As the autoplay saga demonstrates, online risks being the cowboy medium
When it comes to online I’m never entirely sure what to be more surprised about – the strokes that people try to pull, or the fact that they often get away with them.
But what has been more surprising is the size of the players involved. Often those getting up to shenanigans are the very players you would hope had a vested interest in taking a market lead.
The current furore is over autoplay video, which puts Fairfax in the firing line.
For those who don’t regularly venture to the likes of smh.com.au or theage.com.au, autoplay kicks in when a video starts playing on a page without you telling it to.
To the casual user, it’s mildly annoying – particularly if you’ve sound enabled on your computer and perhaps don’t want your colleagues to know what you’re up to.
Frustratingly, the five second countdown to stop it from autoplaying doesn’t kick in straight away. Which means that you’ve often scrolled past and the player is no longer on the screen before it starts.
If your audio is not switched on, you may never even know it played.
For advertisers, it’s a bigger deal. All of those phantom plays are being paid for.
What was interesting to note at the end of last week was after Mumbrella reported that UM had put its head above the parapet and pulled advertising, just how many other media agencies were willing to claim that they were all over it too.
Yet a quick look at autoplaying ads this morning saw Mazda (OMD), Suncorp (Starcom) and Audi (Mediacom). Of course, these ads may be running free of charge or on some other basis other than CPM.
But they were still autoplaying, so what isn’t overcome is the annoyance factor for consumers.
However, it feels like Fairfax may be about to reverse its position on autoplay.
Certainly it wasn’t keen to come out and justify it. My call from Thursday wasn’t returned, and neither was one from AdNews on Friday. And The Australian’s article today predicting Fairfax was about to ditch the practice also didn’t feature a Fairfax voice. There was also no sign of a statement promised for this morning.
But even if it does ditch autoplay, there’s plenty more sharp practice.
Autorefresh – the widespread habit of refreshing a page every couple of minutes and charging advertisers for each new refresh whether the user is looking or not – is another big issue.
It doesn’t happen in most other markets, which suggests that the excuses for it happening here are indeed just excuses.
Right now, because the big boys all do it, auto refresh is harder to eradicate.
Then there are all those other little tricks where sites could deliver better value to their advertisers if they only wanted to.
For instance, only serve their ads to Australian audiences. But not everyone is automatically geo-targeting either.
And then there is the relatively widespread issue of sites (many of Mumbrella’s competitors included) of not auditing and taking an imaginative (to put it politely) approach to their traffic claims.
This may be a mature industry, but it faces a real risk that if it doesn’t clean up its act, it will be labelled as the cowboy medium.
Tim Burrowes
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Tim, you make a great point. And one that from where many people sit may look quite valid.
I don’t want to appear to be defending autoplay/autorefresh – but I would say there is plenty going on to make sure digital doesn’t continue to be the wild west of the media world.
I’m not of the opinion that simply cutting off publishers without consultation is the way to go about changing the industry. Nor do I think it’s responsible to invest clients money based on one internal study. It’s for this reason that you will still see our client’s ads running on sites using autoplay, autorefresh, and where we feel it’s appropriate, unaudited sites.
But at the foundation of everything we do is ROI – spending our clients money in the best possible way. We’re aware of these issues, and we’re aware how they affect the actual return for our clients. And we work with publishers based on this knowledge.
I believe the best way to stall any cowboy mentality is to actually have conversations with publishers, and be involved in leading the industry through the IAB, MFA and TCC.
Trying to defeat the cowboys by acting like a cowboy only confirms that online really is the wild west.
Cheers,
Nic.
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The problem is advertisers still don’t track their ROI for online advertising. Impressions isn’t really a valid way of measuring a successful campaign. Clicks and conversions are. ROI for a campaign can then easily be tracked through a CRM like Sales Force if you spend a bit of time configuring it properly.
The benefit of doing this is over time you build up numbers on what works vs what doesn’t and can then spend your advertising dollars even more effectively.
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Nic,
I’d hardly describe our position on Fairfax’s autoplay as “acting like a cowboy”. Far from it – we’ve taken a measured stance – based on consumer research – to act in the best interests of our clients and ensure their digital media investment is well managed.
Sadly your comments that we should “actually have conversations with publishers, and be involved in leading the industry through the IAB, MFA and TCC,” doesn’t quite stack up either. From what I can recall there has been lively debate and dissent about autoplay from just about every quarter of the industry (including ourselves) and yet, after 18 months, no tangible action has been forthcoming.
Our position was a last resort designed to finally get a resolution to a problem that has existed for far too long.
We will always choose to be consultative rather than combative but there has to be a point when enough is enough. That time came for for us late last week.
Sometimes leadership is about taking a stand and as Tim said putting your head above the “parapet” – it’s just a shame the first bullets to be fired our way come from fellow agency folk.
Cowboy Mat, yeeeehhah.
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Nic,
There are some who might say that there is a more mature way to handle things, i.e. ‘don’t stoop to their level’, but at the same time, there are those who say ‘fight fire with fire’.
It’s great that there is finally aciton being taken though. There’s only so much ‘talk’ that can be talked, before someone has to walk the walk, and taking a stance on auto-play is the first step.
Hopefully by showing the industry that agencies will take both big and measurable steps, we can bring practices such as auto-refresh and auto-play under control, make the publishers more accountable, and make every dollar our clients spend that much more valuable.
Keep everyone accountable I say
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“Trying to defeat the cowboys by acting like a cowboy only confirms that online really is the wild west.”
Your Pardner Salad is gonna shoot from the hip and call that UM are acting less like Cowboys and more like Sheriffs.
Cowboys turn a blind eye and laze around in the Saloon. Sheriff’s publicly uphold principles.
“When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.” — The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
Now get outta town!
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Spot on. Glad there are a few folk who still keep their heads clear of the digital hype. It may mean it can finally develop into a worthwhile medium.
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Really annoying
But not quite so dodgy and annoying as news.com.au s autorefreshing every few seconds.
this is really bad practice
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The online media industry is immature and the executives at the ‘big’ publishers should hold their head in shame. IAB Board should well have played stronger role here too… but at the end of the day its the responsibility of the media Publishers. For Fairfax to be leading the way with these type of silly behaviours serves as a spotlight on the chasm between the phillosophical canyon between the print heritage and prestige and leadership vs. the F2 / Fairfax Digital management culture & capability. And now they are running the mother ship…. gulp.
On another note, the fact we are still showcasing skyscrapers, leaderboards and Islands as the major advertising units for brands to engage with online audiences is also depressing. Do we really believe any brand is getting engagement and cut through with these…. Really? Which just means more money goes to Google (search) and facebook (new, differrent)…
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Well done Mat B for being so vocal and generating the much desired PR.
As a leader one would think there is a better way to address such issues, preferably in a mature manner? In turn, ensuring the sector grows and is truly educated on best practice.
Surely all would agree the approach that was taken shows lack of maturity as CEO. The attention grabbing schemes will generate just that bit more when their clients decide to walk.
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Agreed Dave.
Seems mr. baxter misses the spotlight.
It worries me one on the publisher side that people such as Mat are making decisions like this.
I’ve heard Mat knows as much about digital media as kim jong-il knows about running a country.
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To be fair, no one knows the back story here. FD have been doing this for a long time with a lot of industry people calling for it to end. Their approach has either been to:
– say it’s great and users love it (Pippa)
– ignore the issue and hope the revenue keeps coming (everyone else)
Mat made a stand around an issue most are frustrated with and we don’t know whether he tried to raise this with FD and was smarmily told it was a “non issue”. To his credit, Mat isn’t a ‘born digital’ person obsessed with click rates and probably sees the bigger picture brand benefits and how this damages those … not the linear ROI/click attribution benefit alone. Seems clear that has been what has influenced the decision to put a line in the sand whilst most other people have skirted around the issue.
Clients (rightly) are often confused who their agencies really look after – the publishers (who give them kickbacks, rebates and other nice revenue line items) or the actual brands they represent (who also pay fees). Baxter has I think shown here that his main preference is to look after the clients (like he did at Naked). Can’t imagine any UM clients having an issue with it. (but I am sure most would have issues with some of the other agency deals that are cosily done behind closed doors with many publishers)
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NZ data on http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/3.....o-ck-90063
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To clarify, Mat was part of the culture at ZenithMedia to have a Digital Media Executive within their teams. I know this because he hired me to do it. It was a move which has now been replicated in many, many agencies, some 10 or so years later.
Hardly the act of a “Cowboy”. Anyone who didn’t expect Mat to be a vocal leader as CEO of UM hasn’t been paying attention!
Agree with his approach to this issue or not, I’d suggest the character assasinations are a little off the mark.
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