders in the audience began mobilizing....
>=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Good golly Miss Molly. Any *other* publisher with 80% unsold
inventory, who refused to sell what couldn't be sold on
(incredibly high!) rate-card prices, would likely close
their virtual doors in short order...
UNLESS they were making their money some other way. Like by
having a stock that has sold so far above the actual value
of the company as to give a mountain goat a nosebleed. Like
by making "portal" deals with online branding sites that are
desperate to get their stock prices up just as high,
regardless of the fact that it leaves them operating deep in
the red, quarter after quarter.
I don't mean to belabor the point (OK, maybe I do, but only
out of necessity), but the fact is that market forces are
*inevitably* going to, well, "force the market" to embrace a
direct response model of online advertising. Let me
reiterate - I don't fault Yahoo! for charging exhorbitant
rate card ad prices to the branders they can extract it
from. Good for them, I say! (Especially if I get 20% for
bringing that branding advertiser to them!) But I've got a
lot of other advertisers that can in no way justify spending
that much when their resultant ROI is in double-digit
negatives; however, they're willing to work with publishers
to maximize returns on Cost Per Action deals on their unsold
inventory. They win, the publisher wins, I win - the market
allows us all to win.
Unless, of course, the market is circumvented by inflated
IPOs leading to inflated CPMs leading to 80% unsold
inventory that can be held close to the vest. The market,
however, has devious ways of "correcting" such
circumventions, as I mentioned in my recent DM News article
("The Coming Great Net Advertising Shakeout" -
http://www.dmnews.com/articles/1998-09-14/1817.html). Let's
be reasonable, folks - I also publish and sell ads, and I
take the higher CPM when I can get it, but I refuse to have
unsold inventory, and work deals when that inventory is
there! Let's not root for sites setting subsidized standards
that can't be realistically maintained in the long run -
let's pull for good old free market capitalism!
I can see my cheerleaders now beginning to mobilize... :-)
--------------------------------------------------------
William Greene
Moderator, Direct Marketing Online discussion list
http://www.directmarketing-online.com/
Director of Internet Marketing,
Grizzard Communications Group - A Top 10 DM Agency
http://www.grizzard.com/
404-635-5784 / 800-241-9351 / mailto:William.Greene_at_Grizzard.com
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