Let’s Work Together to Save Advertising

It’s Not Working for Anyone

It wasn’t so long ago that advertising was the best and sometimes only tool in the marketer’s tool kit.

And it wasn’t so long ago that you could build a good web site and support it through advertising.

But now when people ask me how to monetize their content, I tell them “any way but advertising.”

Advertising, at least for the moment, is unsatisfactory for both publishers and marketers. As an industry, its business model is just broken. Ask any ad agency. Ask any online publisher.

It has taken twenty years for the shift from old media to new media to truly disrupt advertising. It started when Craigslist undid the Classifieds, which was the traditional way newspapers made money. News was always the tradeoff for viewing advertising.

Everything just went to hell in a handbasket from there, especially when Google came along and chose advertising as its business model. For a while, it seemed as if portals could support themselves by advertising. Then it appeared that financial advice sites could, or porn, or health information.

But each new technological advance just drove ad prices lower and response rates even lower. Automating the ad sales process was the last nail in the coffin, as anonymous algorithms now could now buy leftover ad space on random sites for unsuspecting brands who comforted themselves by thinking they were getting the benefits of “big data.”

And the site visitors? They are not only annoyed by spammy advertising; they’re often furious. They feel violated by marketing stalkers trying to sell them penis enlargement pills and mortgages.

How can we restore advertising to its rightful place as a useful tool for marketers and a source of revenue for publishers? Simple. Give up the idea of big data as a panacea and concentrate on the human connection again.

If you are a publisher:

1) Don’t race to programmatic and sell all your ads as remnant just to fill your space. Be selective.

2) Don’t sell your premium space/time programatically. Use your direct sales team to connect with advertisers to find out what their goals are. Keep your direct relationships. People are always able to command better prices than algorithms.

3) Collect and mine your audience data. Know the people who are your visitors.Use your data as the underpinning for premium pricing. The right advertiser will always pay you for the right audience.Grow and cultivate your audience through social sharing.

4) Prepare your site to receive video advertising and mobile advertising. Use responsive design.

5) Check with your audience regularly to see how they are responding to ads on your site.

For advertisers/brands:

1) Don’t try to advertise on the cheap. You do get what you pay for.

2)Don’t hesitate to adopt new formats. The banner is dead, especially for mobile. And forget click through rates (CTRs) as a metric. No one clicks on ads anymore. You want is attention and engagement, which is better measured by time.

3) Educate yourself about programmatic buying. Make sure you know what content is on the sites you are buying. Blind programmatic audience buying could land your brand on a high traffic porn site or one that is politically incorrect.

4) Tune your brand story for video and mobile. They require different creative.

5) Take the power from your geeks and return it to your creative director. Make campaigns that inspire conversation and action.

Advertisers and publishers can’t fix the industry while too many tech providers are between them and the audiences. Make great advertising, show it in the right place at the right time, and the industry will fix itself.