People who love sports...

Your toughest competitor is yourself

I saw this story on ESPN about a golfer who called a penalty on himself.  In doing so, he cost himself his PGA Tour Card.  This is significant because that’s how he makes his living.  Getting the card is hard.  Hard enough without policing yourself.

 

But that’s why I love golf. It’s about honor and playing against yourself. The truth is, I am ok if my opponent beats me, but not ok if I lose to myself. When I see people cheat, even if it is the smallest thing, it bugs me. Too often, we only hear about the dark side of sports - the violence, the misbehavior, the steroids...  And that's why when I see a guy like J.P. Hayes doing the right thing, I love it. 

What blew me away was the ESPN poll that reported 50% of the audience wouldn’t have called the penalty in that situation. Wow! What does that say about our culture?  

 

For me, sport is about the personal challenge.  It is about pushing yourself to the next milestone.  Like running a business, it is about getting up every day and figuring out what you can do better than the day before.  That's what keeps me going and I applaud J.P. Hayes for doing the same.

The art and science of media planning

I read an interesting article in Ad Age yesterday about Yahoo! and its value to advertisers. 

 

One quote jumped out at me.  Rob Norman, CEO, Group M Interaction said “The dominant gene in Yahoo is to think of advertising as a math problem -- machines talking to machines," he said. "If you reduce it to a math problem, we go to Ad.com."

 

As a vertical network, I think there is a tendency to assume that we treat our campaigns similarly.  Of course, every campaign is built around the idea of efficiently reaching a target audience.  Media planning, however, is both an art and a science.  As a vertical, we have domain expertise and knowledge that helps us put together unique campaigns for our clients. 

 

I was at the OMMA Ad Nets a couple weeks ago and there was a lot of discussion over the value of networks – both vertical and horizontal.  Many of the panel participants were buyers and spoke about the value that a vertical network can bring because of its relationships with mid to long tail sites with niche content and a passionate following.  That was good to hear – we need to continue to evangelize our value and provide marketers with programs that enhance their overall campaigns and drive value for their brands.

Branding with vertical ad networks

John Battelle posted something yesterday that I think is somewhat short sighted.  He writes that vertical ad networks do not provide a solution for branded advertisers and are just a slightly more targeted version of the horizontal model.

I disagree.

Vertical Networks can help brands connect better with users. Our audience does not visit the sites in our network by accident.  They make a choice to seek out and engage with the content.  We aggregate these audiences and offer brands the ability to connect via multiple media products. As an example, we can create programs around a specific audience, such as “active women”, for a brand like Advil. The program we create will  provide numerous high impact opportunities to help Advil tap into the passion of this valuable target audience.

Yes, there are a lot of ad networks who work with only DR clients, but most verticals like Sportgenic, Jumpstart or Halogen Guides, offer intimate knowledge to help brands be more relevant and effective.