As part of the run-up to the Context Revenue Strategies conference next week (on Thursday, October 5th only and FKA AdSpace at last Spring's adTech in San Francisco), we'll be running some terrific Q&A with some of the panelists from the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.

Today, here is a Q&A between panelist Brett Brewer, President of AdKnowledge and moderator Jay Sears, EVP at ContextWeb, Inc and the ADSDAQ Exchange. 

Your Name: Geri Guillermo

Your Job:  I'm the Director of Sales for AOL Sponsored Listings (formerly Quigo), AOL Search Marketplace and BidPlace Pro at AOL Advertising.  I oversee a team of 9 product specialists in the East and Southeast regions.  BidPlace is a new platform where large advertisers can bid on AOL packaged inventory.

Your Company:AOL's mission is to inform, entertain and connect the world through premium content and mass scale.  AOL.com provides top news, movies, music, weather, finance, sports, horoscopes and more.  Advertisers can engage consumers by integrating their brands into AOL content and extend their message by targeting audiences across Advertising.com's trusted network.  AOL works with Fortune 500 advertisers as well as the top agencies, networks, direct marketers and SEMs.

I work in the Product Sales group.  My team is comprised of SMEs (subject matter experts) that support the national sales team  in one or two product categories.

It used to be contextual advertising was the "step child" of search, living in its shadow. It finally seems to be coming into its own. Do you agree or disagree and what are the macro forces contributing to this shift?

Agree - but that's because search has always performed best in the marketing mix. But, everyone is looking to diversify once they have exhausted their search budgets and contextual is a natural complement.

Why does content and context matter?

Advertisers are always looking for good sources of traffic where they can associate their brands with premium content.  With the overlapping of media channels it's important for your brand message or product offering to be aligned at various touch points of the consumption cycle.

How does behavioral and demographic targeting tie in with content and context? Or does it? Mutually exclusive or best used together?

They tie in as part of the continued evolution of contextual.  Primarily in two ways -

AOL's content targeting, or AOL Sponsored Listings, is about reaching a desired demographic through the premium vertical sites in our network (AOL Money & Finance, CNNMoney.com, TheStreet.com, and many more). 

Content targeting has evolved.  You can now reach that site-defined demographic (DemoMatch), but you can also add a layer of demographic and behavioral targeting to ensure you really are reaching your desired audience.

The caveat here is not to slice and dice too granularly because you need scale with content targeting.   We (AOL Sponsored Listings) have the tools and scale to accomplish both.

The Long Tail and media fragmentation. More than 80% of Internet sessions start with search-the advertiser's customer is now everywhere. Adsense has one million publishers carrying its ad tags. How do you compete in the Long Tail and against an installed based such as Adsense?

We don't.  We have created a unique value proposition in the premium publisher space which makes us a "must-buy".  Our publisher relationships are primarily exclusive, so advertisers need to come to us to reach a desired audience - if you want to advertise on ESPN.com on a text link basis, you have to work with ASL.  If you want the AOL audience, you have to come to us.

I've seen this with other networks too that are carving out a differentiated niche.  Often they evolve into specific demographic and are successful because of that. 

Search has benefited enormously from last click attribution. More recently, Microsoft has published Atlas Institute research on engagement mapping and more advertisers are considering multiple attribution protocol when determining media mix. What are some of the macro "forcing functions" you see behind multiple attribution models and how will this benefit contextual advertising?

Not every conversion should be measured off the last click.  Contextual can benefit from this new research because search has traditionally gotten all the credit for conversions.

Marketers need to become more savvy and not just allocate budget to search.  They need to look at their marketing strategy holistically, and the entire customer lifecycle, including offline.  How should a billboard on the highway get credit?  Many cycles start offline and transition online where conversions are eventually captured.

The better we get at measurement, the more mainstream it will become.  We are currently conducting research that ties into this theory as well.

Site targeting. When you move into the Long Tail (or even past the top 1,000 or 2,000 publishers), can site targeting deliver scalable solutions to advertisers? Is content a better answer because it is a common currency across all web pages?

Not necessarily.  AOL Sponsored Listings' network has only ~ 500 publishers, but we served over 60 billion ad impressions last month.  Site targeting can deliver scale in the premium publisher environment, even without the long tail.

Dynamic content. Web pages change constantly. How important is real-time - real time valuation, allocation, optimization?  Many folks who talk about real-time talk about "audience aggregation" and re-targeting, but how important is content as one element of a "real-time" decision?

For us (AOL Sponsored Listings), the dynamic nature of news does not play a large role in our optimizing towards content as we do not work on a keyword basis.  However, advertisers in our network can still take advantage of breaking news as those advertisers deemed "most popular" by our users will appear most often.  Our system will naturally start to serve those ads with the best performance on these pages - those that yield the best.

Keyword vs. category targeting. Keywords are the holy grail of search. But are keywords effective in content targeting? Are they a destructive vestige of search-too granular or sometimes out of context to be impactful for content targeting? Is category targeting the answer?

This fits in well with our offering. 

Mapping keywords contextually is definitely effective but also potentially limiting.  Having the opportunity to site target allows you to demo match and increase your scale.  For example, Golfsmith.com can promote their new Nike irons to the male user, between 18-34, who reads their news in AOL News, checks stocks in AOL Finance, updates fantasy football leagues in ESPN, all without keyword targeting.

Pricing Models. CPM. CPC. CPA. Cost Per Whatever-engagement, order-Cost Per Flowbee. Is this the direction we are headed? Good or bad?

That's funny - I heard this one the other day - CPHM - cost per half impression.  Don't ask me to elaborate but something about splitting the impression.

I think these pricing models will always be at the root but evolving into new models is a good thing.  Advertisers like P&G spend so much time talking about their ideal customer and how to reach them and how they should measure positive return, this flexibility can only benefit them.

Can you sell content ads alongside search ads-1. With the same value proposition? And 2. To the same SEM buyer? Or is it more sensible to sell to agencies?

Yes, as long as it's relevant.  If it's rooted off the keyword search, the same value proposition holds because the user experience is retained.   You could sell this to both the SEM buyer and any agency.

Tell us about you.

What did you do last Saturday?

Golfed in 103 degree heat (celebrated my one year anniversary in Scottsdale). At least it was dry heat.  I don't recall breaking a sweat which was lovely, and I beat my husband by 6 strokes.

What's the best conference you attended in the last two years (besides AdTech and CRS, of course)?

Well, CRS is my new favorite conference....but I find Search Insider Summit/Mediapost highly valuable.  The group is smaller, setting is more intimate which makes the panels more thoughtful and interactive, the activities are fun and the networking is productive.

If you could be appointed to any position in a US Presidential cabinet post, what position would it be and why? 

Reggie Love! His personal aide must get more info from anyone in his cabinet, probably even more than the First Lady.

Your LinkedIn profile: http://linkedin.com/pub/geri-guillermo/0/b43/287

Your Twitter account: believe it or not, I don't tweet

Your Company's Twitter account: @AOL_Advertising

Thanks, Geri!

Geri's Bio:

Geri Guillermo is the Director of Sales for AOL Sponsored Listings (formerly Quigo), AOL Search Marketplace and BidPlace at AOL Advertising, where she oversees a team of product specialists in the East and Southeast regions. Geri was responsible for the successful integration of the Quigo sales team into her organization and continues to scale the business. She also manages product sales for BidPlace Pro, a new platform where large advertisers bid on AOL packaged inventory.

Before AOL, Geri spent two years in the sales organization at Microsoft, assisting in and promoting the launch of adCenter, Microsoft's new search platform to direct clients and agencies. Prior to Microsoft, Geri spent four years in Search sales at Yahoo!. She began her advertising career at US News & World Report and The Atlantic Monthly. Geri is an avid golfer and resides in Manhattan with her husband.

About CRS

Produced by Marc Phillips and David Rodnitzky in conjunction with adTech, CRS is a "conference within a conference" is 100% focused on contextual advertising-an area that has needed its own conference for some time. Please join us for the CRS kick-off panel "The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices" at 9am on Thursday, November 5th.

Our panel looks like:

ADVERTISING:
The State of Content Advertising: The Players, The Options, The Best Practices

Where is contextual advertising going? What's hot, what's not? What can you do today to make your content buys massively profitable? This roundtable discussion features some of the top minds in contextual advertising sharing their insight on the state of the industry now, and in the future.

MODERATOR:
Jay Sears, Executive VP, Strategic Products and Business Development, ContextWeb, Inc./ADSDAQ Exchange

PANELISTS:
James Colborn, Director, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft

Oded Itzhak, Founder and CEO, AdSide

Brett Brewer, President, AdKnowledge

Geri Guillermo, Director of Sales, BidPlace Pro, Sponsored Listings and AOL Search, AOL Advertising

Jeff Arena, Senior Product Manager, Yahoo!

Rajas Moonka, Group Business Product Manager, Google, Inc.

Special offer: Register today and receive $100 discount (Promo Code: CRSNY91) for the upcoming Content Revenue Strategies @ ad:tech NY.

We'll be posting additional CRS, industry-related news and ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange insights and updates in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.