Has Reckitt Cheapened Web Video Advertising?

In March of ’09 our program started, and some press came out, along with some numbers that we had not confirmed. We do not comment on rates or budgets, but things leak (a story broke last year that RB was spending $40 million on Web video alone). We made a big investment and a year later reupped that investment. Right now, online video is an integral part of our online media mix, and it wasn’t prior to 2009. I’d say range-wise in the first year it was 5-10 of budget, and we then increased the following year.

We have a very, very rigorous purchase process for video, just like we do when buying TV. Unfortunately, there are some companies out there that exhibit poor business processes and tactics, and a few bad apples have spoiled the bunch. [For example, Digiday found several Lysol ads perched on piracy sites, as well as a banner for Jet Dry alongside a provocative Miley Cyrus photo.] On the flip side, there have been so many great advances in the space. And we are heading toward a true combination of digital and TV, when we see real convergence and the two become more and more homogenous. That is the exciting stuff, along with the targeting Web video offers. Now when you are serving billions of impressions, you can’t police all of them.

When it happens, we contact those vendors. We have both an automated and manual process to track this stuff. It’s not true that we influence how a vendor or company is going to run its business. I wouldn’t say that a business is going to act in a nefarious way just because of a certain budget amount. I’ve actually had many peers applaud us for being so aggressive in this space. I don’t believe that we’ve cheapened the market; I think we’ve helped legitimize it. The online video marketplace has tiered and it should, just like TV with dayparts. Some are more valuable and some are less. Web video is definitely following suit, and that’s a good thing. It shows the evolution and maturation of the marketplace.

We helped level set that. A few years ago everyone was asking for $25 CPMs no matter who they were; we helped change that. Content and data are king. People were talking about inventory shortages at one point, and I don’t believe that was ever the case. We exposed that.

I wish that someone would be able to police it. You have your entrepreneurs coming into the space doing great things, and then you have people coming in just for easy money. I’d love to see a governing body. The ANA, the IAB or even the federal government itself. It’s not hard to find the culprits. The problem is there is no force or body to take action. Stuff like that holds ingenuity and progress back. I remember the early years of display advertising, when this same sort of thing kept happening. It really kept big companies, big brands from coming online for years. It made them very uncomfortable. When a vendor pulls this stuff, they are personally contacted by someone on the team. Then they are confronted with data and immediately shut off. Depending on the severity of it, we may seek damages — that it makes goods, or some money back. We are not going to pay for rogue placements. It would be a shame if it happens again. We have a whole team dedicated to tracking this.