CEBP and Advertising

I saw this terrific article on GigaOm discussing the micro economics of online advertising.

So, for those who have taken just a few economic courses the big picture idea from the article about the potential disintegration of the online advertising market (other than Google) is easy to follow. For those of you who have taken lots of economics courses follow the thread of comments for the granular details and arguments that exemplify why the general population tends to make fun of economists.

Seriously, I thought the article was great. Check out the author Mike Speiser and his archive . I especially enjoyed the attempts to cost average leads generated by Google and (non search) Yahoo. The author estimates Gooogle generates and average of 49 cents per lead vs. Yahoo's $2.93 for display advertising with costs of 30cents for Google and $2.17 for Yahoo. His argument is that the low cost producer will continue to gain market share. Remember in the online world a simple click though is considered a lead. We can agree or disagree with the numbers but I want to use them as a baseline to show the importance of CEBP driven advertising.

That's some background. Now lets get into the nitty gritty of CEBP and how it can leverage some of the $400 Billion spent globally on advertising.

There are generally three purposes for advertising.
1. Drive consumers to buy something now or very soon.
2. Influence the consumer's perception of a product, service or brand over time to drive decision based purchases. (Cars, Computers, B to B marketing)
3. Position a brand in the marketplace against competition. ( Premium, Cool, Safe, Reliable)

Our (My) experience is that Commmunications Enabled Business Processes can improve advertising efforts at all three levels.
1. Click to Connect functionality can drive real people ( and their phone numbers) to companies advertising. Google is testing this functionality with keywords that are high priced ex. $20 per click through and/or phrases that may have problems with click fraud.

2. Diary functionality is very useful on any product site or community aggregation site that brings consumers together for reviews. It is helpful in providing real time feedback "How's my driving on the back of trucks" or " Tell us about your meal and restaurant experience". It also helps build community around services or products targeted at segments of the population ...new moms looking for help and guidance on product selection, newly diagnosed patients using a drug. ( BazaarVoice)

3. Interactive agencies creating campaigns looking for cool or fun campaigns with an opportunity for a viral upside have successfully added voice functionality. MonkEmail, Tide, Transformers

Each specific advertising campaign is valuable to the client, agency, consumer,and CEBP vendor.
What isn't well understood is how over time the telco service provider could ethically collect ,re-use, or simply datamine the contact numbers driven through lots of these campaigns. To me, that datamining component becomes the linch pin to a true two sided business model for the Advertising vertical.