Digital Thoughts: If we build it, they will come
by Jay Weintraub
This
voice called out to me, it told me a great product to
market. I’m all excited; I’m going to do it… but wait. If I
build it, how am I to get people to come to the site? Once I
figure out how to drive people to my site, how do I best track
conversions? If I can track my conversions, how do I do so
in a way that lets me know which site sent me the
conversions? After I’ve figured all of that out, I’m sure
I’ll want an easy way to share that information with the
originating site. Seeing as search is popular, I will almost
definitely need a way to have a good return on advertising
spend and know what words actually made me the money. I have
a smart technology team, but can they build this type of
technology… should they? What do I do? Build versus buy.
Unleash the mad technologists or pay for someone else’s.
There used to be a clear
delineation of what technology was obviously better to
purchase and what was obviously better to build. Agencies
representing clients didn’t build ad servers, they bought.
Let’s say you are Circuit City looking to do search; you
don’t build in house technology, you pay to have others do
it for you. But, if you are an ad network that needs
granular tracking and customized reporting, you didn’t want
to rely on someone else’s technology, so you built.
If you are a lead generator,
your choices aren’t quite as clear. You have heard about
this affiliate company that thousands of other merchants
use. You have also heard about this tracking software
company that would allow you to work with multiple
distribution sites without their having to sign up through
another company. Then again you could also use both, track
with one and use one for distribution. At the same time, you
are pretty sure your team would be able to provide the
functionality in time and on budget. When it comes to
tracking options, I’ll call the build versus buy a tie.
My idea is great. Except now,
I have all these email addresses that I don’t know what
to do with. I remember a few years ago that it would have been
easy to find a service to help me send them out for free.
Now, there are still many options to help me send out my
mail, but do I want to try and send it and monetize it
myself, knowing that I might be paying for emails that get
automatically sent to the junk mail folder? With the new
laws and impossible filtering, I would have to develop an
expertise to effectively monetize my names. I’m not sure if
it’s worth going through the learning curve. It begins to
sound even less appealing when I hear about a company that
can manage the list and ads all while making more than I
might be able to make myself. I might just have to score one
for the buy here.
That still leaves me with the
registration process. When users come to my site they enter
information. Quite a few advertisers and ad networks have
ads that I can host and send the data collected to them.
They even have online stats. The only downside is that I
don’t have time to fully analyze the offers to determine the
best order of the ads. It can also get complex dealing with
so many different entities. I now see that several of the
companies with whom I work offer fully managed, custom
branded sign-up paths. That a company has a plug and play
co-registration vehicle isn’t new, but to see the level of
customization some of the new ones allow is. I don’t know if
we have a distinct winner. I give credit for the
competitiveness of the buy offer in an area that once seemed
unlikely to have a competitive offering.
Perhaps, the issue surrounding buying versus
building isn’t about it being less clear as initially
implied. It could be that there simply are more options
today than there were previously. With evolving complexities
in the marketplace, segmentation, and the specialization
required to become proficient, now more than ever, buy
options start to look attractive. It used to be that build
was the ultimate dream. When a site got big enough, it would
shed its plug and play technologies, just as the site would
look to have only direct relationships. In our space, what
once was the path to follow no longer appears to be the only
path to follow. The road to riches now has legitimate
options. Make sure you choose your path carefully. Have good
tread on your shoes though, because your partner today
might become your competitor tomorrow.
Make sure
you choose your path carefully. Have good tread on your
shoes though, because your partner today might become your
competitor tomorrow.
Jay Weintraub
