Official site of Dr. Joni Salminen

Media agency vs. Creative agency: Which will survive?

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

In space, nobody can hear your advertising. Earlier today I wrote about convergence of media agencies and creative agencies. But let’s look at it from a different perspective: Which one would survive? If we had to pick. To answer the question, let us first determine their value-provided, and then see which one is more expendable. Media agencies. First, media agencies’…

A few thoughts on ad blockers

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Anti-ad-blockers are becoming common nowadays. Introduction. So, I read an article saying that ad blockers are not useful for the users. The argument, and the logic, is conventional: 1) the internet is not really free; 2) publishers need advertisers to subsidize content creation which in turn is also in the users’ interest, because 3) they don’t have to pay for…

Problems of standard attribution modelling

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Attribution modelling is like digital magic. Introduction Wow, so I’m reading a great piece by Funk and Nabout (2015) [1]. They outline the main problems of attribution modelling. By “standard”, I refer to the commonly used method of attribution modelling, most commonly known from Google Analytics. Previously, I’ve addressed this issue in my digital marketing class by saying that the…

Programmatic ads: Fallacy of quality supply

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

A major fallacy publishers still have is the notion of “quality supply” or “premium inventory”. I’ll explain the idea behind the argument. Introduction. The fallacy of quality supply lies in publishers assuming the quality of certain placement (say, a certain website) is constant, whereas in reality it varies according to the response which, in turn, is a function of the customer…

Is “premium” ad space a hoax?

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Answer: It kinda is. “Premium publishers” and “premium ad space” — these are often heard terms in programmatic advertising. But they are also dangerously fallacious ideas. I’ll give three reasons why: A priori problem Uniformity problem Equilibrium problem First, publishers define what is “premium” a priori (before results) which is not the right sequence to do it (a priori problem).…

Quick note: Measurement of brand advertising

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Two brands colliding. Hm, I’m thinking (therefore, I am a digital marketer). The classical advertising question has been: How to measure the impact of advertising on a brand? And then the answer has been “oh, you can’t”, or “it’s difficult”, or something along those lines. But, they say, it is there! The marketers’ argument for poor direct performance has traditionally…

A New Paradigm for Digital Advertising

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

From its high point, the sheep can see far. Introduction In Finland, and maybe elsewhere in the world as well, media agencies used to reside inside advertising agencies, back in the 1970-80s. Then they were separated from one another in the 1990s, so that advertising agencies do creative planning and media companies buy ad space in the media. Along with…

Why social advertising beats display advertising

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Introduction I’ve long been skeptical of display advertising. At least my students know this, since ever year I start the digital marketing course by giving a lecture on why display sucks (and why inbound / search-engine marketing performs much better). But this post is not about the many pitfalls of display. Rather, it’s outlining three arguments as to why I nowadays…

Programmatic advertising: Red herring effect

Published by Joni on March 30, 2017

Introduction Currently, there is very strong hype involved with programmatic buying. Corporations are increasing their investments on programmatic advertising and publishers are developing their own technologies to provide better targeting information for demand-side platforms. But all is not well in the kingdom. Display advertising still faces fundamental problems which are, in my opinion, more critical to advertising performance than more…

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