On Mar 18, 2014, at 5:35 PM, Anandan Jayaraman <
">
> wrote:
I did a project on addressable advertising for a large media client a couple of years back and would like to share some of my learnings.
1. Brand advertising vs. lead generation are distinctly different.
2. In brand advertising,
a) the attribution chain from impression to transaction is very fuzzy and not measurable.
Which is one reason it's outside the zone of favor with those for whom measurement is everything. In fact, as Don, myself and others have pointed out, brand advertising and all-measurable direct response advertising are different species going by the same name. One's ancestry is Madison Avenue and the other's is junk mail.
b) The value of qualified vs. unqualified impression can vary from same ( mass market product in brand building mode) to 10 X (presidential campaign trying to reach undecided independents 10 days before voting day) depending on context.
3. In lead generation, Joyce is indeed correct that a qualified lead is worth its weight in gold. Which is why google generates $120 M revenue every day.
True. And at least in search (Adwords), they do surf intention.
4. Customers are not interested in selecting ads they would like. They really don't give a damn and it is not a "job" they want to do. They may do it when forced to ( like in the case of watching Hulu) but any business built on the assumption of customers self selecting advertising interests is not realistic.
Agreed. I'll answer Jim Burch's response in a separate post.
5. As much as we all love intent-casting, it is really not clear to me that a new service can achieve the scope and scale to perform the role of a generic demand aggregator. Making liquid markets across categories is pretty damn hard.
I don't think one starts across categories. Start with one:::
6. It is more conceivable to think of smaller ( but still huge) plays where customer demand pulls supply in real-time. Like ordering a taxi (uber), ordering a private jet (blackjet), renting a tuxedo ( blacktux), getting legal help (upcounsel) etc. In each of these categories, the demand-supply dance is being orchestrated in a beautiful dance. When operating at scale, the new model will be 10x better and will eliminate or minimize the need for marketing done in the traditional sense.
Agreed.
7. In the long-term, as individual markets get efficient with collecting demand, they may not see as much value in investing in "spray and pray" marketing and creepy advertising based on crude cookie based guesses. But it does seem a long journey from here to there, market by market.
regards, AJ
It is a long journey, but the pendulum is swinging.