RSS FeedArchive for the ‘Research’ Category

Social Signal Informing Traditional Research And Brand At WPP's Millward Brown

Millward BrownResearch agency Millward Brown (part of WPP Group) and Kantar Media Cymfony announced yesterday what it calls "a new suite of online listening solutions merging Kantar Media Cymfony’s analysis of social media and online discussion with Millward Brown’s brand and communications research." Read the release.

Ann Green, Partner, Client Solutions at Millward Brown discussed the new product and why brand marketers should care.

AdExchanger.com: Why is there a need for online listening solutions?

AB: I think clients are understandably enamored with social media monitoring tools, because they provide the organic voice of the consumer. What has been lacking or needed is context for this information. In other words, how do I use this information to build strong and healthy brands and manage my communications? The way in which we can do this is to come up with best practice integration of social media monitoring alongside traditional research.

What are some of the important metrics that get tracked with this solution?

I think what you can find out is it provides a lot more texture. So let's say that the image of my brand is declining. Sometimes from a tracking study, it can be difficult to diagnose why that decline is occurring. What social media allows us to do is to listen to consumers at that point in time and in an organic fashion and help us to diagnose - based upon their own words - why imagery might be on the decline.

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For Digital Advertising, Affectiva Moving Beyond Survey Questions To Facial Recognition Says CEO Berman

AffectivaAffectiva, a Waltham, Massachussetts-based company which "provides tools for measuring emotion with electrodermal testing & face expression recognition," recently announced a new round of funding with investors that include WPP Group's Kantar unit and Myrian Capital. Read the release. Affectiva's tech grew out of research from the MIT Media Lab.

Dave Berman, CEO of Affectiva, discussed the opportunity he sees for his company in digital advertising.

AdExchanger.com: What is the problem that Affectiva solves?

DB: What we provide are unique, new types of data that haven't been relevant before. For example, in an experiment done at MIT, researchers had a bunch of people take a sip of Pepsi in new and different types of flavors. After they took a sip, they'd answer a survey question.

Well, one guy on his fourth sip makes a really funny face like he has heartburn. But, he still marked it 7 out of 10 - that he was pleased with it. Except, when he got about 20 sips in, he started changing his mind.

So, what Affectiva can provide is physiological data faster than you can get through normal surveys. Over time, we think that we can mine this subconscious and physiological information and help advertisers make better, faster decisions.

AdExchanger.com: What does the use case look like on data collection?

What happens is that at the beginning of a survey, you hit "allow" to turn on your web camera and then you start watching a commercial, for example.  In real time, your results are aggregated in the cloud. We can give a real time look at how people were feeling while watched the commercial.

For one survey, we were looking at three different metrics: “smile” - are people enjoying it?; the lower eyebrow - a negative look or a confusion; and we measured attention. And then we asked a few survey questions at the end. Literally, in three seconds, we can tell you whether people enjoyed an ad and aggregate that survey across thousands of people. We've got other emotional states that we're in the process of rolling those out, too.

Basically, we can tell if somebody's engaged. Do they like it? Do they dislike it? Are they confused? And we can correlate that to whether that ad is going to be successful in the market.

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From Re:think 2011 - The CTR Means Nothing Says HP Researchers Leighton And Satiroglu

ARF Re:think 2011The four-day, Advertising Research Foundation's Re:think 2011 show was up and running in New York City today. And, there were few media buyers and sellers in sight as the analysts and researchers of the media world took over the Marriott Marquis to share notes, agree to disagree, and see if what's in-house is up-to-date.

A forum panel tantalized attendees with its title - "Is My Digital Ad Working?" - and consisted of three different groups of presenters whose answer seemed to be... "not exactly sure." Given what one might imagine about the empirical world of research, it's amazing to see how the ad research business in digital is still wide-open as there are few clear insights or metrics to report the efficiency of online display ad, brand campaigns, in particular.

But, that isn't to say there isn't any data. It's digital, after all, and there's tons of data which can result in many different insights within segments of larger campaigns. The story is clearly ... complex.

Sibel Satiroglu and Suzanne Leighton, European-based ad researchers from HP, led off and presented results from their recent paper which delved into the proper metrics for digital ads and used their company's digital ads for printers as a basis for learning.

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Click Forensics CEO Pellman On The Malware And Malvertising Fronts

Click ForensicsThe online advertising world continues to be challenged by ne'er-do-wells as Click Forensics released results from its latest quarterly, deep-dive into the company's fraud detection data. The Company identified challenges with display advertising where "a pop-up or pop-under (...) rotates brand advertisers' banner ads every 10-15 min in an effort to seemingly boost impression figures." Read the release.

CEO Paul Pellman discussed the latest on malware and malvertising.

AdExchanger.com: How is the malware scheme you describe reaching websites - through display ads from exchanges, specific ad networks? Any ideas on how it can be prevented?

PP: The Click Forensics Malware Lab has been finding two generic types of malware.  The first, more common version, is actually installed on the visitor's machine as a result of some other seemingly innocent download.  It can be spread via e-mail attachments or through lots of "freeware" that people install on their machines.  Once installed, these Botnets can take control of browser functions or simply open pop-unders to display ads for nefarious ad networks.  The best way to prevent these is for visitors to be diligent and use updated antivirus software from Symantec, McAfee, and others.

The second type is not really malware at all, but is the one more commonly talked about in AdExchanger circles.  Namely, visitors to ad supported sites get served all sorts of ads that they never see, whether in pop-unders, zero-by-zero iFrames, or invisible pages.  The generic term for these schemes is "ad stuffing."  Advertisers can protect themselves from both types of fraud by employing ad verification and/or audience verification platforms.

What IS the malware? Any trends there?

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ClearSaleing CIO Goldberg Reviews Attribution Across Digital Advertising Today

Adam Goldberg of ClearSaleingAdam Goldberg is Chief Innovation Officer of ClearSaleing. AdExchanger.com asked Goldberg about the latest advancements and traction with effective attribution modeling in digital advertising.

AdExchanger.com: How does ClearSaleing approach attribution across channels and what are the coming milestones in cross channel attribution? Attribution modeling for an SEM direct response campaign seems pretty straightforward.

AG: Today, we have the ability to perform attribution across any online channel.  We are able to account for the value of a click, a view-thru, an interact-thru, and video on a conversion.  If we can track that an ad, a video, a direct visit, organic visit, etc., was involved in a conversion, we can attribute credit (profit, revenue, sales, engagement) across those activities in a statistically sound manner.

When it comes to attribution modeling specific to SEM direct response, one needs to be very careful here.  It is rare that SEM is the only channel driving visits to a client’s site.  If there are any other vehicles driving traffic and they are not accounted for in the attribution modeling, then the models are based on an incomplete data set, which will lead to decisions being made on bad data.  Attribution cannot be done in a silo.

We are already capable of doing media mix modeling that incorporates not only the online world, but the offline world as well.  As technology enables us to better track TV and mobile, we will be able to get more granular in our reporting and thus create even more effective attribution models that account for the entire advertising universe.

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VP Hunter Says Comscore Focusing On Data Effectiveness Not Just Ad Effectiveness

comScoreAnne Hunter is VP Advertising Effectiveness at comScore. She discussed comScore's products and initiatives around what's core to her role - advertising effectiveness - and, in particular, a new product called Campaign Essentials announced in September. Read the release.

AdExchanger.com: comScore has been thought of as the company that measures website traffic.  What is the AdEffx offering and how does it fit in with comScore’s place in the market?

AH: comScore Media Metrix is our audience ratings service and flagship product, which is why a lot of people associate the company with audience measurement. We’re trusted as the most reliable source of digital audience because it has been our core competency from day one.  Agencies, publishers and advertisers around the world rely on it to make important business decisions every day.

Advertising effectiveness research is a large and growing component of the comScore’s product offering building on our reputation for trusted digital measurement. Until about a year ago, the majority of our advertising effectiveness work was conducted on a custom basis for clients.  We’ve since developed AdEffx, a standardized product suite for measuring the impact of online campaigns.

Our audience verification product – called Campaign Essentials – is available in the same client interface as Media Metrix, which means clients can log-in on a daily basis to assess a campaign’s performance with digital GRP overnights, as well as verify audience and geographic delivery. Campaign Essentials uses the same people-based methodology as Media Metrix so clients can plan and measure performance using the same data, giving our clients the ability to understand how their topline strategies are driving actual campaign performance. This alignment is critical for marketers who want to understand why a particular campaign is working or which levers to pull when a campaign isn’t performing up to expectations.

If click isn't the right success metric for display according to marketers, what is?

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Nielsen EVP Paparo Driving Accuracy, Cross-Channel Metrics And Ad Effectiveness Themes In His New Role

NielsenAri Paparo, EVP, Product Leadership at Nielsen, a media research and measurement firm, recently discussed with AdExchanger.com his new role, Nielsen's initiatives in the digital space and his experience as an advertising product leader at Google.

AdExchanger.com:  Tell us about your new role and its responsibilities.

AP: I'm in charge of online audience measurement and ad effectiveness at Nielsen. I'm particularly excited about the ability to help marketers, advertisers and media companies measure online and digital media across channels and across user behavior. I think that the proliferation of devices and the proliferation of ways in which consumers interact with media is causing some really exciting opportunities, but also some really significant measurement challenges.

What would you say are some of those measurement challenges, in particular?

Being able to measure audience across devices, in particular. Three‑screen: TV, PC and phone. And now, four‑screen with the iPad and tablets, etc. Being able to figure out who you reached and the value of the media that you bought - or the value of the media you sold - is incredibly challenging.

Why did you leave Google?

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Download AdExchanger.com's May-August 2010 Q&A Report: Learn From The Ecosystem

AdExchanger.com May-Aug 2010 ReportYes, it's another opportunity to "Learn About The Ecosystem" and reflect upon another four-month block of data-driven Q&As on AdExchanger.com.

Learn from, review and slice-and-dice recent insights and info from members of the digital ad ecosystem including web publishers, digital agencies, ad networks, exchanges, ad tech and data companies.

AdExchanger.com presents Volume III of its Q&A report, a 262-page publication consisting of all the Q&A interviews on the site from May to August of 2010.

Collect 'em all!...

  • Volume I from all of 2009 is here.
  • Volume II containing January-April of 2010 Q&As is here.

And now, select from two versions of Volume III:

You can buy a printed, bound copy
of the report from QOOP.com for the cost of the printed paper plus shipping - click here!

WPP Group's Media Innovation Group Addressing Attribution Challenge Says Analytics Exec Becker

Media Innovation GroupEugene Becker is Director, Analytics of the Media Innovation Group (The MIG), WPP Group's proprietary technology firm.

AdExchanger.com: What is your perspective on the attribution challenge within the broader context of measurement and analytics?

EB: We see the lack of a viable attribution metric as a central, if not the central dilemma facing digital marketers. The industry is drowning in data, but decision-making remains subjective because marketers know that the last ad model can lead to wildly suboptimal decisions. A typical case is where bottom-funnel tactics receive the entire budget, while the top-funnel sites that are actually driving demand get little or nothing. If no one has faith in the metrics, the accountability model suffers. At the end of the day, the growth and power of digital media is constrained because we are still facing this fundamental measurement challenge.

How is the MIG’s attribution offering unique?

In developing ZAP Attribution, we focused on two major gaps in the market – lack of objectivity and lack of accountability.

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New Digital Media Index Data Showing Best Growth In Display In Years Says Solbright CEO Pace

SolbrightWeb publisher solutions provider Solbright released its initial findings from its new Digital Media Index™ (DMI) last week as the "premium" display advertising market rebounds in 2010. Among the data points, "Cost-per-thousand-impression (CPM) revenues in the first half of 2010 rose almost 9 percent from the same period in 2009, while pricing, after experiencing a recent decline, has stabilized." Read the release. And, download the report (sign-up required).

Solbright CEO Tom Pace discussed the new research.

Given your prediction that this will be the strongest year ever for "premium" display, why do you think this will be the case?

It’s all in the numbers. The Digital Media Index makes it clear that Q2 2010 has been the strongest Q2 we have ever seen, and 2010 overall has also seen the best sequential growth in recent years. As far back as we have tracked this data, we have seen very strong seasonal trends. The first quarter of every year has traditionally been the weakest quarter, with revenue trending up significantly in the second and third quarters, and the fourth quarter coming in the strongest. These strong seasonal trends, taken together with record-breaking and accelerating revenue for the second quarter, portend a very strong overall year for the premium display market.

What is the biggest surprise for you in the data?

One of the biggest surprises for us was the recent strength of the newspaper sites. These sites, taken as a whole, had about a 30 percent revenue increase in Q2 over the same period last year. While there were some other segments that had even better performance, 30 percent is certainly respectable. This strength may be attributable to a growing advertiser preference for local reach.

What is the value proposition for your clients in having this data made available publicly?

Keep in mind that we are not reporting any organization’s specific data here, and that all reported information is aggregated from across our client base. Our clients represent the top premium publishers in the industry, so they see tremendous value in being able to compare their own pricing and revenue data against the rest of the market. The trends we’ve identified help these publishers set their own pricing and packages in a way that gives them a competitive advantage.

It’s also important to note that the data we’ve been made available for the public only scratches the surface of the trends the DMI can identify. While a significant amount of information will be included in our quarterly public reports, our clients have access to a broader and more detailed view of the DMI findings, and it’s our hope that the information we present will help them make decisions that will have a positive impact on their bottom lines.

By John Ebbert