JohnDeMayo.com: Internet Advertising Insight

Yahoo remnant inventory

If anyone out there is currently buying a significant amount of Y! class 2 and wants to swap experiences, drop me a line?  I am seeing a large shift in inventory available at T2 pricing and wanted to compare notes with someone else active in this regard.  Also, if you are measuring and/or have run any experiments in regards to frequency and frequency capping on Y!.....it may be a good idea for us to compare notes.  I am finding their in-house ad serving solution behaves unlike any other I have encountered, causing some bizarre user frequency effects.

Advertising aggregator space

There's been a lot of speculation as Google begins facilitating image ads on sites, in addition to their text-based offerings.  Folks ponder about the future of more traditional advertising networks like Advertising.com and Fastclick as Google moves into their space.

When discussing any advertising broker/aggregator, most folks first talk about the medium they do most business in.  Google does most of its business in "paid search", and the second place medium is "text ads" on the "web".  Now they are ramping up more traditional "banner ads" or "image ads" on the "web".  Fastclick handles primarily "banner ads" on the "web".  Azoogle handles primarily "email ads" on fairly legit email inventory.

So the dimension folks tend to focus on is the medium (web, email, search) and potentially the manifestation (text, image).  Maybe even some details on the type of publishing partners they use (fairly legitimate, squeaky clean), or the type of targeting they do (contextual, advertiser specified, channel).

There are some neglected dimensions though, that are critical to understanding an advertising facilitator's business model.

-Number of clients
-Amount of integration (typically the greater the number of clients, the less the integration)
-Amount of risk the facilitator bears
-The method by which the advertiser is charged
-Primary targeting or matching methodology (how it is decided which advertiser is shown on which publishing location)

If you start to map all of this out against all of the networks, brokers, facilitators, aggregators, etc. it paints an amazing picture in regards to where the concentration is, where the growth is, and where in all honesty few companies have tread.....areas that show amazing promise that have largely gone overlooked.

online retailing

So I've got a friend who sells books through amazon's private seller program (some of you know who im talking about). Basically amazon lets other companies sell the same books (and other goods) they do -- normally used versions, but allow new as well. Amazon takes a cut for handling the transaction, and handles the money between parties. So bob can sell his used books to jane through amazon. And jane learns that bob has this book for sale when she searches for it on amazon and sees the "new and used from $x.xx" link. So amazon doesnt sell the book.....but they help bob sell it to jane, and take a middleman fee.

So essentially they in addition to their traditional retail business, they also take a cut in facilitating sales of party to party transactions. Sounds like ebay minus the bidding model.....and an increasing percentage of ebays business is not bidded on anyways (using their buy-now feature).

It does make you wonder when ebay might sell new goods.....at a higher price then their private sellers might but still, with a better gurantee and more concrete terms it would enable them to round out their offering......makes sense to me.

Also makes you wonder......what other online retailers should be following amazon's lead and letting private parties sell goods along side of their own.

I think in a lot of consumer retail industries.....the sustainable winners will employ both models, retailer to consumer, and 3rd party to consumer. It's only with more obscure goods that the auction nuance really adds much value anyways.

Overstock, there's a killer change you could make to your business model here to grow certain sections to critical mass rapidly...and start to play with the big boys....I can tell you more if you pay more highly exorbitant consultant's fees.

Responsible tax payers

Taxpayers who made more than $1 million received an average federal income tax break of $123,592 in 2004, according to the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution think tanks. This compared to $383, the average tax break in 2004 for the two-thirds of taxpayers who made less than $50,000 per year.

When you hear that the only choices we have are to cut budgets, increase the deficit or increase your taxes, remember that $69 billion in tax breaks went to people who made more than $200,000 last year.

Facing off against Responsible Wealth are families including the widow and heirs of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. founder Sam Walton and influential lobby groups including the National Federation of Independent Business (lobbying for continuation of tax cuts for the super-wealthy).

It's just not right.  Time for the succesful to step up and stop supporting those that favor tax cuts for the 1%.