Banners Up, Criminals Down

Not So Fast, Grabby

Two notes from the social feed this week that made me wonder if we've got a trend. And if we've got this one, it's a pretty big one.

First, news out of Paris that Criteo, the market leader in B2C retargeting for years, passed $1B in sales. That's a whole lot of ads, and the remarkable thing about that amount is just how deep and sustainable it is. Criteo is a worldwide operation, with banner ads working on a CPC basis, and placements in any number of languages and consumer categories. They also were leaders in monetizing mobile, and making the utterly correct move of having their own publisher relation and media buying team, rather than relying on the same old automated indexes that everyone else used. When ad fraud and viewability went from niche to world-changing problem in 2014 and 2015, Criteo didn't just have better and more exclusive ad inventory. They had the only placements that anyone felt good about having. The doom and gloom probably helped their sales, not hurt.

Next, the report from Integral Ad Sciences, the ad monitoring business that's been reflecting the doom and gloom in the sector for years now. Funny thing: they think this world has turned the corner as well, with a sharp rise in media quality in Q4 of last year, and fraud dropping by as much as a third in programmatic display. Viewability also kicked up for programmatic, and even did so on the dirty old exchanges, and while the numbers are still not where they should be -- honestly, when you know there's fraud and non-viewable ads in your campaign, the idea that there is less of it is not a great feeling -- it's still on the right side of the trends.

Why? Well, because Web advertising is best understood as a Google / Alphabet product, and that company isn't going to let a revenue stream go to ground, just because a bunch of criminals want to make it so. Pretty smart people there, and reasonably well-capitalized. They might be able to fight against the tide of crime.

And while this isn't probably going to be a smooth arc to perfection, since ad fraud is such a target rich environment with worldwide access, the fact that the world got better in 2015 is, just by itself, incredibly encouraging. It proves that there is not an ocean of malfeasance, and the good actors are not armed with brooms. It's more of a fair fight than that.

But hold on. Aren't banners still something that no one ever clicks on purpose, and built on the current user experience mirage of error clicks on mobile? Well, there's some of that, especially for low brands and pure acquisition moves, and marketers that are dumb/lazy enough to think that anything, even a premium ad campaign in the safest of environments, is truly set and forget.

But for good brands on solid content sites, for advertisers that know enough to run A/B tests to show lift, and use the medium for a constant stream of learning engine goodness?

Well, they probably never stopped running ads. Because ads work. Always have, always will, especially if you've got the right list, offer and execution. T'was ever thus, t'was ever will be. Even in a world with fraud.

Oh, and one last thing for all of the people who seem so invested in the death of a medium...

What medium were you hoping would gain from the demise of this one?

And hasn't someone else declared it's dead yet, too?

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Too Slow Tech

Faster, Please

As I was scraping the ice off my car the other day -- it's been a mild winter, but it's still completely fine by me if it ends soon -- I was left to think, as always, about technology. How nice a remote starter would have been, so my car could have begun the job without me. How close that tech is, really. And lo and behold, when I got to my desk and checked my social feed, there it was: the app to not just remote start your Tesla from your Apple Watch (well, OK, missing both of those things), but to have it open your garage and come on down the driveway to meet you. Next, of course, will be when the car drives me to work, and lets me get more sleep, because hey, more sleep. And it's not as if driving is that much of a pleasure. I'd happily take another half hour nap. Naps are great. (I'm kidding, I'd probably just use the time to do more work. It's a sickness.)

Now, all of that tech is pretty much at our fingertips, and if it was our top priority as a nation, it would probably be legal in months. But it's not, and if I had to bet the over/under on when it would actually happen in my MidAtlantic part of the world, I'd want at least a decade. That will be a decade of unnecessary deaths from driver error and fatigue, preventable fatalities where the car could have taken over for someone who was intoxicated or suddenly ill, increased greenhouse gases from the inefficient use of transportation, and, dammit, a decade of naps that I could clearly use.

It's not just the driverless car that's going to come slower than you might want. Wearable technology has a clear use in remote monitoring in healthcare, but it will probably take a really long time, because, well, inertia and billing and the medical establishment's lack of regard for patient competence, or tech they don't own and operate. We've mapped the human genome years ago, but the clear and present advantages of such a breakthrough don't seem to be very apparent.

Want to go beyond the health sciences? There's traces of water on Mars, and the ability to draw replenishable power from solar panels, and... no timeline for when we're going to have more than probes up there. There's an increasing amount of water on moons in our solar system, which means that there might even be alien life within reach, but once more, no clear timeline on when we might move than from conjecture to proof. 3-D printers and the Internet of Things and all of these next level businesses that you read about in the Gartner Group or see valued in the markets, all of it tantalizing close, but slow, slow, slow. We were supposed to have flying cars and robot laundry and so much more by now, right?

Why? Well, we're spoiled. The tech that's in our hands every day -- phones and screens and the like -- has gotten so much better, so quickly, that we're lost all perspective on how fast things actually happen, and how it all has to be backwards compatible with the existing infrastructure. Also, how many parts of our world are *not* like the Internet, or able to take down years of venture capital before it can exist without clear profit.

Sometimes, the pace of change and technology all seems to be going so bewilderingly fast, especially when it runs against ethics or employment or the environment. But in reality, it's not going fast enough, and we will, someday, wonder how we managed to put up with life as we knew it.

Tomorrow comes fast. With another forecast for snow to clear off my car.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Past The NFL Event Horizon

Showing Its Age?

I'm a father of daughters, and while I'm a big sports fan and blogger, I've never really insisted on my kids liking what I like, or watching what I watch. That's even extended to past Super Bowls. But with the game this year featuring musical acts they've heard of during the halftime show, I extended the invite to my man cave, then took notes of the neophyte reactions. There's possibly some telling stuff here for the future marketing of the biggest show in America, but one that's going to need to grow to replace aging demographics fairly soon. So instead of providing yet another ranking of the ads that cost $5 million to show during the telecast and next to nothing online, let's get into the diary...

> Pre-Game

The news that people bet on how long the national anthem will go was utterly fascinating to the kids. They immediately whipped out their phones to time it, giggled like mad when it became apparent that Lady Gaga was milking it, and we were off to a rollicking start to the evening of snark.

My youngest then asks, "Dad, why did the airplanes fly over the stadium?" Can't say I've got a good answer for that one. Also, having been in stadiums where that happened? Not pleasant!

The amount of preparation and pretense around the flipping of a coin also strikes the crowd as kind of crazy. Looking at it objectively, I can't say they're wrong. Why a coin? Why do we need to explain that the coin has a heads and a tails, as if that's not kind of how coins work? Why not Rock/Paper/Scissors (Nothing beats rock! Good old rock!), or just have the ubiquitous Microsoft Surface tablet computers on the sidelines spit out a random generation? Well, Because Tradition. Moving on.

> First Quarter

Willem Dafoe replaces Marilyn Monroe for the latest Snickers ad, and it just causes bewilderment. "Who's that guy?" Then, after the reveal, with maximum sarcasm, "I love the transpobia." Cheap advertiser humor might not be a great move in another decade or two.

Oh, and the ultrasound Doritos ad, and Puppy Monkey Baby for Mountain Dew? Jaw-dropping astonishment, but no interest in, say, having some of the product. (Both were in my cave, actually.) I suppose that's what they were going for. In less explosive news, as they've heard and loved Flight of the Conchords and Key and Peele, they were good with the Marmot and Squarespace ads. Though not, of course, actual customers.

Second Quarter

Carolina scores, but running back Jonathan Stewart does not hold to the team's season-long pattern of giving the ball to a kid. (They know about this because, well, I've told them.) This gets a lot of side eye from the new audience, and more or less kills off any rooting interest for either team.

As for Peyton Manning, who you would think would be on everyone's mind after being in a billion ads? Not on their radar. They don't do ads outside of this game, really. They do kind of laugh at him when he stumbles on defensive pressure, then tries to throw an underhand pass forward that ends in sloppiness.

By the end of the second quarter, the party is entirely on their phones trying to Snapchat each other with the most embarrassing possible exposure, and are clearly just killing time before halftime.

Halftime!

At the two hour mark, people are lapsing into food comas, but the appearance of Coldplay gets them back online. They sing along without too much enthusiasm because they know the songs, then express concern for the innocence of the youngest when Beyonce and Bruno Mars enter the arena.

Good times are had as we all kind of Mystery Science Theater the experience, and when the telecast moves to a retrospective of the past 50 halftime shows, complete with video of multiple performers who are no longer with us, they're more or less blissfully unaware of all of the recent deaths. As soon as the music's over, so are the teens.

Third Quarter

My youngest is in the game just long enough for her to be the only person in the room for the PSA on domestic abuse. Kind of happy she was tuned out at that point, honestly. My wife and I send her off to bed, and that's it for the next generation for the rest of the night. In terms of good snark, my wife contributes "Is he still alive?" as a reaction to the Christopher Walken Kia ad, but otherwise, well, not much to note.

So, final tally?

My good TV screen holds no sway over their personal phones. A game that you don't get into by a certain age won't hold much sway. Telling someone how much an ad costs won't make them care about it, other than to wonder just how messed up adults are. (Can't argue with them on that one.) It's still football, and no matter how much you dress up a dull game, dull games are dull games.

By the end of the third quarter, I was pretty much the only way paying attention, even to the ads. When I checked in with everyone afterward, they were glad they watched and had the time together, but mostly just because it was family time, and no one asked me who won. I suppose they'll watch it again next year, but I can't say for certain. You've got some work to do, NFL...

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.