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Media Industry Veteran Bill Wise Joins MediaBank as CEO June 1, 2010

Posted by Bill in Digital, Online Advertising, online marketing, Outdoor advertising, Press Mentions, Technology, traditional advertising.
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http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/media-industry-veteran-bill-wise-joins-mediabank-as-ceo-95320579.html

WSJ: Web Sites Debate Best Values for Advertising Dollars August 16, 2009

Posted by Bill in ad networks, Behaviorial Marketing, Digital, Online Advertising, online marketing, traditional advertising.
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Interesting read, especially with the study coming from the OPA… hardly an independent voice. However, it brings up a more holistic strategic question: How can we as an industry be doing a better job influencing share shift from broadcast and/or direct mail? Our competitors are not OPA sites versus portals versus ad networks; our competition needs to be anyone selling TV and traditional direct….

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Study Produced for Online Publishers Says Proprietary Content Is Better Channel Than Portals or ‘Ad Network
by Emily Steel

For a time, Internet advertising was a rising tide lifting all boats. But as ad spending ebbs, there are more arguments about where on the Web advertising is the most fruitful.

The fight over shrinking Internet ad dollars pits online publishers that offer premium content against major Web portals such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo. Portals and publishers, meanwhile, also have to compete with the ad brokers that sell often cut-rate leftover ad space on Web pages with less visibility.

Web publishers this week are pointing to a study — ordered up by their trade group — that they say presents evidence that ads on their prime pages offer more bang for the buck.

Online Publishers Association’s report
The Online Publishers Association — which represents creators of Web content such as New York Times Co., ESPN.com, MSNBC.com and The Wall Street Journal — on Thursday is releasing a study that finds that ads appearing on the portals and bought through ad brokers are significantly less effective than the premium ads they sell on their own sites.

“A brand marketer might be tempted in a recessionary economy to look for the lower-cost option. What this study shows is that the lower-cost option is not a productive solution,” says Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital operations for New York Times Co.

The study, based on research from the WPP PLC research firm Dynamic Logic, taps three years of data that include more than 4,800 marketing campaigns. Dynamic Logic offers a syndicated tool that big advertisers use to measure the impact of their digital campaigns.

The study shows, for instance, that online ad awareness metrics — where consumers remember seeing a brand or product advertised on the Web in the past 30 days — was 21% greater for ads on content sites than portals and 50% greater than ads placed in bulk by ad brokers.

Rates have begun falling for display ads, the graphical ads that border a Web page and make up the bread and butter of most Web publishers’ revenues. U.S. spending on display ads will drop 17% this year, to $4 billion, according to projections from PricewaterhouseCoopers. These declines come after years of rapid growth. It’s bad news for media companies trying to make up for even steeper declines in their traditional businesses.

Overall, U.S. spending on online advertising is expected to drop 3.2 % to $24.1 billion this year, according to PwC.

Big digital publishers long have charged high rates for the ads that appear on high-traffic areas of their sites, such as the home page. The argument is that their professional, proprietary journalistic content should reflect well on an advertiser, says Ed Erhardt, who oversees ad sales at ESPN, which is a unit of Walt Disney Co.

The Web portals and ad brokers, for their part, say that while big banner ads on a premium Web site often garner more attention than small ads, advertisers are paying high prices for relatively small audiences. The portals say they provide an easy way for marketers to make a big splash with consumers with a single ad on their homepages, which attract big audiences.

As the economy has deteriorated, many marketers have sought out cheaper options, like “ad networks” that sometimes sell ad space for less than $1 per thousand times the ads appear. In comparison, Web publishers try to sell ads for upwards of $10 per thousand appearances.

Some media buyers say the study oversimplifies the planning work that advertisers do, as ad space purchases on premium content sites, portals and through ad networks each serve a different purpose.

“You go to media conferences, and there is a portal contingent, there is an [ad network] contingent. Sometimes I feel like saying to all of them, can’t we just get along? You all have a place at the table, says Steve Kerho, senior vice president of analytics, media and marketing optimization at Organic, a digital ad agency owned by Omnicom Group that works with marketers such as Chrysler, Bank of America and Kimberly Clark.

Portals like AOL and Yahoo are trying to position themselves as a one-stop shop for digital advertising. “We see value for advertising in all three,” says Jeff Levick, AOL’s president of global advertising and strategy for Time Warner’s AOL division.

Some ad and Internet industry executives worry that comparative research about any part of the online ad business could hurt the whole industry, by confusing advertisers who are still new to the ins and outs of the Web — a small but promising part of the slumping ad business.

“The reality is that consumers are spending more and more of their time online. We as an industry have not made the bridge to large marketers as to why the dollars should shift as well,” says Bill Wise, vice president of business development at Yahoo. “It is all part of us getting more market share for digital.”

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Shift Happens… November 3, 2008

Posted by Bill in Digital, traditional advertising, video.
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This is an incredibly thought-provoking video… interested if this excites or scares you– let me know.

Silicon Alley 100 List October 31, 2008

Posted by Bill in Online Advertising, online marketing, traditional advertising.
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From Silicon Alley Insider:

“As we approach the end of another year, we’re once again pleased to present the Silicon Alley 100, our annual list of the entrepreneurs, investors, executives, and technologists who are making waves in the New York digital business community.

Last year’s No. 1, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, has had his jersey retired (but we commend him for once again blazing entrepreneurial trails by doing away with annoying two-term rules). Union Square Ventures’ partner Fred Wilson, who hates lists like this, has deservedly taken his place.

Congratulations to this year’s winners and a hat tip to the impressive cadre of other folks we didn’t have room to recognize. As always, a huge thanks to our readers, whose votes and voices helped shape our second annual SA 100, and to our advertisers and sponsors, without whom we wouldn’t exist.”

Traditional Publishers Need to Become Ad Networks Themselves… March 24, 2008

Posted by Bill in ad networks, Ad Serving, exchanges, Online Advertising, Press Mentions, Right Media, traditional advertising.
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A lot is being written about online media not being sold like “pork bellies”, or as a commodity. Those people are missing the point of the importance of syndication in today’s market. Publishers may not opt to send remnant inventory to ad networks, but rather BECOME ad networks themselves. Martha is doing it. Forbes is doing it. Viacom already does it.

Mike Shields of MediaWeek wrote a decent article summarizing this. While I think he missed my main point, the article is a good read….

ESPN Turns Off Ad Nets to Protect Brand, Content

The site recently cut ties with Specific Media and several other unnamed ad networks, and is taking the bold stand that ad selling that relies heavily on arbitrage and algorithms is not for them.

Mike Shields

Top Web publishers are planning a revolt. Even as more prominent sites experiment with selling remnant inventory through online ad networks, and in some cases ad exchanges, ESPN.com is saying thanks, but no thanks.

The site recently cut ties with Specific Media and several other unnamed ad networks, and is taking the bold stand that ad selling that relies heavily on arbitrage and algorithms is not for them.

“We’re heading down a path where it no longer suits our business needs to work with ad networks,” said Eric Johnson executive vp, multimedia sales, ESPN Customer Marketing and Sales. Sources say that ESPN would like to rally support from other publishers behind this move, and ultimately tamp down ad networks’ growth. Turner’s digital ad sales wing is rumored to be considering a similar move, though officials said no decisions are imminent.

“Turner, like a lot of media companies, is currently reviewing all of its media practices, and ad networks are certainly a part of that process,” said Walker Jacobs, senior vp of Turner Entertainment New Media Ad Sales.

ESPN’s decision crystallizes a philosophical debate in the online ad sales industry that has intensified since the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual meeting last month, when during a keynote address Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia media president Wenda Harris Millard gave her now famous warning against selling Web inventory like “pork bellies.”

Two sides have formed—those who want to protect traditional, direct selling of premium content brands, and the math-loving crowd which favors automation and data. The math lovers make the traditional sellers nervous.

“There is a genuine concern about commoditization of brand inventory by some of the networks,” said Millard in an interview. She’s concerned that such a debate is happening so early in the Web’s development as a business. “We haven’t even established the value of our medium, and all of a sudden it’s about price. That is very bothersome to people who are brand stewards.”

Of course, there’s a reason that online ad networks, which rose to prominence in the late ’90s by aggregating inventory across thousands of smaller Web sites, are playing a bigger role in Web publishing. Most large sites are swimming in avails they can’t sell. Insiders estimate that 20 percent to as much as 70 percent of inventory can go unsold at a given time. Thus, ad networks offer a monetization alternative.

And in recent years, to differentiate themselves, more of these companies have been touting themselves as ‘premium” ad networks, talking up their associations with the ESPNs of the world when they meet with ad agencies. “Nobody comes into a meeting and says, ‘I’ve got a bunch of lousy sites,’” said Mike Cassidy, CEO of Undertone Networks.

That doesn’t sit well with some publishers, like ESPN, who see networks as profiting on their brand investments and their user data, while also threatening their own marketer relationships. Many just think using networks devalues the power of content.

Several publishers, in conversations with Mediaweek, privately applauded ESPN, and hoped that others would follow suit. But applause doesn’t necessarily translate to action.

“I don’t see it happening,” said John Battelle founder/chairman/CEO Federated Media, a company that represents numerous blogs. “I suppose certain premium brands could say, ‘I’m above the fray. Our inventory is all very valuable.’ With that there are some problems.”

Central among those problems is that in this accountability-driven quarter-by-quarter business climate, it’s hard for any publisher to walk away from revenue, even if it’s not huge.

“Not all inventory is created equal,” said, Peter Naylor, senior vp, digital media sales, NBC Universal. For example, Naylor said iVillage’s Horoscope section generates a lot of traffic, but doesn’t attract many endemic advertisers. Thus, he turns to networks.

According to Pam Horan, president of the Online Publishers Association, most publishers do just that.

For example, MTV Networks recently inked a deal with Microsoft to let the software giant sell its remnant inventory. Nada Stirratt, executive vp, MTV Networks Digital Media (herself a former top sales exec at ad net giant Advertising.com) said that ad networks “absolutely have a place for high frequency, low value impressions.” Plus, she likes tapping into Microsoft’s tech expertise, and is comfortable with the numerous safeguards the deal offers.

Even Tina Sharkey, chairman, BabyCenter.com (and a former AOL exec) who gave a well-received presentation of the value of branded sites relationships with their readers at the IAB meeting, defended the network model. “Ad networks play a vital role in the online advertising ecosystem.”

So can ESPN change the model? “It won’t have the desired impact,” said Adam Kasper, senior vp, director of digital media Media Contacts—unless the top ten or so Web sites followed suit.

The networks themselves don’t seem worried. Tim Vanderhook, co-founder of Specific Media, said he hopes that his company would end up working with ESPN again in the future, and doesn’t believe that big name publishers can afford to ignore networks. down the road.
“Specific Media’s publishing partners come and go in the network throughout the year as we constantly assess the cost and performance of their ad inventory for our advertisers,” he said.
“If several, or even all, big name publishers stopped working with us, it would hurt the publishers themselves more than us…The online advertising business is all about targeting and publishers can’t do it on their own because they don’t have enough data.”

Kasper, and many others, believe that data will be essential to online advertising’s future.
“They’re [ESPN] essentially fighting technology. That’s a hard thing to do.”

But ESPN and other publishers may opt to invest in their own ad targeting technology. In the meantime, they’ve got the option of trying ad exchanges, which promise more control.
“We think of the exchange as a solution to all of these discussions,” said Bill Wise, general manger, global exchange, Yahoo – which acquired the exchange company Right Media last year.

Wise emphasized that since exchange companies don’t purport to be ad sellers, but rather provide a selling platform, they are safer than ad networks. “You take a big risk in letting other people represent your brand,” he said.

As for commodization fears, Wise quipped, “Well, gold is a commodity.”

Web 3.0– Predictions for 2008 (Part I) January 4, 2008

Posted by Bill in ad networks, Behaviorial Marketing, exchanges, mobile marketing, Online Advertising, online marketing, Right Media, social network, traditional advertising, video.
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1. Ad Networks need to go deep to strive. Ad Networks need to offer true differentiation and add unique value. I predict the untargeted or performance-based ad networks lose ground to the portals who are building their own ad networks, and to vertical ad networks and data/ behavioral ad networks who are building a defensible deep expertise.

2. Local & SMB market get to critical mass for a handful of players and the search engines pay attention to them. Its about time…

3. Video continues to not have a standard ad unit, but continues to take huge mindshare within brand departments, ad agencies, brand publishers and portals… and amongst the press, who loves to talk about the broadcast dollars shifting.

4. Mobile explodes. Similar to the social networks in 2007, huge amounts of venture capital will pour into this market without a material focus on established revenue streams.

5. Ad Exchanges go mainstream…!!!

More to come in Part II…

Are Ad Exchanges Solely for Spot-Market/ Remnant Inventory? April 6, 2007

Posted by Bill in Auction-based media, exchanges, Google, Microsoft, Online Advertising, Online Auction Tips, traditional advertising.
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The eBay Media Marketplace (“EMM”) has received much hype the past bunch of months. According to a MediaPost article, this past Thursday that hype came to a screeching halt when the Cable television Advertising Bureau–which holds the keys to launching the broadcast auction system–said the EMM was a permanent no-go. The trade group’s opposition was based on two points:
1. The eBay functionality was flawed, and
2. The system wasn’t in step with the new age of media buying, where the focus is on complex multi-touch point deals, not peddling and purchasing spots.

CAB head Sean Cunningham said his members reviewed a pilot of the system for some weeks. They found that its infrastructure fell short in making the intricacies of end-to-end buying and selling better. Cunningham said it was “evidence of someone developing a system in eBay that, despite the best counsel of top buyers in the business, was just not getting the scope of this business in terms of both current and future practice.”

So this raises a few questions…
1. With all the hype over DoubleClick’s entry into the “Ad Nasdaq” world, will anybody be able to move this marketplace concept up market?
2. Was broadcast simply not ready for their ecosystem to be turned upside down and embrace auction-based media?
3. Is premium inventory, regardless of channel, simply too personal and relationships and media buying too complex to make the evolutionary switch away from upfronts and personal negotiations?
4. Is an auction platform built simply for spot-market, remnant, or turn-key/ non-creative ad inventory?

For the eBay Media Marketplace to make it, I believe the market first needs to figure out a solution for a Premium Online Ad Exchange. For that to happen, it has to be driven by a Media company with a huge online presence, powered by a technology which embraces auctions but respects the old-school inventory forecasting and expectations on campaign delivery. All eyes have to be on Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! before they go onto eBay…

What Search Can Learn from the Aqua Teen Fiasco February 5, 2007

Posted by Bill in Outdoor advertising, Search Marketing, traditional advertising.
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You probably already know the facts by now, but I’ll give them to you anyway…

To promote its late-night show Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Cartoon Network  placed light-up signs of one of the show’s characters in surprising but noticeable spots throughout several US cities. Boston was one of those cities.

In Boston, terrorism-suspicious passersby saw the signs placed in sensitive areas—like bridges and overpasses—and called the police. Cartoon Networks, which is owned by Turner Broadcasting, neglected to mention to the police that they had put the signs up. Mayhem ensued.

Bomb squads came out. A major highway and a portion of the Charles River were closed off. The two men who placed the signs were arrested. And now the city of Boston is calling for heads to roll at Turner, and for Turner to foot the $750,000 bill for the day’s antiterror precautions.

Something like this was bound to happen, as the public has long been on tense relations with outdoor marketing. Mini Cooper’s supertargeted opt-in billboard campaign, which displays birthday wishes and other extremely targeted greetings to Mini drivers, has been criticized by driver safety groups as a distraction. An LA billboard for shoe inserts was removed over complaints around its tagline, “Shoe-icide is not the answer!” In San Francisco, a “Got Milk” outdoor display was yanked after groups took issue with the smell (it smelled like cookies).

Outdoor advertising is a lightning rod, for the very same reason that it’s so powerful. Outdoor and out-of-home advertising weave themselves, literally, into your life’s landscape. They’re with you when you look out from your car window, when you’re waiting for the bus, or when you’re in the elevator. They integrate brands into your life.

But injecting yourself in people’s lives is bound to rub some people the wrong way. Somebody’s bound to think your joke isn’t funny, that you’re creating a nuisance (which you very well might be), or that you’re engaged in a bomb plot. And there lies the conundrum of outdoor.

For those of us in search, there’s a cautionary lesson in this. Like outdoor, search is also built around injecting your brand into the ebb and flow of real life—as, at this point in the 21st Century, search has become one of life’s basic tasks. Until now, we search marketers have avoided the unpredictability that’s haunted outdoor advertisers, because our control over keywords lists gives us immense control over who sees our ad, and how.

And we still have that control. But at the same time, times are changing. Search is becoming more deeply integrated into other types of media, and different types of media are diverging in more directions every day. Keyword lists just aren’t the only factor involved in dealing with who sees a campaign. Suddenly, we all need to consider the unique problems of search traffic off of MySpace—or even, as David Berkowitz points out, from Second Life. And as contextual advertising evolves into search-based retargeting, part of every search campaign will involve display advertising on publisher sites.

Which means that, as search gets more sophisticated, search is weaving itself into many people’s lives in many different ways than it ever has. It’s becoming less like old-fashioned search, and closer, in some ways, to outdoor advertising.

As that transition happens, we’ll see a real turning point in the search industry. Those of us who are as good at understanding who’s looking at an ad, and how to relate to that viewer—by making one landing page for searchers off of MySpace, and a different one for searchers off of Yahoo! Financial, for instance—will continue to thrive as we always have.

But those of us who can’t relate to the newly-diverse search audience will face the same challenges faced by the outdoor industry in terms of dealing with the viewer they couldn’t have foreseen. And being in the online industry is going to make those shortcomings even harder to surmount, since clients are willing to forgive outdoor agencies for a lack of precision, but expect a lot more precision from online firms.

If you’re in the first group of search marketers, then you’re probably in a good place right now. If you’re in the second group, then you might want to really rethink your approach.

How Search Turned MTV Into MySpace January 21, 2007

Posted by Bill in Google, Search Marketing, traditional advertising.
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For last week’s pronouncement that shook the new media world — but didn’t particularly surprise it — look to MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson. MySpace, Anderson informed German mag Der Spiegel, has “replaced MTV.”

The point is debatable. Between its acquisition of 10-million visitor RateMyProfessors.com and a rumored investment in social networking site TagWorld, MTV is clearly gunning for a return to empire. But at least for now, it does look as if the world’s sixth most popular site has stolen the lead from the suddenly presidentless MTV.

But the MTV versus MySpace competition is a bit more complex than just the old replaced by the new. That’s because MySpace isn’t as much the usurper of MTV, as it’s an evolution of MTV’s basic concept: a horizontal channel in which glamorous stars, the common folk, and the channel itself are all on surprisingly equal footing. And, like MTV, MySpace is a channel that’s built on reaching out to a youth generation who’s the first to have really grown up with a new medium. So MySpace hasn’t replaced MTV, as much as MTV has evolved into MySpace. And none of this evolution would have been possible without search.

Let’s start with MTV. MTV was first built around the ’80s generation, the first generation to really grow up with television — and even color television — as a given in the home. Their baby- boomer parents also grew up with TV, but the boomers often weren’t born into a TV household.

MTV also introduced horizontal media in 1992, when “The Real World” spawned reality TV a full 8 years before “Survivor.” And “The Real World” entirely changed the rules of how television works. Now, instead of a medium in which lofty stars appear on the screen while couch potatoes watch them, MTV’s invention of reality creates a model in which the stars and the mere mortals occupy the same space. MTV showed us how media can become horizontal. MySpace isn’t so different. MySpace is also built on capturing, and capitalizing on, the first generation of youth who’s grown up with new media — in this case, the Internet and mobile. In Anderson’s own words to Der Spiegel: “If you are 23 now, you probably started using the AOL Instant Messenger ten years ago. It’s totally natural for you to talk to your friends that way. A few years after that you started text messaging. I think the MySpace generation is these people who just have this experience. It’s perfectly natural.”

MySpace is also a truly horizontal medium, with everybody vying for the same attention: Madonna, Jamie Foxx, and the Honda Element all have to go head to head with your 12-year-old cousin to get noticed.

And so, again, while MySpace may have replaced MTV, it’s also just an evolution of the MTV model, brought online. Both MTV and MySpace gained success by providing young people with the opportunity to just be themselves, while understanding that technology had made young people “just being themselves” into something fundamentally different than it had ever been before. And they both did that while creating a new kind of horizontal channel.

It was search that allowed the MTV-MySpace evolution to happen. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman points out, search is the Web’s great flattening force: by offering a single window through which to jump to the Web’s billions of disconnected pages, search pulls the entire Internet together.

Instead of developing a relationship with just one site at a time — in the way that viewers watch one TV channel at a time — search turns the Internet into a single, unified Web. That puts all Web pages on equal footing, all Web pages at the mercy of the user, and all Web pages in direct competition with one another. (A similar point could be made about the effect of remote controls on TV, but search gives way more user control than remotes do, across billions of pages rather than just dozens of channels.) Search made the Web horizontal, and that horizontality enabled MySpace to use the Web to take MTV’s horizontality to a whole new plane.

This means a tremendous amount for those of us in search. If search is a driving force behind the new horizontality, then those of us in SEM — the first industry to make business sense of a horizontal universe — can drive unique value in the new horizontal world.

That’s also a challenge. As communications evolve — and search, and elements of search, become just one piece of a much larger media picture — SEM needs to turn its insights into ideas that can provide value, regardless of the directions that media take. And if we can’t make that happen, it won’t just be MTV that’s facing replacement.
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(For a bit more on the future of search and social media, have a look at my recent interview with MarketWatch.

Welcome The Pubvertisers January 15, 2007

Posted by Bill in Online Advertising, Online Auction Tips, online marketing, Search Marketing, traditional advertising.
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Last Wednesday, megapublisher Meredith Corporation (publisher of Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, and Parents, to name a few holdings) purchased interactive agencies Genex and New Media Strategies. It was an incredible deal for Meredith, as it brings advertising accounts like Honda, Unilever, Citigroup, ABC, Coca Cola, Ford, Sony, and AT&T under Meredith’s roof, and most likely onto Meredith’s magazine pages. It’s also a move that would have been utterly unthinkable ten years ago.

The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Steel puts it this way: “There used to be a clear division between media outlets… which sold ad time or space and ad agencies, which designed and placed the ads on behalf of marketers. One reason [for the division]: the potential for conflicts of interest if an ad agency owned by a media company was seen to be unfairly directing ads to its sibling media outfits.” But times are changing. Steel goes on to cite other examples of the new pubvertisers, including Conde Nast and Wenner Media, both of which have created in-house ad divisions; Gannett Media, which now owns interactive shop PointRoll; and Google, which has “expanded aggressively into ad sales.”

I think it’s Steel’s last example–Google, or, more broadly, the whole world of search–that’s the key catalyst in the pubvertising trend. That’s because search has placed a whole new level of analytics and transparency into the publishing world; and it’s this analytics-based transparency that makes pubvertising possible.

Why? Because advertisers would mistrust pubvertising in environments in which there’s little recourse for evaluating the agency’s suggestions. It’s only when good analytics can show advertisers when they’re being lied to, when they’re being led astray–and when they’re being offered sound advice–that makes it safe to take advice from a source that may have a conflicting interest. Analytics create transparency, which creates trust, which is the crucial element for pubvertising to get off the ground.

And it’s the search engines that are leading the way in both providing and leveraging this kind of transparency. From free keyword tools to human sales reps, search engines are kings in advising advertisers how to manage keyword spend. But while they’re pushing keywords, the engines also provide clear data on how those keywords actually perform. That transparency makes customers feel secure both listening to the engines’ advice on buying keywords, while purchasing those keywords directly from the engines themselves.

Of course, it’s obviously in publishers’ interest to have ad agencies in-house, because having an in-house ad agency places advertisers within immediate reach. Publishers know this, which is why pubvertising is a trend that will only grow. And to allow that trend to grow, publishers of all kinds will look to offer better analytics and transparency to make that pubvertising possible. I’m not just talking about the MSNs, Yahoos, and Googles of the world entering into an arms race to create better targeting and analytics. I’m talking about even the lowest-tech of ad formats getting into the game, as was the case when print classifieds joined forces with Google late last year.

This has serious ramifications for the future of the ad agency. As publishers look to beef up their analytics and transparency so they can get into advertising, ad agencies will have to beef up their analytics capabilities to get closer to the publishers they’ll need to work with–or be purchased by–to survive. That’s exactly what happened in the world of search, in which a transparent, analytics-heavy publisher model (the engine) gave rise to a new kind of transparent, analytics-heavy ad agency (the SEM firm).

And so as pubvertising shifts from yesterday’s impossibility to tomorrow’s new standard, look to a huge surge in the analytics-based publisher, the analytics-based ad firm, and clients who expect analytics-based transparency from both. Meanwhile, Madison Avenue firms who can’t keep up–because they can’t get up to speed with their data–will face a real uphill battle in the new ad world that looks more like the search world every day.