3 ms·

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 tha

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.

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.