The State of Online Advertising

conq writes "BusinessWeek has an article looking at how internet advertising has changed and is changing. From the article: 'The race is on to find new ways to track customer behavior. Advertisers and agencies are progressing far beyond the standard arithmetic of counting clicks and page views. They're tracking the to-and-froing of the mouse on Web pages, and they're finding new ways to group shoppers by age, Zip Code, and reading habits. CEO David S. Rosenblatt of DoubleClick Inc., which serves up some 200 billion ads a month for customers, says that every campaign now allows for 50 different types of metrics'"

Re:Metrics

[leonmergen]

Personally I just don't use any browsers without blockers anymore.

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

Re:Metrics

[Anonymous Coward]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

I think it would be fair for said sites to block users with adblock on. Many users would probably whine about this, but it's quid pro quo - you have the choice on both sides.

Re:Metrics

[GungaDan]

That's hardly the parent poster's concern, now is it? Sucks for the ad biz when us "eyeballs" outsmart them.

Re:Metrics

[networkBoy]

My problem is not with ads, but with the ton of scripts and *annoying* ads that many sites use. Sometimes the page simply wont because an adserver somewhere is bogged down. That earns an adblock.
-nB

Effective CPM is all you need

[Serveert]

Effective CPM tells you everything you need to know, the little bit of data like where the mouse is is all gravy. Nothing in this article shows innovation or anything remotely new/interesting. In fact, online advertising hasnt evolved much from the 90's with the exception of adsense.

Re:Metrics

[EzInKy]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?


I don't know about others but I was never really bothered by static banners and occasionally even purchased a relevant advertised product. As a matter of fact I never even considered blocking ads until "Spank the Monkey" appeared.

Re:Metrics

[plover]

I personally rely on the stupidity of the web-surfing public to not install ad blockers on their machines.

Remember, no web site ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the American public.

Even if every geek out there installed Firefox and AdBlock, that leaves 80+% of the machines belonging to the great unwashed masses who can punch all the monkeys they want. As long as Joe Sixpack is out there generating eyeballs for these sites, I'm going to free ride the whole trip.

Besides, I figure I'm just saving Doubleclick the bandwidth. It's not like I've ever purchased anything at all from an on-line ad, targeted or not. All my purchases have been driven by me, through Google/Froogle searches, pricewatch, Amazon, ebay, etc. I do not follow ad links.

It's okay, really.

[MrNougat]

Yes, many web sites require ad revenue to continue to exist. Yes, many people have been driven to use various forms of adblocking because of the intrusiveness or annoyance factor of online advertising.

One could infer, then, that the people who are not using adblocking fall into one of two categories: those who enjoy the advertising, and those who do not, but are too novice to set up adblocking. Both of those classes of people are the kinds that online advertisers want to target, because each of those classes is more easily separated from their money than the class of people who do not like online advertising and are savvy enough to block it.

This is why you don't hear online advertisers really making much noise about adblocking. Those who are blocking ads are much less likely to buy were they to see the ads anyway, and the fact that they're blocking reduces load on the technology supplying the ads.

It's a win-win. Those who don't want to see ads -- don't. Those who want to target ads to the consumers who are most likely to respond and buy -- do.

What sites will need to do

[bigpat]

Web Sites will have to start hosting their own ads again, or else somehow detect that the browser is no longer letting ads through and cut off content. Actually, from a coding perspective the app server could proxy those ads for delivery without a problem, but there needs to be a whole new level of intimacy between the ad server and the content provider, otherwise their metrics are going to get screwed up or be untrustworthy.

Re:pay me

[MrNougat]

I will give them all my buying habits for $10 per month.

It might be worth that to some company, but not if you're anonymous.

Re:Metrics

[mzwaterski]

Sucks for the poster when his content disappears or is no longer free...

Re:Metrics

[thrillseeker]

The algorithm I use when I decide whether or not to block are:

If it flashes, wiggles, blinks, moves, stutters, makes sound, takes up too much space, or changes its content in any way , it gets blocked - forever. Static ads I leave.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Metrics

[crabpeople]

Perhaps the lack of ads will drive people to consume less and there will be less useless websites out there. I dont recall ever seeing an ad on wikipedia for instance, and alot of pages just rip that content out and put it on their own page. How many redundant websites exsist? how many blogs that say the same exact things, or do like pipiquail and linkjack others content?

perhaps there are too many pages for the market to bare. of course when you tell advertising people that, they would just look for ways to enlarge the market. This is flawed thinking. We should be moving to less products and redundancy and not more. Why are there 50 brands of shampoo in the grocery store? its waste and i will not subsidise it.

Re:No doubleclick.net with DNS blackholing / Adblo

[utlemming]

If I were a system administrator I would do it as a security measure. If ad companies are going to start using more metrics than a simple click, I would consider that a potential breach of security. Who knows what information they might be gathering. But if they are gathering any information which might be personally identifiable. The last thing that a company would need is to have an advertisment database that included the company's domain name with what the people at the company look at on the internet. Call me paranoid.

In the more practical area, it will save a little bandwidth by blocking those sites. It might not be much, but if you have a large organization it can add up.

Metrics

[daigu]

Let me be the first to say it. If you have 50 different ways to measure something, you do not have any measurements that matter.

When advertisers are looking at buying media, they want to use a standard metric so that they can do a rough apples to apples comparison. The question advertisers want to know is how much it costs and how many people that might buy their product will see it. In the world of three network TV channels, you could talk about cost per million and you basically have a homogenous mass, so it was pretty easy.

Nowadays, you have media fragmentation and advertisers do not know what to buy. Should you buy commercial time during the NCAA tournament? How about the Simpsons? How about on MTV? Since people are using DVR, maybe it is better to do a product placement and put that Coke can on American Idol. Maybe you should just buy search advertising on Google.

You get the point. While it may be interesting for advertisers to track purchase habits with loyalty cards at grocery stores, through capturing personal information via Google or targeted search results ads, the bottom line is that you can measure it 50 ways till Sunday and it doesn't much help with the central problem - what media do you buy and how much do you buy? Advertisers want an algoritm that breaks it all down and gives them the best bang for their buck.

There is an old saying in advertising, "I know I'm wasting half my money on advertising, I just don't know which half." The reality is that despite all the scary privacy issues that are starting to come into play - advertisers generally have no clue about what they are doing. And you know what? It's only going to get harder. People can talk about getting into the content tail, but it doesn't make the advertiser's job any easier.

Re:Sunday Newspaper Ads

[vertinox]

Then what do you propose as a way the companies that deliver the websites you visit and block ads from should cover the costs they have for serving their content to you, plus a little profit ?

You know that big lump of color advertising in the middle of the Sunday newspaper?

Well... I throw that out too without looking at it.

Do you know what I do when a crappy commercial comes on the tube?

Yeah... I change the channel.

Do you know I do when a commerical comes on the radio?

I... err... Well there doesn't seem to be any ads on my iPod. I guess I could put them there, but maybe that is why I stopped listening to the radio on the drive to work.

Truth of the matter is I am an advertisers worst nightmare and I don't really go that far in refusing to view ads.

Its not because I don't like the idea of advertisments, but if the advert interupts my stream of entertainment or causes annoyance... I tend to find a way to stop it or I find another mehtods of entertainment.

Billboards, related ads to entertainment, and entertaining ads will get my eyes and ears.

Obtrusive, non-related ads, and annoying ads will get my immediate disintrest.

Entertainment and information with the ads is just as important as the content... Otherwise if I can't shut out the ads, I'm going to shutout the content.

Re:Metrics

[enjahova]

Sucks for the company when there are no more users.

These back-and-forths don't make any sense, its a market. Advertising is NOT a right, its a business model!

Re:Metrics

[aevan]

*nods*

Your ad is a static image?
....Is the image less then 30% of the page?
You can stay.

Is your ad animated?
....Is it not bright and looping?
You can stay.

Huge ads or ones that distract too much to read content get added to Adblock.

I recognise your desire to advertise to make money, now please recognise that it is your content why i visit your page, not to subject myself to annoying 'Tagworld faux chat dialogues' etc.

Maybe they will rethink their business model once they realise of 1000 visits, only 10 ads were successfully uploaded to the visitor.

Re:Sunday Newspaper Ads

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Truth of the matter is I am an advertisers worst nightmare

And yet you bought an ipod.

Re:Metrics

[Gulthek]

Oh no. You had to click on the noscript icon and click "Allow somesite"? That is a pain. Noscript is the best thing that's happened to web browsing in a long time. I am constantly astounded by the sheer number of unrelated to site content javascript is out there. Right now slashdot wants to run javascript from: slashdot.org, google-analytics.com, and falkag.net. All blocked, slashdot works fine.

If I use a site that depends on Javascript (flickr, etc.) all I have to do is whitelist it with two clicks o' yon mouse. That's a pain in the ass? The internet runs faster and works better. Most sites run fine without javascript, those that don't are either great exceptions or not worth my precious time.