I was recently told that you are either an ad agency with an ad network, or an ad network with a creative-like agency.  It makes sense: the agencies want a piece of the spend they control, and ad networks want to attract more dollars by offering deeper integration.

I think there are a couple of questions to explore here.  First, is it a conflict of interest for agency holding companies like WPP to own an ad network like 24/7 Real Media, or is it a more efficient way to move dollars through the system that ultimately passes more money to publishers?

For ad networks, I think the big question is if offering deep creative services scales, or does it raise the cost so high that it squeezes all of the margin from the sale?  My feeling is only a few ad networks will be able to offer the creative services, but it’s more likely sites with sales forces, like Pandora, will make it work as a business. Most other ad networks will be better served by looking for more efficient ways of bringing in ad dollars.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Online Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.