originally posted 7/26/07
Here at CPX Interactive, we often discuss what we call “The High Profile Fallacy.” This misconception – so common that it deserves its own moniker – is the belief that “That which I need, is that which I know…”
To believe this is to believe that only those things important enough to create a blip on our own radar could possibly hold value to us. But adhering rigidly to this view would mean foreclosing the opportunity to discover new truths…and, therefore, new value.
This is why we always feel a little sad to hear a mediabuyer explain that her client only wants recognizable, or “high profile” sites on a media buy. Sure… if your campaign is directed at sports enthusiasts, then going directly to a well-known sports portal will get you exposure to your core audience…guaranteed…but at what price?
Doesn’t the baseball fanatic who religiously logs onto that high-priced mainstream portal to check the latest sports headlines also surf over to his social network page? Or his favorite band’s page? Or check out news about his favorite comedian’s new movie? Or find time to visit his preferred gaming site to see who has the latest high scores? And is it really worth 10X the CPM to reach him on the sports portal then to reach him on the gaming site …or the movie review site…or the social network page?
Our experience shows that putting your ad in front of a user who has shown, by his behavior, that he is within your targeted psychographic, is statistically just as effective, no matter where you reach him. So then why would a client want to spend more of his money to get the same result? And there you have it… the “High Profile Fallacy!” The underlying belief that paying more for something that has a larger buzz is inherently better.
Smaller sites, with their extremely targeted demo- and psychographic audiences, can deliver your audience extremely efficiently. They typically have very small, if any, advertising budgets of their own, however. And so they take advantage of the power of joining and ad network like CPX Interactive. We, in turn, are able to leverage the power of aggregating the inventory of thousands of these highly targeted, smaller websites. Coupling this access to huge amounts of targeted inventory with our own technology that allows us to dynamically “ratchet down” the conversion efficiency of a campaign in real-time, we are able to offer mediabuyers a campaign driven by ROI rather than the by name recognition.
We understand the difficulty of trying to teach old dogs new tricks. And we understand that teaching a new trick is particularly difficult when one’s job is dependant on that old dog remaining comfortable with us. But we also know how happy that same old dog can be when he finds himself in that most unusual of positions…having, after so many years of believing “that which I need, is that which I know,” suddenly realizing “that which I needed, was that which I didn’t know…until now!”
