fa·ble [fey-buhl] (noun)

This past week, MediaPost published an article written by our own EVP of Marketing, David Shay.  The article talks to the current ‘perception’ of digital advertising and the need to alter that view in order to reach the full potential that the medium has to offer.

Just a little more than 10 years ago, the way we measured a user’s engagement of a specific ad would likely have involved a call center lighting up for the 15 minutes following the broadcast of a direct-response commercial. (It probably ran in the overnight hours on a second-tier cable network.)

But in the late ’90s, the idea of advertising designed for user engagement took a monumental leap forward. What became known as ‘the click’ did two things:

Read more…

CPX Interactive’s Strategy is the New Creative initiative has always been a conversation about, “The Promise of Digital” and reaching its full potential in the world of online advertising.  We recently revisited this conversation by hosting a panel discussion at the IAB MIXX 2011 Conference and Expo on October 4, 2011 at the Crown Plaza Times Square in NYC.

David Shay, our EVP of Marketing, moderated the panel discussion and opened up a conversation that explored how a pendulum counter-swing that has seen the industry rapidly move towards a pure technology-based vision of ad serving, combined with an acceptance of a poor online attribution model, now runs the risk of marginalizing the value of the human element that makes up the ‘art’ of ad placement.

Hear thoughts about the opportunities, challenges and dangers of the technology-heavy ad placement tactics currently being used from our panel of industry execs:  Zach Coelius, CEO of Triggit; Steve Latham, Founder & CEO of Encore Media Metrics; Michael L. Miller, CMO of SolutionSet MediaWhiz Partnership; and Mike Seiman, Founder and CEO of CPX Interactive.

David Shay is the EVP of Marketing at CPX Interactive. Read on to learn about his journey from law school grad to marketing professional at an online ad network.

1. Who are you, and what do you do here at CPX?

As EVP of Marketing, I am ultimately responsible for the messaging, both internally and externally, for the company. Initiatives that come out of the marketing department include, trade shows and networking events, online and print advertising, sales support materials, public relations and use of social media to disseminate information.

2. After college, you went to law school. How did you end up working in marketing for an online ad network?

I always knew I wanted to go to Law School, and I guess I assumed that meant that I wanted to be a lawyer as well. As law school drew to a close, I realized that this was an incorrect assumption. Rather than go the traditional route of a job at a law firm, I opened a private practice with a partner in Hollywood, FL. Three years was enough to prove to myself that I could do it, and also long enough for me to realize that I didn’t have to do it just because I had the law degree. I came up to NYC with my stuff in a duffel bag and found a job at a small advertising agency. Eventually, my career path led me to an online agency called Endai Worldwide. It was here that I met a colleague named Rob Rasko and the rest…as they say…is history.

3. How do you apply what you learned in law school to marketing?

People often question if the two paths (law vs. marketing) are similar at all. I think that they absolutely are. In law school, you are taught how to construct a way of interpreting and explaining facts in a way that is most favorable to your client’s position. Marketing is really driven by the same fundamentals. A marketer’s job is to spin and package information in a way that is most favorable to the company.

4. CPX recently opened a Manhattan office, which the marketing department now calls home. Why do you think it was important for the company, and the marketing department, to have a presence in NYC?

The move of the ‘forward facing’ departments of the company to NYC was both necessary and organic. With the development and growth of the sales and publishing teams, they have both been able to hone their target audiences to a high-profile /brand level. NYC is simply a more ‘target-rich’ environment for them, and being here makes it easier for them to interact socially and build relationships. As for the marketing department, it only makes sense for us to be with the teams we support most directly.

5. What kinds of things are on the horizon for CPX Marketing in the next few months?

We have a couple of interesting projects on our table at this point. In addition to laying the marketing groundwork for some pretty exciting business-level announcements planned over the next six months, we are focusing on taking our philanthropic arm, CPXample^TM, to the next level and we are working to support the online promotion and release of the first completed project by the indie film house, Chaos². Chaos² is owned and run by CPX founders Mike Seiman and Carlton Hickman.

David Shay, EVP of Marketing at CPX Interactive, recently published his first blog post on iMedia Connection entitled Marketing Begins at Conception. In the post, he answers the question, “What IS marketing?” and provides tips to marketers on how to be part of the message crafting process. To read the post in full, visit David’s iMedia blog, and check back for more valuable marketing insight in the future.

originally posted 5/27/08

Key assumptions:

1)    People tend to repeat habits with which they are most comfortable, and
2)    People are naturally more receptive to receiving information in an environment in which they are comfortable.

Building upon these two assumptions, and then leveraging both the power of behavioral targeting and our unique ability to reach some of the most sought after audiences on the Internet, CPX Interactive has developed an offering known as “Web 2.0 Immersion.”

The idea is simple. Rather than asking an Internet user to leave their comfort zone in order to be introduced to your brand, we “immerse” your brand message into the environment in which your targeted user has already illustrated a preference and comfort level.

Hoping to target social networkers? Why not build a social network page for your brand, develop custom ads that link back to that social network page, run those ads within social network environments and pixel users who see those ads so that you can serve them again (or deliver “next-level messaging”) to those social networkers as the surf around the web?

More specifically, you could target MySpace users with ads that bring them back to your brand’s MySpace page, while you target YouTube users with video “commercials” that also provide links back to your YouTube channel where they can watch additional commercial-style videos.

Of course, this strategy is limited only by creative vision. CPX can create multiple “mini-campaigns” within an immersion strategy. Imagine targeting users of  an“on-topic” blog site and inviting them to create their own blog posting about your brand, while targeting MySpace or Facebook users to enter a competition where a prize is given to the user who tags the most “friends” on your social network page.

The point is that in the growing world of user generated content (UGC), Internet users have the power to create own worlds. CPX Web 2.0 immersion campaigns are designed to engage these users within their self-constructed space and to speak to them in a language they can easily relate to.

Web 2.0 immersion campaigns include:

•    Strategic consultation
•    Creation of customized Web 2.0 environments
•    Development of target creatives
•    Web 2.0, Long-tail and Premium ad placement strategies
•    Behavorial targeting and retargeting functionality

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!”

originally posted 7/10/07

Some of the largest players in the ad network space only monetize a publisher’s premium inventory – the first few impressions per unique visitor. Most often, the remaining non-premium (also known as “remnant”) inventory is defaulted either to unmonetized “house” ads or daisy-chained down to other networks.It is not surprising, then, that a recent study conducted by Forrester Research, Inc. indicates that 25 percent of online advertising inventory is never actually sold.

CPX Interactive is the largest global online ad network proactively serving the non-premium display ad market and dedicated to efficiently monetizing 100% of publishers’ inventory.

If other networks are interested in monetizing only the “low hanging fruit” of premium impressions, CPX has developed unparalleled skill in monetizing the remaining fruit on the tree. CPX’s proprietary process includes arbitraging non-premium inventory, conducting targeted traffic analysis, developing and honing specific conversion-focused creative, and parlaying years of historical data and learning into dynamically optimized performance-based campaigns that maximize publisher revenue for inventory that would otherwise be written off as valueless.

A well-placed equity firm in the industry estimates that the non-premium display market will be the fastest growing segment of the overall online advertising market from 2006-2011, growing at a 28% CAGR to $7.6B, which represents 12% of a $60.1B estimate for the total online ad market in 2011

It may be more of a challenge than some industry players are willing go after…but that’s a lot of fruit!

A magazine cannot contain an infinite number of pages…

A television show cannot contain an infinite number of commercial spots…

In contrast, however, there really are no limits to how many “impressions deep”  website publishers can monetize their ad space inventory…so long as there is a supply of both advertisers who are ready to pay a reasonable price for the inventory AND a mutually rewarding process though which avertisers and pubishers can interact.

This “limitless” supply of online inventory is the natural winner in a marketing landscape that increasing sees a tightening view of return on advertisng dollars.