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Advertising - Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Right Media And Ad Exchanges For Pro Use Only

Here at the a:c, we have been running some tests on a variety of ad networks, ad exchanges in particular to see for ourselves how they fare against the hype. Today, the Wall Street Journal ads to the hype of ad exchanges with quotes from happy publishers and advertisers:

"The exchanges have allowed StubHub to place ads on a broader universe of sites large and small that it never had used before. Some of those, including ads on Gawker, a gossip blog, and Internet radio station Accuradio, led to ticket sales, StubHub executives say."

In our experience, however, we found the Right Media user experience on the publisher side to be lacking in clarity. Unless Right Media can dumb the system down, we would forecast that professional ad traffickers will manage Right Media, leaving most long tail publishers on the sidelines. Adsense caught fire among publishers because it is simple to get going on. Right Media's ad exchange is nowhere near as simple.

A comparison that comes to mind is stock picking vs. mutual funds. Most consumers prefer to leave their portfolios to mutual funds or index funds because stock picking requires too much know-how and effort. We suspect that most publishers will continue to work with ad networks and let those networks use ad exchanges.

Read - Exchanges Selling Web Ads Catch The Attention of Internet Giants (WSJ)