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But Julie Ruvolo reports from the Adweek conference last week that media buyers are still hesitant about highly targeted ad campaigns:

In the traditional media-buying paradigm, advertisers buy audiences by buying content. Coca-Cola sponsors American Idol, Nissan sponsors Heroes, and so forth. But social media, ad networks, and especially behavioral ad networks, are chipping away at the “content as a proxy” mentality and positing that ads can be as or more effective if they’re tied directly to people and not to content…

But for all the talk it’s garnering, media buyers remain hesitant about jumping on the addressability band-wagon for several reasons.

16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors

Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”

On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well

I think that there is definitely more value in a vertical ad network than in a horizontal ad network. So you can say look, I've got these 400 sites and they are all women's interest. Advertisers are going to probably pay a little bit more for that. I just don't think at the end of the day you can get the brand awareness and brand engagement using algorithms, putting (Interactive Advertising Bureau) banners next to content. You can get part of the way there. To get all the way there you have to have the kind of ecosystem that was the magazine business at the height of its expression, where you can really get into that and do some cool things working with the publisher, like (the equivalent of) a two-page advertising spread online.

The industry is really good at direct response advertising online. The problem with vertical ad networks is that until you have engagement, integration, and proof of that consumer awareness, you are just going to keep devolving down to direct response pricing, which is sub $5 cost per thousand (CPM) for an ad.

We want it at the kinds of CPMs that supported the magazine and the cable industry, which is above $20, $30, $40, $50 cost per thousand. Advertisers will pay that once they feel like they're getting that value for it, and once the media is created that proves that value, and it's not just the publisher's job to create that media, it's the publishers working in partnership with the marketers and that what we try to do it with them.