I heard two things today that piqued my interest. Three, really, but let's stick to two for now... I'll save the third for a post some other day.
Thing number one: "XXXXX has no unsold display inventory. They give all the remnant to Overture. They're phasing out all of their network relationships because the networks can't pay enough to compete".
Thing number two: "YYYYY had an unsold problem, but they're giving the leftovers (via an optimization partner) to Overture to monetize and expect the solution to product 1/3 of their overall revenue going forward".
Now, a couple things about this should catch your eye.
First, Overture? With all the hype about Google, it's interesting that Overture's getting the traction here. This validates my theory that Google doesn't understand the enterprise media business particularly well.
Second, an optimization partner? Is Overture's built-in optimization on non-search inventory that weak? And if so, how long until they fix it? I'd be shocked to see this kind of arbitrage continue.
Third, textlinks as remnant/RON backfill on major sites? More than anything, this strikes me as a great example of the froth in the textlink marketplace. I can pretty much guarantee that these aren't delivering very good results for the advertisers... and something has to give. I'd love to see the ROI statistics on this... publishers shouldn't rely on this money to last.
On that note... if you think about it, if you're serving text ads into banner slots and with no fancy targeting they're doing better than standard banners, doesn't it mean that the people designing the standard banners are doing a crappy job? Shouldn't happen... text is just one tool in your belt, and you should be able to make it do much more for you.
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