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2013 The Year of Digital Brand Advertising

Roy de Souza — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:55:26 +0000

According to IAB, performance-based advertising has reached the point of diminishing returns for all its players; it has created a highly efficient market in which there is almost no margin left for either publishers or agencies. So this is the year digital brand advertising can and must be born, or the digital advertising industry can’t survive.
We are part of the IAB because we feel we are aligned with its goals. We don’t just join every organization. IAB shares our beliefs that if agencies are freed to produce magical creative, technology will help them build brands across platforms and geographies. And all this can be measured with metrics that are useful to marketers.
Here is a summary of the IAB Digital Brand Building initiatives for this year.
1. Rising Stars rewards the creative that interacts with consumers right on the page and allows them to engage the way they used to engsge in person. We have to allow agencies to produce better creative — the kind with which people really want to engage.
2. 3MS(Making Measurement Make Sense) is the initiative that began last year to change how we measure ads. Last year, the emphasis was on viewable impressions. Going forward measurements will also include Interactivity, Engagement and any other tangible forms of ad interaction that correspond with results.
3. Advertising Technology and Operations. Deployed well, advertising technologies can eliminate fraud and assure brand safety. But the ecosystem has been portrayed with unnecessary complexity. iAB wants to simplify and lubricate the supply chain. Amen brother.
4. Protecting Privacy. To build brands requires trust, and the industry should collaborate with consumers to combat malware and spyware, and protect privacy through self-regulation. Firefox’s decision to forbid third party cookies is the tip of the impending security/privacy iceberg.
5.Demystifying Dats. Right now, the advertising industry takes more data than it gives, and to be successful we must foster transparency and trust in the ad value chain.
6.Screens. Simplifying the delivery of ads across devices is critical.Cross-screen research initiatives will quantify the value of cross-screen campaigns and IAB will try to help marketers manage the risks and maximize the rewards of working across screens.
7. Learning and Certification. iAB wants to grow, professionalize and standardize our sales teams, ad ops, and ad technologists so the industry can be taken seriously.
8.Global Brand Building. All brands can and should be global. Digital reaches everywhere, and digital can play both a global and a hyperlocal role simultaneously. IAB plans to help brands be global safely.
Once again, we’re ahead of this curve, already selling our high impact formats and full screen video formats that accept already- produced TV ads on a digital platform. We’re just waiting for you to meet us here in the digital marketing Utopia ahead. How else can we help?

How I Plan to Scale Social Media

Francine Hardaway — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:06:13 +0000

Long, long ago, way back in 2010, Altimeter's Jeremiah Owyang gave a talk in which he uttered the immortal words, "social media doesn't scale."

I've found that out through my work with ZEDO, the San Francisco-based platform partner for publishers. ZEDO started with one person doing its social media almost two years ago: me. But the company is growing rapidly, and it has a globally distributed work force in many different time zones. This year, my challenge is to inspire my colleagues to help me with the social media so we CAN scale it better.

I'm fortunate, ZEDO is still relatively small -- about 250 employees. But suppose you are a public company, or even a very large private company with a distributed global work force? How will you control your brand? How do you respond to Twitter complaints in a manner that meets the expectations of customers who tweet out their troubles expecting someone to be there listening? And how do you use social media to help you attract talent?

Listening platforms like Radian 6 help. But they're just a beginning. After all, they're just listening and monitoring. They're not sharing information.

Ideally, we'd like to turn our best customers (our fans) into advocates or at least into customer service reps. SocialToaster purports to do this for fans, and forums do this online if you have the patience to consult them. But those are relatively minor efforts that still don't solve the problem.

And most customers don't want to be bothered. They can't be depended on to be there when you need them, 24x7x365. Who else can help?

Maybe it's the people whose paychecks we sign.

Because of the scope and magnitude of the "Big Shift" to customer control from vendor control, we must engage and enlist every employee to help, whether two or 200,000. IBM figured this out a while ago, and has been singing this song as loudly as it can, including walking its talk by empowering its own employees. IBM even has created an enterprise platform for this.

But the platform is not the most important part: it's the education, engagement, and empowerment of the employees that's critical.

I had this discussion with Marcus Nelson, formerly of UserVoice and Salesforce, about 9 months ago, and I angel invested in the company he started to solve this problem: -- Addvocate. Addvocate is moving right along through its beta, but it is only able to work with companies that are already enlightened.

Most companies are not. First, someone must have the discussion with the C-suite. Why is it necessary (rather than just nice) to have employees who are empowered, with the ability and tools to respond socially? How do you engage those employees, incentivize them, and educate them so they can really help the company deliver the right messages at the right time with the right results?

As usual, I'll be the person who starts the discussion and takes the arrows. In the next couple of months, I'm going to speak to a large company that has a unique set of challenges in this area. And I plan to speak many more times, until I help complete the transition to a more social, responsive, business environment for all of us.

Publishing is Dividing into Two Camps

Francine Hardaway — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:08:13 +0000

Online publishing seems to be dividing itself into to camps lately: premium and non-premium. We might also refer to them as "video-receptive" and not receptive, open to new formats with hight CPMs, or just interested in filling inventory with anything.

Digging deeper, this goes to the publisher's own brand; whether it is interested in brand ads or performance ads, whether it sees the future as higher CPM's for fewer ads, or whether it wants to sell out its entire inventory, even as remnant.

For premium publishers, a scarcity of inventory is not only acceptable, in some sense it's desirable. If they run out of inventory, they raise the price, and they actually accept fewer ads. In this sense, they're like old-time glossy magazines; you can only afford them if you are someone they want in the book. Today, as I write, there is only one ad on the entire Huffington Post home page. These are the basic supply and demand principles: scarce supply drives up price.

Premium publishers are also moving quickly toward video. The single ad on today's Economist home page is a video.

And the single ad at the top of the page on Vogue is a rotator with three promos for the magazine and only one slide for the single advertiser on the home page, J.Crew.

For these new formats, premium publishers enjoy high CPMs, which is why they've "sacrificed" clutter. In point of fact, they're responding to readers, who will tolerate an ad or two, but not too many. And those ads are not performance ads -- they're brand ads that associate like brands (the publisher and the advertiser) with each other.

In my ASU class on the business and future of journalism, I polled my students on what they would like to see in advertising support for online publishers. Since they're the Millennials, they have strong preferences, and they want fewer, more interesting and relevant ads. In other words, they'll happily tolerate ads with good creative. I showed them ZEDO's new InviewSlider, and they actually thought it was cool!

On the other hand, non-premium publishers are still insisting on 100% fill rates. They will tolerate more ads, sold at lower CPM's. In general, they don't sell video, or any of the new high impact formats we are now introducing to such enthusiasm. And they are not looking for brand ads -- they're looking for ads that justify their rates.

We believe that the premium brands are what will keep digital media alive, and that advertisers want brand-safe placements that will help, not hurt their brands, and they're willing to pay for that.

Network Optimization Tips for Publishers

Rohan Lotlikar — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 12:43:27 +0000

If you are a publisher with valuable inventory, there are plenty of ad networks out there that will compete for it. If you deal with multiple ad networks, you can use a network optimization system to easily manage all of your networks. Network Optimization technology is built by advertising technology providers, and can be managed by them or you once set up is completed (depending on your interest and support capabilities of your technology provider). Implementing network optimization into your ad operations allows you, the publisher, to monetize domestic and international inventory, get the most out of each network for each ad size , easily compare the true eCPM of each ad network, re-order ad network impressions to put the highest paying impressions first, and see all your data without logging into each ad network's system. If you are thinking about implementing network optimization into your ad operations, or even if you already have, keep in mind these following 10 steps:

1. Setup a Daisy Chain

A good network optimization tool will allow you decide the order in which ad networks are served on your site. This is often called a daisy chain. If one ad network is paying you a better eCPM than another, you should put them higher up in the chain. This will increase the quantity of impressions given (first impressions have more uniques as none have left the site yet), as well as increase the value of the impressions (first impressions perform better).

2. Setup a Daisy Chain per Country

Network CPMs varies by country. Network A may pay $1.10 in USA but pay just $0.20 in UK. If you were sending UK impressions to network A you would be losing revenue. Therefore create a daisy chain per country. In this example Network A may be high up the US daisy chain but not in the UK daisy chain at all. You should create daisy chains only in countries where you both generate significant traffic and countries where CPMs are decent. So UK often needs it's own daisy chain: big volumes and high CPMs. China often does not: high volumes but low CPMs. To create a daisy chain per country you need t ask each ad network to give you a tag for each country you want to have a daisy chain in. If you are going to have 5 daisy chains for 5 countries and one daisy chain for inventory from all other countries, then you need to ask each network for 6 tags. If you run two ad dimensions then this means 12 daisy chains.

3. Negotiate Fixed Price CPMs

Networks strive for volume from good quality sites. If you have a good quality site you should demand a flat CPM deal with the networks. Even if you have a UGC site still try to negotiate fixed CPM deals. This will normally earn you more money

4. For Revenue Share Networks Set min CPMs

Many networks don't pay you a flat CPM but instead pay you a percentage share of the revenue they generate. The CPMs you earn will therefore vary each day. Ask the networks to set a "floor CPM". This means that the network will not serve any campaigns that will earn you less than the agreed floor CPM. Instead the network will redirect the impression back (called a "pass back") to your ad server so that you can send it to another network that pays better.

5. All Pass Backs Must go into The Right Place in Your Daisy Chain

Some networks don’t always have a paid ad to serve above your floor CPM. They therefore send some impressions to the default tag you give them. Some publishers are tempted to use another network as the default tag. However if you do that you lose control of the daisy chain for all future impressions for that user. So instead you should ask the network to send default impressions back to your ad server. If your ad server supports network optimization then make sure those defaults go back into exactly the right spot in your daisy chain. They will then go down through the rest of the chain of ad networks.

6. Make Sure you Calculate the True ECPM Correctly.

This is the actual revenue that the network pays you divided by the impressions that your ad server sent to that network. CPMs displayed by the networks will use lower impression numbers to make their CPMs look larger. Don't be fooled. Make sure you are comparing only True ECPMs for all ad networks. This lets you truly compare ad network CPMs on an apples-to-apples basis, to see who is paying the most for that country. Ad Servers with ad network optimization capability will automatically calculate the True ECPM for all networks in each of your daisy chains.

7. Monitor the True ECPMs Every 3 days

I have found that monitoring the True ECPMs in each daisy chain every 3 days is best. To do this fast and compare True ECPMs in different daisy chains you need all your daisy chains displayed on one page.

8. Get Networks to Like You

Ad networks can run their best high paying campaigns on any of their sites. If they know you and like you they will try to steer their best campaigns onto your site. So take your rep out to lunch and send him a hamper at Christmas.

9. Try New Networks

Ask experts in the industry which networks perform best. Try these networks to see if they will pay you well

10. Try New Ad Formats

New ad formats perform better than old ones. The click through rate for some new formats is great. For example, some new ZEDO formats have achieved CTRs of over 1% when the same network's ads on the site usually get a CTR of 0.3%.

About the author:

Rohan Lotlikar, Ad Network Optimization Team Leader for ZEDO, Inc.

Rohan has been with ZEDO, Inc. for over 6 years. He has a background in application development, and 7 years of experience in software development and engineering.