Re: Buying bulk overseas

From: Ray Taylor <taylor_at_nmcadplan.com>
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 03:56:49 -0600 (CST)

JOHAN SIWERS <JOHAN.SIWERS_at_MAILBOX.SWIPNET.SE> WROTE:
>My question to you is: Are the Networks buying or are they
>selling? Who are they representing - in my world you can not
>represent both the buyer and the seller. How widely spread
>is this? For me with about 100 million impressions a month
>to sell I will have a hard time selling all these to the
>local market. An international ad sales company is a good
>partner, but hey I want them to look after my interests!
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


The simple answer to this question is that ad networks
represent themselves. I deal with ad networks in the UK, but
only because they handle specific sites. I have found in the
past that buying an entire network seldom produces results,
Even buying supposedly targeted groups of sites is seldom
cost effective unless the CPM rates are below $5.

The only time I ever buy from a network is if, for instance,
I want to place a campaign with AltaVista, I will place it
via DoubleClick (there is no choice in this case).

>From the point of view of a web site owner, there are many
advantages of selling through a network. These include the
"route to market" (they have immediate contact with buyers),
use of ad servers without the high overhead, and use of a
no-overhead sales operation. The down side is of course that
you pay a high percentage commission, and there is no
guarantee that your inventory will be sold without massive
network discounting. Even then, there is no guarantee.

>From the point of view of the sales networks, their main
aim is to pull together a wide range of sites from which
they can sell inventory en masse. Makes no difference to
them if they sell site A or site B. And I have never had an
approach from a sales network suggesting a particular site
or group of sites. They just sit back and wait for the calls
to come in.

The thing I don't like, from an agency point of view, is
that networks often portray themselves as online media
planners - which is just not true. Media planners represent
advertisers, whereas sales networks represent sites (or
themselves). There is absolutely no way a sales network can
possible understand and meet a client's online media
requirements without spending time getting to know their
business. And given the number of advertisers the bigger
sales networks deal with there is no way they can do this.
Even if they could, they are paid to sell inventory,
regardless of its value to the advertiser.

I have often found response from sales networks poor.
Presumably because they are busy dealing with enquiries from
naive, first-time advertisers. And it is not unknown for a
sales network to pitch media planning services directly
against my company (an online media planning agency).

So, networks give poor service to their clients (web site
owners), to their direct advertisers (I have taken over a
couple of real turkeys initially bought direct from a
network), to their agency customers (in many cases they
prefer to book business direct in order to keep the 15%
commission, avoid discount buying, and to be able to sell
turkeys to naive first-time buyers), work in direct
competition with their agency customers, and are responsible
for large-scale heavy discounting of network inventory.

I certainly have no problem with availability of volume
traffic at low cost to the advertiser. But if networks are
set up to do this, it should be made clear to the media
owners.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against sales networks. I
just think that if they stuck to one job - that of proper
representation of web sites for ad sales - they would be
able to do a better job for their client sites, and
therefore provide a more valuable service to advertisers and
agencies.

But I guess there is always the temptation to just shift
inventory. In the words of Harry Wormwood (as portrayed by
Danny DeVito) "There's a sucker born every minute and we're
gonna take them for all they got."

Is this the future of online media?

Ray Taylor +44 181 639 0015
nmc/adplan UK taylor_at_nmcadplan.com
Online media is our business


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Received on Thu Apr 01 1999 - 04:38:40 CST