When ad networks launched ten years ago one of the greatest things about them was the ability to run a campaign across hundreds or thousands of sites and, not only get great performance and value, but get learnings from the campaign. Because you could see what was performing in which channels or sites from the many, it was like free market research. At the time it was a great approach and despite the cost of non-performing media to get those learnings, it was innovative and a good value for the time.
Fast forward to now and there is no longer an excuse for “Let’s Run It On Our Network And See What Works” campaigns. We have become too sophisticated with our data and knowledge of users, brands, and digital media use the LRIOONASWW strategy any more. Through user-level cookie/data exchanges we now have data on almost every single internet user on the planet. Some of it is true online-based behavior while some of offline and demographic or psychographic-oriented. Using almost any of this data is going to at least help you pre-target better than the LRIOONASWW strategy. Second, composite indexing through Compete, Quantcast, or even Nielsen can help you include and remove many sites from a larger list to narrow the buy down before you start. Sure, there is the chance that a site that indexes an 84 against your brand or category ends up to be a top performer, but it’s a small chance. More likely is that you’d have to spend thousands of dollars of media on other similar sites that follow the logic of the model and end up not performing well at all.
While this may be self-promotional (it is the Goodway Blog after all), there really is no excuse for RON network buys any more. Our automotive network, Beep!, now has a custom-build site list for every brand based on clickstream shopping behavior from our partner, Compete.com. Beyond that, we’re applying cookie-level data to every campaign to enhance performance (to be fair, so do many other networks.) The bottom line is that there is no more room for LRIOONASWW – demand more from your network partners!
