The Online Publishers Association (OPA) is advocating that large advertisers should spend their money with large publishers and not waste their money on smaller publishers. So what should the smaller publishers and advertising networks do about this?
Well, if you read the OPA report published last week: New Research Shows Advertising on Ad Networks Provides Smallest Change For Advertisers, the apparent advice is for ad networks and small publishers to collectively pound sand. It was hard to miss this zinger of a finding:
Ad Networks provide advertisers with the smallest change –including no change in Purchase Intent (i.e., 0.2 delta is statistically insignificant) (emphasis in OPA slides)
For those of us not in the media industry, this is a way of saying that large advertisers should spend their money with large publishers and not waste their money on smaller publishers (which use advertising networks to sell much of their inventory). As if smaller publishers (e.g. the ones that use advertising networks) are the enemy. Jarvis Coffin of (advertising network) Burst Media pointed this out on his blog which was re-worked and re-posted at AdAge.
Reading Coffin’s post, I can’t help but ask the question: What’s the remedy? What should the little guys do?
The answer — nothing. Do nothing. Move on. And chalk this up to industry misinformation. Keep marketing as usual. And the advertising networks should work within the IAB (or potentially some other framework) to articulate the value of networks and smaller publisher sites.
Why?
The OPA is a membership association. They’re a nonprofit that works within rules defined within section 501(c) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. There’s a 501(c)(6) application with the IRS and quarterly filings with the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.
And within these rules, the OPA defines their mission as advancing the business for a group of companies they identify as “high-quality online content providers.” This term doesn’t specify a size of publisher — just a type of publisher — high quality.
Alternative: Join the OPA
Coffin asserts (correctly) that there are many small publishers that would fit the “high-quality online content provider” category. But are these small publishers really as powerless as he suggests?
OPA members were supposed to serve as a proxy for content sites in the report. Proxy means the authority to act for another and, in this case, we’d assume, it means the countless other quality content sites on the web unable to foot the cost of a Dynamic Logic study (or OPA membership). Forget it.
OK. So the Dynamic Logic study is costly, but OPA membership isn’t. For companies with less than $50million in revenues, OPA membership is $26,250. “Supporter” membership is $5,250 annually. Of course, the true cost of any trade association is staffing and travel — members should plan on ¼-½ FTE depending on participation levels. The OPA has 48 members and 32 supporters, with an annual budget somewhere around $2 million.
The best way to change the direction of a nonprofit membership association is to start with the membership. Association management answers to the members, and everything begins and ends with member approval.
So here’s the obvious question. Has Burst Media tried to join the OPA? What about other advertising networks? What about smaller publishers?
Because if, on an outside chance, the OPA has turned down a number of small publishers and advertising networks, then those companies have several alternatives. Get a group of companies together that have been rejected from the OPA, and complain, complain, complain. Not on weblogs. Complain to people who matter.
Reality: It Was Bound To Happen
In other words, this was going to happen one way or another. With — or without — the OPA, the large publishers would have found a third party to come to similar conclusions as this report. This is a product marketing tool (sales collateral) for them. That’s all it is.
{ 1 trackback }