Relevance is Expensive
Being compelling and relevant to consumers is the goal of any good advertising campaign. But at what cost?
I’m posing this question to marketers and media buyers that are faced with the economic reality of cheaper buys when things aren’t as optimized as they can be. Yes, an online airport parking company is best fit on a travel site. But for how much a premium buy on a single site costs, is it worth it?
More and more, the answer is no. It makes more sense to bid up keywords on AdWords, spray some ads across the web through a network with low CPM and see where they stick, and generally stay away from ever paying a premium CPM direct to a publisher.
Good news for advertisers, bad news for publishers, and horrible news for consumers. Ad networks can do some wonderful things for ROI, but they’re a “good enough” solution when it comes to ad relevance and influencing purchase intention. Why spend $1 sending a pitch that really speaks to you, the consumer, when I can spend $0.01 and send one that sorta speaks to you?
Again, a lot of excitement these days surrounding relevance in ads. But any technological breakthroughs that enable this to happen are going to have to develop through ad networks for them to actually be scalable. I see the death of premium CPM approaching…
