iMedia Connection
Clearing up confusion over the function of these two industry essentials.
When I was a kid, my Uncle Charlie used to have a series of silly questions that made no sense. “Which is further, Miami or by bus?” “Do you walk to school or carry your lunch?” and my all-time favorite, “What’s the difference between a duck?” The answer to any of these questions was, “A violin, because a vest has no sleeves.”
To those of us who’ve been in the business awhile, the question, “What’s the difference between an Ad Network and an Ad Server?” is akin to one of Uncle Charlie’s silly questions. However, there is a relationship between the two and, for the purposes of this section of iMedia, it’s worthwhile to provide an overview of each.
An Ad Network is a group of Web sites which can be purchased through a single sales entity. It could be a collection of sites owned by the same publisher (e.g., AOL, CNN, Sports Illustrated, etc. are all owned by AOL/Time Warner) or it could be an affiliation of sites sharing a rep firm (e.g., Burst, HerAgency, Max each represent a collection of smaller “second tier” sites). In most cases, advertisers have the option to pick and choose from specific sites, to select a group of sites in a particular category or to run ads blindly across the entire network.
An Ad Server is a tool used by ad agencies and/or clients to facilitate ad trafficking and to provide reporting on ad performance. The value on the agency side is threefold:
Publishers and networks will also use ad servers to facilitate the serving of ads throughout their site(s).
It should be very clear from the above definitions that ad servers and ad networks are completely different things. So why the confusion?
With the exception of Atlas DMT, which was created by an ad agency, the rest of the ad servers were all designed by ad networks. The servers were originally used on the publisher side to distribute advertising across the various sites that made up a network. So, for example, DoubleClick was both an ad server and an ad network. However, the company has since sold off its ad network business perhaps sparing future generations from this confusion.
So getting back to the core question: What’s the difference between an ad server and an ad network? The answer, of course, is “a duck.”
Michael Comins is SVP, Director of Media Services for Insight Interactive Group (IIG). IIG offers a diverse line of strategic, tactical and technical interactive solutions aimed at online marketing for healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. Its focus in the healthcare industry allows the company to enhance the impact of individual brand programs with a deep knowledge of both the OTC and pharmaceutical marketplaces.
Click Z
A contextual ad is the same ad Google or Overture displays at the top of search results. It's labeled "sponsored result" or "sponsored link." But this ad is instead displayed on a content page that contains relevant material. The ad serving is automated, based on algorithmic relevancy consideration.
Contextual advertising is a relatively new online advertising channel. It's available through Google, Overture and Sprinks. I'm fascinated by these ads because I believe they're a fundamental component of the inquiry marketing mix, although they're slightly removed from the behavior of search.
Why are contextual ads important? Not all Internet sessions begin at a search engine. Not every searcher clicks on any one search result. Some people begin their online journey on a news site, sports site, or e-commerce site. While there, they may choose to view content relevant to your category or brand. They'll educate themselves about a topic while you have an opportunity to be in front of them. more
ClickZ
It's 9 a.m. Do you know where your users are?
For increasingly more marketers, that's not such a crazy question. As the Web becomes more measurable and we target our audiences more directly via psychographics, demographics, dayparts, and measures, knowing where someone is has become just as important as knowing who she is (or what she likes).
For a while now, it's been possible to target users by location using a variety of "local" online properties. From Yahoo City Guides to Citysearch to various city papers and business journals, targeting folks based on location is increasingly easier. Many major ad-serving companies incorporate IP-based geolocation that uses a combination of DNS resolution and proprietary lookup tables to locate users in place. Though this method usually won't provide someone's street address, it does at least place them in a metro area.
Why should you care where your users are outside cyberspace? Because even though a growing number of people buy online, much of what people do in their day-to-day lives occurs locally. Advertising anything that doesn't require a national focus -- regional services such as store locations and locally focused pricing -- has been tough online. It's an audience increasingly more of us need to reach.
One effect of the war in Iraq has been driving tremendous amounts of traffic to news sites, according Nielsen//Net Ratings and CyberAtlas.com. From March 10 to March 23, traffic to sites such as CNN.com, washingtonpost.com, ABCNEWS.com, and FoxNews.com soared, with increases in the double digits -- as high as 58 percent, in CNN's case.
To be expected, right? Of course, but it does reflect a growing trend. People are turning to the Internet more for news. Midway through 2002, CyberAtlas reported on a comScore Media Metrix study that found newspaper sites are some of the fastest-growing Web properties (often at the expense of print editions).
Peruse another study from Jupiter (owned by this site's corporate parent) on the rapid growth of online classified advertising and another that notes 60 percent of consumers access local content online. A pattern starts to emerge: Location matters.
Knowing your customers' locations can open up a whole range of advertising options just not possible otherwise. Serving price offers by region, offering local coupons for brick-and-mortar stores, testing offers in different parts of the country... all these require knowing where people are.
Some of the most interesting opportunities around geolocation are those that move beyond ad serving. Companies such as CyberSource, Quova, and Digital Envoy are working with ad networks, content management system providers, online security vendors, and other companies where location can matter to provide solutions that make the Web a little more local.
Why should we care (outside of targeting advertising)? First, although cyberspace has no borders, countries with the infrastructure to make the Web work do have them. They're starting to enact legislation that affects the "borderless" Internet. From differences in privacy laws to restrictions on gambling and pornography, compliance with "local" regulations in a non-localized space is becoming more of an issue. Though many of these laws may seem archaic in a wired world, legitimate businesses must consider location now more than ever.
Second, knowing where your users are can be valuable for security and e-commerce verification purposes. If a person types in a credit card number saying he's from Dallas, but the geolocator in the credit card verifying software says he's entering the information from a computer in Berlin, the transaction can be red-flagged for a closer look by fraud investigators. Similarly, knowing where someone really is can be useful in helping to track users of stolen credit cards... a nagging online problem.
For marketers, some interesting applications revolve around "localizing" Web content. For years, many sites have forced users through one of those ubiquitous "click your country's flag" interfaces to direct traffic to the proper in-language site. A geolocation solution, tied to a content management solution, can automatically detect the country a user hails from and send her to the correct version of the site.
Many have been able to use geographic data gathered from site users to fine-tune marketing campaigns based on location. Travel Alberta, a Quova client, used location data to accurately target site visitors. Another company, E4X, was able to use Digital Envoy's products to automatically offer online pricing in users' local currency for international e-commerce.
The Web is a global medium, but it's becoming increasingly important to think about it as a local medium, too. By adding geolocation and geotargeting to your Web strategy, you can offer higher value to customers and better user experience. These days, those intangibles can provide the competitive advantage.
ClickZ
Not sure if you've heard. There's a new kid on the block. He goes by the name of Behavioral Targeting.
The kid ain't new, actually, but his recent return to the online world has attracted much press and attention. Word on the street is behavioral targeting can ensure advertisers reach the target audience with the right message and, consequently, increase their brand awareness and return on investment (ROI) performance. I've also heard the kid can help publishers provide an extremely targeted audience to advertisers, better inventory management, and increased revenue.
Everyone's talking about behavioral targeting. We all know who offers it; the list goes from prominent players such as Tacoda, Revenue Science, and 24/7 Real Media to rising stars such as Accipiter, Poindexter, and various others.
Exactly what is behavioral targeting good for? What are its online implications and its applications to agencies and marketers? Sure, behavioral targeting provides marketers with unique branding opportunities to reach a targeted audience. But we're neglecting many other potential applications it has to offer.
To better understand its full scope, I explored all the potentials and came up with three primary behavioral targeting dimensions.
The CRM Dimension: Customer Retention
CRM is often the easily forgotten application in behavioral targeting discussions.
We all know an intuitive, considerate customer experience leads to better conversions. It's a fundamental tenet not only online but also for marketing in general. Marketers must "think" for the customers and synthesize their personal identifiable information (PII), collected with their clickstream data, to achieve a deeper understanding of customer predispositions.
With behavioral targeting, marketers can better grasp customers' needs and interests. Consequently, they provide recommendations and offers that map back to those needs to improve the experience before they ask you how.
To borrow from "The Godfather" (one of my favorite movies for business inspirations), CRM is simply about thinking for customers and creating offers they cannot refuse. Behavioral targeting can effectively deliver this. Marketers just tend to forget this application from time to time.
The Branding Dimension: Brandwashing
"Brandwashing" is my dysphemism for branding. Don't get me wrong, I mean this in a positive way. Similar to its ominous counterpart, brainwashing, brandwashing is conditioning consumers' perception of a brand and the consequent increase of its awareness, recall, and equity over time.
As more brands turn to the Internet as a viable advertising vehicle, the channel will only become more congested. This trend is already validated by ever-decreasing CTRs for almost all standard banners, year after year, as consumers are bombarded with ad units and messaging. If the current challenge is to break through the clutter to get in front of the target audience, behavioral targeting has the ability to ensure timely delivery of the right messaging, in the right context, to the right people.
In a recent discussion with interactive colleagues at WPNI/Newsweek, I learned Shell and Exxon have included online as a major component in their respective marketing mixes. One might wonder why petroleum giants are doing online advertising. I have a few guesses and will confidently say branding is one of their objectives. If branding is about achieving strategic ubiquity online, then behavioral targeting can certainly be a solution.
The DR Dimension: Customer Acquisition
Direct response (DR) has gained tremendous attention in the online renaissance. Online trackability and performance accountability have become somewhat synonymous with DR in many ways, along with all the promises this medium can deliver. Regardless of client or industry, customer acquisition is always a critical objective. Not surprisingly, behavioral targeting has an intuitive application in this area. It allows marketers to continuously target potential customers with tangible, real-time results.
Behavioral targeting can be an instrumental tool for DR initiatives. It helps marketers to effectively reach consumers in a natural fashion. By this, I mean naturally following the consumer's interests, patterns, and behaviors to speak with the audience who wants to be spoken to.
If consumers are typing in search words online and actively looking for information relevant to your company, you should rightfully monitor this behavior and track its frequency and recency to improve marketing ROI. Vendors such as Revenue Science offer a search-based tool that enables advertisers to select words that are relevant to an advertiser's target audience, track the visitors who recently visited pages that contain these interest-based terms, and group them into audience segments for targeted acquisitions.
What Does This Mean for Online?
Behavioral targeting can be applied to multiple marketing dimensions. Its systematic tracking and monitoring of consumer behaviors can even be extended to business operations and communication planning. If we apply behavioral targeting to the four phases of the consumer buying process (need recognition, information search, evaluation/comparison, and purchase decision), we clearly see a strategic fit for every stage.
Marketers must clearly define objectives for using behavioral targeting before blindly jumping on the hype wagon.
At the heart of behavioral targeting is a learning-based investigation of consumer behaviors. It helps marketers understand consumers' purchase patterns over time, mapping out a customer's activities based not only on a single purchase but also on an annual or even lifetime basis. As marketers increasingly appreciate the importance of customer lifetime value, they'll understand behavioral targeting can be a foundation for creating a continuous analytical study of consumer trends and patterns.
We all know the kid has plenty of potential, but he has a lot of growing up to do as well. As good marketers we must consider all of behavioral targeting's dimensions to realize its full aptitude. Yet we must also foster a growth environment and use it to elevate the marketing industry as a whole.
iMedia Connection
Advertising.com's Jeremy Helfand looks at the nuances of targeting across ad networks and boosting the return on your marketing spend.
By now we all agree one of the great benefits of online marketing is the ability to track and measure. With that comes a greater ability to target campaigns. While targeting can provide tremendous impact and efficiency for an online campaign, it can also cause havoc if not used properly.
Make no mistake, targeting works. And targetability is one of the most powerful benefits of online advertising -- especially when it exploits the scope and diversity of large advertising networks. There are many ways to target when marketing across an online network. For instance, you can target specific audience segments by standard demographic parameters such as age, gender or income, or by specific behaviors such as consumers who travel frequently or read ESPN The Magazine. But both research and advertiser experience clearly indicate how critical it is to know your market and choose the right network before you invest in a targeted campaign. Taking a critical look at how and how much you target can make a big difference in your campaign’s ROI.
All targeting is not equal
What kind of targeting works best? Is some targeting always better than none? Will sophisticated behavioral targeting always yield better results than simple demographics? The answer is: it depends.
Even though behavioral targeting performs better in general than using no targeting strategy or targeting by demographics alone, the degree of improvement it delivers will vary significantly by market. Behavioral targeting is typically of most value for advertisers in niche product categories or with strong purchase consideration where there are definite links to traceable behaviors. For example, if you’re selling cars, targeting your campaign to consumers who searched Kelley Blue Book is a virtual no-brainer.
But demographic targeting also has its place. It tends to work best for advertisers in broader product categories where links to specific behaviors are less clear. For broad-interest advertisers, such as those selling travel services or consumer electronics, demographic targeting will perform nearly as well as behavioral -- and cost less. Demographic targeting is also more effective when substantial target market research has been done, although you may also find that the target demographic is different online.
The bottom line? Advertisers should be careful not to overpay for targeting. Research and understand your market thoroughly, then choose a targeting technique that will provide the greatest value for the yield given the product or service that is being marketed.
A mix can be the fix
One surprising characteristic of targeting is how little overlap there often is between an advertiser’s demographic and behavioral targets. One might expect campaigns directed at both targets to reach essentially the same universe of consumers. But in many cases, there is very little redundancy. Rather than duplicating efforts, a campaign that combines two targeting approaches may be a way to reach an ideal middle ground in terms of cost and performance.
Missed opportunities are expensive
How sure are you of your target market? Unless your research is perfect or your market crisply defined, focusing too heavily on a narrowly defined “ideal customer” can be costly. And once again, the degree of risk depends on what industry you’re in.
For advertisers with highly specific, easily identified in-market consumers, the risks of missing opportunities by overtargeting are small. Parents of children 0-3 are likely to purchase infant diapers, and few others are. So if you have that segment covered, you’re probably doing okay.
But for broad-based products or services, focusing exclusively on a perceived target market can exclude a significant percentage of your in-market audience. Focusing too narrowly on an ideal consumer target audience can leave large numbers of in-market sales on the table. Let’s use digital cameras as an example. Advertising that focuses solely on a behavioral target (say, people who report as being photographic hobbyists) or a demographic target (men 30-40), will exclude all the first-time grandparents, vacationing moms, and generous girlfriends who are in-market for new cameras. And those numbers can add up. In a harder-to-define market, a run-of-network campaign can actually help advertisers reach more in-market consumers than a targeted campaign--at a more cost effective CPM.
Especially for products that appeal to the masses, advertisers must carefully evaluate the volume of consumers inside and outside the target window in order to avoid costly missed opportunities.
The importance of reach
A fundamental and critical ingredient for successful targeting is reach. If your universe of potential impressions isn’t very large to begin with, paring it down further via targeting can be counterproductive.
Successful targeting requires reaching your desired audience on a sufficient scale, and in many cases, can only be achieved through a network advertising model. When targeting is employed within a large advertising network and across a wide array of online publishers, even targeted ads can reach a sizeable consumer segment. Specificity without sacrificing reach is a unique advantage of network-driven targeting. The number and diversity of publishers within a network is critical to ensuring that the audience segments you aim for are both precisely defined and statistically significant.
Target, yes. But do it right.
Clearly, advertisers should continue using online media to target specific demographic and behavioral audience segments. The key is to ensure you choose a provider with the reach to make it worthwhile and to avoid overpaying or overtargeting -- either of which can diminish the ROI of your campaign.
To benefit from the targetability of online advertising, advertisers must thoroughly understand their markets, know how much to pay for targeted campaigns, and assess which targeting approach best suits their products. Broader product categories often do best with demographic targeting, while a behavioral approach may work better for niche advertisers and considered purchases. And for some advertisers, using the two approaches together may provide the best net results.
Finally, don’t underestimate the size and value of your out-of-target but in-market audience. For broader product categories, a run-of-network campaign may be the best way to cover all your bases.
Jeremy Helfand leads Advertising.com's U.S. sales efforts as senior vice president of advertiser sales. Helfand works with clients and agencies on performance-based marketing programs that deliver superior return on investment. Advertising.com conducts strategic direct-response and brand marketing campaigns that guarantee bottom-line results for its clients. From web ads to search listings, Advertising.com offers diverse tactical tools, innovative thinking and the most expansive reach in the industry.
In 2004, under Helfand's leadership, Advertising.com's sales organization was awarded the iMedia ASPY award for Best Advertiser Customer Service. Advertising.com's sales organization has also been recognized over the past three years as one of the industry's best.
As an advocate for the development of interactive advertising, Helfand has participated in, hosted and moderated several key internet advertising industry events for the DMA, eMarketer, iMedia, OMMA and more.
Prior to joining Advertising.com in 1999, Helfand worked for Arthur Andersen where his responsibilities included managing consultative services for technology companies. Helfand received his B.B.A., Summa Cum Laude from Loyola College in 1993, and is a candidate for an M.B.A. at Johns Hopkins University.
In the beginning, there were “hit counters”. Occasionally you will still see one at the bottom of a website, prominently displaying the number of hits over a given time frame. There was a time when the success of a website was gauged solely on this number, with a site that received many visitors being deemed “successful”. Boy, how times have changed. more