Ad-Pro Media

The AIMA meeting last night was well attended and had a strong panel to discuss Ad Networks and Exchanges. Those on the panel were

Lexi Reese, Director, Google Content Network

James Fellows, VP Product Management, Platform-A (AOL, Advertising.com)

Marc Grabowski, Exec Director, Yahoo! Ad Network

Jay Sears, EVP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb / ADSDAQ

The panel was ably moderated by Joel Lunenfeld of Moxie Interactive who earned the biggest round of laughter during his introductory speech about how today we all should consider becoming part ‘Analyst’ and part ‘Therapist’ which would make you an “Analrapist” which he pronounced differently than what the audience quickly did. He indicated a need to change the slide later so this gaffe was apparently not intended but either way, it was funny and a bit ironic.

Laughs aside, after the requisite infomercials by the panelists, Joel proceeded to introduce some solid questions for the panelists to discuss and answer with some of them provided via text message to his phone before the discussion got started (expect nothing less at a meeting of digital professionals).

There were some good points made such as Lexi Reese of Google indicating that consumers on the web are 2x more likely to look at ads on niche sites (via the long tail!) and spend 4x more time interacting on niche sites!

To me, that provides some nice third party evidence for SMB publishers to sell more of the inventory directly and not through networks or exchanges. Clearly, the networks and exchanges will not go away and I applaud Lexi for even bringing up that possibility whether intended or not.

Jay Sears of ContextWeb / ADSDAQ probably had the some of the most riveting things to say as he dove down under the covers a bit. He mentioned how agencies are developing their own demand platforms such as WPP’s B-3, Publicis’s Vivaki, and Havas’s ad Netik as examples. His review of ADSDAQ was interesting for providing such as powerful tool to agencies to fully evaluate and target their buys down to the page level. Wow.

One of the other items Jay mentioned was the OPA’s recent announcement (discussed in an earlier post) about larger ad sizes. This was old news to me as I was instrumental in working with RIM / Blackberry in using large format ads and push-downs on a B2B site back in 2006! I guess it pays to be on the bleeding edge.

I made some new friends which is always nice and learned about their companies such as David Reed over at Enablus which I didn’t know anything about previously but whose firm works on online product development. AIMA overall has done a really good job of providing top notch speakers for a solid ROI on time and dollars spent to attend.

I learned first hand how well large format online display ads versus their smaller brethren perform with a campaign I worked on RIM / Blackberry for a B2B website I was representing a few years ago.

At that time, the B2B website I represented offered a large (336×850) display ad which during a test of several ad sizes on the site outperformed a 728×90, a 336×250, and an interstitial ad during the same timeframe by at least 40%. By any measure that was a huge difference!

I think it important to note that those 336×850 ads ran on the website over three years ago in 2006! I guess we were way ahead of the power curve.

If you have not seen the announcement, a good overview of the new ad sizes announced by the OPA can be reviewed here: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090310_456699.htm