First to offer insight into companies, advertisers and products running on ad networks
Analysis finds more than 7,000 companies advertising on ad networks
New York, NY, April 28 -- Kantar Media, the leading provider of strategic advertising intelligence to advertisers, advertising agencies and media properties, is introducing Internet ad network competitive tracking reporting.
With the introduction, Kantar Media will be the only research provider to offer detailed insight into the companies, advertisers and products running on ad networks, and the only source of industry-specific and category-specific ad network trending.
The reporting will be available as data through the company’s Stradegy™ product, which provides competitive multi-media expenditure and occurrence information to media buyers, and Evaliant™ product, which details competitive online advertising intelligence, providing expenditure, occurrence, impressions and creative.
“Advertising networks have emerged as a primary channel for Internet display advertising, enabling advertisers and agencies to reach both wide audiences and targeted demographic groupings. Ad networks have made it possible for site owners to monetize inventory that hasn’t been sold through direct sales channels,” says Mark Nesbitt, president of Kantar Media’s Intelligence sector. “But to date, industry- and advertiser-level trending and data analysis for such networks, as well as insight into the source of such display advertising, has not been available. Our reporting will now enable further growth and utilization of these networks by providing insight into the volume of network advertising running across the 4,500 premier, top-tier and local sites in the U.S. and Canada that Kantar Media monitors.”
“Kantar Media's ad network impression data will be an invaluable resource for brands and marketers going forward,” said Judit Nagy, Vice President, Market Research, Fox Audience Network. “This pioneering effort to track ad network impression volumes helps express the importance and the maturity of online ad networks in the overall media marketplace."
Kantar Media’s Internet ad network reporting, which was designed in consultation with agencies, publishers and ad networks, will enable advertisers and agencies to see which brands are running on which networks. Duplication reporting will also allow buyers to better optimize network buys for the greatest reach and efficiency. While the reporting will not reveal network individual site placements, agencies will be able to identify which networks have the highest level of overlap when evaluating flights and campaigns.
The service will allow site owners and media companies to understand which networks have the highest penetration of advertising running within the universe of premier and market sites that Kantar monitors. With this, media companies can target prospects not running on networks – that is, brands paying for premium placements directly through site partnerships – or prospects advertising on ad networks but not with them. Additionally, sellers of advertising will be able to evaluate product categories that may suit available inventory that carries light or no current network activity.
According to Nesbitt, Kantar’s tracking will make it possible to easily view competitive brand network detail to determine who is responsible for the majority of campaigns and make it possible to understand network share across industries, categories, advertisers, brands and products. At release, Kantar Media will be collecting data for 29 networks, with more networks to be added over time.
ANALYSIS OF INTERNET AD NETWORKS
Using a two-month data set (December 2009-January 2010) that reports ad network impression delivery by product, parent company and category, Kantar Media documented an initial analysis of Internet ad networks.
The analysis found that as a group, the 29 ad networks tracked accounted for 22.1% of total impression delivery across the monitoring base. Publisher direct ad placements had a dominant share of 77.9%, with the top four ad networks accounting for more than 85% of total network impression delivery.
An analysis of the top ten product categories based on total impression delivery, showed that nearly 80% of the impressions for the “Amusements and Events” category were via networks, while some top product categories distributed less than 10% of their ad weight through networks.
Kantar Media’s analysis of ad network monitoring data identified more than 7,000 parent companies that placed ads through the 29 networks tracked during the December-January period. However, a select group of just ten companies accounted for more than 40% of all network-delivered impressions.
That represented a higher concentration than the publisher direct segment where the top ten companies accounted for about one-third of all impressions delivered via that channel. The top ten network advertisers are a mix of large blue-chip companies and smaller, less well-known firms.
The top ten publisher direct advertisers include prominent internet marketers. The tables below show the Top Ten rankings for each of these segments. The percentages are each company’s share of total segment impressions. There are four companies common to both lists.
85% of the network-delivered impressions in the data set flowed through just
four of the 29 ad networks. This implies that individual advertisers and products concentrate their network buys on a small number of these entities.
Kantar Media also analyzed ad network activity for each product by the Top 100 parent companies by internet ad spend to identify how many individual networks were used.
The results showed 56% of the products used exactly one ad network. Only 17% of products used more than four networks. The mean was just 2.3 networks out of the pool of 29.
The full ad network analytics and trends report is available at:
http://www.kantarmediana.com/Ad-Networks-Analytics.php
About Kantar Media
Established in more than in 50 countries, Kantar Media enables exploration of multimedia momentum through analysis of print, radio, TV, internet, social media, and outdoors worldwide. Kantar Media offers a full range of media insights and audience measurement services through its global business sectors – Intelligence, Audiences and TGI & Custom. Combining the deepest expertise in the industry, Kantar Media tracks more than 3 million brands and delivers insights to more than 22,000 customers around the world. www.KantarMediaNA.com