Ain't it the truth?

Points to Steve Hall of AdRANTS for pointing out the obvious in his post Media Optimization has Trumped Creative Optimization.  For 10 years online ad serving has provided the technology to truly get the most bang for your media buck by testing and optimizing multiple creative units within your banner campaigns. This technology has gone from being misunderstood and underutilized in the late 90’s, to virtually disappearing during the dot com bust, to enjoying mild utilization by the smartest advertisers, to once again falling into disuse.  Steve sites creative production cost as the possible culprit, but can that really compare to all those wasted media dollars?

Media giants and networks have created their own proprietary technology to automatically optimize your media and creative so you don’t have to worry about it. But where does this leave the advertiser? Steve’s right that direct marketers won’t sleep until they find the right message and creative to bring about the desired response. And let’s face it, the internet IS a direct marketing medium.

Current technology is ready to dynamically generate a customized message within Flash to the person it knows is helming the computer keyboard. But will advertisers be fully prepared to take advantage of this advanced technology if they’re not even currently doing creative optimization? Is testing and analysis doomed to go the way of the Sony Betamax video standard, defeated by runaway market conditions that don’t necessarily have the customers’ best interest at heart?

- Layne Salter