9 Questions for Andy Atherton, Display Ad Evangelist and COO of Brand.net

I had the chance to meet Andy Atherton, COO and Co-Founder of Brand.net, a couple of weeks ago, and had an intriguing conversation about branding and display ads -- so intriguing that I thought I’d ask him to answer a few questions for you you you! I found his views surprising and fairly unorthodox, always qualities I’m happy to encounter in someone sitting across from me. ;-)

But enough of my rambling, let’s let Andy speak and stir the pot himself.

Note: I have no business relationship with Brand.net or Andy, nor does Catalyst:SF. I don't agree with everything he says, but I definitely value it as a strongly argued and distinctive POV.

---

1. For those who don’t know you, can you give us the fast food version of your background?

I am currently COO and Co-Founder of Brand.net. Prior to Brand.net, I was Vice President of Global Pricing & Yield Management (PYM) for Yahoo!, responsible for maximizing monetization of Yahoo’s $2B+ annual worldwide portfolio of display advertising. I created, developed and globalized the PYM function in my five years at Yahoo! Prior to Yahoo! I co-founded and was president of Optivo, a venture backed start-up that developed price optimization software for e-commerce retailers. I began my career at R.B. Webber & Co, a Silicon Valley strategy consultancy and venture fund. I received a B.S. in Engineering from MIT.

( You can find a more extensive bio for Andy here: http://www.imediaconnection.com/profiles/andyatherton )

2. Suppose I could wave a wand and put you in charge of a giant brand’s digital marketing. What three things would you do immediately? Valuable cash prize if you can resist making all three about buying enormous amounts of inventory on your network. ;-)

The answer would vary depending on whether or not my supply chain terminated primarily in an online or offline transaction. Since we do most of our work with companies who primarily sell their products in offline retail environments I will answer assuming the “giant brand” in question is one of these customers.

A. I would want to understand in detail what my agency was buying and why – what the strategy was behind it, what were the key metrics and goals over time. I would work with them to make sure that my entire team and theirs was working against a common set of well-defined objectives with simple, clear, consistent and meaningful metrics to measure progress. Easy to describe, lots of work to accomplish.

B. I would work with my agency to design a comprehensive online test plan for the next 1-2 years that included both attitudinal (e.g., brand awareness, purchase intent) and econometric (in-store sales) analysis. The goal would be to compare the effectiveness of online media in driving offline sales to offline benchmarks established in other media. Simultaneously, given the time-lagged and approximate nature of measuring the response of offline sales activity to advertising, I would be looking for correlations between the econometric results and more responsive attitudinal or even traditional delivery, reach & frequency metrics. The econometric analysis would give me “proof” and the more responsive metrics would give me management tools.

C. I would focus on developing scalable operational processes to drive consistent, measurable improvement over time. I would set aside some portion of my budget for ongoing experimentation, but my focus would be on incorporating the online medium into my broader marketing mix in a consistent, scalable, repeatable way. Focus on steak, not sizzle.

3. What do you think big brand marketers are looking for from digital that they aren’t getting yet?

Big brand marketers need to see 3 things - quality, scale and value – from the online advertising environment before they will put serious money to work there. Currently it’s just too hard (impossible) for Brand advertisers to get all three of those things in one place. Fragmentation of media makes manual site-by-site approach to branding increasingly inefficient and today’s DR networks simply aren’t designed to handle brand campaigns. So I think big brand marketers are missing a scalable, standardized, horizontal solution that leverages the power of the Internet, but accommodates the unique requirements of Brand advertising. A solution that allows them to leverage online media’s advantages without abandoning everything they have learned about media in general over the years or the organizations and systems they have built to apply that learning.

4. In talking to you, it seems you are one of the few people wholeheartedly and publicly defending banners. How do you answer critics who say no one even sees them anymore?

Don’t get me started. It’s just as easy to tune out ads in other media as it is online. So saying “nobody sees banners anymore” is like saying nobody sees TV, Print or Outdoor ads anymore. It’s totally arbitrary. Are we seriously saying that all of the $100Bs spent each year on all of these media are wasted? Is some of it tuned out and/or wasted? Sure. But it’s impossible to believe that the global 1000 would spend these astronomical sums of money year in and year out if they didn’t get a positive return overall. And at least with online you know when an ad has been delivered – a serious challenge for TV with DVR penetration at 20% and projected to double over the next 5 years, or for Print with exposure and pass-along rates that have always been uncertain. I personally think there’s a lot of room for creative to become more engaging, so I think that’s a productive conversation, but online display ads (including rich media, video, etc) are not going away. The bottom line is that advertising needs to go where the eyeballs are. Increasingly that’s online and we’re not going to squeeze $100Bs of global ad spend into 70 characters of text (or widgets, or virtual gifts, or…)

5. Can you give an example or two of companies whose standard banners get it right?

Even though I mentioned it above, I am not a creative guy – we’re really focused on the media side – but I have seen a lot of good creative from both P&G and Unilever.

6. One of the major portals, and a number of other sites, used to promulgate a set of best practices for banner design. Make the CTA button red and have text on it that says “Click here.” That sort of thing. Would you care to give us your thoughts about what works in a banner?

The answer will vary widely based on the campaign objectives. There are certainly a plethora of great creative options these days, but again - I’m not a creative guy. What I will say though is that we should be thinking more about how to do compelling creative within a standard size unit. The best TV creatives figure out how to do a compelling TV ad in 30 seconds – they don’t ask for 35. Similarly, all the fancy expanding and floating and skins and tearbacks (and…) have their place, but for the medium to scale we need to think more about standards at every level.

7. In a branding context, what metrics do you think are most important to measure and optimize for display ads?

Talked about this quite a bit above in my answer to question 2. At the end of the day all marketing is about driving sales. So the bottom line is that each marketer and their agency needs to figure out how to measure as well as possible, then get a stable, meaningful set of metrics that help them manage consistently and not get distracted. We can’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Not everything will ever be perfectly measurable – focus on meaningful and reliable you’re most of the way there. And beyond that, there’s no substitute for good old fashioned experience and intuition.

8. Most brands still view digital as a supporting medium – one that does some of the DR heavy lifting, or essentially reminds the user of the TV. Do you agree with that assessment?

No, because of the points I raised earlier about changing media consumption habits and DVRs. The Internet is a great DR medium – probably the best ever. But the story doesn’t – it can’t – stop there.

9. Is there anything else you’d like to say on the topic of graphical display and branding?

Just that I see a bright future ahead and I am very much looking forward to working with our customers to push things forward.

Thank you Andy!