ARA Lifestyle - Two Click Display Arbitrage

For those wondering if any other company was operating a model similar to that of Adblade, the answer is yes. Although, in fairness, it would have been more appropriate to mention this post's company of interest, AdFusion, operators of ARA Lifestyle, prior to Adblade. Astute web observers will have noticed these thumbnail image and text ads running on the usual run of network inventory for almost two years, whereas Adblade is a relatively recent phenomenon. Both companies in effect aggregate display inventory for others, charging those they work with on a CPC basis. That is where the similarities end, as unlike Adblade, Adfusion has seemingly taken the more cautious route, i.e. no flogs, and rather than promoting an advertiser's site directly, i.e. click on the ad in the display unit and go to the advertiser's site, you go to a site run by Adfusion - ARALifestyle.

Here are some examples of Adfusion ads. They were the first I can remember to make content / news looking ads (outside of the text based AdSense ads). The first ad unit is their most prominent one, but they have experimented with various iterations (the second image). 

 

A click on one of the ads within in an ad takes you to a very different type of landing page than we commonly see. As mentioned above, it doesn't go directly to the advertiser's landing page. Instead it goes to a page about the content area the advertiser specializes in that is hosted on ARA Lifestyle. The ad units themselves signal this. Their most prolific ad unit and style reads at the top, "Lifestyle Articles provided by:" (It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Adfusion began with an SEO play in mind at first.)

As one who snores, let's go to the page "Are You Snoring Yourself To Death?", I presume they mean death by partner willing to strangle you for not being quiet...

 

You will notice the topics certainly aren't high brow reading, and they cross-promote their other articles/ads on each page. They take a decidedly soft sell approach though.

While I have seen Adfusion's ads for some time, they came top of mind recently when I saw them running on the Wall Street Journal. It's either a sign of their success or a sign of the times. Naturally, it's probably a little bit of both with the latter helping create the former.

And, as we can see from their Compete numbers, the company does decent volume. If I am guessing correctly, these numbers are slightly misleading because it represents landing page loads not server loads, which we often see represented when looking up volume for most ad networks. Were it server load for their ads, it would easily be multiples higher.

What I like about Adfusion is that in many ways, it does the same thing incentive promotion offers do, only more cleanly. They take a user not interested in any particular topic and turned them into a customer for another company. The analogy that always comes to mind is that of waiting to check out at a grocery store. We're finished shopping, yet the stores turn a percentage of people into consumers for things they didn't come to the store for - magazines, gum, batteries, gift cards, etc. Not sexy, but it sells.

Comments

[DanaTodd]

Hi Jay,
If you'd like to continue your exploration of unique ad offerings that look like "article marketing" or advertorial, I invite you to look at Newsforce.

Our model is quite different from AdFusion and Adblade, in that we are a platform licensed to publishers to help monetize their valuable news properties better.

Because we're not a remnant network, we have some unique differentiators:
- Advertisers can control their placements, just like a regular ad buy
- High volumes and premium placement are more easily guaranteed for advertisers, because the publishers themselves set the price and the inventory allocation
- We can semantically target advertiser stories (on remnant networks, contextual/semantic targeting is far more difficult or impossible since it's often a "blind buy" for the ad network picking up the impression)
- The bulk of our advertisers are brands and larger companies who are purchasing space for product education, awareness, thought leadership and political goals (not teeth whitening). These are the same companies who understand the value of taking out a full-page ad in the NYTimes to tell their side of a story.

Also, most of our customers write their own stories and frequently test and update their multimedia landing pages. Since we host the story, we can report back the user interest in their topic/messaging, and we also allow them to A/B test the headlines as much as they want.

If you'd like more info, we're delighted to answer questions for you.

Thanks for digging into these new offerings for advertisers. It's important that advertisers have plenty of options for performance pricing (Adblade, AdFusion, and others), as well as large-scale traditional controlled media placements - and as you can see there are now many alternatives to "plain old banner ads".

Best,
Dana Todd, CMO
Newsforce Network

[Jim Musselwhite]

Jay,

It's great to see some insights about some of these up and coming advertorial networks. There isn't much of this to find, so your insights are invaluable.

And thanks, Dana, for enlightening us further as to how Newsforce differentiates itself from the "teeth whitening" advertiser crowd.

Why do you suppose there aren't MORE of these networks given their apparent success, both for the network and the advertiser? Also, I was very aware of Adfusion, AdBlade, and Newsforce -- but are there any other contenders?I'd really appreciate any feedback.

Thanks,
Jim

[Rob Leathern]

Oh boy - we're about to see a lot more of these I would hazard to say. Barriers to entry are fairly low -- the biggest problem is buying media scalably and companies like ours (http://cpmatic.com) are helping people to do that without as much overhead as going through ad networks.

Should be fun to watch.
Rob

[Matias Leiva]

Hey Jay,

Thank you for the great content. I was on epsn and noticed this add, and as a marketer I always want to see their backend.

Awesome value, once again.

[Carol]

Jay,

In the future please stste that taxpayers, not Obama are giving funds to individuals to go back to school. The ad as stated currently is very misleading. Obama is not giving the money, we are. Thank you so much!

[mike Jensen]

Jay,

As others expressed, great insight for marketers. I appreciate the update on the newest efforts in digital DR marketing. Things move fast, and as a company not just focused in the world of the latest display marketing, this information is critical and not easily found.

Regards,
Mike Jensen
Partner
Mission Control