Coming Soon To The Endangered Species List: Online Ad Sales Teams?

The self-serve ads option has been all the rage for search ads the last few years. Increasingly, now, do-it-yourself is becoming similarly popular for the display ad space. Over the past several months, a number of companies have come up with DIY offerings: Fox Interactive Media (NYSE: NWS) began testing a self-serve option for its local TV websites and on MySpace, as Facebook’s DIY program has been drawing interest from small advertisers as well. Meanwhile, a slew of relatively new vendors like AdBrite, AdReady and AdItAll have all been pushing self-serve display-buying options as well. On the web publisher side, AOL (NYSE: TWX) just released PubAccess, a self-serve tool aimed at small publishers as a way to manage their display ads. Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which was credited with helping spur the rise of search ads with its self-serve system, has launched a similar service. The emergence of DIY ad services for display have the potential bring in greater numbers of small advertisers who can’t afford display ads through the current route. Self-service also appeals to those marketers who can’t afford demands like Yahoo’s (NSDQ: YHOO) usual service, which requires advertisers to commit thousands of dollars per month as a price of admission to place display ads across its portal. Contrast that with the few cents its costs to reach a thousand users with Facebook’s and MySpace’s DIY systems. Display ads are expected to be 40 percent of the $20 billion online ad market over the next few years. That growth is dependent on the process becoming more simple and less expensive. As the self-serve option takes hold, WSJ compares the likely shakeup in the online ad industry to that of travel agents, a business that has been marginalized as consumers have tended to plan their own trips online as well.
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-coming-soon-to-the-endangered-species-list-online-ad-sales-teams/