The American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) is holding their first "Digital Conference for Agencies of All Kinds" at the Graduate Center at City University NYC. I will be speaking this afternoon and since I technically hail from a PR firm, I am a living example of their title. Still, it is really for members who are ad agencies.
Brian McAndrews, President & CEO of aQuantitative, is on stage gloating over being acquired by Microsoft last month (just kidding). It only seems fitting that this forum talk about the acquisition burst of ad networks. Mike Donahue from AAAA is interviewing him.
Why sell?
We saw an opportunity here to accelerate our vision: more finances, more technology. Technology is the key distinction between traditional media and new media.
Will consolidation continue?
Yes.
How will your business units change?
(same answer as above plus the following)
Atlas - build a platform that brings one view of consumer to a marketer. Started with display ads and has expanded all the way to VOD
Atlas Ad Manager - publisher technology
Drive - 100% growth last year of this premium ad network. Top 250 Websites and top advertisers not going after the Long Tail. Very targeted cpms.
Avenue A/Razorfish - will remain the most independent. They have invested millions of dollars in knowledge management including a global wiki (I invested approximately $150 to establish my global wiki - so far so good).
"We have learned a lot from mistakes. It doesn't cost a lot these days to make mistakes We put the media planners next to the programmers and the statisticians - that's our model."
How can marketers measure success?
Digital has raised that bar. Third party ad serving helps (I presume they are credible providers). The conversion ad-model (counting the last clicked ad vs. the four that might have had an impact) is an imprefect model. This leads to search advertising being overvalued. They are working on a dashboard
to help measure the steps along the way. He calls it conversion attribution. People who saw your message on multiple sites are twice as likely to buy.
Brian is a confident CEO. Very natural yet on message. But you cannot blame him as the Microsoft deal has not closed yet. Mike Donahue from AAAA started to ask about "Engagement" but it didn't go anywhere. It will be interesting as my preso is all about engagement. We'll see what happens.
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