Last week, I started this column by confessing that I read too much radio, TV, ratings, and advertising trade press. Same goes for email ads.
LinkedIn sends emails regularly suggesting entries that might be interesting to me. Most of the time, the posts aren’t all that engaging, but last week, I was rewarded with a good use of my time against the power washing that needs to be finished or a paper deadline in my Middle East international relations class at Western Kentucky that will be here sooner than I expect (don’t worry, Dr. Kiasatpour, my paper will be submitted on time!).
The initial post was from someone I don’t know, but George Ivie, the head of the Media Rating Council (MRC) and a longtime friend, had responded. It concerned digital advertising and while much of the conversation was beyond my knowledge, it was instructive.
For example, among the many three-letter acronyms I’m aware of, I had never heard of MFA, or at least not in this context (admit it, your mind probably came up with something “not safe for work” or for broadcasters, “not safe for on-air” too!). MFA is “Made for Advertising” and refers to certain websites that have numerous display ads. Often, these websites run a ton of ads, sometimes by spoofing a legitimate website.
In the case discussed on LinkedIn, the publisher was Forbes magazine, a venerable title that has been around for over a century. If you happened to go www.forbes.com, everything was fine. As I understand it, there was also a www3.forbes.com URL that ran any number of ads. According to the report from Adalytics, an online ad quality and transparency platform,
“Forbes appears to have set up a dedicated sub-domain – called www3.forbes.com, which appears to have a very different ad-serving experience relative to the “normal” www.forbes.com sub-domain. A reader viewing an article on the normal sub-domain may see about 3-10 ads in an article, whereas reading the www3 variant exposes the reader to approximately 201+ ad impressions in a single page view session.
“Several experts assert that this “www3.” subdomain of Forbes can be classified as “Made for Advertising” or “Made for Arbitrage” (MFA). One consumer was shown 27 New York Times subscription ads and 201+ ads total while viewing a 52-slide slideshow on the “www3.” Forbes subdomain. The New York Times paid an effective cumulative CPM of $60.39 to serve ads to that one consumer.”
Part of the LinkedIn discussion revolved around MRC’s digital standards concerning Invalid Traffic (IVT) and Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT) and how there may be a loophole in the standards. Ron Pinelli, another friend from his days auditing the Arbitron system who is now a senior vice president at MRC and well-versed in these matters, replied concerning how MRC handles these issues.
Why write about some LinkedIn “back and forth” that not many of us fully understand? While over 200 ads in a slideshow is over the top and to me, even up to ten ads with one article seems a bit much, this isn’t my reason for raising this issue. When we talk and write about how to improve radio, we invariably bring up spot load. I’ve not seen anyone defend the current spot loads on most commercial stations, yet this torrent of display ads on a website dwarf just about anything on radio.
And when was the last time anyone talked about “invalid traffic” on radio? Advertisers pay for spots and they run. Yes, mistakes are made from time to time and makegoods are run and our stop sets are often far too long. Perhaps this is “apples and oranges”, but the various digital advertising options are loaded with ads, oftentimes extremely annoying pop-up video ads that take away from what you were trying to access. While it’s fair to go after some radio stations for their heavy spot loads, let’s talk about the consumer experience for online…it might be much worse!
What advertiser would want to run their ad in that kind of environment? Let’s go back to the oft-used John Wannamaker quote that about half of his advertising was wasted, he just didn’t know which half. For the 21st century, perhaps the quote can be “Some of my digital advertising is fraudulent, but I just don’t know which part”.
Oddly enough, when I searched on Google to get the exact Wannamaker quote, one option was a newsletter from Forbes. You should have seen how many ads popped up!
If you’re interested, here is the LinkedIn conversation that triggered this column.
And if you’d like to know more about the Media Rating Council (and you should), click here.
Let’s meet again next week.
