Media & Marketing/Siobhán O'Connell:The world wide web is a big place and Irish surfers spend a lot of their time on overseas websites. Naturally advertisers want to catch them wherever they are, but how to do it?
One option is to place a buying order with the plethora of network buyers that have sprung up recently. These buyers aggregate banner advertising slots across hundreds of websites and parcel delivery of impressions - page views by surfers - to advertisers at a competitive price.
The only problem with this is that some of the websites which attract huge audiences are not very politically correct.
In a recent investigation into cyber bullying, the BBC's Panoramaprogramme came across the website, PureStreetFights.com. Besides videos of happy slapping action by unruly kids, the website was adorned with advertisements from bluechip brands such as British Telecom and Carphone Warehouse.
After the programme aired, the brands moved quickly to pull the advertisements and launched investigations to find out why the "mistake" had occurred.
Carphone Warehouse said in a statement: "We buy mass online advertising space on third-party online advertising networks. Upon investigation, it transpires that one of our online advertising networks mistakenly advertised TalkTalk on PureStreetFights due to a technical error on their part. This was a breach of contract and we immediately cancelled our contract with this network."
Closer to home, Peugeot and Eircom unknowingly ended up on the unsavoury celebrity website, Deanscentral.com. Once they found out, they also removed the advertisements.
While most advertisers allocate most of their online budgets to portals and publishers they know, more than 20 per cent of online display advertising in the UK goes through sales houses or networks that represent thousands of smaller websites. Network buying is also increasing in Ireland.
One key advantage of the network buy, or "blind buy" as it is also known, is that the cost per 1,000 impressions is very cheap, as low as 50 cent in some cases compared with an average of €8 per 1,000 impressions on the Irish portals.
The drawback is that the advertiser does not know which websites their advertisement will end up on, though they can specify broad categories such as sport, motoring, consumer etc.
Paul Cassidy, managing director of Katapult, the digital division of advertising agency Owens DDB, says: "We would never recommend network buys. You can end up with responsible advertisers advertising on inappropriate sites. Although you are buying incredibly cheap advertising, the ramifications can be damaging in terms of brand image."
However, network buys are not going to go away. The web is incredibly fragmented, and if a network buy is the only way for an advertiser to catch the thousands of people in Ireland who surf RottenTomatoes.com, for example, then the practice is sure to continue.
Dublin online advertising agency Ican regularly buys space across web networks for its Irish advertisers. According to Ican chief executive Shenda Loughnane: "Network buys represent excellent value for money and give the advertisers cost-effective access to Irish traffic on a wide range of international sites. Most of the top advertisers use ad networks extensively. For instance, if you go to XE.com or weather.com, you are likely to see Irish-targeted adverts."
Loughane says that when Ican buys advertising networks, it specifies that its advertisements do not run on social networking websites, where users are free to upload whatever content they wish.
Vodafone recently pulled its advertisements from Facebook.com after they were placed on the British National Party's profile page.
"Irish sites don't like to see money going out of the country to UK-based networks, so they try to convince advertisers that it's better to advertise on Irish sites," says Loughnane.
"Personally, I think it's high time Irish sites, rather than moaning that advertisers do not spend enough with them, got their act together and improved their sites to make them more appealing to Irish users."
Current accounts
The Department of Social and Family Affairs is inviting tenders for a TV and radio campaign to promote the introduction of the half-rate carers' allowance.
The Institute of Technology in Tralee is looking for an advertising agency to place newspaper recruitment advertisements, as well as buy radio, cinema and outdoor media space. For details see www.e-tenders.gov.ie.
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