Good and Timely

By | May 29, 2009

Yes, Albert has a point:

Every time I ask the entrepreneurs to chart how what they offer fits in with the networks, exchanges, data providers, ad servers, optimizers, agencies, etc.  Inevitably, every one draws themselves in the center with the other players revolving around them.

. . . which is, this whole ad ecosystem is pretty complicated.

Naturally, entrepreneurs want to unify it – that’s their job, so to speak. And some of them will make progress.

But frankly I’m much more excited about the ones who are going to look at that ecosystem and decide to subvert rather than unify it.

When it comes down to it, we need new ways to create ads, do the creative, and share ads in places where people want to see them, which, yep, is where advertisers want to pay for them (places with great content and communities from branded sites to blogs to e-newsletters).

And if the new ways of doing those two things aren’t in the current ad ecosystem, then what are we really unifying, right?

Sure, advertisers want to have great reach at a fabulous price point, so that’s what all of the “networks, exchanges, data providers, ad servers . . .” have scrambled to provide. Scale! is the battle cry. And target!, which is another way of saying people don’t want to watch the ads, so we have to put them in the crosshairs.

But this bread ain’t going to rise, can’t rise, without the uncoerceable attention of a lot of people who check out an ad because it’s actually good. Good and timely. Everything follows from this little truth, if we really want a healthy ad ecosystem.

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  • http://www.taylordavidson.com/writing/ Taylor Davidson

    Great points: the way forward is less about unifying the parts of the existing chain, more about delivering a new chain based on the best ways to create and deliver ads; the old system worked in the old reality, but fails in the new reality.

    But that's just repeating your thoughts back to you; your best point is “subvert rather than unify”. Replacing the existing ad ecosystem isn't going to happen until an alternative has been “proved”; too much incumbent thought, people and “best practices” for people to jump to an unknown without “proof” of a better model. Subversion offers the opportunity to develop and test and “prove” an alternative model and test ways to create and deliver ads.

    The fact is, unifying a broken model still leads to broken model; a great point and reach to *nothing* is still nothing.

    So a question: instead of “location, location, location”, is it “content, content, content”, knowing that if the content is right, people will share and deliver it to the right locations? Simplistic, yes, because content is in the eye of the beholder, which cares about right content at the right time in the right place (i.e. relevance), but given a focus, what is the right place to start (start, not end) to subvert the ecosystem?