Here’s a question for you. What is really going on with the online marketing space? How did we get here? Where is it going?
- How does a marketer today compete against the growing cost of SEM marketing?
- What are the other options available to them today?
- Is there anything else out there other than Google and Yahoo?
- Why does television seem to think that they are the only ones capable of reaching millions of people in a single market?
- How does our company address these problems?
To begin with must understand the needs of the publisher and the desires of the advertiser. Each and every single client of our ad network is an integral part of what we call a search exchange. Many unique websites and publishers all working towards the same goal.
Essentially, each of these organizations can maximize their exposure by sharing their traffic with each other. It’s amazing how the Internet forgot why it was called the World Wide Web in the first place. The term World Wide Web is rooted in the concept that sites linked to each other in some context or another. If we were to link these websites together every website to every website there would be billions of hyperlinks on every single webpage. Of course that’s not possible so the search engine was born.
Now obviously somebody who’s in the arcane business of creating lithographic technology for microchips would not link to a website discussing the hypocrisy of Aristotle.
In reality a search engine is designed as a jumping point onto the World Wide Web were then you could link from site to site via embedded URLs on the page and find content that is pertinent to the subject matter in which you are researching. Many times the subject matter they be entertainment but in the end hyper linking was the critical component of the Web.
A hyperlink has all but disappeared on the Internet, still you may find some websites with a link or resource section where they list out websites of commonality or common interest but in the end people have now turned their eyes to the search engine to sort the mess out for them.
The search engines do a great job and the index everything that exists. With massive server farms in massive resources these monolithic business models bring together a disparate and often misunderstood environment that today we call the Web.
Many of the young people today or only experience with the Web has been when search engines existed. For those of us were around in the early days prior to Yahoo, Inktomi, Google, and a dozen other search engines, we remember the lengthy process of finding relevant information. Often times the information never existed in the first place and we had to revert to libraries.
The philosophy I am speaking of here is one of sharing. The Web was orginally about sharing about the propagation of knowledge. The fact that the Web is the ultimate library starts with the publisher and the creator of content. Content as many say is king, and without the publisher the search engines would have nothing to index or spider.
Now putting commercialism aside, and looking at the pure function of the Web as a tool to collect resources and information we can justify the existence of search engines. They do the functionality of indexing and sorting and searching so that way we don’t have to remember every single link in the world, nor keep billions of bookmarks.
As you may know the cost of entry to build a search engine is immense. Massive server farms thousands of computers, and hundreds of people are necessary to sort and decipher this information into contextual search terms which produce results.
Until the day that we all have the equivalent computing power of a Yahoo or Google in our laptop computer, we will use search engines. But as I said previously without the publishers that they index the search engines are really nothing but a bunch of computers in a server farm.
Our technology takes advantage of the many different search brands that exist. We aggregate across multiple engines bring together the ubiquitous search result, and presented in a way that levels the playing field amongst the search giants.
It true David versus Goliath story, ours is one of the symbiotic existence. Looking at the web as a means to collect information, the user becomes a target for advertisement. Advertisement is a necessity without it we would have none of our favorite television shows, we would not be able to read the news from around the world in printed publications, and favorite professional sports teams would be playing ball on the high school field.
Yes advertising is necessary, the cost of content hasn’t changed, but the cost of delivery has gone down. Television has had the best deal yet, put up a number of radio towers around the nation and you can milk them for decades. In the end the consumer has to buy their own television so the medium in which your television signals delivered cost you almost nothing. Of course the cost of production is expensive, but if you look at the revenue over time it completely negates the costs of setting up a studio and radio equipment. These models are driven by advertising, and in the end the subscriber base is so broad that the television stations can claim they penetrate the entire geographical market in which they broadcast.
Of course this model is harder for cable and satellite, which requires very specific registered pieces of equipment in order to deliver their media. This is easily auditable, and us you will see that the per channel revenues is lower than that of broadcast. Albeit that Comcast makes more money in a local market because they have more channels and charge a monthly subscription fee for access to their media, but unfortunately must charge less for the advertisements placed on their network.
This revenue generated from the 30 second ad spot, which generates millions of dollars a month per station per market for broadcast. It is a huge vast machine, very entrenched in the minds of the American people. The same people who are inundated on a daily basis by billboards, radio, mobile advertising, web advertising, newspaper advertising, magazines, and even ads on bathroom walls. The growth in the advertising market has pushed and pulled the consumer in dozens of directions, now each of them is fighting for the same ad dollar.
This brings me to web advertising; it is the strongest mechanism to deliver a marketing message. The technology allows us to target individuals in a geographic area, based on their behavioral patterns, psychographic profiling, and of course the standard demographic target group. With all of this available to it, the cost of delivering it across the Internet medium is so low, that we must add value by defining extensive target capability, of not only a selection technology which presents the ad, but also the relevance of the publisher’s site in which the ad is presented.
Obviously one would not advertise baby diapers and a yachting magazine, the same as one would not advertise feminine hygiene products on ESPN. So relevance is critical, and the Web can produce that by the boatload.
Search engines today assume that the consumer who is searching for a term will find advertisements relevant to their search. With almost any search term in the world today you can find an advertiser who is banking that you will be interested in some contextual or relevant manner to their product. It’s kind of funny, because big national packaged goods brands such as those coming from Procter & Gamble are not necessarily seeking relevance but brand awareness.
How do we bring brand awareness to the Web in a relevant manner? Does it have to be relevant? If it’s been good for these big national brands to advertise on TV with little or no relevance then why is it not good for them to advertise on the Internet with greater relevance and better targeting?
Technology works against itself here in this case, if technology of the Internet is the best delivery mechanism available for a brand message, then why does it get a smaller price point against television and newspaper? That is an easy one, lower cost of delivery. In order to serve 10,000 people online it may only cost three dollars, versus delivering 10,000 newspapers could cost nearly $2000. Scarcity of the media is becoming a moot point. Television shows are moving to the Internet printed publications are presented on webpages, the consumer has many routes to the same information traditionally delivered over these antiquated medias.
Just some food for thought. Next posting I will be discussing the concepts of why one would build a technology such as adUup and fleeQ. Why is this important to the Web as a whole? And who it benefits them the most. Thanks for reading.
