The cost-per-click (CPC) online advertising model still kicked up considerable controversy on a panel of marketers and publishers at DoubleClick’s Investor Day conference on Monday.
The effectiveness of CPC is always going to depend on the product offered, said Chris McCabe, vice president of integrated media sales at World Wrestling Federation Entertainment. “We stay away from it.”
Todd Simon, vice chairman at Omaha Steaks “vehemently disagreed.” If you can develop a good partnership with the publisher and there is good content, “over time you can come up with an offer that works really well.”
CPC forces a publisher to serve high volume, intrusive ads, said Chris Neimeth, executive vice president of national sales at TicketMaster.
Columbia House uses both CPC and cost-per-thousand deals. “What I like about CPC is that both the publisher’s and the advertiser’s teams work together to make it the best ad possible,” said David Conn, vice president of marketing at ColumbiaHouse.com. “If publishers want us to use CPM, you’d better give it to us as a discount.”
What size online ads work best?
“We have performance rates from .5% to 5%,” said Bruce Jaret, vice president of sales marketing services at CBS SportsLine.com. “There’s nothing that works all the time.”
Every time a new type of ad is introduced, “it does extremely well,” said Matthew Goldstein, vice president of online ad sales operations at MTV Networks. Then, then novelty wears off.
Whatever the size of the ad, “If people are bombarded with ads, they are going to back off,” warned McCabe.
One problem is that online ads aren’t targeted well enough. “What I can’t understand is that Yahoo knows I’m on their site four or five times a day, and they don’t show they know this [by the ads they serve me],” said Charlie Tarzian, CEO of agency Euro RSCG Circle.
How much of advertisers’ business will shift online in the next five years?
At Columbia House, Conn expects 30% of the business to go online.
At TicketMaster, currently 40% of the business is done online. “In the next two years, it will go up to 70%,” said Neimeth. “But ticket buying is a killer application online.”
DoubleClick’s conference is running through tomorrow at Chelsea Piers in New York.
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