$10 billion to reinvent advertising

Back from a lovely wi-fi free week in St Ives, I've been catching up on the blogs, trade press and gossip.

I've been very surprised at the lack of comment from the advertising/marketing business on the 4 weeks that changed the world - Google, Microsoft and WPP spending around $10 billion to buy adserving companies.

To me this seems like a major shift in the advertising world;

• Google can now extend their algorithms to display advertising and have cemented their position as the dominant player in town.
• Microsoft went from being a bit player in online advertising to a serious number 2
• and WPP stopped buying people companies and bought a technology company.

Adserving can seem like the plumbing of the Internet but used properly it can be a very powerful tool. Years ago we (MindShare) bought an IBM campaign that targeted executives at a number of major banks - using DoubleClick adserving we identified people from that bank (through their IP address) visiting FT.com etc and served ads that mentioned their banks names - which was hugely effective. We often sequence ads using adserving, so people see the ads in pre determined order - really good at telling a story or conveying a range.

Even though these techniques are not widely used by an essentially lazy digital ad industry, it does hint at the possibilities that these new deals will deliver. Imagine being able to target banners ads based on someones search history -or serve different search copy knowing what banner ads they  have seen or even clicked on. Coming soon from Google and Microsoft.

Imagine that we can build profiles based on the digital body language of our clients customers and prospects - the ads they viewed/clicked, the brand website pages they read, the email links they clicked on etc - and then buy really cheap space anywhere across the Internet, knowing that we can serve exactly the right ad based on that profile. Thats the sort of thing 24/7 will enable our people across GroupM to do.

And having that sort of toy to play with will also help us achieve the number 1 requirement going forward - how to be the best at getting the most out of Google/DoubleClick and Microsoft/Aquantive for our clients.

I don't want to use this blog just to big up my employers but to me this is a big deal and I'm surprised that there has been so little comment. If you're with Aegis, Publicis, Omnicom et al (either as a client or an employee) it must be a little worrying to see the world has changed and that you weren't even at the ball game.

Comments

[John Dawson]

Maybe it's just me but don't forget that there is a BIG play for the mobile phone networks here as well. Stick an RFID tag in a mobile phone and you can tell where and when a person was exposed to an ad.

As for the WPP move which is the most interesting for the industry at the moment, can't you see MS or Google purchasing Omnicom? I certainly can and i think that would be even more interesting!

[simon andrews]

I agree the mobile element is going to be big - Google are getting serious about mobile and it will become a key part of search.
I think that a Google or MS could buy a network but I'm not sure what value they'd get - I thnk we'll see MS sell the razorfish part of aquantive soon