Category Archives: adverlytics

Ban the Banner?

Interesting article on AdExchanger, “The Rise Of Addressable Video And Banner-Ad Bans.” Seems to be the latest in an attempt to kill off banner advertising. Generally, a bad idea and kind of like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

http://adexchanger.com/tv-and-video/rise-addressable-video-banner-ad-bans

Display ad media (banners) are notoriously hard to measure especially if your strategy is an upper funnel one where clicks do not make sense as a KPI. Most banner ads seem to be about awareness or engagement in spite of that. Digital marketers should stick with proven ad research methods, e.g. brand lift studies or dig deeper into analytics using passive brand impact measurement like viewthrough. And of course there is always algorithmic attribution that can help.

A bigger threat to display media’s viability is ad blocking, which prevents display ads and any associated tracking tags from being served up. Yes, that means no potential for viewthrough (or clickthrough) if there are no ads presented to the user.

In addition to the reduced page clutter (what most people seem to want), ad blockers are also a good way to speed up your Web browsing experience. Unfortunately, too many publishers do not use advanced tag management to reduce the strain put on browsers when 25-50-100 3rd party cookies and tags fire in the browser.

http://www.iab.com/insights/ad-blocking/

According to eMarketer this is going to be a 25% de facto tax on publisher audiences. Some are however, asking users to shut off their ad blockers when visiting their site. Here is the official word from the IAB on ad blocking.

What’s the difference between viewthrough and viewability?



In case you haven’t noticed, digital marketing performance is more important than ever. With advertiser’s increasing need for accountability and measurement tools evolving to meet that need, there is major and growing interest in associated ad analytics or adverlytics. More specifically, display viewability measurement and attribution are hot topics. Yet, before the explosion in ad viewability technologies and an enthusiastic trade group response to standardize (IAB, MRC), viewthrough remains complicated and mysterious.

Even among experienced digital marketers, agencies and analytics professionals, there is often confusion around these terms with many people using the terms wrong or inter-changeably. They each describe important steps in the digital advertising funnel with viewability an important first step towards measuring exposure and viewthrough gauging post-exposure latent response. It makes a lot of sense to use these tracking methods together.
Viewthrough Defined
Display viewthrough measurement has been around since the late 90s and the advent of agency or
3rd party ad serving (3PAS). That means an advertiser’s digital media agency centrally manages the serving of their display ad campaign across multiple Web sites and/or ad networks. Typical tools used for this purpose include Sizmek, Pointroll, Google DoubleClick and Atlas. The beauty of this approach is having one report that consolidates one or multiple campaign performance metrics across multiple media vendors. The advertiser-centric approach and even allows for performance analysis by placement, ad size or creative treatment across media vendors. Prior to this, agencies had to collect the reports from each media vendor and doing cross-dimension analysis required advanced Excel manipulation. Included in the consolidated report was usually impressions, clicks, media cost a calculated click rate and effective CPM (cost per thousand). Potentially average frequency of ad delivery could also be reported.

How Viewthrough Works
As a more advanced option, the ad server could generate a special beacon tag which could be coded on an important digital event on the client’s Web site, e.g. a visit to the home page, playing a game, initiating a particular download and most obviously the rendering of an order thank you page. The latter being a revenue-generating conversion. The way it works is simple enough: the ad server site code that is placed is page-specific and named in a certain way with a certain ID. When that beacon tag fires, the ad server increments the count for that specific ad. The ad server uses clicker cookies to distinguish between clickthrough conversions and viewthrough conversions by the presence of a click cookie that is served to the browser if they click an ad. Generally, a viewthrough can be simply a visit to the target site or it can be an actual ecommerce conversion.
Fig 1. Viewthrough Process
In practice this meant that digital advertisers were no longer limited to the more direct-response oriented clickthrough rate for measuring display campaign performance. With viewthrough they could also analyze the passive impact of display which is more difficult to measure since it is not immediate and is harder to measure than clickthroughs which use appended query string parameters in the landing page clickthrough URL. That said, viewthrough measurement from the ad server is not enough as unscrupulous ad networks learned to do what is called cookie-stuffing to take advantage of affiliate advertising systems.
Site Analytics Technology Matters
Going beyond simplistic, ad server viewthrough measurement is not easy for digital marketers and technology choices matter. The complexities of generating and managing ad server site tags has also made ubiquitous measurement operationally difficult. What’s more ad server counting of viewthrough was an afterthought. The solution to better viewthrough measurement is ingesting ad server data into the site analytics system where site taxonomy, visitor uniqueness, multiple marketing channels and event level tracking infrastructure already exists. Another option are the better algorithmic attribution systems; a couple even integrate display viewability into their solution (ideal).
The reality is that there is are a few site analytics platforms that integrate with the ad servers in the market today. All are not created equal, not independent of media and there are significant differences in the methodologies. The integrations can be complex but well worth it for advertisers spending more than $10MM per year in display media. However, the learnings are significant when it comes to understanding customer’s digital path to the target Web sites and the latent effects of display ads (banner/video/mobile). 
Last, a word of caution: the best way to really understand display media from a viewthrough standpoint is through periodic incrementality analysis, i.e. test and control.
Viewability Defined
Display viewability is a newer capability for digital marketers that has really caught on over the last five years. Essentially, display viewability leverages Web technology that can determine how much of an ad is “in view” of the user’s browser window and for how long. While there is some additional complexity involved, simply put this offers a way for digital advertisers to really understand the quality of the ad inventory that they are buying from Web publishers and ad networks.
Fig 2. Viewability Process
Industry Reaction to Measuring Ad Viewability
Not surprisingly, ad viewability has met with resistance from publishers and even media agencies though it is of obvious interest to advertisers. By better managing viewability, advertisers can ensure they maximize the value of their display spend in terms of both raising awareness and driving a measureable response (clickthrough, viewthrough, engagement, conversions). Unlike viewthrough which languished for years as somewhat of a stepchild metric, The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Ratings Council (MRC) stepped in early on viewability to create some early standards: 50% or more of an ad for at least 1 second. Advertisers can certainly raise the bar here but there is at least a baseline.
Ad viewability is fairly easy to implement on a display campaign but can often be challenging to operationally integrate into media performance reporting. As a best practice, having an independent analytics team pilot test and benchmark current performance will help gauge how much upside potential there might be.
Rising Tide Lifts All Ships
It stands to reason that you cannot have a clickthrough without an ad first being viewable. If an advertiser were to increase their ad viewability rate from 50% to 75% that would likely mean the number of clicks and therefore clickthrough rate should increase. Similarly, you cannot have legitimate viewthrough without an ad first being viewable. Increasing ad viewability rates should also benefit viewthrough rates as well.

  • Viewthrough – It’s all about response measurement. Advertisers ultimately should be very keen on measuring viewthrough from display media if they are interested in Web site engagement and even more so if an online conversion is possible (offline measurement is also possible).
  • Viewability– Think front-end of the advertising process, i.e. the inputs. The focus is on doing what branding has always sought to do through media campaigns: create an impression, influence behavior or change preferences.

As you can see, while they are certainly related viewthrough and viewability are very different. Measuring and optimizing viewability should be a self-evident way to improve those front-end metrics that will likely also boosts downstream ones. Viewability and viewthrough can and should work together.

The Encima Group Donates Tag Management Referrals, Maintains Neutrality

The latest from Encima but a long-time in the making….hopefully more digital analysts and marketers will consider Piwik as an open source alternative to sharing their precious customer data with G. And of course, the DAA is doing some great things for the industry and we want to be a part of that. Special thanks to David Clunes for his vision and support on this initiative.

Encima Group LogoNewark, DE – August 18, 2014 – Analytics consultancy The Encima Group, is pleased to announce the donation of several thousand dollars in referral fees earned through the recent recommendation and subsequent implementation of Signal’s technology platform. Signal’s Tag Management system (formerly BrightTag) was chosen by two of Encima’s major pharmaceutical clients as the best-in-class tag management solution. For one Encima client, their prior tag management system took too much time to use and was expensive. It was replaced with Signal and the client is already seeing ongoing tag maintenance now taking less than 10% of the time that it did before. For another client, Signal was deployed together with an enterprise site analytics solution across several high-profile Web sites making ongoing tag maintenance a snap.

David Clunes, CEO and Founder of The Encima Group explains, “With technology vendors often jockeying on new capabilities, we prefer let them do what they do best without getting caught up. We purposefully do not recommend the technology platforms that make us the most money, instead we recommend what is best for our client’s long-term analytics success. Donations like this help us continue to maintain our neutrality – all while doing some good for the industry.”

The Encima Group, known best for its independent analytics and digital operations services often finds itself recommending platforms for clients. Sometimes viewed as another value-added reseller, The Encima Group sees itself as an extension of their clients’ organizations and vigorously maintains its “Switzerland” status. That sensibility extends from the firm’s analytics practice which uniquely eschews agency media buying and creative services to focus on providing clients with both objective performance reporting and unbiased campaign optimization recommendation.

Clunes continues, “When it comes to analytics, more objectivity is always a good thing. We feel that this is a great way of paying it forward and that hopefully other firms get the idea.” By sharing the referral fees that it earned, Encima is simultaneously investing in two worthy causes known to analytics professionals worldwide: The Digital Analytics Association, a global organization for digital analytics professionals and Piwik, the globally popular open source Web analytics platform.

“The Digital Analytics Association is thrilled by the Encima Group’s donation,” said DAA Board Chair, Jim Sterne. “The funds will be added to our general fund to benefit all members of the DAA. We hope that others in the space will follow Encima’s leadership in this area.” For Piwik, the funds will be used to facilitate continued development of this open-source platform. Available as an alternative to sharing with 3rd parties, Piwik allows digital marketers to control their Web site behavioral data. Maciej Zawadziński, of the Piwik Core Development Team says, “This is great and will help us to further develop an alternative free Web analytics platform.”

About The Encima Group

The Encima Group is an independent analytics consultancy that was recently recognized for its successful growth in the Inc. 5000 (ranking in top 25%). The Encima Group’s mission really is about actionable analytics and flawless execution. Offering an integrated suite of services around multi-channel measurement, tag management, dashboards, technology strategy consulting and marketing operational support, The Encima Group pioneered the notion of Data Stewardship. The Encima Group is based in Newark, DE with offices in Princeton, NJ and Chicago, IL. Its client roster includes leading pharmaceutical companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb, Shire Pharmaceuticals, Otsuka, AstraZeneca and Novo Nordisk.

For more information about The Encima Group, visit www.encimagroup.com. For more information about Signal visit www.signal.co, for Piwki visit www.piwik.org and for the Digital Analytics Association visit www.digitalanalyticsassociation.com.

Media Contact(s)

Jason Mo, Director of Business Development (jmo AT encimagroup DOT com); phone (919) 308-5309; Domenico Tassone, VP Digital Capabilities (dtassone AT encimagroup DOT com); Phone (312) 492-4652.

 

Piwik: Alternative Analytics Presentation in Chicago

Yours truly will be presenting, “Piwik: An Analytics Alternative,” a short presentation at this year’s Open Analytics Summit at the City Winery in Chicago on March 27th.

OAS is for Developers, Engineers, Data Scientists, CMOs, Data Analysts, CTOs, Architects, Brand Managers, and anyone passionate about open source technologies, big data, or data analytics. My presentation will be particularly interesting to digital marketers, enterprise technologists, Web analytics practitioners and others that are interested in a viable way to provide solid measurement while removing Google from their Web analytics stack.

Full Schedule and Register

If there is interest, I’ll post the presentation here as well.

IAB Recognizes Viewthrough

Interactive Advertising Bureau -- Dedicated to the growth of interactive advertising 

From their annual meeting in Pam Springs, CA, the Internet Advertising Bureau published its Defining Cross-Platform Engagement White Paper. While there are plenty of interesting metrics to be found, we’re excited to see a short and sweet definition of viewthrough. Positioned as one of the three categories, Display Viewthrough is included among behavioral metrics.

Definition: Number of Brand site visits that could have been influenced by display media within a particular look-back window.
Measureable Today: Yes, Web Analytics

While this is a small victory for the cause of viewthrough measurement, there is plenty more to do to get the word out about VT. We’d like to advise the IAB that the prior metric included in this section of their study, “Video Completion Viewthrough Rate” ought to get a different name – perhaps “Play-through?” It is bad enough that Viewthrough and Viewability,  are routinely confused but this could actually obfuscate the different kinds of post-impression behavior, e.g. VT Visits, VT Conversions, etc…Also, the following metric listed, “Searched for More Information” could also use a better name – Viewthrough Site Search?

Other considerations:

  • VT does not have to be at a branded site although this is most likely, e.g. related microsites
  • Any high-value task that can be measured in a Web analytics platform could have a VT source
  • Look-back windows are usually set by the ad server not Web analytics systems
  • Like the “could have been influenced” but no mention of how to understand incrementality

Scroll down to Page 10 of the Defining Cross-Platform Engagement White Paper, to read it for yourself.

Solutions to the Privacy Debate: Lemons, Carrots and Potatoes

After reading the How to Prevent the ‘Do Not Track’ Arms Race  by Peter Swire, the inanity of it all becomes more apparent.The premise of this Wired piece is that users should have a choice…they do. They can visit a site and are implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) agreeing to receive free content and services in exchange for being presented with targeted ads.

Canny Web browsers are in a mad dash to curry favor with the genteel “Information should be free” crowd visible in the user comments. It seems that this end-run was done to pre-empt negotiations through W3C, most likely in an attempt to gain market share. However, it is surprising that for an attorney that Swire missed the opportunity to articulate the above quid pro quo argument missing in the discussion. Then again, so did the IAB. See Digital Media Lesson in Shooting One’s Foot (Part I).

The Dead Weight Web Audience (DWWW) consists of variety of ad/tracking dodgers. The size of this audience and their habits can be measured by most major site analytics tools and ad servers out-of-the-box or with some customization. Common methods include:

  1. Browser DNT
  2. Cookie blockers
  3. Ad blockers
  4. JS rejectors
  5. NAI opt-outs
  6. Likely cookie-deleters
  7. Others…

While the politicians posture and the debate rages on, sometimes it is necessary to turn these lemons into lemonade. The good news is that, solid ad analytics (or adverlytics) can inform the decision-making process about which kinds are most prevalent in your target Web audience.


Advertisers
It all starts with digital marketers and their agencies paying attention to the details of ad delivery. The growing interest in ad viewability is encouraging. For those that really want to reach a tech-savvy entitled audience that wants nothing to do with their ads  they will need to first measure it, in order to monetize it.


  • Carrot. Demographics on this audience may skew higher education and higher income; this  audience spends a lot of time online and believes in getting something for nothing and not afraid to post about it. Measuring the performance of this specific audience for your ad campaigns however, may require a concerted effort by digital media planners and analytics professionals – but that is their job.
  • Stick: Time to get up off the couch and start asking questions of your media suppliers, agencies and analytics team. Advertisers wasting impressions on an audience that doesn’t want any ads and is actively blocking your efforts to show them an ad is kind of masochistic. Ignorance is no longer an excuse as the money being wasted on targeting into the unappreciated abyss, could instead be heavied-up with more receptive audiences. Again, analytics can help refine targeting.

If existing agency analytics can’t measure the Dead Weight Web Audience, then consider adding an independent analytics consultant.

Publishers
For site publishers that really want to attract the free-riding tech-savvy audience that also wants nothing to do with supporting their business model, the same advice applies: measure it and monetize it.

  • Carrot: Allow them to consume content for free, but find a way to sell advertising against this special audience. Free-riders can become its own targetable segment by definition – no off-site tracking or ad network is even needed. Anyone with DNT header activated, rejecting 3rd party cookies, blocking JS, etc…Most larger pubs already have an audience research/analytics and ad ops teams that can help do this and if not, additional consultants can be engaged.
  • Stick: Just say no to the content free-riders. While this has been really difficult for sites that have historically been in search of bulk ad impression delivery, the writing is on the wall considering the drive for ad viewability. When these literally dodgy people visit a site, send them a pop-up that advises them to pay for the session, subscribe, register or add site to the targeting white list. If the users choose not to, show them an empty page, very stripped down content or allow an annoying freebie cap. BTW, the pop-up can carry an ad, too.

Ad Networks
The real question is what to do with the DWWW that expects free content to be there when they arrive at a network Web site. These users can be sized up and once this is done, it is a question of monetization:

  • Carrot. Though anecdotal research suggests a small percentage of users are actually opting-out and that the size of the audience is relatively small, it does represent a valuable tech-savvy segment. Simply enable ad targeting of the DNT, NAI Opt-outs and the 3rd party cookie blocking crowd. Many ad networks have a means to even exclude likely cookie-deleters from their targeting. Folks, that sounds like a new segment to sell.
  • Stick. Develop or implement ad/pay wall technology. This will force the quid pro quo. For users that want to read their favorite bloggers, they will need to pay up with cash or a small slice of their attention. Smaller long-tail publisher partners will need help pulling this off but ad networks could easily deploy this technology.

Conclusion
Whether using the carrot, the stick or both, the solution is that advertisers and publishers need to take action on their own to stop getting ripped-off. Don’t carry this sack of entitled potatoes on your back. Now is the time to measure and monetize this otherwise mass of Dead Weight Web Audience.

Leveraging an incremental approach that leverages solid adverlytics, these strategies can boost the bottom-line and shape the digital media industry for the future. In doing so, many of these regulatory problems will solve themselves.

Learn to Say No to Free-riders.

    Stop Stressing About Clickthrough…Think Viewthrough!

    This is not going to be another bit about declining clickthrough rates, but a quick analogy that should get the juices flowing about viewthrough measurement.


    FACT: For many digital advertisers, the average rate of clicks on their display ad campaigns is about the same as the probability of being dealt a full-house in standard 5-card poker. That works out to 0.14%…actually based on the above industry averages – your odds in poker are much better.


    Relying on clickthrough measurement today because it is easily available (and you have benchmarks) and not because it is meaningful or actionable exemplifies a digital marketing capability that is likely obsolete. Sure you can juice your CTR with rich media, incented video and even questionable calls-to-action on Facebook (Like Beer?), but immediate click response to display ads is often problematic.See ComScore’s Natural Born Clickers (originally from 2007, updated in 2009) study for additional information.

    And if you are really serious about getting away from clickthrough obsession, you can get one of these from Visual IQ!

    Calling All Analytics Vendors and Ad Networks

    There has been an incredible amount of interest and enthusiasm the Viewthrough.org effort from across the ad technology stack, evolving into a real grass-roots Viewthrough Measurement Consortium. Many thanks to all those who have taken the time to share their considerable insights, ideas and candid feedback.


    LEARNINGS SO FAR
    Below are some key learnings gathered from throughout this process:

    • Nobody is happy about clickthrough measurement and its inherent biases
    • With the DAA and IAB doing their own thing and the emergence of ad viewability as the latest bright shiny object, viewthrough measurement continues to be looked over
    • Most everyone wants better viewthrough measurement but are unsure how to push this forward on their own
    • Many digital advertising companies across the ad tech stack are already measuring viewthrough but don’t necessarily label it viewthrough or they are not breaking it out in their reports today.  
      • Reasons include that it is confusing to clients/agencies that are still focused on last-click attribution; also, that there is that lack of standard definitions, i.e. mention viewthrough and get ready to teach.


    It is apparent that analytics and advertising vendors are seeking a meaningful way to report passive display media response. It should be a concern to everyone that many ad networks do not get credit for viewthrough performance today, itself a by-product of slimy performance networks and cookie-stuffing. While the bigger Viewthrough.org strategy evolves (advocacy, research, standards, best practices), there is a definitely tangible step that is low-cost and be taken today.

    NEXT STEP: VIEWTHROUGH SCORECARD
    Vendors that are already reporting on passive post-exposure response to display media (beyond clickthroughs) ought to consider letting the industry know.Whether it is raw viewthrough visits, a viewthrough rate or viewthrough conversions, now is the time and this is the place.

    Below is the current list of vendors known to the Viewthrough Measurement Consortium that provide analytics/reports that specifically containing viewthrough performance:

    POST COMMENTS OR SEND FEEDBACK FOR UPDATES.

    Digital Channel Attribution…A Cheat Sheet

    Last click, last touch, first touch, fractional…Adometry, TagMan, Visual IQ, Convertro, Omniture, C3 and ClearSaleing…there is no shortage of techniques and vendors claiming to have the right solution for digital marketers today.

    Forrester recently released their The Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Attribution Providers, Q2 2012 and got most of it right. However, as a recent and current practitioner of digital attribution analysis they curiously weighted market share over real-time data collection – strange!

    In any case, if you are still struggling to understand the the various attribution methods used in digital marketing channel analysis and want to avoid the painful learning curve, take a look at the simple vendor-neutral hype-free cheat sheet.

    What do you think? Send your feedback!
    Download Digital Attribution Cheat Sheet r3.1