The Role for Humans In Digital Marketing
02.09.2007
My next guest-blogger post is up at ZDNet:
“Smarter minds than mine (BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis on frictionless ‘open ad marketplaces,’ and Google’s Eric Schmidt on his preference for targeted ad bots over targeted ad salespeople) have argued that algorithms and auctions will create market efficiency for advertisers and publishers, and with market efficiency, a kind of ‘perfect’ ad pricing that recognizes value more intelligently. Especially for small, quality independent publications that are left out on the ad-budget sidelines today because they don’t have the resources to take media buyers out to expensive restaurants, perfect pricing will mean increased revenues.”
See why I don’t agree over at Alan Graham’s blog!
Chas, in your riff about humans role in digital marketing you said small publishers are in need of grouping or “federating” if you will to gain “scale and reach” for advertisers. I’m not sure I agree, totally. I read a recent case study where a download offering was made on USA Today followed by identical creative placed on a few subject-relevant blogs. The blogs outperformed USA Today 50-1. So my argument is this: The advertisers in search of a good return don’t need scale or reach, they need the most lucrative, relevant audience for their prodcuts. The folks that really need the reach and scale are the ad sellers. They need that reach and scale to make a business that will allow them to represent smaller publishers that would be just perfect for the relevant product. And of course, as you often argue, putting that download creative on the right blogs did required gray-matter, not algorithms.