Integrated Results-Based Approach to Online Advertising

A version in German:Results that Measure Up DE.DOC (63.50 kb)    

 Don’t you wish someone could put a realistic price tag on finding new leads or customers?

While we are preparing a wish list… Wouldn’t you like to get a better handle on ROI, or knowing how much revenue in certain market segments can be attributed to the campaign? Or even better yet, how would you like to be able to analyze price sensitivity in different market segments based on online information while the campaign is going on?

Integrated results-based approach is about squeezing every possible benefit from every dollar spent – quickly and intelligently. In order to optimize advertising campaigns and achieve ambitious ROI goals, advertisers must have access to real-time feedback, measurement and instant analysis of all their online marketing activities.

Define the road to meaningful results

This approach is based on the fundamental understanding and definition of the real value that a customer, lead or click represents. That means setting a realistic “price tag” on the desired result, or conversion, whatever it may be – a new lead, customer, sale, click, or registration. At the same time, we must bear in mind that this price tag varies across geographical regions, market segments, media types and even promotional offers.

Measure to optimize the process

The focus is on measurement and understanding that everything is, and should be, measured. The optimization process is based completely on the measurable results received from across all the different advertising platforms, on the different processes that make up the conversion value chain – starting with clicks, leads, registrations and even offline upgrades and up sell opportunities. This way, every advertising dollar is optimized intelligently. So before, during and, of course, after the campaign, advertisers have a real handle on the value of every conversion and know how much revenue in specific market segments can be attributed to the campaign. Armed with that, ROI objectives are clearly in sight.

Real added- value comes with integration

Results-based online advertising is only as good as the breadth of the online tools available, and how they are leveraged together. Data is combined from all advertising platforms: SEM, Banner ads and emails to shorten the learning curve and build value faster. Knowledge gained from any one platform is immediately made available to ongoing campaigns on other platforms and rapidly optimized to guarantee continuously improved results.

The final frontier: integration with CRM

With full integration with existing CRM system, the campaign comes full circle to become a sophisticated marketing tool that enables targeting market segments, such as discounts to first-time buyers, as well as opening a plethora of cross-sell opportunities. The result: total control of the sales cycle – from the very first impression all the way to the desired conversion. Control that is always focused on positive ROI.

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:

We all know that Online Social Networks are the current trend of internet traffic. If you are not there –your square!

Who have not been through the high of racking our brain over every individual we knew in our past- trying to reestablish long lost ties with our high school sweethearts through Facebook or Myspace or at least spent time spying up on them.

And while the title of this paragraph might be understood as a discussion on how to maintain a good imprint on our peers in the social cyber world, I'd like to take it its meaning to the Performance based advertising arena.

According to various surveys, we are spending the most amount of our monthly Internet time online in top social networks; each individual racking up over 45 page views a time -  from flipping through photo albums to joining a "good cause". 

New social networks are popping up daily covering all walks of life from music to travel to business interests.

Publishers are now having a challenging time keeping up the performance for their banner advertisers with these mass amounts of page views, as  banners swiftly become a blurred backdrop to users after a few pages.

Publishers can keep up their value for their advertisers if they:

Segment their user's interests and profiles

Serve ads contextually to the content on page.

Keep banner advertisement placements to a reasonable amount for each unique user   - Sometime less is more.

All these tactics will increase the CTR and CNV considerably giving higher value to each impression –and that’s the impression that lasts!

 Don’t overpuff your Stuff!  
Too many banners kill the performance
 
Just like an over puffed bodybuilder who exerts all his energy to maximize his muscle mass, but in fact is undernourished and weak; similarly occurs when a website wallpapers on his banners and colossally increases the No. of impressions, but actually produces poor results: low CTR and CNV rates.

Therefore, the balance between a given space and proportionate amount of advertising should be maintained in good taste. This way Publishers will be able to create higher revenues from their commodities by maintaining real value for the advertiser.   

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.   

 As Affilicon Israel draws near, we approached Peles to discuss the interaction between the two marketing channels - Results-based online advertising & Affiliate marketing:

§         Q: How do affiliate marketing and results- based marketing co exist with the more traditional ways?
Peles:  Affiliate marketing is one segment within the broader scope of result based advertising. They in many cases compete for budget, although, in our opinion they shouldn't. More traditional ways should deal with what is called branding, and result base should deal with direct acquisitions. More sophisticated advertisers, transforming both their budgets to results - they just define the goals differently, but measure both and optimize both budgets.

§         Q: What is more effective affiliate or SEM?
Peles: It is like asking what is more important, eating or drinking, for successful online advertising programs both should be effective, it is a matter of volume, competition and market.

• 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. 

Commentary by Peles on :

Global Budgets To Boost Online Advertising (OMD, 11/3)

”This article demonstrates one of the good things that comes 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”.

Media Post letters-to-the-editor 14.11.08.pdf (330.46 kb)