As Mother’s Day approaches, many of us remember quotes from our moms--simple sayings which may not have rung true then, but are timeless now. Among them: “If all your friends jumped off a cliff…would you do it too?”
It’s obvious, but sometimes it takes a mother to show us that the well-worn path is not always the right path. And this is why your mother can actually buy media better than you.
Some Historical Perspective
See, here’s what she knew that can help online marketers right now. All online ad tracking systems used today are legacy systems built 15 years ago. They erroneously give all credit for a conversion to the very last ad in line. So if 10 ads were involved from the top of the conversion funnel to the bottom, the bottom one gets all credit. You’ve heard of line cutters (folks who cut in line), these are funnel cutters—stealing all the credit by jumping in at the end. Why do we still measure everything this way? Because that’s the way it was done, and we’re following everyone right off the media cliff.
We Are To Believe What?
Today, all those tracking systems have just one slot for which an online ad is... Read more
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Why Your Mother Can Buy Media Better Than You – C3 Metrics on Fractional Attribution
Tags: attribution, viewable impressions
Posted in Ad Networks, Ad Serving, Media Planning & Buying, Opinions, Research, Web Analytics | No Comments »
Augmented Reality: Gimmick or the future of advertising?
Many great innovations never really take off or are just too fiddly to ever gain consumer acceptance. A great idea is not always the next big thing. However, some lead industries and products into new areas that completely redefine the way we view the world. I have been wondering of late which one Augmented Reality (AR) falls into.
Tags: augmented, augmented reality, mobile advertising, reality
Posted in Ad Networks, Ad Serving, Opinions | 3 Comments »
Travel: Come Fly With Me
The following statement may seem to be fly in the face of economic sense at first. It’s a great time to be in the travel business. Now with American Airlines filing chapter 11 just two months ago, and a sluggish economy holding consumer-spending hostage, it might seem to be just the opposite. However, if all digital marketing verticals had the momentum and forward-thinking strategies that the travel vertical has shown, we’d all party like it’s 1999.
Full disclosure: We’re in the travel business. But it’s not our only business. We saw substantial increases month-to-month for our audience-targeting platform over the past 12 months. In fact, we have almost 250 million individual customer data profiles. But this not an individual success story. This is a vertical success story. The success of the travel ad vertical can be duplicated, and should be duplicated as brands like P&G, Unliever and GM increase the acceleration of their overall budgets from offline to online spend. Kantar Media reported in November, “the display spending gain of 12.9 percent and 8.6 percent spike in search (for 2011) were driven by travel, local service and insurance categories.”
We know from other data that offline spending for travel was flat. The... Read more
Tags: brand loyalty, Data, loyalty, Targeting, travel
Posted in Ad Networks, Targeting | No Comments »
Introducing Tablet Readership Reports for Advertisers
As AdAge reported, now marketers that pay for advertising space on Conde Nast’s digital editions will receive valuable reader behavior data like time spent on the advertisement, the number of users who accessed the ad and how their specific ad compared to the issue’s overall advertising.
The Wrap’s Lucas Shaw reports that this move by Conde Nast is a major step for publishers and advertisers alike in setting the digital business model. Additional publishers are likely to follow suite in providing advertisers with tablet user metrics.
At the OPA, we believe this new development further feeds the optimism the industry has felt surrounding the tablet as a welcomed new publishing platform. Its also exemplifies how publishers are helping brands further realize the valuable environment premium publishers provide them. As audiences grow and publishers are increasingly able to demonstrate the impact these ads are having, the dollars will follow.
This post originally ran on the OPA Blog.
Tags: online publishers association, publishers, tablets
Posted in Ad Networks, Opinions | No Comments »
What does oil scarcity have to do with ad technology innovation?
Americans are despondent over our dependence on foreign sources of energy. While America has recoverable oil, there’snot nearly enough to fuel its 20 million barrel per day habit. We've found ways to fill the gap between our demand and our domestic supply, including moving to abundant and cheaper natural gas, solar, and wind, but some of these new sources just aren’t as good as oil.
As the price of oil rises, it’s become economical to invest in new technologies thatrecover previously expensive sources of natural gas and oil. Two techniques - natural gas 'fracking' and shale oil extraction –have emerged as viable alternatives that.Both approaches require new technology, place a premium on available inventory and are disruptive to existing producers. These are not methods you use when oil is cheap and plentiful.
Oil isn’t cheap and plentiful like it used to be. 30 years ago China and India weren’t growing at 10% a year and the internet was nothing more than an academic and military communications tool.
The parallels between the energyeconomy to the current ad technology ecosystem are not obvious at first. But when you take a look at the ad ecosystem - and Terry Kawaja’sLumascape - the parallels are stunning. As... Read more
Posted in Ad Networks, Ad Serving, Email, Emerging Platforms, Media Planning & Buying, Opinions, Social Media, Targeting | No Comments »
