OMD - The World of CPM Advertising

September 18th, 2008 by Peter Glaeser | RSS feed for comments on this post | TrackBack URI

Yesterday I visited online marketing düsseldorf (OMD), Germany’s leading trade show for the online marketing industry. It was my first time and I have to say that returned with mixed feelings. I expected it to be a stunning event but it wasn’t.

In numbers of booths and by its sheer size OMD beats all related fairs I’ve been to anywhere. Somebody said it was much larger than ad:tech New York which is true. The exhibit halls are seriously huge. But it’s also very crowded because the fair is quite untargeted. Admission to the exhibit halls and some presentations is free which also attracted a lot of semi-professionals. I even saw Toni Schumacher (the goal keeper of Germany’s national soccer team back in the 80s) on the floor.

Again, the list of exhibitors was impressive. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, MySpace etc., they were all there. However, somehow OMD didn’t seem to be my thing. The bottom line is that this whole event is pretty much about CPM advertising. There were all these media companies trying to sell advertising on their sites and also way too many agencies that are just looking for your search marketing or branding budget.

I don’t have a background in offline advertising and started doing online marketing with a performance-based mindset right from the beginning. The world of CPM is just not my thing and I think it will never be. In the world of CPM you have to play the corporate game including wearing a suit so that dumb clients buy some ads on your shitty inventory of sites. I had a blast at Affiliate Summit because it was about people doing business with other people. At OMD it was just about companies doing business with other companies.

If you’re an advertiser and want to generate a lot of volume at whatever cost, OMD is the place to find media companies and agencies who are competing to get your money. As an affiliate marketer whether you’re a merchant, publisher or network, I don’t think the outcome is that great. I was looking for merchants or technical solution providers but saw very few of them.