Darren Herman - Marketing, Media and Technology Conversations - Latest Comments

Re: I’m the client, what questions should I be asking my agency?

Jo — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:02:31 -0000

Should I be using banners and buttons, or is digital about much more than that?

Re: Stop Looking at CPMs for Health of the Industry

kasib — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:08:44 -0000

Cosmetic Surgery San Francisco

Re: A Company Who Understands Pregnant Women

kasib — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:07:02 -0000

San Francisco Plastic Surgery

Re: A Company Who Understands Pregnant Women

kasib — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:00:29 -0000

San Francisco Plastic Surgery

Re: I’m the client, what questions should I be asking my agency?

Lee F — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:52:04 -0000

Couple of creative questions to add:

When and why do you recommend digital display advertising?
When and why do you recommend Rich Media creative? Including, when and why to use which Rich Media creative format?

Some feedback on your "Even though it’s sexy, does it pay to use Rich Media?" question...

Perhaps this is a question that should live in the "Creative" section above? "Rich Media" is really "Rich Creative", the media is the same.

Rich Media creative is anything a marketer wants to do beyond the limitations of the typical 40K banner site spec. It does not mean "complex interactive, expandable, and expensive ads".

A major challenge is that most agencies do not know how to use display effectively. In most cases, display does not fit well into the agency business model. Agencies make big $$$ building web sites, not Rich Media creative banners. Rich Media requires more thought, planning, and education on the media side as well... What do we really want to measure? How will the formats we recommend impact metrics?

Today's Rich Media creative enables any functionality of a web site to be distributed to users across the web. It provides one of the most scalable and measurable content distribution strategies available. Marketers should look at the successful distribution (over destination) strategies of video content producers - think YouTube, Hulu, Revver, Viddler, MySpace, etc - as an example.

Rich Media creative is also high impact, high resolution images well beyond the restrictive visual limits of typical site specs. Rich Media frees creative people to do creative things.

Rich Media creative is also dynamic ad content providing massive efficiencies by streamlining production, ad versioning, and optimization to Boost results...fulfilling the true potential of the web.

Rich Media creative increases the reach of innovative micro site, social, mobile, search, ______ (fill in the blank) digital programs, makes them larger and more discoverable.

While Click Through certainly is a good thing, more often than not, it is a means to an end and not the marketing goal. When developed correctly (i.e. format, structure, usability, call to action) display advertising can achieve nearly any tactical marketing objective.

With media pricing declining everyday leaving more budget to invest in higher quality creative, the question should be "does it pay not to use Rich Media creative?"

Re: Sizzle: OPA Ad Units

EricFriedman — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:53:03 -0000

I hear the 1024x768 ads are coming soon :)

But seriously, these seem like large inventory for sites. The flexibility is good if the spots become ubiquitous, but I think they are distracting and make it tougher to read content.

Re: Sizzle: OPA Ad Units

dherman76 — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:54:08 -0000

I think for the foreseeable future, publishers will sell these directly as they are "new" and I suspect the margin is great for them. Also, they could bundle them with other packages to build bigger programs.

Once publishers realize that selling small standardized programs isn't the business they want their salesforces to be handling, then these types of now standardized units will flow towards exchanges. I outline (scare) this notion with this post: http://www.darrenherman.com/2008/07/16/goodbye-...

Re: Sizzle: OPA Ad Units

Eric_Franchi — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:50:56 -0000

Darren,

Do you think the publishers will allow these units to be sold via exchanges or networks, or keep them for their own salesforces' direct selling efforts?

I agree that the prospect of marrying these larger sizes with data is really, really exciting.

Eric

Re: I’m the client, what questions should I be asking my agency?

greghills — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:19:25 -0000

Darren,

I love the spirit of this post. Meeting the client's expectations is one thing, but being willing and able to advance the client's expectations is the hallmark of a forward-thinking agency. And it's not like the agency has all the answers easier; if the agency and the client can have a honest, continuous meta-dialogue about they really want to achieve in digital marketing and how to measure that success, both sides are going to think smarter.

Some of your most important questions (e.g., Am I making sure the impressions for my US-only brands are targeted only to the US) are taken for granted not just by clients, but by agencies themselves, and that's a mistake.

The question that resonated most with me is : "Even though it’s sexy, does it pay to use rich media?" I think this applies to a lot of the discussions between agencies and clients: "Even though it's sexy, does it pay to {blank}?" For example, does it pay to devote lots of man hours to project management of a one-off sponsorship with limited reach, or would that time be better allocated to long-term media strategy? Someone needs to be asking, does it pay?

Clients often push agencies to "move beyond the banner." If agencies are willing to pass along "beyond the banner" opportunities that don't really pay, the steak of the media plan moves further and further away from the sizzle of the media plan. And if agencies continue to lead their clients down that path, disappointing the client is inevitable.

-Greg

Re: I’m the client, what questions should I be asking my agency?

adventurista — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:04:42 -0000

Darren - this is a super great list. But now I'm curious to know the "best" answers. Look forward to follow-up posts!

st

Re: I’m the client, what questions should I be asking my agency?

maxkalehoff — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:25:56 -0000

Darren,
These are awesome -- and very media specific. I think you should definitely add one more category (one which digital shops, especially, tend to forget): overall business campaign goals and strategy.

Also think about integration into the marketer's business operations, including CRM, sales, internal employee communications/activation. And this one's super basic but often overlooked...does the campaign resonate with the home page? Does the message of the campaign actually agree with the most basic customer touch points, like the 800 number or live chat? So often the campaign operates in a silo, detached from the reality of the brand.

Cheers.

Re: Roll Ups in the Digital Space

@lmai — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:04:57 -0000

Disqus won't let me log int, but this is @lmai

Small world, Kevin and I were both developing our respective apps at the same time.

I like the idea of aggreation and notification. I've added a tag cloud/search to start the filtering process. The delivery of the filtered results is the next step (RSS or email or tweet)

Re: Roll Ups in the Digital Space

dherman76 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:11:00 -0000

Yes, you get it. we do need to catch up.... meeting keeps getting dropped on my end. Ping me and we'll schedule.

Re: Roll Ups in the Digital Space

falicon — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:03:20 -0000

the http://www.halfbite.com site has a service that does a lot of the same things as tweetlnks.com and expands many of the other url shortners...but what I think you are trying to get at is that a service like bit.ly actually has an amazing opportunity to be a connector and a recommendation engine...IMHO they could and should be letting people subscribe to topics and then get a daily or weekly feed of links that have recently passed through their system related to the topics you've subscribed to (I've actually shared this idea and some other related aggregations concepts/ideas with Kortina at bit.ly awhile back, and he said there were working on some of these sorts of things -- though not the alerting bit yet because of the challenge of scale)...

Anyway - great things to think about...you and I have to catch back up sometime soon and talk more about these things (and some stuff in the sports/fantasy realm too)...

Re: Roll Ups in the Digital Space

mikestig — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:43:51 -0000

I know bit.ly (not sure of others) has an open api so getting this type of data into a service like http://www.tweetlnks.com may be easily accomplished without having to strike a formal deal/agreement.

Re: Featured in the NY Times Today

janzlotnick — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:25:19 -0000

I get some seriously crunched eyebrow stares from creative associates, but I like the dive into the thick of it -- the analytic rigor that the better the metrics the better the creative (and the better For creatives). It can be the key, not the lock, to greater creative involvement in ROI conversations. Seems to me there's a 24/7 role that ROI -- and "Media Optimization"-- at play in our every decision -- not just in what to buy, but what to "buy into" -- who to love, when to commit, when to revolt, where and how to leap and risk....Bring it on Darren; the more enlightened the conversation -- especially in the 3rd dimension of audience -- the more likely creative lightening will strike in the right place at the right time, sparking, not killing, the ideas that move people.

Re: Startups & Offshore Development

Brett Miller — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:05:29 -0000

Thanks for writing this article. It can be a tough decision. Detailed requirements are a must and acceptance that you are getting cheaper software in exchange for greater risk of failure (due to distance, communication, etc).

Here is another perspective on whether a project should be sent offshore:

http://cspreston.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/does-...

Thanks,

Re: Eclectic Curation: Sales & Art

craigspva — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:04:09 -0000

Interesting post. I have made a twitter post about this. Others no doubt will like it like I did.

Re: Greetings from Sand Hill

craigspva — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:26:53 -0000

Insightful read. I have stumbled and twittered this for my friends. Others no doubt will like it like I did.

Re: A Company Who Understands Pregnant Women

AventIsis2 — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 04:31:54 -0000

Well said Kimi!

Amber

Re: Featured in the NY Times Today

Robert Tsai — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:48:40 -0000

The Wall Street analogy is certainly evocative, and begs the question whether online media will some day be bought and sold in the same manner that stocks, options, commodities, currencies and futures today are traded today.

Of course, some fundamental differences exist between online ad impressions and financial assets, and this suggests that the online ad markets could and should evolve differently.

Ad impressions aren’t similar to commodities like oil. There’s no way to park and store ad impressions the way you can warehouse barrels of oil, something that oil traders have been doing by buying tankers to warehouse oil bought at the cheaper spot market rate and sold forward at higher rates for future delivery (the contango trade).

Congratulations Darren and John on the great coverage - and I look forward to seeing how you guys will continue to evolve this market.

Re: Featured in the NY Times Today

jon burg — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:12:24 -0000

That's so cool! Congrats!

Re: Featured in the NY Times Today

Alan Kelley — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:03:17 -0000

Darren, great to see you and all of your talents in the middle of these important trends.

Re: Display Ads Aren’t Going Anywhere…

noahrobinson — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:06:35 -0000

Strong article, Darren.

In regards to your statement, "I’ve sat in too many meetings where someone senior pontificates about how display ads are clicked only by mid-western housewives."

I was curious what you thought press release last year about Natural Born Clickers.
http://www.smvgroup.com/news_popup_flash.asp?pr...

At first glance, it sounds suspect...but maybe it's true.

I look forward to the day when we evaluate campaigns based on deltas that have nothing to do with CTR.

Re: Media Optimization

sandieman — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:44:48 -0000

This is why it's difficult being a middle-market site. I am finding the ad networks tend to do a much better job of consistently selling. The question is when do you turn serious for selling direct to advertisers? 20M monthly uniques?