Notes From Ad-Tech 2005
This was an amazing conference. Held at the Marriott in San Francisco, it reminded me of going to Comdex or other computer industry shows 10 years ago. The hall was packed, shoulder-to-shoulder, so much that I would bump into people just walking around. There were tons of companies, big and small. There were no really huge booths like you would find at LinuxWorld, e.g. a huge Red Hat, Microsoft, or IBM Booth. Google had a good size booth, but it wasn’t huge.
I only attended the exhibit hall not the talks – but I spent over three hours and even then felt like I could have spent a whole other day. What a diverse set of attendees, from New York City ad agency execs in suits, to people working out of their homes.
Takeaways:
- I was blown away by the sheer amount of activity and excitement at this show. I’ve been to so many shows where there really isn’t much going on. But here there were tons of people and the vendors wanted to get the word out.
- There were lots of companies doing virtually the same thing, with no clear distinguishing features or competitive advantage.
- Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon were not in attendance in a big way – or at least I didn’t see them.
- There were a surprising number of non-venture funded companies. A lot of these companies started out doing some web consulting and morphed into what they are now. They bootstrapped. If you think there is money to be made here long term, then perhaps PE firms should look at going in and getting a piece of the revenue of these companies in exchange for putting in some capital now.
- The toolset is pretty immature and very diverse. How do you optimize your ad campaign? How do you optimize your revenue? What’s the best layout for a site to drive purchases or clicks? Which tools are the best for doing this? How do you separate the scams from the real thing? It is still very early days. Lots of little players.
- There is real room for niche sites. Lots of sites out there that are basically front-ending for the larger sites (metasearch and travel sites, for example).
- Also walked away with several new ideas, but I’ll save those for a separate discussion!
There were companies in the following areas (and then some, in no particular order):
- Search engine optimization (SEO). These companies work with web site publishers to make their sites appear in the top listings of search engines like google, yahoo, msn, etc. Organic search engine optimization refers to the natural listings that appear on search engines, as opposed to pay for click (PPC) advertising like you see on the side of Google, Yahoo, etc.I’d say there were three rough pricing ranges: $500-$600 per month; $2000-$5000 per month, and $50,000+ per month. Example companies: KeywordRanking.com, SLI Systems, SEO Inc.
- Ad campaign optimization and management. These vendors sell tools (either software or hosted) that optimize your PPC spending across a number of different sites (such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others). One problem with these is that they are not very broad, that is, most of them support say 2-5 search engines. So if you are spending across some of the second tier search engines, then you still have to manage your campaigns individually across these different sites. Some of these products claim to have a very algorithmic approach to managing your entire ad portfolio, analyzing what keywords generate the most traffic, updating your bids, etc. and doing this all automatically. There are both agency/consulting models for this and software/service models. Example companies: SearchForce, Enhance Interactive, SearchAdNetwork, Accipiter. ePrize will manage your prize giveaway campaigns. Casale Media. SearchRev, Efficient Frontier.
- Second tier search engines. These companies are like Google, but they are what I call second tier search engines (they are not google, yahoo, msn, askjeeves, etc.) But because of this, it’s easier to buy lower priced ads on these sites. For example, if you try to buy the keyword “dating” on google, and you want to appear in the top few advertisements, it will cost you a lot because many people are competing for that keyword. But if you buy the same keyword on these second tier sites, it will be much cheaper because fewer advertisers are competing. Companies: Lycos InSite, FindWhat.com, Azoogleads, mamma media solutions, blowsearch.com
- Direct Navigation Traffic. I wasn’t even aware of this category. Essentially, if you own a domain that is named, say, “sportsinfo.com,” some percentage of Internet users that are looking for “sports info” will type this actually site name into their browser and go to your site directly. Companies: DarkBlueSea.com. These guys claim that 6.4% of all .com domains are owned by fewer than 100 web site portfolio owners. That is, 100 people collectively own 2.2 million .com domains.
- Web site networks and Niche sites. These are destination web sites on various topics like travel, entertainment, sports, finance, etc. These companies sell ad space on their sites. Sidestep.com is a travel web site that essentially provides referrals to orbitz, expedia, and others. The VP Sales said they are generating a lot of traffic in excess of 3M visitors per month. In other words lots of people go to essentially a second-tier travel site that is basically a front end for orbitz and a few other larger travel providers. Good idea. Azoogleads.com. Weatherbug, which allows you to download a little program that runs on your computer and shows you the weather (and ads).
- Web site analytics. These companies analyze your web site and determine where people are stopping, how much time they spend on your site, and where they are coming from (google, yahoo, etc.) Companies: ClickTracks.
- Ad networks. For example, Google AdSense, which displays ads on a publisher’s web page. Advertising.com claims to do this based on behavioral analysis of users. Also targetsaver.com – popup ads. EuroClick will buy your non-US traffic from you.
- Affiliate programs. There were few affiliates at the show – although there were some people promoting casino web site affiliate programs and herbal remedies. But I did not see, for example, any of the large dating web sites. But companies like Commission Junction (cj.com), which manages affiliate programs were there.
This was an amazing conference. Held at the Marriott in San Francisco, it reminded me of going to Comdex or other computer industry shows 10 years ago. The hall was packed, shoulder-to-shoulder, so much that I would bump into people just walking around. There were tons of companies, big and small. There were no really huge booths like you would find at LinuxWorld, e.g. a huge Red Hat, Microsoft, or IBM Booth. Google had a good size booth, but it wasn’t huge.
I only attended the exhibit hall not the talks – but I spent over three hours and even then felt like I could have spent a whole other day. What a diverse set of attendees, from New York City ad agency execs in suits, to people working out of their homes.
Takeaways:
- I was blown away by the sheer amount of activity and excitement at this show. I’ve been to so many shows where there really isn’t much going on. But here there were tons of people and the vendors wanted to get the word out.
- There were lots of companies doing virtually the same thing, with no clear distinguishing features or competitive advantage.
- Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon were not in attendance in a big way – or at least I didn’t see them.
- There were a surprising number of non-venture funded companies. A lot of these companies started out doing some web consulting and morphed into what they are now. They bootstrapped. If you think there is money to be made here long term, then perhaps PE firms should look at going in and getting a piece of the revenue of these companies in exchange for putting in some capital now.
- The toolset is pretty immature and very diverse. How do you optimize your ad campaign? How do you optimize your revenue? What’s the best layout for a site to drive purchases or clicks? Which tools are the best for doing this? How do you separate the scams from the real thing? It is still very early days. Lots of little players.
- There is real room for niche sites. Lots of sites out there that are basically front-ending for the larger sites (metasearch and travel sites, for example).
- Also walked away with several new ideas, but I’ll save those for a separate discussion!
There were companies in the following areas (and then some, in no particular order):
- Search engine optimization (SEO). These companies work with web site publishers to make their sites appear in the top listings of search engines like google, yahoo, msn, etc. Organic search engine optimization refers to the natural listings that appear on search engines, as opposed to pay for click (PPC) advertising like you see on the side of Google, Yahoo, etc.I’d say there were three rough pricing ranges: $500-$600 per month; $2000-$5000 per month, and $50,000+ per month. Example companies: KeywordRanking.com, SLI Systems, SEO Inc.
- Ad campaign optimization and management. These vendors sell tools (either software or hosted) that optimize your PPC spending across a number of different sites (such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others). One problem with these is that they are not very broad, that is, most of them support say 2-5 search engines. So if you are spending across some of the second tier search engines, then you still have to manage your campaigns individually across these different sites. Some of these products claim to have a very algorithmic approach to managing your entire ad portfolio, analyzing what keywords generate the most traffic, updating your bids, etc. and doing this all automatically. There are both agency/consulting models for this and software/service models. Example companies: SearchForce, Enhance Interactive, SearchAdNetwork, Accipiter. ePrize will manage your prize giveaway campaigns. Casale Media. SearchRev, Efficient Frontier.
- Second tier search engines. These companies are like Google, but they are what I call second tier search engines (they are not google, yahoo, msn, askjeeves, etc.) But because of this, it’s easier to buy lower priced ads on these sites. For example, if you try to buy the keyword “dating” on google, and you want to appear in the top few advertisements, it will cost you a lot because many people are competing for that keyword. But if you buy the same keyword on these second tier sites, it will be much cheaper because fewer advertisers are competing. Companies: Lycos InSite, FindWhat.com, Azoogleads, mamma media solutions, blowsearch.com
- Direct Navigation Traffic. I wasn’t even aware of this category. Essentially, if you own a domain that is named, say, “sportsinfo.com,” some percentage of Internet users that are looking for “sports info” will type this actually site name into their browser and go to your site directly. Companies: DarkBlueSea.com. These guys claim that 6.4% of all .com domains are owned by fewer than 100 web site portfolio owners. That is, 100 people collectively own 2.2 million .com domains.
- Web site networks and Niche sites. These are destination web sites on various topics like travel, entertainment, sports, finance, etc. These companies sell ad space on their sites. Sidestep.com is a travel web site that essentially provides referrals to orbitz, expedia, and others. The VP Sales said they are generating a lot of traffic in excess of 3M visitors per month. In other words lots of people go to essentially a second-tier travel site that is basically a front end for orbitz and a few other larger travel providers. Good idea. Azoogleads.com. Weatherbug, which allows you to download a little program that runs on your computer and shows you the weather (and ads).
- Web site analytics. These companies analyze your web site and determine where people are stopping, how much time they spend on your site, and where they are coming from (google, yahoo, etc.) Companies: ClickTracks.
- Ad networks. For example, Google AdSense, which displays ads on a publisher’s web page. Advertising.com claims to do this based on behavioral analysis of users. Also targetsaver.com – popup ads. EuroClick will buy your non-US traffic from you.
- Affiliate programs. There were few affiliates at the show – although there were some people promoting casino web site affiliate programs and herbal remedies. But I did not see, for example, any of the large dating web sites. But companies like Commission Junction (cj.com), which manages affiliate programs were there.
1 Comments:
wow - that was a nice summary of events. i did learn a few new things.
I dont know if you have observed this, but your blog, when opened in Firefox, just displays the complete HTML code. I had to open a IE session for this to work. Not sure what the problem might be, but I would guess there's some closing tag missing somewhere in the template(perhaps) you use.
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