Matt Freeman is a well known digital advertising thought leader. He has been the CEO of Tribal DDB for some time and speaks at all the big advertising conferences. Advertising Age has a story on him moving to head GoFish a really interesting ad network for kids and parents.

What I found most interesting in the Ad Age story was his quote on the ad network business and specifically how Microsoft and Yahoo are missing a great opportunity:

Mr. Freeman in an interview said there is an opportunity for digital ad networks like GoFish to pick up a ball he believes Yahoo and Microsoft have dropped when it comes to online brand advertising.

“As Yahoo and Microsoft and others are trying to beat Google at Google’s game — search — they’ve taken their eye off the most valuable ball they had in their court, which is online brand advertising,” Mr. Freeman said. “Even though Google has a terrific business model, it’s not a panacea for brands. Brands can’t build equity by buying keywords alone.”

As I commented in March, the ad networks and exchanges are going to be fine. However, I still feel they need to throw out the crappy CPM metrics improve the inadequate metrics they sell against. Hopefully with Matt’s connections on Madison Ave he can advance this.