Attend our New seminar by co-CEO Peles at Ad-Tech London & DMEXCO Cologne:

A 3D Approach to Online Advertising
The Optimal Blend of Cost, Margin and Volume for Substantial Growth

A Veriosn in German

When advertising budgets get slashed, our knee-jerk reaction is to cut costs. But will salvation come from reducing eCPA alone?
Advertisers need to take an efficient, bold “3D” approach to building online advertising and media campaigns that takes into consideration the 3 business pillars: Costs, Margins and Volume.
This session goes beyond the hype and conventional wisdom. Learn how campaigns and media strategies can be built by aggregating and integrating diversified media sources, optimizing margins to reflect true business goals and leveraging technology to allow full control of the value chain. You can then achieve the right balance between cost, margins and volume – for more opportunities, higher profits and improved ROI.

Join Us!

Ad-Tech London: Tuesday 22/9, 14:30 hrs   -at Marketing Integration / Campaign Strategy Seminar

DMEXCO Cologne: Thursday  24/9, 12:00 hrs  - at  Seminar 4

This week, Ad technology firm PubMatic relased a survey which reports that: average eCPMs for inventory sold through ad networks and exchanges have risen sequentially-  each of the last five months, and have climbed 35 percent since their low point in January.

http://www.clickz.com/3634511#jsid-1248596819-10 

Peles, is comenting:

By Inbar Chap, co-CEO

Don't Judge a Banner by its Cover!
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107890

By Moran Treiser, Sales Manager 

Maintaining the focus- a way of thinking in online advertising
When we think of online advertising there are a lot of parameters to consider, but the main question is – which ones are the most important to us as advertisers?In the economic climate we have today, every dollar counts and everything is measurable, which is a very good thing to the ones who know what to focus on, and a very bad thing to the ones who think everything is important in an equal manner. In our day to day work, we often meet advertisers who know what they want to achieve, but for some reason measure the wrong parameters. One of the most important things to remember in online advertising is that if a certain parameter doesn’t have any correlation to the achievement of a certain goal, it shouldn’t be considered as relevant to the marketing activity.

Traffic vs. Conversion
A client that has a clear CPA goal- whether in the Casual Gaming, Mobile content, or the Lead generation industry, should always consider his eCPA as the most important parameter to measure, and to judge the other parameters by.
The second important parameter, from an online marketing point of view is the eCPM of the campaign which starts the whole conversion chain. These two parameters are in correlation to one another and therefore should be considered when running an online campaign. However, A client with a clear CPA goal, shouldn't consider the CTR important for this goal. The CTR is very important in the matter of how much traffic is getting into the website and how much interest can the campaign raise, but to the specific goal of the campaign – the eCPA – it is irrelevant. For example lets take a mobile content advertiser who has a CPA goal of $8 . He is paying an average of $0.50 CPM during his online campaign. In one case, the CTR is %0.4 and the eCPA is $7.50, and on the other case the CTR is %2 , and the eCPA is $12. Which case is better for this advertiser ? the case where he drives a lot of traffic to the website but the conversions percentage within the site is low, or the case where he drives less traffic but maintains a high conversions percentage in the site ? The point is that when we measure the final result, the data we get for the parameters along the way are not important if we can't connect them to the final goal.

 Impressions vs. Conversion
A second parameter is the amount of impressions while running an online campaign on a dCPM model. Although the campaign is being optimized according to the CPA goal, some advertisers would consider a great deal of importance to the amount of impressions yielded during the campaign. Again, a parameter which is irrelevant to the goal of the campaign.Lets use our mobile content advertiser for an another example. The CPA goal is again $8, and the amount of impressions he is supposed to yield during his campaign is 12 million impressions with an eCPM of $0.40. Again lets imagine two cases. On one case he pays $0.40 eCPM and gets 12 million impressions, however his eCPA is $10. On the second case he pays an eCPM of $0.60 (possible because of the use of dCPM payment model), and receives only 10 million impressions but achieves an eCPA of $7. Again the question is asked, which case is better ? does the amount of impressions and the CPM price really matters while trying to achieve a certain eCPA ? While trying to achieve our advertiser's CPA goals we sometime encounter different situations where we might need to increase our CPM payments, increase the CPA payouts in order to compete with other advertisers over the media. "Out of the box" thinking is required in our optimization and campaign management strategies; in order to get the most important mission complete – achieve our client's CPA goals. 

At the end of the day, Everything is dynamic, and everything is flexible but one thing remains constant – the bottom line results.   

• Website marketability
• Offer
• post click conversion

 On the side of the Service provider or, in our case, the "network" - we complete the picture with our expertise in providing the playing field and the optimization tactics. As a representative of the media side of the business, my responsibility is with the playing field or accurately; the rich Blend of traffic that provides the opportunity for the conversions to happen. This is fundamentally made up by a 2 level media pool: 
1. The base – the mass amounts of various traffic that provide multiple types of traffic from channels and placements that have some  slight relevance to the advertising offer.
 2.  Highly targeted, highly convertible traffic. Together these traffics create a blend that provides the advertiser with enough momentum to take its first baby steps in making the beginning conversions happen.

Once those occur it has to be provided with enough fuel to be able to learn and grow and be optimized using our technology, expertise and tactics into a significant volume campaign. One may ask why a campaign isn’t run on the second level traffic only where the highest likeliness of a conversion would occur.

The answer lies partially in the fact that this traffic is limited in its quantity and furthermore we have seen that to grow an advertiser to limitless expansion it is important to provide it with both types giving it the necessary bulk it needs to be a strong long lasting campaign. 

If the issue of the perfect blend of traffic isn’t enough; in order to keep going a long lasting successful campaign the traffic pool must remain forever fed by a continuous flux of new traffic in both of the levels. This compliments the continuous changes and optimization tactics made on the back end side of the campaign that creates each moment with a rich starting point for the new seed conversions. 

By Gal Avidor, Account Manager

In this post we will demonstrate how a properly planned and funded test campaign can ultimately produce the desired results: lower eCPA, better reach of leads and new clients, and of course the major bottom line - higher ROI. 

For the past two years we have witnessed the emergence of many ventures looking to utilize results-based online advertising to drive potential customers to their website, and convert relevant traffic into sales dollars.   
 

Today, it is especially important for advertisers to maximize the utility of every dollar spent while casting a wide net in the vast online marketplace. Many advertisers have already invested a great deal of time and money developing a “designer” site platform and home page for incoming traffic, and are looking to test out the effectiveness of their designs before devoting a great deal of money to an advertising campaign.   In many cases, the size of the initial investment in the site creates a sense of urgency to quickly launch a test advertising campaign, with the hope that maximum performance can be achieved instantly on a small test budget. Our vast experience in this field has revealed that many advertisers make some common mistakes while developing online marketing plans for their websites, leading to a loss in efficiency and effectiveness, and costing more money in the long run to reach their goals. Here you will learn some of the essential elements of effectively testing an advertising campaign to maximize value over its lifetime. 

 A. Planning and Setting Objectives Set campaign objectives and define the value of your customer acquisition chain. Sample Objective: To achieve online sales while maintaining a daily sum of leads to support your calling center.  For this example, we get a mix of 3 options for a conversion process:  

1. Short qualifying process (for online sales).
2. Llong qualifying process (for enhanced lead quality).
3. Mix of short and long processes.

 Defining a clear objective and putting a true price tag on the value of each component within the acquisition chain enables you to measure and evaluate how performance at the beginning of the process affects the value of other components within the value chain.  You can follow the chain to the final conversion and beyond, even analyzing each component’s affect on up-sell opportunities.  This critical level of analysis will ultimately increase your ROI. 

B. The Optimal Landing Page Mix
In order to ensure achievement of your objectives, you will need at least 2-3 optimized landing pages which are properly designed and structured, giving the right incentives for viewers to click through your acquisition chain. 
Sample Objective: One of our clients was seeking to achieve an eCPA (effective cost per acquisition) of $250 from online sales of a financial product with 3 landing pages: 

1. Home page (not recommended)
2. A “call for action” page
3. Special incentive page

Testing these three, distinct landing pages gives us the ability to better understand the end user interaction and behavior in regards to our sales efforts. We can find out: Is the end user impulsive or is he more incentive driven?  Is he committed to enduring the whole conversion process or is he more comfortable with a short lead process, paving the way for an up-sell at a later date?   To summarize, the optimal landing page mix is an extremely important piece of information to maximize the reach of our conversion process, while enhancing our understanding of client behavior, and ultimately maximizing ROI. 

Landing Page Types – Pros and Cons: 

   C. Choosing a Test Budget:
Advertisers often commit a great deal of resources to building an online platform, but allocate minimal budgets to the testing phase, underestimating the capital needed to achieve a truly successful test that will translate to maximum ROI. The growing diversity of online traffic sources embodies many opportunities for advertisers to tap into new market opportunities, but it poses a great challenge of distinguishing between highly relevant, revenue-generating traffic sources and less relevant sources.  In order to calculate the ideal budget, one must take into account the different variables being tested during the campaign, these variables may include the CPA target goal, the number of creatives and Landing pages being tested and the number of traffic sources sampled during the learning process.It is important to point out that these variables differ from one advertiser to another, both in type and significance and depend much on the type of product or service being tested and the advertiser’s main and secondary objectives.These variables will dictate the size of the “Optimum budget” which is defined as the ideal budget to achieve a statistically viable conclusion to maximize ROI. To demonstrate how an Optimum budget can work for you, let's examine a real case study. 

D. Case Study 
Going back to our financial products example, where the advertiser was looking to achieve an eCPA of $250, he had created 3 landing pages and two creative sets totaling 10 creatives: CPA goal = $250Creatives tested = 10Landing pages tested = 3 Recommended test budget for the combination of number of variables and CPA goal is: $15,000With the test budget calculated the test campaign looks as follows: 

Phase 1: Preliminary AB testing The 3 landing pages were exposed to the same amount and mix of traffic in order to establish a general idea of potential for yield. This was done in order to plan the general distribution of traffic to be implemented during the actual testing phase. 

 Phase 2: Learning Phase (campaign) The test campaign was conducted for 4 weeks, constantly monitored and optimized. The results were as fallows: 

 From the test results we can conclude that although the test did not yield the desired eCPA of $250, and did not produce a high ROI, it did exhibit a number of positive key elements, allowing us to make meaningful changes before launching a full campaign. 

1. A positive trend in the number of new leads and new clients
2. A positive trend in leads\new client's ratio.
3. A decline in eCPA.
4. A relatively large number of leads fit for potential up-selling.

  These elements play a key role as you will see in the phase 3 – the optimized campaign:

 Phase 3: Optimized Campaign After the learning was complete, the number of high performing landing pages was narrowed down to 2 and the number of creatives was narrowed to the 5 highest performers. With the proper test exercised, and traffic sources carefully analyzed, the optimized campaign was launched with a 75K budget, with the following results: 

From this data, we can conclude the following: 

1. The number of leads and new clients increased dramatically.
2. So did the leads\new client's ratio.
3. The average basket value for new client decreased but in exchange for higher reach and higher volume.
4. The eCPA dropped drastically and registered below the client's initial goal.
5. The total revenue generated by new clients, when added to the revenue from the test campaign, yielded a higher ROI.

 When summarizing both the testing phase and the optimized phase, the full picture becomes clear: 

 To summarize, defining and carefully planning the different aspects of a results-based online advertising campaign are crucial to achieving maximum results in the long run.

By Gilad Hellerman - CTO   

One of the major characteristics of the online-result-based-advertising industry is the huge numbers involved (no, I am not talking about the money, even though that is quite impressive as well, I am talking about impressions, clicks and conversions).  

 These numbers require special attention both in terms of technology (which I will address in my next post), and in terms of information gathering and analysis, which I will address in this post.What is our goal in all of this information gathering and analysis?Our ultimate goal is decision making, mainly towards campaign optimization, even though there are other decisions we need to make in order to maximize our profits. 

 In order to empower the user to make better decisions, we need to provide the user with knowledge on which the user can make his decisions. The emphasis is on knowledge as opposed to information since knowledge is actually the result of the procedure of processing the information we are presented with, during its storage in our brain. We make our decisions based on the knowledge rather then based on the information. Our goal therefore should be to process the information for our user so that it will save him some of the processing he will need to do by himself, and add bits of processing he might not have thought about, thus enlarging his knowledge.

 How do we turn information into knowledge?
We do that in four major stages:
1.       Data gathering
2.       Data analysis
3.       Deciding what, of the vast number of analyzed data to present.
4.       Presenting the data in a way that will make it easiest to use and consume by the user.  

Establishing the decisions on knowledge rather then information is the only way to effectively manage this vast amount of data in the online advertising world.

Gilad

When selecting the right mix of online advertising payment models there is
more than one way of getting the results you want.

Everybody's talking about results and the inherent 'measurability' of online advertising campaigns.
Does all this buzz mean that pricing models with no risk, such as cost-per-action, are the way to go?

Read my full article on iMediaConnection UK.com

Inbar 

For advertisers as well, In response to an article by Abbey Klaassen published on Ad age digital February 23.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134787 

Click is wrong metric for advertiser optimization as well, as CTR is the easiest metric to manipulate. As a media buyer I’ve always stayed away from cpc metric when buying display.

When eCPA is what matters from the advertiser perspective and eCPM is what the publisher is after, manipulating CTR is, in many cases, the way to bridge the gap. When locked in a fixed CPC this tool is taken away and hence at least one will lose (advertiser, or publisher).

In response to "Global Budgets to Boost Online Advertising" 

An article posted in November on mediapost:

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=93914 

I commented on this article when it was published, and now approaching the half of Q1 2009 - i find it, not only still relevant, but also actually happening.

International growth in general, is what companies need to be looking for now days. In our industry, CPM 's are falling and opportunities are rising...

Here is the original comment: 

This article demonstrates one of the good things that come out from these bad times: looking for extra monetization.

When big U.S. advertisers are cutting budgets and are looking to get their campaigns better targeted, publishers will increase their efforts to better serve their American clients, and on the other hand, better monetize the leftovers.

In the last 4-5 years, we have also been pursuing this slice of the pie, and built a successful business on the 30%-40% non-U.S. visitors on U.S. properties.

Most of the time we find it very difficult to convince Americans that there is a world out there, that, among other things, visits U.S. Web sites such as yahoo.com and alike