San Francisco-based Online Marketing Agency Achieves Highest Rank since First Placing in Esteemed List in 2008

SAN FRANCISCO, August 24, 2010 – e-storm international (www.e-storm.com), a leading online marketing strategy and services firm, today announced that it has placed in the Inc. 5000 list for the third consecutive year. For over 30 years, the Inc. 5000 list has served as a barometer of success among America’s top emerging privately-held independent businesses.

This year, e-storm placed 1,037^th among the overall 5,000 contenders, the highest rank for the marketing agency since it first placed in the list in 2008.

“With increased billings in 2009 and a strong new business pipeline expected to push us even higher in 2010 and 2011, we look forward to using this latest honor as momentum for further growth,” said William Gaultier, CEO of e-storm. “Our objective with this award is not just to promote e-storm as one of the nation’s top fastest growing 5,000 companies, but rather to highlight ourselves as one of the several marketing agencies pushing the envelope in strategic thinking, innovation and service.”

“For more than 30 years, Inc.’s list has served as evidence of the significant accomplishments of enterprises such as e-storm,” stated Jane Berentson, Editor of Inc. Magazine. “As an Inc. 5000 honoree, e-storm International shares a prestigious pedigree with such notable alumni as Intuit, Zappos, Microsoft, Visa, Clif Bar, Patagonia, Oracle and scores of other powerhouses.”

For companies to be eligible for the Inc. 5000 list, they’re required to be privately-held and for-profit companies based in the US, and report at least $100,000 in revenue in 2006, and at least $2 million in revenue in 2009. The list measures revenue growth from 2006 through 2009.

About e-storm international
e-storm international is an online marketing strategy and services agency headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Canada, Europe, and Asia.  Since 1998, we have applied smart strategies, smart tactics and deep analytics to provide, market research, marketing planning, and implementation services in SEO, SEM, online display advertising and social media marketing (SMM).  e-storm has helped more than 100 business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations that specialize in consumer, technology, finance, education, travel, healthcare and many other industries including Bank of America, National University, Design within Reach, SelectQuote, Yola, and Microsoft.  Visit www.e-storm.com or call +1 (415) 352-1200.

About Inc.com
Inc.com, the daily resource for entrepreneurs, delivers how-to guides, advice, tools, breaking news, and rich multimedia to help business owners and CEOs start, run, and grow their businesses. Inc.com offers dynamic marketing solutions to help advertisers effectively reach Inc.com’s audience of business leaders. Visit http://www.inc.com.

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Woohoo! The 2010 Inc. 5000 list came out today and we’re very excited to announce that e-storm has placed in the esteemed list for the third year straight, with our highest ranking yet!  This comes after several great wins earlier this year, including the ICIC 100 list (which we’ve placed on two years straight) and a few great industry recognition opportunities, such as leading two great panels at the upcoming DMA 2010 Annual Conference.

For those unfamiliar to the Inc 5000, it’s an annual review of the nation’s fastest-growing privately-held independent companies. Check out our press release, or visit the official Inc 5000 website for more information.

This is yet another indication of e-storm’s strong growth, and we look forward to placing in the Inc 500 next year! And as always, we’ve got more announcements coming down the pike. Subscribe to our newsletter and be in the know before everyone else!

Today in the music industry, a bellwether is sound as Warner Music Group has reported $55 million in net loss for Q3 of 2010. Their reason? “Because of the Internet.”

“Warner Music Group reported…a further double-digit drop in sales as further business was lost to the Internet, resulting in a net loss of 55 million dollars for the third quarter. A year earlier the net loss was 37 million dollars…analysts noted the trend of declining compact disc sales in a market in which consumers are increasingly downloading the music they want from the Internet.”

Q: So what’s the prognosis for the music industry?

A: This Christmas…band managers, merchandisers, booking agents, and music lawyers will undoubtedly go hungry.

Within this fragmented sector, the ones suffering the most are the enterprise record labels–that primordial Pangaea where dinosaurs still roam the earth and continue to harbor animosity toward the Internet over Napster-era mp3 pirating. With a culture of hostility embedded in the mindset of this industry, one can only imagine what prompted Prince to recently declare that the “Internet is over”. Others who continue to adhere to this aversion to digital media follow suit. Expect a faction of “Neo-Luddites” to emerge.

In the recently seemingly-immortal words of Prince:

“The Internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it…the Internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good.”

Prince, sounding like ‘grandma’ in her rocker lamenting an era gone by, keeps harping on “Internet abuses” and “no good digital gadgets”. However, the new pop acolytes – who are adept at tuning out the ramblings of grandma – are ready to become the standard-bearers of the digital age, as most have superseded many of the the roles normally delegated to members of large record labels. Musicians, in part, have become their own PR machine, booking agent and enacting their own A/R–very savvy stuff here.

Here are some tools and solutions that will help burgeoning musicians who are technically inclined enact A/R through the chutes and pipes of the Internet.

SoundCloud:

Definitely one of my favorite in terms of social applications for music sharing, SoundCloud gives the DIY musician a large landscape to canvas. SoundCloud uses a viral loop approach (much similar to Facebook) that guarantees continual engagement of musical aficionados and connoisseurs to rate, share and provide feedback on any track you produce–while you continue to live rent free in your mother’s basement making those beats.

Bonus Round: SoundCloud also has prepaid packages where you can enable analytics on your dashboard to measure play metrics on a more granular level, from geo-targets to unique plays (if you absolutely need to geek the heck out). Additionally, the nifty little widgets you can deploy look great on your own website and blog posts:

Sun by Caribouband

Vimeo:

So you have a friend who’s into video production? Need a music video for your band? Well hop into that beater and head on down scenic PCH to get that crunked out video buzzworthy for the masses. With a much more glossy sheen than the matted format of YouTube videos, Vimeo allows musicians to set up profiles, upload videos and also comment on other user’s productions. Also, as of late, I have seen event promoters using Vimeo to distribute video fliers via Facebook and blogs. Definitely, a greener and less intrusive approach to getting the word out about your party (tip: marketing street teams–your jobs just became easier). Additionally, having the option for video allows you the opportunity to preview what your live experience is like:

Caribou from NOW Magazine on Vimeo.

Finally, get a content management system up and running. It isn’t very difficult to do. Of the packages, WordPress is the most simplest application to use and does not require a lot of hand holding. For the more experienced, try out Drupal which uses a flexible and community-supported format for website development. You can implement your own band’s viral loop by creating various routes to your content, implement a forum/message board and create your own social network uniquely tailored to your fan base to get your audience engaged.

And one more thing…all the tools I’ve listed above are for the most part FREE! If that doesn’t get Warner Brothers shaking in their boots, I don’t know what will.

“Online ads will top $100 billion by 2015 while continuing to outpace traditional advertising revenue,” is the gist of one report issued last month by Magna Global, IPG’s Mediabrands’ global forecasting and analysis division. This sort of sentiment has been pretty common among online marketers over the past few years, with anecdotes such as “Marketers spend more on Internet ads, as they look to engage [their] audience, plus get fuller measurement and targeting” reinforcing the behavioral mindset that traditional ads are on the way out.

This is fantastic, positive news for both online publishers and advertisers! However, the reality is that display engagement rates continue to decline as users become “accustomed” to online ads, i.e. ignoring them. This trend has already started pushing marketers toward more intrusive ads such as video, non-standard rich media and social marketing. And suffice to say, success rates for social marketing are still difficult to evaluate.

As the online industry grows across every channel, the continually unanswered question is whether good ol’ online banners can survive in their current form, or if they need to go through a major makeover.  In other media, there is little discussion about unit size standardization (e.g. 15- or 30-second spots are the norm in TV, full-page or full-spread placements in print, etc.) or of the wide variety of targeting techniques by the type of ad (branding or direct response).  Instead, traditional marketers focus on creating the most memorable, compelling messages and finding the appropriate audience and context for that creative.  However, due to its flexibility and measurability, online display media formats continue to be under close evaluation because specific ad placements, sizes, formats and colors seem to play important roles in click-through rates and earnings for publishers and advertisers.

The heatmap below is from a 2007 eye-tracking study is a great illustration of why publishers and advertisers are averse to display banners and why there is an urgent need for change. The red areas were tracked by viewers’ eyeballs more than any other areas.  On the other hand, the gray areas, which contained the banner ads, received no fixations from viewers.

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Online Publishers Association (OPA) have already made several attempts to make these stale online units a bit more stylish. Both organizations even invited publishers and creative agencies to participate in these conversations, in an attempt to close the gap between the interests of publishers – who require the sales efficiency afforded by standardization – and advertisers – many of whom have come to see banners as ineffective and stiff.

It has been over a year since the OPA introduced the new ad formats, which were designed to: (1) help marketers deliver a greater share of voice by increasing the ratio of ad space to editorial content, (2) create a new ad metric to measure the emotional impact of creative advertising and (3) increase consumers’ ability to engage with brands.  For those who haven’t seen the new formats live, here is a rundown of their specifications:

• The Fixed Panel: 336 wide x 700 tall, remains constant as the user scrolls to the top and bottom of the page
• The XXL Box: 468 wide x 648 tall, opens for seven seconds to 936 wide x 648 tall with 1/24x frequency
• The Pushdown: 970 wide x 418 tall, opens to display the advertisement and then after seven seconds rolls up to 970 wide x 66 tall with 1/24x frequency

Another unit that has recently flooded the market is called “Hover Ad,” which exists at the bottom of the browser and remains above the fold as the user scrolls. You can see an example of one at the bottom of the page in the image below.

Do these non-traditional ad units really boost the fortunes of online display and “work,” or are they simply gimmicky?  Does anybody think bigger banners will fix the problem? Sure, bigger, splashier and more interactive units carry with them the potential for increased ROI, but also bring with them a risk of increased clutter on the website, which is a turn-off for publishers and advertisers alike.

A year after these new units have been introduced, there still doesn’t seem to be any official studies available on ad-effectiveness that would prove or disprove whether the OPA moved in the right direction.  So far, I’ve only heard negative feedback that the “Pushdown” units are a nuisance and obstructive, and that the user’s main goal is to get them off the page. The click-through rates also don’t seem to be anything extraordinary, falling between 0.1 – 0.3 percent.  I’m guessing this format has the same destiny as pop-ups or peel-backs, which gained a lot of buzz five years ago and are now barely seen due to their intrusiveness.

Display is still not dead, contrary to the war cries of many online marketers. It’s just that the revolutionary “display ad makeover” that many have yearned for has yet to occur.  Until then, advertisers will have to continue using the standard banners and occasionally testing new unit discoveries.  Perhaps new mobile devices (like the iPad) and new ad delivery mechanisms (like iAds) will open up new creative opportunities and outlets for digital display and rich media advertising. But again, this won’t do much to directly help the “good old” banners from surviving into the next generation of internet usage.

• Yahoo!’s primary revenue channels are losing steam, and according to my calculations will be all but exhausted in a couple years.
• Yahoo! should make some bolder moves and major investments (while it still can) to become a publisher of record again.

I’m not saying this because of some Nastradamian-based apocalyptic premonition, but because of the simple fact that the company can no longer sustain the core strengths that are necessary for its continued existence.

As much as I can surmise, revenue for the Sunnyvale-based Internet giant (if I can still use that term) stems from two main sources: display advertising and paid search.

Let’s take a closer look at these two business units, shall we?

Yahoo!’s Display Advertising
In May of 2009, comScore declared that Yahoo! ranked as the top display ad publisher for March of 2009 with 43 billion ad views, or 13% of market share.   For comparison, Facebook achieved about 25 billion ad views at the time (8% market share).[1]

Now fast forward the recession some more to a year later, where Facebook has leapt to the #1 spot with 16% share pushing Yahoo! down to #2 at 12% share.   For an even more dire perspective, this happened during a timeframe when Google Sites jumped to 2.4% from 1.3% a year ago and likewise, Fox Interactive jumped to 9.7% from 4.9%.[2]

Interest-based targeting of Facebook’s 500 million plus users and the encroachment of the DoubleClick Exchange will only continue to steal share from Yahoo!’s stock (no pun intended) pile.

Doing a (grossly) simple forecast, let’s assume that the market will continue to favor Facebook at the cost of Yahoo!, a pattern all too familiar for Yahoo! in the search engine world.

If Facebook were to grow at just 5% per year in market share at the cost of Yahoo!, by the end of March 2012, Yahoo! would stand at a towering 2% share.  If Yahoo!’s lucky, maybe the Turner Network will be looking for an acquisition by Q2 of 2012.

Yahoo!’s Search Advertising
Using a similar approach for Yahoo!’s search business, we can build a basic forecast of Yahoo!’s market share based on historical patterns for the past two years.[3] By June of 2012, Yahoo! should own about 2.5% of the search market as share is surrendered to Google’s dominance and Bing’s creative branding.

By then, will Microsoft even need the relationship for “data gathering” and “synergies?”  Maybe Baidu will need a cheap acquisition at that point to contend with Google in the domestic US market.

What Should Yahoo! Do?
I see two alternatives here: either (1) Yahoo! needs to drastically improve the way it acts as a content house and publisher, or (2) cut its losses, and begin the sale of its business units to the highest bidder in the market.

Tips for Scenario (1): 

• On the publisher front, aspire to be like the NYTimes.com to stay relevant and take more risks to experiment and adapt to the tectonic shifts of the digital terra.  I don’t need another dashboard (Yahoo! Mail) to tell me my friends’ latest Facebook updates or Ashton Kutcher’s last Tweet. Yahoo!’s recent announcement of a partnership with Facebook seems more like a cry for help than a line in the sand.  Yahoo! still has more unique visitors than Facebook.  They need to take advantage of that now, before it’s too late.
• It’s the same story on the search front, invest in the technological infrastructure to be a premiere search engine again.  Why does keyword canonicalization still exist?  What (again) is the difference between standard and advanced match types?  Improve your search results algorithm (not borrow Steve Balmer’s).  Show me a better desktop editor tool that’s less awkward and not based on Adobe’s AIR.

Tips for Scenario (2):

• Talk to Rupert Murdoch again.  In light of Facebook’s encroachment, I think Yahoo!’s board of directors is in a better place now to speak with MySpace’s patron saint.  Perhaps the two can unite their monetary and technological powers to make inroads into social media’s mobile front, advertising’s next frontier.

Yahoo! is losing ground on traffic share while outsourcing its search technology and data to Microsoft.  No company can operate as a shell forever.   Carol & Co. need to make some visionary changes.  Fast.

[2] http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2010/05/facebook-top-display-ad-publisher-in-q1.html

[3] http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-ww-monthly-200807-201006

There’s lots of great changes going on here at e-storm this summer. In addition to a few announcements coming down the pike, we’ve strategically expanded our service offerings and grown to the point we’re starting to feel the pinch. What used to be my office now houses ten e-storm team members. But not for long.

First, we’re excited to announce that we’re doubling the space of our headquarter office here in San Francisco’s financial district.  We’ll be in the same building (and keep the same mailing address), but we’re taking over the entire sixth floor.  The new space includes a second large conference room, patio access to allow for Friday BBQ’s (during that one warm, fog-less week in the City), and more private and open space for our personnel and service expansion…and hopefully an air hockey table.

Second, we’re also on a hiring spree, looking to expand our resources in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Strategy and Analytics, and Social Media Marketing. A list of open jobs can be found here, and we’ll be updating this with more positions shortly. And in addition to hiring a few people, we are also promoting from within. More details will follow in our next newsletter.

Stay tuned for more information, or sign up for our newsletter to get the scoop delivered to your e-mail.

The typical consumer’s online purchase behavior has skyrocketed in complexity over the past few years. We can attribute this to an ever-growing number of online channels (e.g. microblogging, social networks, video, web apps, etc.) and in particular, an associated explosion of compelling and highly influential peer-generated content. The dramatically increased number of touchpoints and venues for interaction between consumer and brand has in turn has provided marketers with a mass of new opportunities to better identify, target and align with consumers and their interests – but not without also creating new challenges.

Whether it’s learning to juggle priorities or better understanding the vagaries of each new channel and the effect they deliver not just on the consumer, but on other channels as well, marketers are tasked with simultaneously building their brand and also driving response in this fluid and near-real-time environment.  With this new world order, I believe that the Hegelian dialectic of Brand v. Direct Response in online marketing is ripe for redefinition.

For consumers at any stage in a purchase funnel, this increase in number of channels and associated purchase influences has not necessarily resulted in shorter, less concentrated or less meaningful and engaged interactions.  The core effect has instead been realignment. Consumer purchase behavior is now increasingly inclusive of, and influenced by, specific and trusted sources and channels.  Some companies have recognized this evolution, and adapted in order to pinpoint and engage consumers across every channel (e.g., find out where they “live online”). These efforts have been rewarded with more brand-loyalists and roads to new customers paved in shiny gold brick.  Others have continued to rely solely on mass marketing approaches (brand or direct response), which may continue to generate results, but against the backdrop of a dramatic shift in consumer behavior. These efforts may be underperforming against the actual (read: real) market opportunity.

Today, brand advertising may be measured less – or less measurable than before – but it’s still critical to coloring the totality of the (inter)relationship with consumers that comprises the “brand.’  Online marketing activities focused on direct response are measured much more closely and granularly, and are lauded for their results-orientation and performance-based cost characteristics.  While these have been treated largely in the past as two divergent strategic marketing avenues, in the multichannel world, the gap in this “brand v. direct response” continuum is inevitably closing.

These previously divergent foci now need to be integrated, or synthesized, in order to capitalize on a golden opportunity to make the ‘call to action’ a part of the brand.  Online consumers now expect to have channel-specific interactions or engagement with a brand, and particularly in the online world, they also demand the immediate gratification of being able to move quickly and seamlessly from brand-oriented stages (awareness, consideration) to direct response-oriented action (trial, buy)…in one place.

For marketers, identifying and targeting online consumers now, more than ever, requires a multichannel strategy — one which both recognizes this dynamic new landscape (as well as the changes that tomorrow’s innovations will bring) and emphasizes the importance of successful channel-specific tactical implementation. Realignment on the part of marketers on how to target today’s online consumer will help continue to eliminate the gap between brand and direct response.

Ending several weeks of subdued speculation, Apple finally announced the iPhone 4 at the annual WWDC last Monday. The device’s front-facing camera and higher resolution display serve as the two tentpoles in Apple’s pitch to drive consumers to make the iPhone 4 their next smartphone of choice. But what appealed most to us online marketers was a little detail overlooked by many and dissected by few: Jobs’ claim of Apple dominating 48% of the mobile ad market by the end of 2010. Considering both his previous predictions and recent headlines surrounding the company, one has to wonder how grounded in reality this claim really is, and just what Steve would do to try to accomplish it.

(A little crib note history – Apple purchased Quattro Wireless this past January for $275mn, ostensibly to counter Google’s earlier $750mn purchase of AdMob, which itself signified the search giant’s determination of dominating the mobile ad space. These purchases were both result and precursor of several months of public Apple/Google spats, and they also helped contribute to the rise of a tech rivalry unseen since the days of, well, Apple and Microsoft.)

Corporate drama aside, the question at hand is: can Apple beat Google at its own game and dominate the mobile ad market in just six months? It sure looks like it – but at what cost to its P&L, brand perception, and relationships to other tech and ad companies?

While Apple comprises only 25% of the North American smartphone market, it claims that it dominates mobile browser usage, with 58% of mobile web traffic derived from an iPhone (with Android at a distant second with 23%). As with all figures quoted for marketing purposes, this number’s up for verification (others claim the number is more like 33%). But whatever the number, it’s clear that iPhone users are far more avid mobile browsers than any other smartphone user. There’s not much that needs to be done to improve sales of the device, as year-over-year growth indicates that Apple isn’t too far away from taking the number one spot from Nokia fairly soon.

Jobs and Co. are banking on this growth and the unique nature of iAds – notably what the platform promises in terms of ability to create relevant and emotional connections to the user – in compelling developers to in turn bank on displaying ads in their applications instead of profiting from the one-time application purchase fee. Long story short – with iAds, users get better, cheaper apps; developers are further incentivized with more $$$; and Apple wins even more $$$.

Apple’s investing heavily to ensure success of the iAd gamble. The company’s secured $60mn in commitments from large brands such as Disney, AT&T, Citi and others to make iAds a success. And not only has Jobs secured the involvement of these heavyweights to insure his investment, but he’s also putting up strong, if not borderline illegal, defenses to add an extra layer of insulation. It’s become recently apparent that Apple’s implemented policies to ensure that AdMob’s display ads do not appear on any of its products, an act of which by itself could trigger a very interesting battle between Google, Apple and, as reported this morning, potentially the United States government (and who knows, maybe the EU as well – they love a good technology antitrust battle).

Whatever the case, Apple’s promise for iAds indicates that digital advertising is set to invoke the wrath of Jobs in a manner similar to how he helped rattle the personal computer market with the Macintosh and likewise, to mobile computing with the iPhone. However, there’s a thin line between protecting investments and playing fair, and it looks like it’ll be a few weeks (or even days) before we see which side Apple finds itself slipping toward.

Today I’m very excited to announce that, for the second year in a row, e-storm international has been selected by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Institute for a Competitive Inner City for their annual Inner City 100 List! 2010 was the 12th year in which this honor was awarded to the fastest growing companies located in inner cities across the nation. Last year, e-storm placed 26th on the list, while this year we took a small bump down in absolute ranking, our growth was still healthy at 135% in 2009.

This award joins a growing list, including the most recent nod to e-storm by B-to-B Magazine as one of the nation’s top business-to-business agencies. We’re confident that with a couple more announcements in the next few months, 2010 will be our best year yet.

For full coverage of the 12th annual Inner City 100, click here. And thanks much to everyone who made this possible!

Seems like every week there’s a new story about the “death” of ad networks.  Yes, the increasing number of industry reports has given us reason to doubt the sector’s long-term viability, especially considering the tales of  “cookie cutter” networks struggling to emerge intact from the recent economic recession.  Yet, there seems to a silver lining as the ad networks are showing strong signs of a comeback, due mostly to a focus on efficient pricing and delivering new service offerings from continued investments in technology.

Comscore’s March 2010 report indicates that Microsoft Media Network increased their unique visitors by over 33% in the last year. Could anyone have predicted this in early 2009, at a time when sale forces were cold calling and knocking on marketers’ doors every day in a desperate attempt to hold onto their jobs?

A weak economy could have been a contributing factor to why marketers opted for ad networks instead of purchasing directly from sites. But a recent article in AdAge indicates that marketers are now shifting their online budgets back to content sites as the economy recovers, though it will be interesting to see if this will keep up. Many things can be blamed on the economy, and it’s imprudent to state that ad networks will lose their market share to content sites (speculations are that maybe to demand-side platforms and ad exchanges, but that’s a separate conversation); in fact, it looks like the opposite may be true.  Leading ad networks such as Advertising.com and Specific Media are not only surviving, but they‘re growing by leaps and bounds, and at an unprecedented rate of growth.

Some ad networks already offer multiple service lines and packages, in the hope of becoming a “one stop shop.” Ad networks such as Halogen Network and Martini Media Network attempt to offer a full service buying experience, from brand building, customized marketing programs and efficient customer acquisition. By their logic, why would a marketer spend time working with multiple vendors and comparing and negotiating rates or coordinating release schedules, when instead they can do everything with a single ad network?

Furthermore, these new ad networks are not just more convenient to marketers, but they‘re also continually investing in upgrading their service offerings to provide everything from simple demographic, geographic, content and behavioral targeting to sequential re-targeting and auto-optimization. And let’s not forget that ad networks provide a far greater advantage over publishers when it comes to a broader audience reach, much more efficient pricing, and vast inventory of premium content.

For their part, publishers have been trying to fend off the appeal of ad networks by continuing to rely on their ability to offer “immersive” media opportunities, such as premium custom sponsorships and other services that ad networks have not yet been able to replicate.  However, there are signs that ad networks are breaking down the barriers of publishers’ proprietary offerings.  Some, such as Undertone Networks, already offer marketers the option to purchase high-impact full-page or homepage units on premium sites. Currently, publishers still have control over selling these opportunities directly, but as with everything price is the most critical factor, and once both sides agree on mutually beneficial terms, immersive media offerings will also become part of the ad network’s service package.

Transparency and accountability is another argument commonly cited as a weakness of ad networks, but they’re quickly adapting their business practices and dealing with this issue head on.  Many networks including InterClick or Collective have been offering complete site transparency for a while.  Furthermore, ad networks have the ability to create custom site channels specially built for a single advertiser.

Third party verification tools and services are also becoming part of the ad networks’ offerings, allowing marketers to receive alerts when their ads run on sites they deem unacceptable (service providers in the ad-verification space, including DoubleVerify or AdSafe Media use tracking technology as well as human analysis to identify misplaced ads).  It’ll only be a matter of time before ad networks will provide marketers the same trust and assurance that their publisher counterparts presently offer.

So despite the premature obituaries, ad networks are here to stay, and they’ll keep evolving and improving their technology solutions and service offerings.  Far gone are the times when ad networks only received a small fraction of the advertising budget or incremental “test” funds, one day they may be receiving ALL the online ad spend.