The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic Advertising: T to Z
In this series, we set out to help you get fluent with the Programmatic language.
*This is part 5 and the final installment of a series, The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic Advertising. See all other parts of this series: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.
We launched this series as an aid for every digital marketer out there who has ever been confused, annoyed, or even a bit frustrated with all the programmatic advertising jargon out there.
In this series, “The ABCs of Programmatic Advertising,” we set out to help you get fluent with all the specific terms and acronyms.
Today, we breakdown everything from T to Z.
Targeting, Behavioural vs. Contextual
Without contextual or behavioural targeting, your ads be like…
There are two main ways to target your customers: with behavioural and contextual targeting. Behavioural targeting is based on looking at a user’s
historical data web browsing data to predict where users will be in the future, and what they’ll click on to serve the most relevant ads to them. This is where First-Party data, especially data collected by publishers, is therefore an important factor in accurate behavioural targeting.
Contextual targeting is based on identifying and understanding the content that frames an ad placement to serve the most contextually relevant ads. This is done largely by scraping keywords and allows advertisers to, for example, run ads for a new car offer on a web page featuring an automotive article.
Unique User (UU)
Do I have to define this? This is pretty straight forward. A Unique User is pretty much what the term implies: the measurement of an individual web visitor and their behaviour. Unless you’re using a single sign-on (like Facebook), one person can have multiple unique user footprints if they use more than one device. UU is the basis of how web traffic is measured.
Viewability
Viewability is a digital marketing metric that is quickly becoming a standard in the industry. It refers to the tracking of impressions that are actually seen by users, not just impressions that are served. For example, if an ad placement is lower on a site, but a user doesn’t scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and therefore doesn’t see the ad, then that is not a viewable ad placement. The IAB has set out regulations that dictate a minimum of 50% of the ad has to be displayed on screen for at least one second to be considered viewed.
Win Rate
The ratio of bids in an auction to those that are won. According to Digiday, Win Rate is used as a metric in the programmatic world for technological efficiency.
Yield Management
You may have heard of the term yield management in the context of digital marketing before. What does it mean? Yield management is a challenge mainly for publishers. Demand for any given website’s inventory fluctuates and does not necessarily consistently fill 100% at the best rate. Yield management has the aim of filling as much inventory as possible at the highest rate to maximize the publisher’s ROI. Yield management officers determine which buyers publishers should partner with, how much inventory they should get, and which buying channels are work best. It’s not an easy job: for digital yield management strategists, we’re talking about striking the right balance between programmatic sales, direct, and indirect sales.
If you didn’t know, now you know!
Keep following ClearPier’s blog for everything you need to know on Programmatic and Digital Advertising. Remember to sign up for our monthly newsletter, and don’t forget to follow us on social media!
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic Advertising: L to S
In this series, we set out to help you get fluent with the Programmatic language.
*This is part 4 of a series, The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic Advertising. Last week, we published part 3 of this series. For part 1, click here, and for part 2 click here.
We recently launched this series as an aid for every digital marketer out there who has ever been confused, annoyed, or even a bit frustrated with all the programmatic advertising jargon out there.
In this series, “The ABCs of Programmatic Advertising,” we set out to help you get fluent with all the specific terms and acronyms.
Today, we explore
everything Programmatic
from letters L to S.
Lead
After a visitor completes an action on your page, usually a sign-up/opt-in, or download, or contact form, which suggests their interest in your offer by way of providing your business with their information. A lead is therefore a “potential sales contact.”
Monthly Active User
A metric for the average number of users who are active on a website or in-app per month.
Native Advertising
Originally, native advertising stemmed from the print tradition of advertorials. Native ads in the form of Custom Content refers to digital publications, usually articles, which resemble the look and feel of the publication’s editorial content but is sponsored by the advertiser and intended to promote their product or service. The idea is to provide an organic experience for audiences that is non-invasive.
Native ads also come in the form of In-feed Native ads which can now be served programmatically. In-feed native ads includes promoted listings and paid ads. As In-Feed Native has now evolved programmatically, advertisers are now able to include in a placement elements of an editorial like a headline, images, and video which are automatically customized and arranged to look like an editorial based on contextual content.
Negative Retargeting
Negative Retargeting refers to a process where marketers can prevent an ad from being show to a user to that has already completed a specific action so as to prevent unnecessary overspending. For example, a user that you had been targeting completed the desired action of making a purchase.
Negative retargeting in this case would mean limiting any retargeting ads to users that have made a purchase. For such users, ad dollars would be better spent by running new promotions they have not yet seen or suggesting new products that compliments their recent purchase to ensure all audiences receive only the most relevant ad at any given time in the sales funnel. See also “Retargeting” and “Frequency Capping”.
Omnichannel
Similar to multi-channel marketing, which markets across several different channels, omnichannel is also a cross channel marketing model – with one important difference: customer experience.
While multi-channel considers each marketing channel as separate silos with independent touchpoints that all work together towards a single goal, omnichannel focuses on the customer’s experience of receiving media communication through all potential channels in a unified, seamless, and holistic manner.
The best way to imagine omnichannel is from a birds eye view. “Omni” is Latin for “every/all” and also the root word for ‘omniscient’. Multichannel is more like being on the ground and surveying the landscape across the entire expanse of the horizon.
Omnichannel is all encompassing, includes online and offline, all devices, OOH, digital, and telecommunications as well.
Open Exchange
Sometimes referred to as “Open Auction”, an open exchange is where ad auctions open publicly take place. Unlike Private Exchanges, they do not require closed invitations and anyone can buy inventory.
Page View
The number of a web page is requested from an ad server and displayed to a viewer.
Price Floor
The lowest CPM price a publisher is willing to sell their impressions for programmatically.
Private Marketplace (PMP)
A Private Marketplace or PMP is a closed media buying and selling environment that enables publishers to control the demand partners that they work. PMPs function on an invite-only basis, they also allow advertisers to customize deals to fit their needs by pre-setting targeting parameters, floor rates, and content, and more. Buyers are also given the opportunity of first-hand access on premium inventory that isn’t available in public exchanges. ClearPier is a Private Marketplace offering premium inventory.
Private Auction
A private auction is similar to an Open Exchange but as the name suggests, is private and only select buyers are permitted to bid against a pre-agreed minimum floor price. The difference between Private Auction and PMPs is singularity versus plurality – PMPs generally have a network of publishers and private auctions can happen in one-offs.
Programmatic Ad Buying
Programmatic Ad Buying or Media Buying is an umbrella term that refers to the use of data (behavioural, contextual) and software to buy or sell ad inventory in-real-time to serve ads efficiently and instantaneously, rather than through an RFP (Request for Proposal) and manual IOs (Insertion Orders).
Programmatic is really just using technology to serve ads and while this seems to be a given for digital media, the same cannot be said for OOH or TV yet. Times are changing, however, and vendors are attempting to apply programmatic technology to other marketing streams.
Watch this video for a primer on Programmatic and RTB.
Premium Programmatic
Historically – and this is why originally programmatic advertising received a not-so-great reputation among big brand advertisers – programmatic buying/selling was reserved for lower quality, remnant (unsold) inventory.
Programmatic today no longer necessitates remnant inventory, particularly if purchased on a premium programmatic basis. Over time, buyers and sellers have really benefited from the scale and efficiency of buying programmatic and now also offer “higher quality” or “premium” placements, which demand higher sale prices, programmatically as well.
Programmatic Buy, Guaranteed
Inventory bought programmatically rather than through manual RFPs and IOs, that nonetheless have specified flight times and for specific placements, conducted directly with a publisher. Guaranteed programmatic buys do not necessarily follow the normative auction model.
Programmatic Buy, Non-Guaranteed
On the other hand, Programmatic Guaranteed Buys often refers to the sale of remnant inventory, through a third party, usually ad networks and ad exchanges, rather than directly with the publisher.
Reach
The total number of different people that have been exposed to an ad or piece of content, at least once, over a specific period of time. Reach also refers to how far wide an awareness or branding campaign impacts consumers.
Real-Time Bidding
Real-time bidding refers to the buying and selling of ad inventory on a per-impression basis through live-time auctions that take place in the hundredths of milliseconds that it takes before a webpage loads. It’s likened to the stock market and how auctions work on Wall Street. Real-time bidding is facilitated by ad exchanges and SSPs (supply side platforms).
Remnant Inventory
Remnant inventory refers to ad supply from publishers that have not been sold. Remnant inventory is often seen as lower quality ad placements, requiring more and deeper clicks into a publisher’s website. Remnant inventory is generally sold at a discounted rate and historically have been packaged and sold wholesale to ad networks.
Retargeting
Even if you haven’t looked up the definition of “Retargeting” just by being a participant of the interwebs, you’ve somehow experienced and understand that retargeting are the ads that follow you around the web after you’ve visited a site or completed a certain action.
Retargeting advertising is cookie based ads that target viewers based on your previous browser based internet activities and behaviour. Retargeting is an attempt to drive users back into the purchasing tunnel to complete a specific action like a purchase or sign up.
Rich Media
Rich Media ads or content refers to creatives that have an interactive element which is an added advantage over basic text or display ads, encouraging more engagement from viewers. For example, units like full page overlays, peel downs, expandables, or pops are all rich media formats.
Supply Side Platform
Just as on the buy side, the SSP or supply side platform is the equivalent technology on the seller side of programmatic buying that facilitates the sale of publisher ad inventory. The purpose of SSPs is to ensure efficient selling and maximize revenue.
If you didn’t know, now you know.
Stay tuned for more in our next and final post in this series where we take a look at the T’s to Z’s of Programmatic.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic Advertising: D to K
In this series, we set out to help you get fluent with the Programmatic language.
*This is part 3 of a series, The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic Advertising. For part 1, click here. For Part 2, click here.
We recently launched this series as an aid for every digital marketer out there who has ever been confused, annoyed, or even a bit frustrated with all the programmatic advertising jargon out there.
In this series, “The ABCs of Programmatic Advertising,” we set out to help you get fluent with all the specific terms and acronyms.
Today, we breakdown everything from D to K.
Daily Active Users (DAU)
The average number of users who are active on a website or mobile app over 24 hours. DAU is a measurement of the “stickiness” of a site or app by showcasing precisely how many unique and active users visit on a daily basis. The main requirement for a user to be considered “active” is that they open to view or engage with a website (or web product) or app in any way.
Data, First Party
First Party Data is widely defined as data owned by the party that initially collected the data. For businesses, this includes information you directly collect about your customers through your CRM, and through surveys and feedback.
In the digital landscape, advertisers and publishers can also collect first party data about the behaviour and actions of audiences that visit their site. This information can be used by publishers to better sell their inventory to advertisers who want to leverage more precise targeting data. First party data is seen as the most accurate and reliable.
Data, Second Party
Second party data is data that is collected by an entity but is then sold from the source, usually through a DMP, to advertisers to improve their audience targeting.
Data, Third Party
Third party data is aggregated collected and owned cookie data from other sources. Third party data is usually provided by a vendor and sold to advertisers who need to reach a broad audience. There is an abundance of third party data, but it is not always seen as accurate.
Data Management Platform (DMP)
A DMP is a technology platform that warehouses and helps manage data. Advertisers often work with DMPs to manage cookie IDs and create specific audience segments for improved ad targeting. DMPs play an important role in the programmatic landscape by facilitating data driven advertising by way of layering audience data over media buys.
Deal ID
In the context of private marketplaces, a Deal ID is the unique number assigned to a buyer and used to identify and match their automated buys with sellers and their inventory, based on a number of trading variables negotiated beforehand. Variables negotiated can include a minimum price for bids, types of ad units available and specific placement location on the site. Deal IDs allow for rules to be set up across buyers working with a seller who then has control over preferential deals for advertisers willing to pay premium prices. Deal IDs also have the added function of helping to keep publishers from having to disclose their inventory in the public marketplace which would effect their direct sales.
Demand Side Platform (DSP)
The technology that helps facilitate programmatic media buys for buyers, most likely marketers, advertisers and agencies. DSPs can be used to manage the purchasing of display, video, mobile, in-app, and search ads by plugging into numerous exchanges. Why use a DSP? The technology makes media buying efficient by allowing a central location for advertisers to buy media across a large volume of publishers, while keeping costs low.
Display
Display advertising is a type of online advertising that comes in several forms, including banner ads, rich media and more. Unlike text-based ads, display advertising relies on elements such as images, audio and video to communicate an advertising message. The IAB provides a standardized guideline for all display ad sizes and formats, now updated for HTML5, found here.
Effective CPA (eCPA)
A measurement of the actual costs spent to generate a specific action – it is used to measure the, well, effectiveness of a campaign. If the advertiser is purchasing inventory with a CPA target, instead of paying per action at a fixed rate, the goal of the effective CPA (eCPA) should always be below the maximum CPA. This fundamental view of what the performance of conversion-based campaign should be is served as the baseline for many buy-side platform optimization algorithms.
Event
A term often used in the customer journey or in-apps, ‘events’ signify the moment a user takes a specific type of action. For example, in-app purchases or app downloads are often labeled an ‘event’.
First-Look
Also known as First-Look Impressions or First-Look Inventory occurs when publishers, marketplaces, and SSPs allow specific advertisers to buy impressions at a set price. The selling process happens in sequences where the impression is shown to the preferred first-look buyer before being shown at any price to other buyers until the first-look buyer declines to purchase the impression.
Frequency
The number of times (how often or frequency) a single visitor is shown an ad over a specified time period, usually 24 hours. Frequency capping is the maximum number the ad can be shown to a single visitor within the time period. For example, a visitor can only be shown an ad a maximum of 4 ads over a 24 hour period. Frequency capping uses cookies to remember the frequency count. Frequency capping is important to avoid ‘banner burnout’ or ‘creative fatigue’.
Geotargeting
The practice of delivering ads or content to a user based on their physical location which is identified by postal (zip) code, IP address, ISP, or GPS data. Geotargeting is important for delivering relevant ads, and is an important innovation for mobile and local advertisers.
HTML5 Ads
HTML5 ads as defined by the IAB “are like mini web pages and require multiple file types to create the ad display and ad features. These files need to be packaged in a way that optimizes load performance and reduces the time it takes to display the ad. However, ad developers may not know how they can produce a visually appealing and interactive ad while making the ad easier to load. In addition HTML5 opens up a diverse set of choices for advertisers and creative designers.”
Impressions
The number of time an ad is shown or served to viewers. It is not a count of the number of unique viewers of the ad impression. A single visitor can be served and see an ad multiple times.
Insertion Order (IO)
This is a term that originates from the early days of advertising when paper was still being used, particularly among agencies. After an RFP (Request for Proposal) is sent out, a proposal by vendors is sent back to the agency. Insertion orders are the final step in the ad buying process that comes from the advertiser or agency that represents their commitment to run a campaign with an outline of spend and flight time. In the programmatic context, insertion orders are sent through ad exchanges.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
Key Performance Indicators are metrics that clearly quantify how well or how poorly a campaign meets objectives. In programmatic advertising, KPIs can range from conversions, to CTA, CTR, viewability, to completion rate (for video), and more.
If you didn’t know, now you know.
Stay tuned for more in upcoming posts in this series. Next up, we explore and define the everything programmatic from L to S.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
The Experts Weigh in On Programmatic and Performance in the Year Ahead
It comes as no surprise, that more brands are turning to Performance Marketing, and to vendors who can provide the technology to facilitate Performance.
Performance Marketing is on the up and up, year after year. In a recent article on MarTech Today, columnist Jim Yu discussed Performance as an imperative for CMOs worldwide.
At the heart of his discussion, he urges that performance-led platforms should be at the core of the marketing stack. As Yu puts it, “The CMO’s performance imperative demands that they can clearly demonstrate how every element of their spend is bringing about meaningful returns, lest they fall prey to the very real risk of budget-slashing.”
Performance is the overarching concern for marketers everywhere, to justify maintenance and growth of their budgets.
So it comes as no surprise, that more brands are turning to Performance Marketing, and to vendors who can provide the technology to facilitate Performance but not sacrifice scale. But where will Performance lead marketers?
We sat down with ClearPier’s Ad Ops and Client Services team to get a better understanding of the future of Performance Marketing in the year to come. Here’s what ClearPier’s Demand Optimization Manager, Terry Kalambalikis, and Digital Analyst, Albert Ng, had to say about performance marketing.
1. What can we expect for Performance Marketing in the year ahead?
Albert Ng, Digital Analyst:
I believe Programmatic buying will be the base of all digital performance marketing in the future. It’s the only way to move forward with accountable marketing.
The automation of programmatic buying will evolve and be extended towards optimization and contextual/behavioural learnings, in which as a result provide insight and recommendations to accelerate the process of taking the appropriate actions for a better performance
CTR will no longer be true measurement for performance. Instead, it would be primarily be measured through attribution.
Brands and Marketers will begin to realize that attributions requires them start applying processes to verify the data they are running on. Along with quality inventory, marketers will make the attributions part of a broader plan in order to create a solid foundation of data to run the most effective marketing campaigns.
2. What marketing trend or buzzword are you totally over?
Albert Ng, Digital Analyst:
“Engagement.” Honestly, this is probably THE most overused word amongst marketers. It is not an actual measurement of performance, it is a fluff word used to generalize any results of performance. It’s also not specific enough and so doesn’t provide enough insight. Scroll depth, for example, is a strong measurement because it indicates how deeply engaged your visitors are with your content.
Engagement alone will include accidental clicks which can skew your results. Engagement over time, on the other hand, is a more specific metric that actually tells you something: your visitor’s propensity to return after their first visit. Engagement, isn’t enough, you need to expand the metric to get real insights.
Terry Kalambalikis, Demand Optimization Manager:
“Millennial” – What is a Millennial? How do you really define an entire generation with varying interests, hobbies and issues? What really makes them different than anyone else aside from the year they were born?
I mean, you get 29 year olds who may like Hockey, Politics, Movies, Videogames etc., but you also get 50 year olds who can and do like the exact same things just as you get 17 year olds who may be interested in the exact same things. They consume the same content as anyone else, and aren’t the only ones using smartphones or social media.
So how does one market to Millennials? I think this word is over used by pretty much everyone and is just a lazy way to define a group that doesn’t really exist.
3. What do you think the biggest challenge advertisers and brands will now face?
Albert Ng, Digital Analyst:
With so much content being created daily digitally, it becomes difficult to be able to authenticate or verify any third party sources that are being run by the advertisers. Brand safety is going to be the top concern, globally which means only vendors who can guarantee it – or at least has brand safety as a top priority – will win.
Terry Kalambalikis, Demand Optimization Manager:
Not necessarily a new challenge, but I would say Ad Fraud.
There’s no fool-proof way to combat fraud, and no third party actually provides a solution that prevents it. You can monitor it, and possibly action on it once you identify the problem, and use various wrappers that may look out for suspicious traffic and monitor for bots, but in the end, it won’t stop the fraud from happening, and would require media buyers and marketers to actively monitor reports and react on the fly, which is not only a massive, time consuming task, but a task that is likely almost impossible.
Those that enable fraud always find new ways to get ahead of marketers and exploit the system, just the same as how those who create malware and viruses are almost always ahead anti-virus programs, so the fight against ad fraud will be something that will continue to be a problem through 2017, and likely grow into a larger problem as more and more spend is pushed into the digital ad space.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic Advertising: The B's and the C's
In this series, we set out to help you get fluent with the Programmatic language.
*This is part 2 of a series, The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic Advertising. For part 1, click here.
We recently launched this series as an aid for every digital marketer out there who has ever been confused, annoyed, or even a bit frustrated with all the programmatic advertising jargon out there.
In this series, “The ABCs of Programmatic Advertising,” we set out to help you get fluent with all the specific terms and acronyms.
Today, we breakdown all the B’s and the C’s.
Banner
A web banner or banner ad is a type of advertising you’ll find online and can be delivered on desktop or on a mobile device. Banner ads are the billboards of the digital world and one of the earliest online ad formats as standardized by the IAB.
One of the earliest banner ads was this infamous AT&T ad which ran on HotWired.com back in October 1994 (Business Insider).
Bid
Like the lingo used in stock markets, a bid is the price advertisers are willing to pay for an ad impression. In real-time bidding (RTB), the buying and selling of online ad impressions in the real-time it takes a web page to load, an auction occurs for every impression. The advertiser’s bid is facilitated by a DSP (Demand Side Platform) or through an exchange. For the advertiser to win the auction with their bid, their bid must be higher than all others.
As technology has evolved and targeting parameters improved, the winning bid must also be a strong fit or match for the targeted audience visiting the website at any given time.
Bid Request
When a visitor loads a webpage, bid requests occur in the browser. This is when the ad server requests the ad exchanges which the publisher works with for an auction to take place to buy/sell a specific ad impression. The bid request is sent to buyers through the exchange and received on their DSP which in turn submits their bids in the auction for the impression. The winning bid is then served onto the web page to the visitor – all of this happens within a 100 milliseconds.
Brand Safety
One of the key goals for publishers and advertisers on both sides of the ad trading cycle: to ensure their brand integrity, or brand safety. Ad placements alongside objectionable or inappropriate content can be damaging to a brand, and this is a big concern.
As the digital advertising industry developed over the last five years, brand safety has become a priority.
Brand safety can therefore also refer to the practice of brand protection and use of ad verification tools to prevent objectionable content from being placed on a publishers’ site or vice versa. Some adtechs, like ClearPier, offer multi-level security measures that include technology and human verification.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
Click-through-rate (CTR) is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown: clicks ÷ impressions = CTR. For example, if you had 5 clicks and 1000 impressions, then your CTR would be 0.5%.
Cost Per Action (CPA, A.K.A Pay Per Action or PPA)
CPA stands for ‘cost per action’. It is an online advertising pricing model wherein advertisers only pay when a completed action occurs, rather than for a set volume. Nearly anything can constitute an ‘action’ from impressions, to clicks, to leads (completed forms), views, or a sale. The desired action is dependent on the advertiser and the goal of each campaign. CPA is the basis of the pricing model for all Performance Advertising.
There are numerous variations of CPA that differ based on the final goal or action: CPA PC (cost per action post view), CPA PV (cost per action post view), CPL (cost per lead), CPC (cost per click), CPV (cost per view), CPI (cost per install).
Cookie
Not quite that type of cookie. In the digital world, a cookie is a small piece of data, or tracker that runs on web browser to track and identify a user’s online behavior and browsing habits.
Conversion
When someone, a potential customer, completes a pre-defined action and/or goal of a campaign such as a click, filling out a lead form, or completing a purchase.
Conversion Rate (CR)
A campaign’s conversion rate is the measure of ad clicks that ultimately result in conversions. To calculate conversion rate, you divide the number of conversions by the number clicks and multiply by 100. For example, you’ve made 100 t-shirt sales (conversions) after 1000 clicks: 100/1000 x 100 = 10% CR.
Cost Per Mille (CPM)
Cost Per Mille (CPM or cost-per-thousand) is another online advertising pricing model where buyers pay on the basis of every thousandth impression or view. CPM is not a new pricing model but was used in print advertising originally.
Cross-Device Tracking
Cross-device tracking is the many ways in which publishers, advertisers and ad tech identify and trace audience behaviour across numerous platforms and devices including desktop, tablets, and mobile phones. The goal? To provide a holistic view of the individual audience member’s behaviour online, regardless of the device they’re using, and enable proper, relevant ad retargeting.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), also known as Lifetime Customer Value (LCV), or life-time value (LTV), is the projected net profit a customer will generate during their time as a customer of your business. There are various ways to calculate your CLV, depending on your business model and goals. Check out this great infographic by Kissmetrics which looks at Starbucks as a case study on calculating CLV.
If you didn’t know, now you know.
Stay tuned for more in upcoming posts in this series. Next up, we explore and define the D’s – G’s of Programmatic.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic Advertising: A is for?
ATD, CPL, DSP, CPA, SDK…
Is this even English?
*This is part 1 of a series, The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic.
ATD, CPL, DSP, CPA, SDK…Is this even English?
No, you didn’t just read a string of nonsense.
These acronyms, which I’m sure you’re always hearing Ad Ops throw about, are actually representative of important elements of Programmatic Advertising.
But let’s admit it, they can be incredibly confusing.
In this series, “The Ultimate ABCs of Programmatic Advertising,” we set out to get you fluent with all the specific programmatic media buying terms and acronyms.
If you’re new to programmatic, this series is for you. Keep reading!
In Programmatic Advertising,
“A” is for…
Ad Server
A technology that offers the means to store and delivers advertisements onto digital platforms including websites, social media, and apps. Ad serving companies also function to count clicks or impressions of ads to help advertisers track their campaigns and return on ad spend (ROAS).
Ad Space
An area of a digital platform, including websites, social media, and apps, that is reserved for displaying online advertisements.
Ad Exchange
Often likened to stock markets, an ad exchange is a virtual marketplace that allows advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ad space usually through real-time auctions. Ad types sold on exchanges can be display, video, and mobile inventory and winning impressions are determined by a set bid price in combination with historical user behaviour, time of day, geographic-location, and device.
Exchanges are beneficial to advertisers because they allow ads to be bought at scale, that is, across a large array of digital platforms at once as opposed to individual, time-consuming direct buys.
Examples: DoubleClick by Google, BrightRoll by Yahoo, Rubicon Project, AppNexus, OpenX etc.
Ad Exchange, Open (Public)
Open ad exchanges, A.K.A public exchanges, are virtual marketplaces that allows advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ad space. Open exchanges are publicly accessible to any advertiser or publisher. Open exchanges have come under fire for a lack of accountability, problems with ad fraud and reliance on third-party data which can limit audience targeting.
Ad Exchange, Closed (Private)
Closed ad exchanges, A.K.A private exchanges, are virtual marketplaces that allow advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ad space. Private exchanges are not publicly accessible to just any advertiser or publisher.
Private exchanges are much more controlled environments where only select advertisers and publishers are invited in to buy and sell. Private exchanges, often run by a large group of publishers, are growing in popularity as they are seen as safer environments with less fraud, as well as first-party data to improve audience targeting.
Ad Network
A company that connects a large number of websites and aggregates ad inventory to sell for a profit. Ad networks originally came about as a way of offering advertisers scale and audience reach. Premium content has historically not been a major concern for ad networks.
Ad networks have been criticized for driving the cost of inventory up as they can and have broker sales between themselves causing the daisy chain problem.
Examples: AdSense, BuySellAds, Conversant etc.
Agency Trading Desk (ATD)
Agency Trading Desks (ATD) are the in-house programmatic ad buying team in advertising agencies. ATDs offers real-time ad and audience buying as a managed service for clients.
Typically the inventory made available through ATDs have been described as remnant publisher inventory – the same inventory sold to ad networks. Complaints about ATDs have arisen around the issue of double paying agencies for both agency services and trading desk services, or conflicts of interest between buyer and seller.
Awareness
The first stage of a full-funnel marketing or purchasing model. Awareness precedes interest, consideration, conversion (and loyalty and advocacy) in the buyer journey and encompasses the moment when potential customers first learn about a product or service.
In the context of programmatic advertising, running awareness campaign is an important prospecting process to help identify potential users or customers. By tracking and measuring ad performance, for example, full video views, early in the buyer process, programmatic media buyers can strategize on how to target these prospects (based on interest) later in the funnel and drive them towards conversion.
If you didn’t know, now you know.
Stay tuned for more in upcoming posts in this series. Next up, we explore and define the Bs and Cs of Programmatic.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
18 Simple Ways You Can Segment Your Audience Data in 2017
Marketers must re-examine their audience data and segment creatively. Look beyond just demographics.
We’re midway through November already. The holiday lights are out, the Christmas décor is going up. Soon, we cue the endless music.
Yes, 2016 is coming to a close and as the end draws nearer, it’s high time we start thinking about next year’s revenue goals and ad budget. And to do that, advertisers need to re-examine first, and foremost, their audience data.
Earlier this week we mentioned the importance of audience data in programmatic buying. We argued that ensuring that you have granular audience segments in place to run specific and individual campaigns, rather than broadly scoped ones, will help you find greater success.
While simple demographics like age, gender, and location are great starting points, marketers need to get more specific.
So in the spirit of specificity, here are 18 different ways marketers can segment their audience data to double their ROI in the New Year.
Demographic Segmentation
Demographic segmentation is one of the most common ways advertisers can segment their audiences. These common attributes include the following familiar categories which form the basis of how marketers determine how to market their products.
1. Age
2. Household Income
3. Gender
4. Geolocation
5. Language
6. Education
7. Seasonal
These basic demographics are important to consider because based on, for example, the age groups of your audience, your messaging and even medium may change.
If you’re a cell phone service provider, the creatives you use to reach a millennial audience will be entirely different from your messaging for the baby boomer generation. The packages you sell may differ based on the needs of each age group. On top of this, gender and geolocation will affect the way you design your creatives and where you deliver them.
But wait, there are WAY MORE ways to segment your audience by demographics:
8. Birthday: If you can further segment your audience by birthday, this means you can even run special birthday offers. Sephora, for example, does a great job with this with their Beauty Insider VIB birthday gifts.
9. Weather: Weather based targeting is gathered the same way as geolocation and can influence what products marketers may choose to promote, as well as the messaging that goes along with it.
For example, a fitness clothes retailer may run an ad featuring anti-rain gear in a rainy weather geolocation, and hot weather gear elsewhere.
10. Life Stage: You ever change your status to ‘engaged’ on Facebook and then suddenly, you’re bombarded with ads for diamond rings and wedding gowns (yes that happened to me)?
Life stage targeting can be incredibly effective because it’s based on a period in life your audience may be particularly conscious of.
From upcoming nuptials, to entering college for the first time, retirement, or pregnancies, these are major life events and stages that marketers should consider to deliver the right audience to the right audience at the right time.
Behavioral Segmentation
11. Cart Abandonment: For many consumers, price, timing, and shipping are often the culprits behind cart abandonment.
But segmenting out clients who do so – clients who are often on the verge of converting – can help you tailor your retargeting campaign messaging to remind them about what they’re missing out on or if prices change.
12. Type of Shopper: Is your audience a bargain shopper, a luxury shopper, an online-only shopper? Different ‘types’ of shoppers respond to different sales and discounts. The way you sell to a bargain hunter from a luxury shopper vary greatly.
13. Buying History: What does your audience’s historical shopping data look like? Do they buy similar items? Are they always on the hunt for a new tech gadget?
Knowing your audience’s click and purchase history is great for upselling by suggesting similar or complementary products at the final check out.
14. Engagement Level: Highly engaged customers are your best customers because they also act as your brand advocates. Engaged customers spend more on average according to 12ahead, and brands can take advantage of their loyalty by rewarding these clients.
Segment out your highly engaged audience and reward them by allowing them to contribute their ideas to product improvement like Starbucks’ ‘My Starbucks Idea’ or Lay’s Do us a Flavour campaign.
15. Psychographics: It’s like demographics, but more related to your audience’s affinity towards specific values, hobbies, political views, and spending habits. As Hubspot puts it, “demographics explain ‘who’ your buyer is, while psychographics explain ‘why’ they buy.”
It’s important to segment out your psychographic information because you might have two or more completely different sets of psychographics to one set of demographics. Your single male audience aged 25-35 located in Vancouver may all be sports lover, but only half may be inclined to do sports while the other prefer to watch sports.
Social Data Segmentation
16. Brand Affinity: Brand affinity segmentation identifies groups of audiences that have a certain attraction to specific brands and the lifestyles they espouse. For example, Nike and the Just Do It attitude.
You can segment your audience out by specific brands or even by a competitor’s with similar products. If you’re an start up sports gear company attempting to disrupt the market and challenge dominating brands, marketing based on brand affinity can be one way to target your competitor’s audience.
In other cases, brand affinity is an excellent way to inspire cross or co-branded marketing initiatives like this example between BMW and Louis Vuitton.
17. Lifestyle: Your audience segments by lifestyle are ascertained usually by a combination of psychographic, past purchasing data, and behavioural data.
Be it the Savvy Entrepreneur, the Fashion Insider, the Tech Enthusiast, or the Health and Fitness Junkie – lifestyle segments are usually where brands find their brand advocates, influencers, trend setters, and early adopters.
These are the groups of individuals who categorically identify with a certain way of life that is aligned with the brand.
18. Interests: What are your consumer’s favourite television shows, movies, and sports teams? What kind of music do they listen to? What cuisines and restaurants do they love?
These are examples of interests that your audience may identify with which can in many ways dictate the types of promotions you may execute whether online or off.
Now you have 18 more ways to segment your audience data. Now get out there and get creative with your segmentation and double that ROI in 2017.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com
7 Tips That Will Take Your Programmatic Buying to the Next Level
Knowing your audience at large isn’t enough. You must segment in detail.
Programmatic is all about selling to specific audience segments. Knowing your audience is therefore key to success.
It starts with identifying your audience’s most urgent concerns. Decoding your audience’s main problems will have a profound impact on not just your marketing and messaging, but also on the way you conduct your business overall.
1. Knowing who your audience at large isn’t enough. You must segment in detail.
Audience segments will allow you to clearly define your targeting parameters. Demographics like age, gender and location are great, but they may not be granular enough. For example, say you’re a travel company and you know you have a strong millennial audience. But segment deeper: pockets of your millennial audience may prefer to travel at very specific times of the year and to certain places only. Some may prefer quiet, luxurious retreats, while others prefer extreme outdoor adventures.
Properly segmenting your audiences will allow you to target with more precision and relevancy which are keys to conversion.
2. Understand the Customer Journey
Knowing your audience helps you learn why your audience buys. But getting to know your customer journey helps you determine the how and when they buy.
How do you do this? Make sure that you’re properly tracking your audience’s behaviour and actions as they visit your website. If you work with a DMP, events based data can provide a lot of insight into your audience behaviour.
- Consider the average time spent between first website visit and first conversion. This tells you how long it takes your audience to decide to buy.
- What’s your audience’s pathway towards a conversion? This tells you precisely which pieces of content your audience views before they convert which helps highlight good content from bad.
- Which sales channel results in the highest sales? Knowing your rate of sales per channel helps to identify your best performing channels so you can reallocate your resources to focus on those, or optimize your other channels.
Dissecting all of this will help you optimize your customer’s buying journey and user experience towards more conversion.
3. Set Clear Goals
As with everything in life, setting goals leads to success. The same goes for programmatic buying, so ensure your goals are clear, measurable, and attainable.
Ask yourself and your team, what goals you want to achieve. Do you want to generate more online sales? Or boost brand awareness? Or perhaps you want to influence offline consumer behaviour?
Keep the following KPIs in mind:
- CTR (click-through rates)
- CPA (cost-per-action), CPC (cost-per click) and CPM (cost-per mille)
- Conversions
- App installs
- Viewability
- Reach and frequency
Programmatic buys enable you to measure your audience’s online buying behaviour at nearly every point of the purchasing funnel. Beyond these tangible results, marketers also want to measure brand impact.
While harder to measure, it’s not impossible to correlate. Look to lift in branded searches, social media engagement growth, and attitudes towards your brand as indicators of brand impact even when you’re executing programmatically.
4. Invest in Brand Safety with Premium Inventory
For marketers, there are a number of things that are top of mind when you run a campaign. First, your ad spend budget is finite. You need to make sure that what you spend ensures maximum ROI. Second, your brand reputation is at stake every time you run anything digitally.
So how do you make sure your brand stays safe but you get the most bang for your buck? Invest in your own brand safety and go with premium inventory.
But keep this in mind, not all “premium inventory” are equal. Premium inventory is set within the context of high-quality, brand-safe content – on trusted and reputable properties.
Working with vendors that have exclusive relations with publishers can ensure that your ads only land on these properties. However, for added brand safety look for vendors that provide additional anti-ad fraud security measures. Vendors that work with GeoEdge or Integral Ad Science are concerned with putting your brand safety first.
Demand more from your advertising partners and get a better understanding of how their premium inventory is bought and sold. Ask them which other platforms and exchanges do they work with? The answers will tell you the types of security measures your ad partner has in place to prevent ad fraud and ensure your ad dollars aren’t wasted.
5. Always Employ Data
If you’re running your campaigns without insightful audience data, your ads might as well have never been seen.
The more granular and accurate data you have, the more opportunities you have to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of your campaigns. Data helps determine how well you target, how far reaching your ads are, how many conversions you will achieve, and ultimately, how much revenue you make.
Data can come in the form of 1st party, generally the data you as a marketer collect, 2nd party, non-proprietary data unique data retrieved from a partner, and 3rd party data, aggregated data usually from DMPs that can be built into custom targeting segments.
While each are important on their own, combining your data layers will transform your targeting capabilities and help your campaigns perform better.
6. Use Relevant Creatives
We’ve talked about the significance of relevant creatives before and we’re going to say it again. If your creatives and messaging aren’t relevant, all your audience segmenting and granular targeting parameters are wasted efforts.
If your campaign messaging isn’t relevant to your target audience, it won’t resonate and therefore won’t result in the actions you aimed to stir from your potential customers. Additionally, if you’re always using the same ad copy for your campaigns, you reduce the power of that ad’s ability to persuade.
Split test your creatives, from copy, to images, to the colour of your CTA buttons to optimize for the best results. Refresh your creatives often so you don’t bore your audience.
Consider using Dynamic Creative Optimization platforms (DCO). DCOs can drive better engagement by swapping out components of an ad dynamically, in real time. DCOs can help increase the efficiency of this process, and helps deliver the most relevant creatives depending on your audience’s pass behaviour and targeting parameters.
7. Go Mobile – Now
Everyone has gone mobile. That includes your audience. Are you reallocating enough budget to the mobile market? Optimizing for mobile right now may be one of the best things a marketer can do to boost their campaign results.
In 2015, the Pew Research Center estimated that 64% of American adults own a smartphone of some kind. For many, their mobile devices are their primary way of retrieving information.
In the US, programmatic digital display ad spending will reach $22.10 billion this year – an increase of nearly 40% over last year. A big driver of this growth in programmatic spending is mobile and eMarketer predicts that US mobile programmatic ad spend will reach $15.45 billion by the end of the year to represent 69% of all US programmatic digital display ad spend.
The shift towards mobile has been happening for years and marketers must adapt. Realize that the executions that worked on desktop may not work on mobile. Experimentation on the mobile frontier may be what puts you ahead of the competition.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com.
What's Next for Header Bidding?
Header Bidding continues to make waves among publishers well into 2016. But its future, looks even brighter.
‘Header Bidding’ was a big buzz word in 2015 and still is even now late in 2016.
Before header bidding was introduced, publishers who were employing the ‘waterfall’ or ‘daisy chain’ bidding method suffered from a loss of impressions when passing impressions back and forth between partners and ad servers.
Since the solution entered the digital advertising ecosystem, header bidding has continued to make waves among publishers. Many large publishers, including Fortune.com and other Time Inc. sites, have adopted it. It doesn’t look like interest in header bidding is slowing down anytime soon and as we move towards 2017, the forecast looks bright and filled with innovation.
But before we discuss what the future has in store, let’s take a step back to re-examine header bidding’s origins.
How does Header Bidding work?
Header bidding relies on a piece of code that is scripted to a publisher website which enables their inventory to be shown to multiple demand sources – including exchanges, ad servers, and DSPs – simultaneously. A real-time auction then takes place on the impression across all demand, and the winning bid is relayed to the ad server to run the ad. All of this takes place in the milliseconds before the page load and before the ad server is able to work through the traditional waterfall.
For a really great explanation, check out this video on header bidding via ExchangeWire.
The benefits of header bidding.
Not only does header bidding help increase the density of demand for publishers, but it also enables the actual highest bid to win. In the traditional waterfall, the daisy chain process could result in some demand partner’s bids never being assessed, despite bidding higher than the winning bid.
Before header bidding, buyer access to inventory was limited by the preferences set within the ad server. The ‘waterfall’ was also originally quite labor intensive, requiring too much human intervention and inefficiencies. For publishers, especially those who don’t have the resources to man the waterfall, this resulted in a significant amount of missed opportunities.
This changed with the advent of header bidding. Beyond allowing publisher partners equal opportunity to purchase impressions, header bidding has an equalizing effect on the auction floor. This drives up demand and yield due to the nature of how many competitive bids are eligible to win the impression.
“It’s no secret that the more competition you enter into the programmatic space, the higher the impression will sell for. Header bidding just helps solve this efficiently.”
Megan Sun / Director, Publisher Relations
ClearPier
Commenting on the impressive changes that header bidding has brought to the fore Megan Sun, Publisher Relations Director at ClearPier, said “the biggest gain that publishers have seen after setting up header bidding is that there is little to no management required for your yield to increase and stabilize itself.” She also added, “It’s no secret that the more competition you enter into the programmatic space, the higher the impression will sell for. Header bidding just helps solve this efficiently.”
Jack Chung, ClearPier’s VP of Engineering, also emphasized the programmatic efficiencies that header bidding allows on the advertiser side. Chung stated that header bidding ultimately improves the “quality of Programmatic and Performance campaigns by allowing them to compete with reserved buys at the same level.” In other words, programmatic will no longer be stuck with the ‘leftover’ so-called lower quality inventory seen at the end of the waterfall.
Early challenges and drawbacks.
As with any technological innovation, there are complications. Early on, many publishers have stated that integration has been among the biggest challenge for them since the concept was first introduced. For publishers without the resources available to help with the setup, integration is definitely the biggest drawback. After all, code is required to be embedded on the website, but the publisher’s ad server needs a corresponding line item mapping as well – this requires some technical know-how.
Other complaints that have arisen have to do with latency. With more information being passed through the header bidder to partners and more partners ‘looking’ at the impression, the effects all this has on page loading times is definitely an issue. Indeed, trying to connect with as many demand partners as possible can result in publishers running too many header tags simultaneously. This of course causes slower load times, which is counterproductive for publishers’ conscious of the importance of strong user experiences.
But some header bidding partners offer ‘time out’ functions which empowers the publisher and lets them determine what is an acceptable amount of time for their page to load before users drop off. Determining this, Sun advises, requires thorough testing to find the sweet spot.
What does the future hold? Innovation and expansion.
It has only been a year since header bidding has entered the digital advertising ecosystem, but its future looks bright.
ClearPier’s take on the header bidding solution is exchange agnostic and allows multiple exchanges to plug in whereas previous versions are exchange specific. Few tech vendors can boast this type of solution and even more attractive for publishers is ClearPier’s tag setup take less time and doesn’t require the publisher to place anything directly on their site.
As Sun puts it, “ClearPier’s ability to offer publishers with more granular settings will mean they get a more robust programmatic solution where latency isn’t a problem, and yield will grow. Our Premium and flexible demand partner selections combined with a DMP and DSP will help push the technology forward, and its expansion into mobile and video.”
Header bidding’s ability to facilitate fairer prices and transparency will indeed likely mean expansion beyond digital into video and mobile. But not before we see it work with high-impact units. As we move into 2017, the development of header bidding technology is definitely one to keep an eye on as it helps reshape the ad trading landscape.
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Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com.
Why are Brand Marketers Turning to Performance?
The bottom line for brands is that Performance provides true, measurable KPIs where ROI tracking wasn’t possible before.
Last Thursday, AdExchanger published an article about how one brand is shifting attention to Performance.
Namely, Reebok is beginning to explore how Performance can help them garner more measurable results in their US marketing strategy. David Oksman, Reebok’s Head of US Marketing, stated that Performance is increasingly entering Reebok’s brand equation, largely because of its ability to map audiences through their sales funnel.
Tracking audiences and understanding how deep they are in the sales funnel and moving them through your CRM not only allows for potential retargeting and more precise messaging, but also helps close the ‘leaky’ funnel one might have with content or brand engagement alone.
Indeed, on Performance Oksman stated “we make sure that we’ve got objectives and KPIs set up not just at the top of the funnel, but across the entire consumer purchase funnel, in order to maximize content.” He added, “The content [Reebok is] creating as well as the dollars we’re spending on media are really just about finding the right efficiencies in order to maximize reach. The balance of content creation and media investment is something we’re thinking hard about.”
Brands are beginning to demand more attributable results and accountability from their campaigns. And with that demand, more forms of media – paid content, ads, and TV – are becoming measurable beyond just engagement.
With such pivotal news we asked Debrani Ghosh, Programmatic Client Services Director at ClearPier, what her thoughts were on the growing shift.
What are your thoughts about brands shifting gears towards Performance?
The bottom line for brand advertisers is that Performance provides true, measurable KPIs where ROI tracking wasn’t possible before. But it’s effecting more than just our ad strategies.
Performance is also changing the client-vendor relationship in many ways as well. We’re seeing brands demand more from their campaigns and they’re doing so by putting vendors in the spotlight to be the main ROI drivers.
And as a result, vendors have to step up their game across data and insights capabilities, technology, client services and education to stay competitive.
Is shifting to Performance a smart move?
Absolutely. What’s the point in spending your ad dollars without measurable KPI objectives? Performance coupled with data encourages results and helps reduce waste compared to traditional methods.
For example when brands work with ClearPier on a Performance basis, we’re able to identify your potential consumers beyond site demographics, down to the page level with first-party data layering. So the result is you don’t have to spend time or money in the prospecting stages to gather more info. It’s also a controlled environment because of our direct relationships with each publisher, so beyond Performance, clients are also assured brand safety.
Does the future of all marketing belong to performance?
E-commerce trends indicates that an estimated $34 Billion will be spent online by Canadians alone this year. Worldwide, retail e-commerce sales will reach $1.9 Trillion this year. The rise in e-consumption will dictate changes in marketing budgets globally as well.
And if brands are demanding more results, you can bet that they’ll also be shifting more of their marketing dollars towards Performance.
Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com