Web Publisher Issues
The Web Publisher session was moderated by Michael Zimbalist, director of the Online Publishers Association, with panelists including Scot McLernon, EVP Sales & Marketing, CBS MarketWatch, Stephen Moss, General Manager for Advertising & Sales, MSN, Narenda Rocherolle, CEO, Webshots and Lorraine Ross, Vice President, Sales, USA Today.com.
Michael started with a presentation with lots of stats (right-click here to download the presentation). The nut was this: business is great for publishers these days. Everything is up. “Audience, sell out rates and CPMs are all growing, in that order,” he said. He noted that the IAB just announced Q1 results for the industry, which found that, “Internet advertising totaled nearly $2.3 billion in the first quarter of 2004 - the highest quarterly total on record since PwC and IAB began tracking revenues in 1996. This quarter also marks a 38.9% increase over Q1 2003 ($1.6 billion) and a 3.9% increase over Q4 2003 ($2.2 billion).”
Asked what pain keeps them awake at night, the one consistent chorus all panelists echoed was “inventory management.” As behavioral targeting takes off, and publishers are actually selling their inventory (instead of just hyping the concept), trying to make sure publishers have enough inventory to sell in all segments is a huge headache. Remarkably, no vendor yet has a solution for this problem, meaning publishers are having to kludge solutions in-house. Major opportunity for the first vendor to get an inventory yield management system to market.
Other highlights of the panel:
- MSN’s Moss said, “Each of us has been through this cycle once before. We saw dramatic growth in 2000 of 40-60 percent year over year. But look at what happened 18 months later. So I’m cautious. The key is what is your client base, to have a base today you can build from. Sustainability, maintaining this momentum, that’s what keeps me awake at night.”
- Referring to the market’s upswing in the last year, MarketWatch’s McLernon quipped, “After 18 months of not sleeping, sleeping just fine these days.” He added that he had an insight from HP’s Allison Johnson’s morning keynote that customizing consumer experience is key in today’s market, whether that’s iPod and music, Starbucks and coffee, TiVo and TV or web publishers. “Today, the consumer is the programmer. I worry, at MarketWatch, are we doing a good job providing consumer with what they want, how they want it, when they want it.”
- The panel also agreed that online video was another important trend for publishers. McLernon noted a challenge though: “Site, sound and motion is big. But everyone goes to the web to watch clips of train wrecks, sports clips and sex. Our challenge, as a business site, is how to make talking heads more interesting online.
