The Long Tail of Branding
Portals vs. the Long Tail Reach of Online Ad Networks
If 66% of online ad dollars will be spent on portals AOL, MSN, Yahoo or Google, where does
the other 34% go? Most likely to the long tail. This may be so as of
today (thank you eMarketer), but it's clear the net is now going niche
and personalized (an
eMarketer study found that long-tail Web sites are "indispensable" to
consumers -- and they provide a new way for brands to position ads
where users want to see them). So, the question is, will the long tail of branding really grow to compete with the dollars brands funnel to portals?
eMarketer's
portal figures sound convincing, but the article scribed by MediaPost
shows the online researcher has conflicting data (doesn't mean either
data capture is wrong). The
example is that at the end of 2006, eMarketer reported that U.S.
Internet users spent 61% of their time online outside of the top 20
domains, which includes most major social networking sites and web
portals. There are more
quality Long Tail publishers (blogs, wikis, social networking pages)
than ever before, and yet Media Post reports that most ad exchanges
focus on selling remnant inventory only from larger publishers (portals
too). This is because they [the ad exchanges] believe that advertisers
[brand managers] perceive the Long Tail as a "scary place," yielding wasted impressions.
But
whoa, if you look at the online ad networks, it's clear from the brand
manager standpoint that it's easier to place one order and have the
brand managed online simply via portals. Portals aggregate eyeballs and
hey, they're "brand name portals" so many brand managers fall into the
guilt by association brand trap thinking that the little long tail site at the end of the blogosphere rainbow won't deliver the impressions its brand needs to thrive in the digital ecosystem. Where
do brands want to go? Typically where eyeballs are. And it's the online
ad networks which aggregate a lot of the long tail. Online ad networks
are the Long Tail of Branding. Are the online ad networks capitalizing
on this reach they have yet? I'd say yes and no. I'm not sure I've read
it enough from the online ad networks that it is they who can
effectively reach the long tail consumer. If it's the online ad
networks who can position a brand contextually in the long tail,
how come many online ad buyers don't know this yet? Online ad network
publicity folks, let's get the PR Machine fired up. Target the brand
managers who buy and deliver them educational material and facts which
will educate them on the Long Tail of Branding.
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