Fairfax’s Pippa Leary warns – now banner ads are commodotised let’s not do it to video too
Fairfax is looking to the likes of video and targeting ads based on user behaviour to break the dominance of commoditised banner ads, commercial boss Pippa Leary said today.
Speaking at AIMIA’s future of digital advertising summit, Leary said that banner ads had accounted for 90% of Fairfax’s digital display revenue a couple of years ago. This declined to 75% in 2009, and 62% this year. She said the target for next year is 45%.
She told the audience that banner ads had been caught in a spiral of commoditisation, and Fairfax Digital will try to avoid the same thing happening again.
She said: “We don’t want video to get commoditised. It’s about engagement. The exciting thing about the rise of video is about its ability to create emotional responses.”
“She told the audience that banner ads had been caught in a spiral of commoditisation, and Fairfax Digital will try to avoid the same thing happening again.”
At the same time theage.com.au has 17 ads on the homepage, the SMH 18 on its …
Did anyone else sense that a few of the panel speakers seem to feel that agencies are almost holding back the growth of online advertising?
An example was from Mark of Sensis Mediasmart when he said that he is having to approach clients direct and it appeared it was because agencies did not appear to be embracing his product. He is finding that clients do embrace it and get great results but the agencies do not want to touch it?
It will be very interesting over the next 5 years. Darwin Tomlinson who is at an agency in Sydney now, (he was in NYC only weeks before) appeared to paint a similar picture and cast an image to me that many agencies in New York are not getting their clients represented online adequately; or are rushing in to embrace fads when not actually fulfilling their clients brief (the whole social networking bandwagon / what works for some might not work for others…) – I am not calling social networking sites fads – they are very important for advertisers when leveraged correctly
Over all well done to the organisers – it was a good show.
Great questions from the man at the back also… 😉
I would disagree with the comment that agencies are holding back the growth of digital – just look at the growth the channel has experienced over the last few years. What is happening is that as digital opportunities in market expand, where the budget is directed is also expanding, with agencies recommending solutions that will meet their clients objectives. This means that not all publishers are growing at market rates and it’s this gap which is worrying to them as they fight for market share & growth targets.