WTF is up with DMPs? CPMs of First Party Data & Viewability

The premise of this blog post is that DMPs on the demand side are supposed to identify higher performing inventory and suggest higher bids for it. This also means devaluing junk inventory.

If that is the case, why are we having discussions about viewable impressions? Wouldn't  non viewable impressions have poor performance and thereby the DMP would bid lower to nothing on it? If DMPs are doing their job, wouldn't the market identify the bad players and take care of it through pricing?

At the Digiday WTF Programmatic Conference last week I had a conversation with a publisher who complained that packages assembled with first party data and offered as a PMP were not getting the higher CPMs that they deserved. He said they deserved the higher CPMs based on the lift in performance they provided versus inventory without the first party data. Again, shouldn't the DMP recognize the lift and bid higher for the inventory with deterministic data?

What am I missing here? Is the value of the DMP a myth? If they are not determining pricing based on performance, then what kind of job are they doing on assumptive data? 

The Perils & Possibilities of Programmatic Buying

In a discussion during Advertising Week, The Perils & Possibilities of Programmatic Buying: Essential Factors to Consider brands such as Netflix and Kellog talked about their experience and insights as they dive into the world of automated buying. 

AdAge wrote an article on the event:

Why Netflix and Kellog Took Programmatic In House: http://adage.com/article/advertising-week-2014/netflix-kellogg-programmatic-house/295253/?utm_source=digital_email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage&ttl=1412869072

My notes from the panel had a bit of a different emphasis.

• “Investment follows performance”. We are in the very early days of programmatic and these guys will throw a little money at anything once. They will pull the plug quickly if it doesn’t work and pump more money into it if it does work.
• “Element of art & common sense.” They both admitted that you can’t measure everything. Especially Kellog who is an offline brand and can’t directly tie grocery store sales to digital campaigns.
• Finally, private deals done programmatically give advertisers access to inventory & audiences without requiring them to commit to spending. They repeated that “investment follows performance”. It is my feeling that all of this is very one sided in the advertiser’s favor.

I have more to say about private deals and where programmatic stands right now but I will save that for other blog posts. 

High Impact Starts the Conversation, Banners Seal the Deal

We live in a polarized world. Discussions about high impact, premium and native advertising always seem to be at odds with conventional display. This approach is wrong. I am guilty of it. We are all guilty of it.

The truth of the matter is that the banner ad is celebrating 20 years of existence since it does serve a purpose. Used correctly within a plan, Click throughs lead to conversions and sales. They drive traffic into stores. 

So why all the hating on banners? Why don't they get the love they deserve? Because they are a useful part of a plan. Not an entire plan. 

Engaging with consumers starts with telling a story. Telling a story through text content, or showing an image the depicts a lifestyle, or showing consumers what you represent with video, or drawing an audience in with interactivity. Banners do a terrible job at this. 

Telling is not Selling

Once you have the audience's attention, once you have communicated your value proposition, once a brand has projected the lifestyle they represent, you have to close the deal. You have to remind the consumer that you are there. You have to follow them and pester them and remind them that you exist until the transaction is complete. This is the value of banners since the audience doesn't need to hear the story again and if they want to they can probably find it on their own. 

This blog post sounds like I am a big proponent of banners. I am not. However this blog post is my admission that banners do have their place and purpose. They have a purpose after the story has been told. They have a purpose after the value has been communicated. 

CheckM8 works with publishers, agencies and brands to create rich environments and ad formats that attract the audience's attention and then provide the canvas for visual and interactive story telling. We provide the vehicle for advertisers to connect with their customers so that they can follow up with banners and seal the deal at another time and place.

Otherwise, banners are useless.

Why Highway Billboard Ads Beat Web Banner Ads

Article from Digiday: http://digiday.com/brands/highway-billboards-beat-web-banners/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Digiday%20Daily%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=DD%20Daily_final

The summary is that billboard ads give advertisers a bigger and better canvas for messaging. Technology can target and retarget ads all they like but do not provide the vehicle for storytelling that a larger canvas will. 

Additionally, audiences are conditioned to optically skip and ignore ads. This does not happen with roadside billboards or non standard or high impact placements.

33% of your Ads Views are Fraud: The Cost of Bots to Online Advertising

This article (http://digiday.com/agencies/hidden-cost-bots/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Digiday%20Daily%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=DD%20Daily_final) talks about how much bots or NHT are costing the online advertising industry. They speculate that 33% of all traffic is bot generated and that bots are sophisticated enough to spend time on pages, scroll and click through to advertiser web sites.

The effects are that NHT is not only eating up ad spend through wasted impressions but that advertisers are seeing click results through bot traffic and optimizing campaigns towards those fraudulent numbers. 

Bots are unable to do complex actions such as completing registration forms, transacting e-commerce or submitting an email. This is why a immersive experience that encourages deeper interaction is the way to go. Creating ads with a rich experience and vehicle for complex audience interactions combats ad fraud from bots and enables advertisers to accurately determine where their money is best spent.

Less Ads, but High Impact/Prominent Placement Means More Revenue

This article in @Digiday: http://digiday.com/publishers/publishers-foregoing-online-ads/ details how many prominent publishers are doing what makes sense for themselves, their advertisers and their audience. They are eliminating non effective display placements in favor of fewer higher impact, prominent placements. The end result is:

• Increased advertising revenues
• Better advertiser results
• Audience sees less ads

It all makes sense since ad blindness (the user being conditioned to ignore the standard banners they see on every site) has killed the effectiveness of standard ads with response rates of .01%. 

We at CheckM8 have found that creating custom ad units designed for a publisher's site has increased click through and interaction rates by 10x. This is due to the unique presentation of the ad and the better canvas for the digital messaging, storytelling and assets that most effectively lead to achieving campaign goals.  

Why Publishers Should Focus on Mobile Web, Not Apps

This article from Digiday details what we have been thinking and what publishers have been telling us for a long time: http://digiday.com/publishers/publishers-concentrate-mobile-web-apps/

Quite simply, brand publishers are best off using apps like Facebook, Google Search, Gmail, Twitter, Google+ and Yahoo! Mail to distribute headlines that then drive traffic through the side doors of the site, their article pages. 

Not only does it drive traffic but also efficiency. When sites are designed responsively, a site built once dynamically orientates to the device where it is viewed. Content is updated once and ads can be managed through one platform. 

Unless you are a stand alone application such as a Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or utility application like a fantasy football or game app, you need to concentrate your efforts on building a responsive site that addresses your mobile web audience.