“Intelligent Buying on Ad Networks and Exchanges”

By Kirby Winfield, Chief Revenue Officer at Mpire (Makers of AdXpose)

In the early days of online advertising, some of the questions marketers would typically ask their agencies included: How can I get my ad in front of the most eyeballs?  What’s the best way to reach my audience?  Where can I get the biggest bang for my buck?  Invariably, the tried and true answer was “location, location, location!” – meaning, advertise on brand name sites such as NYTimes, Yahoo! or AOL and you’ll do fine.

So as we know, advertising on well-respected content sites works great, but with the emergence of ad networks and ad exchanges the playing field is much larger and more complex to navigate from a media buyer’s perspective.  Audiences are more disbursed than ever and technology has allowed fraudsters to become smarter.  Ad budgets are tighter and advertisers are much more focused on results.  As such, the questions marketers ask now are much more direct:  Am I getting what I paid for?  Are these impressions for real? How did my advertising perform and how can I improve performance?  Where can I buy more of the stuff that is working?  The answers I would give them are “verification, optimization, performance!”

For those who are scratching their heads, let me elaborate more on the benefits that each one provides.

Am I getting what I paid for?

Great question!  You have a contract with a network or an ad exchange and they promise you that your ad will be above the fold on several hundreds or thousands of their best sites, but how can you be sure?  Some networks engage in URL padding, which funnels the majority of impressions to a small handful of sites—and not always the sites you want your ad appearing on most frequently.  Campaign verification technologies ensure that your ads are delivered to the right sites, located in the right positions and not next to any objectionable content.

Are these impressions for real?

Beyond campaign delivery, today’s ad verification technologies also ensure that the impressions you pay for are legit.  Some nefarious ad networks employ ad stuffing, which stacks multiple ads into a single ad unit. While it appears that the impression was delivered, the viewer only saw the ad on top.  Other fraudsters use bots to inflate impressions.  Fortunately, you can identify these practices by comparing clicks to actual user engagement; if your ad is getting a lot of clicks, but no one is mousing over your ad, chances are it’s fraud.  Armed with this knowledge, agencies and advertisers can go back to their network, exchange, or publisher and demand restitution.

How did my advertising perform and how can I improve performance?

How many times have you seen this before?  Your creative team comes up with a killer campaign with some really clever ads that unfortunately seem to flounder when put into rotation.  Is it the creative?  Or were the ads appearing on the wrong sites?

Creative optimization can give you tremendous insights into what the viewer found appealing.  We do this again by looking at the “mouse over” engagement data: Where did the user enter and exit the ad?  How long was the engagement?  Did they hover over specific visual or text elements?  By analyzing the aggregate data, agencies will be able to gain insights into the reader’s engagement with an ad and make adjustments to the message, the offer, or the creative that will hopefully improve its performance.  Imagine the importance for a brand advertiser to have the ability to measure the “cost per engagement” on the dollars spent.

Since ad networks and exchanges are not as transparent right now as they should be, campaign optimization paints a clear picture for agencies as to which sites in their ad buy are underperforming or questionable from a fraud perspective, enabling agencies to strip these sites out of their current and future ad buys.  Imagine telling your network partner that you’re not going to pay for impressions from sites x, y, and z because they were fraudulent or there were significant idiosyncrasies in how the ad performed versus other sites, and instead you would like to double-down on sites a, b, and c.  There is little that a network can do – it’s like walking into a new car dealer with the manufacturer’s invoice in hand and telling them you’re not going to pay $125 for $17 floor mats.  The power is all yours.

Where can I buy more of the stuff that is working?

Right now there’s no clear-cut way of divining which networks or exchanges are going to give you the best results, the least fraud or the most ROI.  But employing verification and optimization technologies with every ad buy delivers greater transparency and peace of mind, and gives more control back to the advertiser or agency.  Someday soon, these technologies will be scaled up to verify or create entire networks of “safe” inventory so that even the elusive brand advertisers will be able to buy with confidence.  Imagine that – a “Good Housekeeping” seal for ad networks.  We’re looking forward it.

At Centro, we guarantee 100% transparency and accountability with respect to what sites your ad appears on and what content it is next to.  In working with Centro, our clients are guaranteed the safest campaigns on the most well-respected sites available on the web with business principles in place to back it up.  We look forward to helping you meet your ROI goals without having to sacrifice quality or integrity in your media plan.