No Second Prize Visitors for vanity. Revenue for reality.

27 Jan 2012

Is this really how AppNexus practice retargeting existing customers?

by Dan Hills (3) Comments

Before I start, this post is not to highlight the complete social media fail that AppNexus have demonstrated. “Please visit our opt out page, and you won’t see ads from us” completely misses the point that your retargeting strategy is doomed from the outset. Using a “stock” response is bad at the best of times but why would you tweet that to a digital media planner buyer, not to mention one who often blogs about such matters? Its very clear from my Twitter profile and website url that I am deeply interested in such matters. You need to have some direct conversations with your social media agency, or perhaps appoint one.

Twitter exchange between AppNexus and No2ndPrize
Social Media #Fail by AppNexus

I digress. The objective of this post is to raise awareness to the issues with the methodology behind the Appnexus strategy for their Netflix client. My issues with the AppNexus strategy for Netflix are as follows;

Firstly, if I have already signed up for the service do you think I am going to sign up again under an assumed alias? That seems to be the only reason for targeting somebody whom has just signed up to your product. If I was Netflix, I would be asking;

  1. Why am I paying to show DR focused ads to people who have already signed up to my service?
  2. Why am I letting AppNexus and/ or my media agency get away with this waste of my money?

Secondly, AppNexus have got at the very least two good options to engage (or not engage) with me and they are missing both by serving me a generic sales message. I have blogged about this before but options could be;

  1. Negatively retarget me, so if they see me, don’t buy and therefore show me the ad
  2. If they see me, they know I am a customer, so why not show me a complimentary ad? i.e. “We hope you are enjoying your free trial. We have [Amazing New Film] on the service this week so give it a try”

Thirdly, if you are following the apparent current trend in media employment practice, you have employed some maths and science based boffins to develop an algorithm, which helps you buy ads against somebody who has visited Netflix. As above, you are obviously not bothering to drop me into the “Do Not Target” pool (you don’t seem to have one). Instead, your maths graduates are optimising to numbers on a spread sheet. These are numbers of banner impressions shown, subsequent clicks delivered, all media costs associated with said banner placements and ultimately resulting sales made. What these big brained analysts are not monitoring is how annoying and brand damaging it is for the prospective or indeed current Netflix customer to be bombarded with ads on every page of every website they visit. You guys are selling banners, not sales after all so its about the volume and subsequent markup. I’m sure you will correct me if this is wrong and  I’m sure I have blogged about this before.

The problem as I see it is that, Appnexus (in this instance and who are not alone) have the technology to do good things in digital media, but after all the talk of how things are changing for the better, we are seeing companies operating as they did in the early naughty’s. We need cleaver people putting contextually relevant messages in front of the optimum audience at an effective price, and by that I mean messages that are relevant and will yield a strong return at that moment in time. You probably wont sell anybody a service they already are paying for.

01 Dec 2011

The death of retargeting networks

by Dan Hills (0) Comments

Before I get started on the nitty gritty of his post, I feel it important to establish context.  This post based on my own experiences of working with organisations such as Criteo, Struq and others, but more so being on the receiving end of their emphatic chase of profit over brand experience, something which I am sure you as a reader have encountered all too much as well. Also, I must also stress that my opinions have nothing to do with the likes of Criteo approaching clients directly in an effort to cut the media agency out of the loop. If you remember, Google tried this approach too but realised the value of dealing with agencies on mainstream multinational brands (although they continue to chase the local brands, to which they are welcome). What I am saying is these re-targeting organisations are not even in the same *ballpark or indeed sport* as Google.

How Re-Targeting networks operate

All too often, retargeting networks are all about clicks and sales. When you say it like that, it doesn’t sound too bad. My mantra is Visitors for Vanity, Revenue for Reality after all. However, where these networks miss the point is that they have no regard for UX (User Experience). They may well drive incremental sales, but how many users are they annoying with their incessant cookie bombing and subsequent chasing of a cookied user around every website selling ad space. They are not tracking this statistic you can be sure. I have had conversations with Criteo in particular on this subject, and have been informed that basic steps like frequency capping are against their business model. My view is that they take very much a quantitative over qualitative approach and treat users as numbers rather than customers. Get me that scatter gun. For those of you who may not be familiar with how these networks operate, it goes something like this.

  • Get sales teams to get several clients on-board
  • Go out and buy a billion impressions of remnant (unsold or unsellable) inventory at dirt cheap CPMs (Cost per Thousand Impressions)
  • Serve a dynamic ad (feed based) whenever one of the client’s users visits a page where the retargeting network has purchased said remnant inventory
  • Charge the client whenever a click is made

    • How Re-Marketing Networks make money

    Remarketing networks turn a profit by buying very cheaply in bulk on a CPM, and selling clicks on these banners back to the clients. If we take a theoretical example using small numbers to demonstrate the point, The network goes on to various DSPs and accumulates One Million ad impressions at bargain basement rates of $0.30 CPM. They have a bunch of clients ready to sell this inventory to on a click basis. When a user visits the site (who has previously visited a client’s site), the network serve the relevant clients banner to them. Based on the users previous visit to a client’s website, the network are able to finely tune the messaging so they can return a highly relevant creative message and therefor a strong click through rates of %0.1 (conservative estimate). One million impressions equate to one thousand clicks which, for sake of argument they sell at $1.20. The revenue generated is $1,200 for a mere $300 spent. 400% profit can’t be bad and this is obviously scaled up hugely. Go and buy that sports car and super yacht sir.

    You have to take your hat off to them. These networks grasped the nettle and made hay when the sun shone. Death is inevitable, and now all the main media agencies are able to develop or purchase technology do this job themselves. We don’t need to rely on these types of networks, and we can pass the saving on to our clients, after we take our fee obviously.

    *Ballpark/ Sport quote lifted and adapted from S L Jackson, Pulp Fiction, 1994. Subject: Foot Massage – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/
    06 Nov 2011

    Who owns cookie data?

    by Dan Hills (0) Comments

    If I buy advertising space on a major publisher, I own that space I have purchased and can do what I like with the space within reason can I not? Not according to a major travel site, as they have this weird idea that they own my data. I’m paying to adserve an ad on a placement I have booked on their site

    So, if you are that guy who sometimes reads my posts, you might know about what I call (its not my tm or ©) Pre-Targeting. In essence, this process involves serving a banner (and a cookie) on a META SEARCH SERP. Have I lost you yet? If so, to recap we serve a cookie from a banner to a user who has searched for a destination on a Meta Search site (tripadvisor, travelzoo, Kayak etc.) and can use that to target them in the future. Its pretty straight forward really.

    Anyway, this is the way that online media planning is going so adapt and get use to it I’m afraid. After all, if I leased a shop, and made it clear that I was going to be a travel agent, would I have to pay my landlord a fee for every sale I made?

    Cookie Monster

    I own that cookie, so give it back!

    According to one major travel site I have been dealing with I am “Cheapening their brand by engaging in such practices”. Well, the choice is yours I say. I can either run my banner on your site or I can run them elsewhere. Basically, if your site was rubbish, I would not bother to buy your media but don’t be fooled into thinking I cant work around you. You are NOT Google! Besides, If you made sales from your “premium priced” banner placements, I wouldn’t need to do a network buy in the first place would I?

    In answer to my question, Its not the site or the adserver who owns this user data. I the media planner own this user data as I have paid the site owner to run my banners and build my cookie pool. If you don’t like it, I will be buying my banners on alternative sites in future.

    30 Oct 2011

    The rise and rise and rise of the ad exchange

    by Dan Hills (2) Comments

    The Demand Side Platform

    Much is banded about around the subject of the DSP (Demand Side Platform) and how this is irrevocably changing the digital media planning industry. You can’t deny it, as it is doing just that. In the most basic of terms, the PPC search model pioneered by the likes of espotting in the UK, but obviously Google in the US has now become common practice in display advertising where media planners now bid to buy users impressions on mass across these networks. The sites and traditional ad networks are increasingly losing out to this planning side practice.

    The Ad Exchange

    However, the most exciting aspect of this for me is the rise of the ad exchange network. These guys are the middle men between the client or agency and the billions of available ad impressions out there on the web. These are the guys whom you can now brief in on a campaign, and can manage your bids dependent on your objectives. Yes, a media planner could do this themselves (assuming they had access to the technology), but as is common in our industry, there are just too many variables to manage in every campaign, so the ad exchange network proves an invaluable resource to us.

    I am currently working with The Exchange Lab and Mexad , but there are many out there. They all do a similar thing with the technology they ever build or buy, so my advice is to find the ones you can work with (who deliver results) and build your relationship. For the next 18 months at least, this type of network will be taking the bulk of my DR budget I belive.

    30 Sep 2011

    Lessons in online DR: Building and Managing Your Cookie Pool Through Meta Search Re-Targeting

    by Dan Hills (1) Comments

    A technique I have used to great affect in the past is to bucket users by their exhibited behaviours on respected sites and portals. One way I have been doing this is to use a dynamic adserving platform combined with a SERP media buy. This has been particularly effective on travel clients and works something like this.

    Step One – Identify a relevant user

    By planning my activity to run on the SERP’s of a travel site or portal such as TripAdvisor, Kayak, Trivago etc., and using a dynamic adserver, we are able to serve a relevant ad to a user who is searching for a product. In the below example, the user is searching for things to do to New York, so it is likely that this person could be in the market to buy a flight. We can now serve them an ad relevant to their search instantly through the technology we have at our disposal. Hopefully, the user will click on our add and make a booking with us, however this is only the first chance we will give this user to snap up a relevant bargain with us

    Tripadvisor dynamic banner ad

    An example of an dynamic ad showing an offer to New York on a page served to a user who is searching for activities in New York

    Step Two – Rediscovering the user on the web or “Pre-Targeting”

    By showing the relevant ad to the user, we have now cookied them, which gives us multiple chances in the future to target that user again. By using some clever technology and, working in partnership with ad exchanges such as The Exchange Lab, Mexad, The Fourth Wall etc., we can now bid to buy ad space when the user visits a site in the future. We know that user was interested in flights to New York, so we show them a new ad with a relevant offer. We could also choose to cross sell similar products like hotels, currency deals and travel insurance if we so wished.

    Pre-Targeted dynamic banner served to a user

    Pre-Targeted dynamic banner served to a user on a news site who has recently made a similar search on a travel portal

    Step Three – Re-targeting a site visitor

    Step One or Two may well have led to a click on the banner and the user visiting our site. This click may lead to a purchase, and if it does we don’t want to be showing them this offer again as it will only serve to annoy them and cost us money we don’t need to be spending. Alternatively, the user may not purchase the New York flight. In this instance we could choose a variety of options including serving them that offer again, serving an offer to an alternative destination they may have found on our site, serve them complimentary offers or product ads or indeed choose not to buy ad space against this user in future if we don’t think they will convert at a cost effective level.

    Complimentary banner served to a user who has visited the target site

    Re-targeted banner served to a user who has visited the target site promotion a relevant complimentary product

    29 Jul 2011

    Synchronised Skydiving = awesome

    by Dan Hills (1) Comments

    Very much like what I do most evenings, when Im not hunting wild boar of flying the space shuttle.

    28 Jul 2011

    Living Social cab ride

    by Dan Hills (0) Comments

    What a nice idea, well executed

    Roll them dice!

    04 Jul 2011

    The International Exchange

    by Dan Hills (0) Comments

    Great idea, brilliant video!

    TIE places communications professionals from developed countries on short-term work placements with NGOs in developing countries, to assist them with their communications.

    www.theinternationalexchange.co.uk

    03 Jul 2011

    Sales Attribution – Part Three – Multiple Media Sales Attribution

    by Dan Hills (0) Comments

    In previous posts, I have outlined the difficulties of attributing sales to a particular keyword in a search campaign, or indeed search as a channel within an advertiser digital marketing activities. If we now take this a step further, how does digital work as a channel compared to “traditional” media activities such as TV, Press, Outdoor or Radio?

    Cross media sales attribution
    Cross media sales attribution

    One of the things that drew me into digital when I was studying Marketing Communications at University was the overriding accountability of the media. Whereas TV relied on a BARB poll to tell you how many people were likely to be watching Coronation Street last night when your ad was running, digital could tell you exactly how many times your ad was served, and subsequently engaged with.

    There was in particular one media myth banded about at the time that there was only one Bangladeshi family in the UK who were measured in the BARB poll, so whatever their viewing habits may have been, dictated what all UK residing Bangladeshi families would be watching too. Completely pointless, but the best solution available at the time. Hopefully the impending launch of the Google TV service will help my TV planning colleagues produce more reliable campaigns moving forwards.

    Back to the case in hand, much of my time in recent months has been dedicated to a major UK high end supermarket chain that has recently launched an ecommerce operation. The challenge here has been to drive sales through their site. Online display advertising has been tasked in conjunction with TV, Press, Outdoor and Radio to perform this task. The obvious problem of cross channel sales attribution therefore comes in to play.

    Previously, I have written about the problems of sales attribution within the digital channel. Now the problem is heightened to the next degree. How do we know that the person who was served one of my ads online and subsequently went on to purchase (known as a post-impression sale) had not seen a TV ad last night, and had the opportunity to see a press ad in their paper this morning. Traditionally in digital, we would not take in to account the effect of these external media channels as we cannot track them as accurately, but this has been a myopic stance to take. For example, just because you can’t track an outdoor ads effectiveness on the buying channel does not mean you don’t run in that channel. Communications planners know it has an important role to play and can measure this in the overall sales uplift.

    So, how can we prove that digital can provide an incremental uplift in sales? The only way is to test it. Offline media channels have been doing this for years and our tests are conducted in the same way. We are able to target our online ads by TV region on a major portal. In one month, we only run our activity in that region. All other media channels maintain their usual weightings and frequencies. If there is a percentage uplift in that TV region, we can associate that with our digital media activity. The test can be repeated in other TV regions in later months as necessary.

    Various media touch points leading to a sale

    Various media touch points leading to a sale

    OK, this is a simplistic view of our testing strategy, and in truth we rely heavily on the big brained individuals in our Data Science team to prove or disprove the effect to any degree of significance. However, what it does prove is that cross media sales attribution is possible to measure, but perhaps not at the granularity of detail we digital media types are used to. Somebody watching one of our TV spots invariably goes on to Google and enters the URL in the search box anyway. Search and indeed digital win again!

    30 Jun 2011

    Renault Cover Wrap on T3

    by Dan Hills (0) Comments

    Great digital planning and buying work from Team Renault at Manning Gottlieb OMD. A media first T3 Cover Wrap on July’s the iPad edition

    Renault Cover wrap on T3 Magazine
    Good work @MarkHalliday and team

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