5 ms·

"The crux of the problem is that the number of video ads that agencies and brands want to run far exceeds the amount of quality inventory — that is, well-placed

"The crux of the problem is that the number of video ads that agencies and brands want to run far exceeds the amount of quality inventory — that is, well-placed video players on prestigious sites, like, say, Nationalgeographic.com. When the premium space fills up, media buyers start looking for video players in less coveted online real estate." Why doesn't the video market clear? Do clients just refuse to pay enough for the good space? Don't tell me they know how much that ad space is worth to them in revenue. I worked at an adtech startup for two years --- we only barely touched on video, but the dynamics are still there. Buyers plan on the scale of D-Day but there's really no place to do that --- there's no halftime superbowl ad on the internet, just a billion little things that have slightly different definitions of every single thing involved. What's an inch when screens are different sizes and the site has responsive design? What if you've got something built around 4:3 or 16:9 and their site is the opposite? What counts as adult, exactly? Bet it isn't the same in Northbrook IL as it in Palo Alto). It's a big mess, and the things that put buyers' minds at ease aren't the same that make them money.

hagbardgroup 12y ago
The problem is that it's not in the organizational mindset of agencies that mostly do creative work and expect to be able to hand it over to another company that specializes in buying media space. You can see the ad networks as opportunistic parasites that take advantage of over-specialization in ad-land. Fancy creatives that have next to no tech knowledge get their budgets gobbled by people with some measure of tech capability and no ethics. The 'outsource everything but your core competency' only works when you can trust everyone that you are outsourcing to. The lack of quality inventory is also something of a canard. Direct buying and selling requires ::effort::, thinking, spending on expertise, and salespeople. Dumping ads into a network that quotes absurd numbers and promises everything requires pressing a button and going to get coffee. It's like the Somali pirates -- they identified a bunch of ships that had no defenses and corporations that would barf out millions of dollars when you point guns at a few sailors. A $500 weapons budget could hold a multi-billion dollar cargo hostage. It's similar with ad piracy.
- flomo 12y ago
  > organizational mindset Most marketing agencies are owned by a handful of large conglomerates, so this is by design to a great degree. Even when the creative and the media people are under the same roof, they may be entirely separate organizations with their own profit targets.
- 001sky 12y ago
  Direct buying and selling requires ::effort::, thinking, spending on expertise, and salespeople. Dumping ads into a network that quotes absurd numbers and promises everything requires pressing a button and going to get coffee. This. Online advertsing is a micro-transactions model. With print and Tv you have a single touch-point with the publisher or network, and they have a single-pipe-channel to N users. With online, the content is de-fragmented into individual sales units on an individual users screen. Each pixel of real-estate is de-bundled and needs to be bought/sold/negotiated. That is a massive amount of cognitive overhead on the business side. And, on the creative side...there is way too much variation/uncertainty about the context to fully tailor the creative elements to each user/context (way too expensive). This explains the huge "value add" of reducing complexity. If you can sell remnants with a 1-click solution, you just saved somebody some pain. And that guy/gal has a budget and needs to make numbers...so you can negotiate a cut.
notatoad 12y ago
>The crux of the problem is that the number of video ads that agencies and brands want to run far exceeds the amount of quality inventory — that is, well-placed video players on prestigious sites, like, say, Nationalgeographic.com. When the premium space fills up, media buyers start looking for video players in less coveted online real estate. from my uninformed position as a viewer of advertising, it seems like the opposite of this is true. On any site i would consider premium (e.g. hulu, youtube, theonion, and yes, nationalgeographic) my biggest pet peeve with advertising is that they have more ad blocks to fill than they do advertisements, and they have to keep re-using the same ads over and over again. surely the advertiser doesn't want to pay for me to see the same 15-second video ad a half-dozen times in a row on a single visit, do they?
- saurik 12y ago
  Yeah, it is just crazy; I watched an entire season of a television show on either NBC or CBS's website, and I remember them only having three advertisements that I got to watch over and over and over again; sometimes the ad would end, but the slot was timed for two ads, so it would show me the same ad a second time. I don't even dislike watching ads normally, and this was driving me insane.
- arghbleargh 12y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure that this isn't exactly what they want. Consciously you get annoyed, but it's those same ads that pop into your head from your subconscious every once in a while.
  - BrandonMarc 12y ago
    Exactly. It's repetition. Maybe you don't click, but you do receive the same message 15 times. That has consequences ... Maybe not with you in particular, but averaged out across the audience, yes.
    - wiredfool 12y ago
      And that message is: Skip ad in 5 4 3 2 1 click.

hagbardgroup 12y ago

The problem is that it's not in the organizational mindset of agencies that mostly do creative work and expect to be able to hand it over to another company that specializes in buying media space. You can see the ad networks as opportunistic parasites that take advantage of over-specialization in ad-land. Fancy creatives that have next to no tech knowledge get their budgets gobbled by people with some measure of tech capability and no ethics. The 'outsource everything but your core competency' only works when you can trust everyone that you are outsourcing to. The lack of quality inventory is also something of a canard. Direct buying and selling requires ::effort::, thinking, spending on expertise, and salespeople. Dumping ads into a network that quotes absurd numbers and promises everything requires pressing a button and going to get coffee. It's like the Somali pirates -- they identified a bunch of ships that had no defenses and corporations that would barf out millions of dollars when you point guns at a few sailors. A $500 weapons budget could hold a multi-billion dollar cargo hostage. It's similar with ad piracy.

flomo 12y ago
> organizational mindset Most marketing agencies are owned by a handful of large conglomerates, so this is by design to a great degree. Even when the creative and the media people are under the same roof, they may be entirely separate organizations with their own profit targets.
001sky 12y ago
Direct buying and selling requires ::effort::, thinking, spending on expertise, and salespeople. Dumping ads into a network that quotes absurd numbers and promises everything requires pressing a button and going to get coffee. This. Online advertsing is a micro-transactions model. With print and Tv you have a single touch-point with the publisher or network, and they have a single-pipe-channel to N users. With online, the content is de-fragmented into individual sales units on an individual users screen. Each pixel of real-estate is de-bundled and needs to be bought/sold/negotiated. That is a massive amount of cognitive overhead on the business side. And, on the creative side...there is way too much variation/uncertainty about the context to fully tailor the creative elements to each user/context (way too expensive). This explains the huge "value add" of reducing complexity. If you can sell remnants with a 1-click solution, you just saved somebody some pain. And that guy/gal has a budget and needs to make numbers...so you can negotiate a cut.

notatoad 12y ago

>The crux of the problem is that the number of video ads that agencies and brands want to run far exceeds the amount of quality inventory — that is, well-placed video players on prestigious sites, like, say, Nationalgeographic.com. When the premium space fills up, media buyers start looking for video players in less coveted online real estate. from my uninformed position as a viewer of advertising, it seems like the opposite of this is true. On any site i would consider premium (e.g. hulu, youtube, theonion, and yes, nationalgeographic) my biggest pet peeve with advertising is that they have more ad blocks to fill than they do advertisements, and they have to keep re-using the same ads over and over again. surely the advertiser doesn't want to pay for me to see the same 15-second video ad a half-dozen times in a row on a single visit, do they?

saurik 12y ago
Yeah, it is just crazy; I watched an entire season of a television show on either NBC or CBS's website, and I remember them only having three advertisements that I got to watch over and over and over again; sometimes the ad would end, but the slot was timed for two ads, so it would show me the same ad a second time. I don't even dislike watching ads normally, and this was driving me insane.
arghbleargh 12y ago
I wouldn't be so sure that this isn't exactly what they want. Consciously you get annoyed, but it's those same ads that pop into your head from your subconscious every once in a while.
- BrandonMarc 12y ago
  Exactly. It's repetition. Maybe you don't click, but you do receive the same message 15 times. That has consequences ... Maybe not with you in particular, but averaged out across the audience, yes.
  - wiredfool 12y ago
    And that message is: Skip ad in 5 4 3 2 1 click.