————— Forwarded message —————
From: Federated Media
Date: Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 9:05 AM
Subject: A Holiday Gift from FM, $5 CPM's
To: melissa@melissagira.com

Believe it or not the holidays are already fast approaching! To make planning your holiday advertising campaign quicker and easier, we've created a Holiday Shopping Federation that includes the best gift and shopping related content in the Federated Media family of sites. Sites in this category include Uncrate, Mighty Goods, The Bargainist, and many more.

The Holiday Shopping Federation reaches the savviest of shoppers. They are avid readers of product reviews, and hunt down everything from the best in fashion to the coolest new tech gadgets. This is where engaged shoppers peruse gift guides, and look for suggestions for everyone on their list.

Here's the best part, for a limited time only, we're offering access to these high-quality sites at a low $5 CPM.

Reserve your campaign now through November 28th to lock in this low rate, and get access to readers on some of the best content on the web.

Start Planning and take advantage of these low CPM's before holiday inventory gets booked up!

Cheers and Happy Holidays,
Federated Media

FM Self-Serve Homepage
Online Marketing Idea Exchange

Or what seems like a bargain. But even the bigger online ad networks are troubled. Take Glam Media, for example, the splashy ad network founded by Samir Arora, which he has pitched as "the future of all media." A dismal future indeed, if so. Glam grew quickly by promising publishers rich ad-rate guarantees, and then ran into trouble selling the inventory it had acquired at those rates. In the third quarter, according to two sources familiar with Glam's finances, Glam took in $14 million — $11 million short of the $25 million forecast Arora gave investors when he was peddling a stake in the company. Layoffs ensued. It's not clear how much of the $85 million Glam raised in February is left to buy up competitors.

And if the advertising market is due for a deep downturn, as many in the industry fear, then the more successful ad networks would be wise to husband their cash, rather than spend it on weaker rivals. Darwinian market forces will do away with the lesser ad networks soon enough. Roll up, or roll over? The latter seems wiser.

The first reason an interactive agency buyer chooses an ad network for his clients is because the people who work there take him out to lunch.

But the second reason buyers choose one ad network over the other 299 is that they can trust the ad network to carefully manage its audience and the publishing partners it includes. The first requirement LinkedIn has down: Its users are rich and easily targeted by industry, seniority, company size, geography, gender, and number of connections. If publishers sign up for its network, LinkedIn can detect when those users visit other websites, using its personalized information to target ads.

But to meet the second requirement, LinkedIn needs to carefully restrict the publishers it allows into its ad network. This could prove more challenging for the startup. BusinessWeek, CNBC, and the New York Times already pipe content into LinkedIn, but it's unclear if they plan to carry LinkedIn's ads, too. There's some incentive for them to join up: LinkedIn says it charges advertisers between $30 and $76.50 per thousand ad impressions, an attractive rate for almost any publisher. LinkedIn might have trouble recruiting those types of publishers because they, too, want to start their own ad networks. Even though the world doesn't need another one.

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They're doing what everyone else is doing, throwing their inventory into a big pile and asking someone else to do the work in return for a large cut of the revenues. Jon Cohen and Rob Stone, principals of New York-based Cornerstone Promotion, have created an ad network for the very purpose. We're not surprised many follow this path. It's easy and allows publishers to focus on creating content — which is probably more fun than selling ads. We would be surprised if RCRD LBL's Rojas joins up. His blogfather, Weblogs Inc. founder Jason Calacanis, is a known proponent of going with internal ad sales teams over ad networks, which he describes as "short term and very damaging." Indeed, Fortune reports Rojas is rumored to be going the smart way: releasing a major artist's latest album, sponsored by a single advertiser.

NBC, Martha Stewart, and Forbes use Adify to run their own networks; with capable sales forces but undersized websites, ad networks allow them to expand their Web reach. Cox was interested in signing up with Adify as a customer, then decided to buy them outright.

One hopes Cox executives don't think an Adify buy turns them into Google overnight. It gives them technology. But the value of a network isn't primarily in the technology; it's in the data, which allows the operator of the network to refine targeting, improve pricing, and increase its take. A number of small, atomic ad networks may keep salespeople better employed. But they won't overturn the industry's status quo.