DoubleClick's Robert Victor on Mobile Ads, Rich Media
with
Don Schechter
Robert Victor, DoubleClick's product manager of emerging media, talks about the need for more reliable ways to sell mobile advertising, the future of rich media, and the difficulty of simplifying the ad buying process.
Transcript: DoubleClick's Robert Victor on Mobile Ads, Rich Media
The challenge facing interactive marketers I believe is going to be getting reliable data from multiple types of media. People are trying more and more challenging campaigns, for example integrating mobile into their buy, but it's very unclear what that means to spend on mobile. At DoubleClick what we're doing is creating the opportunity for publishers to be able to sell mobile advertising more reliably. So that means allowing publishers to do ad campaigns which are image banners, combination ads, as well as destination pages for advertisers, but even when they can buy those types of ads, the issue facing them is what happens when you want to start adding an SMS campaign into that, you know have some sort of call to action, short code, right? Buying beyond the standard banner and doing a proper media mix is going to be quite challenging.
Even though there is a decline in the economy right now, the ad economy will be alive and well, in the sense that money may shift places. So for example, money being spent on traditional media that's not measurable media, for example, print, will start to flow a little bit into digital. So you'll see some money moving into the web, you'll see money moving into other measurable forms of media. For example as mobile advertising gets bigger, you'll see more spend go there. I really see the shift going from things like television, print, into digital, because it's measurable, it's easier to calculate an ROI, and you can then make smarter decisions on the spend based on what's actually working.
Rich media of the next 12 months is only going to get bigger and more complex. We're already seeing some really interesting things, for example we're integrating mobile messaging into rich media, so SMS to a friend, you know what we're going to see is we're going to see more calls to action, more things like widgets, where you are going to see a rich media ad really turning into essentially a micro site, where the user if they're interested can start to interact with that ad on a more meaningful level. Today we do some interesting things, for example, have different video tabs that would appeal to different demographics seeing an ad, video 1, video 2, video 3, can consume as much content, but you know, we'll see more things like: download wallpapers, receive a call from Donald Trump telling you you're fired for "The Apprentice," things like that. It's really about putting more of an interactive experience into the ad, because that's really what the benefit of rich media is anyway, right?
We're at a point in this industry where people are worried about cutting costs at the agency level, people are worried about cutting costs at the publisher level, and the automated exchange really brings it together, so that buying and selling can happen at a more reasonable price and create a more liquid market.
What keeps me up at night is that we are constantly trying to innovate and move the market forward, and as we enter the markets --- for example we recently announced that we have launched our mobile advertising product for publishers: DoubleClick Mobile --- and what's most concerning to me is that when you enter these new spaces there's a million different startup companies and when you have the fragmentation in the market, its very difficult to get them all together to make things like third-party ad serving happen. So what keeps me up at night is just the thought of rounding everybody up, getting them to work together to create a better experience for both publishers and advertisers, buyers and sellers.
