Unintented Consequences: Avoiding Inefficient Ad Buys

Posted on May 23, 2013 by John Dietz

Recently, new survey data was released that, unsurprisingly, found that the vast majority of consumers find certain types of advertising to be “annoying.” The press release announcing the survey results includes all sorts of interesting data points such as:

Online Ads Chart

    • Consumers find irrelevant pop-up display and lottery scams to be the most annoying forms of advertising.
    • 51 percent of respondents felt irrelevant ads impacted their ability to surf the web, with 37 percent saying it negatively impacted their ability to shop or purchase items online (talk about unintended consequences for Ecommerce companies).
    • 45 percent said they would ignore all future email correspondence from a company after receiving a single ‘annoying’ ad; 13 percent went as far as to say they would completely boycott the company as a response.

Perhaps most interesting, 58 percent found advertising for “products and services they do not need” to be the single most annoying form of advertising. In a world in which brands have more data than ever before about purchase intent and history for targeting and re-targeting, this represents a unique challenge.

Over the past few weeks there has been some debate about whether programmatic RTB may be exasperating this issue. Critics argue some digital marketing campaigns are simply overwhelming consumers with too many ads as a result of media planners having the means to quickly create and segment audience profiles and serve them with ads more efficiently than ever before. It’s an interesting question and one that is worthy of attention.

From an attribution perspective, there are also valuable tools available to marketers to help them run effective top-of-the-funnel campaigns while avoiding turning customers off due to irrelevant ads. For example, frequency capping is an often overlooked aspect optimization strategy than can greatly improve conversion ratios while increasing eCPA by limiting the number of ads served to customers over a given period. The video below includes a great overview of how frequency capping works.

Frequency Capping Video

Even more importantly, a fully-featured, data-driven attribution platform like Attribute provides marketers with real-world insights at a granular level about how different audiences respond to different media. In other words, instead of simply saturating target audiences with ads based using simple demographic or geographic segmentation, advanced attribution can help marketers make more informed decisions about not only the types of customers that are most likely to convert, but also the right combination of sites, placements, keywords and creative that perform best for the brand and feel most relevant to the consumer.

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Marin Certification: Integration of Attribution with RTB Platforms

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Casey Carey

Marin Software

Let’s face it – with new digital marketing strategies and capabilities emerging daily, it can quickly become overwhelming trying to manage and measure the impact of marketing programs, particularly when attempting to maintain data and ad inventory across multiple networks and suppliers, RTB platforms, analytics partners and so on.

One of the things prospects typically ask when they first learn about Adometry and the advanced attribution capabilities through Adometry Attribute is how conversion data can be ‘operationalized’ to fit into their existing processes in order to reap the benefits without having to manage disparate data sources. This is particularly true for organizations utilizing campaign and bid management tools to standardize workflows and efficiently monitor the impact of marketing efforts across multiple channels on behalf of multiple brands.

So with that in mind we set out to see how we could help make our customers’ lives a little easier. As a result, we’re excited to announce a new certified integration with Marin Software, a leading campaign management provider, as an extension of our industry-leading efforts that extend Adometry Attribute (see here for more information. Working with Marin, we were able to create robust conversion and revenue data integrations that unlock several exciting new scenarios for joint customers. For example, advertisers can:

  • Utilize attribution measurement insights and recommendations in familiar workflows,
  • Standardize performance metrics across media for more accurate “apples-to-apples” comparisons,
  • Monitor and assess the revenue associated with each ad-unit using Adometry’s leading attribution model across multiple channels and revenue sources,
  • Utilize post-attributed conversion data to determine more precise bids for keywords and identify cost-effective path-to-purchase conversion paths tailored to specific audience segments.

With these capabilities customers have even more flexibility in how they leverage attribution data to inform campaign decisions. This type of integration reflects how we think about solving marketing complexity, and it’s fantastic to be able to offer this type of powerful integration in partnership with Marin (check out Marin’s Marketing Insights blog for more information). Clients can take advantage of the new capabilities immediately – at no additional cost.

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Using Attribution to Address RTB Inventory Quality

Posted on May 7, 2013 by John Dietz

There’s no question real-time bidding has taken ahold of the digital ad industry. A few weeks ago I wrote here about the staggering growth projections. Since then, the seemingly limitless supply of announcements promoting new exchange-traded media options hasn’t shown any sign of slowing down. In fact, there is now an RTB platform for practically every element of the digital marketing mix, including not only traditional display and search but also video, mobile and social.

This week ClickZ published an interesting article raising some common issues with RTB and ad exchanges, specifically the challenge of determining the quality of specific ad inventories. It’s certainly true that as the process of purchasing media has become democratized, new publishers have emerged with a fresh supply of inventory, not all of which is remotely valuable to any brand. Then why do these publishers continue to garner ad dollars? Part of the issue is that many marketers still lack a reliable way of measuring performance across their entire digital marketing portfolio, either relying on siloed, channel-specific performance data or antiquated cross-channel tools like last-click attribution.

RTB

As I’ve mentioned, Adometry’s RTB Connector was specifically designed to tackle this issue by providing clients with automated integration designed to let advertisers funnel data-driven, cross-channel attribution insights directly to DSPs for RTB in order to refine media buying criteria and generate better results. Since Adometry Attribute can generate attribution models on a daily basis, advertisers can pull performance data daily and incorporate these insights directly into their preferred RTB platforms ultimately using performance data to separate high and low-value inventory in a vendor-agnostic and independent manner.

There’s a lot to like about real-time bidding, and I suspect all we’ve seen is the tip of the iceberg in terms of adoption. As the industry diverts even more spending to ad exchanges, leading brands will benefit from proactively addressing inventory quality concerns using their own performance data on their own terms.

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Solving Marketing Complexity through Collaboration

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Paul Pellman

Marketing Silos

With the advertising industry growing at a rapid rate –– particularly all things digital – it probably comes as no surprise that many advertisers are experiencing what is probably best described as ‘growing pains.’ Just this week, a new survey found that four in 10 CMOs feel “unprepared” to meet modern campaign objectives. An even greater percentage (7 of 10) said they fully expect a dramatic overhaul in corporate marketing within the next five years. We hear this sentiment from many of our customers as well as they work tirelessly to revamp processes and realign strategies around multi-channel opportunities designed to drive higher revenues and improve efficiency.

What’s sometimes lost in this discussion is the role of the agency and analytics partner. For example, according to the same survey only 44 percent of more than 400 respondents in 10 countries said agency partners were helping transform the marketing organization. Operational inefficiencies were also cited as a hindrance to performance. With marketers being asked to do more than ever before, it’s clear that the role of agency and analytics partners has shifted. As businesses look to fundamentally shift the way they approach marketing, it’s no longer enough for vendors to simply sell products or services. The ability to understand and collaborate to solve business challenges is now the ‘value add’ that separates commodity suppliers from strategic assets.

Federated Media’s John Battelle recently wrote about this dynamic in Ad Age reflecting on his experience at this year’s IAB leadership meeting:

I was amazed to see how segmented our industry had become — the ad-tech guys were literally in one corner of the room, and the brand folks were in another. As I bounced between them (my company has businesses in both camps), I heard an awful lot of disparaging words directed toward “the other side.”

But we cannot be an industry of two sides. We are one industry, united by the desire to bring the most relevant and valuable information to our customers — the consumer. It’s time we started acting that way.

At Adometry, we have the opportunity to work with some of the best top agency talent in the business, as well as leading media companies, publishers, DMPs and more. Part of what makes these relationships so successful is the effort that goes into fostering a collaborative environment in which our mutual clients’ business problems is the focus, not arbitrary divisions of labor. Just as attribution models rely on integrating data from a variety of sources in order to analyze campaign effectiveness, our partners want as much insight as possible about performance so they can provide the maximum value to customers. While we may not always agree (that’s where interpretation and intuition will forever play a role), being focused on the right outcomes ensures clients’ best interests remain the one and only motivation.

While competition across the ad industry (both for audiences’ attention and for business) is surely at an all-time high (a good thing), this isn’t a zero-sum game. Increasingly, marketers need their partners to work as one in order to achieve the lofty goals they’ve set for themselves. To do any less would be failing to deliver on our promise.

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Marketing Attribution is a Drill Bit. What is the “Why”?

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Casey Carey

Marketing Attribution is a Drill BitConfused by the title of this post, “Marketing Attribution is a Drill Bit”?  I’ll get to that in a bit, but first some context. Last week I attended the Forrester Forum for Marketing Leaders in Los Angeles. Having been a few years since I last attended the conference, I was excited to see what progress had been made and hear from peers across new ideas and areas of focus.

Key Marketing Trends

This year’s event, primarily attended by CMOs and senior marketing executives, was titled “Creating Brand Advantage with Perpetually Connected Consumers”. While I expected the bulk of the content presented to focus on the impact mobile is having on the marketing landscape, the overall event turned out to be a broader discussion of the forces reshaping marketing.  The vast majority of the speakers were interesting, but throughout the two days there were really four consistent themes that emerged from the presentations and conversations.

Mobile Mind Shift

  • Mobile phones are approaching saturation globally and 50% of the US population now has smartphones. This represents a massive sea change for marketers.
  • Consumer expectations are changing as it relates to how they engage with brands and consume information. Forrester calls this the “mobile mind shift”, which is a very interesting framework for marketers to assess the appropriate approach to mobile.
  • Companies are responding with very creative uses for apps (as one example, E*TRADE now supports voice recognition/commands both to access stock quotes and initiate trades directly from smartphones) and location services. On the other hand, most marketers continue to struggle with how to effectively use digital ads on mobile (42% of consumers have a negative view) and how to leverage “perpetual connectedness”.

Social Media Moves Down the List?

Although social remains a topic mentioned in almost every presentation, it was clearly not the topic it was three years ago. In fact, the lack of focus on social raises an interesting question about where this currently lies on the CMO’s priority list. Judging from conversations at the conference, defining meaningful goals for social and measuring social marketing effectiveness continues to be elusive.

Shifting Consumer Demographics

IBM also presented the results of a survey of 1,700+ CMOs showing a big shift in millennials and digital natives’ (13-19 year-olds) buying criteria and habits. Social (again)  played a big role here, but more interestingly…daily deals, flash sales and other emerging models are rapidly changing the rules for younger consumers. Unfortunately for marketers, reaching this demographic continues to be an exercise in trial and error and brands are faced with “building the plane as they fly it”.

Data-Driven Marketing aka “Big Data”

While “big data” continues its journey along the hype curve, this year there was clearly an uptick in discussion about how to utilize the data, big or small. I’m glad to see we’re finally beginning to move beyond defining what big data is and isn’t. For example, there were many discussions – some of which were genuinely visionary – about using data to “understand” and “instrument” the customer journey. Although these were presented in many different archetypes, they seemed to follow a common approach

    • Collect
    • Analyze
    • Decide
    • Deliver

Marketing Attribution Moves to the Forefront

Not surprisingly, the topic of marketing attribution came up numerous times within the context of understanding and optimizing the customer journey. I was able to speak with a handful of marketing leaders and asked them their view of attribution and its importance within their strategic objectives.  Consistently I heard:

Marketing analysts and channel owners say marketing attribution helps determine:

    • What marketing touches influence conversions?
    • How do I divide credit among those touches?
    • How do I optimize my channel?

CMOs and marketing executives think about marketing attribution in terms of:

    • Which campaigns are working?
    • What is the correct balance?
    • How do I optimize my marketing mix?

One CMO in particular really drove this point home for me,

“I’m not here to do attribution, I’m here to grow our brand, engage our customers, and drive the business.”

That comment was a very clear “WHY” moment for me! As it turns out, CMOs need holes and attribution is in effect, a drill bit. There are other ways to make a hole, but for the task at hand, you’d be hard pressed to find a more effective tool. In terms of helping drive value for CMOs, there is a direct association between drill bits and the process of making holes, but in most construction projects that’s not really the end game, is it?

Back to the title: As marketers, we have to be mindful of what attribution insights enable, such as identifying opportunities to improve campaigns and generate improved ROI, and be careful not discuss the analysis itself as the final product. The opportunity to advance marketing through advanced marketing attribution is clear, but the only way to help others understand the value is to create and illustrate the connections between the in-the-moment work and the strategic goals (like growing your brand, engaging your customers and driving business outcomes), and then tell the stories about those who have done it effectively.

If you have any good examples of how marketing attribution has helped directly or indirectly drove improved marketing results, I would love to hear about them.

PS. A shout out to Todd Kelley from ExactTarget who has always been a prolific note taker, thanks for sharing your notes!

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Measurement and Fraud Prevention Headline Buzz from ad:tech San Francisco

Posted on April 18, 2013 by John Brown

ad:tech SF

In case you missed it, last week marked a major industry moment for the advertising community as leading brands, agencies and technology providers descended on San Francisco for ad:tech. At this year’s conference there once again was a marked interest in all-things measurement with several sessions seeking to answer questions about performance metrics and cross-channel attribution. We’re glad to see the industry continue to focus on moving beyond last-click and recognizing the need for data-driven attribution modeling.

Given Adometry’s one-of-a-kind click scoring product with the most advanced click-fraud prevention technologies in the industry, another key theme we heard frequently – both in hallway conversations and formal discussions with current and prospective clients – is suspicion or outright fear of the low-quality traffic caused by fraudsters and botnets that continues to hinder campaign performance and tarnish the reputation of many in the ad business. Unfortunately, the problem is broader than just a handful of ad networks and publishers and represents a significant challenge to both agencies and advertisers – many of whom lack adequate visibility into exactly where media is being purchased and how those impressions are performing.

While listening to the concerns of colleagues across the industry, I was reminded that many organizations remain unaware of preventative measures available to them to help fight back against bots and other fraudulent activity taking place online.  For example, Adometry offers various block lists that are updated daily based on the clicks we score from other Ad Networks to identify known sources of invalid traffic, which clients can leverage to their immediate benefit. Additionally, the more advanced capabilities within our click scoring product, such as our various collusion algorithms, help ad networks and publishers not only quantify the quality of traffic being provided to advertisers but also bolster the overall performance of impressions sold, which often can improve the overall trust and relationship between the advertiser or agency and the sell-side provider.

With more competition than ever before, it’s important for publishers and ad networks to take control over their traffic quality. While the industry may never be able to stop every botnet or bad actor, advertisers are sure to gravitate towards partners that take every step possible to provide the best traffic and results.

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Maximizing the Impact of Real-Time Bidding with Advanced Attribution

Posted on April 15, 2013 by John Dietz

If “Big Data” was the marketing term du jour for 2012, 2013 is shaping up to be the year of real-time bidding (RTB). If you spent more than five minutes reading ad industry headlines in the last month you likely encountered several articles about the impact of RTB or programmatic buying – particularly as it relates to digital marketing budgets. Just last week, eMarketer revised its projections for 2013 spending on programmatic buying estimating that US-based advertisers will spend more than $3.36 billion on real-time bidding this year alone, up from less than $2 billion in 2012. And that’s just the beginning with RTB spending set to encompass roughly a third of the total display ad market by 2016.

RTB Ad-Spend

In many respects, the rise of programmatic buying is an inevitable byproduct of the explosive growth of online publishing. Just five years ago (an eternity in advertising years) most media planners were responsible for a digital marketing world that was considerably smaller, with most campaigns limited to a handful of publishers and ad networks that catered to a particular demographic according to data from Nielsen and comScore. New campaigns were planned for and executed based on the performance of the previous campaign with most investments decided by gut instinct vs. any type of hard evidence. Even the most sophisticated marketers struggled to articulate why it was important to spend X percentage of the campaign budget on display in addition to search – even if they instinctively knew both were valuable.

Today’s media planners have a very different job. Because of the scale at which campaigns are run, inventory is now purchased through DSPs, which can be automatically configured to target specific audiences. Whereas performance data used to be captured manually in complex spreadsheets, today agencies can generate reports in real-time to highlight not only how media is performing but how it is trending over a given period of time.

From an attribution perspective, the rise of programmatic buying represents tremendous opportunity for Adometry clients. While these platforms allow marketers to make more efficient decisions about media buys and offer new tactics for reaching target audiences, often they are restricted to using only simple attribution data to optimize media buys.

To help clients get more out of RTB investments, Adometry developed a complementary technology called the Attribute RTB Connector. This provides certified buying platforms a way to incorporate attribution data for Adometry Attribute clients, allowing them to further optimize bids based on the industry’s most accurate, multi-channel campaign data. Additionally, the RTB connector allows pricing information from the bidding platform to be funneled into clients’ attribution and optimization models to create even more accurate and up-to-date optimization recommendations.

In many respects RTB is still in its infancy, however it’s clear that these platforms will play a major role in shaping the future of digital media buying. As the technologies mature and clients unlock their full potential, accurate and granular attribution data only becomes more essential.

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Wrapping Up The Startup Games

Posted on April 2, 2013 by John Brown

cpc

A little over a month ago Adometry employees joined other Austin startups at the 2nd annual Austin Startup Games to compete for the charities of our choice. While we weren’t able to take home the top prize as planned, we did finished with a respectable 7th out of 16 teams.  Not too bad for our first games!  Despite not taking home the gold, Adometry did raise $500 for our charity, The Center for Child Protection, and helped with the overall donation effort of more than 533 pounds of canned goods to the Capital Food Bank of Texas.

For those who are not familiar with the Center for Child Protection, they are a child-friendly, specially-equipped facility where children go for recorded forensic interviews, medical exams, counseling and intervention during the investigation and prosecution of child abuse cases. It is the only nonprofit in Travis County involved in the investigation of crimes against children. All services are provided to children and their protective caregivers at no charge and most are available in English and Spanish.  We had the pleasure to work alongside Debbie Tate and Kristina Thompson from the Center, who provided great support each step of the way. To them, and everyone at the Center for Child Protection, the employees at Adometry would like to say thank you for making a difference to so many kids.

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Big Data Targets Little Cheaters: Adometry to License Attribution Technology to Help Score Exams

Posted on April 1, 2013 by John Smolik

Testing In Progress

In conjunction with the National Board of Testing Standards (NBTS), Adometry is pleased to announce that its data-driven marketing attribution technology has now been licensed to help review exams and term papers for plagiarism, collusion and other forms of cheating in an effort to relieve teachers and administrative staff of the time-consuming process of verifying students’ work as their own.

“This is a wonderful partnership that will greatly reduce the strain on our nation’s educators and NBTS employees alike, allowing for expedited exam scoring and definitive reporting on any form of cheating attempted by our students,” said NBTS Chairman, David Calcoles. “Scoring exams has always been a productivity bottle-neck considering the increasing teacher to student ratios in most classes. Kids also have a wealth of technology available to them, and not always for the better either! It’s pretty hard to catch kids cheating when almost every gadget in their backpack is connected to the web,” he added.

To the chagrin of teachers everywhere, cheating has always existed, whether it be crib notes or looking over the smart girl’s shoulder. Technology has only exacerbated the problem by offering students a plethora of digital tools to help them change a B+ into an A-.  Schools are always looking to curb cheaters when they’re identified, but collusion and plagiarism remain difficult to identify without careful review and a nuanced understanding of the students’ knowledge and writing styles. To aid educators, Adometry has repurposed its marketing attribution platform to ferret out cheaters. Instead of ingesting siloed marketing data and assigning scores to advertising clicks and impressions, Adometry’s data-driven attribution methodology will instead be trained on student generated exam and test data. “The technology is actually quite remarkable,” exclaimed NBTS Chairman David Calcoles. “By combining test data with past performance, seating charts, class schedules and social media history, we can build a wonderful model of the classes’ predicted testing output, and compare that against the actual results. Now that we can identify anomalously high-scoring students, administrators can dive deeper into the data to compare specific answers, writing styles, work time…even who the student sat by on the bus, or whether their older sibling had the same teacher two years before,” Calcoles explained.

“This is a really exciting time for us,” said Adometry’s Click Forensics Product Manager, John Brown. “We developed this technology to identify click fraud and save advertisers money, but we’ve discovered there’s untapped educational potential in our methodology. We’re looking forward to expanding our efforts to colleges, technical schools and maybe even continuing education curriculums for doctors and lawyers. In the end, we’re dedicated to fraud prevention, no matter what venue it exists in,” Mr. Brown concluded.

While educators might be eager to utilize the technology, K-12 students have mixed reactions. “What about Wikipedia? Everyone colluded on those answers…why can’t we?” asked one student who wished to remain unnamed. Fourth grader Emily Harris confessed that her brother Sam, “[I]s always cheating! I hope the computer catches and punishes him like in the Matrix!” Another unidentified student added, “The computer should grade my parents tests because my Mom says Dad is ALWAYS cheating and one day she’ll catch him.”

Regardless of the hallway sentiment, test score accuracy is already on the up-tick resulting in less-crowded Honors classes and a complete overhaul of high school academic rankings by state universities. A trial program was started to bring the same technology to bear on teacher performance and rankings, but was halted due to pending legal action by teachers unions.

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Casey Carey Joins Adometry as CMO

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Casey Carey

Casey Carey

As one of the newest additions to the fast-growing Adometry team (currently enjoying my second week here in our Austin office), I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Casey Carey and I recently joined the executive team here at Adometry as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). One of my primary responsibilities is taking Adometry’s story to the market.  This often involves talking directly to marketers about their challenges, discussing opportunities to improve upon existing practices, and communicating ways Adometry may be able to help. As a marketer myself, I get the pleasure of marketing to marketers, which is sometimes an oddly, self-reflective experience. However, these exchanges are typically enlightening and reaffirming. Most marketers — regardless of industry — are not only faced with similar business pressures, they also have aggressive goals and strive to achieve high quality work from their organizations. And to be sure, as the complexity of marketing continues to increase, so does the role of technology as a strategic weapon.

The Dawn of the Marketing Attribution Problem

I have to admit, joining Adometry is a bit serendipitous. You may be surprised to learn that over a decade ago, I invented attribution. Okay, that is a bit of an Al Gore-ish thing to say, but it’s somewhat true. In 2001 while working with DoubleClick, one of my primary responsibilities was bringing a product called ChannelView to market (now part of Epsilon Targeting).  At the time, catalog and specialty retailers were struggling to measure campaigns as more and more conversions moved online from call-centers and stores.  ChannelView solved this problem by matching mailing and email addresses to transaction data and properly allocating demand to the list source.

More Channels Means More Data and Bigger Attribution Problem

As VP of Product Strategy and Marketing at web analytics provider Webtrends, conversations about marketing and media attribution were again frequent as we saw countless customers working to understand more about the customer journey and what actually happened prior to the conversion. At the time, advanced attribution was only available to a few large advertisers and brands with the resources to create custom measurement systems ­— even then, getting more than a fuzzy picture of digital marketing effectiveness was a difficult and an expensive proposition. Fast forward to today and advanced attribution has evolved to rapidly becoming a “must have” for major brands. The industry has largely agreed simple attribution models like last-click and allocated are insufficient. The race to create full-feature platforms to more accurately measure both online and offline channels is in full swing. As is often the case with technology, the maturity of methodologies and the advancement of technical capabilities have converged to make the advanced attribution problem now solvable at scale.

Superior Science and Innovation Provide a Great Platform on Which to Build Success

As I researched the company and went through the interview process, it became clear that Adometry is a perfect blend of talent, vision, innovation, and execution. As a marketer myself, it’s exciting to work for a company dedicated to helping advance the art of advertising by providing superior science. I know at the end of the day, best perception in the market wins, but it sure doesn’t hurt to have a “Leading Marketing Attribution Solution” according to Forrester, on which to build your story. As I enter this new chapter, the goal remains the same – “Helping power more intelligent marketing to drive remarkable results.”

I look forward to meeting many of you in the coming weeks and months. The future is bright, and I’m stoked to be an active participant in  the fray as it unfolds.

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