Programmatic platforms should concentrate on effective media placement – not the actual content, message or make-up of the ad, writes Dominic Mills. So why is Rocket Fuel trying to solve creative problems?
A couple of weeks ago I came across an ad tech company that claimed it provided advertisers with “the programmatic of everything”. I’ll spare their blushes because they tell me they’re in the process of ditching this particular slogan, but it underscores a trend in this space: increasingly, these outfits see themselves as omnipotent, able to apply their brain power – human or machine-powered – and provide the definitive answer to everything.
And so last week we had the case of Rocket Fuel, so confident in its own abilities that it produced a report telling telecoms advertisers how they can improve their display creative.
And who are these helpful people? I must confess I have trouble placing them on the famed Luma-scape map of the ad tech eco-system, but I think they are a DSP. Or perhaps they just crunch data…who knows?
Their corporate gobbledygook isn’t much help. “We unlock the power of artificial intelligence to make digital advertising better. We make our customers heroes every day.”
As if that isn’t enough, using the tired old ‘what-would-you-be-if-you-were-a-car’ analogy, they claim to be the Bugatti Veyron of high-performance technology.
I am no car buff, but as far as I know the Bugatti Veyron is an eye-wateringly priced, VW-owned, modern take on a classic car. Priced at more than $1.5 million, VW probably only sells about 12 a year. As analogies go, it’s probably not very helpful to your average mass-market advertiser who will shy away, convinced Rocket Fuel will charge them for a lot of stuff they don’t need.
And what they really don’t need, as in the case of telecoms advertisers, is a tech company telling them such pointless nuggets as:
– An animated ad produces an average 84% higher conversion rate than a non-animated one
– In this order, ads with a green, white or grey background do better
– Conversion rates are 45% higher for ads that feature the brand’s tagline
– Ads that feature a price tag and a special offer outperform
– Ads that feature a call to action such as ‘Check Availability’ do better
Hello? Is Lord Obvious at home? It’s hard to know where to start with this.
What sort of green would you use? Green runs the spectrum from olive to lime. Should Virgin and Vodafone, whose colour is red, go green? And what idiot creative wouldn’t use animation, a tagline or a call to action. Doh. That’s pretty much the whole point of digital display, certainly in the fiercely competitive telecoms world. (I note, by the way, that Rocket Fuel lists just the one telecoms advertiser – Verizon – and neglects to feature any telecoms advertisers in its list of case studies. Which may call into question its credentials.)
And what happens if they all start using green? How would you distinguish your brand from the competitor’s then? As for averages…it reminds me of the line about the statistician who drowned in a pool that was, on average, 11 inches deep.
Rocket Fuel may claim to have the power of a Bugatti Veyron, but this ‘insight’ has all the performance spec of a milk float.
What I find peculiar about this is that Rocket Fuel chose to go public with this stuff during Cannes week, which is all about celebrating the magic of creativity, not the logic of some data cruncher.
And therein lies the issue. I am, contrary to what some people might believe, a big fan of the potential of programmatic trading, armed with data, to serve the right ad at the right time and in the right context.
But the likes of Rocket Fuel should concentrate on the media placement, the time and the context – not the actual content, message or make-up of the ad. That’s the task of the people who do the magic. And the magic comes from genuine creativity, not some sort of painting-by-numbers, tick-all-the-boxes, approach to advertising.
Imagine the reaction if some geek from Xaxis marches in to tell the creative director of JWT that he or she has the answer to all the world’s creative problems. They would be out on their ear before they could say ‘let me run you through our algorithm’.
It may well be that we will see more of this sort of thing. It may be the arrogance of people who think that an algorithm is the answer to everything.
Or, wearing my cynical hat, it may be that this is some sort of pre-emptive smokescreen the programmatics can use to defend under-performance of the media buy. If their customer turns out to be a zero, not a hero, well then, let’s blame the creative.
In case anyone thinks I have a particular animus against Rocket Fuel, I don’t. Indeed, they look as though they’re doing some interesting stuff that moves the game on, including launching an audience guarantee scheme that means the advertiser doesn’t pay for waste.
But I’ll take you back to Rocket Fuel’s tagline about using the power of artificial intelligence to help advertisers.
In this particular case, their efforts are certainly not intelligent, but they are artificial. They’d be best served using their undoubted data crunching skills in areas they have credibility and expertise. Get back in the box.
