I give a lot of attention to performance-based advertising formats such as search and lead generation. While I’m bullish on both at all times, I especially think that they are easier to buy and defend in a bad economy. Today Fred Wilson over at A VC wrote this post about a comScore white paper that described the lift that is generated by display advertising (banners). This article is definitely worth a read.

Banners definitely provide a positive benefit for advertisers. (And this research certainly proves it.) Like television, billboards and radio advertising, they defintely promote brand awareness, and, based on this study, a lift in sales. But the issue still remains that without a research study like this one running to measure the effectiveness of a specific banner, it is impossible to measure its ROI. And in this economy, it doesn’t matter how many studies like these are released, marketers are going to be looking for 1-to-1, measurable ROI.

Photo by Travis Isaacs

With the economy in the tank, there are a lot of people who are understandably worried about their businesses and their jobs. Companies that rely on marketing for revenue are especially concerned; historically, marketing budgets are among the first to be cut when there is a downturn. In the dotcom bust early this century, the slicing of marketing budgets directly contributed to the demise of several publications, including one that I worked for at the time.

I have said this before, and I will say it again now – if you are a media company that relies on advertising for revenue, you need to start offering a performance-based, ROI-based media option today.

If you don’t believe me, let’s look to someone who knows something about online advertising – Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Google just announced their earnings for the third quarter of 2008, and in the press release, Schmidt said this:

“The measurability and ROI of search-based advertising remain key assets for Google.”

Measurablility and ROI-based marketing programs are what are going to be the key assets to get Google through the hard time. I say, why not follow the leader?

My latest article has just been posted on The Industry Standard – Five ways media companies can take advantage of the shift to performance-based media.

With the markets down 30% year-to-date and nations around the world joining the U.S. in an economic downward spiral, it might feel like anything related to the economy or spending money is bad news. But there are bright sides to any situation if you look at it from a different perspective, and this situation is no exception.

When the economy dips, and companies take a hit, one of their first budgets to be cut is often the marketing budget. Marketing can feel like unnecessary spending for businesses, and it’s easy to cut one month and then quickly pick up the next month again when the company is doing better.

During the dotcom bust of the early 2000’s, I was working for Publish magazine, a trade magazine/Website focused on “Internet communication.” That magazine, like many others (including The industry Standard) folded due to the bad economy and the cut that IT companies were making to their marketing budgets.

But those were the days before performance-based media. Google, the leader (and pioneer) of PPC and performance-based advertising, launched its AdSense program in October 2000, but it didn’t gain traction until 2002. At that time, marketing budgets were easy to cut because marketing execs couldn’t prove ROI on the money they were spending. But today, when $1 out is easily measured to x dollars back, I believe that companies that provide performance-based advertising options will be insulated (a bit) from the downturn.

This isn’t to say that companies will be entirely shielded. But when some amount of revenue is easily tied back to a smaller amount of spending, companies will not be inclined to cut that spending.

Dollar bill by reubenaingber

I just posted my latest article on The Industry Standard – What The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNN are doing wrong.

It has already been well-documented that online media is eating away at print revenue. Take The New York Times for example. According to Scott Karp, from “May 2006 to May 2007, print ad revenue for the News Media Group decline $19.2 million or 14.4%, dwarfing the $2.8 million increase in online ad revenue.”

Broadcast revenue is also on the decline. According to Nielsen Media Research, although National Cable TV and Spanish-Language TV were up slightly, Network TV and Spot TV Markets were down significantly in 2007.

The good news for print and TV is that they’ve moved to the Web. Now they just have to figure out how to do it right.

Print and television brands are some of the most well-known in the world. Just think of the names – The New York Times. CNN. The Washington Post. NBC. It would be difficult to find someone who doesn’t recognize at least one of those companies. And the audiences have followed the brands online. According to the data (see chart, below), many mainstream print and TV outlets have huge – and growing – online audiences.

In my opinion, building an audience is the biggest challenge to overcome online. The second is producing content that anyone cares about. So these companies are more than half-way there. If they can just get their business models figured out, they just might have a shot at not only surviving, but thriving.

Just saw a story this morning about Carat’s advertising outlook for 2009. Even though they are revising their forecast down to reflect the weak economy, they are raising their forecast for online advertising from 23.3% to 23.7% in 2008. For 2009, they are predicting that online advertising will grow 18.6%, vs. earlier estimates of 17.8% growth.

The most interesting bit in the article, however, is this:

[Jerry Buhlmann, CEO of Aegis Media] said the growth in online’s ad spending share has less to do with the growth of consumer use of online media, and more to do with a secular shift within the advertising industry that is driving marketers and agencies toward media that deliver measurable returns on advertising investments.

“With search now central to the planning and execution of any campaign, online media brings a greater level of accountability not just to itself but to TV, print and other forms of advertising,” he said. “This is why we are predicting further strong growth for internet, even when advertisers are cautious in many of the other sectors.” (bold and italics mine)

This shift to performance-based media, sometimes called ROI advertising, is going to continue until most (if not all) advertising is based on performance metrics. Not only is search advertising going to continue its phenomenal growth in leading this sector, but lead generation is going to continue to grow quickly. Joining them will be other media that traditionally have not been measured but will move in that direction, including video and even print.

Marketers have always headed in the direction of measurable media programs. Just think of the 1-800 numbers that can be traced back to specific ads. With money tight, even more dollars will be adjusted to go to these programs that can prove they are worth the money they cost to run.

Photo by aussiegall

My cousin Jay (hi Jay!) is in the process of building and launching his own online business, and he sent me a note this week (OK, he sent it two weeks ago, I’ve been busy!!) asking me about online advertising and how it works. I ended up writing him a fairly long-winded email in response, but I thought that there were enough nuggets in the message to make it worth re-posting.

Here is a (somewhat edited) version of the email that I sent him. Please forgive me for the rough format.

I just saw the headlines from a report this week that Google is earning $1.10 of every new search dollar spent. This didn’t make sense (obviously) because Google is magic, but I couldn’t imagine how they were creating money out of nothing. Turns out that the explanation is simpler:

“For every new dollar spent on search in Q2 2008 versus Q2 2007, $1.10 went to Google. Yahoo lost $0.09, and Microsoft lost $0.01. In other words, advertisers are putting all of their new search dollars into Google, and pulling money out of Yahoo Search and Microsoft Live Search.”

Looks like Efficient Frontier Insights, the company that published Search Engine Performance Report: Q2 2008, is looking for publicity with that headline, because it isn’t really accurate. Google may be taking money away from Yahoo and MSN, but they aren’t taking $1.10 of every NEW dollar. Google may be taking old dollars away from its competitors, but it isn’t creating money out of nothing.

Nevertheless, the news remains strong for search advertising. Some other highlights from the report – CPC rates increased for all three search giants compared to Q2 of last year, as did ROI.

My latest article for The Industry Standard is now up online: Three online video formats for the future. In the article, I take a look at the current state of online video advertising, and make some suggestions about where video advertising might be able to head in order to stay relevant to the medium and to move beyond traditional ad formats.

In the course of researching for the article, I came across a lot of great online video stats. These are in addition to some earlier articles about online video that I posted to this blog. Those articles are here:

Online video stats for September 07
Video is not going to kill the Internet in 2010
Some more YouTube stats

The new data covers a wide variety of information, from online video usage to online video advertising metrics. I just am going to include it here because it’s great information for anyone who is following online video. I’ll also include links to all the sources so that you can explore the information in context.

Online Publishers Association – Online Video Advertising, Content and Consumer Behavior (PDF)

This report contained a great deal of useful data, particularly about audience reception to online video advertising, including the following statistics:

• Over 40% of U.S. online video users watch online video on at least a weekly basis; over 70% at least monthly.
• 80% of U.S. online video users have watched an advertisement in an online video. Of those people, 52% took action after watching that video; 28% looked for more information; 19% clicked a banner ad that accompanied the video; and 16% bought something as a result of the ad.
• 56% prefer that the advertisement is related to the video content.
• Both 15- and 30-second pre-roll ads are effective at lifting brand awareness; 30-second ads outpace 15-second ads in “likeability.”

Advertising.com – Bi-Annual Online Video Study: First-Half 2007 vs. Second-Half 2006 (PDF)
This study bills itself as the “who, what, when and what works of online video consumption and advertising.” The most surprising data from this study is the age range of online video consumers.

• 31% of 18 to 34 year olds watch streaming video; 69% stream video more than once per week
• 69% of consumers 35 and over watch streaming video; 47% stream video more than once per week
• 95% of those surveyed are streaming video at home (vs. 4% at the office and 1% at school); 45% of streaming takes place in the evening.
• 42% of consumers have forwarded a video clip to a friend
• 94% of consumers would prefer to view ads than pay to watch a video
• 63% of consumers would prefer ads that are shorter than television ads
• Consumers are 8% more likely to view a 15-second advertisement through to completion (vs. a 30-second advertisement)
• The 30-second pre-roll slightly outperforms the 15- and 5-second ads when measured in terms of click-through rate

BtoB – Interactive Marketing Guide

comScore – More than 10 billion videos viewed online in the U.S. in February (08)
This is the most recent data that I could find – the highlights:

• U.S. Internet users viewed more than 10 billion videos in February; this is a 3% gain vs. January, and a 66% gain from February 2007
• 135 million U.S. Internet users spent an average of 204 minutes watching online video in February
• 72.8% of U.S. Internet audience viewed an online video
• The average online video duration was 2.7 minutes
• The average online video viewer consumed 75 videos

Online video is already huge and getting bigger all the time. At least 75% of Internet users watch videos online and 8 hours of video content being uploaded to YouTube EVERY MINUTE. But there is a problem with online video because no one has (yet) figured out a long-term viable advertising model that will work with video. Google (which owns YouTube) is certainly working on it, but all the models that have debuted so far – pre-roll, post-roll, sponsorship – have fallen short because none of the formats have taken advantage of the inherent interactivity of the Internet. That is, until now.

I just took a look at what Revision3 and VideoClix have teamed up to put together and it’s great. Not only is the ad format interesting and cool, it’s also fairly unobtrusive and seems tailor-made for the Internet’s interactive format.

The first video to debut with the new technology is Diggnation (although all of Revision3’s videos will have the technology shortly). Watchers are able to interact with the video as it’s playing. When a viewer clicks on an item in the video that has additional information included, an area is displayed to the right of the video that has the details about the item, as well as room for advertising or additional vendor information.

This is clever. For one thing, the information that was provided was fun and interesting. (For example, I found out that the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam has rooms that range from 1 to 5 stars and one of the rooms has a shower in the middle of the room.) I wanted to click every link in the video to find out more about the video that I was watching, the clothes that the hosts were wearing, and even to see what computers they were using. Since my clicks didn’t stop the video, I was able to click around when something was happening that I was less interested in watching and I didn’t have to miss anything that I didn’t want to miss.

My prediction – this online advertising format will be viable and long-lasting, particularly in the consumer market. Clickable video is here to stay.

My most recent article for The Industry Standard is up on the site now: What the ValueClick settlement means for the future of lead generation. Why don’t you go read it? And hey! Why don’t you leave a comment if you have something to say.

For those of you who don’t know the background to the story, ValueClick just recently agreed to pay $2.9 million to settle the FTC allegations that they were doing bad things with their business, including:

1) Lying to consumers, advertising free offers, but then requiring consumers to pay or purchase to qualify for those “free” offers.

2) Violating federal law, specifically, the CAN-SPAM act.

3) Not securing customers’ financial data, even though they promised to secure it.

The press release from the FTC with the complete list of charges is here.

ValueClick will admit to no wrong-doing. Here’s what ValueClick says about the charges:

“The FTC alleged that the Company utilized deceptive marketing practices that violated the CAN-SPAM Act and FTC Act. In an effort to resolve this matter, ValueClick agreed to a settlement payment of $2.9 million without an admission of liability or conceding that the Company violated any laws.”

Having worked in the lead generation industry for years, I know that this is not the norm in lead generation and that most lead gen companies follow solid business practices; but yet, these types of scams do happen fairly frequently. Lead generation is a big business in the U.S. (see images below) and gettng bigger as companies realize the value of generating data that can provide specific metrics and ROI. So companies will use many different tactics – not all of them aboveboard – to generate leads for their clients.

If you’re doing lead generation through a third-party provider, make sure that you get them to explain in detail the following things:

1) What the environment looks like in which they will be generating leads. If they are creating a registration form, make sure that they show you what it looks like.

2) How they are generating the traffic that drives the leads.

3) If they are doing “co-registration” to generate their leads. Co-registration is the practice of including a check box at the end of another registration form so as consumers register for one thing, they also can “opt-in” for your thing, too. If they are doing co-registration, find out if the box is pre-checked, and if it is, run the other way.

4) Ask for a client reference – they should be willing to let you talk to someone else who has used the service and found it reputable and helpful.

Here are those lead generation numbers that I promised. This image is taken from the BtoB Magazine’s Interactive Marketing Guide for 2008, which has a lot of great online advertising data.