Darren Herman - Marketing, Media and Technology Conversations - Latest Comments in Sizzle: OPA Ad Units

Re: Sizzle: OPA Ad Units

Michael Senno — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:23:15 -0000

I am on board with the innovation, and the fact that the OPA is continuing to tweak in hopes of improving improving, but a few questions. If you're a site planning to deploy new inventory, possibly you're more valuable inventory, why not sell direct. I feel the overuse of exchanges are hurting the economics online.

I'm not intimately familiar with all the new guidelines, however I think a more effective ad unit that could spark innovation for creative areas is making two smaller units that interact with each other, similar to what Apple did with the top and side bar on the NY Times website a few weeks ago.

Re: Sizzle: OPA Ad Units

Eric Friedman — 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

Darren Herman — 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...

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