By: Michael Lamb, Sr. Product Manager, DG MediaMind

Third-party ad serving has many advantages that agencies can leverage. One of these is the ability to record a user’s journey from ad impression through to purchase. This journey is called the path to conversion. In order for the agency to mark milestones on this path as well as the conclusion, it is important to place conversion tags on the advertiser’s site.



What are conversion tags?

Conversion tags are either snippets of JavaScript or a 1×1 image pixel. These bits of code are placed at strategically important spots on the advertiser’s site. The conversion tag “fires” when a user visits a strategically important page. At that time, the user’s local cookie is updated with the event ID and a date/time stamp of the event. We can pull data from the page and send that back to the ad server for analytics. We can also write information into the user’s cookie for future use, for example retargeting.

Where should I put conversion tags?

Best practice is to do an audit of the advertiser’s website anytime major changes are made. Most agencies will have multiple personas for different target audiences. “In Market” might be one target audience. “Considering brands” might be another. Role-play the possible activities your target audiences might take on the advertiser’s site. Mark down the URLs of specific locations where they may abandon their session or need more information. For each of these URLs, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why do I need to track this location?
2. Would I need to modify my creative messaging to a user that’s been to this location?
3. Do I need any additional data from the page to understand the user’s journey? (product name, local zip code)

The results of a tag audit are usually presented in a spreadsheet. It’s best to prioritize the items on this list, i.e. which conversion points are the critical paths and which conversion points are important, but not critical?

Many agencies simply want to tag everything on the advertiser’s site. This presents three challenges. First, keeping up with site changes can be challenging. Second, if everything gets tagged right away, then you may be drowning clients in too much data. Third, if you tag everything at once, there’s nowhere to grow.

We recommend putting a plan in action which allows you to grow the tagging strategy over time. This helps you set expectations with the advertiser and better manage the incoming stream of data. For example, start with collecting point-of-purchase conversions and a few key locations. Then phase in product-level or category-level retargeting. A final phase might be to tag social and interactive actions on the advertiser’s site.

What is “piggybacking” tags?

Placing individual pieces of code on the advertiser’s site is a time-consuming process. Years ago, ad technology companies didn’t need a major presence on the advertiser’s site. Now everyone and their cousin wants to put their conversion tags on the advertiser’s site. To accommodate this, ad servers allow you to attach or piggyback other vendors’ code onto the ad server’s conversion tag. When a user visits a conversion page, the ad server conversion tag is loaded first, and then any piggybacked tags are loaded into the user’s browser.

Are conversion tags important for branding clients?

We recommend the presence of some conversion tags for branding as well as direct-response clients. The ties between display advertising and brand lift carry over into activities users perform on an advertiser’s site. Conversion tags can be linked to coupon downloads, account sign-ins, social sharing buttons, newsletter sign-ups and even video views and game play. These events become part of a path- to-conversion analysis which gives agencies more commentary on how brand advertising is affecting consumer behavior online.

What’s all this talk about Tag Management?

As agencies and technology companies have gotten more sophisticated, the demands for tagging have increased greatly. It’s not uncommon for an agency’s tag audit to yield 500 to1000 different conversion “points” that need tracking. Tag Management companies provide a single piece of code to the advertiser. This code is placed into their content management system and once there, the code will render on each and every page of the advertiser’s site. This paradigm allows an agency to use the Tag Management user interface to map where they want conversion events to occur without the need to send hundreds or thousands of code snippets to the agency that is responsible for managing the advertiser’s website.

Not every advertiser needs tag management. Its benefits are ideal for advertisers with large sites, sites that change frequently, or web developers that don’t like to accept lots of code from third parties.

By: David Scatterday, Manager of Product Marketing for Mobile at DG MediaMind

Mobile display ad spending is growing rapidly across all segments and will nearly triple between 2012 and 2014, jumping from $1.10 billion to $3.07 billion, according to eMarketer. While standard banners, rich media and video are the largest mobile display formats, dual-screen advertising is easily the most exciting and relevant segment in the space.

The always-on multi-screen consumer is a quickly growing yet hard-to-target audience. According to Business Insider, 85% of smartphone users report engaging in second screen-linked behavior at least once per month, and about 60% reported doing it on a weekly basis. I often check my favorite mobile application or website during a TV commercial break, and data shows I’m not alone. According to Pew, more than 80% of 18- to 24-year-olds say they use their phones while watching TV. A hefty 60% of Americans with annual incomes above $50,000 do so as well.

While the value of second-screen engagement may be hard to quantify, there’s no doubt it is real. A second-screen campaign DG executed for a major global retailer found a very strong correlation between the time proximity of seeing a TV ad and the frequency of click-throughs on the brand’s digital companion ad.

Continue reading

Media, especially video, is a world on the precipice of immense change. The headlines say it all: “The New Rules of Content,” “…the TV Business May Be Starting to Collapse,” “The New Economics of Media,” “The future of TV.” The entire media landscape is changing, and everyone with a stake in the game – service providers, content producers, device manufacturers, and advertisers – are impacted.

Right now, people are watching video whenever and wherever, on the go, at work or at home. The array of video capable devices available on the market, from feature phones to smart TVs, means that the way we watch video will never be the same.

The landscape may be changing, but TV is still at the center of the consumers’ media world. TV is one of the most common media in the home, beating out the internet and mobile devices by time spent with the widest reach across age and ethnic demographics. As a result, TV has unmatched clout in the minds of advertisers, and it still dominates the media landscape in terms of share of ad spending.

However, digital media is also the most disruptive and fastest growing consumer channel. The democratization of news and print media online virtually decimated traditional advertising revenues, famously trading print dollars for digital nickels and pennies. Online display ads are cheap, while digital video spots remain in-line with TV for some premium publishers.

Where media fragmentation is a challenge, convergence and content democratization are opportunities.

Convergence inherently adds value to the video advertising ecosystem as a whole, allowing for better reach, influence and analysis. Some agencies are shifting their tactics by expanding TV teams to incorporate digital pros or vice versa, but there is still work to be done. Aegis CEO Nigel Morris talked about how the digital generation’s ideas can help manage consistent messaging globally: “…we have to drive convergence. The industry has not done a good job in terms of flattening out agency structures and fostering innovation from young people…we have to take organizational design more seriously.”1

The advertisers who come out on top will be determined by their ability to integrate the traditional and emerging video experiences best, blending new media with traditional in a way that not only streamlines process but also benefits brands. In a world where single digit shifts in mindshare can make or break a quarter, the growing influence of multiple platforms and the impact of converged marketing cannot be ignored.

Check out convergence.dgit.com to learn more about video convergence.

1 Speaking at the American Association of Advertising Agencies Transformation conference, as cited in Ad Age

It’s been over a year since ad tech and video ad distribution company DG acquired semantic data providerPeer39 and folded it into DG’s MediaMind online division. During that time, Peer39-er Alex White has had a front row seat to his company’s integration into DG with his new role as GM of DG’s Data and Trading operations.

White says that although being in a larger company can sometimes make it harder to get things done, the new resources have provided significant benefit to Peer39′s business. According to White, DG has quietly built infrastructure support that will allow it “to scale at the speed of RTB,” which might have otherwise become prohibitive for an independent Peer39.

AdExchanger spoke to White last week about Peer39 and the use of his company’s data in digital advertising.

Continue reading

By: Alex White, GM, Data & Trading, DG

The ad industry has lately cast its site on the topic of viewability and trying to give buyers some assurance that their ads are indeed seen by a living, breathing human. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks viewability is a bad idea, but current expectations exceed reality. The pendulum was swung so far that buyers only want viewable inventory, which is an incredibly limiting strategy. Before we enter a brave viewable world, the industry needs to understand how to use viewability to buy media in the current market.

There is a common understanding that there is waste in advertising, specifically in online advertising, and the cost of media reflects that in many cases. The challenge is that although the industry and trade groups leading the charge have made great progress in trying to define a “view,” there is still no universal definition, let alone standard for measurement. There are proposals and a loose set of guidelines, but without accurate measurement technology we are stuck where we are. The industry will arrive at true viewability eventually, but in the meantime, here is what’s available today.

Continue reading