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. 

The Ad Ops Nightmare of Native & How CheckM8 Eases the Pain

This article from AdMonsters details the pain that publishers, and more particularly ad ops, face when pitching and delivering native advertising campaigns: http://www.admonsters.com/blog/answering-call-ad-ops-native-world

To summarize, the biggest challenges include:

• Scale and the economics of creating custom ad units for campaigns with limited page views
• Pricing
• Aligning advertiser's goals with publisher's audience experience
• Available resources to pull it all together
• Advertisers & agencies relinquishing control of creative

From our experience, the most successful publishers who sell native display sponsorships simplify the process. Here is how it is done:

1 - Find formats that get approved editorially. Find the balance of what attracts an audience's attention while not disrupting the user's experience. Ad units that fit into the look and feel of the site deliver an amazing branding & transaction vehicle while complimenting the publisher's brand. When done right, this approach improves the viewer's experience since many members of an audience visit a publisher's site as much for the advertisers and learning what is going on in their field as much as they rely on the editorial content of the media. 

A big consideration in format selection is flexibility. Make sure that you are getting a format or placement approved that has the ability to deliver a variety of creative assets so that each campaign can be customized to most effectively achieve an advertiser's goals. Make sure the placement is not solely for video or e-commerce or registration. Do your advertiser a service by offering a canvas that delivers the assets most appropriate for their campaign goals. 

2 - Pricing. Our most successful publishing clients base their pricing on time based sponsorships. They sell high impact branding placements as an exclusive by number of days. This eliminates frequency capping and time of day delivery. Based on an average number of page views publishers can comfortable set impression minimums but that should not be the focus of the ad sale. 

3 - Available Resources to Put it All Together. This is where publishers rely on CheckM8. We specialize in two areas critical in native display ad units - creative development and site integration. 

Site Integration - Without a solution that provides ad serving, the publisher is left to integrating native ad units into their site through their CMS. They actually need to change the web site. This puts the entire site stability at risk with the limited gain of delivering an ad campaign. Add to this the inability to track interactions when an ad unit is hard coded into the site. Stack on the complexity of creating an ad unit/units that reach the audience on tablets, phones and desktops and you easily identify why native display is not as common as it is effective. 

Creative - For creative to be done right, each campaign needs to be adjusted to fit the advertiser's goals. There is only so much templatization a publisher can do without becoming stale. The limited number of native display campaigns and the complexity of creating unique units for each screen (tablet, phone & desktop) makes this a full time job for a limited scale placement and very inefficient. 

The above reasons are exactly why top tier publishers work with CheckM8 on their native display advertising campaigns. We are experts in site integration and creative development while giving our clients the time and attention they deserve for site specific campaigns. Other vendors discourage non standard campaigns since they don't have massive scale.

4 - Advertisers & Creative Control. Finally, working with a third party vendor to execute native display ads has two real advantages:

The first is using them as a liaison between the advertiser and the site to make sure that advertisers and their agencies don't lose creative control while not creating a placement that will violate the publisher's user experience guidelines. Having an expert on both sides of the equation not only makes for better ad creation but a vendor like CheckM8 serves as a buffer when conflicting opinions arise. Our expertise on both sides enables us to effectively communicate the other side's point of view and find simple solutions that satisfies all parties.  

Secondly, when advertisers work directly with the vendor it gives them the ability to create high impact placements that can scale to multiple sites without forcing multiple publishers to recreate the entire unit. Build once, tweak often. This allows for creative optimization for native display ad campaigns running on multiple sites along with one source for tracking interactions. 

CheckM8 distinguishes itself by being the one source solution for native display advertising for desktop, tablets & phones and it is our purpose to help advertisers and publishers deliver more effective campaigns while simplifying the process. 

IAB Native Ad Guidelines "Cheat Sheet"

The Interactive Advertising Bureau gathered insights and commentary from industry professionals to set out guidelines for Native Advertising. The full IAB Playbook can be found here: http://www.iab.net/media/file/IABNativeAdvertisingPlaybookFINAL.pdf

This document attempts to define six forms of native advertising, proposes questions that advertisers should ask themselves to make sure the Native formats meet marketing objectives, and provides disclosure guidelines to ensure that consumers do not confuse paid advertising with traditional content.

The IAB notes that this is an evolving form of advertising and there is no consensus definition of what is Native. The IAB has trouble defining the Core Six Formats  and how they fit marketers needs since each of these formats can be altered and defined by the media company or technology provider. Marketers and media companies should speak in the same language when talking about the formats in relation to the questions that every marketer should ask. 


"Publishers and advertisers aspire to deliver paid ads that are so cohesive with the page content, assimilated into the design, and consistent with the platform behavior that the viewer simply feels that they belong." 

"Native is decidedly and overwhelmingly a form of brand advertising and, as such, will enable marketers to better use digital marketing to meet the full range of their communication needs, from branding to direct marketing."

The Core 6 Formats:

In Feed Units - Generally paid posts within a newsfeed. The posts look like the preceding stories (for content producers) or "friend" posts (Twitter & Facebook).

Paid Search Units - Posts correlating with a search inquiry. 

Recommendation Widgets - Content recommendation engines that say something along the lines of, "If you liked this content then you may want to try this content."

Promoted Listings - Common on shopping sites but also used in search applications such as Foursquare, they are basically the same as Paid Search and Recommendation Widgets.

In-Ad (IAB Standard) with Native Element Units - IAB Standard units with content feeds or media company branding inside.

Custom/"Can't Be Contained" - Specialized display ad units that are non standard and fit the media company's site.

The Core 6 Questions for marketers to ask to ensure that a unit will meet the brand's objectives:

1. Form - How does the ad fit with the overall page design? Is it in the viewer's activity stream or not in-stream?
2. Function - Does the ad function like the other elements on the page? Does it deliver the same type of content experience or is it different?
3. Integration - How well do the ad unit's behaviors match those of the surrounding content? 
4. Buying & Targeting - Is the ad placement guaranteed on a specific page, section, or site, or will it be delivered across a network of sites? 
5. Measurement - What metrics are typically used to judge success? Are marketers using top-of-the-funnel brand engagement metrics like awareness and views or are they using more transnational metrics such as sale, download, register, etc?
6. Disclosure - Is the disclosure clear and prominent? Does the audience know that it is an ad?

Recommended IAB Native Advertising Disclosure Principles (Simply put): Regardless of context, a reasonable consumer should be able to distinguish between what is paid advertising vs. what is publisher content.

Sample disclosure statements can be found in the original document.

Effective Formats for Mobile

Why Marketers Just Can't Crack Mobile by @AdAge 

This article from AdAge: (http://adage.com/article/news/marketers-crack-mobile/293249/?utm_source=digital_email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage&ttl=1401113818) talks about how mobile is the "next frontier". Basically, that consumers are spending more and more time on their phones but advertisers are very slow to catch up to them with their spending. 

"Mobile is, without a doubt, the first screen for a great many users. Consumers spend 23.8% of their time with media on mobile devices each day, according to eMarketer, compared with 37.2% with TV. It may soon surpass TV as the screen claiming the most consumer time."

"And yet ad spending remains almost the mirror image. Advertisers spend 17¢ on TV for every hour of U.S. adult consumption of the medium; they pour 83¢ into each hour spent with print. For mobile, it's 7¢, according to eMarketer."

"Advertising, like any institution, can move glacially. Brands and agencies are just getting comfortable with SEO and banner ads, tactics now becoming obsolete."

What this says is that first movers are going to figure out the formats and tactics that work best, prove excellent results, and then when the mass market copy cats those tactics consumers will have already been bored with it and performance metrics will tail off. 

"What marketers expect from the device is shifting markedly as well: They want engagement, not simply impressions."

Currently, the most popular and least effective form of mobile advertising is the mobile banner. Everybody realizes that it is not working and are looking for new ways.

Smart publishers are implementing sponsored content. In stream Native content that blends with the mobile publisher's site. But what if your most effective messaging is not in words but in pictures and videos instead? 

Take a look at CheckM8's Page Roll format for phones, tablets & desktops: http://goo.gl/FevXa1 
**scroll to view the Aveda video. It only plays when in view of the user and pauses when out of view. Notice the branding "leave behind" when the video ends and collapses. 

CheckM8 also developed a more effective video banner that responsively adjusts to the device (desktop, tablet *& phone). See what Tim Tebow has to say about T-Mobile:  http://goo.gl/l8AN1Y

Will NHT kill Open Exchanges?

I attended 212 Interactive Advertising's (@TwoOneTwoNYC) Video Panel yesterday evening and got some great insight into where video advertising is going.

1 - It is getting significant enough that the problems and warts are coming to the surface and need to be addressed. People caring about the problems and the discussion around the problems are a significant step in growth.

2 - Non viewable ads and Bot traffic are so significant that it has it's own acronym: NHT Non Human Traffic. Its a problem that is getting agency attention as they need to solve it to attract TV dollars. 

3 - It is Ari Bluman's (Chief Digital Investment Officer, North America, GroupM) stated goal/directive that none of his clients will buy inventory on an open exchange by the end of 2014. All programmatic video buys will go to private exchanges since those premium publishers can be personally responsible for making sure the traffic is human, the ads are viewed and the content is appropriate. 

4 - Nobody mentioned directly buying or selling video inventory. Everything was centered around programmatic. 

5 - Natalie Bokenham, SVP Managing Partner UM, talked about how one of her top clients can't get enough digital video advertising inventory. The ROI on those campaigns have proven well worth it and they have a lot more buying to do before she sees that leveling off. 

Premium Audience, Premium Environment & Standard Ads via Programmatic?

Interesting video during which Gregg Colvin, US COO at Universal McCann, and Donnie Williams, chief digital officer at Horizon Media talk about paying more to get better ads in front of high value audiences on high value sites. 



The discussion starts with Apple's approach to building the equity in their brand by telling the story of how people use Apple products and how Apple products improve people's lives. How cool Apple is. They do not talk discounting or value. 

They then go into "tentpole" events like the Super Bowl or even Times Square advertising which is the canvas for brand building to a massive audience.

Gregg Colvin from Universal McCann talks about creating premium experiences for audiences in these premium environments. 

In a surprising finish they talk about premium ad buys going programmatic since this would lead to standardization and the lack of unique messaging approaches. Who wants to talk to a premium audience in a premium environment with a standard storytelling method? What happened to premium environments? Don't standard ad approaches get ignored? Audiences skip commercials and New Yorkers never look up while walking through Times Square. 

WTF do People think Native Ads are?

I had the pleasure on attending the Native Advertising Round table, a panel discussion on digital native advertising. Aside from one publisher, it was made up of technology providers each with their spin on the subject. What I heard was jaw dropping idiotic.

Since the panelists were CEOs and founders of companies in a very complex industry, our industry, and they had enough credentials to speak at this meeting let me first give them the respect they deserve as very smart people with innovative ideas and approaches. But what they had to say was downright stupid.

Let me first provide my own definition of native advertising. Native advertising is an ad placement that is unique to a publisher's property. That's it. If we need to distinguish between content and display advertising then we can do that although, at its core, native is unique to a property regardless of its form. If you don't agree with my definition then please Google the definition of Native.

"Native is the New Black" is because it solves the problem of ad blindness. Audiences are ignoring the standard billboards they see on every page. Native ads not only stand out but they also do a much better job of associating the advertiser's brand with the quality of the publisher's brand. 

In our industry we are automating everything and Facebook and Twitter have come out with or are launching exchanges for their native ad units. They can do this since the scale they provide allows for audience targeting. Programmatic native platforms will only be offered by the supply side since the creative an advertiser submits must be unique to the channel - since the ad formats are unique to the channel. Anything that scales across many sites is not unique to a channel and thereby not native. Once an ad format is standardized you may want to submit it to the IAB for their stamp of approval so that Double Click can add it to their formats in DFA & DFP.  

The absurd comments that I heard during this round table included:  "Retargeting is native advertising". WHAT? If an ad follows you from site to site then it is not native. Standard ad sizes are not native. If you want to argue that a specific targeting methodology is native to a channel you may have a point but retargeting is not that since it does not live within the publisher. The round table talked about Zappos shoe ads following them from site to site.

Everyone around the table agreed that the future of native advertising is standardization. I slapped my forehead. Again, if it is the same for more than one publisher, then it is not native to that publisher. 

CheckM8 is a rich media technology company that specializes in custom or Native ad formats. The ad units that we build can be unique to a publisher's or a channel. I say "can be" since the minute the same format is used by two of our partners it is not native.  

That is all. Thank you for reading. I appreciate your comments and feedback. Maybe even a healthy discussion.

Future of Digital Advertising - Storytelling with Engagement

Much has been made about the investment in the collection and application of user data to get the right ad to the right people. This is coupled with software platforms that make buying digital advertising at scale extremely efficient (in theory according to my ad operations friends). This is all fine and good but the piece that we are missing is the human element and ability to tell a story and engage a consumer. 

Compare digital advertising to every other form of advertising media. There are classic TV commercials. We have all cut an ad out of our favorite magazine. There are plenty of radio jingles that have stuck in my head. Newspapers and roadside billboards have had their moments but have been limited in their ability to connect with an audience. Direct mail is, well, for direct response.

Digital advertising has not and, I will be bold enough to say, will not have a standard IAB unit that people will remember as great advertising. It does not matter how targeted the ad is. It does not provide a canvas for the advertiser to tell their story in an engaging way. 

What does?

Content Marketing - Sponsored stories. This is the winner for mobile as incorporating advertiser content within the stream layout of a mobile page has proven most effective. It is targeted and relevant not based on user data but as complimentary to the content and publisher environment in which it is delivered. 

But what if my story is not best told through words?

Big, Splashy Ads. Everybody "hates" these because they get in the way of the audience visiting the site but they notice them. And they do give a great canvas for advertisers to tell their story with photos, videos, and interactive elements that consumers can engage with.

Take a look at these can't miss home page take overs:

• H-Unit: http://goo.gl/aFJN24
• Theater Unit: http://goo.gl/HfHBmD
• Cascade: http://goo.gl/ki29U3
• Window Blinders: http://goo.gl/plxaed
• Video-Stitial – Served before page view: bit.ly/1pZIbwY

The bottom line is that standard digital advertising will be as effective as highly targeted direct mail. Probably more so. Winner for the IAB Standard units, data targeting and exchanges. 

If an advertiser wants to make a connection with a consumer they are going to need to create custom content that fits with the channel where they are reaching their audience. If their story is best told with words it will be with custom content. If it is visual and interactive it will be through reach out and grab you ads. This is how the digital medium will best be leveraged since it offers advantages that no other medium does giving it the potential for advertising that will be remembered. 

The New, New Thing in Digital Advertising

The New, New Thing is Native Advertising.....which is comical since it is not new. It is the current, current thing. 

Digital advertising is in a constant state of change since it is new and as an industry we are still figuring it out. It does not help that the screens we deliver it on change rapidly.

5 years ago the hottest cell phone was the Motorola Razor. The iPhone did not exist. Since then we ahve had an explosion in mobile traffic which encompasses Iphones, Androids, iPads, tablets, mini tablets and now "phablets". Publishers have gone from redesigning their site once every 4 years to creating 4 new sites every year or taking a responsive design approach where a site designed once renders to a multitude of screen size devices. 

The New, New Thing is adapting the old way of doing things to the new advertising environment. This includes efficiency through automation for standardized ad buys and custom ad solutions for premium. 

Native advertising is nothing new. As long as there has been print, there has been content written on behalf of advertisers for paid placement. There have been special ad sizes and approaches that have attracted the audience's attention and built the name recognition that leads to sales in other places. 

"I know that half of my advertising works, I just don't know which half." - Native compliments display. Native gets people buying online and leads to sales. Publishers and advertisers know this and will continue to use native and big, splashy ads because they know it works for their entire campaign.

The New, New Thing is adapting it for all the different screen sizes. Take a look at some of CheckM8's work: 

Here are some of our most recent cross screen work:

·         Aveeda Page Roll for phone & tablet (scroll to view, pauses when out of view): http://bit.ly/1f6gSig

·         Bottega Veneta Theater Unit (desktop example): http://goo.gl/HfHBmD

·         Shinola Expandable E-Commerce Ear for tablet & desktop (mouse over the right hand button in the masthead): http://goo.gl/VgS02R

·         Mercedes Benz Video Page Peel (desktop): http://bit.ly/1g0v9ww

The basis for this post came from an article on Ad Exchanger: http://www.adexchanger.com/the-sell-sider/the-current-current-thing/ @adexchnager by Jim Spanfeller @jimspanfeller

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