If you haven’t yet seen Centro board member Andrew Swinand’s recent guest column in Advertising Age “Want to Win the Race to the Bottom? Don’t Invest in Tech” you’re missing out on one of the most prescient analyses of why agencies need to find new ways to raise their efficiencies and, in turn, their profitability.

Andrew compares agencies’ challenges – media fragmentation, unprofitable new fee structures and digital media complexity – to how newspapers found themselves struggling when they realized that diminishing their product’s quality in response to years of not investing in technology was not a sustainable long-term strategy.

His answer to the triple-threat flies in the face of the usual solutions of staffing up and working harder – Andrew suggested agencies move toward working smarter.

“For savvy agencies, investing in technology is a start. This means using technology to increase efficiencies in workflow and media buying, so that agencies can be free to focus on strategy and ideas,” he wrote. “But technology requires capital, and with persistent pressure on profit margins, agencies are reluctant or limited in their ability to invest capital in innovation.”

Exactly.

Increasing efficiencies and profitability for agencies is Centro’s core mission (by the way, thanks for the mention, Andrew!).

Centro believes prosperous ad agencies are critical to a strong and prosperous industry ecosystem. Yet, as Andrew points out, the many challenges are hurting advertising agencies’ health.

We’ve all witnessed the explosion in media choices; today there are thousands of websites and vendors, making digital media buying complex and difficult to execute. Advertising agencies are tasked with finding the manpower, expertise and/or budgets required to deal properly with this level of operational complexity. But there is another way.

Centro takes all the complexity out of buying digital media, giving agencies cost savings that they can then invest in their future. We provide the breathing room and profit increases that can empower agencies to invest in staffing up their data and analytics departments, upgrading their content creation and community management offerings, and increasing their employees’ ability to create happier clients.

To Centro, simplifying digital media’s complexity is the key to improving not only agencies’ bottom lines but the industry as a whole. Are you ready to invest in technology and win the race to the top?

Eleven years ago today Centro came to life.

I had no idea if it would be successful or a colossal failure but I felt passionately about trying to build a better type of company while also changing the advertising industry for the better.  Eleven years later, not only have we built a company we can be proud of, we’re also on our way to having a significant and lasting positive impact on the industry forever.

I have endless appreciation for our many partners and clients. It is they who have inspired us to work hard, strive for perfection, and be our best. They have enabled Centro to mature into the successful company we are today.

But the overwhelming share of my gratitude goes to all the people who have worked so hard for 11 years to make Centro great.

Building a company represents powerful extremes in one’s life.  There are great benefits to starting, building and running a company but there are also many powerful and difficult hardships.  It’s not easy to build any company, and it’s even harder to build a company going strong, and increasing its strength, 11 years into it.  Yet through the efforts of so many passionate and dedicated Centrons, here we are on our eleventh birthday, getting better, growing and still gaining strength.

My deepest thanks and best wishes for a successful 11th year!!!

(The-MakeGood.com) - The 2008 election ushered in an era of internet-based voter engagement, but that was about a million years ago in terms of how quickly the web has come to dominate nearly every aspect of campaign strategy, voter opinion gathering and messaging machinery.

Today, if marketers, publishers and brands want to profit from what’s already been hailed as America’s first truly digital presidential election, then we too have to be prepared to service the 24/7 candidate and political party campaigns that want to turn on a dime their estimated $9.8 billion for targeted advertising to support the 2012 campaign.

At Centro, the largest digital media logistics provider for federal and state political candidates and causes, we know that during what is anticipated to be the most expensive campaign season in United States history, political clients will be searching for publishing partners they can trust to get time-sensitive messaging into the marketplace on very short notice. This means the digital publishing industry needs to improve operations if it wants the trickle of political dollars to turn into a flood.

Recently, we submitted a hard-hitting piece of political creative to a well-known news website. Three days in advance of the start date, the site accidentally ran the creative live carrying with it competitive ramifications. The mistake was caught around 8 p.m., but though Centro started scrambling that minute, we couldn’t get a hold of any of the sales or ad operations representatives at the publisher. After emailing every contact and calling every number we could think of, we finally got a hold of someone at the site’s newsroom at 1 a.m. and at 1:30 a.m. the ad was removed – after running for more than five hours.

Read the remainder of the article on TheMakeGood.

• What makes an ad effective? Nielsen lists the top five characteristics of ads that exhibit strong brand linkage among consumers, including brand cues early and often (visual and verbal), leveraging the brand icon, integrating the brand in a storyline, establishing ownable creative concepts, and using messaging as a brand cue. An ongoing campaign theme is also a proven successful tool in establishing memorable brand identity. Lastly, targeting a brand’s most profitable consumer with quality placements and optimal reach and frequency levels is key. Read More: Effective Ads Marry Message with Impact
• An interesting article on gigaom speaks to the importance of digital media and how those who are not embracing it are at risk for survival. There are still many companies who are clinging to traditional media only, which is causing them to lag behind and pay the price for not embracing technology and changing consumer behavior. Overlooking digital media is not an option. Read More: Digital First Isn’t an Option for Media – it’s the Only Way Forward
• Rich media mobile ads are delivering an engagement rate of 12.8%, on average, across all devices, platforms and ad placements, according to a new report from Celtra. The report found that a well-designed rich media experience that uses a store locator, games, or social media can have a positive impact on consumer engagement and return on investment. “The big news here is that mobile rich media ads work!” - Matevž Klanjšek, chief product officer of Celtra. Read More: Rich media ads deliver engagement rate of 12.8%: report

A few weeks back in an article published on Centro’s blog titled “What do you mean you don’t see my ad?” I wrote this about viewable impressions:

“What if print advertisers only paid newspapers for the ads that were seen by their intended target?  As in, “Hey, our ad on page 5, Section B wasn’t seen by 34.5% of the audience, so we’re only sending you a check for part of the contract.”

Not possible? The stuff of a futuristic Sci-Fi world where devices are implanted in our eyes and monitored by unseen beings?

I hate to break it to you but – brace yourself – something like this is coming soon to the ever-disruptive Internet near you.”

Coming soon? More like coming now.

Just a few weeks after I wrote that piece, comScore announced its validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE) for Video, which measures GRPs, demographics and behavioral profiles of audiences reached by video campaigns, as well as the extent to which video ads were actually viewable by consumers.  (Full disclosure: Centro vouched for this technology and was listed as a partner in comScore’s press release.)

Then last Friday Gannett Co., Inc. and comScore announced that USA Today would be implementing comScore’s vCE and Digital Analytix Monetization tools to optimize inventory and validate that digital ad impressions of desktop web and display ads  are actually seen by an advertiser’s desired target audience.

As if that weren’t enough, Anthony Psacharopoulos, comScore’s senior vice president, told reporters that in addition to USA Today and Forbes, comScore is already in trials with approximately 90 out of the top 100 publishers in the United States.

Don’t be scared – this is a good thing.

On-line touts itself as highly precise and this is a move in that direction. In fact, I predict that initiatives like these will be standard within a year – and before you know it we’ll be at the point at which ads will be served on an “only if viewed” basis.

But again, this is a good thing: As Big Data and the technologies that power viewable impression data evolve, media and clients will have richer data to make faster and better decisions with their limited media dollars.

Measurement is the first step toward better media and, as we at Centro always say, your media should be beautiful and perform. So away we go.