Geisentumblog

Chas Edwards quoting Noah Brier on why online display advertising sucks.  I saw this happen first hand.  Being a slave to CTR and driving traffic to poorly conceived landing pages is a recipe for mediocrity.  The best programs I worked on were tightly integrated and thematically consistent, with an open-minded view to metrics.  Still, the fact that you can track everything online means that marketers want to track everything, inconsistent goalposts notwithstanding.  As Chas concludes, online display/video craves a corollary to the best print and TV ads:

We still also need find an approach to online advertising that offers the self-contained goodness of a Vogue print ad or a Superbowl spot — advertising that’s so good we don’t mind a little interruption.

That’s hard to solve for, but I do think that Noah and James Gross at Percolate are on to something.  I’ve been a fan of the advertising as curation model espoused by James’ alma mater, Federated Media, and I think they’re doing it the right way at his new company.  What’s interesting about Percolate is that they’re bridging the gap between publisher and agency.  They’re using the technology platform they’ve built to help brands like AMEX easily find relevant content to push out to Tumblr and their other digital publishing outposts.  They’re not providing a place for AMEX to advertise, but rather they’re enabling AMEX’s conversational marketing output; most likely with the right metrics in place to boot.

What’s strategically smart about this sort of brand first strategy is that once the platform gains consumer traction, Percolate will be able to capitalize on their role as trusted analysts/useful API providers to build effective marketing programs on their own property.  I’m looking forward to seeing them continue to iterate.