When it comes to doing business with ad networks, media planners have plenty of issues. But what about the relatively minor gripes? Underscore Marketing's president lays out a few of the "little" issues.

Whenever a group of media buyers get together to share gripes about ad networks, the first thing that comes up, invariably, is that there are so many of them. They can even get difficult to tell apart after the first dozen meetings or so. That's why so many network sales reps are frequently asked to kick off presentations with what makes their network different from all the others.

With so much concentration on differentiation, sometimes media folks mistakenly communicate the notion that this is the only issue that matters. I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. There are plenty of minor gripes that media planners have about ad networks. Here are a few:

1. Remarkably stupid-sounding names -- I know all the good domain names are taken, but can ad networks refrain from adopting monikers that sound like something Wham-O, Inc. rejected as a potential product name for the Frisbee?
   
   
2. Not-so-thinly-veiled conflicts -- It doesn't typically escape the notice of a media buyer that an ad network has creative services, media planning and research in-house. Calling that amalgamation of services an "ad network" is not likely going to throw buyers off the scent and make them stop thinking of the network as competition.
   
   
3. Bragging about uniques -- Great. Your network has 10 million unique users. So does every other network. In these days of non-exclusive inventory and ad-hoc networks, bragging about unique users is like bragging about owning a refrigerator. While it's true that media planners need to understand they're not wasting their time talking to a network that can't deliver reach, networks shouldn't turn presentations into a you-know-what wagging contest.
   
   
4. Not knowing how it works -- Buyers want to know whether your geo-targeting is based on IP addresses or registration information. We want to know whether your behavioral targeting works based on actual identified behavior or on a lookalike basis. We want to know how your contextual relevance engine makes decisions.  It's okay for us to be ignorant going into the meeting. That's why we're asking you these questions. It's not okay for you to be ignorant going into the meeting.
   
   
5. "Borrowing" clients -- Buyers love the "badge slides" in presentations that show all the great brands networks consider to be "clients." They often convey a sense of comfort that other brands have already taken the risk and reaped the rewards. Let's get this straight, though. If Life Savers tells its ad agency to buy some web advertising, and the agency turns around and buys 10 million impressions on an ad network, and that ad network sources some of its inventory from the Right Media exchange, and then some of that inventory comes from your network, that doesn't make Life Savers your "client." We know that if we called the Life Savers brand manager and asked, she probably wouldn't know who you are. (The same is probably true for their ad agency, for that matter.)
   
   
6. Brand protection via elimination of affiliates -- We love it when ad networks give us a site list and then say, "You can eliminate up to 20 percent of the affiliates that are objectionable to your brand." Why 20 percent? A piece of objectionable content can come from anywhere. How about this? I'm going to fill a water glass with highly radioactive Plutonium-239. You can eliminate 20 percent of the radioactive material before you chug it. Feel reassured? Me neither.
   
   
7. Abuse of the phrase "The leading [X]" -- It's completely meaningless to be "leading" in a category no one will admit to following. "Leading" could mean you're tops in uniques, or it could mean you were the first in a particular category, or it could just mean that a bunch of people really, really like you.
   
   
8. "We need an NDA" -- Please. You're an ad network. You're not protecting nuclear secrets. You will not be irreparably harmed if an agency finds out that SomethingAwful.com is a network affiliate. You won't require injunctive relief if we find out which vendor you selected to serve your ads. And we're pretty sure we could have guessed that your "proprietary optimization technology" is a bunch of over-caffeinated Ukrainian college students looking at ad serving reports all day.
   
   
9. "Can we run a test to see what your clickthrough would be?" -- I can't tell you how many ad networks, as the result of being so deeply immersed in the DR side of the business, assume that CTR is the primary success metric for every online ad campaign. Truth be told, many advertisers couldn't care less what their CTR is and they're more interested in seeing what the advertising did for their brand or for their offline sales.
   
   
10. Unwarranted escalation -- Contrary to popular belief, you don't get special favor points for escalating simple introductory meetings to the highest level of executive management. Sure, it's nice to have the general manager or the CEO of an agency join in a meeting. But most of the time, they have other things to do than help you grease the wheels. That's why they refer you to the people in their agency who make the day-to-day site selection decisions. If you keep insisting that they attend every meeting, they're eventually going to get upset with you for wasting their time. So please be sure to level-set.
    

I'm sure many of you network reps and sellers will have something to say to rebut these points, and to introduce some of your media buyer gripes. Have at it in the comments section below.

Tom Hespos is the president of Underscore Marketing and blogs at Hespos.com.