The suggestion in last week’s AdWeek article by Brian Morrissey, “Can Search’s ‘Beautiful System’ Extend to Display?,” is that all any advertising exchange or ad network needs is a self-service system which allows advertisers to easily create graphical display ads and, poof!, you’ve got nearly unlimited inventory available with search advertising-like revenue potential.
Even the oft-quoted Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence gets on the bandwagon saying, “There isn’t a reason that (self-service ad platforms) couldn’t happen to display, except that display is more involved,” said Greg Sterling, an industry analyst with Sterling Intelligence. “There’s layers of complexity for display that haven’t existed in the search marketplace.” This is the wrong direction – it’s not about making pretty banners, it’s about the analytics that show ROI.
As we’ve said before, for Display to truly become a powerful tool and scale revenues for web publishers – analytics which can be tied across multiple campaigns and user activity will be necessary to prove Display is worth investment for advertisers.
On Tuesday,