November 10, 2010 in Blog by Alexander

Ad:Tech New York Trends and Observations

Whew… another great conference is over. Conferences are great especially when you need that extra kick start to get you motivated and fired up about your business. It’s also great to put faces to names with the many vendors that you work with on a daily basis. Although we are an internet business, at the end of the day nothing beats a good ‘ol handshake.

This is my 5th Ad:Tech which makes it easier than ever to spot trends and growth areas in the industry. Here are a few that I thought were interesting and might be game changers in the future.

Real Time Bidding – As a media buyer, I always wondered how fragmented and inefficient the landscape is. Well that may soon start to change my friends. Thanks to a few companies that are creating markets for inventory on a real time basis, you will soon have to pay closer attention to you metrics and performance than ever before. Soon the days of negotiating huge buys at discount will be long gone.

CPA Traffic Sources – I remember when rumors were flying that some ad networks will let you buy on a CPA basis. As a direct response marketer this was too good to be true. This conference it seemed like almost every ad network had a CPA component. However, don’t think that this means easy profits. The catch is that your campaigns have to produce the highest eCPMs possible for you to receive significant volume. Again, it is vital to pay attention to your metrics and optimize like never before.

Convergence – I see more CPA networks buying traffic sources and vise versa. What does this mean for the independent affiliate? If you do not own an asset (product, service, traffic) your business will have a very hard time surviving in the long run.