Banner Advertising 2.0

This is ultimately a CNN Money story about how display advertising is evolving into a algorithmically-oriented exercise in exactitude in general, but the most compelling part to me is the first part that discusses how agencies are using such algorithms to make creative adjustments to banners on the fly, meaning elements like colors and copy. The article doesn't talk about the format of the banners that can be changed in this manner -- I assume it's a rich Flash-based format -- but it sure is a lot different from the days of begging and negotiating for creative and IT resources to set aside a few hours here and there and make simple changes to your banners for testing purposes.

Many senior management types believe that online marketing success boils down to negotiating ever lower rates for the media purchased as the path to lower CPAs and higher revenue margins. But until you get to a certain spend level -- at least two commas of spend per month -- online media is generally a transparent marketplace where you know whether you negotiated a rate that's too low -- in such case, your ads simply won't run. Yahoo might write Class 2 IOs for 10¢ CPMs -- the inventory simply won't clear unless no other advertiser is purchasing the allotted salable inventory for higher rates.

One thing that leaped out at me in this story: Yahoo digests about 12 terabytes of data from user interaction every day. That adds up to almost 4.4 petabytes a year.

Did you even know what a petabyte was before today? Neither did I.

Yahoo's Rich Media SNAFU

According to this story (registration required to view), PointRoll has written to its clients stating that Yahoo is going to make an effort to enforce their policy of charging fees for third-party rich media placements.

Yahoo have apparently pulled the PointRoll rich media ads of some clients and replaced them with standard ads. It appears the real reason behind the move is to try to migrate advertisers to use of rich media solutions from AdInterax, a company Yahoo acquired in the fall, and for use of which Yahoo would waive the fees (since AdInterax is not a third-party to Yahoo). PointRoll, who claim to have 70% of the rich media market, is a direct competitor of AdInterax.

If I'm a Yahoo media rep, I can't be too happy with having to field numerous phone calls and emails this morning from media-buying clients asking for makegoods on what's been switched out, and a bonus to salve hurt feelings. Yahoo might be an 800-pound gorilla, but it's a huge jungle out there, and Yahoo is already seen as a stumbling giant anyway. There are too many other online media vehicles out there for significant advertisers to cave to Yahoo on this.

On the other hand, there's no word in the story on whom the affected clients were, and that is a very large question. I have trouble envisioning Yahoo putting their foot down with their biggest advertisers (such as automotives, financials and the biggest direct advertisers) or their most coveted advertisers (such as CPGs) very hard. Would Yahoo risk ticking off an eight-figure spender just to try to strong-arm them into migrating their rich media technology to AdInterax? I doubt that.

I don't see Yahoo's strategy here succeeding for very long. Online media is a fluid commodity that is highly subject to the vagaries of supply and demand. If Yahoo loses business over this, the strategy will go bye-bye.

MarketingSherpa: One Out of Four Consumers Use Preview Panes; 59% Block Email Images

I have always used preview panes whenever I can, mostly at work. At home I use the classic Yahoo mail client, which doesn't have the preview pane available. I would think most people who work in offices handle their email clients the same way.

And now the proof: this MarketingSherpa article confirms that 69% of people view their emails within a preview pane while on the job, but only 27% do so at home, for basically the same reasons I (and possibly you) do.

Part of the issue is availability of course, but there is also a significant minority of people who don't use preview pane even when available to them. 95% or so have preview-pane-capable email clients, while 38% of home users do. That means that roughly 70% of the people who do have preview panes available to them use it, and it's consistent between office users (69/95) as home users (27/38) -- but this also means that almost 1/3 do not use it even if they can. It would be fair to predict that as more folks at home have preview panes made available to them (e.g., as Yahoo's Outlook-like "Beta" view becomes more popularly used), the 70% acceptance rate figure will probably hold firm with the absolute growth.

As with most tech and digital applications, preview pane usage does have a demographic skew: 84% of 18-34s use it, but only 58% of 55+s do. I would guess this is in part due to the older generation's aversion to fully exploring the options available to them in their digital applications, as the default for mail clients is no pane preview.

The article states upfront that 59% of users blocks images, but the chart they show well into the article seems to show the opposite: that only about 41% block images, with the majority of those people being in the 35-54 range. The article also states later within that fewer than 50% block images. So even though the article appears to contradict itself somewhat, it seems safe to take away that roughly half of email users block images.

The implication for email marketers: bring your value proposition immediately to the top of the email, and try to limit images at the top to the degree possible, so that your email recipient does not decide in the 1.4 seconds it takes to scan your email that you have nothing relevant to say, and that your email is too difficult to interpret at first look.