The ‘Research’ Category
DoubleVerify CEO Oren Netzer discussed his company's new research group called the "Advertising Fraud Detection Lab [which] will investigate advertising fraud in real-time and raise awareness of deceptive scams taking place every day across thousands of publishers." Read the release.
AdExchanger.com: How big a problem is impression fraud today?
Impression fraud is a huge issue in online advertising and it happens across thousands of sites a day. There are currently 4 million sites in the U.S. carrying ads on a daily basis and studies show that on average, 31 percent of all online impressions are non-compliant. A significant cause of this waste is due to common fraudulent activities and we have noticed quite a large amount of questionable activity on some sites already. There are potentially hundreds of ways in which a site can engage in advertising fraud. For example, publishers can stack 10 ads on top of each other, where the user only sees the topmost ad but all 10 advertisers pay for an impression. There are numerous other ways to do this as well (Professor Ben Edelman publishes other types of advertising fraud on his blog at http://www.benedelman.org.
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On Monday, DataXu released insights from a recent sample of client display ad campaigns that showed creative has more impact on conversions than context or audience. Read more on the DataXu blog about "Beyond Audience: What Drives Campaign Performance?" And, download the one-sheeter (PDF).
Sandro Catanzaro, VP of Products at DataXu, discussed the study's findings.
So are you saying that if context and audience remain equal (or remain the same) that nearly 1/2 the time, a change in creative led to a conversion? How do you pull out the fact that creative is the key here nearly 1/2 the time?
To provide some context, we initially conducted this analysis as an engineering effort. We wanted to see if our data would reveal any insights about which type of impression attributes are most important to a campaign. We analyzed converting impressions across a set of 19 of our campaigns for 30 days, and we found that for almost half (48%) of the campaigns, creative attributes of those impressions were more correlated to conversions than attributes related to context or the consumer. In the other half of the campaigns (52%), context or consumer attributes were more frequently correlated.
So, getting back to your question, for the 48% of campaigns in which creative was the most important attribute, with all else being equal, choosing the best creative was the most important decision driving the increased conversion rates.
While creative attributes were the "winner" in our study, the real takeaway is that there is not one approach or dimension of optimization that fits all campaigns, as campaign performance drivers can be unpredictable. Ideally, you need to consider all three data domains, at the same time—and for every impression— if you want to maximize performance.
Given the limitations of certain inventory sources and exchanges, did any of the campaigns run across non-RTB-enabled inventory? If so, do you have any estimate of the performance impact of a non-RTB-enabled environment?
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Demand-side platform DataXu has released a new monthly study called "DataXu MarketPulse." Among the insights: "DataXu analyzed the price paid for ad impressions across ad exchanges over the past 30 days, and discovered that the average daily price varied by over 100% during the period."
The company also compared CPM pricing volatility to other markets:
DataXu VP of Technology Bill Simmons discussed the studies findings and the use of financial market constructs in digital advertising.
AdExchanger.com: How do you determine a 100% fluctuation in CPM pricing? Isn't every impression potentially different so an apples-to-apples comparison is impossible?
BS: You are right, all impressions are different. However, the graphic in DataXu’s MarketPulse shows an overall average CPM across all of our campaigns. What this is showing is that even when you aggregate this average across billions of impressions bought on multiple exchanges; you might expect the cost of media to stay fairly steady over a thirty-day period. However, this is not the case. Over thirty-day periods, we typically see the average cost of online display media change by over 100 percent.
If we break down inventory into to smaller and smaller buckets, like individual content categories or audience segments, the volatility measurement increases dramatically (sometimes as high at 500 percent). This finding is significant, since traditional media planning methods --- where change orders may take days to execute --- can’t keep up with these kinds of price swings on a day-by-day, let alone a second-by-second basis.
Please discuss how the variables involved with CPM pricing differ from the pricing in other markets.
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Dan Salmon is an equity research analyst at BMO Capital Markets and covers advertising and marketing services.
AdExchanger.com: Please provide a bit of background on you and how you and Bank of Montreal got into the marketing services space.
DS: BMO Capital Markets is the investment banking arm of BMO Financial Group (aka Bank of Montreal) and it has been providing advisory and capital markets services in the media, advertising and marketing services industry for some time. However we increased our US focus in recent years including the creation of my role: equity research analyst. I began covering the industry for BMO in April 2008 and continue to add new companies to my coverage list. As for some background on me, I am a Canadian citizen and have worked in the equity research business since graduating from college. I began my career at Saloman Smith Barney on the Hotels and Casinos team from 2000-2003 and have been with BMO since 2004, where I began working on the Broadcasting and Internet Media team.
What has surprised you about the digital media space in 2010?
Slowly but surely, many people are beginning to expand their definition of "digital media" to include things like addressable IP-based television (IPTV) and digital-out-of-home (DOOH). For so long, the term was confined to lead generation, search, display and email, and then eventually rich media and mobile. It's no secret that the media and marketing ecosystem is evolving into an all-digital one, but up until recently my discussions with "digital media" companies were normally confined to "the internet" and maybe mobile. Now when I ask if they're beginning to think about evolving their offerings to handle DOOH and IPTV, the answer is increasingly 'Yes!'
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It's finally available online!
View the video - "A Few Good DSPs" - from last Monday's presentation at the IAB Exchanges and Networks Marketplace by GCA Savvian's Terence Kawaja..
And, see and hear Kawaja's complete PPT presentation...
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It's time to gather up the most recent Q&As and send them out into the wild! Get insights and info from members of the digital ad ecosystem including publishers, advertisers, agencies, ad tech and data companies.
AdExchanger.com presents Volume II of its Q&A report, a 271-page publication consisting of all the Q&A interviews on the site from January to April of 2010. (Volume I is here.)
You have two versions to choose from:
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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WPP Group's Kantar Media announced that it introducing Internet ad network competitive tracking reporting. This data is the first by a research provider to offer detailed insight into the companies, advertisers and products running on ad networks." Read more on Research Magazine.
Research SVP Jon Swallen of Kantar Media North America discussed the new product.
AdExchanger.com: Why offer this service? What problem is Kantar Media responding to?
JS: Ad networks have become a major channel for Internet display advertising. To date, measurement has lagged behind. Our clients need competitive and strategic intelligence on network activity to support a wide-range of decision making. That’s the hole we are trying to fill.
For example, site owners and media companies will be able to use these data to evaluate networks’ share of business across product categories and advertisers and develop targeted prospect lists. Agencies and advertisers will gain insights into the strategies of their competitors and be able to identify site overlap between networks to help them optimize their own network buys for the greatest reach and efficiency.
Will their be any performance data associated with ad networks? Any plans here?
Consistent with our business of monitoring advertising placements, we are reporting on the advertising impression delivery that networks achieve in aggregate as well as for individual advertisers and brands.
Will you be using third parties to verify ad network capabilities? If so, which ones?
The service is designed to capture display advertising on web sites and identify the source of the ad – i.e., an external ad network or a direct placement by the site publisher. Our ad capture technology is able, on its own, to analyze and identify the internal web page code markup used to request and insert ads. From this, we can identify the specific ad network.
Who is the target client for this report and will it be freely available, or subscription, etc.?
There are business applications for networks, site publishers, agencies and advertisers. Data access by subscription.
By John Ebbert
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AdSafe Media sponsored a new white paper by Winterberry Group called, "Beyond the Grey Areas: Transparency, Brand Safety and the Future of Online Advertising." Looking at brand safety concerns across the industry, Winterberry Group notes it's not so much that full transparency is the important issue for marketers, but its that they feel safe distributing their brand throughout the Web - there is a difference! Read Winterberry Group's release. And, download the PDF.
Jonathan Margulies, a director at Winterberry Group discussed the paper's findings.
AdExchanger.com: On the buy-side, specifically agency, do you sense confusion among buyers of brand safety "tools"? Or is it pretty cut and dry?
There's no question that agencies--and most brands, for that matter--are still sorting through the market of potential brand safety solutions. But the confusion is much deeper with respect to the problem itself. And how can we expect buyers to make informed decisions about tools or services when, by and large, they don't yet fully understand the extent the costs they're already incurring? That was one of the principal drivers of this research, and our hope is that putting some context to the current roadblocks--that is, tying some tangible costs to the vast array of anecdotal feedback associated with brand safety issues--will help buyers, sellers and intermediaries address the problem more effectively.
When it comes to brand safety solutions--and I'd argue that encompasses a broad combination of rating services, filtering tools and other custom applications--it seems that many on the buy-side are adopting the approach that "more is better," and covering themselves through affiliation with as many legitimate providers as they can (and as many as their clients are likely to require). But that's something we expect will change somewhat as the contrasts between platforms grow more distinct--and the tools available to track their respective value grow more useful. At the end of the day, that's ultimately what's going to drive adoption.
What are one or two insights that surprised you the most?
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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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