The Old Models Don't Work
soupsoup:
Do you think Gawker is really moving the needle for Tito’s homemade vodka? On the other hand, if I was the Gary Vaynerchuk of vodka, and I wound up really enjoying Tito’s vodka, I could work out a deal where I get a cut of every bottle of Tito’s I can sell. I’m far more likely to buy Vodka based on Gary’s endorsement than Gawker’s banner ad.
What kind of products make sense for Gawker to sell? I’d imagine bad television programs like those on Bravo and MTV seem like a good fit. For all the crap Gawker got for True Blood, it’s a program that seems to fit their demographic. I just think Gawker does a terrible job at integrating those products into their editorial. Skinning the site with a product doesn’t give me a compelling reason to use it. It is good for branding, and if that is the only goal, it succeeds. If they’re aiming for clicks and conversions, I can’t imagine it does.
Here’s an interesting idea. Get the television programs to provide Gawker with exclusive previews of shows supported by advertising in the video that cannot be fast forwarded through, ala Hulu. Gawker keeps the ad revenue in the video, and the television network gets free advertising for their program. Sites like Hulu have the best chance of succeeding because they solve the problem that DVR’s caused for traditional television viewing, which allowed viewers to skip the commercials. You can’t skip the commercials on Hulu, and nearly everyone is willing to sit through them. I can’t think of better ad models on the web than Hulu.
I know the other argument already, it’s not your job to sell your advertiser’s product, and you’re right. I just think you can get a premium for promoting products in a more creative, personal way. The old models of advertising on the web are still decent for branding but they’re missing huge opportunities to try more creative and likely more lucrative methods.
Well, unless you think Gary Vee’s taste in wine and spirits is not very good. In which case, you might actually avoid Tito.
But that’s sort of beside the point.
Your point about better campaigns is valid. The problem is, the publishers generally don’t have creative control over that. Creative comes from the agency and the only thing you control is the positioning in your layout. You can make suggestions to the client till you’re blue in the face but they usually don’t have the resources to do individual campaigns for sites as [relatively] small as Gawker.
Occasionally you develop a good relationship with the client or buyer and they really, really want *your* specific audience, in which case they’ll lean on *you* for creative services. Then it’s your opportunity to exploit or screw up. It’s rare, though, especially for larger brands with a lot of money who’d rather take a scattershot approach and be widely visible even at the cost of irrelevancy to most individual users.
On the upside, what you’re suggesting is becoming more common. I advised a client recently to hire a designer to their in-house sales team just to do theoretical mockups that could be pitched as alternatives to existing creative. It’s not really affordable to do that if you’re selling $1.50 CPMs on a site with < 1 million uniques and a skeleton staff, but if you’re going to pitch double digit CPM placements and sponsorships to big budget advertisers, it sort of behooves you to make suggestions about what works best on your site, rather than relying on them to figure it out. After all, the more effective the ads are, the more likely you (the publisher) get a renewal.
There’s also an increased availability of more targeted placements (geotargeting, age/gender/income segmentations, etc.) which would seem to indicate that buyers are more willing to pay a premium to get a more specific, relevant portion of a larger audience.
So I think some of the larger publishers in the space are going to become crypto-creative agencies on the biz side. (Gawker already does a bit of this in doing site re-skins and proposing sponsored content.) And I hope this happens, because I think it will result in more innovation all the way around.
The status quo, however, is that the publisher places whatever the client provides and has no say in the creative at all, except in determining placement.
