Over the past year, display has been something like the long-in-the-stained-tooth Austin Powers when he lost his mojo.  It’s just not sexy anymore. The business media has certainly dumped it in favor of the ingénue allure of mobile and social.  The publishers are declaring that display ads just don’t work. At last week’s DPAC IV one prominent publisher panelist declared he didn’t think his media company would even BE in the display business two years from now.  Thus, we’re in danger of losing the attention of marketers. For those who work in online advertising, this is a very dangerous thing.  It’s also patently absurd to think that a multi-billion dollar business is just going to go away or be only used for DR business.  For the record, display related ads accounted for $1.9 billion or 35 percent of total publisher-reported revenues during the second quarter of 2009 – that’s a 2 point YOY share increase, according to the IAB.

In display, we need to keep in mind that “the next big thing” is not what is important.   Helping great content and great interactive functionality survive, with freedom of access to all, is.  Those in online display need to fix what we have now and take it to the next level. There’s almost a kind of embarrassment in talking about display. Many of the biggest public media companies do not break it out in their quarterly earnings reports and allow classified decline and search growth to dominate coverage of online advertising.  What does it say when the company that took over the search market with a better product (Google) vocally turns to display for growth but the logical places that should own the market turn their back?

Planning can help rescue your mojo. I continually hear about the lack of training of planning personnel.  Research that comScore has done for some of their clients shows just how often plans overreach heavy users of various sites (home page takeovers are particularly guilty of this) and a giant chunk of many campaigns reach entirely the wrong demographics. In his recent paper “Does Online Advertising Deliver the Target Audience,” Jon Gibs, VP Media Analytics at Nielsen gives two examples of failed planning, one based on household income criteria, the other on age.  The first campaign only delivered 25% of targeted households and delivered fewer target audience members than a general run-of-network buy. The second campaign did over index among the targeted age groups, but 62% of impressions still went to consumers too old for the target.  Gibs argues that the entire online paradigm of rewarding publishers based on impression numbers needs to be scrapped in terms of rewarding them (through higher CPMs) for “dwell time” or the amount of time a consumer is exposed to an ad.  The argument goes that if publishers were rewarded based on time, they would likely do beneficial things for the ad market such as eliminate clutter and use one, well-placed, larger unit per page.  This thinking demands a pretty big change in ad practices – time will tell how much traction it gains -- but it is a compelling idea.

Initiatives like Microsoft Advertising/Atlas’ updated Reach & Frequency Planning tool could go a long way towards increasing the true effectiveness of reaching specific audiences through various campaigns.  Research that was done five years ago on how different types of sites “cume” their audiences (“Internet Audience Dynamics,” by Lynn Bolger, comScore with DoubleClick, September 2004) is as relevant today as it was then. Planners need to understand the distinct dynamics of audience builds and take this into account when they flight impressions. It’s not rocket science – and it’s something understood in offline media – let’s make sure it’s used in digital.

Creative can help rescue your mojo even when planning can’t. There’s an enormous amount of bitching about “belly fat ads” which is to this era what the “X-10” was to the last recession. We don’t have enough focus on the great creative that is being produced – especially that within standard sizes.  I applaud the efforts of both Dynamic Logic and InsightExpress in bringing to light creative best practices – and showcasing some of the good creative out there (see the excellent ad category by category primer on what can improve online ad creative, published in October by Dynamic Logic.  The OPA should immediately archive and promote examples of the units they introduced:  Push Downs, Fixed Panels and XXL boxes.  The IAB started its first task force with agency creative directors: what are the specific tasks they will work to achieve? Award shows can be silly and gratuitous, but let’s get as much mileage out of what OMMA and now DPAC are doing with their creative awards.  If I’m allowed one wish for the beginning of 2010, it’s that it becomes the year of true creative innovation – not of a push to new ad sizes and formats.

To download your copy of the Kathyrn's white paper on The State of Digital Display, a $595 value, (20 pages including 25 data charts) go to: www.primaryimpact.com/dpac4