Suddenly ad exchanges are HOT. DoubleClick, earlier this month announced that it is setting up an ad-exchange, close on the heels of WunderLOOP, which had announced its own exchange, WunderLOOP Connect in mid-March. Even Google embarked on a little TV-ad experiment with EchoStar that essentially points to a future online ad-exchange.
The growing interest in these ad-exchanges shouldn’t come as a surprise. Online advertising continues to grow – about $16.8 billion in 2006, and heading to the $25 billion by end of decade. These numbers, while astonishingly large, are matched by an exponential growth in the available inventory.
The advertisers need to become more efficient and maintain a tighter control over how, when and where their ad-dollars are spent. Such needs can be met by online ad-exchanges – which also brings back recurring B2B exchange nightmares of the dot-com bubble.
One of the nagging worries about these ad-exchanges is the issue of liquidity – something only Google, and possibly Yahoo & Microsoft can provide. Perhaps that is why Google and Microsoft have expressed mega-billion dollar interest in DoubleClick? Thankfully, they will find little resistance from the web publishers, unlike the television and cable operators who thrive on the inefficiencies of the traditional media markets.
A few months ago, I had argued, that the core competency of large media companies is not the media. Instead it was their sales team, that was their edge over the upstarts. And that is precisely why cable network put the kibosh on an ad-exchange proposed by eBay and backed by the big spenders, aka the people who advertise.
Seven national cable networks tested the exchange over the last month, and executives at those networks decided it went too far in removing humans from the ad sales process, Mr. Cunningham said.
Sean Cunningham, president and chief executive of Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau, a trade group, in separate interviews with The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times stressed the point that it wasn’t going to work. Of course, pretty dumb of me to assume that the whole point of an online exchange … is to remove inefficiencies.
I know of a few companies going down this road. I’m personally a huge proponent of an online ad-exchange. This will in effect drive the 90% junk on the internet to the bottom and drive the good content sites to the top where they can fetch top dollar. It equalizes the market based, hopefully, on measurable statistics. How great would it be, if to be listed in the market, you had to use something like Statcounter to accurately track your stats???
This is just like building a hotel in a swamp biz school case study
1st wave comes in drains swamp, runs outta money
2nd wave comes in builds building, runs outta money
3rd wave buys up assets, rebrands, dumbs down and makes a killing
We’re in the stage right before the second wave
See, PCC (Parkland Community College) really did pay off dad
p.s. add me as your Facebook buddie, Larry Chiang
Well I wouldn’t exactly say they are suddenly hot, as they have been around for a long time. Most ad networks have an exchange element, and adbrite has been trying to re-invent the space for the past few years. The main problem with any ad exchange is the vast number of sub-par publishing sites make it really difficult for any marketer to choose from the best of the worst. And from a publisher standpoint, there are usually way too many other publishers to compete with that you have to accept horribly low rates to get any takers.
Online Ad Exchanges are the future indeed! Especially when these exchanges provided add-value services that did not exist before. That’s why I believe soon, everyone is going to get blipd!
Om,
Can you have a look at my article: Yahoo can kill Google Adsense for Content (http://sramanamitra.com/blog/683) and give me your thoughts?
I find AdSense for Content a somewhat idiotic ad service.
How do the ad exchanges mitigate this issue of CPC versus CPM, and segmented ads versus keyword based ads?
Sramana
Om,
Media company advantages are 1. content 2. exclusive control over the distribution of that content 3. sales
everyone can have a sales team. not everyone can have content and control of distribution.