DGTL Media’s ad network – Ad Magnet is planning to introduce a video advertising network by the middle of this month. It also claims to have touched 7.5 million unique users in India. And to top it all it is eyeing a growth of 250% in the year 2009-10.
According to Exchange4Media, the April 2009 comScore report suggests that Ad Magnet achieved an aggregated reach of 7.6 million unique visitors in India in 2009, a 113 per cent jump. Ad Magnet’s online ad inventory is in effect directly reaching out to 22.5 per cent of India’s Internet population as per the comScore report. Ad Magnet gets these numbers through impressions spread over its 350 publishers and deliver these ads for around 60 publishers.
What is interesting to note about this is that Ad Magnet has apparently not increased on its publisher count, at least not in the last 4 months. For a February announcement which claimed they touched over 11 million impressions worldwide (around 3 million in India) also stated that Ad Magnet has access to over 350 publishers. Of course this is a debatable point because the words over 350 could mean 351 or ever 451. Anyway, common sense suggests that it won’t be a very high number over 350, which raises the question where did this jump in reach happen in the last four months?
The answer can perhaps be dwindling direct ad sales at the publisher’s end. Ad networks usually use up the left over inventory, so with relatively the same publishers, if an ad network increases its views it means it the sites have higher unsold inventories.
While this is good for the ad network (in this case Ad Magnet) it doesn’t paint a pretty picture otherwise. It essentially means publishers are either not creating enough value to create good business for direct advertisers and that advertisers on the other hand don’t have much to spend on advertising. I don’t know therefore how long the gains Ad network get from such a situation can last.
With regards to the video ad network, he video ad network aims at enabling advertisers to push video ads even to publishers who don’t have a streaming video content, ensuring mass reach for video advertising online. The competition evidently being Vdopia and Nautanki.tv on the face of it. IT is not clear though whether Ad Magnet will simply stick to its existing set of publishers to build this network initially or will they use this as a tool to reach out to a lot more publishers.
Interesting move nevertheless for a company that’s hardly a year old in business.
This post does look like written with lot less knowledge of latest development happening in the ad network business.
Lot of hybrid models have emerged and way networks are being run are very different from true blue google etc.
One need to dig a lot more deeper in terms of pointing out or being critical from 2 different view points of advertisers and publishers.
Watblog does a good job of sharing news but authors shouldnt act maverick and back post with numbers which are verifiable and criticism of models with more input from the industry
@Siddharth – Thanks for your critical comment (which also wasn’t backed by any numbers
). But jokes apart the objective of this post wasn’t to show off our knowledge or insights but to ask a question and generate a valuable discussion. Which I think we have succeeded in doing as you commented. I do know that ad networks are run very differently to google and also the fact that market dynamics have decided what works or doesnt work in online advertising space. But my point only was to question what is a fair model? and whether clicks is a fair metric to judge a websites ad performance and whether a publisher or the ad creator should be responsible for the same.
@siddarth @rajiv
I am a little lost here.. why is this discussion taking place on my post?
Siddharth, presuming you wanted to comment on my post only.. I am willing to accept your opinion but it would be great if you can shed light on what part of this post showed my lack of knowledge?
Also, now this is my personal point of view and not WATBlog’s.. As a blogger I am entitled to present only my opinion, counter views and opinions are for those who have them and are free to comment it.. and in my school of thought bloggers need to be maverick, numbers ..two sides of the coins are good but it is best left for journalists ..and I am not one.
At the same time WATBlog as an industry resource certainly needs to put forward all the voices existing in the industry like you said, and that has to happen of course.. it’s just that I don’t feel it needs to happen on individual posts all the time.. one post can talk about one side and another post about the other side..that’s the benefit of having a blog compared to a newspaper.
Just in case it got lost in the language.. I am actually agreeing with your comment..just with an additional view though
Sorry maneesh I thought his comment was on the Publsiher Click post.. will reply to him there.. My bad!
its for your maneesh.
the lines which i am pointing are
“The answer can perhaps be dwindling direct ad sales at the publisher’s end. Ad networks usually use up the left over inventory, so with relatively the same publishers, if an ad network increases its views it means it the sites have higher unsold inventories.
While this is good for the ad network (in this case Ad Magnet) it doesn’t paint a pretty picture otherwise. It essentially means publishers are either not creating enough value to create good business for direct advertisers and that advertisers on the other hand don’t have much to spend on advertising. I don’t know therefore how long the gains Ad network get from such a situation can last.”
AD networks in the industry have moved away from championing the cause of Long tail publishers or generating market place environment. From publisher point of you there are 2 many factors for determining between pure play ad network model etc. Indian market has adopted too many models which are working in the name of ad networks but not completely working on same.
Being a maverick blogger is great thing and internet does give us freedom of expression but then as a reader my expectation is wrong to treat watblog as a forum of digital industry experienced pros which does comment on industry development and share insights based on depth.
So with clarity on how watblog appears i am in absolute concurrence on view point being presently and happy to share my comments on same.
Cheers
@Rajiv
Understand your viewpoint and always congratulated you on bringing view points from different aspects.
Now in terms of onus the problem is there is no standard wand which can be used to play the game who is responsible. The marketplace automatically optimizes the publisher or ad creator(agency) based on performance, so although you might be thinking publisher is taking the risk in all terms risk does get spread across to both publisher and agency. Now in terms of model what is fair i believe end of the day everything boils down to sales. For instance of Rediffusion does Tata Nano campaign impact or awareness generated to meet number of booking numbers determine their performance across Print and OOH. Again as advised on your post marketplace does optimizes everything.
I recently meet a small publisher in education vertical which was ready to work on confirmed seats with engineering or medical colleges. Just purely on basis of audience filtering and management capability he claimed to own. For him doing CPC model or even CPM wouldnt garner the money he would earn instead of CPL. You are right to ask which model can work as too many different impact metrics other then technology performance driven existing in marketplace have started to effect and they need to be streamlined in a model which is fair and captures optimization of both media and creatives.
Ratish Nair, co-founder of Ad Magnet, not surprised by the growth the ad network has achieved despite the weakening economy says’ “There is increased pressure to generate additional revenue on publishers, and sale of remnant inventory to ad networks ensures that publisher inventory is 100% filled.
- This is him quoted in an article that came in Feb which I have linked to in the post .. I have based my view that remnant inventory means left over inventory. This and from what a few people that I know very well in some other ad networks have told me at other times regarding their inventory.. and so I am personally convinced that a majority among the top ad networks still continue to pursue the long tail or pursue the long tail as well while having exclusivity in a bid to increase their inventory scope…
However, without numbers to show I accept that what I said is debatable and in fact baseless.
Also, at no point would I want any reader to consider WATBlog is not a resource which provides deep and pertinent analysis, leave alone a reader who takes pains to comment, contribute and make this place better. So if I with my posts and comments have in anyway tarnished this blog’s image as a valuable resource then do accept my apologies and this goes to Siddharth as well as Rajiv.
naah this is taking too formal a turn.Lets keep it all simple, my idea for posting comment was to share feedback and insight working in the digital industry and seeing it day in day out. It was to add value to content being generated on this platform.
I respect people who can take out time to blog as unfortunately I dont get time
and idea is not to discourage but ensure Blogs do live up to their reputation of engaging dialogue.
We had a dialogue exchanged views and created an example for others that this medium does help in communicating 2 ways.
Some numbers comscore in India puts 33 Billion Page Views out of which Top 1000 publishers with indian page views contribute to 98% of inventory.(this is not me but comscore data)
Now imagine how much long tail theory validates out.Maybe it does maybe it doesnt and as rajeev pointed out without giving data its no fun debating it.
Lets leave other readers to dig in further as we both did give them enough things to start with.
Cheers and keep blogging and having fun
Btw Maverick Entrepreneur have higher success rate in life!!
Best of luck
I think I got the gap in our argument:
Left inventory is not that of the long tail.. but that of these top publishers itself.. the impressions they can’t sell through direct ad placements, I didn’t quite say that like adsens all other ad networks pursued the long tail.. and then we all got caught up in words and comments..
Anyway yes I think it is better for us to move on from this post now and it has been intensely debated (pun with that auttomatic tool) upon