The Long Tail of Branding

                       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.