Hey Media Guys, Bad News. It's The Creative. Don't Despair.

By Matt Rosenberg, VP Solutions

Many of you have heard it, some of you have said it: "This campaign is under-performing the last one we did in this placement so we're pulling it and reallocating to a new publisher." Or there's the flip side: "The placement is blowing the roof off the same one we bought last time, we'll definitely keep buying it."

The premise of these sentiments is that the hole in the page is responsible for the success of the campaign. However, there is a much more obvious difference-maker. It's the creative.

Yes, there are wonderful placements (big, above the scroll, on pages with high natural time spent, closely aligned with audience passions) and crappy placements (tiny buttons, below the scroll,invisible). But a piece of inventory never created an emotion. It is the creative that either earns attention or doesn't, moves people to action or leaves them cold. An ad with a compelling message will do better than a coupon to sample Soot Cola in the same placement. Late last year, comScore released a finding that the creative is 4x more responsible for the success of a campaign than the media plan.

Read more on the iMediaConnection Blog: http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2011/06/28/hey-media-guys-bad-news-its-the-creative-dont-despair/