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Doom
and gloom, doom and gloom. What's a responsible online advertiser
to do?
 You
may be reading this while on hold with your 401K or stock
broker. OK, so we may have made a bad joke a few weeks ago
about stock brokers jumping out a window. That hasn't happened,
thank goodness, but this week's "Black Sunday"
is going down in the annals of Wall Street as the worst
slump since — well, since the last one. With the Dow down
504 points on Monday, and a similar slide on Wednesday,
it's hard to view it is as business as usual, even though
broker's and analysts across the country are tirelessly
touting the "hang in there" speech.
Interestingly,
the views of the advertising community seem myopic at best.
AdAge talks about what the impact may be on ad spending
in the financial sector, while CNET talks about how Wall
Street woes could stifle mergers and acquisitions in the
technology sector. Kara Swisher in her "All Things
Digital" article titled "Dear
Web 2.0 - It's STILL the economy, stupid!" is one
of the few to discuss the wider ramifications of a deepening
economic crisis, and it's potential impact in the online
world.
So,
what's a responsible online advertiser to do? It's safe
to assume that many will be stuck in that all too familiar
scenario of a declining budget with increased performance
expectations. For starters, we know more consumers are shopping
online, and shopping for deals. Logic would dictate that
a successful advertiser would optimize every online engagement
point, find and nurture their best customers, and then make
ongoing media decisions based upon which buys are actually
furthering their business's Key Performance Indicators.
But even with all the latest online technologies like engagement
mapping and behavioral targeting, does an advertiser actually
know if he's got a relationship with the person seeing
his online ad? Can he know if that user has already been
to his site and purchased a toaster oven? Probably not.
What
if the advertiser could tie his internal KPI's to media
performance, rather than relying on the old scenario of
impressions, clicks and conversions? What if he could actually
build a customer relationship with every ad served. Online
advertising spend currently represents 8% of all advertising,
but the medium enjoys 17% of all viewership. Do you think
advertisers would spend more online if the technology could
keep up with their needs? We think so, and that's why we're
perfecting exactly that kind of technology.
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