The ‘Research’ Category
Recent Eyeblaster research led by Ariel Gelfman looked at conversions from more than 10 billion impressions and showed that their are correlations between online and offline buying habits. Read the release.
Geifman discussed the research with AdExchanger.com.
AdExchanger.com: In the release about your eCommerce report you say, "This research also highlights the unique potential of addressable advertising in making digital channels even more effective conversion producers." Can you drill down a bit here? What is the link you see in the research to audience buying in digital?
AG: Digital affords the ability to uniquely target users unlike other channels such as traditional out of home and even TV. The research points out that online advertising drives high conversions in tandem with spikes in offline retail figures. Audience buying can become an invaluable tool for advertisers. If advertisers can reach consumers via online display while in the midst of the buying decision, they can persuade them to buy their product and not the competitor’s. With addressable advertising becoming more widely adopted by marketers, users experience more relevant advertising and this is expected to increase online conversions and grow digital display as a direct response medium. The ability to target the right audience and eliminate wasted impressions will improve ROI and increase user response online. Ultimately, this will drive sales and activity on E-commerce sites.
Any thoughts as to why your research showed conversions reaching their all time high on the Monday following Christmas? What might be the consumer's thought process?
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The Rubicon Project released it's Online Advertising Market Report for Q4 2009 and said that CPMs were showing considerable strength as "CPMs across the Rubicon 20 Index have risen by an average of 34 percent vs. Q3 2009." Read the release. And, download the report here (sign-up required).
Rubicon Project VP of Marketing, Kara Weber, discussed the report with AdExchanger.com.
AdExchanger.com: Can you share some data that shows audience targeted buys, in particular, were a key driver of increased CPMs for the "Rubicon 20"?
KW: At the end of Q409 more than 10 percent of advertising dollars flowing through the Rubicon Project's REVV Marketplace were being spent exclusively on audience-targeted buys, compared to 5 percent at the start of Q409. There is also a chart highlighting percentage of revenue from Audience-targeted buys in this blog post.
Comparing Q4 of last year for the Rubicon 20, what does it look like in terms of CPMs?
The Rubicon 20 Index saw 17.7% growth Q4 '09 over Q4 '08.
What are the key "major news events, especially around celebrity activities" in which Rubicon Project saw an increased demand?
The events we identified were the same as what the rest of the market saw, including the passing of Brittany Murphy and reports on Tiger Woods' infidelity. These major new stories drove consumers to celebrity gossip sites en mass in Q409.
By John Ebbert
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What's 369 pages long and contains everything you need to know about the evolving world of digital media optimization?
That's right! It's the AdExchanger.com 2009 Year-End Report containing every Q&A from 2009.
You have two flavors of downloads from which to choose.
You can:
Or, download your favorite parts:
- Download All Agency Q&As (PDF, .5 MB)
- Download All Ad Networks & Exchanges, Advertisers, Analysts, Buying Platforms Q&As (PDF, 1.6 MB)
- Download All Creative Providers & Optimization, Data & Measurement, Digital TV, Video & Radio, Search Engine Marketing, Digital Out-Of-Home, Lead Generation, Mobile, Performance Marketing Q&As (PDF, 1.7 MB)
- Download All Publisher, Targeting Technology, Social Targeting & Marketing, Traffic Tools: Serving, Quality & Attribution, Back Office, Venture Capital, Yield Optimization Q&As (PDF, 1.2 MB)
You can buy a printed, bound copy
of the report from QOOP.com for the cost of the printed paper plus shipping - click here!
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Dan Beltramo is CEO of Vizu, an online advertising effectiveness research company.
How did Vizu begin? And where did the name come from?
Vizu began with the vision that market research could be made more widely available and useful by using the internet to make it much faster, easier, and less expensive to conduct. While pursuing that broader vision, we encountered numerous online publishers who were having difficulty selling brand advertising on their sites.
Given my background in CPG marketing, it became clear to me that one of the primary reasons brand advertisers were not advertising online in volumes commensurate with online media consumption is that there was not a reliable, relevant everyday measurement system in place for brand advertisers. Given the dire need expressed by online publishers and the corroborating feedback that we received from media buying agencies and brand advertisers who were equally frustrated by the tyranny of the click-through-rate, we chose to focus exclusively on delivering a reliable online brand advertising metrics system based on measuring the brand lift associated with ad campaigns instead of the CTRs.
The name Vizu was a riff on the word visibility which is what we provide to brand marketers and their partners.
What is the sweet spot for Vizu in terms of client type? Is it difficult selling to traditional brands due to an unfamiliarity or lack of comfort with online marketing tactics?
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Josh Chasin is Chief Research Officer of Comscore, a marketing research company.
AdExchanger.com: Of the three silos of metrics - audience measurement, campaign analysis tools and web analytics - in your opinion, which one is the toughest to grasp for the end client?
JC: One the one hand, I think the most vexing thing for the client is that the three don't match. In network TV, for example, all metric streams come from the Nielsen ratings-- there is no analog to web analytic data (maybe Set Top Box data will get there) and ad campaign data is run off the ratings data. So the advertiser raised on TV is flustered by the fact of multiple metric streams.
On the other hand, there continues to be an issue with both ad server and web analytic data, in that they talk about "Unique Visitors," but unlike audience measurement they base these measures on cookies. At this point, we all know empirically that cookies are not unique at all, and they can dramatically overstate and thus misrepresent reach. And this isn't just coming from the audience measurement side of the divide anymore; web analytics guru Eric Peterson summarized the issue nicely right here.
I would refer all prospective Internet advertisers interested in parsing the definitional differences and limitations of the different ways to calculate Unique Visitors to the IAB Audience Reach Definition Guidelines.
How is Comscore quantifying the Long Tail?
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Looking to build a startup that makes a Facebook valuation look pedestrian?
The big "opportunity" (problem!) in online display advertising is aggregating empirical data showing display's benefits. For now, they are fairly hidden. Yet, the inevitable success of the ad exchange model and evolution into premium inventory trading depends, in part, on better engagement analytics with standards for attribution.
Can you build the analytics platform of the future which includes measured attribution of campaign elements (display ads, search, a billboard on the NJ Thruway) that leads to a final conversion whether online or offline?
You caaaan?
Currently, value of display is being established using the lowest common denominator of metrics - did the last click from the display unit cause a conversion or not? Often, not. Though, as we discussed recently in regards to Adgregate Markets, technologists are bringing the store to the media unit in hopes of improving conversion ratios.
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Enough.
The unending criticism from ad industry leadership of ad exchanges, networks and their technology is an abomination.
Cut to a scene from the movie, "Network" with Yahoo!'s Carol Bartz poised in the window instead of Peter Finch.
Carol: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
Today - the latest salvo: Chairwoman of IAB's Board of Directors, Wenda Millard, goes on the offensive against technologists in an Ad Age piece by Michael Learmonth.
"Ms. Millard also criticized two high-profile appointments at two of the internet's biggest advertising companies: Microsoft and Yahoo. Microsoft appointed former Yahoo search technologist Qi Lu to head its online services group; Silicon Valley tech exec Carol Bartz is the new CEO of Yahoo, the largest publisher on the web.
"We shouldn't let marketing decisions be made by a technologist who has never met a CMO," she said. (Still, it could be posited that the biggest innovation in online marketing has been paid search, invented by technologists.) "
This is an amazing quote on many levels. Think of the strides made in the executive suite by women. Bartz is an example as is Millard, who shows no mercy. Even writer Learmonth winces as he adds the parenthetical phrase at the end.
Millard has made some serious coin as a founder at DoubleClick and Yahoo! exec as we recall. Guess those days are in the past: Forget the technologist no-nothings... and oh, by the way, I'm excited about MSLO's partnership with Yieldex and I like being a board member of Contextweb.
In Ad Age, Millard reveals a shared mentality within the old guard of the ad industry and, consequently, the IAB - that technology is bad for business. The reason it's bad? First, it threatens the inefficient livelihood to which they are accustomed. More importantly, they don't own the technology.
As we all know, selling, these days, isn't about a marketer merely talking about her brand safe site to a prospective media buyer and how great it is to be on said site. Her site's efficiency can now be quantified through technology. Horrors.
The reality is that technology helps - not hurts - and makes the process with which the old guard has been familiar the past 50 years more efficient for all parties. Of course, some of the old guard are going to lose their jobs and their power, so now they run scared when they should be leading the charge to a brave, new advertising world.
The constant, lightning barrage of negative comments made by key members of the online advertising community are unfair, unwarranted and point to an archaic mindset that drags the advertising industry in the wrong direction.
Randall Rothenberg recently compared ad networks to "outlet malls" in a BusinessWeek written by Rob Hof who made ad networks sound like a Madoff-inspired Ponzi scheme.
Hey Rob and Randy - ad networks are the opposite of Ponzi's core competency - they are middlemen between real buyers and sellers of online media through the use of technology. And, ad exchanges are the next step of this online advertising evolution/revolution as they provide more transparency and, consequently greater efficiency for all parties involved - a future that includes networks as super traders on the exchange.
How can Rothenberg, the leader of an industry council that includes ad networks and exchanges, treat some of his membership so poorly? (Note: The IAB is fortunate to receive the sponsorship dollars that it does from ad networks and exchanges.)
The big name ad agencies and publishers of the IAB who beat their chests - and who Rothenberg obviously favors - need to be told to take their medicine and accept technology, ad networks and exchanges as partners not pariahs.
Posted in Online Advertising, Research | 6 Comments »
The genie is out of the bottle.
Premium content publishers and their direct sales team are out for blood (or so they seem) on Silicon Alley Insider as the "evil" ad networks have plundered their premium kingdoms and hired their women and children. In the comments to SAI's coverage of an AdAge piece, direct sellers from website publishers show up to lambaste the model which has enriched them: ad networks.
Premium pubs: you need to accept that fact that your CPMs are going down for IAB/standard display, but more efficient days are ahead as your direct sales team shifts to selling unique, integrated sponsorships and the CPM inventory is given to the publisher's trading specialist on the exchange, or yield optimizers such as Rubicon Project, AdMeld and Pubmatic. We know the argument about experience for the brand, but ad exchanges can provide brand safe inventory plus the reach and frequency that advertisers want.
And, let's face it.. many large pubs may need to go subscription to pay for the cost of creating content.
As we noted, the latest firestorm started after Advertising Age covered the Pubmatic AdPrice Index. AdAge continues to be hurt by its willingness to remain with the weekly magazine format which, in this case, has left it seven days behind the news. Ugh.
In his thoughts on declining CPMs, SAI's Nicholas Carlson nearly declared that it's time to boycott ad networks. Wisely, he knew this is impossible. Carlson's view - and many of the commenters - are indicative of "the love" for the old way of doing things.
Why moan that the free market has found a better way and continues to evolve with the help of powerful technology? Hooray!
Rather than resist, it's time to try and move towards new models which make better sense than outrageous CPMs based on little more than the perceived value of a publisher's brand name. Better analytics are on the way to show cross campaign lift where display correlates directly to search success metrics, too. Advertisers and publishers rejoice.
We suggest that the exchanges will lead the way for these publishers who will need to remain nimble while ad dollars are scarce.
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As we said back in September, the online display advertising business is sorely in need of an analytics package showing that the exposure of online display ads to the consumer can be tied directly to the performance of other campaigns including search - organic or paid.
We even postulated that ComScore might be in a position to provide this type of critical research for which online display advertising exchanges and networks are so desperate in order to sell to their clients.
Well, whaddya know? ComScore has come through for its client base of ad exchanges and networks in a new white paper called "Whither the Click." (Get it here.) Thanks to MikeOnAds and Fred Wilson for the heads up.
Leveraging its 2 million member panel and aggregating a couple hundred ad effectiveness studies from its Brand Metrix product line, the Comscore research was presented by Gian M. Fulgoni and Marie Pauline Mörn to attendees of the
"Empirical Generalizations In Advertising Conference" in early December at the Wharton School.
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