Centralising Retargeting
BY: Paul Silver, Head of Product AOD UK and Geoff Smith, Head of Activation AOD UK
Featured in Exchangewire also here

Retargeting is the core foundation of any performance display campaign. It’s something we all know now, but it’s not something we all knew when we outsourced our display buying to ad networks all those years ago. That’s ultimately because ad networks never disclosed the importance of retargeting whilst they were able to ride the gravy train. However those days are over, and there are several compelling reasons as to why we should all bring retargeting in house today.

Transparency:
Arguably, the greatest output of RTB is that it has created a new marketplace that allows it to be centred on transparency (not 100% complete transparency on every bid request but considerably better than it was previously).

Being in control and accountable of every penny a client spends means we know exactly how much contribution there is from every element of their retargeting programme, and what’s more, so now do our clients. There is no more allowing ad networks to hide behind blended CPA metrics, offsetting the poorer performance of their run of network activity with quick win retargeting conversions. Clients now understand the exact worth of retargeting and precisely how/what needs to be done to a) increase that volume but also b) drive incremental growth.

Lets not forget, in most cases, we also now have insight and transparency into where our ads are being served. Not only is this paramount from a brand safety perspective but also incredibly valuable when we can provide insight to clients that demonstrates which environments convert their target audience more efficiently, how that informs their other cross media planning strategies, and how it disrupts their traditional media planning with fresh ideas.

Price Inflation:
The impact of price inflation from multiple retargeters running on a single media plan is real, it is not just a theory. We know the effect of having to bid for a single user against other bidders. We’ve seen the data, it becomes less efficient. The message we convey to clients is that the situation is akin to brand bidding in the affiliate space a few years ago. Why would you let affiliates obtain standard levels of commission for piggybacking on your marketing investment, by bidding on your brand, whilst also inflating your own CPC costs to access that brand term inventory? It didn’t make sense then and it doesn’t make sense now.

Strategy versus tactic:
By centralising retargeting in house, you immediately remove any element of having to play ‘the ad network game’ which is designed to obtain last click or view attribution. You are actually able to start developing more bespoke, controlled strategies around first party data, integrating it into the wider marketing/comms mix and introducing separate eCRM or cross channel strategies. It becomes an extension to an integrated marketing plan, rather than simply a cheap display acquisition tactic.

User experience:
If there’s one thing that gives retargeting a bad name, it’s when advertisers do it poorly. Retargeting should be used as a reminder of the brand/product/service that a potential customer is considering, rather than giving advertisers the ability to stalk users across the Internet with the same message, no cap on frequency, and potentially showing them the same product that they bought 3 weeks ago. It sounds basic, but we’ve all seen it in action. By taking the retargeting program in house, agencies can help clients ensure that their customer’s user experience remains engaging, consistent and above all else, controlled, increasing brand advocacy rather than damaging it.

Data security:
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, being in control of client’s first party data is not a simple game of efficiency improvements. There is also the much more serious consideration of client data protection. With publishers being able to place tracking pixels within tracking pixels within tracking pixels, can you honestly say that you know every 3rd party server call being made from your client’s site?

It is not unfair to say that practices from *some* ad networks in the past have included leveraging one client’s dataset to improve performance for another client competing in the same vertical. Why should client A help fuel the performance of client B? It reduces their competitive advantage for the benefit of their competitor’s. It’s clearly efficient for ad networks to do this, and certain agency groups are also now taking this data sharing approach, but who really gains when everyone has the same cookie pool available to them?

Data leakage became a serious issue for the industry last year, and with the e-privacy cloud looming, agencies have a responsibility as much as their clients to ensure consumers are well informed of how cookie data is being used. How confident can you be in your client’s privacy policy if numerous disparate suppliers are still managing elements of your retargeting?

At VivaKi we take this very seriously and ensure that no client data is EVER co-mingled. We also work with clients to give them transparency over which pixels are on placed on each of their sites and what they are used for. When you outsource retargeting, you loose your ability to have a holistic view on how your client’s data is being used and ultimately, you outsource control. In today’s ever-stringent e-privacy environment, that is a dangerous place to be.

CES 2012: The world of television
19 JANUARY 2012

Last week executives from business, government, entertainment, automotive, consumer electronics and every major industry converged on the 2012 International CES to experience new ways of doing business at the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow.

Everyone told me that Las Vegas was a crazy city and CES even more so but no one did it justice. This was my first visit to both and no one could have prepared me for either. The scale of the city and the event itself beggars belief. The buzz around the event is incredible with every major tech company represented (except Apple of course) and on a scale I have never seen before…See rest of article here

Everyone told me that Las Vegas was a crazy city and CES even more so but they did not do it justice. The scale of the city and the event beggars belief. There is a real buzz around the event with every major tech company represented (except Apple of course) and on a scale I have never seen before.

Executives from business, government, entertainment, automotive, consumer electronics and every major industry converged on the 2012 International CES to experience new ways of doing business at the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow.

The 2012 International CES was the largest in the event’s 44 year history, with a record number of more than 3,100 exhibitors across the largest show floor in CES history – 1.861 million net square feet of exhibit space – and drawing a record of more than 153,000 attendees, including more than 34,000 international attendees. More than 20,000 new products were launched at the 2012 CES, and as we know it has become the second largest event for Agency Groups with Levy, Sorrell, OMG Board and 500+ people turn out from VivaKi amongst others. My boss Curt Hecht comments on this in an article in Adage – read it here.

Although there was an enormous amount covered at the show I wanted today to focus on the converged TV topic and the challenges we all face in this space. Let me start by giving you some of the highlights of the TV space for me and then look at the implications.

The TV is no longer lean back but lean in, it is being designed to draw you in and pull you from your stupor. The TV is being assaulted by set top boxes, App stores, satellite companies, it’s now no longer able to sit quietly in the corner of the room, it has to be your communicator through Skype, your music system, social media entry point, picture frame, cinema etc, it is also on a diet and becoming more colourful! (more on that later). Before looking at specifics, I have to say that above all the point I was left with was that the role of the main broadcasters and channels seems antiquated and slow at this stage and being left behind a very fast moving wave of tech.

The TV manufacturers are all looking for an angle on how to interact with their devices. Microsoft want you to wave at their TVs via Kinect, LG want you to speak to their machines and have created a unique remote control that acts more like a cursor, this worked for me more than waving hands etc. The video below shows the users scrolling around the TV screen between all the apps using the very simple cursor method.

The Rise of Apps: The first thing that strikes you about the LG is that this is now all about the Apps and not about the linear TV stream. These apps remember will hold TV catchup, movie download services, Facebook, Linkedin, games etc, it will be a while before you start turning to your fav TV show at the allotted time, it is this the vast array of other ways of interacting that leaves you with the feeling that the main broadcasters have a big job on their hand. Check out this LG and it’s Apps.

In this screen you have not only the Apps but also the advertising slots available on the left under the screen, in this case Toyota, if you click on these Ads you can be taken through to full video or sites or Facebook pages, the opportunities are impressive and again this raises questions of measureability

All the manufacturers have led with the App approach, take a look at the Samsung picture below, an awesome TV with incredible layout and design, again all driven by voice commands. The Samsung TVs really stood out as being very impressive both in terms of design and functionality.  You will notice the social apps in the TVs, previously they have been a little clunky but now they are seamlessly integrated so you can be talking with people, tweeting or on Facebook alongside the TV programming, the second picture below shows an example of that in action. Social TV is going to be huge and will again swing the stats away from dual behaviours / screens whilst watching TV.

Facial recognition and personalisation

Right now if we want to personalise through TV it is down to the very early attempts and basic targeting alla Virgin or Sky, if we want to measure TV viewing in the family we have to press buttons or in some cases in the US people are still filling in diaries that a multi billion pound industry relies on. What about a future when the TV recognises you as you sit down, or whether you are with people, whether you are doing something else as well – are you distracted, advertiser pays less!? All this and more is coming in the new TVs. Facial recognition will be huge, imagine logging in and the TV suggesting the Sopranos episode you missed or show what your friends have been watching or even some Ads based on those you have previously watched all the way through? Facial recognition is going to transform your viewing experience and again will present you with a myriad of entertainment opps before you even get to the first channel you would normally watch!

The battle of the software

So LG and Samsung have built their own platforms for all of this to run on, so has Microsoft and Google of course, Sony was the more open minded of the manufacturers we looked at who were turning to Android to provide their operating system. Apple will have their infrastructure and others will too. So where does that leave us? Well it leaves us with the same argument we have always had – Open vs Closed. In the world of TV that debate favours closed with LG, Samsung, Microsoft, Google and Apple all running their own platforms, this is crazy in reality and a brain fade for advertisers and users. Interestingly this does not stop at the TV. Sony, Samsung and Apple in particular are all trying to wrap up your living room and online experience, trying to get you to link tablets with TV with mobile, thats the big win. What is open is the App and online companies, with all of them working to be available everywhere – email, movies, social etc are common to all, so those companies are having the time of their lives with all this innovation.

Sony went a step further by connecting their PSP to their TVs, tablets and phones, meaning as a user you can get anything everywhere. A gamer who was on the PS at home and had to run could get to the bus and then turn on their PSP and it would remotely fire up their home system and stream all the gaming to their handheld meaning they carried on exactly where they were, its a cool piece of work from Sony and needed. I felt their TV and tablet experience was behind the competition.

Measurement

We have a problem. In one TV set or should we just say large screen we have social media, photography, communication with tools such as Skype and Facetime, we have movies through all the Apps, TV shows through the Apps, the weather, an ecommerce hub and so on and yet somewhere in there people are watching TV in a linear fashion..or are they? Then on top of that we have all this on top of different platforms and players and across thousands of TVs. How as an advertiser can you a) be expected to navigate this and b) measure it in current methods. Lets face it the panels as we know they are over, they are basic and cannot fully give the advertiser a faith that they are paying for the right information. There will be ways of consolidating advertising by companies such as YuMe but on top of that everyone will be selling advertising in their Apps or via video resellers and exchanges and we have to add all this up? We need ASAP a universal tracking initiative such as online adserving etc to at least pick up a big chunk of those metrics, but outside of that the role of the TV panel either needs to reinvent itself and fast or die.

And finally..

Oh my the TVs look amazing, they are getting slimmer and slimmer and brighter and brighter, see some of the images below, they dont do the reality justice but you get the idea. The colourful images are from the 4K. The 4K from Samsung basically means 4 x HD, the pictures were so real you could barely tell and check out the TV as slim as a card! The innovation is incredible and mind boggling, but I am so glad I got to see it first hand, the world of TV is an exciting one!

Dataxu first of all was very down on the VivaKi partnership with Google and Invite, first was the usual Google paranoia stuff which I am used to and bored of but the second was whether or not we could succeed by using Invite, considered the lesser DSP apparently by Dataxu compared to their high tech operation.  At the time I explained that to grow the marketplace and to grow my business and make a success of Audience On Demand first and foremost was to have the support of a strong partner (and a good one) with resources and scale not just in EMEA but globally. Secondly I needed consistency of offer, the finer points of the algorithm would not be the defining factor. Audience On Demand a year later is the largest Exchange Trading proposition in the world and we are delivering fantastic results and have some very smart people working for us so I feel pretty vindicated in my approach. It is therefore enlightening to now see Dataxu resort to buying Mexad to be able to deliver service and people.

Mike quotes ‘“feet-on-the-street” is becoming a key differentiator for the DSP business, because it’s not just about having the best software, algorithms and access to RTB inventory that determines success in local markets, but understanding local cultures, ways of doing business in specific markets, and the ability to advise and service local marketers and agencies in those markets.

This is exactly what I was explaining all those months ago and it seems Dataxu have also seen some truth in that approach.  The other telling thing for me is around the fact that the individual DSPs are finding it hard to get into the agency groups, they have been knocking on the door for some time and the way is blocked for many of them with Invite taking the lion’s share and each of the others taking the smaller share, at least in EMEA.  I have said all along that I still see this a very difficult market place for the independent DSPs, not impossible of course and I look forward to working with a number of them as we continue to test and learn, but difficult. Perhaps by buying Mexad they see a quicker way of getting through the doors, although Mexad as far as an agency trading desk is concerned is like outsourcing your TV buying so I suspect those doors, at least in developed markets, will also start to close.

Finally Mexad. I assume that even though they have been bought by Dataxu they will continue to work with multiple DSPs? I have been repeatedly heckled at industry events that working with just one is wrong and is not the way forward, that it is a flawed approach!  Anyone who knows how agency land works knows that it is a large education piece and consistency of message is crucial. Audience On Demand is working well because the agency teams understand it, the publishers know we are transparent and consistent and the clients have a team of people who are aligned and focused only on delivering the best results. Perhaps Mexad will find some of the same benefits now it can concentrate on one DSP only.

This world will evolve of course and Audience On Demand will test a number of different DSPs over time, that is what any desk would expect to do, even if we retain a major partner, I hope now that Mexad is tied down to just one they wont find it too strategically difficult to handle after claiming for months that it was the wrong approach!

Aside from that Good luck to all parties and well done!

I now have an Xbox that I can access social media, stream movies and play games. If I want to watch a movie I have the choice of Apple TV or the iPad to stream to the TV via Apple TV, now I have Roku which gives me more selection or more of the same, this time in a different room, my living room was just too busy to cope with another box!

Even when I isolate a single vehicle such as the iPad I then have more options. I can stream movies from lovefilm, I can download from iTunes I can catch up on TV from the iplayer, 4OD, ITV or watch live with Sky. If its a programme I want then I could download from iTunes, Roku HBO channel and Netflix will hold the same programmes – I could even look at my EPG on Sky and find it in there somewhere, or maybe I Sky+ it. I can’t remember really, perhaps I should check in Sky Anytime+ or The Planner or trawl through 300 channels?

It is a mind boggling amount of options and choices and this will only increase as Google and Xbox continue to grow their product offerings in the UK. There is another important factor in all of that – no Ads. All of the above is driven by micro payments and subscriptions and it is this that makes the TV model look so ill defined as we enter 2012. The Roku box asks me to subscribe at every turn for every service and at that point I hesitate..can I get this somewhere else, is it worth it?

I noticed this week a video from Microsoft that talks about similar changes in our consumption behaviour so I thought I would post the link here

Added to that the measurement becomes ever more confusing and understated. John Baylon, Head of Digital Trading at SMG commented in an article about how the research Barb are doing is just not up to the task, indeed in my opinion its actual measurement is looking outdated and needs an overhaul. The NMA article and link can be found here.

Just sometimes it would be nice to have less rather than more, that said next week it will be more rather than less. Next week I am off to The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and I am extremely looking forward to it, maybe there I will see something that highlights the major future change in this arena, I suspect however I am going to see a myriad of new devices and boxes that will just make things ever more complicated. One thing is for show in the TV space, the TVs will all be connected, big, pixel-tastic and likely with a few Ds but it’s the connected bit that will be the game changer. Already Skype integrated TVs are being produced so you can sit and Skype through the TV, nice touch and makes perfect sense..

More from CES next week.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,300 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Although not what I am focusing on today, it is interesting that the advertising and media industry still seems in capable of grasping this opportunity, I would now say above all other media channels mobile dominates our life and yet ad spend on mobile and mobile optimised ecommerce sites of major brands is not where it should be. In 2010 advertisers spent £83m on mobile advertising – that’s a crazy stat when you think how attached we are to our phones.

The thing with the mobile phone and in particular the smart phone is the crazy amount of things you can do with it, it is this that makes it something we are glued to day and night. GSMArena carried out research with around 15,000 people, link here and you can see the array of things people use their phone for and what was most popular. There is a word cloud and an info graphic, both below that are pretty insightful.

The detail behind those words can be found on the next infographic

It is for this reason that my phone stays with me from dawn until dusk, I am not alone in reaching for my phone before anything else, 83% of people use their phone as an alarm and so starts the day. From here when you look around you its relentless. Everyone is used to the idea of people using phones on trains etc, the commute, it’s not that which I notice the most, it’s the bits in between. As an example what is the shortest pause you need to reach for your phone or check it?

a) Would you check your phone as you wait for the cash machine to register your card?
b) Would you check your phone as you wait for lights to change in the car?
c) Do you always look at your phone while you are walking?
d) Would you check your phone in a work meeting
e) Check it when you are one on one with a friend?

It is relentless checking that I am noticing, and I am well and truly guilty of it, but I think we re beginning to erode the old rules and its acceptable. More and more people are checking phones during meetings, at dinner, at the bar, often three or four people are all checking at the same time. Big events and presentations have more people with their heads down on their phones or tablets than concentrating. The rules of politeness are being eroded. Concentrating on a conversation or a meeting is no longer a prerequisite. In fact as soon as someone leaves a conversation to pop to the gents, you dive onto your phone is you have been restraining yourself. We are all addicted.

More and more guys are on their phones at the urinals now, that is an emerging trend! Perhaps they were the polite ones not looking at their phones during a conversation and went to the loo just so they could.

I remember someone once saying that we are making time for ourselves with mobiles because we fit all our catch up conversations in on the move and so its making time at home for partners and friends, I am not sure that holds water anymore, we are always on our phones and when it was just calls it was fine but now you can basically run your life from them, they have become more intrusive. I look around me and see everyone immediately reaching for their phones at any pause in life, all of us head down not watching life go past and I feel like I am in one of the futuristic movies where we are all wired to some unseen force, I think we need to disconnect more.

VW have done it in a German factory, they have stopped their servers sending emails at 6.30pm so workers are not constantly on their blackberries – interesting! Not sure that will catch on but its the principle of it, the fact they are trying to break a cycle that is hard to break. As new members join the company and are desperate to get a blackberry I always think what a mistake that is and to stay away for as long as possible, as soon as you are wired to the work all hours is the day you will never truly have a holiday again.

I am addicted to my phones so I am all the things up there but I wish I was not, I spend too much time on it and looking at it, it makes me rude at times, and I miss things because its head down all the time.

I think Microsoft got it right in their Ad to kick start their new phone – ‘Really’ Take a look, not a bad Ad and absolutely on the mark!

Online Video – time to fast forward

Online Video is at an interesting place. It’s poised to accelerate digital spending over the next few years. But it’s stuttering somewhat. Given the time of year, this is not about predictions, but what needs to change if Video is to fulfil its promise.

Planning

Advertisers and agencies alike need to change their planning mentality when it comes to Video. Rule number 1, it is not TV so why plan like it is?
Video planning is still dominated by replicating a TV spot buy online. In a world where we now have the ability to address and optimise at scale, why create a plan that is not suited to the strengths of the medium? The Video industry needs to embrace the move to programmatic, audience led buying. There are new ways to reach and engage audiences; TV targeting models simply are not transferable.

We also need to define premium. Advertisers (rightly so) are sensitive about content and environment but to the detriment of innovation. It seems to be a belief that only long form broadcaster content is deemed premium. Id argue that reaching & captivating your precise audience and demonstrating engagement and interaction would be a premium buy? I’m not discounting the value of broadcaster content, but it should sit within a blended schedule that really maximises audience reach and the ability to optimise.

Personalising

A lot of our research from The Pool suggests users want a different online experience, different from TV. All the more reason why we should not be repurposing a TV strategy online. Users want personalisation, they want more relevancy. Our research has shown that if ads are more relevant, users are more engaged. Users understand the web economy; if they need to be exposed to advertising in exchange for content, they want it more tailored. This is another reason why innovation is needed. A change in the way we serve ads, using data (in the same way we do for Display) to customise creatives on the fly. We simply have to.

Measurement

Speaking of optimising brings me onto a fairly contentious subject: No one knows how to measure video. Over the past few months I’ve had a lot of dialogue and conversation with those within the video space and the feeling i’m getting is we buy long form content because it dovetails nicely with our TV spot buying schedules. This would then assume that it’s a reach and frequency game against an audience. However, when we start looking at reaching a precise audience, using actual data, the goalposts move. Buyers look at clicks. Clicks are the worst metric to evaluate as a measure of success for Video. Users who click are a) from a certain type of environment and tend to be a consistent type of demographic and b) are not being subjected and impacted by your advertising. Video is truly about upper funnel engagement. Regardless of whether it’s on your mobile, desktop, tablet, connected TV. Those that do click also drive, invariably, terrible bounce rates. What about connected TVs? We are already accessing inventory within these platforms. Do we expect users to start clicking on TVs??

The problem is that there is not a common currency. And whilst there is not a 100% robust methodology to bridge TV to Video using a GRP, we should be evaluating success on engagement and cost per engagement. If that happens within long form content, short form content, it should not matter. You’re reaching your audience and optimising to engagement. If ITV, et al can outperform all else on a cost per engagement model then great.

Buying

Video is still dominated by the old guard approaches to trading. There is a fear to change and innovate and often it is misplaced, perceived fear. Video publishers look at the display space with the excess volume of inventory and fear that Video will become a race to the bottom. This is not the case. You remove UGC out of the equation and you have a model that is prime for biddable trading. You have constricted supply with an increasing demand for that inventory. Anyone knows this will lead to increased pricing. Addressable video is about improving relevancy for the advertiser and rewarding the publisher appropriately. With improved relevancy and reduced wastage means less ads required to make the impact. Less ads at higher yield means a better user experience. A better user experience means more returning visitors. And then the process repeats itself.

Trading Video over a table is not the future digital model. It will become platform based. It will become technologically enabled. But as to the reasons above, this isn’t a bad thing. It doesn’t mean prices race to the bottom. Change is happening and it’s a positive thing which needs to be embraced. At Audience on Demand we are 100% committed to making the Video space more efficient, more scalable and ultimately more rewarding for publisher and advertiser alike.

Paul Silver, Head of Product, AOD UK
@thepaulsilver