An Internet Advertising Blog

Video, Audio and Photos from CRS Conference - The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices

Jay Sears — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:41:00 GMT

ContextWeb, Inc / ADSDAQ Exchange recently participated in the round table discussion, The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices for CRS: Content Revenue Strategies, a part of ad:tech on November 5th, 2009.

This panel discussion features some of the top minds in contextual advertising sharing their insight on the state of the industry now, and in the future. Companies represented included Microsoft, Yahoo!, AdKnowledge, AOL Advertising, Google, AdSide and ContextWeb, Inc / ADSDAQ Exchange. The informative discussion helped answer questions like where contextual advertising is going, what's hot and what's not. And provided valuable insight into what you can do today to make your content buys massively profitable.

The round table discussion was moderated by Jay Sears, EVP of Strategic Products and Business Development at ContextWeb, Inc / ADSDAQ Exchange.

Panelists included James Colborn, Director of Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft, Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO of AdSide, Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!, Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising, Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc., and Brett Brewer, President of AdKnowledge.

Video: View part 1 of this thought-provoking and insightful round table discussion.

Audio: Listen to Part 1 of this round table discussion below or download the audio. (Note: Please allow 17 seconds to play before hearing the audio from the event.)

Photos: View photos from the event.

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

We'll be posting Part 2 of this round table discussion plus additional industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

ContextWeb, Inc / ADSDAQ Exchange To Speak At PubCon Las Vegas

Jay Sears — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:35:00 GMT

On Thursday, November 12 at 11:30 am, Isai Shenker, SVP of Product Management will join the PubCon 2009 discussion titled, “Optimizing Your Site for Contextual Ads.” The panel will discuss the tricks of the trade and help you optimize your site for money from any contextual advertising program.

The panel will be moderated by Heather Lloyd-Martin who is the President and CEO of SuccessWorks. Isai is joined on the panel with Aaron Wall, a search engine marketer, blogger, and author of a popular SEO book, Matt Tuens, Founder & CEO of AcuVox.

The PubCon Las Vegas 2009 panel discussion will take place at the Las Vegas Convention Center in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada on Day 3 from 11:30 am to 12:45 pm. PubCon is four days of leading edge education and networking in over 90 sessions featuring 200 expert speakers in Social Media, Affiliate Programs, Search, and SEO/SEM. In its 8th year, PubCon was founded out of the rich and diverse base of WebmasterWorld forums. These aren't people who just talk about this stuff - these are people who do this stuff.

The A-List alpha attendees to PubCon are among the most highly pursued demographic in the online marketing world. Highly educated and computer savvy, they're early adopters of the latest web technologies and trends. These are the folks that any forward thinking company wants to reach and network with.

If you plan to be in attendance, be sure to say hello and attend our panel, “Optimizing Your Site for Contextual Ads” on Thursday, November 12th from 11:30 am to 12:45 pm.

Subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

At CRS: a Q&A with Geri Guillermo of AOL

Jay Sears — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

As part of the run-up to the Context Revenue Strategies conference next week (on Thursday, October 5th only and FKA AdSpace at last Spring's adTech in San Francisco), we'll be running some terrific Q&A with some of the panelists from the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.

Today, here is a Q&A between panelist Brett Brewer, President of AdKnowledge and moderator Jay Sears, EVP at ContextWeb, Inc and the ADSDAQ Exchange.

Your Name: Geri Guillermo

Your Job: I'm the Director of Sales for AOL Sponsored Listings (formerly Quigo), AOL Search Marketplace and BidPlace Pro at AOL Advertising. I oversee a team of 9 product specialists in the East and Southeast regions. BidPlace is a new platform where large advertisers can bid on AOL packaged inventory.

Your Company:AOL's mission is to inform, entertain and connect the world through premium content and mass scale. AOL.com provides top news, movies, music, weather, finance, sports, horoscopes and more. Advertisers can engage consumers by integrating their brands into AOL content and extend their message by targeting audiences across Advertising.com's trusted network. AOL works with Fortune 500 advertisers as well as the top agencies, networks, direct marketers and SEMs.

I work in the Product Sales group. My team is comprised of SMEs (subject matter experts) that support the national sales team in one or two product categories.

It used to be contextual advertising was the "step child" of search, living in its shadow. It finally seems to be coming into its own. Do you agree or disagree and what are the macro forces contributing to this shift?

Agree - but that's because search has always performed best in the marketing mix. But, everyone is looking to diversify once they have exhausted their search budgets and contextual is a natural complement.

Why does content and context matter?

Advertisers are always looking for good sources of traffic where they can associate their brands with premium content. With the overlapping of media channels it's important for your brand message or product offering to be aligned at various touch points of the consumption cycle.

How does behavioral and demographic targeting tie in with content and context? Or does it? Mutually exclusive or best used together?

They tie in as part of the continued evolution of contextual. Primarily in two ways -

AOL's content targeting, or AOL Sponsored Listings, is about reaching a desired demographic through the premium vertical sites in our network (AOL Money & Finance, CNNMoney.com, TheStreet.com, and many more).

Content targeting has evolved. You can now reach that site-defined demographic (DemoMatch), but you can also add a layer of demographic and behavioral targeting to ensure you really are reaching your desired audience.

The caveat here is not to slice and dice too granularly because you need scale with content targeting. We (AOL Sponsored Listings) have the tools and scale to accomplish both.

The Long Tail and media fragmentation. More than 80% of Internet sessions start with search-the advertiser's customer is now everywhere. Adsense has one million publishers carrying its ad tags. How do you compete in the Long Tail and against an installed based such as Adsense?

We don't. We have created a unique value proposition in the premium publisher space which makes us a "must-buy". Our publisher relationships are primarily exclusive, so advertisers need to come to us to reach a desired audience - if you want to advertise on ESPN.com on a text link basis, you have to work with ASL. If you want the AOL audience, you have to come to us.

I've seen this with other networks too that are carving out a differentiated niche. Often they evolve into specific demographic and are successful because of that.

Search has benefited enormously from last click attribution. More recently, Microsoft has published Atlas Institute research on engagement mapping and more advertisers are considering multiple attribution protocol when determining media mix. What are some of the macro "forcing functions" you see behind multiple attribution models and how will this benefit contextual advertising?

Not every conversion should be measured off the last click. Contextual can benefit from this new research because search has traditionally gotten all the credit for conversions.

Marketers need to become more savvy and not just allocate budget to search. They need to look at their marketing strategy holistically, and the entire customer lifecycle, including offline. How should a billboard on the highway get credit? Many cycles start offline and transition online where conversions are eventually captured.

The better we get at measurement, the more mainstream it will become. We are currently conducting research that ties into this theory as well.

Site targeting. When you move into the Long Tail (or even past the top 1,000 or 2,000 publishers), can site targeting deliver scalable solutions to advertisers? Is content a better answer because it is a common currency across all web pages?

Not necessarily. AOL Sponsored Listings' network has only ~ 500 publishers, but we served over 60 billion ad impressions last month. Site targeting can deliver scale in the premium publisher environment, even without the long tail.

Dynamic content. Web pages change constantly. How important is real-time - real time valuation, allocation, optimization? Many folks who talk about real-time talk about "audience aggregation" and re-targeting, but how important is content as one element of a "real-time" decision?

For us (AOL Sponsored Listings), the dynamic nature of news does not play a large role in our optimizing towards content as we do not work on a keyword basis. However, advertisers in our network can still take advantage of breaking news as those advertisers deemed "most popular" by our users will appear most often. Our system will naturally start to serve those ads with the best performance on these pages - those that yield the best.

Keyword vs. category targeting. Keywords are the holy grail of search. But are keywords effective in content targeting? Are they a destructive vestige of search-too granular or sometimes out of context to be impactful for content targeting? Is category targeting the answer?

This fits in well with our offering.

Mapping keywords contextually is definitely effective but also potentially limiting. Having the opportunity to site target allows you to demo match and increase your scale. For example, Golfsmith.com can promote their new Nike irons to the male user, between 18-34, who reads their news in AOL News, checks stocks in AOL Finance, updates fantasy football leagues in ESPN, all without keyword targeting.

Pricing Models. CPM. CPC. CPA. Cost Per Whatever-engagement, order-Cost Per Flowbee. Is this the direction we are headed? Good or bad?

That's funny - I heard this one the other day - CPHM - cost per half impression. Don't ask me to elaborate but something about splitting the impression.

I think these pricing models will always be at the root but evolving into new models is a good thing. Advertisers like P&G spend so much time talking about their ideal customer and how to reach them and how they should measure positive return, this flexibility can only benefit them.

Can you sell content ads alongside search ads-1. With the same value proposition? And 2. To the same SEM buyer? Or is it more sensible to sell to agencies?

Yes, as long as it's relevant. If it's rooted off the keyword search, the same value proposition holds because the user experience is retained. You could sell this to both the SEM buyer and any agency.

Tell us about you.

What did you do last Saturday?

Golfed in 103 degree heat (celebrated my one year anniversary in Scottsdale). At least it was dry heat. I don't recall breaking a sweat which was lovely, and I beat my husband by 6 strokes.

What's the best conference you attended in the last two years (besides AdTech and CRS, of course)?

Well, CRS is my new favorite conference....but I find Search Insider Summit/Mediapost highly valuable. The group is smaller, setting is more intimate which makes the panels more thoughtful and interactive, the activities are fun and the networking is productive.

If you could be appointed to any position in a US Presidential cabinet post, what position would it be and why?

Reggie Love! His personal aide must get more info from anyone in his cabinet, probably even more than the First Lady.

Your LinkedIn profile: http://linkedin.com/pub/geri-guillermo/0/b43/287

Your Twitter account: believe it or not, I don't tweet

Your Company's Twitter account: @AOL_Advertising

Thanks, Geri!

Geri's Bio:

Geri Guillermo is the Director of Sales for AOL Sponsored Listings (formerly Quigo), AOL Search Marketplace and BidPlace at AOL Advertising, where she oversees a team of product specialists in the East and Southeast regions. Geri was responsible for the successful integration of the Quigo sales team into her organization and continues to scale the business. She also manages product sales for BidPlace Pro, a new platform where large advertisers bid on AOL packaged inventory.

Before AOL, Geri spent two years in the sales organization at Microsoft, assisting in and promoting the launch of adCenter, Microsoft's new search platform to direct clients and agencies. Prior to Microsoft, Geri spent four years in Search sales at Yahoo!. She began her advertising career at US News & World Report and The Atlantic Monthly. Geri is an avid golfer and resides in Manhattan with her husband.

About CRS

Produced by Marc Phillips and David Rodnitzky in conjunction with adTech, CRS is a "conference within a conference" is 100% focused on contextual advertising-an area that has needed its own conference for some time. Please join us for the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.

Our panel looks like:

ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices

Where is contextual advertising going? What's hot, what's not? What can you do today to make your content buys massively profitable? This roundtable discussion features some of the top minds in contextual advertising sharing their insight on the state of the industry now, and in the future.

MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange

PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft

Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide

Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge

Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising

Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!

Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.

Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.

We'll be posting additional CRS, industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

At CRS: a Q&A with Brett Brewer of AdKnowledge

Jay Sears — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

Today, here is a Q&A between panelist Brett Brewer, President of AdKnowledge and moderator Jay Sears, EVP at ContextWeb, Inc and the ADSDAQ Exchange.

Your Name:

Brett Brewer

Your Job: President, Adknowledge I live on Southwest Airlines, spend more time on the road with advertisers and publishers than in the office, and work closely with Board and CEO. I'm one of two inside Directors.

Your Company:Adknowledge is an ad network, one of the largest in the world, and has developed a leading targeting technology. It all started in the technology center of the U.S. -- Kansas City, MO. We're a performance solution, so it figures we have our roots in the Show Me state.

Agree. We think the PPC's in search have pushed advertisers and marketers into the world of display and we love that. We see SEO/SEM practioners as more knowledgeable about contextual and display in general than ever before

Why does content and context matter?

Environment, qualified audience, fit, engagement. But . . . I would raise the question whether, over time, ad-serving solutions that emphasize the targeting of users, not content, will prove to be more successful.

How does behavioral and demographic targeting tie in with content and context? Or does it? Mutually exclusive or best used together?

Speaking of targeting . . .so, yes, they do tie in to some extent. Content in the form of the advertising format - a social network app, inventory on this publisher, an email ad in this category - can factor into targeting.

In short, targeting technology and multiple channels. Deepen the targeting technology and broaden the channels. I think that's a good competitive position.

The challenge with "MAP" is how many advertisers will use it, how big do they have to be, and will the large segment of SMB's incorporate it into media-mix decisions? I am optimistic that MAP will have significant penetration.

I don't have a long view into site targeting . . .but I have a point of view that common currency of content does provide value. As content continues to benefit from targeting technology improvements, that creates separation vs. site targeting.

Depends on ROI. The change in web pages reflects growing importance of 1-to-1 approach to consumer. How far does customization need to go to be effective? We are all going to find out.

Category targeting, done right, presents greater opportunities. The out-of-context challenge for keywords can create problems.

Pricing Models. CPM. CPC. CPA. Cost Per Whatever-engagement, order-Cost Per Flowbee. Is this the direction we are headed? Good or bad?

Good. Pricing varies with the advertiser's needed action or result, and varies with the business categories of advertisers. Credit card companies have different needs from dating sites who have different needs from entertainment companies (think viral). Multi-pricing options will increase total online advertising spending.

Can you sell content ads alongside search ads-1. With the same value proposition? And 2. To the same SEM buyer? Or is it more sensible to sell to agencies?

I think it depends on advertising category. Selling alongside can require more testing and tweaking by SEM buyer. But sure . . . can sell to the same SEM buyer.

Tell us about you.

What did you do last Saturday?

Played in a beer pong tournament at an event we hosted for publishers and developers of social games. I can talk all day about my pong-playing prowess.

What's the best conference you attended in the last two years (besides AdTech and CRS, of course)?

It has to be one of our own. Australia Social Media conference. Whether in U.S. or Australia, I love talking with advertisers who are still figuring out the social advertising space. The flight over was not part of best . . . was in middle row, in coach.

Thanks, Brett!

Brett's Bio:

Brett Brewer is a leading Internet pioneer and executive. He co-founded his first company, Intermix Media, just two years out of college. Intermix Media was the parent company of several businesses including Myspace.com. Intermix was sold to News Corporation for $673 million in October 2005.

Brett joined Adknowledge in 2006 and serves as President and Board of Directors member. He played a key role in attracting a $48 million investment from Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) and in completing several acquisitions that have helped make Adknowledge the largest, independently owned ad network in the world.

Brett is active with many charities and education-related organizations. He received a BA in Business/Economics from UCLA in 1996.

About CRS

Our panel looks like:

ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices

MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange

PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft

Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide

Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge

Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising

Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!

Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.

Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.

At CRS: a Q&A with Oded Itzhak of AdSide

Jay Sears — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Today, here is a Q&A between panelist Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO of AdSide and moderator Jay Sears, EVP at ContextWeb, Inc and the ADSDAQ Exchange.

Your Name: Oded Itzhak

Your Job: Founder and CEO of DOCLIX - Operator of the AdSide advertising network for premium publishers and advertisers.

Your Company: AdSide is a premium pay-per-click ad network, serving tier-1 content publishers, advertisers and media agencies. The network delivers highly-targeted text ads within a controlled environment of pre-screened content sites.

AdSide's Two-Step Click^TM model ensures advertisers pay only for twice-qualified clicks, and only from high-performing sites. Advertisers benefit from a powerful combination of qualified leads, premium sources of traffic, flexible targeting, and ad placement control - at optimal price points. Customers are top-50 and regional interactive agencies, performance advertisers and large brand publishers.

Contextual Advertising started as an extension to SEM, allowing search engines to display paid listings on content pages using keyword-based relevancy algorithms. In recent years we've been seeing content-targeting evolving beyond the keyword and taking a separate path from search. Today marketers can place text-based CPC ads while also taking into account the demographics traits and interests of their target audience, making targeting a more accurate process.

Why does content and context matter?

Content and context are indicative of the users' interests and state of mind when they click on an ad. This benefits both the advertisers and the publishers. Advertisers benefit from higher conversion rates and publishers from a higher CTR.

How does behavioral and demographic targeting tie in with content and context? Or does it? Mutually exclusive or best used together?

I believe that demographic and behavioral targeting make more sense with certain types of content where a pure keyword-based contextual algorithm might not work so well. For example, on content pages such as a news article about a car accident, where a pure algorithmic model could lead to ads like: "Get your degree in car accidents."

Long tail provides great reach but might not offer a good fit for some marketers. For example, marketers that look for a brand-safe environment should rethink long-tail. Other problems associate with long-tail include click fraud, accidental clicks, lack of transparency and the lack of ability to optimize on a per site basis, concerns that are less of an issue with premier, large sites .

I believe that it's impractical to manage site- (or placement) targeting with a long list of long-tail sites. Beyond the premium or well-known mid-tier list of sites, content targeting is better accomplished on a category level, allowing advertisers to place ads across a large number of sites that cater to users with similar interests and demographic traits.

Category-based targeting is an effective subset of contextual targeting. It allows advertisers to reach audiences on their go-to websites, and deeper within the same demographics - beyond what is accessible through keyword targeting.

Pricing Models. CPM. CPC. CPA. Cost Per Whatever-engagement, order-Cost Per Flowbee. Is this the direction we are headed? Good or bad?

CPA is a no-brainer for DR advertisers. It ensures positive ROI; however it places all of the risk on the publisher, which many quality publishers will refuse. The CPC model shares the risk between advertisers and publishers, but doesn't provide the branding benefits of display ads. CPM is the de-facto standard for branding campaigns, however it assumes that all impressions are created equal. It also incentivizes publishers to artificially create lesser inventory by adding more units per page, republishing 3rd party content, or creating photo galleries, etc. For pure branding campaigns, a new model should be developed to replace the CPM model.

Tell us about you.

What did you do last Saturday?

Sunday pumpkin picking with my kids.

Your LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/oded-itzhak/0/a07/4b2

Thanks, Oded!

Oded's Bio:

Oded Itzhak is part of a leading group of performance advertising experts. Prior to founding AdSide, Oded was Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Quigo, a leading pay per click ad network which was acquired by AOL in 2007. Oded was responsible for developing Quigo's PPC technologies and owns several search marketing and content targeting patents. Prior to launching Quigo, Oded held senior engineering and management positions at Electronic Arts, and was Chief Technology Officer at WorldImaging, Inc. Oded holds a BSc degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences.

About CRS

Our panel looks like:

ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices

MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange

PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft

Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide

Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge

Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising

Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!

Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.

Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.

At CRS: a Q&A with Jeff Arena of Yahoo! Content Match

Jay Sears — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:00:00 GMT

To kick it off, here is a Q&A between panelist Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager at Yahoo! Content Match and moderator Jay Sears, EVP at ContextWeb, Inc and the ADSDAQ Exchange.

Your Name: Jeffrey D. Arena

Your Job: Senior Product Manager, Yahoo! Content Match. My job is primarily focused on defining and executing the global product vision for Yahoo!'s Content Match contextual advertising platform. In this capacity, I oversee the global Yahoo! roadmap for contextual PPC text ad serving platforms that support Yahoo!'s Content Match text ad network.

Your Company: Yahoo! I work specifically within the Sponsored Search Advertising unit of the Advertising Product Groups (APG) at Yahoo! Sponsored Search Advertising as a group contains both of our global text ad products, specifically our Sponsored Search and Content Match products. Our primary customers are Sponsored Search and Contextual advertisers, advertising agencies, and advertising tool providers.

I do agree with the premise, which is that contextual advertising has long been an afterthought in a larger PPC, textual advertising campaign. However, a combination of factors is fundamentally changing the relationship between Search and Contextual. Specifically, these factors include:

Decelerating growth in algorithmic search query volume is causing advertisers to look elsewhere for additional volume (at some point, search growth will be bounded by growth in overall internet adoption)
Maturing reporting and distribution controls specific to Contextual advertising (and not Search) are allowing advertisers to unlock pockets of value within these large ad networks

Why does content and context matter?

Delivering ads alongside related content (e.g. in-context) allows an advertiser to get exposure to an audience he/she believes to be a target for their products. So, content and context matter as a proxy for delivering audiences directly to advertisers. For example, if I'm selling sporting goods to a college-aged audience, I might choose to contextually target fantasy sports sites for my advertising, as these sites tend to aggregate the same audiences as my product. Over time, this disconnect between buying ads by context and buying ads by audience will close, as new and unique targeting capabilities emerge to allow advertisers to buy these audiences more holistically and more directly.

How does behavioral and demographic targeting tie in with content and context? Or does it? Mutually exclusive or best used together?

Building off of my previous answer, behavioral and demographic targeting are targeting methods that allow an advertiser to buy audiences more directly, as opposed to contextual targeting, which is a more indirect method of buying audiences. I do not believe these targeting methods are inherently mutually exclusive, as there are a number of ways they could be creatively used together to access a very specific audience. That said, if I were a contextual advertiser just starting out with behavioral or demographic targeting, I'd likely be testing the performance independent of other targeting methods before I introduced the complexity of combining multiple targeting types together.

As an Advertiser, unfortunately, this dispersal of audience to the far corners of the web increases the friction in the buying process. Since users are visiting increasingly diverse destinations on the web, advertisers are forced to deal with such audience fragmentation and chase those users across multiple ad network and advertising tactics. Clearly, someone will benefit from the consolidation of such fragmentation at some point, but such advertiser complexity is an ongoing reality in the short-medium term.

The general convergence of display advertising and search advertising, as well as the maturation of the performance display market, are both drivers for better attribution modeling. When advertising online, large online marketers are typically spreading their budges across a number of buckets, such as guaranteed displayed, non-guaranteed display, search, contextual, etc. Search and Contextual advertising, by virtue of being sold CPC to advertisers, have benefited disproportionally when being measured, from an overall ROI perspective, against non-CPC ad buys (e.g. guaranteed display sold as CPM and non-guaranteed display sold as CPM). There is inherently too much friction in the advertiser processes associated with determining ROI across various online advertising tactics and such friction needs to be eliminated from the system as search and display advertising converge on the buy side.

That said, contextual advertising will not necessarily benefit from multiple attribution modeling. Today, search and contextual ads that are clicked on by a user receive 100% of the credit for driving that click. Distributing the value of that click across other ad buys will inherently lower ROI for contextual advertisers. The devil is in the details, but such a paradigm change will have winners and losers, and contextual advertising is not a guaranteed winner.

I see Site Targeting as an extremely valuable tool in a successful contextual advertising optimization process. Advertisers are not at all concerned with the scalability of site targeting in the context of a large ad network. Ad Networks are the ones who are scared of this targeting technology because it threatens the subsidy they currently collect on low-quality traffic at the expense of high-quality traffic. Advertisers should see these "scalability" concerns for what they really are and not second-guess the value and criticality of site targeting in managing a successful contextual advertising campaign.

As with any targeting, having a "real-time" understanding of the context against which you're targeting ads is essential to long-term success. But, by that same token, having a "real-time" understanding of your user, including where that user has recently been on the web or what things that user has recently been searching for, are similarly critical to long-term success. That said, these are not necessarily new problems that have emerged alongside the "real-time" web 2.0 meme. So, to a certain extent, both the newness and criticality of these concepts are a bit overblown, in my opinion.

Keywords have a limited value in the world of contextual advertising simply because very few parties attribute clicks and conversions to individual keywords. Optimizing your keyword lists for a contextual campaign is fraught with trial and error, as advertisers cannot determine which keywords are having a positive influence on their ad group versus those keywords that are not. Keywords would be more valuable for contextual advertising if keyword-level reporting and attribution were available for purposes of optimization.

However, keyword-level reporting and attribution are inherently problematic in the contextual advertising space as no single keyword is responsible for driving a particular ad-to-page match. In this sense, categories are a more appropriate concept for purposes of reporting and attribution as many contextual matching technologies internally leverage categorization for determining contextual advertising matches. That said, category-level targeting and reporting, although easier from the perspective of new online advertisers, does indeed offer less control in cases or both positive and negative keyword targeting.

So, clearly there are trade offs here when any ad network is considering this question in regards to their advertiser offerings. In general, I think you should expect to see keywords used in contextual matching for some time. Meanwhile, I would expect a number of distinct targeting capabilities to be added to standard contextual advertising offerings. Among the candidates for such new targeting are: behavioral targeting, demographic targeting, user re-targeting, and category targeting.

Pricing Models. CPM. CPC. CPA. Cost Per Whatever-engagement, order-Cost Per Flowbee. Is this the direction we are headed? Good or bad?

I think these concepts are valuable as applied today, but the well established offline concepts of reach and frequency are not going away and will likely finder broader application within online advertising over time. In the end, advertisers need a single, consolidated mechanism for evaluating the success or failure of marketing efforts and a single, high-level approach for allocating marketing resources across advertising tactics, both online and offline.

Can you sell content ads alongside search ads-1. With the same value proposition? And 2. To the same SEM buyer? Or is it more sensible to sell to agencies?

Absolutely! Contextually matched ads can be and, in fact, are sold to the same advertisers with the same goals and with the same value proposition. Whether or not one's product can deliver on those promises is a different matter altogether. That said, it is completely reasonable to assume a properly priced contextual advertising click or conversion can deliver the same value as a properly priced search advertising click or conversion. The key, obviously, is recognizing these are two different methods of advertising that have unique characteristics in terms of end-user response and then pricing the products differently, to account for inherent performance variations.

Tell us about you.

What did you do last Saturday?

My wife was out of town last weekend. So, I spent several hours on Y! Sports, tweaking and tuning my fantasy football team, while watching several college football games simultaneously! That agenda will quickly be replaced when she returns.

What's the best conference you attended in the last two years (besides AdTech and CRS, of course)?

I always enjoy Search Engine Strategies, San Jose, as there are typically some good sessions related to contextual advertising. That said, I've seen more growth in the publisher-side content on contextual than on the advertiser side, so I appreciate the fair-and-balanced approach that CRS has taken.

If you could be appointed to any position in a US Presidential cabinet post, what position would it be and why?

Secretary of State - because I find diplomacy a more interesting and fruitful potential lifetime endeavor as compared with politics at almost any level. Oh, and all the free travel would be pretty cool, as well.

Your LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffarena

Your Twitter account: http://twitter.com/jeffarena

Your Company's Twitter account: http://twitter.com/yahoo

Thanks, Jeff!

Jeff's Bio:

Jeff Arena is a Senior Product Manager at Yahoo!, focused on defining and executing the global product vision for Yahoo!'s Content Match contextual advertising platform. In this capacity, he oversees the global Yahoo! roadmap for contextual PPC text ad serving platforms that support Yahoo!'s Content Match network.

Before joining Yahoo! two years ago, Jeff was a Senior Product Manager for Ad Serving at LookSmart, Ltd., and also held a Product role at Neverfail, Inc. Complementing his Product roles, Jeff has held product development and IT consulting roles for Fortune 500 Financial Services companies while a Manager at Accenture, as well as a Software Engineering position, developing systems management software for Dell. Jeff graduated from The College of Engineering at Cornell University with a degree in Electrical Engineering.

About CRS

Our panel looks like:

ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices

MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange

PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft

Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide

Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge

Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising

Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!

Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.

Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.

adTech and Content Revenue Strategies: See You There

Jay Sears — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:30:00 GMT

We are looking forward to adTech next week. Lots of folks from ContextWeb, Inc. and the ADSDAQ Exchange will be at the show and conference, so keep a look out. Chairman of adTech programming Drew Ianni always delivers. This year the lead off keynote is "Mr. Frenemy" himself, WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell.

Sir Martin aside, we are particularly excited because this show number two for Context Revenue Strategies (on Thursday, October 5th only and FKA AdSpace at last Spring's adTech in San Francisco). Produced by Marc Phillips and David Rodnitzky in conjunction with adTech, this "conference within a conference" is 100% focused on contextual advertising-an area that has needed its own conference for some time.

The Content Revenue Strategies programming looks terrific including David "Mr. Contextual" Szetela from Clix Marketing (who I hear is coming out with a book on the topic) and David Jacobs, SVP of Publisher Services at Advertising.com and my co-chair on Standards Working Group of the IAB's Network and Exchanges Committee.

Most exciting for me is moderating the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th. We'll be running some excellent Q & A with our panelists on the CRS blog in advance of the conference (we'll also post it here as well for any of our readers). The panelists are a real cabal of contextual advertising-we should probably keep at least one of them in an undisclosed location for security purposes.

Our panel looks like:

ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices

MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange

PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft

Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide

Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge

Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising

Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!

Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.

Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.

We'll be posting additional industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

Audio, Video & Photos From Pubmatic's Ad Revenue 2009 Panel: The Blurring Lines of Ad Exchanges, Ad Marketplaces, and Ad Networks

Jay Sears — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 10:29:00 GMT

On Thursday, October 8th, ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange's Executive Vice President of Strategic Products & Business Development Jay Sears joined Pubmatic's Ad Revenue 2009 panel discussion about the blurring lines of Ad Exchanges, Ad Marketplaces and Ad Networks.

The event took place at the New World Stages located at 340 West 50th Street in NYC. The panel was moderated by Michael Learmonth, Reporter, Digital Media & Advertising, Advertising Age.

Panelists joining Jay included Jed Nahum, Director of Network Planning and Strategy, AdECN (Microsoft), Philip Smolin, GM, Platform Solutions, TURN, Rob Rasko, President and COO, CPX Interactive, and Tom Sipple, VP, IAC/Dictionary.com.

View the entire panel discussion video below or listen to the complete audio of the event. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Listen to Part 1 of the event via Audio below or download the audio.

View photos from the event.

Pubmatic's Ad Revenue 2009 is a gathering of thought leaders from the online display advertising industry and discussion will be focused on improving ad monetization for premium publishers and media companies.

Additional coverage of the event may be seen on Adotas.

Next Up:

Register today for Content Revenue Strategies (CRS) conference and expo - formerly ADSPACE located at ad:tech New York on Thursday, November 5, 2009.

Jay Sears, EVP, ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange will moderate "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at the Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY on November 5, 2009 starting at 9:00am.

Panelists include:

* James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft
* Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide
* Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge
* Jeff Arena, Sr. Product Manager, Yahoo!
* Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.
* Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising

Receive $100 discount when you use the promo code: CRSNY91.

Find more details about this panel and the conference, including the conference schedule and speakers at the event. When you register, be sure to include promo code CRSNY91 to deduct $100 from current price of registration.

We'll be posting additional industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

Jay Sears To Speak At Ad Revenue 2009 Panel Event

Ken Lauher — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:51:00 GMT

On Thursday, October 8 at 10 a.m. ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange's Executive Vice President of Strategic Products & Business Development Jay Sears will join the Ad Revenue 2009's panel discussion about the blurring lines of Ad Exchanges, Ad Marketplaces and Ad Networks that start at 10:00 a.m.

It is becoming more and more difficult, even for industry insiders, to maintain a firm grasp on what the differences are between major players in the online advertising space and how things are continuing to evolve. This panel will give publishers a better understanding of the roles and benefits that the blurring segments provide.

The event will take place at the New World Stages located at 340 West 50th Street in NYC from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Following the Opening Keynote, "The 2009 Ad Revenue Report: Welcome to the 2nd Channel," by Amar Goel, Founder & Chairman of Pubmatic.

The panel will be moderated by Michael Learmonth, Reporter, Digital Media & Advertising, Advertising Age. Panelists joining Jay include Jed Nahum, Director of Network Planning and Strategy, AdECN, Philip Smolin, GM, Platform Solutions, TURN, Rob Rasko, President and COO, CPX Interactive, and Tom Sipple, VP, IAC/Dictionary.com.

Ad Revenue 2009 is a gathering of thought leaders from the online display advertising industry and discussion will be focused on improving ad monetization for premium publishers and media companies.

We'll be posting further information after this event including photos and audio, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

If you plan to be in attendance, be sure to say hello and attend our panel.

ContextWeb, Inc. to Present At 6th Annual East Coast Emerging Growth Conference

Jay Sears — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:02:00 GMT

ContextWeb, Inc.'s CFO Richard Sheldon is scheduled to present on the panel, "Digital Marketing Services" at the 6th Annual East Coast Emerging Growth Conference based in Boston, Massachusetts on tomorrow, Wednesday, October 7, 2009.

Discussions will focus on branding vs. direct response, competitive edge, international reach, industry dynamics and sector consolidation. Sheldon will discuss ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange and the roles available for various participants - advertising agencies, direct advertisers, small and large publishers, ad networks and other market participants.

The panel will discuss questions such as:

- How do they see branding vs. direct response dynamic developing in the future?

- What strategies are the panelists considering to drive data via scale and scale via data?

- Is International reach critical for a successful strategy?

- How do you envision the right go-forward strategy for building growth and scale and competing successfully in the space?

- Do they think organic growth alone is sufficient to ensure viability as the online advertising sector consolidates?

The panel will be moderated by Jon Guido, Partner, Investment Banking, America's Growth Capital. Panelists include David Karandish, Co-Founder and CEO of Announce Media, Don Mathis, CEO, Epic Advertising, Michael Mathews, CEO, interCLICK (ICLK) and our very own Richard Sheldon, CFO, ContextWeb, Inc.

We'll be posting further information after this event including photos and audio, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

About East Coast Emerging Growth Conference

AGC (America's Growth Capital) will host its 6th Annual East Coast Emerging Growth Conference on Wednesday, October 7th in Boston, MA. The program will consist of company presentations and panel discussions. Five tracks will collectively illuminate key trends in the hottest technology sectors and companies in emerging growth - including business services, clean tech, comms, data center, digital media/Internet, FinTech, information security, semis and software.

More than 160 leading public and private emerging growth companies (with C-level presenters and panelists) and 500+ attendees, including institutional and private equity investors as well as senior level corporate development executives from large-cap acquirers, are scheduled to participate. (Click here to see the list of participating companies). Click here for the webcast.

If you plan to be in attendance, be sure to say hello and attend our panel.

Maximize Your 4th Quarter Ad Revenue

Karen Trendell — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:14:00 GMT

October 1st marks the start of the 4th Quarter and the ADSDAQ Exchange Selling Desk is ready to help you reach your highest monthly revenue for 2009. Time To Take Advantage Of:

New Advertisers Ready To Advertise On Your Pages.
The ADSDAQ Exchange has lots of new advertisers waiting in the wings to promote their products, services and brands online during this premium 4th quarter. So take advantage of this increase in advertisers and generate more revenue for yourself by making your inventory available on the ADSDAQ Exchange.

Bigger Advertising Budgets From Advertisers = Higher Revenue for You.
On the ADSDAQ Exchange, we see an influx of larger budgets to spend within a shorter period of time to take advantage of these holiday months. This again, means that you'll be able to benefit by placing your inventory on the ADSDAQ Exchange.

Helpful Tips To Maximize Your Online Advertising Revenue On The ADSDAQ Exchange:

1. Put The ADSDAQ Exchange At The Top Of Your Chain.
There's no revenue share on the ADSDAQ Exchange - the price you ask determines the earnings you receive. If your inventory doesn't sell on the exchange at the price you specify, it goes immediately to your other providers - so you'll make the same amount of money or more.

2. Place ADSDAQ Exchange Ad Tags On All Of Your Domains and Pages.
Maximize your impressions by placing the ADSDAQ Exchange Ad Tags on all of your domains and pages and let the ADSDAQ Exchange handle the rest.

3. Set-up Your Back-up Tags To Fully Monetize Your Traffic.
If your inventory doesn't sell on the ADSDAQ Exchange, it will immediately go to your current provider, such as Google AdSense - so you'll receive either the same amount of money or more.

4. Increasing Your Unique, Relevant Traffic will Increase Your Online Revenue.
Build up your traffic in 4th quarter and you'll see higher revenue. Take a moment to plan or revisit your 4th quarter traffic building strategies.

Special Offer For ADSDAQ Exchange Publishers:

Come meet us at the Largest Gathering of Online Marketers!

Content Revenue Strategies (CRS) is where Online Publishers and Advertisers Meet. It's the first and only conference and expo dedicated to contextual advertising.

CRS is for small to mid-sized publishers looking for insider tips on how to maximize publisher revenue, increase revenue opportunities via contextual optimization technologies, advertising network exchanges and the latest affiliate/lead generation alternatives.

Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY. Early bird rates expire October 2nd, 2009.

At the event, Jay Sears, EVP, ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange moderate "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at the Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY on November 5, 2009 starting at 9:00am and receive $100 discount when you use the promo code: CRSNY91.

If you need any assistance, please call an ADSDAQ Advisor today at 1-888-4-ASK-BID (1-888-427-5243) or email customer service at customerservice@contextweb.com.

Pictures, Video, Audio & More from Advertising's Week Panel "Agency Demand Platforms: Is Everyone A Media Trader?"

Jay Sears — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:24:00 GMT

   With standing-room only, here is the video, audio and pictures from "Agency Demand Platforms: Is Everyone A Media Trader?" held on Friday, September 25th at the Paley Center as part of Advertising Week.

   Matt Scheckner, Executive Director of Advertising Week, kicked the event off with the introduction of Two-Time National Magazine Award winner Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair Media Columnist and Founder of Newser. Michael led a heart-felt and humorous introduction for the moderator of the event, Jay Sears.

   Jay Sears, EVP Strategic Products & BD, ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange set the tone by talking about the ADSDAQ Exchange's Agency Trading Desk and how agency clients have used ATD to gain insights and make trading decisions on display media.

   He also shared data from comScore (see image below) that showed that 18 million people a month look at sports content on ESPN.com, and 16 million people a month look at sports content on ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange--specific pages about sports, curated from over 9,000 different publishers.


   Sears asked the panel to consider what opportunities exist for buyers to consider the two sources complimentary and for branded publishers to bundle such inventory together in a reach extension sales strategy.

   The lively panel included Quentin George, Managing Partner, Cadreon (Interpublic) - View Part 1 & Part 2 of Quentin's interview, Matthew Greitzer, Vice President of Search Marketing and Head of ATOM Systems at Razorfish, Curt Hecht, President, VivaKi Nerve Center, VivaKi (Publicis), Darren Herman, Founder & President, Varick Media Management (MDC Partners) - View Part 1 & Part 2 of Darren's interview, and Nathan Woodman, Managing Director, Adnetik (Havas) - View Part 1 & Part 2 of Nathan's interview.

At the end of the panel discussion, Aaron Reitkopf, the former CEO of kirshenbaum bond + partners overseeing all kbp companies (kirshenbaum bond, LIME public relations + promotion, Dotglu, The Media Kitchen and Open Mind) accepted a BIG CHECK on behalf of generatioNext as ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange donated $25 for every attendee to GeneratioNext.

As Chairman of the AAAA's New York Council, Reitkopf helped create GeneratioNext with specific goals of
1) Engaging young industry people in Advertising Week; and
2) Generating new, incremental money for talent and diversity initiatives.

To view the panel discussion and presentation of the BIG CHECK, view the entire event video below or listen to the complete audio of the event.

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Listen to the complete event via Audio below or download the audio:

View photos of the event below:
You can also navigate the entire photo set on Flickr.

Additional coverage of the event may be seen on MediaPost, "Agency Execs Discuss In-House Exchanges" and AdExchanger.com, "ContextWeb Media Trading Panel Featuring Agency Execs Gets Packed House During NYC's Advertising Week."

Next Up: Register today to hear Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange moderate "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at the Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY on November 5, 2009 starting at 9:00 am and receive $100 discount when you use the promo code: CRSNY91.

Where you will learn:
- Where contextual advertising is going.
- What's hot, what's not.
- What can you do today to make your content buys massively profitable.

This roundtable discussion features some of the top minds in contextual advertising sharing their insight on the state of the industry now, and in the future.

MODERATOR:
• Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange

PANELISTS:
• James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft
• Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide
• Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge
• Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising
• Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!

Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY. Early bird rates expire October 2nd, 2009.

We'll be posting additional industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

- Photos by: Doug Goodman

Razorfish's Matthew Greitzer in Interview Prior to September 25th Panel

Jay Sears — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:24:00 GMT

Today we are running a Q&A with Matthew Gretizer, Vice President of Search Marketing and Head of ATOM Systems at Razorfish. This is part of our series of Q&As with top agency execs on our upcoming panel discussion, "Agency Demand Platforms: Is Everyone a Media Trader?" during Advertising Week this Friday, September 25th at 11:00am until 11:45am.

Gretizer joins a panel of agency executives with similar responsibilities including Curt Hecht, President, VivaKi Nerve Center, VivaKi (Publicis); Darren Herman, Founder & President, Varick Media Management (MDC Partners); Quentin George, Managing Partner, Cadreon (Interpublic) and Nathan Woodman, Managing Director, Adnetik (Havas). ContextWeb's Jay Sears will moderate a discussion about the "demand platform" strategy of each company.

To attend the event as a guest of ContextWeb and the ADSDAQ Exchange, you can register here. ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is donating $25 for every attendee to GeneratioNext.

We'll be posting further information leading up and after this event, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

Your Name: Matt Greitzer

Your Job: I oversee Razorfish's search marketing practice and am the head of ATOM Systems, our buy side demand platform.

Your Company:

Razorfish is one of the largest digital marketing agencies in the world, with over 2000 employees representing clients like Starwood Hotels, Capital One, and Carnival Cruise Lines. We specialize in experience-driven web site design and customer acquisition and retention through search and media.

How much digital media spend does your agency control?

In 2008 we represented nearly half a billion dollars in digital media spend.

How many publishers did your agency purchase from last year?

Across the agency, over 800. The bulk of that spend is concentrated in several key players, but we are very active in the long tail.

How many ad exchanges and ad networks did your agency purchase from last year?

Last year, one. This year, six and counting.

What percentage of your media spend in 2008 was allocated to ad exchanges and ad networks?

Somewhere between 12% and 20%, depending on what you classify as a network.

Describe your demand generation platform, ATOM Systems.

ATOM Systems is designed to bring the performance and scale of an ad network with the client focus and insight of an agency. We think we can take the optimization and data analysis skills endemic in Razorfish and use them to create more valuable advertising opportunities for our clients. To date we are live with over 20 clients, and growing steadily month over month.

Are these demand side platforms complimentary to or in conflict with current ad exchanges such as Yahoo!'s RightMedia and ContextWeb, Inc.'s ADSDAQ Exchange?

Totally complementary.

You have many large, Fortune 500 clients such as Capital One, Starwood Hotels and Best Buy. What language do you use to describe the opportunity around your demand generation platform to a client? And what scale does this solution have to provide in order to be relevant and capture their attention?

We tell them they can take the money they are currently spending online, point it in a different direction, and get a better return on investment. It's a pretty simple pitch.

In an agency demand side platform, how important is impression based valuation and bidding? And what common attributes of an impression do you use to assess value-Context? User cookies? User location?

Very important for performance and optimization. But I think it is more important for the exchange to be a viable platform for suppliers. I think it will be table stakes soon, and those who don't offer real time bidders will lose out on access to quality supply.

In this new real-time world, will there continue to be "blind buys" or "blind network buys"?

Yes.

As you continue to implement your agency's trading strategy, does it permeate across the agency, requiring new skill sets among employees and new workflow for the purchase and assessment of media? Or is the strategy concentrated in a trading group or division that acts in a service capacity to existing client account groups?

It's concentrated in a trading group because the skillset is so specialized. That being said, there are some changes in mindset and workflow that have to permeate across the media buying organization in order to reach full potential.

At the 2008 IAB Annual Meeting, Rob Norman, Global CEO of GroupM Interaction Worldwide said: "Today, we plan and trade on behalf of our clients. Tomorrow and in some places today we also trade on our own behalf where we can create value and deserve our place in the chain... We charge at the moment for the cost of inputs but again if we charge on the basis of the value of the outputs we are perfectly entitled to do that too."

Should it be permissible for an agency to conduct arbitrage? -to purchase media for the "house" and re-sell it to clients, making a spread?

As long as they are totally transparent about this with clients, I don't see why not. Especially if they are taking upfront risk, they are entitled to outsize gains if those risks pay off.

Do you buy media or audience for your clients?

We buy the combination of audience and media that yields the highest return for our advertisers. In some cases that can be audience independent of content, in some cases that can be content independent of audience, and in most cases it is some combination of the two working together to produce maximum impact.

Do you believe in the substitutability of media? Quantcast says you can reach 13 million users looking at sports content on ESPN and you can reach 16 million users looking at sports content on the ADSDAQ Exchange and that both audiences have similar demos. Say pricing for ESPN is $30 (CPM) and ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is $8 (CPM). Discuss.

Yes, if they produce equal impact.

Tell us about you.

What did you do last Saturday?

It was pretty crazy. I bought a ShamWow. Honestly, I don't have as many large spills as I thought I might so I haven't really gotten to use it yet.

What's the best conference you attended in the last two years?

The Razorfish Client Summit, of course!

If you could be appointed to any position in a US Presidential cabinet post, what position would it be and why?

Ambassador to France. I know that isn't a cabinet position, but it seems like less pressure.

On what specific day will the US Treasury Secretary declare the recession in the United States is over?

November 15.

Your LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mattgreitzer

Your Twitter account: @mattgreitzer

Your Company's Twitter account: @razorfish

Thanks, Matt!

Need to register for this Friday's panel discussion, "Agency Demand Platforms: Is Everyone a Media Trader?" during Advertising Week (Friday, September 25th at 11:00am until 11:45am)?

To attend the event as a guest of ContextWeb and the ADSDAQ Exchange, you can register here. ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is donating $25 for every attendee to GeneratioNext.

We'll be posting further information leading up to and after this event, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

kirshenbaum's Aaron Reitkopf to Accept BIG Check at September 25th Panel

Jay Sears — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:28:00 GMT

Aaron Reitkopf, the former CEO of kirshenbaum bond + partners overseeing all kbp companies (kirshenbaum bond, LIME public relations + promotion, Dotglu, The Media Kitchen and Open Mind) will accept a donation on behalf of generatioNext at tomorrow's panel discussion, "Agency Demand Platforms: Is Everyone a Media Trader?" during Advertising Week (Friday, September 25th at 11:00am until 11:45am).

ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is donating $25 for every attendee to GeneratioNext. As Chairman of the AAAA's New York Council, Reitkopf helped create GeneratioNext with specific goals of 1) Engaging young industry people in Advertising Week; and 2) Generating new, incremental money for talent and diversity iniatives.

Tomorrow's panelists including Quentin George, Managing Partner, Cadreon (Interpublic); Matthew Greitzer, Vice President of Search Marketing and Head of ATOM Systems at Razorfish; Curt Hecht, President, VivaKi Nerve Center, VivaKi (Publicis); Darren Herman, Founder & President, Varick Media Management (MDC Partners); Nathan Woodman, Managing Director, Adnetik (Havas) and moderator Jay Sears, EVP at ContextWeb, Inc.'s ADSDAQ Exchange will present the donation at the end of the program.

To attend the event as a guest of ContextWeb and the ADSDAQ Exchange, you can register here.

Here is a little more background on Reitkopf:

Graduating high school in three years. Getting a dual college degree in Economics and English Literature. Traveling around the world solo. Trading precious metals on Wall Street. This wild balance of big business and big ideas ended up being the perfect training for Aaron Reitkopf. Aaron joined kbp in 1997 as head of account services. The majority of Aaron's time was dedicated to the Target business, focusing on redefining Target's value equation. He went on to become President of kirshenbaum bond, overseeing the advertising and strategy arm of kbp and becoming actively involved in integrated efforts with all of kbp's companies.

In 2006, Aaron was named President and CEO of kirshenbaum bond + partners overseeing all kbp companies (kirshenbaum bond, LIME public relations + promotion, Dotglu, The Media Kitchen and Open Mind) to further all integrated efforts and synchronize the work of the company's several hundred employees. Following the completion of kbp's sale to MDC Holdings, Aaron is a free agent. Before kbp, Aaron worked on the Mercedes-Benz account at McCaffrey & McCall Direct and then at Ammirati Puris Lintas and Angotti Thomas Hedge, managing such brands as Saab, Coca-Cola, Bacardi, and Chase Manhattan.

Aaron served as chairman of the Association of American Advertising Agencies for the New York region.

Aaron lives in Manhattan with his wife Amy, and their two children, Maxwell and Hannah.

We'll be posting Q&A with panelists and further information leading up to this event, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

Need to register for this Friday's panel discussion, "Agency Demand Platforms: Is Everyone a Media Trader?" during Advertising Week (Friday, September 25th at 11:00am until 11:45am)?

To attend the event as a guest of ContextWeb and the ADSDAQ Exchange, you can register here. ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is donating $25 for every attendee to GeneratioNext.

MDC's Herman in Interview Prior to September 25th Panel (Part 2 of 2)

Jay Sears — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:36:00 GMT

Today we are running Part Two of our Q&A with Darren Herman, Founder & President, Varick Media Management (MDC Partners). This is part of our series of Q&As with top agency execs on our upcoming panel discussion, "Agency Demand Platforms: Is Everyone a Media Trader?" during Advertising Week this Friday, September 25th at 11:00am until 11:45am.

Herman joins a panel of agency executives with similar responsibilities including Quentin George, Managing Partner, Cadreon (Interpublic); Matthew Greitzer, Vice President of Search Marketing and Head of ATOM Systems at Razorfish; Curt Hecht, President, VivaKi Nerve Center, VivaKi (Publicis); and Nathan Woodman, Managing Director, Adnetik (Havas). ContextWeb's Jay Sears will moderate a discussion about the "demand platform" strategy of each company.

To attend the event as a guest of ContextWeb and the ADSDAQ Exchange, you can register here. ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is donating $25 for every attendee to GeneratioNext.

Here is the rest of our Q&A with Herman:

VMM has been created to be the technology and services backbone for the holding companies trading strategies at least for the short-term, or until our agencies ramp up their education and are able to leverage our platform and we move into the background by continuing to power all of their trades and research. The reason why we chose to create a separate entity is because we knew that the skill sets required to work with data, analytics and analysis, deep-quant driven media decisions do not encompass all of our agencies and if we concentrated a select group together, we'd be able to first create the DNA needed to get into market quickly and it has led to an early mover advantage and lead for VMM amongst our peers.

In one way or another, all agencies are arbitraging. In the US, agencies are arbitraging human talent. In Europe, they are arbitraging media. I think the conversation should not be as myopic as arbitrage, but rather should be about whether or not they are delivering results.

Do you buy media or audience for your clients?

Audience overlayed media.

Depending on the campaign and goals of the client, substitutability can certainly play a role. Fundamentally at VMM, we believe in this but some clients do not. With clients who demand contextual natures of say an ESPN, substitutability obviously do not play a role here.

Tell us about you.

What did you do last Saturday?

It was daddy day in the Herman household and my 10 month old son caught a cold the night before, so I was stuck cleaning buggers and poop. Fun. In between that, I penned an article for John Ebert's AdExchanger.com.

What's the best conference you attended in the last two years?

None. I actually dislike conferences but prefer closed door small gatherings of intelligent people.

If you could be appointed to any position in a US Presidential cabinet post, what position would it be and why?

None, I'd rather hit the road with the Dave Matthews Band.

On what specific day will the US Treasury Secretary declare the recession in the United States is over?

March 4, 2010 - I picked this very specific date for no other reason than it being my birthday.

Your LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenherman
Your Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/dherman76

Thanks, Darren!

Need to register for this Friday's panel discussion, "Agency Demand Platforms: Is Everyone a Media Trader?" during Advertising Week (Friday, September 25th at 11:00am until 11:45am)?

To attend the event as a guest of ContextWeb and the ADSDAQ Exchange, you can register here. ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is donating $25 for every attendee to GeneratioNext.