Make Digital Marketing Work

There have been a couple of examples recently about how desperate some organisations are getting in these troubled financial times.  The pressure is definitely on to sell more and get more pie in a shrinking dish, but I would argue that  consumers are more attuned to look for false claims and snake oil selling tactics in rough times.  I would also argue that employing these tactics now is a worse idea than at any other time.  The resultant damage to your brand and loss of trust could take years to put right during a recovery when other brands sneak an advantage.

The sales process begins with you stating you case.  Create a story that satisfies your needs and engages with the consumer.  After that it’s time to deal with objections with a FAQ. The first thing to be aware of is that you should help your FAQ as much as possible by not making outlandish and plainly untrue claims on your site about your products.  The court of Social Media will be in session in no time and it will find you guilty.  This is a tough one for a lot of established brands to get as their ’snake oil’ selling tactics have worked for years, although going back to the point above consumers are more likely to dig during lean times and so the threat of being found out is very real and probably very likely of finding you out.

Think of your FAQ in terms of the 4 marketing Ps as this will highlight a lot of objections to you.

Price - Is it too expensive for my target audience, how can I make it more affordable and how can I help people appreciate its value better.  Can I add volume and seasonal discounts, bundling, spread payment, early payment?  Do I give a money back guarantee?

Product – What makes my product better than the other products, does it have a clear advantage I haven’t mentioned yet.  What are the reasons why someone should buy my product and not my competitor? Is it better made?  Is it more functional?  Does it fulfil a niche? Does it last longer? Do I offer after sales service, does this product make it easier and more cost effective for people to accomplish tasks?  People never buy a product they buy a solution to a need.  Your product should therefore focus on how it solves that need.

Placement – Where can I buy it?  Can I only buy it here? How soon can I get it?  Buying it today and getting it tomorrow is a powerful tool as that produces an effective solution with little effort to a customer need.

Promotion – Where else is the product being used effectively?  Who else has got it?  How long have they had it.  What has it achieved for them and how much has it saved/earned for them.  Is it exactly what they needed and will they give you a testimonial.   Does a promotion entitle me to receiving more if I buy it now?

Testimonials are the stories that enable a consumer to see your product working in their world.  It is a powerful and persuasive tool that is capable of clinching the deal.

By giving reasonable and accurate information about your product and then dealing with the objections you will start to build a relationship with consumers on a one to one basis and from there you will build trust.  If you follow that up with testimonials from other consumers, you will make it more likely for a consumer to convert to a customer.

I received an email recently which began:

“With more and more marketing interactions conducted via digital media, it is now much harder for B2B brands to gauge what their potential customers think about their products or services, let alone understand where they are in the buying cycle.”

I can’t tell you how much that introduction annoyed me.  Harder compared to when?  Maybe they are referring to before the telephone was invented when every salesman put on his running shoes and took his starting blocks every morning to traipse door to door?  Or maybe they are talking about after the telephone was invented but before the Internet when Direct mail, reply mail, market research and telesales provided expensive and low response  methods to stay informed and up to date with all thing sales and customer related.

Personally I thought that the statement was ludicrous.  The complexity of yesteryear was that quite often not enough information was available and so guesswork was employed.  These days, there is so much information available that analysing it is a skill in its own right.  My problem though is that relying on guess work against analysis is hardly more difficult to do.  It might be more complex but difficult is the wrong word.

For a start if you want to find out what your customers think about you in the marketplace, just go to Google, Twitter or Facebook, and you can do so from the comfort of your own home.  If you need information from them why not send out a well worded email and ask them?  The email can point them at a webpage which securely connects with your database and then all you will have to do is look at the forecast.  How is that difficult?  It takes skill sure, and a bit of knowhow but difficult isn’t the word.

That leads me on nicely to the art of words.  Marketing communications are all about words.  Copywriters understand that words have colours, textures, tastes, feelings and volumes.  These combine together to evoke a response from customers.  Done well they will have customers flocking to find out more about you.  Done badly they will annoy your customers and have them making a mental note to avoid you like the plague.  No software solution has yet been able to replace good copywriting and the software that the email I received was probably not going to solve my reporting and analysis problems (mainly because I understand my customers and know what to measure and how and therefore do not need some generic jumped up spreadsheet to help me). Bad copywriting in the modern workplace will have people like me reaching for their blogs and sharing how bad your message is with the rest of the world.

I was going to start off by writing that the Interactive Marketing World is changing but that’s a bit like saying we all get older every day.  Of course it is changing it has been changing ever since the first banner ad appeared on a website.  It’s been changing since the first email was sent asking people to click through to a website and it has been changing ever since the first context sensitive ads appeared.  It’s always been changing and has moved at warp speed.

My point though is that a fundamental shift is happening at the moment.  The individual disciplines are becoming mature now, and new channels are not so much new as just recognitions of things that had been happening anyway and embraced into the overall interactive marketing mix.  What is changing is that the focus is moving away from the disciplines and towards the over arching strategy that binds it all together.  Its moving Away from a toys focus and into a business focus that looks at the results and what it actually achieves for business.

I would argue that even though you can generate metric ton load of traffic for your site that unless you are able to convert it, then it is a waste of time.  I would also argue that even though you have the best most necessary products in the world, unless people know about them you have wasted your time. That’s what I am talking about, joining the disciplines up into a cohesive chain that provides an overall strategy for a customer.  It begins with a group of people who have never heard of you and leads them through a journey that ends with regular customers who buy from you habitually and who tell everyone they know about how great you are.

Some of the early clients I worked with would say that they didn’t need to have time spent generating more traffic because they were satisfied with their current traffic levels but they didn’t understand that if you are optimising every part of the chain then the results are not just greater, they are exponentially greater.

I don’t watch much boxing, but when I do I like to watch a heavyweight bout.  There is something so engaging about two giants landing thundering blows on each other.  Any one of them would probably take your or my head off, but the recipient casually shrugs off the blow and jabs his way into his own point scoring punch.

Watching the Operating Systems marketplace is a bit like watching a boxing match at the moment.  Absolutely everyone is getting in on the act.  Sports fans may be interested in our facts thoughts and trivia on this

In the Blue Corner we have Microsoft Windows 7 with its snap too drag and drop.  The ad we saw is available at the link below:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1847321790?bctid=45901397001

The problem that we have with this is that we can’t see a compelling reason to upgrade from Windows XP (which we understand and are familiar with).  Neither could we see a compelling reason to upgrade to Windows Vista.  Now a lot of people agreed with us about Vista and we strongly suspect that a pretty large majority of those people will think the same about lucky number 7.  What we are not sure about is how many of the current Vista users will flock to purchase it.

Now on the same day that the Microsoft Ad was released Apple has filed a patent on an Operating System which has embedded advertising at its core.  The full story can be found on Brand Republic::

The upshot though is that Apple has sounded out their intention to release an operating system that can be ad funded and therefore given free to consumers.  Does this herald the crowning of a new heavyweight champion of the world?  Well no not quite, because the patent actually requires you to interact with the ads before you can use any applications.  If we think about this for a desktop computer then everyone having a coke and a smile or diet coke break before they can begin working is pretty intrusive and not terribly productive.   Apple’s alchemist though is never stupid.  If this was media that people wanted to interact with to find content through ads that were crucial to the applications then that would be a very different story.  The only question is where would Apple find this kind of content that you could advertise?  I mean you would need an entire library of publishing rights.  Oh hang on…………..

In the wings we of course can hear (not see) the new kid on the block in training in the form of Google Chrome OS.  We don’t know much about Chrome other than the fact that it is based around the concept of Cloud Computing where most of the work is done on the Internet using Internet tools rather than on the desktop.  Given Google’s experience with media funding projects we can also expect that the OS will be financed from other means than retail sales.  As an article on TechRadar notes:

“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS,” says Google. “We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds.”

“People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up,” says Google.

“They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files.

“Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.”

That’s pretty impressive talk if you (like me) booted a Windows computer this morning and then went to get a cup of tea and visit the men’s room whilst it went through all its checks and pre loads.  It’s probably pretty scary if you are Microsoft and even concerning if you are Apple.

Of course posturing in the OS marketplace isn’t new.  They all do it all the time.  Apple quite famously aped the Microsoft Vista version and pricing model at their user’s conference a few years ago.

Although it still seems a bit confused according to a ZDNet article:

The standard retail pricing for Windows 7 will be £149.99 for Home Premium, £219.99 for Professional and £229.99 for Ultimate. The notional prices for the unobtainable upgrades for existing Windows owners are £79.99, £189.99 and £199.99 respectively.

However, UK shoppers will initially be able to buy the standalone product at upgrade prices for a limited period. “[The full retail price] is more than people would expect to pay,” said Painell. “We will be offering fully packaged product at upgrade prices from the launch to the beginning of next year.”

The Steve Jobs video above highlights exactly the problem and the dilemma for users of Microsoft.  Who needs which version and what will they pay for it.  £200+ price tags are pretty self flattering and quite possibly delusional when there are alternatives like OS X here now, and Chrome on the way.

I can’t help but feel that this is largely a marketing communications problem.  There won’t be too many tears though across the industry for Steve Ballmer who was quite happy to bully and punch his way through the industry in Microsoft’s hey day.  He had a genuine innovative thinker then in the form of Bill Gates.  These days if Ballmer thinks something is a bad idea, it generally means it will go on to great success.

It may also be a crucial sign that Microsoft without Bill Gates is a bit like a heavyweight boxer without a fist.

It used to be said that ‘the big idea’ that permeated agency output was all important and that the channel was secondary.  What was meant was that a good idea would translate to any media (although they usually meant TV) and so it was just a case of adapting it.  I’ve sat in meetings in rooms painted with blue skies (see what they did there?) whilst the great and the good of the creative team argued about the difference between pantone colours 2592 and 2602.  (As an aside if anyone can tell me the intrinsic difference between the two and why it’s worth two hours of two highly paid individual’s life arguing about it then I’ll buy the drinks).

I felt at the time that this was all a bit ridiculous and far too up its own arse and I am even more convinced of it now.

Then along came digital, and everyone proclaimed that it was just another channel.  I’ve been guilty myself of towing this party line to make sure that the delicate sensibilities of the creative department were not offended and they didn’t suddenly erupt in a re-enactment of mount Vesuvius as it destroyed Pompeii.  I know better now than to play that game, and would much rather be the little boy asking why the emperor has no clothes on.

Here is an analogy to explain what I mean.

There was a hierarchy of things, with brand and mass advertising occupying the high seats of power on the client’s right hand.  From there came PR and direct and a multitude of below the line suppliers.  Then there were the dogs of digital who padded around on all fours sniffing the distinguished guests and looking for the scraps, whilst everyone complimented them on their intelligence and fine breeding.  All was well in the universe and everyone knew their place whilst the people were told to admire the fine clothes of the emperor.

Then came the knock on the gates and the people of the kingdom rose up to create havoc in the order of things.

The very definitions that denoted an agency’s place in the hierarchy is vanishing quicker than the new receptionist and account manager at an agency Christmas party.  Consumers don’t care if the media they interact with is called Brand building, advertising, direct response, PR, experiential or anything else.  What they care about is whether it engages with them and facilitates a relationship with two way communication.

Does this emperor truly care about and listen to his people? The megaphone of power marketing is being ignored, and the royal decrees that it issued are now rejected as twaddle.  Moreover, there are mutterings that are spreading throughout the kingdom that the emperor is wearing no clothes.

Now the people are demanding that their needs and experiences are taken into account because they know best what they want to wear.   Consumers have overtaken agencies in knowing what they want to achieve and what they want to get out of the media they consume.

So where does this leave us?  The high table is in confusion and in the general melee the dogs are having a wonderful feast whilst the people cheer.

The actual point is that we will still need creative and creative ideas but instead of thinking of it in a simplex manner the creative will now be conceived with the added ability for customers to interact with it as they want to, and consumers will surprise everyone by how they choose to interact with it.  This is what we term as ‘duplex creative’.  If something is duplex it is two way and it flows.  Simplex is the advertising of the 80s, semi duplex assumed that the advertiser could choose the direction that it was led, but only when you reach full duplex communication is the customer’s needs actually served.  It can go either way and be led by either party.  Communication is the secret to all relationships and is definitely the key to customer relationships, because the focal point is the customer.

This is why I believe that the old ways are gone forever.  Naturally I think that the digital dogs will inherit the places at the top table but I also think that old media itself will morph into new and exciting forms of media.  What I hope I have seen the last of is someone looking at me and saying “but what is the big idea?”, and be under any illusion that what they are saying is intelligent.  The big idea is that we are going to be brave enough to interact on a personal level with customers.

That big enough for you?

In my post yesterday I talked a lot about Digital Marketing strategy and how some Offline and integrated agencies could have problems adapting.  This world isn’t so removed though from the wisdom of the great men of advertising though.  One of David Ogilvy’s most well known sayings was:

“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular. “

He was of course referring to the way that sentences were constructed but the key point here is that you should use a tone and style that is familiar to consumers.  For the point I am making I would suggest using the channels, language and grammar of the Internet.   Grammar in these terms refers to yuser experience, SEO awareness, viral and all the other buzzwords that populate our trade press.  Some of us have watched and helped these channels evolve (Digital Pioneers?), whilst other people discovered them when they became popular but there is another sort of person and that is the Digital Native.  These are people for whom online and a tweet are as familiar as a pint in a pub.  These are the people who talk in the ‘vernacular’ of digital media and whose creative minds are tuned to the available channels.  Consequently these were the people we decided to look at when we were assembling our creative offer.

There is always a risk when you bet on youth.  Sir Matt Busby with the Busby Babes and Arson Wenger with his dedication to the Arsenal Youth are parallels that have struck us as poignant.  One thing for sure though and that is consumers are not going to put up with, nor respond to the bolted on and shoe horned offline creative that has traditionally been appearing in digital media.  The acid test is whether the creative produces effective return on investment for the client, not whether a panel has decided it warrants a reward (of course both is a goal that everyone should strive for).

My personal feeling is that Mr Ogilvy would have relished the new media around today and would have been unafraid to learn the vernacular and bet on youth who understood all the grammatical points of the channel.

It’s everywhere at the moment.  Media agencies, marketing commentators and clients are all in the mood to change as the cry goes out for the marketing industry to re-invent itself.  Reinvention though is a big thing to undertake and there has to be a genuine will there to create something new and better if the pitfalls are going to be avoided and the new marketing just turns out to be the same marketing with whole host of different acronyms.

From my point of view I see the need to fundamentally change the view that ‘the message’ and ‘the big idea’ are not all powerful links in the chain.  This has to be replaced with the consumer and customer and engaging with them in a relationship.

Part of this is creating content that will facilitate two way communications and provoke discussion.   Another important part is how your overall Digital Marketing Strategy fits together.  These two elements will take you and your prospects on a journey together from the point of first contact right the way through to the point you have created relationships with regular customers who buy from you habitually and also refer you to others that they know.  This is the basis of the Interactive Mix.  It provides an end to end solution for acquiring, converting and retaining customers, and is proven to work.

I can see why a lot of offline and integrated agencies are going to have a few problems adapting to this new world.  It is because their disciplines have grown up with the idea that a message will be heard and picked up by consumers.  That they will identify with and accept the message and then rush to the shops to buy your product.  The problem is that consumers these days:

1)      Will not believe what you tell them

2)      Will not believe what you show them

3)      Will believe what a friend (no matter how little they actually know them) tells them

4)      Will go with the majority

5)      Will voice their concerns and dissatisfactions with you brand

6)      Will defect and find different alternatives

7)      Can stop you talking to them

8)      Expect you to treat them well in return for buying your product

9)      Will punish you for lying to them

10)   Expect you to listen to them

That is a world where suddenly the concept of message led communications feels a bit like a roman gladiator turning up on a modern battlefield with its smart bomb technology and automatic weapons – a bit inadequate. That is why changing the lyrics of an old, well known song to include your brand name, brand message, and creating an ad with a cute kid and a doting mother just doesn’t cut it anymore.  Consumers are too sophisticated for that now, and if that is what you serve them they will assume you are lying to them, won’t believe what you tell them and punish you for lying to them.  You could conceivably lose a whole swathe of customers.

For agencies, ingrained in this way of thinking, I can see problems, because the temptation will be to play lip service to this new world whilst egos demand that sooner or later everyone will get back into line and ‘the message’ will rule once more.  The problem is that clients won’t stand for that either now.

My personal view is that Online/Interactive/Digital agencies are better placed to deliver these strategies because they have grown out of the channels that consumers are now screaming for.  They haven’t had to adapt to them, it is a native language.  When I visited Egypt for the first time I contacted a local guide, when I learned how to dive I chose an instructor who had been diving since aqua lungs became recreationally available.  Its the same with Digital Marketing.  If you understand where the channels came from, how they developed and how to interact with people through them, then you have a much better idea of how to deliver a winning strategy to clients.

There have been several high profile instances of Citizen Journalism this week, at the same time as the established news media are talking about charging for their content.  I feel that these two examples of the former are perfect representations of why the latter won’t work.

The first started with a an entry in The Guardian which read “The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.”

The popular myth is that this entry captured the imagination of many Twitter users who uncovered and published the story about oil company Trafigura which exposed a toxic dumping disaster inflicted on the Ivory Coast, which hospitalized up to 100,000 people.  This came about because Trafigura pulled what political Blog Wikileaks described as a legal parlour trick to prevent the reporting of this.

The full sequence of events is laid out in the  WikiLeaks article.  It shows that this isn’t a people’s journalism coup of Watergate proportions but rather a deliberate collaboration of a series of people to make use of the Internet in order to disseminate information in a game of cat and mouse.  It does however highlight the manner in which law and technology are engaging each other in an exchange similar to that of a great white shark and a killer whale, with the killer whale able to ram the shark, place it an a catatonic state and then devour it at will.  Technology is simply too clever for the existing law, especially where information is concerned.  If you want it hidden and people sont want it hidden, it wont be hidden.  If you want something silenced and people don’t want it silenced, it wont be silenced, if you want it paid for and people are not prepared to pay for it they won’t.  The point that is worth considering (from someone interested in online media’s point of view)  is that all that appeared in the press was a piece in the guardian saying they couldn’t print anything, after that it was the Internet all the way and websites which are free.  Its success was because it was free and it captured the imagination of hundreds of thousands of people who had never heard of Trafigura or Carter Ruck.  I include myself in this,

It was the players who orchestrated this and watched it go viral, and if they can do it once they can do it again.  Will they need or can they use a paid for online media with it’s limiting capabilities to achieve the same again or will they simply go back to Twitter with a good story?  I suspect the latter is true.

The second example is a bit more grass roots and an example of actual citizen journalism.  An every day commuter was travelling home when he witnessed a member of TFL staff blow up at a member of the public.  Its a very common thing and it has pissed commuters in London off for years.  There was never any point complaining so everyone subjected to it just got on with it whilst dreaming of excruciating death machines for the TFL staff concerned.  Yesterday though the commuter used his camera phone to video it and capture the sound.  The full story of Ian’s TFL abuse is on this blog entry.  It was posted yesterday evening.  By this morning it had gone viral on Twitter and Facebook.  By mid morning it had attracted the attention of the Mayor’s office, the Daily Telegraph and BBC lunchtime news carried extensive coverage of the incident complete with subtitles.  It is a clear example of a TFL employee losing it, and the chap concerned looks as though he is probably going to be hung out to dry.  His full name has been made public and links to his personal Facebook page are being circulated across the web at the speed of broadband.

This is a clear example of Citizen Journalism being picked up by the mainstream media, and if it originated on the internet how do the established media expect it to be suddenly worth paying for?  Do we?  All the commentary has already been made, and the Mayor has already got involved.  Interestingly enough he has voiced his opinion before anyone in TFL has responded.  They must know it has happened and that the cries outside Holborn station are getting louder. Their silence shows a company ill prepared to deal with their brand in a fast paced social media world.

One of his last entries was that he was “trying to get out of bed” yesterday.  After today he may well look back on that and wished he had not bothered.

This highlights the next point though, because this single employee who has (for all we know) made a single but significant error is now the focus for every Londoner who has ever suffered a similar experience from TFL staff.  The mob is baying and they want blood.  Unchecked it could get out of control and people could get hurt.  There is the need for a mainstream voice to keep thing in proportion and perspective.  In this case in particular if the employee was not removed from his platform the unrest and cries of the mob could easily turn into a tragedy.  The media does therefore have a part to play, I just don’t think we are prepared to pay for it.  They of course have the choice to not pick up a story of this nature, but that won’t stop the readership from creating their own news online.  Back to the drawing board then for Murdoch and the other media owners.

Since we started using Twitter there has been a wealth of applications spring up.  Some of them are very useful and well thought through but others just seem to be trying to cash in on people’s naivety and greed.  They are all variations on a theme and the theme is :

“Get millions of twitter users to follow you and make millions from them.  Use our breakthrough software to show you how to unleash the power of Twitter”

There then follows a link to a website with a single page.  It’s usually very long and uses phrases like “never before seen”, “price held for a limited time only”, “will only share this with the next 300 people And then its gone”.

Basically it’s using ever trick in the book that Marketing Charlatans say to use when you go on one of those courses (or summits as some of their egos now demand they are called).  As another tip, don’t go spending thousands to be whipped into a frenzy, buy a book on the subject  by a marketing Guru such as Seth Godin.  It will be cheaper and you will learn more on the subject than you can in a two day ego fest.  There are lots of other books as well on pretty much all the disciplines associated with Digital Marketing.  We have posted a booklist to help you

Anyway, back to Twitter and these software packages.  Firstly I object to the term ‘software’.  We did a bit of research (no we didn’t go and buy them but we did talk to people who had) and most of these alleged software packages consist of a few video presentations which could quite legitimately be placed on Youtube for free.  Next the ‘secrets’ they claim to impart are nothing more than selecting a bunch of people to follow and watching who follows you back, then removing anyone who doesn’t, repeat ad infinitum until you reach a critical mass of followers whereby other people will see that you have a lot of followers and follow you because you have a herd of people already following you.  Think about that for a second.  Doesn’t it sound suspiciously like a bunch of lemmings heading towards a cliff.

Now here is the kicker.  The final ‘secret’ is that to promote the ‘software’ you have just used whereupon you will receive a kick back for everyone that buys the software in exactly the same way as affiliates receive a kick back for achieving sales on an eCommerce shop.  So then everybody that buys the software is promoting the software and because lots of people are promoting the software it is highly visible and more lemmings buy the software.

This isn’t a new method of marketing it’s a Multi Level Marketing (MLM) scheme, and most of these are scams.  The acid test of a scam is if you have to buy it to get enrolled into it, it’s more than likely a scam MLM.  The internet has largely turned MLM into a dinosaur because if your product is strong enough you don’t need millions of people buying it in order to promote it.  They will promote it because it’s good.  The last point of course is that you are not going to make serious money doing this, and the money you make is only going to be from idiots like you who bought it.  It’s a pyramid scheme and the only person who is actually going to make money is the charlatan that put the video instructions up in the first place.  Do you want to make them rich simply because you were dumb enough to buy it?

So for the benefit of everyone who has been tempted to purchase these useless tutorials we would like to tell you how to build up a sizeable following on Twitter for free.

1)      Say something interesting useful and relevant.

2)      Give a point of view on something,

3)      Ask a question,

4)      Give original content

5)      Post your content to the various discussions that it is relevant to (#discussions)

6)      Don’t SPAM discussions with irrelevant content

7)      Interact with other users and offer them advice on something they have asked (@username)

8)      Don’t repeat yourself every half hour

9)      Maintain a high signal to noise ratio

The last bit is the important one.  It takes time and effort to build up a following.  We don’t have millions of followers but there again we have a niche market and I would rather my message was read by a few hundred interested parties than millions of people that it was not relevant to.  Incidentally every time we do tweet something useful our list of followers goes up which is proof that it works.

This will build your reputation and people will follow you because you are adding to the conversation and because you have something useful to say.  That’s how Twitter works.

If you want to promote your products on Twitter that is absolutely what it is used for and it costs nothing except your time and effort.   If that is too much for you then go to an agency who knows how to do it.  Obviously if that happens to be us, we would love to talk to you about it.

I spent a day at Ad Tech a few weeks ago in the company of one of my favourite New Media Age types.  We wandered around and caught presentations, discussed technologies and generally got a feel for the marketplace as it stands right now.  One of the big buzzes was about Ad Exchanges.  For those that do not know about them, you can read a good description of what an Ad Exchange is and what it does.

What it amounts to is that display ads are suddenly becoming a lot more targetable.  Ad exchanges let you target your ads based on a series of criteria such as geographical location and connection speeds.  The aim is to cut out the number of wasted impressions that are delivered, and only deliver ads to the marketplace that is geographically relevant and content which connection speeds can handle.  The claims being made are that response rates (click through) are increased by 50%.  Now colour me unimpressed but on a lot of sites I’ve seen this would increase click through from 0.02% to 0.03%.  Still not amazing.

Also I am yet to be convinced by media that still charges by the impression instead of the results it produces.  That’s the acid test and the one that I suspect will shut most Ad Exchange and media owners  up.  Are you prepared to charge on a CPC basis, and if you are how does the price you put on it compare to a Google Adword click?

Suddenly I hear silence across the void.  When the media is of suitable quality that media owners feel able to offer it on a CPC basis then we may have something to talk about.

The simple truth is that whilst this is a very good step forward by display advertising it doesn’t alter the fact that the ads themselves are invasive and distracting for users who are actually there to view the content.  The reason Google works is because it gives me an ad for the thing I am looking for at exactly the time I am looking for it.  Do display ads do that?  Are they spliced at the DNA level to the content they accompany?  Most of the time I don’t think so.  Display advertising still is yet to move beyond the realm of brand based advertising.  It isn’t direct response and despite this leap forward with Ad exchanges it isn’t likely to become direct response any time soon.  It will help your email produce better results and your eCRM campaign will love Ad Exchanges as part of a media multiplier but when it comes to getting clicks.  Our advice would be stick with Google.