Category Archives: Media Agencies

Mar 03 2012
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Ad Technology, Media Agencies, Publishers, Startups

How to Play Nice With Technology Gatekeepers

(Originally published in ClickZ, July 2002) by Eric Picard

Back when Bluestreak was a rich media company, I could have written a doctoral thesis on working with tech gatekeepers. This was back in the heady days when publishers had a certain sense of superiority fueled by the artificial inflation of their valuations. We went to extreme lengths to develop rich media technology that didn’t impact user experience — to the point we nearly killed ourselves getting our initial software download down to 5.7k.

For the Web publisher, a technology gatekeeper manages the adoption of third-party ad technologies used by advertisers on the publisher’s site. These include ad servers, rich media, and analysis technology. The goal is to make sure third-party technologies won’t crash the Web site, make user experience suffer, or cause significant data discrepancies between the publisher and the third party.

It wasn’t only technology providers like Bluestreak that faced the gatekeeper issue. Media buyers and creative teams faced it as well. Nearly all the players in the industry were under the close scrutiny and influence of the technology gatekeepers.

They were the sheriffs of the Wild Web portals back in the gold rush. They carried the fastest six-shooters and had a posse of deputies to research, track, and nail the most miniscule bug in a technology. A license to run rich media on Yahoo or AOL was like having Wyatt Earp let you carry your guns into town because he deemed you a “good guy.”

Eventually, a time came when the sheriff was running the town. It was difficult to do any kind of business without making him happy first. When the gold rush dried up, the sheriff lost his posse. The town fathers turned the jail into a welcome center. Suddenly, everyone was allowed to carry his guns in town, even those who fired them into the air after 7 p.m.

Things have started to equalize. Once again, technology gatekeepers have budgets and teams. They are regaining the ability to say no to technologies they don’t approve of. That means it’s time to start learning about this breed of hombres so you can work with them easily (and without flinching when you’re asked to present your guns for inspection).

The technology gatekeeper as sheriff metaphor wasn’t chosen at random. There are a lot of parallels between the jobs and the psychological makeup of these roles.

Keeper of the Peace and Protector of Babies

The technology gatekeeper does her job with a clear conscience. She’s making the experience of visiting her Web site a safe one. She keeps unsavory technology that misbehaves from causing problems in the community. This could be a rogue Java applet, or a Flash file that causes older machines to freeze because they overwhelm the CPU.

Remember: Gatekeepers feel they act in the best interest of the people they represent. Approaching them in any way that puts them in conflict with that role is a bad idea.

Don’t try to sway them by offering a bribe, even an innocent offer of industry schwag or tickets to a trade show. This is a surefire way to get their hackles up. Any tech gatekeeper worth his salt would be insulted or worse by that kind of behavior.

Never try to strong-arm or go around them (to the mayor
— or VP of sales) to get your way. If the VP includes the gatekeeper in the meeting you’ve set up (which she’s likely to do), things will just get uncomfortable. A better approach is to start off on the right foot by having a meeting with all parties ahead of time. Then, move on to the gatekeeper as part of the process. This gets all the issues on the table, sets the everyone’s expectations (including the gatekeeper’s), and makes everyone happy.

The only way to win trust from technology gatekeepers is to be trustworthy. Demonstrate you will not screw them. Keep them from getting in trouble for letting you walk their streets. Build the relationship over time and make sure you don’t let them down.

In ad technology, it’s likely you’ll eventually have a problem. These are the moments when you can actually improve your relationship with the gatekeeper. By being open and honest and doing everything in your power to fix the problem and keep him in the loop, you’ll win his trust and respect.

They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To

The biggest problem we’ll face now that power is returning to gatekeepers is the majority of them are inexperienced. Disney, Yahoo, AOL, and some other major players have kept those important and skilled people in their roles, but they’re the exceptions. Most gatekeepers moved back to the traditional world where jobs with real salaries still exist.

Many of today’s new gatekeepers aren’t experienced in being empowered to turn away revenue under almost any circumstances. They gained their experience in a world where they were left to clean up the mess made by a third party rather than keeping the mess from happening in the first place.

Now that gatekeepers have some say again as the pendulum approaches center, they need advice on how to use of this power. Here’s mine:

Let’s not return to the “good old days” of letting technical issues drive the publisher’s business decisions. I’m a technologist. I completely understand why testing is needed and what can happen when things explode. But many lucrative deals were lost by this industry because of technology gatekeepers’ excessive conservatism.

There was fear user backlash from intrusive technology or techniques would drive people away from the publisher’s free content. This wasn’t the case. Let’s learn from that. Be flexible. At the very least, run live tests with companies without taking weeks and weeks to do so.

In the end, we should all strive for the same thing: success. Ours in particular, the industry’s in general. Everyone needs to work together. The overriding goal of the gatekeeper should be to facilitate the process, not throw a monkey wrench into the works.

Mar 03 2012
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Ad Ecosystem, Ad Serving, Ad Technology, Media Agencies, Publishers, Startups

Advanced Ad-Serving Features, Part 2: Third-Party Ad Servers

(Originally published in ClickZ, November 2001) by Eric Picard

Last time, we discussed advanced features of site-side servers. Now let’s go deeper. This week, we’ll go into the even-more-advanced advanced features of third-party ad servers.

Third-party servers primarily serve the needs of advertisers and agencies. Sometimes they are called buy-side servers. They are part of the business infrastructure of these groups and must reliably and accurately deliver and report on ad serving and related user actions associated with the ads.

In addition to delivery and basic reporting, third-party servers provide unified comparative reporting for all publishers in a media buy, as well as many advanced features. From a feature standpoint, a third-party server is more complex than its site-side counterpart.

One thing to keep in mind: A third-party server is not able to “refuse” a call for an ad. If an ad tag is supplied from a third-party server to a site-side server and that ad is called, it must be served. Only a site-side server can schedule and deliver ad calls to users.

Beyond Banner Tracking

This is the big feature. Tracking beyond the banner enables the view of an ad session from impression to conversion (and beyond). This is a major reason a third-party server is a must for most advertisers. Some tracking types beyond the banner are:

  • Tracer tags. Tracer tags are single-pixel images placed on pages of the advertiser’s Web site so that activity on those pages can be correlated to the view or click of an ad. 
  • Post-click analysis. The user sees an ad and clicks on it. She arrives at a landing page on the advertiser’s Web site. She travels across three pages that have tracer tags on them. Each intersection of creative/tracer is credited to the advertiser’s reports. 
  • Post-impression (also called post-view) analysis. The user sees an ad but doesn’t click on it. That user (remembering the message) later travels to the advertiser’s Web site on his own. He moves across a number of pages with tracers on them. Each intersection of ad and tracer is correlated and credited to the advertiser’s reports. This analysis is a definitive branding measurement and is sometimes called a brand response report. Not all third-party servers collect post-impression data.

Reporting

  • Cross-publisher reports. A major reason to use a third-party server is that reports are covered across all publishers within a campaign. 
  • Comprehensive data sets. Since both post-view and post-click data must be recounted, reports must be unified and comprehensive.

Analytics

Some third-party servers offer advanced analytics capabilities. This is one of the fastest growing areas in the industry. Far more data is captured in an online ad campaign than in an offline one. Turning that data into actionable information isn’t simple. It takes days or weeks of human intervention and interpretation.

A powerful analytics package solves these problems by providing tools to get at actionable information more quickly. There are two basic types of tools to discuss:

  • Online analytical processing (OLAP) tool. This very powerful analytics tool enables the most control of data and reporting. Great power and flexibility comes at a great price, and few people are technical enough to use an OLAP tool to manipulate their data. In most agencies there are only a few, if any, people who can use these tools. It gets even sparser at the advertiser level. 
  • Wizard. To address problems with OLAP, some companies have started coming up with wizard-based interfaces for the most commonly asked questions. A good wizard-based interface can likely answer such questions as: Which publisher is the best media buy for my campaign goals based on the past six months of running ads across various publishers?

Optimization

Analytics deals with historical analysis to improve ongoing and future campaigns. Optimization deals with live campaigns that must be improved while still running. When done by hand (as is most often the case), only so much can be changed. Humans can optimize to a level of detail only so deep. This is best handled by technology, which provides much deeper analysis of data. Two types of optimization are:

  • Real time. Real-time optimization is the most powerful. Changes are made automatically to creative in rotation across placements based upon actual results read by the optimization tool. Real-time optimization requires real-time data to make changes. Few ad servers use a real-time reporting architecture, relying instead on 24-to-48-hour-delayed data. Real-time benefits include microtrend discovery (intraday changes in behavior within placements) and greater lift based on feedback loops. Additionally — if the system doesn’t make changes automatically, relying instead upon human approval or intervention — the lift is going to be lower. 
  • Recommendation. For situations where real-time data isn’t available, recommendation-based systems are the alternative. These systems read data when available and provide a list of recommendations to enable the customer to make changes. This inherently is a poorer performing model as changes are not happening quickly. Therefore, additional learning for the optimization tool is lost. The faster changes are made, the better the system gets at predicting performance. Still, this is a better method than hand optimization.

Targeting

  • Geographic targeting. Geotargeting is similar to site-side servers but somewhat less effective. You pay for the media regardless of whether you had an appropriate creative for the users an ad was served to. Wherever possible, try to geotarget at the publisher level. 
  • Profile-based targeting. As I detailed last time, ads can be targeted based on Web-surfing habits. Third-party ad servers have the same issues as site-side servers do. 
  • Session-specific targeting. Specifics include domain, browser type, and operating system. Again, this can be accomplished on the site side, usually to greater effect as the publisher only shows the ad (and bills you) when there is an appropriate fit. When served by a third party, you pay for the media even if it doesn’t fit your demographic.(Remember, there are plenty of other types of targeting I’m not covering here).

Trafficking Controls

Without a third-party server, trafficking ads to multiple publishers is a problem. It can be complex, with many points of failure. A good third-party server simplifies the process of trafficking campaigns and should provide valuable accounting methods for successful delivery and approval of your ads by the publisher.

Dynamic Ad Serving

Most publishers have a limit on the number of ads they will accept at one time. Usually this ranges from 5 to 10 creatives per week. Third-party servers use dynamic ad serving to rotate multiple creatives through one ad tag. This allows the advertiser/agency to traffic as many creatives associated with those tags as they want. This simplifies life for the advertiser and the publisher by cutting down significantly on the work done by both.

Conclusion

There are other ad server features not covered here. But this is a column, not a book! You should now be educated enough to talk to a salesperson without too much trepidation.

Next, I’ll write about a topic near and dear to my heart: how to work with tech companies for long-term success. It’s time to set a few things straight about this marketplace. Customers need to understand that while they are in a position to beat up their tech partners (notice I don’t call them vendors) on issues such as price, they should think twice. If there are any tech firms out there that would like to voice their thoughts on the topic, drop me a line.

Mar 03 2012
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Ad Ecosystem, Ad Serving, Ad Technology, Media Agencies, Publishers, Rich Media, Startups

Protecting yourself from exploding Ad Technology partners

(Originally published in ClickZ, June 2001) by Eric Picard

As you might have heard, AdForce closed its doors last week. CMGI shut it down after failing to find a buyer. What a strange world we’re living in. It makes you wonder whose balloon is going to pop next, doesn’t it? It wasn’t so long ago that these companies were awe inspiring to many of us in the industry. How quickly things change.

So what is an agency or advertiser to do? If you make decisions about or manage the relationships with your technology partners, maybe we can come up with some guidelines for you on how to judge a company’s stability. The world is a dangerous place right now, and getting caught unprepared if your ad-serving infrastructure suddenly goes up in smoke could really hurt.

Public Companies

Let’s start by looking at the public companies. Once, you could assume that if a company was public, it would most likely be around in a few months. Not any more. Being public actually works against most companies in our space these days.

A very well-known industry analyst once told me that any company with a stock price of under five dollars is focused only on appeasing the investors, not on doing business, and certainly not on innovating. At the time, he said he didn’t even pay attention to those companies. I have to wonder if he still operates on that principle. Today, companies in our space with stock near or above five dollars are like superheroes.

I just looked at the list of 43 stocks I’ve been tracking for the past three years. It’s made up of companies either active in online advertising or peripheral to it. I noticed that 34 are trading under five dollars or are no longer trading at all. Of those 34, 12 are trading under one dollar, and 17 of them are no longer actively trading. Some have stopped trading because of merger or acquisition, but most are just out of business.

So how do you make sure you’re safe?

  • Look at the makeup of your technology partner’s customers. And I don’t mean its “portfolio” — since this often contains customers no longer working with the company. I mean active customers.
  • Ask your contacts for active customer references. This might be a tough play, but at least you’ll be able to judge the stability of the company. If a company doesn’t have one customer willing to say something good about it, you might want to reconsider.
  • Find out how much operating capital the company has. DoubleClick is an example of a public company in our space with lots of operating capital. 24/7 Media is an example of one without any operating capital.
  • Make use of the fact that the company is public. Look closely at its public disclosures. Read quarterly reports. Read analyst reports. Judging which companies are in trouble is mostly a clear and commonsensical act.
  • Check if the company traded as an over-the-counter or bulletin board (OTC:BB) stock. If so, you should be especially wary, because the regulations about reporting here are much less clear. Since there is less regulation, companies trading as OTC:BB are often seen as stock scams at worst and as a little shady at best.

    The main change these days is that since many companies have been de-listed from the Nasdaq, as victims of the times, they have ended up on the OTC:BB. If the company is a real business, you should be able to tell pretty easily. One quick test is to verify that its “gallery” or case studies are real, not mocked up. Be direct and ask — even ask for real customers you can talk to if you feel uneasy.

    One of the first questions I ask a company is if it is public or private. If it’s a small company and it’s public, I immediately ask if it’s an OTC:BB.

Private Companies

Now that we’ve looked at public companies, we should review how to judge the stability of a private company. It’s not so different, but some of the information isn’t available publicly.

First, make sure that the general items are covered from above — and especially focus on customers. Since public companies are accountable for things that they say in public, they usually are relatively credible (minus the marketing spin). Private companies are not so tightly regulated, so make sure to do your due diligence.

Usually, private companies’ financial health is the hardest point to establish. And today, this is the most critical factor to review. There are, usually, some indicators:

  • Private companies generally start up through bootstrapping or venture financing. If it’s the latter, you’re in luck. It’s a huge win to get investment from a venture capital (VC) firm, and the general response is to issue a press release.
  • Review the company’s press releases, and try to figure out how much money it’s raised.
  • If it has been growing and hasn’t raised any money in the past six to eight months, your warning bells should go off. The only situation in which that shouldn’t worry you is if the company is bringing in lots of revenue. This is tough, given the market right now.
  • Next, you should figure out how much time it has to get profitable. Once you do (explained below), feel free to ask the company directly how it plans to achieve profitability. Again, you may not get an answer, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
  • Get a general idea of the company’s burn rate by using the following guidelines:
    • How many employees does it have? Usually, the company will tell you.
    • Where does the company have offices, and how many people are in each?
    • What kind of capital expenditures might it have? If it’s an ad-serving company, how much is it spending on server farms?
  • This is closely held competitive data, so a company is unlikely to just hand it over, but you can make some educated guesses about these things:
    • Figure that a company with 30 employees is burning $150,000 a month for salaries (if it’s aggressive).
    • If the company is in New York, figure that it’s paying big-time rent (even with some of the new deals opening up). An office for 30 people will run roughly $35,000-45,000 a month, depending on location and other costs beyond rent.
    • That gives us close to $200,000 monthly without even getting to hardware or server infrastructure.
  • When you look at (a minimal) server infrastructure and costs for setting up and maintaining the business, we’re talking about $250,000 monthly, or about $3 million a year.
  • That gives a company of 30 about two years of life if it’s raised $6 million. You can work out the various scenarios for different sizes and funding.
  • I’m being quite conservative here, and this is based on a whole lot of assumptions. For instance, if the company happens to have offices in New York and San Francisco, you can imagine that the costs are a lot higher.
  • If the company is too large for the amount of funding it has, it will burn out fast. If it’s too small for the amount of business it has, you’re going to get horrible service.

So now you’re an expert in evaluating those companies you’re working with. Go out and look at them. There’s no time like the present.

Mar 03 2012
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Ad Ecosystem, Media Agencies, Publishers, Rich Media

Analytics: Beating Ad Clutter

(Originally published on ClickZ, March 2001)

The outlook for online advertising is good; we just need to fix the problems. A typical Web site publisher runs an ad on every single page of the site. If it has unsold inventory, it either runs a public service announcement or it runs a house ad.

Jupiter Media Metrix just released the report “Online Advertising, Market Perception vs. Reality.” It was very enlightening.

While growth has slowed since online advertising’s meteoric rise over the past few years, the industry is still developing at a healthy clip. And as I’ve been saying since first noticing this dip, it’s not like people have stopped going online: There was a 22 percent increase in the number of unique users online between 1999 and 2000. More important, the amount of time users spend online went up 31 percent in that same time period.

With the consolidation of sites as dot-coms fail and the resultant concentration of user traffic, we’re going to see more value placed on those sites that survive this dip. This is very good news for the long term.

Information Overload

One point made by Marc Ryan, director of media research at AdRelevance, really caught my attention. He said, “Publishers should run house ads more sparingly, surgically, to reduce clutter and allow clients’ ads to have more impact.”

Publishers are selling less inventory, and the inventory devoted to house ads on their sites is increasing. One of the greatest problems online ads face is user information overload. Ads appear over and over in a site’s design in exactly the same static ad space. The theory is: If we leave it empty part of the time, it will draw more value out of those ads that do appear.

This notion hit me pretty hard; it’s basic stuff, but I hadn’t thought about it this way. And as is my wont, I started thinking about the problem from a technology standpoint.

The first step is to validate this theory — it sounds logical, but so have lots of things that haven’t been proven to work. So how would we validate our theory? If publishers can figure out what the effect of NOT running house ads is, then they can make intelligent decisions about best practices. But…

Optimizing Inventory

The majority of publishers and even agencies haven’t invested in analytics solutions — and I’m not talking about a roomful of people looking at campaign stats. That kind of analysis isn’t helpful without a good tool to sort the vast amounts of data before the human eyes start looking.

Part of the problem is that these solutions are extremely expensive and require a staff of people who are experienced analytics specialists. Virtually no agencies have this kind of staff. And the scary part is that the vast majority of publishers don’t have this kind of staff, either.

Yet analytical tools would solve many problems for publishers. They would be able to quickly and easily see value across their properties — and they could actually optimize their inventory differently. They could build new pricing and inventory plans. Imagine what would happen if publishers could show a value proposition to media buyers that leads them through their buys, AND the end result shows a greater ROI.

For example: Traditional media planners are used to buying broadcast media in time slices for specific channels, whether it’s a radio station or a television station. For the most part, we haven’t done this online, partly because of technical reasons and partly because of the absence of a value proposition showing that it works. If the publishers could make this work technically and run some tests, they could analyze the results and see if there’s a business case to be made.

Without analytics capabilities, publishers can’t possibly know what works and what doesn’t. Essentially, most have been flying blind.

So what’s the answer? Publishers need to dive deep into analytics over the next year. It isn’t a critical issue yet — but expect it to start looming soon. And they need to start doing research into what kind of questions they need answers to.

My advice: Please don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s about click rate. And do include rich media ads in the mix when doing the analyses. This is another reason tools are needed, because if you can’t figure out what’s happening with GIFs, how are you going to figure it out for rich media, with exponentially more data to crunch through?

While the industry is not doing nearly as poorly as some fear, it’s time to start cutting through theGordian Knot to solve some of the problems that clearly do exist.

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