The strong weather back east prevented LookSmart CEO David Hill from delivering this address so Mike Schoen stood in to deliver his insights on advertising buys. All media audiences fragment over time, forcing advertising buys further into high-demand media and publishers ramping up their own sales efforts as they try to control and sell as much advertising as possible. As audiences fragment the pricing goes up for buys, but it requires technology that supports both the advertisers and the publishers. Mike sees publishers need to be able to build their brand their own sites, much as YouTube has managed to get its content embedded in other sites. Publishers need to do this in a way that protects their own brand.

In the face of fragmentation LookSmart focused on increasing audiences to leverage the trends falling out of fragmentation. More content, better SEO tools, one of the first social bookmarking tools Furl, focused on introducing vertical sites - all of which grew their audiences 4x and to build a deeper relationship with advertisers. This has resulted in LookSmart owning more ad relationships with a more focused sales force. Looking at ad networks and ad technologies as well as SEO and audience development systems there is a myriad of services available, including LookSmart's own auction based sales and service systems, Quigo, Doubleclick for banners, Google, Yahoo and others.

Faced with all of these forces and choices, there are some key factors to consider. Is your brand going to get the proper brand recognition? Is the right strategy being pursued for verticals, do you understand the demographics clearly? Do you get complete control over ad systems providing whit label services and pricing/terms control?

A good basic primer on managing online advertising, would have liked more leading edge insights but good content.

Labels: advertising, SIIA Content Forum 2007