NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Limit difference in Third Party Serving?
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Limit difference in Third Party Serving?
Andy Bourland (andy_at_clickz.com)
Fri, 11 Sep 1998 08:29:55 -0500 (CDT)
First, I applaud Kim O'Connor for bringing this issue up.
It's a difficult and divisive one. And for once, I find
myself in full agreement with Mark Welch.
Last month, when Ann Handley and I were covering the Jupiter
Online Advertising Forum, we both sat in awe as Drew Rayman
of i33 Communications pointed his fingers directly at the
CEOs of NetGravity and AdForce and said quite plainly that
their numbers were flat out wrong. He was directing his
comments to the leaders of the companies whom the majority
of the Top 100 web site publishers turn for ad management.
For one brief moment, the opportunity existed for some
honest <perhaps even heated!> exchange about methodology and
what constitutes a delivered ad impression, but both CEOs
sat there with nothing to say. To say the least, I was
disappointed, and hope that at some point in time they will
step forward -- perhaps in this forum -- and respond to
Drew's charges. Perhaps Richard will invite them to
participate in this discussion, as well as Drew.
I once had a similar situation to Kim's. A sponsor wanted to
use a 3rd party serving solution for their ads, which
normally I forbid, based on a philosophy very close to what
Mark articulated. But I agreed to give it a shot for the
first 5-10 days, as long as I could monitor it on my end as
well. After 5 days, I compared their stats to ours. The
difference was astounding. I would guesstimate that for
every 10 impressions our system counted, theirs counted 1 or
2. It wasn't even close. I immediately called upon the key
people in both companies to get together and work out their
methodologies to get their counts more in line. Nothing
happened. I had no choice but to advise them that we were
going by my system's count, and began to serve them
directly.
Another issue, beyond the counting, is that 3rd party served
banners dramatically slow down a page load. I had more
complaints of slow page loading during that time frame than
at any other time. And God forbid if the 3rd party server
has a glitch.
The FastForward process is supposed to be addressing this
issue and I wish them the best. I look forward to hearing
their progress report at Ad:Tech...
-------------------------------------------
Andrew Bourland, Publisher
The ClickZ Network:
ClickZ: http://www.clickz.com
Microscope: http://www.microscope.com
SearchZ: http://www.searchz.com
Who's Marketing Online? http://www.wmo.com
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