“Change or die!” says the famous phrase which seems to describe the current trend in the online display advertising space these days. The space has been going through a radical change in the past few years with the emergence of indirect media buying channels (e.g. exchanges such as RightMedia, DoubleClick Ad Exchange), real time bidding platforms (e.g. Turn, Invite Media, MediaMath, AppNexus) and new targeting technology. Speaking with different industry leaders, it’s fascinating to see how different people react to this change. A significant amount of people were quick to embrace and adapt (let’s call them “the adopters”), while many others still deny, ignore or even push back (and let’s call them “the resisters”).
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In my view, the resisters’ reactions are normal in times of change – some are the result of the natural human tendency to fight changes, others are just a mean to handle the risk and insecurity caused by this disruption. If you are a resister, then let me console you with some good news. As much as the industry believes that the exchange and DSPs trend is going to increase the volume of indirect buys at the expense of direct buys, the majority of the media will still be bought in the traditional direct channels for at least a few years. The current assessments range around a 70:30 split (direct:indirect) over the next 3 years.

Feeling good? Great, but I‘ve also got some bad news. Things need to change (and they WILL change) in the way that direct buys are planned and executed. The change that we’re going through happens for a reason and I think that there is an important lesson to learn here. Let’s face it; things haven’t scaled so well thus far. If we stop for a second and ask ourselves what is the industry problem that exchanges and DSPs aim to fix, then the answer is the inefficiency of buying media through direct channels and the suboptimal results of online display advertising so far (in the eyes of marketers).

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that online advertising doesn’t work. If anything, I think that marketers need to increase their digital marketing budgets. However, online advertising hasn’t met marketers’ expectations so far and we ought to change it if we want to keep our game on. Change to Thrive!

Going forward, buying media through direct channels should resemble more the experience of buying through indirect channels by allowing marketers (or actually their agencies) to buy better performing media at an optimal price and in an efficient manner. So, how do we get there? Through better technology. So far media buying decisions were mostly based on simple contextual considerations, short-term pricing info and generic audience data. Why? Because this is what was immediately available for media planners while the planning and buying process was highly labor intensive and didn’t allow them to think strategically. The planning and buying tools of the future should change that.

Until now, planning and buying tools were mostly focused on workflow improvements. That’s OK but in the future they need to evolve and include relevant data for better decision making. Data is the greatest asset of online advertising but it’s currently spread over multiple sources and in many cases it isn’t easily accessible. Plugging in relevant data (and relevant data only) in a meaningful way can solve that problem and allow media planners to step up their game and bring better campaign results. Obviously, workflow efficiency will still be an important aspect and should radically improve otherwise media planning and buying will continue to be inefficient and drive suboptimal results. And if that is going to be the case, then I can guarantee you that 3 years down the 70:30 forecasted split between direct and indirect media buying will be the other way around – 30:70.

So, one way or the other – change will happen and that change will be good!

“Change or Die!”

Huh, that’s it? “We need data (and improved workflow efficiency)” – that’s all I have to say? Well, not quite. If you want more concrete ideas then stay tuned for part 2.

Ronnie Lavi | Senior Manager, Product Planning

VAST 2.0 was finally released last month after few months of hard team work by the Digital Video Committee (DVC) at the IAB.

Although VAST 1.0 provided a solid ground for the industry to run in-stream ads in a consistent and scalable manner it wasn’t comprehensive enough to support the different business needs and possible campaign scenarios. In addition, VAST 1.0 wasn’t always clear from technical perspective as developers were sometimes confused regarding the proper implementation of the VAST.

Realizing the business needs and technical ambiguity, the DVC decided to release a new version of the VAST. Initially planned to be a short list of enhancements, VAST 2.0 ended up as a major upgrade with some significant (non backwards compatible) changes. It is always better to avoid significant, let alone non backwards compatible, changes when it comes to industry technology standards, however in this case it was inevitable. Had they not been handled, the issues with VAST 1.0 would have blocked further adoption of the VAST by publishers and technology vendors which would mean the end of the show for the IAB’s in-stream advertising standardization efforts.

Without getting into too many details – the main benefit with the VAST 2.0 is its ability to provide enough flexibility to support the future and current business needs of the industry while still providing a clear framework from a technical perspective. With the VAST 2.0 everyone should benefit – publishers that sell in-stream inventory, agencies that buy media and technology vendors that facilitate the business between publishers and agencies.

Here are two examples of the improvements in VAST 2.0:
1. Support for complex placements that go beyond the simple pre-roll. As the in-stream advertising space evolves, we should expect a growth in the demand for placements which consist of a combination of linear units (e.g. pre-rolls), non linear units (e.g. overlays) and companions units. These types of placements can be priced in multiple ways and the VAST 2.0 will be able to support the different pricing models.

2. Tracking specific creative elements – one of the most important things for agencies are tracking capabilities and these are especially crucial when it comes to complex in-stream placements. VAST 2.0 will allow tracking below the ad level and verify that each creative element (e.g. linear unit, non-linear unit) is properly served.

Serving as a member of the VAST work group, it was impressive to see a group of competitors coming together (again) and working hard hand in hand to solve mutual key problems. I witnessed the strong commitment of all the leading industry players to both the VAST and the in-stream advertising technology standardization in general. The industry definitely has lots of faith in the VAST (and VPAID) and there is good reason to believe that we are on the right (and fast) track to scale the in-stream advertising space.

Now that we have VAST 2.0 there are no more excuses. The industry must step forward and adopt the VAST (and VPAID) if we want to see more ad dollars spent by advertisers. I, for one, have already adopted it.

Ronnie Lavi | Senior Manager, Product Planning

In the past year, I have been busy preaching to advertisers and agencies to look at search and display as complementary channels and analyze their performance in a holistic manner (disclaimer: Eyeblaster offers a product called Channel Connect for Search designed to help agencies and advertisers in this type of holistic cross channel analysis). I have been pushing the mantra that display is an upper funnel channel, while search is a lower funnel channel and together they should complement and assist each other in driving conversions. Therefore, I have been saying that comparing the two channels is wrong and that the right approach is to analyze the entire path to conversion while focusing on the synergy created by using both channels together. Well, I still strongly stand behind my mantra but recently I have seen several cases where path to conversion and cross channel synergy analysis was not feasible since there was no overlap between search and display (i.e. only few users were exposed to both display ads and search ads). The main reason for the low overlap was poor cross channel planning and execution prior to the campaign launch, which led to lack of synchronization between the search and display campaigns. This made me realize that in my recommendations I did not emphasize enough the critical phase of the campaign pre-launch. The pre-launch phase, which includes planning and execution, is the underlying basis for successful analysis at the end of the campaign (or at any other stage) and therefore it is critical to apply the holistic approach during this stage as well. But what does this actually mean?


Here’s a list of best practices that I recommend for holistic cross channel campaign planning and execution:


1. Campaign objectives synch – to drive the desired results, the search and display campaigns must share the same objective. Whether it is selling a product, building brand awareness or simply driving traffic to the site, it is critical that both search and display campaigns share the exact same objective. This is the single most import aspect of the synchronization between search and display.


2. Target audience synch – this goes without saying. The same audience should be targeted across search and display and that requires synching display targeting tactics with keyword bidding strategy. For example, if you target your display ads to a specific geographic area (e.g. a new compact car geo-targeted to NYC and SF metros) then make sure that you bid on search keywords which include relevant geo terms (e.g. name of car + “NYC” or “SF”).


3. Creative synch – it is critical to make sure that the creative messages are synched across search and display to communicate a cohesive message throughout the consumer’s path which will lead to a conversion at the end of it. For example, if the display creative highlights a certain feature in your product, make sure that you bid on the relevant search keywords for this feature and that the search ad copy will highlight the same product feature.


4. Campaign set up synch – from an execution perspective it is critical to properly synch the landing pages and conversion tags across the search and display campaigns. The display and search campaigns should use the same landing pages and conversion tags to allow tracking the entire path to conversion and de-duplication of conversions between search and display.


5. Campaign periods synch – finally, it is important to properly plan the search and display campaigns launch and end dates. This is particularly critical in cases when the conversion/purchase funnel is short so the search and display campaigns should overlap in their start and end date. In these cases, if one of the campaigns launches too late, there will be missed opportunities to drive consumers to conversion.


This is it for a start. I am sure that as you dive into the small details of the campaign planning and execution, you will find some additional best practices. If you have any, then please feel free to share.


 

Ronnie Lavi | Manager, Product Planning and Business Development

Pre-roll ads are 8-25 time more effective than in-banner ads, according to BBE which released a study that compared in-banner and pre-roll ads based on CTR. “Finding average click-through rates of 1.44% draws a real distinction between in-stream and in-banner ads,” said Matt Wasserlauf, CEO of BBE. This quote by itself summarizes one of the biggest problems we have in our industry today – we measure everything based on clicks and CTR. Big mistake…

Forget about the click…

First, in-stream ads and especially pre-rolls should not be measured based on CTR. Pre-rolls weren’t designed to draw clicks. A user who has just clicked to watch some video content and then prompted to see a 15 or 30 seconds pre-roll ad shouldn’t be expected to click to be taken to the advertiser site (if at all he or she can be expected to click to skip the ad). Pre-roll ads were designed to deliver a marketing message that will stick with user through rich experience delivered by video. Ideally, pre-roll ads should be measured using brand metrics (such as brand favorability, brand awareness etc.) or at least video completion rate (if a skip option is provided to the user). 

Second, even if CTR was the correct success metric to use for pre-roll ads, does a CTR of 1.44% really prove a good performance? Sure, a CTR of 1.44% sounds great when it’s compared to the insignificant CTR of 0.11% for standard banners or slightly higher for rich media units. But 1.44% CTR is still very low and more than anything else, a 1.44% CTR for pre-roll ads just highlights the low CTR of banner ads. But, again, forget about the click…

Unfortunately, even after more than a decade of online advertising we are still heavily focused on CTR. We still see different research papers focusing on CTR, agencies buy media based on CPC and advertisers measuring success by clicks. A better way would be to focus on more meaningful success metrics such as sales, leads, brand engagement (dwell time) and viral elements  such as sharing with friends and buzz. Did I say forget about the click already? …

And stop comparing…

Why does one need to compare pre-roll ads to banner ads (or any other ad format)? A well planned campaign should include many different creative formats to match and create different user experiences. Banner ads are designed to deliver a marketing message on web pages while the consumer reads some content. Pre-roll ads, on the other hand, are designed to deliver the same message inside video players while the consumer watches some video content. Banner ads create a magazine or newspaper-like experience while pre-roll ads create a TV-like experience. Hence, comparing between them is wrong, irrelevant and defeats the purpose of using different creative formats in first place.

The correct way to analyze creative and media would be to look at the campaign in holistic manner across all creative formats, sites and channels and then measure the synergy stemming from the diversified media and creative mix. Each ad, site and channel contributes something to the end result (whether it’s a sale, lead, brand awareness, etc.) as a standalone part of the campaign. However, the main objective should be proving that the whole campaign equals more than the sum of its standalone parts – ads, sites and channels. Showing that type of synergy would prove a successful campaign planning and execution.
Ronnie Lavi | Manager, Product Planning and Business Development

Following is an excerpt from an article I recently wrote for iMedia: 

“Online video is considered one of the most promising online advertising channels, with a forecasted ad spending of $1.67 billion in the U.S. by 2013 (according to JupiterResearch). Over the years, a seemingly endless procession of start-ups has entered the space, with myriad solutions touting inventory creation, ad management tools, and optimized functionality. Judging by projections and innovations, the in-stream space is the place to be, but that still doesn’t necessarily guarantee monetization.

Let’s face it, despite the hype, in-stream advertising has not lived up to expectations. So we, as an industry, need to take immediate action — or online video and in-stream advertising risk going the way of Second Life. ”

For survival recommendations, see the full article in iMedia.

Ronnie Lavi | Manager, Product Planning and Business Development