by Doug Weaver on March 11, 2010 at 8:00AM
The following is excerpted from a Drift column published in October of 2008, when we were staring right into the jaws of the current recession. As things start to brighten a bit, the core theme seems just as timely now. Should we not be just as circumspect about boom cycles as we do about times of crisis?
As my good friend Charlie Thomas often reminds me, hard trends matter more than cycles. The current credit crisis and the resultant pullback on ad budgets is a cycle. But all the hard trends point to continued growth for our digital advertising and marketing world. To illustrate the point, a brief quiz:
- In 3-5 years will there be more or less money spent in digital marketing and advertising?
- In that time frame will the share of spending in digital grow relative to analog media?
- Will the relative complexity and depth of digital advertising and marketing continue to demand professional knowledge and insight?
- Will digital issues occupy more or less of the time and attention of marketers, agency leaders and media company executives in 3-5 years?
Most informed observers would answer “more” “yes,” “yes” and “more” to these questions; so would I, and probably so would you. These are hard trends. If we keep this future in mind, our long term decisions will be about how we create value in that world. Our short term decisions are about staying afloat and building the capabilities and relationships that will help us realize future success.
Read the rest of “Hard Trends Beat Hard Times.”
by Doug Weaver on March 9, 2010 at 7:30AM
The more I get to know about the web, the more it looks like the world. Take for instance the attitudes of media owners, ad networks and enabling technologies, which in the end starts to sound an awful lot like the free trade vs. protectionism debate.
For starters, you’ve got rich countries and poor countries. Some countries have enormous wealth and resources – Turner, ESPN and Wall Street Journal are all rich in prime content assets, audience composition and more. Those countries argue for a strong border: No network relationships, very little third party technology. We’ll be in charge of what goes on here and who comes in.
Poorer countries – sites with larger populations but weaker national identity and content resources – are much more in favor of free trade. Open up the border, let’s all get along. The flow of people and goods is vital to raising their standard of living, and they’ll be far more amenable on price and working conditions.
Ad Networks are the multinationals. They’re dispassionate about national identity and unconcerned about borders. They’re simply trying to maximize profit, grow their share of market vs. other multinationals and create wealth and power. Enabling technologies — everything from ad serving to data provision – they are the shipping and communication providers of the age; the more things move around, the bigger the market for their services.
The debate I’ve observed over the last decade among these players has been shrouded in rhetoric and emotion. But in the end, every one of these positions is perfectly defensible. There’s no morality and immorality here, only enlightened self interest and calculation. It’s as true in the digital marketing world as it was in the geopolitical worlds of the 1990s and the 16th century. So stop arguing about what’s right or wrong or “should be.” It all just “is.”
One final thought: Much like Elizabethan England in the 16th Century, some relatively small, resource-starved ‘country’ is going to tag along with the multinationals and shipping providers and create itself an empire through alliances, intelligence and smart management. And it will have a pretty good run. I wonder which one it will be. And I wonder how many will follow.
by Doug Weaver on March 4, 2010 at 8:00AM
When I started in the advertising business 29 years ago, my boss at the agency (yes, I worked at an ad agency) sent me to ride on the back of a beer truck and deliver kegs to restaurants for our client at Dos Equis beer. I wonder if anybody on either the media company or agency side ever does that anymore? I think we’ve created an “advertising class” that is now two generations removed from the business of really selling stuff and serving consumers. We write media plans, plug stuff into planning systems and compete for CLIOs and other ad awards. For too long, we have treated the manufacturer/marketer – the producer and seller of goods and services – as an ATM to finance our insular, sexy little business. We all need to resign from that business today.
The preceding stand alone passage is excerpted from “Garfield, Armageddon and Dead Ideas” which was originally published in March 2009.
Post script: There’s a reason why clients have turned the lens of procurement on the cost center called “advertising.” From my perspective, the term is downright radioactive at this point. Run, don’t walk, from “advertising” in today’s marketplace of business ideas. Whatever your role in the business, however long your future, it’s time to think and act like a marketer.
by Doug Weaver on March 2, 2010 at 8:30AM
I’ve long been in favor of the IAB taking a more muscular and vocal position in the online privacy debate. Given the blink-of-an-eye in which Congress gave life to the National Do Not Call Registry (“…Telesales business? Bu-bye!”), there is little doubt in my mind that regulation of online data and targeting is a very easy “yes” for both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. But in following the group’s work on this issue and reading the reports from last week’s IAB Annual Meeting in Carlsbad, I can’t help but feel that the view from the bunker may be getting a little narrow. While I’m certain it’s playing well to the membership, I think the IAB’s efforts are falling short in several important ways.
The Conspiracy Theory. According to IAB President Randall Rothenberg, the drumbeat for regulation is “… happening because well-organized anti-business and anti-advertising groups have gotten the ear of regulators and politicians and purposely inflamed fears about our industry.” This premise sidesteps consumers’ legitimate questions and privacy concerns and instead blames outside agitators for all the trouble. This may have played well in Carlsbad, but it won’t last two seconds on Main Street.
The Value Exchange. Inherent in the IAB’s case to consumers is that better targeting will equal better and more relevant advertising. But let’s be honest: as an industry we’ve never delivered on that promise. The creative assets are simply not scalable enough. The more we rely on this premise, the worse we end up looking.
Advertising Is Creepy. Whether any of us like it or not, consumers do not trust, love or crave advertising. On a good day they tolerate it as a means of getting something else they want; free content, discounted service, whatever. While trying to satirize the latent fear and loathing of online advertising, I fear the IAB has buried its real message beneath a bunch of banners and skyscrapers that reiterate the very sentiment that’s driving the revolt.
For me, the real story we should be telling is this:
- You like the free internet that just keeps getting better and faster and deeper all the time? Just like basic cable, this whole thing needs to be underwritten by companies that want to sell you stuff. That said….
- Some anonymous stuff about the kinds of sites you visit and the stuff you show interest in is going to be used anonymously to help those companies spend their marketing money more effectively to support the free internet you like (see point 1.)
- This “Cookie” thing that you’ve been hearing so much about? Think of it like your EZ Pass, the magnetic strip on the back of your ATM card or the scanner in the supermarket. We all trade little bits of anonymity for convenience in the ‘real world’ every day. And you’re still far more anonymous online than you’ll ever be at the A&P or on the New York Thruway.
- If you feared the heater in your house was spitting out Carbon Monoxide, who would you call: Your heating guy or your city councilman? Keeping your data and identity safe and secure online is, in the end, good business. And the business people who build websites and deliver ads to those websites all have the very best technologists working for them. They’re just as vested in the long term success of the internet as you are. Let’s not let “the cure” kill the patient.
While we’re at it, can we once and for all bury the term “targeting?” Let’s go survey a million consumers and see if we fine even one who says that’s a good thing. Words matter.
Freedom. Access to information. Fear of being controlled. Self determination. These can be the issues that support the development of online marketing. But so far they’re only the weapons being used to defeat it.
by Doug Weaver on February 22, 2010 at 8:30AM
Today marks the soft launch of the web’s oldest brand new blog, The Drift. I’ve written and published The Drift since March 2001 as an e-mail newsletter, and have now recreated it as an influential and provocative ‘new’ blog. I’m asking friends and associates to comment this week — either by post or e-mail — on what they’d like to see here, how they feel about the format, whatever. Future posts will be shorter than the historical content already on the blog, and far more frequent. We’ll publish at least twice a week — Tuesdays and Thursdays — and more frequently as market events dictate.
Read, explore, enjoy, comment. Like any blog, The Drift is only as good as the conversation and action it stimulates.
by Doug Weaver on December 14, 2009 at 5:00AM
The common flea is apparently quite a jumper. The little guys travel by leaping from one surface or host to another, often reaching pretty significant heights. That is, until they are confined to a shallow jar for just a few hours. After a few attempted leaps and some flea-sized cranial bruises they get the message of how high the new “up” is. When subsequently released from confinement, the flea will never again leap higher than the lid of that jar for the rest of its life.
Last week I moderated a ‘brawl’ at the iMedia Agency Summit in Scottsdale in which five industry voices addressed the question of what all the newfound scale and efficiency of exchanges and demand platforms would mean to the future of our business. With massive but defined audiences now available for delivery, would we see more “demand creation” (brand communication) dollars being spent in the medium (at the expense of TV, cable and print)? Or will all this science simply make us an ever more efficient (and cheaper) version of the “demand fulfillment” (DR) channel we’ve been for the last 15 years? As I questioned the various panelists (representing a site owner, an industry trade organization, a creative shop, a digital ad buying shop and a major platform) about the implications and possibilities, a realization came to me:
It’s quite possible that online may never become a demand creation channel. At least not until almost the entire leadership of our industry turns over.
Like the fleas released from the jar, we are still enslaved by that invisible lid. Two generations of digital buyers, clients, sellers and technologists have never lived in a world that wasn’t almost completely devoted to hard core direct response metrics. During the panel the audience was assured that the buying shops and the platforms were agnostic on the matter, and both open and prepared for an influx of “demand creation” dollars. “The metrics for valuing demand creation will emerge and we’ll adapt to them,” we were further assured. But then I asked a question that’s been on my mind:
What’s the motivation for any buyer or client to ever let go of the very metrics that have helped them successfully drive down digital media prices for over a decade?
I know this may sound cynical to many, but how else to explain the persistent dominance of click and post-click metrics in the evaluation of display and even video ads? Brand effectiveness research, cross-media optimization studies and market mix modeling have all been there for our embrace for much of the past decade; but most online clients and buyers have only performed a weird karoke version of brand measurement. And even those who see a bigger more expansive role for online in the communications mix can’t see the path to get there. DR is all we’ve been trained for, and to one with only a hammer the world is filled with only nails.
Don’t get me wrong: Not for a moment am I denying the power of technology to scale audiences or the need for — and value of — accountability in digital marketing. I’m only questioning whether those who are most “experienced” in our space might also be the most “conditioned” to the limitations of demand fulfillment thinking. Are we like the liberated fleas never again jumping higher than the lid of that jar? What’s at stake is who will usher in the full development of online marketing. Will it be us? Or perhaps it will fall to those who’ve never been confined to the jar in the first place.
by Doug Weaver on July 10, 2009 at 5:00AM
Picture a rather odd and cumbersome looking bird demurely dragging a mottled clump of tail feather through the dust as it crosses your path. This metaphorical bird represents the present and future of online advertising and marketing as defined by clicks, post-click behavior and the simplistic DR metrics that have dominated – no, smothered – the business for nearly 15 years. You might be a little intrigued, but certainly not inspired or awed by what you see…
But, take the same bird with a different attitude and posture and you get a totally different picture…
This “Peacock Principle” I’m espousing is about how we in the digital media, sales and agency community will – or won’t – talk about ROI from here on out. Will we continue to awkwardly retrofit the value of online advertising to brain-dead, narrow metrics and models? Or will we adopt a more muscular, assertive positioning of what online advertising and marketing really does for a marketer, a campaign, a brand? Sellers, agencies, marketers….this is your invitation and your roadmap to that new conversation about ROI. There is a case to be made for real online ROI and here is how to make it. In every meeting and every exchange, we must display all the feathers.
1. Guaranteed Delivery. In an age of TiVo and ADD, I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice that every single online ad is delivered only when a live human is requesting the page it appears on. In television, they’ve only recently and grudgingly accepted commercial ratings over program ratings, and something like seven times more money is spent there than in the online world. A better brand of snake oil, but still not really treating the patient.
2. Adjacency and Integration. American Idol and the impending NBC Jay Leno experiment are chiefly about breaking down the barriers and integrating advertising into the viewer experience. Hello? Every online ad lives right on the same screen with the content. It’s one integrated experience. In other words, we are the future that television aspires to be.
3. Attention. Not surprisingly, points one and two add up to point three. Attention is today’s media currency and we are drowning in it. We start with an attentive, lean-forward consumer of information; that should be worth a multiple of seven right there!
4. Personalization and Targeting. In a media world where 18-49 is still considered “a target demo,” virtually every online ad is already micro-targeted – demographically, behaviorally or contextually -even in its most simplistic deployment.
5. Interaction. With upwards of 80% of online display ads now constructed in Flash, “interaction” is the new click. Interaction rates on widely-available creative technologies are holding solid: consumers actually like the idea of touching, manipulating and interacting with online ads. Who knew? And with online video just getting bigger, better and faster….well, you know the rest.
6. Brand Movement. “Branding” may have lost some luster as an intellectual construct, but the ability to measure brand movement and growth within the online channel remains undiminished. Thousands of brand studies and a body of work by Dynamic Logic and other companies and industry bodies – all based on rock-solid research methodology – can’t be wrong. Simple fact: online advertising works. It moves consumers from one side of the persuasion scale to the other.
Six simple concepts – six feathers. If we confidently and consistently adopt this new posture – if we strut a little instead of nervously shuffling across the media landscape – we can quickly reshape marketer opinions, behavior and allocation. But first, we’ve got to start (a) believing it ourselves and (b) conforming our own digital-to-digital arguments to this new reality. To do less is to continue to apologize for and enable the status quo and ultimately thwart the real advancement of online within the media landscape.
Who really gives a damn about a shy peacock anyway?
by Doug Weaver on June 12, 2009 at 5:00AM
Two years ago I gave speeches at CIMA and iMedia events on something I called “The Oreo Doctrine,” a model for understanding the distinctions and divisions in the world of online advertising and marketing. Just last week I heard it referenced by three separate sources, which – in our world of highly perishable ideas and news cycles – means that it’s still quite a useful tool. So I’m dusting off a slightly abridged version and adding some commentary. (For a full copy of the downloadable white paper, click here.)
…I’d like you to grab a nearby Oreo (a virtual one will do if you’re not near your snack-source). Now, divide it into halves the way you did when you were six. You’ve now got a separate chocolate wafer in each hand, and all or most of the cream went on one side or the other… The first cookie represents Transaction: the selling, buying, placement, pricing, optimization and reinvestment of standard media advertising units. Transactional buyer and seller organizations will be almost entirely focused on profitable buying and delivery of the common advertisement, whether it’s the :30, the L-Rec, the Pre-Roll :15 or the column inch. Those who will succeed will be very good at things like negotiation and optimization. Ultimately math and science will be the intermediaries and – often – the disruptive agents.
In the very near future, I believe the transactional side of our business will be almost completely automated. Electronic exchanges, auctions, automated buying… If you’re running a business in this space… you’re going to be ultimately rewarded by Wall Street for taking people out of the process. You should be constantly seeking automation and looking to lock down science and math advantages through patents and technological advances. And if you’re a successful buyer or seller in this space, take heed: your days are numbered. Any marketplace where high-priced humans intermediate transaction is one that’s ripe for downsizing. If you’re pushing RFPs back and forth on the basis of price and availability, your job just won’t be there 5 years from now.
Can anyone look at the proliferation of ad networks, the development of exchanges and today’s emerging Wall Street style ad trading models and not see this part of the equation coming true? Run a search on the phrase “automated online advertising” and see what happens.
The cookie in your other hand represents what I call Marketecture: a business discipline that applies complex media and communication elements in the focused solution of unique business problems. Where Transaction was about efficiently delivering ads, Marketecture focuses on profitably solving a time-sensitive marketing or business issue for the client. Transaction dies without standardization, but Marketecture will thrive on the relative chaos – “permanent whitewater” – of technical innovation that will always drive the digital world.
If you believe that your future is in Marketecture… there are steps you need to take as well. We’ve got to hire and train problem solving and strategic skills, often reaching outside our industry to do so. As consultants and consulting organizations do, we’ve got to learn to align with larger business problems than we do today. And we all need to reexamine the concepts of competition, collaboration and account ownership. The business of Marketecture will create some strange bedfellows, and last week’s competitors may now end up shoulder-to-shoulder with us on today’s project. In Marketecture, he or she who has the best virtual talent network wins.
Having seen commoditization and automation put intense downward pressure on price, hundreds of top sellers and dozens of publishers in our industry have adjusted and opted out of the pricing limbo contest. Some have chosen certain segregated inventory to put into the network or exchange pool; others have taken that same inventory and “plowed it under” by running house ads or promotional banners. But all are choosing to spend their valuable outside sales time focused on blending unique assets and capabilities – those things that can not be automated or commoditized – with their best quality inventory and offering them as a combined solution to marketers. Often this sale can only be made directly to the client or at the top levels of an agency. The executional planning teams have neither the time or inclination to look far beyond price.
Further, we’re now seeing many network players looking to create and leverage unique capabilities and advantages so that they too can pull away from the commoditized environment in which they once flourished. All are sharing the realization that you may build a base with transactional business, but you’ll make all your margin with Marketecture.
When you twist apart an Oreo, all or most of the cream sticks to one cookie or the other… it’s up to each of us to decide which cookie holds the cream for us. Is your company’s vision Transactional or Marketectural? In my view, you’ve got to choose: you simply can’t be both. Hiring, skills, training, compensation and ROI for these two kinds of businesses are moving in opposite directions. Much of the dissonance and discomfort in our industry today stems from the overlap between these two visions and functions… Ask yourself in which camp you and your company belong. But if you’re considering half measures or avoiding the decision, remember that great companies are those that make choices. And this is a really big one.
It still is. What’s your answer in 2009?
by Doug Weaver on May 29, 2009 at 5:00AM
Maybe I’m late to the game, but I’ve been fact-finding and mulling over many questions related to social media and social networking over the past weeks. I’ve also followed the truly silly media debates about Twitter recently, and continue to marvel at the way we all continually, consistently miss the point of this whole phenomenon.
I recently watched my friend, collaborator and fellow Habitat Faculty member Mark McLaughlin give a brilliant presentation where he traced the impact of an iconic media brand as it rippled through the landscape of social media and social networks. An article, a photo, an idea would be posted, passed along, commented on, elevated, heated up and served yet again thousands of times. From Flickr to the blogosphere to search boxes, content reverberates and often grows louder in a myriad of compelling and, it seems, highly-measurable ways. It occurred to me – perhaps belatedly – that if a media brand or an article or a photo could have this kind of long-tail afterlife, why not a campaign, a slogan, an ad character, a brand?
In my estimation, we’ve blown through the first two stages of ’social media marketing’ and are on the cusp of stage three:
Stage 1: Social Media as Advertising Environment. While there is certainly value in having an ad presence within a highly engaged social media environment, it’s widely accepted by marketers and social media players that there’s far more to it than this. Hence Facebook’s early decision to outsource banner sales and Twitter’s recent dismissal and about-face on whether they will accept “advertising.”
Stage 2: Social Media as Conversation Pit. The received wisdom from those who spend serious time looking at Social Media is that marketers need to ’stop controlling the message,’ ‘be genuine’ and ‘be ready to listen’ to what their customers have to say. Fair enough, but somewhat unsatisfying to marketers looking to really harness the power of what’s going on and to social media and social network providers looking to monetize the lightning they’ve got in the bottle. It’s like telling a “Survivor” contestant to wear sunscreen and eat balanced meals: sound advice, but not quite the edge he was looking for.
Stage 3: Social Media as Marketing Richter Scale. Negating neither of the points above – this is an additive discussion without a single conclusive answer – I believe it’s time to acknowledge Social Media and Social Networks as the marketing echo chamber that they are. For perhaps the first time ever, marketers can put a campaign or a character or a message out into the public consciousness and then REALLY HEAR AND SEE ITS IMPACT. A brand can throw rocks in the pond and then measure both the quantity and quality of the ripples that follow.
Sure, advertise (subtly). Yes, converse (genuinely). But by all means pour your time, money and resources into this channel to really understand the full ROI of ALL your advertising and marketing activity. For the first time ever, you can.
I’m not bright enough or vested enough to figure this all out, but it seems to me that there’s a profession and business line here that’s up for grabs between agencies, media measurement firms and other interested parties. It also seems that there’s an unrealized source of revenue and ROI for Social Media and Social Network providers: marketers admit they’re increasingly lost in today’s landscape, and you’ve got a GPS to sell them. And for the first marketers to truly turn things around and plug their headset into the Social Media and Social Networking grid, the payoff will be enormous.
Jump ball.
by Doug Weaver on April 22, 2009 at 5:00AM
Picking up on the theme from the March 13th edition of The Drift, I continue here in “Profiling the New Seller;” that is, describing the very new skill sets and orientations of tomorrow’s digital and integrated media seller. When you combine the complexity of today’s digital toolkit (display, search, mobile and all points in between) with a fragmenting media landscape, a fundamental role realignment in client/agency relationships and the intermediation of technology in the buy/sell process (see “The Oreo Doctrine” ), the old media sales models and practices fall apart. We simply need to look beyond “years in the business” and seek out new archetypes for the media sales pros of the next ten years. In March, I described three of those archetypes: the Producer, the Asset Packager and the Human Router. Here are three more:
The Non-Linear Seller: Three traits distinguish the Non-Linear: (1) he’s able to thrive in dealing with multiple decision points in hierarchical buying environments; (2) he’s not afraid of long sales cycles and (3) within those sales cycles he’s able to secure meaningful interim commitments – he does the interim close very well. As a media sales organization, you’ll pay your bills with ongoing transactional business, but you’ll make your margins and profits on big, renewable franchises that often take weeks or months to sell through. We can learn a lot here from enterprise software sellers, especially those who may have done governmental work. Consider also those who have sold non-traditional advertising and promotional vehicles. Who sold marketers on the idea of sponsoring concerts or wrapping their logos around vehicles that patrol the streets of Manhattan or the freeways of LA? Now there’s someone who can go and find the check writing authority in a complex organization.
The Navigator of Complexity: A slight riff on the description above, think of the Non-Linear Seller as Mr. Outside while the Navigator is Mr. Inside. The Navigator is the one who can help your team secure resources and get things done within your own fast-paced, non-linear and slightly dysfunctional company. The Navigator is (1) great at prioritization – a compulsive list-maker; (2) decisive; (3) stays focused on a strong point-of-view and (4) politically savvy. Consider people who have backgrounds in organizational structure, project managers and those who may have served in operational management at smaller organizations. Whether or not you give the Navigator a sales title, you need one in your organization.
The Re-Animator: Richard Nixon once famously quipped that while Mario Cuomo and Jesse Jackson were poets, 1988 presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis was “a word processor.” Today we have far too many people in sales who are also “word processors,” unable to bring to life the relationship between your company and its public. We’ll never transcend the spreadsheet until we pick up the paintbrush. Every brand manager fears irrelevance and apathy most of all, and they look to media companies and websites for “passion transfusions.” Trouble is, we don’t have enough people who can communicate the passion and commitment inherent in our relationships or in the site experience itself. Look in the ranks of user experience professionals, creatives and those well versed in social media and online gaming environments. They can begin to answer the question, “Why are they here?”
Look first within your own larger organization, but commit to bringing a balance of these six archetypes to your future sales team. No one seller will contain all of these traits, but every great media sales organization of the future must.
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