What’s behind P&G’s cutback on targeted Facebook ads?

ejinsight.com

With over 100 brands, P&G is the world's largest advertiser, using a mix of traditional as well as digital media. Image credit: gurufocus

Facebook has dominated the social network world with its 1.6 billion users. However, the world’s biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble, said recently that it will scale back ads on Facebook that target specific consumers, and consider more spending on traditional platforms like TV. The news has shocked the advertising and internet world.
Marc Pritchard, P&G’s chief marketing officer, made the announcement in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week. Pritchard said targeted ads placed with Facebook did not boost sales as much as expected.
“We targeted too much, and we went too narrow,” he said in the interview, “and now we’re looking at: What is the best way to get the most reach but also the right precision?”
The so-called targeted ads would pitch ads to a specific group of target customers. For example, if P&G intends to unveil a new perfume primarily for 25-35 year-old office ladies, it can place ads with Facebook asking for this specific group to be targeted at, bypassing females in other age groups and males.
Targeted ads based on attributes of users have always been viewed as the strength of social media platforms like Facebook. By contrast, traditional media like TV and newspapers are unable to zero in on a certain type of viewers or readers specifically.
Such targeted online advertising is supposed to minimize waste, which is typical when advertising on traditional media.
P&G spends nearly US$8 billion each year on advertising. After numerous reviews of its campaigns, it has now concluded that targeted ads are not as cost effective as expected.
In one example, the company tried ads for its Febreze air freshener, targeting pet owners and households with large families. Sales had been tepid until P&G carried out another campaign.
Using a similar budget, the company sprinkled the spending across a wide range of media, traditional plus online. Sales took off with the new approach.
Traditional mass-market advertising approach offers some synergy to a consumer giant like P&G which owns more than 100 brands.
For example, a sanitary towel ad in a subway station, though not intended for male customers, can raise the brand awareness. Next time when the customers are looking for, say shavers, there is a greater chance they may pick P&G products.
P&G has already ramped up ad spending on traditional media while scaling back from targeted ads, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The consumer products titan spent as much as 35 percent of its annual ad budget on digital media, and the percentage kept increasing in recent years.
But now the strategic shift means the trend could reverse in coming years.
Does P&G’s decision spell the victory of traditional media?
Not necessarily.
Audiences’ shift from traditional media to online platforms remains an irreversible trend. As such, digital advertising is set to keep expanding.
P&G’s high profile cut-back of targeted ads spending on Facebook could be just a bargaining tactic.
The company measures the efficiency of ads in dollar value, or how much business an ad brings.
The cost-per-view of targeting ads on Facebook is a lot higher than of traditional, undifferentiating media.
To reach 5,000 targeted viewers on Facebook, the spending needed can reach the equivalent of that required to reach a million TV viewers, according to Peter Daboll, chief executive of Ace Metrix, which tests ads for effectiveness.
That means targeted ads on Facebook are about 200 times more expensive than traditional ads.
But if P&G can get a better deal, Facebook advertising has the potential to become more alluring.

Research from The Drum and The Trade Desk finds programmatic video spend set to rise but hurdles still to be overcome

thedrum.com

Programmatic spend on video is set to rocket in the next year, with over 80% of respondents to a survey conducted by The Drum in association with The Trade Desk expecting to increase budget allocated to it.
The growth in programmatic advertising spend is likely to migrate from display advertising, followed by linear TV and print, according to the new report.
The Drum surveyed 200 agency professionals with responsibility for purchasing media to gain a more detailed understanding of what clients expect from programmatic video.
The findings of this survey were then debated by an expert panel of programmatic thought leaders. The survey data and the ensuing debate fed into the production of The Drum Market Insight Report: Programmatic Video Edition, in association with The Trade Desk. You can download a copy of the report here.
Despite the huge potential for growth, programmatic technology has yet to fulfil its potential as a mainstream way of purchasing video inventory with clients still too cautious about cost, viewability and wastage, according to the report.
Agency executives also believe that brand trust, fraud and ad blocking are other significant challenges holding back adoption of programmatic video, according to the report.
The research indicates that less than half of clients (46.2%) serve video programmatically, though over a third of the respondents’ combined overall video spend is served in this way.
Mobile to lead growth
Most, however, expect major growth – particularly on mobile – over the next few years.
The Trade Desk’s UK general manager James Patterson says that, while waiting for mobile inventory to grow and creative to mature, the technology is waiting. “Technology can track a user from the top of the funnel to the bottom. We can tell people a story across all different mediums, channels and devices.”
The overwhelming majority of those surveyed (88.5%) expect spend to increase over the next year – and nobody expects a decline in spend transacted this way.
That will be assisted by broadcasters and publishers, who are increasingly embracing the technology and investing in more premium formats and improved measurement and metrics.
Danny Hopwood, Vivaki vice president of solutions and platform operations (EMEA), notes: “Broadcasters are opening their doors to programmatic technology”. Not least, he says, because of a potential plateauing in linear TV viewing and an increased consumer appetite in video on demand.
Dan Hagen, Carat’s UK chief strategy officer, believes that video is the future – one “much more powered by data and what people want rather than what you want to shovel at people”.
When asked if clients understood programmatic distribution, education, knowledge and understanding remains a concern – although almost half of those surveyed believe that their clients either had a “reasonable” knowledge (43%) or “in-depth understanding” (2.4%).
Justin Taylor, Teads UK managing director, says that while 18 months ago clients were investing in data taxonomy they are now asking how they can use it – “and media is the first area they’re asking that in. That’s raised the bar of programmatic.”

Why Native Doesn't Have to Be Advertising

exchangewire.com

When I say ‘native’, you say ‘advertising’. This is how native is perceived in the digital industry, driven more so by the uptake in programmatic native, but is there more to it than just an ad format? In this piece, Alicia Navarro (pictured below), CEO and co-founder, Skimlinks writes for ExchangeWire that the marriage of sales and editorial allows the benefits of both to shine through and brings credibility back to the editorial experience for both publishers and readers.
Native advertising was such a good idea, in theory. Create beautiful, editorialised ads that would slide seamlessly into whatever the viewer was reading or watching. The more scrupulous advertisers would make it clear that this was still advertising of course, but somehow it wouldn’t distract, it would just simply add to the overall content experience.
In reality, according to Contently, only 19% of consumers trust native advertising while 62% think it diminishes the publisher’s credibility to run it. At a time when publishers, such as the FT, are having to make up for the drop in print readership and look to new revenue streams by building their own full-service agency, this isn’t a good sign. Publishers need to work smarter with brand advertisers to deliver editorial that is authentic, transparent, useful, and entertaining.

The advent of ‘Comtent’
This is where comtent comes in. Admittedly a portmanteau of our own making, comtent is commerce-related content: the marriage of commerce and content. Instead of having advertisers drive your content and producing advertorials, ‘comtent’ is about having editors create content your users will love, that just happens to be about products and retailers.
Just look at the success many social and editorial-led sites have had with creating pure-play
comtent such as Refinery29, WireCutter, Apartment Therapy, Gizmodo. These are great examples of publishers that produce high-quality, engaging and unique content around shopping-related themes while being independent and trustworthy. But is the publisher cutting off their nose to spite their face? With great product listicles or feature reviews, have they just handed the advertiser some free – and every reason in the world to save their ad dollars to spend elsewhere?
1: Affiliate your content
The best way to monetise comtent is through affiliate marketing. It simply means that publishers receive a commission if viewers click-through and buy the product linked to within the comtent. Historically this has been frowned upon as a corruption of editorial integrity.
However, the modern-day publisher has established policies and best practises that protect the independence and authenticity of its content while still being pragmatic about driving revenue. For example, did you know policies that ensure product reviews include a link to buy the product reviewed? This is because providing the link is a better user experience, like linking to a retailer’s site rather than a brand’s non-shoppable site, or like hiring commerce editors to add shopping links to content written independently by pure-play editors. There are many approaches that publishers have adopted to ensure they are creating content that their users trust and return to read. And, as a bonus, it can be non-intrusive revenue drivers.
How does this differ from native advertising? Native advertising is created and purchased by an advertiser, and eventually placed, thanks to a direct buy or a when done programmatically. Comtent differs in that it is first and foremost content, driven by editors – or, in the case of social sites, by the community – that can be monetised by affiliate marketing. Advertisers do not control the message, the placement, the frequency, or the promotion.
It has an added benefit of being utterly non-annoying. Unlike most other types of advertising that interject, pop-up, obscure, or slow down the content reading process, comtent is just content that a user has chosen to read, with nothing else clouding the experience. A greater reliance and focus on comtent monetisation through affiliate marketing may slow the inevitability of today’s ad-block debacle.
2: Understand your audience
The second major new revenue generator for publishers, resulting from the comtent phenomenon, are high-intent shopping data segments, also known as second-party data. Leveraged directly from the publishers’ first-party data and deciphered through machine learning.
Users engage with appealing comtent that users interact with, the publisher is then gaining insights into the shopping behaviours and preferences of their users: from what retailers are they shopping, what type of products and brands are they buying, what kind of content do they most engage with, etc. More comtent = more insights into your users, that can directly translate into ad revenues.
How? Publishers are able to approach new types of advertisers for which their comtent analytics show their users have an affinity. Publishers can also negotiate higher CPM rates, if they layer behavioural targeting onto an inventory sale. Publishers can also optimise the performance of their campaigns to achieve targets, thus, more likely securing a rebooking.
More savvy publishers are recognising that, in their efforts to secure ad budgets away from the all-consuming power of Facebook and Google, they need to create specialised bundles for advertisers that merge premium inventory with user behavioural traits. Users interact with comtent, especially if a publisher is part of a data co-operative, they can then glean predictions around shopping behaviours that can dramatically improve the appeal and performance of a publisher’s advertising propositions.
Good, but not enough
Native advertising is enormously popular because it gets around some of the intrusiveness and heaviness of display ads, but it isn’t enough. Publishers who recognise that weaving commerce authentically into their content, in the form of comtent, can gain a flurry of incremental benefits without any additional costs or effort. Comtent is being created anyway by your editors, and is naturally being read by your readers. All that is needed is a monetisation strategy (of which there are a number of partners that can help automate) and the means to feed the data collected from interactions with comtent into a data co-operative that can boost a publishers’ internal programmatic strategies.
It’s not going to be the sum-all solution for publishers to survive the post-print age, neither will it solve the ad-tech industry’s challenges with consumers distrust. But, when done well, it can be the source of incremental low-cost revenues and powerful insights.

The High Price of Low-Cost CPMs

hbr.org

Marketing is essential for companies. Throughout the customer journey, marketing both changes brand perception and awareness and drives sales. Simultaneously, companies need to justify marketing expenses — down to the last penny.
Reaching a balance isn’t easy. Too often CMOs succumb to the pressure to keep costs down at the expense of their brand’s health or product sales. This is especially true in the age of digital media, in which the temptation to pay low rates often leads to wasting money. Why? Because a CMO can argue that they paid low cost-per-thousand (CPM) rates on their ad buy. But trafficking in low CPMs has become dangerous. Too many times, those low rates are borne of fraud and bots (ad impressions created by automated scripts, not humans). Our research suggests that up to half of paid media impressions fail to reach a marketer’s target audience.

The Problem with Programmatic Channels

In a waste model we built to measure the quality of impressions in common programmatic channels, we found many contributors to waste, all of which drive up the real cost of what initially appears to be inexpensive. Some of these contributors are:

• Ads seen by bots, not humans
• Ads, including video ads, that are not viewable
• Ads that don’t fully load
• Ads that miss the target audience
• Ads that miss frequency windows

Facebook recently abandoned plans for its demand-side platform solution because of the many unviewable ads, fraud (like bots), and the lack of valuable inventory available in display networks. Marketers must consider the real, hidden costs of low-cost marketing. An increasing number of marketers are looking at them — hard.

Marketers are well aware of these quality issues. EConsultancy and Signal recently surveyed 350 senior North American marketers and media buyers with ad budgets ranging from $10,000 to well over $1,000,000 per month. The survey showed that because of the industry’s lack of transparency, just 12% of buyers feel comfortable with the current display-advertising model. An ANA survey released in March showed that two-thirds of marketers worry that they may end up buying fraudulent inventory or inventory that shows up at the bottom of the page and is never even seen, and they’re starting to demand more transparency from their media partners. The ANA is championing a standard whereby marketers enter publisher agreements only when impressions are “measurably viewable.”

Channels to Focus On

We see an overwhelming case for investing more in known, verified audiences with logged-in users, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, and YouTube. And the same goes for addressable television. Such networks nearly eliminate fraud and waste. You know you’re dealing with real humans — not bots or theoretical audiences built with unreliable cookies or audience panels.
Furthermore, when users log in to Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest on their computer, tablet, or smartphone, the networks recognize that they are the same person on each device. By contrast, if you’re using cookies to reach prospects, you as a brand don’t necessarily know that the 36-year-old man you identify on a smartphone is the same person who logged on earlier that day on an iPad and MacBook Air. This matters. Real, addressable audiences result in greater measurability and performance attribution in branding and direct response campaigns.
Moreover, these audience-first platforms are setting the highest standards for user experience, ensuring highly engaged audiences in web and mobile app environments that are least vulnerable to ad blocking.
However, decisions about these channels must be driven by cost per performance.

Moving Forward

We have two recommendations. First, don’t work with partners who are not committed to being transparent about every shred of data and every penny of cost. Programmatic is great, but let’s have transparent programmatic, in which a partner gives you full access to the data that enables you to gauge the success of your campaigns.
Second, always ask for CPMs with performance right next to them. For example, use return on ad spend for direct-response ads and viewability (at a minimum) for brands ads. Your impressions are getting cheaper? Who cares? The real question is whether they are becoming more effective. It all comes down to return on investment, which is driven by outcome divided by cost. To truly manage your media investments to ROI, you must manage your cost based on real impressions and business outcomes, not poor quality disguised as low cost.

Does Facebook Advertising Truly Drive Business Results? Yes.

business2community.com
This week’s advertising update starts with a look at Facebook’s Q2 2016 earnings announcement which yet again surpassed expectations. In particular, we’ll talk about the huge boom in mobile advertising on Facebook and in addition, the growth in mobile purchasing in the United Kingdom. Finally, stick around for inspiration on what to do about those unopened emails you’ve been sending your customers and how to reach them in a whole new way.
Facebook has blown us all out of the water, once again, with their latest Q2 2016 earnings announcement. The platform has now reached a user base population of 1.7 billion, the entire population of the globe just 100 years ago. Revenue from advertising specifically was up 63%, from $3.8 billion to $6.2 billion, since Q2 2015. Mobile advertising revenue now represents 84% of all advertising revenue, up from 76% last year. This major rise in share of all ad revenue is big and just goes to show how important mobile is today, to consumers and advertisers alike. The U.S., Canada, and Asia Pacific were cited as having the fastest growing ad revenue. With 1.7 billion users each month, Facebook is clearly an essential place for advertisers to reach their customers.


Facebook’s mobile ad revenue has become 84% of its total ad revenue for a reason. Consumers are using mobile devices on-the-go all the time these days. This has become especially true for shoppers as they search for items in-stores, allowing them to simultaneously research the competition’s prices, check another store for an item in a different size/color, and read reviews from others who’ve made a similar purchase. However, no longer is mobile activity disconnected from the final purchase, according to a recent report by Signal. Today, a third of internet users in the UK buy gifts on mobile devices. To be more specific, 57% of 18-24 year olds in the UK are mobile purchasers, and 50% of UK consumers age 25-34 purchase via mobile (according to a report by Criteo). So as a retail advertiser, consider mobile as a top priority in your ad campaigns, as opposed to accessory. Consumers are constantly connected, so make sure that the next time they are interacting with your brand on their mobile device, you are there, prepared, and ready to engage.


We’ve all received email communications from a retailer in the past. This method of communication is still an essential next step in acquiring new customers for many brands. The best time to reach out to customers is within the first 24 hours of the first interaction, while your brand is fresh in their mind. Yet 40% of marketers are not engaging with customers within 24 hours of purchase. Even more astonishing is that 52% of retailers report that fewer than 20% of email recipients respond to their first communication. So what’s the solution? Try reaching out to them on another channel where they are engaging, often on a daily basis. By using what you already know about your current customers, like their email address, you can target them on channels like Facebook and Instagram, where they are constantly interacting with others, sharing content, and likely engaging with brands already. In short, use what you already have to acquire what you don’t!

How Programmatic Responsibilities Leave Many People Confused

bandt.com.au

Programmatic can throw up a number of problems; no more so than who owns and controls it. In this guest post, Andrew Birmingham, editor of business site Which-50.com, takes a look at its different components and attempts to offer a route to a more seamless approach…
Marketers who combine programmatic media targeting with dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) generally get the best performance, however there’s a problem.
Confusion abounds in the digital advertising ecosystem about who controls what when both strategies are combined.
“This is the result of the many components that make up programmatic advertising campaigns,” says Kelsey Meuse, global product strategist at ad management firm Sizmek.

“We are talking about two different areas, media and creative, and two separate practices, targeting and optimization.”
Instead she argues, it often helps to first clearly define the terms.
So let’s have a stab at it:
• Media targeting is the practice of controlling and limiting impressions to specific digital audiences.
• Media optimisation is optimising how many impressions to serve each segment, when to serve them, and what the advertiser should bid on them to minimise the average cost per acquisition.
• Creative targeting is controlling which ads are served to each audience; if there’s only one version targeted to each segment, the advertiser has no option for creative optimisation.
• Creative optimisation is for cases where advertisers have more than one creative going to a user segment or audience. Brands and agencies can change the creative through the life a campaign to improve performance.
According to Meuse, many people mistakenly blend these four distinct tactics of targeting and optimisation.
“The practice of serving every consumer within a highly targeted segment the same piece of creative sells short the potential of combining creative and media targeting.”
To tap into the full power of personalising creative advertising, she says marketers should consider the ways in which media and creative targeting work together.
Collaborate
“If a marketer targets a broader audience pool, and then targets the creative to more granular sub-segments of that audience, they can simplify the media buy and be more nimble about which creative is shown to a user within a given impression.”
Done right, this should ultimately reduce campaign trafficking complexity and increase performance, she says.
Take for example a retargeting effort by a luxury retailer. The audience pool is composed only of users who have visited the retailer’s site, but that doesn’t mean that every single one of those consumers should see the same piece of creative. Instead, the retailer can customize the creative on a granular basis, adjusting the message based on how much the consumer has interacted with the site.
Meuse explains that if the user has only been to the homepage, they may see generic deals and offers in the retargeted ad.
“If the consumer spent time within a certain retail category, such as shoes, then the creative targeting can optimise the creative to include shoes. If the consumer spent time looking at a particular shoe, the ad can serve that same shoe. A consumer who abandoned a cart can likewise see the products within that cart.”
In this example, the target audience is the single pool of users who have visited the site. The creative targeting is fluid, and optimises the ad unit each user receives based on behavior exhibited on the site, she says.
“This approach allows the marketer to implement a sophisticated strategy that takes into account the different types of users they are trying to reach. ”
There are also cases where the campaign operates on completely different media sets and strategies.
“Imagine an advertiser is running a campaign but they don’t want to buy impressions for consumers who have already bought their product, and also wants to avoid websites that they deem are unsafe environments for their brand messaging.”
In this case, she argues, the media targeting is focused on limiting the budget and waste, but the criteria don’t cross over to creative targeting in any obvious way – the media plan is only focused on what to avoid, but doesn’t say much about who will see the ads.
This leaves the marketer with a number of options for targeting the creative. They may choose to deliver different creative versions depending on geographic data, demographic profiles, or by ad engagement with previous messages.
“As both of these hypothetical campaigns reach consumers, they’ll return more performance data, which will provide the marketer with even more data points to optimize both the media and creative,” says Meuse.
“The retail campaign may find that shopping cart abandoners are more likely to purchase their full cart within 24 hours, while those who don’t return to the site within the first three days never buy anything from their previous cart.”
In theory all of this data fuels how the advertiser targets the media and creative, allowing them to save on media spend and drive more conversions.

Advertising: Convergence can make the impossible happen

reporternews.com

Advertising is the art of bringing the right combination of elements together for the purpose of selling.
The convergence of these elements can sometimes make the impossible happen.
In 1979 Perrier wanted to expand to North America, but how do you convince people to pay for something they could get free?
Enter Orson Welles with his 1979 television ad for the "Champagne of Waters" that ushered in bottled water for sale. The perfect convergence of personality, product, and media made the French product a staple in American stores.
How to sell something for which there is no demand will always be a major problem for advertisers; convergence can help. In the case of the vegetable Broccoli Raab, its seller Andy Boy brands relied on the concept to reach young food-conscious consumers.
Partnering with a celebrity chef, Candace Kumai to develop recipes and talk about it on social media and television, the brand used the convergence of personalities, product, and media with success. Appearing on the Wendy Williams Show to prepare recipes for the host, creating video ads for Hulu and YouTube, and hosting a dining event for 70 food and fashion writers was the right mix to jump-start the superfood on mainstream food blogs and websites.
Let's look at these three elements; media, product, and personality more closely in advertising.
First, the Media, which for Doritos had nothing to do with music video except to sponsor one for a hip hop duo, Rae Sremmurd. Billed as the music video you build, it relies on viewers accessing the video on overhere.tv to link their phone with other viewers to watch the performance. As more viewers join the video becomes longer and begins to unlock secret videos featuring real-time commentary by the musicians and other music. Here sponsored media is gaining an audience for the Doritos brand.
Next the Product, which here shares their space with a new publication, TheDrive.com and cars. Time magazine opened a 5,000-square-foot showroom in Brooklyn to house three custom Porsches, an Indy car, and a luxury Volvo hybrid. Located in the Time building, the showroom introduces their new venture that includes two auto themed YouTube channels and serves as a video set for hot car news. It's an example of using new media to support old media ad sales for the print edition of Time magazine.
Finally we have the Personality, in this case professional tennis players who seem to be endorsing everything these days. The current thinking about athletes to advertise is the idea of using them as brand influencers; not necessarily to sell directly but rather to create connections between the brand and consumers.
When Novak Djokovic lost at Wimbledon last summer he tried to tear off his shirt, made by sponsor Uniqlo, and failed. The fail was marketing magic for the shirt brand whose apparently indestructible quality got the attention of viewers in ways conventional advertising could never do.
If you doubt the ability of star athletes to make a connection, consider that Rafael Nadal, as brand ambassador for Tommy Hilfiger, doubled their year over year underwear sales in one month. Nadal, also sponsored by Richard Milles watches, wore their $775,000 RM 27-02 model for one match on the court and all 50 of that model available sold out instantly.
The wild card in these examples, unlike the Perrier example earlier, is the expanding technology options that make the media component accessible for almost every brand situation. Mercedes hired telco data firm Zeotap build clusters of people based on their mobile data billing and voice services each month.
With this information Mercedes targeted two distinct audiences with mobile advertising for their automobiles and the unnamed telco company was able to supplement shrinking profits from the dwindling number of new mobile subscribers.
With the mobile market saturated, the data telcos collect from their subscriber base is valuable for other brands now able to use the information for mobile ads.
Major league baseball teams are now implementing robots to greet visitors to their ballparks and using virtual reality to allow fans to tour teams spring training activities and other aspects of the game previously inaccessible for most ticket buyers. The goal is to enrich fan engagement at the ballpark and to reach kids with the new tech with offerings such as watching the game from the team dugout.
The possibilities for advertisers will be expanding as rapidly as the convergence. You can almost see, hear and taste the 7th inning stretch video sponsored by Doritos starring Candace Kumai singing the virtues of the Broccoli Raab smoothies in the team.

Unlocking mobile programmatic’s potential

.luxurydaily.com

Ocean Fine is senior director of agency and strategic partnerships at Factual           

Programmatic display ad spending in the United States is expected to top $22 billion this year, according to eMarketer, with mobile expected to represent 69 percent of the total spend.

Behind this shift are the advanced consumer targeting capabilities that are increasingly available on mobile. Marketers who are not taking advantage of these progressive capabilities will be left in the dust by competitors.

How the cookie crumbles
There are brands that have made advancements to leveraging programmatic solutions to test and optimize their campaigns, and those brands are seeing large success in their mobile campaigns.

For some others, the shift to programmatic buying and mobile has raised some frustrations.

The fact that cookie-based tracking in the mobile space is greatly limited compared to the desktop environment can be a big challenge.

Advertisers’ reliance on cookies has caused them to overlook the fact that, even if cookies were present in the mobile space, the strongest indicator of a person’s intent and behavior on mobile is actually his or her location.

Consumers carry their phones with them everywhere. As such, when mobile location signals are properly paired with rich places data, mobile advertising can be delivered to highly precise and accurate audiences.

While impressive tools and automated solutions exist to help brands succeed in programmatic, simply having a good algorithm or flashy user interface does not make for an effective programmatic campaign.

Brands that are truly succeeding in this space are those that blend smart technology with smart people at the brand, agency and vendor levels.

While the promise of programmatic is automation, in a realm that evolves as quickly as mobile programmatic, it still takes a lot of human testing, evaluation and understanding to make campaigns work. That is especially true when it comes to leveraging location data in mobile programmatic buys.

Promise of location data
Location data now is one of the trends in mobile programmatic advertising.

Location data is a leap forward for mobile, where the traditional targeting model tried to infer audience based on the applications that a user installed and used.

After all, location data provides advertisers with a glimpse into the actual real-world behavior of consumers.

Furthermore, tailored advertising through location data benefits both sides of the equation by enabling buyers to create better advertising experiences for their consumers and enabling sellers to increase revenue by offering more tailored audiences to their advertising partners.

For example, location data’s ability to tie into timing can be tremendously valuable in distinguishing between specific audience segments.

There are vast differences between the do-it-yourself weekend warriors and professional contractors. Are both parties likely to be making frequent stops at The Home Depot? Sure.

But those weekend warriors are far likelier to be visiting on the weekends or off-work hours, while contractors will often be putting in their Home Depot time on the weekdays during regular business hours.

This is just one example of how location data can help marketers reach extremely precise and accurate audiences.

As marketers continue to improve their grasp of location data and how to layer it properly into their programmatic initiatives, we are going to see the usefulness of location data expand.

Most brands now focus on location data as a means of finding and targeting new customers.

In the near future, we are going to see the savviest brands begin to leverage this data to better understand existing customers and better target them in the future.

What to look for when tapping into location-data sources
These days, everyone in mobile has a location story.

The key for marketers is to understand which providers will provide them with high-quality location data as that is the only way for marketers to see the ROI from location. And this comes down to understanding at a detailed level where the provider gets its data.

Marketers must have a firm grasp on two important elements of their location data sources:

Latitude and longitude. The lat/long data that comes in from an ad call is table-stakes when it comes to location data. It is simply a pair of numbers that indicates where a user was on the planet when an ad call was made.

Unfortunately, a significant percentage of the lat/long data that flows through the programmatic ecosystem is of insufficient quality for the most advanced targeting tactics, so marketers need to have a firm grasp on how their vendors clean and filter the lat/long data.

Places data. If lat/long numbers are table-stakes, then places data is where marketers need to double-down.

Places data maps out the real-world locations that correlate to lat/long numbers and provides true meaning to the otherwise incomprehensible lat/long coordinate pairs.

There is a lot of outdated places data being used, and accurate sets can be hard to come by.

Marketers need to dig deep with their vendors in this regard and ask the right questions: Where does your places data come from? Did you build it yourself, or is it third party? How is it integrated into your solution, and how am I being charged for it? How often is it updated? Is it global?

For further guidance, check out the IAB's Mobile Location Data Buyers Guide.

ULTIMATELY, THE MARKETERS who are succeeding in the mobile programmatic space are those leveraging self-serve automated platforms that provide the needed transparency and flexibility to customize, test and refine their location-based targeting strategies.

After all, not all data is created equal.

Especially in these early days of mobile programmatic, it is the human touch – how we use, understand, apply and learn from the data – that ultimately translates location data into true audience insights.

Today, I Accept Your Nomination

mediapost.com
In 1999, I met a banner.  At first I just admired it from behind a screen. I stared for what seemed like an hour, wondering what would happen if I clicked on it.  Finally, I got the nerve to move my cursor toward it and clicked. 

The banner has gone downhill ever since, according to most working in this digital display ad business:
“Banners are ignored.”
“Banners get blocked.”
“Banners don’t work.”
For years we have blamed the banner (display) ad for all of our problems.  The thing is, the ad banner didn’t fail us.  We failed it.
We were handed a new medium with millions of consumers on day one.  We were handed an exciting new ad to sell to advertisers that could instantly transfer a consumer to an advertiser’s online store.  We were selling time travel. Advertisers, while initially skeptical, quickly started writing big checks to buy these display ad banners.
Then we screwed it all up.
So what’s the problem today?  Just about everything. 
In my fantasy of being nominated to restore order to the business of digital media so it is sustainable for generations to come and not just the next big deal, here is my first 100-day plan to fix the system we broke:
1.  Data. Fundamentally, I believe we are taking something from consumers without their consent and full understanding, and this fuels an undercurrent of resentment that is not sustainable. I will make it a law that sites have to visually display a counter tracking how many data points have been taken from a consumer during each visit session. 
In addition, there must be a red easy button on every browser that allows users to immediately stop all data collection of any kind.
2.  Ad-Edit Ratios. Ad-edit ratios in print used to be a simple sales pitch.  The higher your edit percentage, the more likely the ads you sold received attention from your audience.  The ad-edit ratios of iconic content brands on the Web look like this:

I will pass a law so that the ad-edit ratio must be calculated for every site and displayed for media buyers to evaluate, other publishers to notice, and for consumers to see as they arrive at a Web site, so they can decide if that site is worth their attention.
Now watch as Web publishers race to clean up their sites so they can claim to have the best ad-edit ratio in their space.
3. Video Advertising. Nothing makes a consumer scroll down a Web page faster than an auto-play pre-roll ad.  Consumers also hit mute, go to another browser, pick up their phone or stare at the ceiling -- all just to avoid watching that effing ad.
I will pass a law that all pre-roll video ads must be six seconds long, and the video content experience will only begin when a user clicks play and then fills in a CAPTCHA.
Total video plays of course will plummet, but that number is full of shit now, anyway.  With my new law, human engagement with video content and the ads that run prior will increase significantly.  Publishers will then have real human engaged inventory to sell at a premium rate, and/or give away as added value in return for a larger commitment to purchase display ads.
4.  Mobile. Looking at 20somethings who have had phones since they were teenagers, it’s almost impossible to ignore their physical and emotional device addiction on full display.  We are profiting from this addiction, as mobile ads fund this whole operation.  This mobile device addiction is literally killing people on our roads and figuratively killing family communication.
You wouldn’t give a 13-year-old kid crack cocaine, but we hand out iPhones to this group like candy.  In my very first day in office, I will pass a law that you must be 21-years-old to have a phone.
5.  The Banner. We owe the display ad unit an apology and a chance to succeed.
To do that, I will pass a law that all sites must limit their page views to two display ad units: a 728x90 that appears along the top of the page, and a 300x250 placed in the left-hand rail that is “fixed” so that when a user scrolls down, the 300x250 remains in view.  The same advertiser must always occupy both ad units each time a consumer views a page.
All other ads, including “native,” will be removed from the premises.
Web pages will look great, sites will be trusted, ads will be noticed -- and the responsibility to get someone to click and visit an advertiser’s site will be on the shoulders of the creative, where it has always belonged.

Programmatic’s Evolution Is Just Beginning

minonline.com

How do publishers successfully meet advertiser demand? Julie Clark, VP of programmatic sales at Hearst Core Audience, believes it starts with great inventory.

Clark understands programmatic advertising from both the supply and demand sides of the business. Before she joined Hearst, she was VP, agency & enterprise sales at Rocket Fuel, a demand-side platform provider, where she built the sales team in Central, East and Canadian regions.
On September 14, Clark will be among the prestigious panel of speakers at min’s Programmatic Selling Conference on the “Strategies to Manage and Sell Your Inventory.”  We caught up with her beforehand to learn more about her philosophy on programmatic selling and what publishers still don’t “get” about this relatively new way of doing business.
min: How do you describe your job to people outside of the business?
Julie Clark: Specific to programmatic, I talk about how technology works in advertising, making marketing a seamless part of the user experience.
min: When was the first time you actually heard the word “programmatic?”
Clark: I can’t specifically remember, but I do recall first hearing about “exchanges” in 2008 and it was almost a dirty word and put on IO’s that we’d insure to “exclude all exchange inventory.” Times have changed!  I was working at a DSP at the time and “programmatic” just became the way to describe tech enabled RTB [real time bidding].
min: What sparked your interest about programmatic selling?
Clark: I was attracted to the technology powering marketing and the idea of smart buying tied to real KPI’s—programmatic was a natural path.

min: What was your first job that involved programmatic sales?
Clark: Rocket Fuel was my first official programmatic sales gig in 2010, but people were not even calling it “programmatic” at that time; they were just trying to figure out what DSP’s were and RTB.
min: What do you think most people don’t “get” about programmatic?
Clark: Last year I would have said that people don’t get that programmatic is more than RTB. That has diminished greatly. There is still a lingering perspective of “remnant” and “efficient” being connected to programmatic. Of course, efficiencies can be one part of a marketers programmatic strategy—but in the past 12 months the space has evolved in a way that has opened up true premium programmatic opportunities.
min: What have been the biggest advances in the last year?
Clark: Technological advances in automated guaranteed buying and header bidding have proven to be substantial. What’s most exciting about such advancements is the ability to strategically leverage programmatic buying tech for more sophisticated marketing goals and targeting. It is possible for a marketer to “own” their audience and leverage premium inventory for lower funnel KPI’s.
min: What still needs work?
Clark: Programmatic is an evolution, I think that there will always be work and advancements needed. The lowest hanging fruit is continuing towards automation of simple functionality and easier connections between programmatic technologies.

Top 4 Tips For Combining Native and Programmatic

mediapost.com

Native advertising has rapidly emerged as an exciting way for advertisers to engage with consumers, and offers an interesting new revenue stream for publishers. Native emerged out of a desire for publishers and platforms to deliver advertisements that fit with the feel of their site, and are consistent with viewers expectations over how a platform should behave.

cc

1) Choose your feed carefully.  It’s important to ensure that any native programmatic ad fit well with the overall look and feel of the host page design.

There are many different types of feeds, each of which will give your ad different context. The Interactive Advertising Bureau defines content feeds as publisher sites and news aggregators such as CNN, Forbes and Yahoo. Product feeds are retail sites and app listings such as Amazon, Etsy and eBay, while social feeds are social networking and messaging apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Tango.

The feed that you choose will largely depend on the type of content you have. Story and video ads can be expected to perform better within content and social feeds, product ads would likely perform better surrounded by other product content, and native app install ads are a good fit for social. A native ad on a social feed could also be enriched with social data, such as friends that like a particular profile.

2) Choose your placement. Advertisers can choose to purchase ads that are “in-feed” as a single atomic unit (e.g., hosted on an article page or single image page), outside the core content (e.g., on a right rail), or as a recommendation widget.

Different types of ad placement will involve tradeoffs in terms of performance and inventory. For instance, right-rail ads are likely to have higher inventory but lower click-through rates, and in-feed ads will have the lowest available inventory but above-average click through.

The placement type will dictate the metadata you provide, too. Heavily visual ads are likely to underperform on the right rail for instance, as the thumbnail will be displayed as a smaller size than in an in-feed ad.

As with feeds, you should experiment with which placement types work well for you and continue to optimize as you receive results.

3) Adapt KPIs accordingly. Native programmatic will involve a sea change in traffic KPIs (key performance indicators) when contrasted to display. This change is twofold: There are areas where we can expect native ads to outperform display, and there are some new metrics that you will need to pay attention to if you want to make sure your native ads are performing well — measurements that matter less for display ads.

First, the areas where you should expect native to outperform traditional display are click-through and conversion rate. Native programmatic ads are closer to a publisher’s site in terms of look and feel than traditional display ads, so should drive higher levels of engagement.

Social shares provide great insight into the value of your native ad content. If a native ad was sufficiently good that a certain number of readers wanted to tell their followers about it, it’s easy to compare that with the average number of shares that a piece of social content on your site receives. You should expect programmatic native on the whole to outperform generic display and come closer to social metrics.

4) Understand your platform capabilities. The standards for native programmatic are still evolving. Some DSPs support all of the different feed types, while some choose to specialize in certain ad types or media formats, such as direct response or video storytelling. Some DSPs have been slow to integrate native formats altogether.

Bidding algorithms will also take time to learn and adapt to the new formats. It’s worth watching the results of your campaigns particularly closely with native programmatic, as some platforms do not distinguish according to media type. This can in turn lead to some campaigns not performing as you would expect. The capabilities of native programmatic tools are standardizing, but we’re not there yet.

Report: 12% of native ads are not labeled

marketingdive.com

Dive Brief:

• A study of ads by MediaRadar found that 54% of native ads are labeled as "sponsored," while 12% have no label at all. 
• The study found other terms are used to identify native ads: “promoted” (12%), “presented by” (6%), “provided by” (5%), and “brought to you by” (4%).
• Separate research conducted by Research Now for Contently found that 48% of U.S. internet users polled reported feeling "deceived" after realizing an article or video is sponsored content.

Dive Insight:

Native ads are an effective and growing format for marketers in a world rife with ad blocking. Native ads currently make up 56% of all display ad revenue, according to data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), PwC and IHS, but BI Intelligence predicts that native advertising will account for 74% of all ad revenue by 2021.

However, concerns over the blurred lines between sponsored content and editorial content are arising at media companies, in regulatory hearings, and on social media. 

Last December, Grady College published research that foundless than 8% of the study’s participants could tell the difference between paid and editorial content — a troubling finding in a media environment where consumers are growing frustrated by a poor user experience. 

The Federal Trade Commission made waves earlier this year by offering guidelines for native ad disclosures. The FTC guidelines specify that native advertising should be disclosed “in plain language that is as straightforward as possible.”

Recommended Reading

eMarketer: The Lines Between Native Advertising and Editorial Content Are Still Blurred
Marketing Dive: Are FTC native ad guidelines the first step toward regulation?

Telltale Signs You Have an Ad Fraud Problem

entrepreneur.com

By now you’re probably sick of hearing about ad fraud.

You know ad fraud costs the industry $18.5 billion annually. You’re well aware that for every $3 spent, $1 goes to fraudsters. You get that ad fraud is a costly problem, and no one is immune. It doesn’t matter if it’s pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-call or display advertising, fraudsters continue to find ways to drain advertisers of hard-earned dollars. Even mobile, which accounts for 30 percent of all digital advertising revenue, is getting hit hard by ad fraud.

You may be thinking what’s the point of constantly rehashing it when there’s no solution in sight. Every time you get rid of one fraudster another one pops up. Might as well learn to live with it, right?

Wrong.

While you can’t simply press a button and make ad fraud go away, there are ways to stop the bleeding. By knowing what to look for and which tactics to employ, advertisers can mitigate ad fraud.

First, let's talk about click fraud.

Click fraud is the bane of many advertisers’ existence. You think your campaign is doing well, only to wonder why conversions are drastically down. Turns out your campaign is being hijacked by pesky bots.

There are three tell-tale signs that you’re a victim of click fraud. Here they are.

1. You get a spike in clicks.

This is when you’ll see an increase in click volume with minimal change in conversions or a spike in clicks from a keyword from one search engine but not others. Often there will be repetitive clicks from the same IP address too.

Your clicks may be coming from areas outside your target area. Don’t be fooled. Bots pretending to be consumers are the culprit.

2. You have a high rate of abandoned shopping carts.

If you’re encountering a high rate of shopping cart abandonment, you may have a click fraud problem.

Let’s say you sell golf clubs. Golf clubs are one of those products that sell themselves. If you need a golf club, you will purchase one. It’s not like you’re trying to sell something abstract. If you’re seeing a ton of traffic but no golf club purchases then you may just have a fraud issue.

Remember, while bots have the ability to download and fill-out forms, they aren’t sophisticated enough to complete the purchase yet.

3. You have a drained budget.

When you have a drained budget and nothing to show for it, that’s a huge red flag. Where did all of that money go? Unfortunately, it often goes to fraudsters.

Currently the music industry is feeling the heat from bots. Fraudsters are stealing huge chunks of money from music streaming services. It’s so easy. It’s like taking candy from a baby.

First, a fraudster sets up an artist account on a platform, such as Spotify. Then they upload fake tracks, and create a bot to stream those tracks on repeat. Now the fraudster is making a ton of money and cutting the artist and producer out of the profit.

Click fraud tip: To stay on top of click fraud, keep track of your metrics on a regular basis so you can spot any unusual activity.

Next, let's talk about impression-based ad fraud.

Twenty-two percent of impressions are considered suspect traffic. Imagine paying for an ad, and it’s never actually viewed. That’s the problem impression ad fraud poses for advertisers. Here are a few common types of impression-based fraud.

• Ad retargeting: Bots pretend to be engaged users and are served retargeted ads that they click so they aren’t viewed by an actual engaged user.
• Video fraud: Ads are stacked, layered or invisible, triggering impressions even though nobody is watching the video.
• Paid impression fraud: Paid traffic can often be riddled with bots.
• Hidden ad impressions: Small ads can be hidden within larger ads, causing both to trigger an impression.
• Fake sites: These sites are created for the sole purpose of serving ads, not content.

Impression ad fraud tip: If your reports aren’t lining up, there’s a problem.

Related: How Ad Fraud Ruins the Internet

Third, let's talk about ad injections.

Fraudsters not only utilize bots, they use browser extensions to place ads on websites through a nefarious tactic called ad injection. Once the ads are injected, they’re sold by third parties without the owner’s permission. And of course, any money that’s earned is collected by the fraudster, not the advertiser.

Pinpointing ad injections isn't easy, especially if you’re using programmatic advertising. Oftentimes, you don’t know there’s an issue until it’s too late. But if you know what to look for, you can quickly remedy the situation once they’re discovered. Here are three clues you’re dealing with an ad injection:

• It appears on top of an already existing ad.
• It replaces existing ads entirely.
• It’s running on pages that weren’t supposed to have ads at all.

Ad injection fraud tip: Keep an eye out for companies involved with ad injections, and try to steer clear of them.

Related: Giving Advertisers a Way to Bypass Facebook Click Fraud

Lastly, let's talk about pay-per-call fraud.

Some may think it’s harder to fraud pay-per-call than pay-per-click. But fraudsters have managed to find a way.

To detect fraud, make sure you have set criteria, including a minimum call duration and key presses. Know your audience too so you can detect anything out of the ordinary. For example, a Colorado phone number calling about hurricane insurance.

To separate legit callers from bots or fraudulent serial callers, consider using the following.

• Interactive voice response (IVR): With pay-per-call, it’s imperative to use IVR to filter calls. You can create a series of phone prompts that will qualify calls before they ever reach a live person. While bots can click, they won’t be able to pass the phone screening process and will be quickly filtered out.
• Call recordings: Also utilize call recordings to detect any red flags. By reviewing recordings you’ll be able to listen for any callers that may be just calling to for a specific time to receive payment for a call.

Pay-per-call fraud tip: Use IVR to qualify calls and be sure to review call recordings to detect any red flags.

Related: 5 Ways You Can Be Swindled by Click Fraud

Ad fraud is a nuisance that comes in many forms: pay-per-call fraud, impression-based fraud, ad injections and pay-per-call. No one is immune, and it’s a costly problem that continues to grow.

It’s up to advertisers to remain vigilant against fraudsters. The best way to do that is knowing the common signs of ad fraud so advertisers can effectively mitigate it.

Retargeting Revulsion? Join the Data-Driven Revolution...

exchangewire.com

Retargeting is often viewed as a dirty word in the digital advertising industry. From annoyance with receiving ads for already purchased products on the consumer side, to opinions that it devalues display advertising on the industry side, retargeting has popularity issues. As Martin Pavey (pictured below), UK country director, Flashtalking writes, there are more sophisticated ways to target consumers today. Here, Pavey tells ExchangeWire that retargeting needs to evolve, using data and creative intelligently to truly understand and engage with the consumer.

Retargeting is about acting on clear signals. If a consumer shows interest in a product, the goal of retargeting is to convert that interest into a sale, to turn window shoppers into buyers. It takes a consumer’s direct sign of intent and encourages them to take that next step. 

Today’s data-rich targeting methodologies offer more sophisticated ways to detect that sign of intent. In many ways, we are finding that the intent itself was more nuanced than retargeters once imagined. Most smart marketers today understand that behavioural signals are not to be taken entirely at face value. When a consumer shows interest in sports cars, it’s not necessarily a sign they have the intention, let alone the financial means, to buy one. Rather, that signal is one input in a sophisticated profile that may take into account age, household income, location, and so on. It probably makes more sense to show them ads for tyres, car repair shops, certain brands of sunglasses, or apparel. 

The problem is that most retargeting today will still turn right around and show that consumer pre-made ads for the same sports cars they were originally searching for. All the sophisticated tech we have to understand consumer’s intentions hasn’t yet translated into a new sophistication in how we act on those intentions, and in how we design and deliver the message. It’s finally time for retargeting to evolve in that direction – to look beyond a simple response to the last product viewed. 

Evolve beyond the last product

Let’s take another example. A consumer is browsing online for wall paint and carpeting. It looks, on the surface, that they are planning to do some work on their home. But what if the week prior, that same consumer was looking at family cars and cribs? These behaviours suggest the consumer is expecting a child, and, likely, in the market for larger purchases than paint. A remarketing ad featuring nothing but home improvement products misses that big picture and those bigger buys. Given the richness of today’s data sets, it’s outdated and simplistic.  

Combine additional data to enhance retargeting

Martin Pavey, UK Country Director, Flashtalking

The key to this evolution of retargeting is the layering-in of additional data and better quality creative, both of which are easy and actionable today. Ad servers can now tap multiple data sets simultaneously, combining first-party DMP data segments, in-page contextual data, geo information, weather, time, sequences, A/B testing, third-party data feeds, you name it. These can, and should, all be available in your ad server and, when used in combination with site-visit behaviour, will deliver on the big picture and identify the big opportunity. Executing on that opportunity requires that you go one step further and have the data inform the personalisation of the creative itself. 

And just adding more data isn’t enough – you have to demand more detail from your data as well. The only way to truly validate conversions from retargeting is with impression-level reporting. Anything short of a full fractional attribution model and the only thing your retargeting data will prove is the rate at which you harvest cookies.

Such a model will also yield the type of nuanced understanding that enables creatives to take an entirely new approach to crafting the message. Clarity on the consumer’s place in the purchase cycle allows for precise personalisation. In the previous example of the expecting parent, this creative personalisation is the difference between advertising, say, a life insurance policy instead of a can of baby-blue paint they already Googled. It opens the opportunity to stay one step ahead.

The real KPI: understanding the consumer

One of the reasons that last-product retargeting persists today is because our methods for measuring success are good at hiding these shortcomings. Catch-all cookie harvesting (AKA post-view conversion tracking) only serves to demonstrate that people who visit your website buy more stuff than people who don’t. People who window shop buy more than people who don’t shop at all – you don’t need data to figure that out.

But you risk letting the consumer’s real interests disappear behind a wall of safe KPIs. A bad retargeting job will show the consumer something they no longer want, already have, or never wanted in the first place. For long-term success, it’s time for retargeting to evolve beyond its comfort zone, take a bolder approach beyond last-product focus and focus on the relationship with consumers – by delivering engaging and high-quality creative experiences powered by intelligent data activation.