paidContent: Google relaunched the DoubleClick Ad Exchange last week. What’s AOL’s approach to ad exchanges? Is that an area you’d like to build up?
Jeff Levick: Sure, we look at that space. But the approach here is not about throwing all the world’s transactions in one place and seeing how you can drive the price down to nothing. We want to drive value for publishers and advertisers. We’ve always been focused on premium and we’ll always be focused on premium. Tim has often referred to AOL as taking the Goldman Sachs model. That means being above all of this and trying to see where we can drive the highest value, and not looking to the lowest common denominator. If the exchanges give us more access to premium inventory, where we can use our tools to drive that higher value, then we’ll be interested. And when I talk about driving value, I don’t just mean that in a monetary sense. It’s value in terms of the goals of the advertiser.
Interview: AOL’s Levick: Still Shopping; Ad Exchange Model Not A Fit
Well said. We have to remember that our jobs on the media sales side are about delivering value and ROI to our advertising partners. At the end of the day all that matters is how many razor blades, cars, TV’s, etc. did my brand help you sell.
You get what you pay for. A $1.50 CPM might look pretty on a media plan, but when it fails to drive sales, that media buy looks pretty bad on a P&L.
(via evangotlib)Smart guys.
