DIGITAL TARGETER

Where is Data Born?

Big data, data-driven, real-time, analytics.  Enough to make your head spin because information services is an area where utilizing a mess of individual point-solutions may leave you more clueless than when you started.  Imagine reading The Great Gatsby in nine languages, a different one for each chapter -- the themes, writing style and expression may not come through as the author intended.  In the same manner, the story you tell of your customers, campaigns, or community is more effectively told when you invest in a common "language."  When it comes to digital marketing and information services and analytics, I'd argue that the data methodology is more important than the solution itself.  I'll explain.

Let's say you have a dozen data companies, all of them able to target whom they call (the favorite industry cliche) "soccer moms."  The obvious question here is to ask why these companies identify specific users as soccer moms.  Let's explore some possible reasons why a data company would place a user in that segment:

• Visitors of "soccermoms.com"
  • Or the "mom" section of soccer.com
  • Or the "soccer" section of mom.com (you get my point, content-based)
• Purchased kids soccer balls, cleats, shinguards, or other gear online.
• Belongs in a group of like-minded households that have a higher propensity to have kids playing soccer
• Searched for "kids soccer league" online
• Watched a "how to cut orange slices" video online
• Subscribes to Grass Stains and Goalposts magazine offline
• Responded to a survey asking why they bought their minivan with "to haul the entire team to games"
• Looked at pictures of kids playing soccer on a photo sharing site
• Downloaded soccer game apps, or an MLS app
• They are female in the age range of 25-45 living in the suburbs
• They previously responded to similar ad campaigns
• They live in an area with a high concentration of soccer leagues, or kids

This random handful of examples outline how little we know about a "soccer mom" segment at face value.  If you don't care where your data comes from, you're essentially saying that any of the above reasons in an "or" statement" suffices.  You're basically saying that as long as your client pays you and a 3rd party tells you that your segment(s) are accurate, you don't care.  Also, I've heard that "where the data comes from doesn't matter, just as long as it performs."  To that I'll ask you these questions:

• As long what you eat is called "food" and cures your hunger, so you not care what it is where where it came from?
• As long as you get from point A to point B, does it matter where you sit on a plane?  What if you had to stand the whole trip?  Sit in the wheel well?

People in this industry love to consider themselves "scientists," and these days specifically "data scientists."  When a scientific experiment is conducted, you measure cause and effect of changing one or a few variables.  After a set of results you can start to conclude that your hypothesis was aligned with reality or not.  How then does "where the data comes from doesn't matter, just as long as it performs" have a place in your "science?"  This is like performing titrations in chemistry class, throwing any mix of solutions in a beaker until PH reaches 0.

Do yourself (if you're a marketer) or your client (if you're an agency or platform) a favor and try to understand the sources that your 3rd party data providers are using.  Are the sources authoritative?  Refreshed often?  Does your partner own the data?  These are all important to know as you could be paying a pretty penny for people that are "photo enthusiasts" that simply visited flickr, looked at a camera accessory on eBay, or something related and as immaterial.

I see data the same way as I see remnant inventory monetization -- "garbage in, garbage out."  Look for companies that build off of an infrastructure you can trust, a segmentation methodology that spans across multiple industries, and would perform multiple tricks if it were a pony.  Especially in this time where there are as many as 80 companies that Forrester is considering for their upcoming DMP Wave report, remember that not all pixels are created equal.

 

PubMatic vs. Google vs. OpenX

Well it's pretty clear where the market's headed now, wouldn't you say?

I've always described the "holy grail" for publishers is a platform that would systematically identify each individual impression's value, respective to business rules that mirror relationships.  If you sold a campaign yourself, it's important to deliver it evenly, in full, and that it performs well so you can grow that relationship with the buyer.  If you're opening up inventory to 3rd-party buyers, it's important that you reach all possible demand out there, control what comes through, and minimize cost whether monetary or by latency affecting user experience.  A simplistic outline of revenue objectives, but I'd say the above covers 90% of any major ad-related revenue initiative.  With the above in mind, the single goal -- make as much money as possible.

Google has placed its bets in creating a full stack starting with ad network/exchange, then having acquired an ad server, video content service, mobile ad network, advertiser optimization technology, and more recently a publisher optimization technology.  Initially this sounds appealing, everything under one roof, until you step back to realize that by definition there's no such thing as optimizing both the buy and sell sides at the same time.  It's obvious too when you start to think about their new privacy policy changes, and how vocal they were in 2011 regarding their web data exchange ambitions that their strategy doesn't require them to take sides, they want to monopolize the entire digital advertising space.  Still don't believe me?  Don't Be Evil" is nowhere to be found here.

Recently OpenX, an ad server and exchange, has acquired LiftDNA, a small startup yield optimization company.  While this new combo of services points in a more focused direction, the reality is that you're going to have to use their server as well, a much larger business decision and migration.

Last week, PubMatic announced the launch of PubDirect, the first publisher-focused and server-agnostic platform that maximizes yield across a publisher's entire revenue strategy whether guaranteed or non-guaranteed demand.  

2012 is going to be an exciting year and it'll be interesting how everything plays out.  The convergence of direct/indirect or guaranteed/non-guaranteed makes a lot of sense and publishers have been asking for this beyond recent memory.  Layer on the same services on different screens in mobile, video, and other parts of the globe, to create one sales platform that will provide a much belated evolution to how we sell advertising on this medium.

If you're a publisher, you should definitely be thinking about how to best utilize these new tools in the marketplace, and choose your vendor appropriately.  Preferrably one that won't also be your competition.

Dirt In A Treasure Chest Doesn't Make It Treasure

I've dealt with a lot of publishers that still arbitrarily assign monetary values and prices to their unsold inventory.  When I try to explain what that inventory is truly worth, some surprisingly take it personally, but most of the time their dissent stems from a lack of understanding in how automated buyers buy, and why impressions vary in value even within the same publisher.

Since audience based targeting dominates automated buying, the freshness of the cookie pool means a whole lot.  There are buyers that only buy on the 1st through 3rd impression on a given user in their session on a site, meaning you really only have 1 or 2 shots to capture that revenue in the smartest fashion.  If you give it to one vendor, and then expect another vendor to come around and in some silver bullet fashion monetize at amazing rates for everything that's leftover, you have to come to terms with the fact that your expectations are completely out of line.

A colleague of mine uses the gold rush and panning for gold as an example.  To those that get first dibs on the supply will find many more gold nuggets.  Those than sift through the gravel thrown out of the pan will find it much more difficult, even more so for the next miner, and so on.  If one would expect that it's only logical that the last miner doesn't find much gold, I'm not sure why it's so difficult to understand that it's the same case with audience-based online media buying.

I understand that I generalize, and there may be plenty of reasons why impressions later on in the session are still valuable -- users are more likely to click away from a site when they're "done," contextual relevance can return a relevant ad, and with rates so cheap the ROI makes sense.  However, when setting pricing expectations, the general arguement suffices.

So, the bad news for publishers is that your marquee name brand doesn't do much to assign a higher value to leftover inventory, so be realistic in your monetization efforts.  The alternative is to run a private marketplace with your current advertisers that also happen to have a performance budget.  Package it up.  The benefits for them is that they can receive centralized service, and I'm sure with a higher spend you're more than willing to offer more value adds.  Private Marketplace after all is a strategy, not a product.

The good news though, is that if you allocate your ad calls appropriately, and work with a smart partner with technology and service to make sense of it all, it becomes a revenue channel that's not only significant, but rapidly growing industry-wide.

Just don't expect the $20 rate card CPMs, which by the way require Ad Ops, Salespeople, Insurance, Tax, Expense Account, and Marketing costs.  And STR is still what, 25-45%?  It's time for CROs, heads of sales, and CFOs to start looking at new technology platforms, not just Ad Ops anymore.  Create a company strategy, don't treat it like a singular channel.  WIth insights and audience protection tools, the opportunity is ripe for savvy publishers to take control of their revenue.

Stop putting lipstick on the pig and serve up some delicious ribs, chops and bacon.  Mmm, bacon...

Quality Content to Rule Them All

I am not a fashionable guy by any means.  Some say I clean up nice, but you'd definitely find me in a pair of Jordan shorts and a t-shirt on the weekends.  However, I've been visiting some fashion blogs and YouTube channels lately (such as Wendy's Lookbook - blog / YouTube) not for tips and tricks, but because how consistently amazed I am by the engagement and loyalty of the audience.

Since my days at CNET, I've been completely bought into the idea that a reader will stay on and revisit a site as long as the quality of the content fuels the passion they have for the subject matter.  It's a simple value proposition really.  Even before I worked there, I took pride in being the type to read CNET, Engadget, Gizmodo, forums, etc. instead of reading reviews on Consumer Reports, some e-retailer or some other "commoner's" review source.  There was a strange sense of pride and feeling of obligation that I receive my information from an independent on-the-pulse-of-the-industry quality source.  The brands and sources of my knowledge defined me through my passions.

I imagine that these burgeoning fashion bloggers are capitalizing on the opportunity that meets at the intersection of social media proliferation, content production/management technology, and the monetization options that might enable to earn themselves a livelihood doing what they love.  I touched upon the social media portion above, not only in content distribution (YouTube in this case for Wendy), but below is also an example of the quality that's being created.

 

I happen to have the pleasure of knowing Wendy and her "Mystery Man" who is an aspiring film director and puts these videos together which can explain the extremely technical feat of not only filming but editing this to its final state.  It's amazing that this level of quality is in a video that is brushed off by our industry as simply UGC (User-Generated Content).  This video is 7 months old and has been viewed by almost 6 million people.

Marketers are definitely starting to notice.  Media strategies weren't as simple as just including the "must-buys" anymore, as people's media consumption shifted away from traditional brand names and more to friend recommendations and search.  Companies like Federated Media were among the first to notice the influence driven by bloggers and independent media, along with Glam and my alma mater NetShelter also have the mission to aggregate this fragmented landscape of influential voices and collectively move markets.  

This of course, requires the big guys to make their efforts to follow a trend to keep themselves relevant.  AOL is putting its chips forward in acquiring HuffPo, TechCrunch, and looking to churn out as much content as possible.  Every major media company is also creating blogs or a blog network to evolve with the trends.  But is quality a strategy or a feature?  It may be either based on who you talk to, but either way I think the benchmark for content now is if it's "share-worthy" or not rather than upholding a given pace and volume.

I hear the term "into-the-weeds" often re: process in our line of work, but in general I don't feel like I hear it enough re: what the hell we're doing overall.  In RTB environments, content farming, and attribution, there's a lot of gaming going on and we're missing the point.  Talk about clutter on the internet -- we're responsible for it.  With everything the Borg (Google) is doing on creating the ultimate marketing stack, it's good to see that they're also constantly making changes to their algorithm to reward quality content producers with higher organic search results (sure it's so they stay at the top of their game, but as a user it enhances my experience so it's welcome).  I feel that we constantly complain about how we want to rid of CTR as the metric, how terrible a user's experience is on some of these sites, or how ad networks pepper the internet to collect credits for a purchase in the last-touch attribution model, though we know why it's happening.

Going back to where I started, it may be as simple as a fashion-oriented person watching a video on YouTube, or seeing a well photographed outfit from someone like them, to influence a purchase now and not so much be the prime placed full-page color ad in Vogue.  Let's make it easier for Marketers to get in front of their audience, and also reward quality content with revenue, profits, or simply allowing people like you and me to earn a livelihood.  Technology can do good if we choose to design it so.

When I Grow Up I Want To Be In Advertising

And old spot I know, but still so good!