Today I release an article in iMediaConnection entitles "The Targeting Solution You've Been Waiting For."
This one was a long time coming. I tried to break down in long-form the details of what I have spent many months building up to in this blog. First party cookies are the foundation of the next generation of ad serving in the industry. Not because my former employer is capitalizing on it and making it their primary GTM, but because it opens the door to so many opportunities in online marketing.
The first party cookie is the collaborative platform upon which so ... |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| As reported in iMediaConnection, “Buyers and sellers of online display advertising will have a new forum for making deals; at least that is the premise behind DoubleClick’s latest proprietary product, DoubleClick Advertising Exchange.” A mediated exchanged between buyers and sellers for the exchange of advertising inventory is not a new concept. Right Media is the best example of a well-executed version of this concept. In the past, I have proposed eliminating the middle-man of the exchange and putting buyer and seller together. But now DoubleClick is going to enter the exchange game. They have the publishers with DFP and they have the advertisers with DFA. This sounds a little bit like Google’s AdSense and Adwords. Watch this one closely as it could be game-changing. |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| Today I published an article iMediaConnection, Moving Beyond Event-Based Targeting. The assignment was to 'go deep' with behavioral targeting, something that is uncommon on iMediaConnection. My blog borders on enraged reactions to the misnomer that network targeting is not really targeting deep behaviors at all. I went deep by introducing the concept that these capabilities are all very relevant but that they need to be tied together. I have another article that I am trying to get IMC to publish… |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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LookSmart Hires Ari Kaufman as Vice President of Publisher Services, and Jonathan Ewert as East Coast Vice President of Advertising and Publisher Services
Critical Hires Complete the Company's Executive Sales Team SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—LookSmart (NASDAQ: LOOK, ASX: LOK), an online advertising and technology company, is bringing two new Vice Presidents into its fold who are expected to help LookSmart grow and service its advertiser and publisher base. LookSmart has hired Ari Kaufman as Vice President of Publisher Services and Jonathan Ewert as the East Coast Vice President of Advertising and Publisher Services. They join ... |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| Today Steve Mulder gave us “Create and Satisfy Demand: Two Tools to Complete the Marketing Loop,” an academic piece in iMediaConnection that well-defines the fundamentals between demographic segmentation and behavioral targeting or what he referred to as “goal targeting.” Steve talks about customer segmentation and Personas, the behaviors that you target or goals. This article focuses on web site content placement and reacting to your customers when to drive recurring revenue potential. If you are spending time creating customer segments and you are spending time creating goals for CMS targeting, why wouldn’t you leverage that knowledge to benefit from being able to recognize your customers when you advertise online as well? Let’s get into that … |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| When Doug Wintz gave us an inspiring article on the Ethics of Behavioral Targeting he offered a glimpse into what behavioral targeting could be like in the offline future. Transfixing our imaginations into the likeness of the futuristic worlds painted by author Philip Dick, Wintz he helped us to question interactive advertising beyond the banner. But there is a big leap between the 728x90 banner and the beams of light that could be reading our retina in the shopping malls. Is it ethical to behaviorally target? Is the internet really free? Is it ethical to target consumer behaviors like catalogers do? Right now there is kickback on behavioral targeting, but that doesn’t stop publishers and networks from offering it or from advertisers from buying it. Where is the difference between what we have come to accept offline and what we protest online? If Behavioral targeting has the ability to present a user with advertisements that are relevant, is there still an ethical violation? Answering these questions and more defines the ethical debate… |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| On Tuesday, Google announced the wider rollout of their beta Pay-Per-Action advertising program, originally launched on a limited based in June 2006. Available only in the United States, CPA on Google will enable AdSense publishers to choose from a selection of ads and will have more flexibility in promoting the ads, according to Google. Pay-per-action advertising is a new pricing model for Google that will allow advertisers to pay only for completed actions that such as a lead, a sale or a page view after a user has clicked on an ad. Over the last couple of weeks, Google has been taking incremental, but significant steps towards engaging advertisers with programs that recognize their need to be more flexible and receptive to the demands of the market. So what’s next. Are they going to step up and answer the industry’s other calls? Do they recognize the onslaught of media dollars waiting to flow in with the addition of… |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| Ted Shergalis is chief product officer and founder of [x+1], and he contributed Marketing Groups: Closing the Great Divide to iMediaConnection this morning. What concerns me is the generalization with which he describes the silo organizational structure between his clients’ external marketing (media buying and advertising) and customer marketing (web site management, etc.). Not only does Ted confirm that the teams working on these two functions are usually physically separated but so too are the technologies that they use. Is that to suggest that the heads of marketing in those organizations are failing in their coordination of these two groups? Or is this about integrating two kinds of technologies together that are already in place? Ted has some ideas and so do I … but are we on the same page…? |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| Yesterday, the IAB presented congress with an appeal to reconsider "spyware" legislation that would potentially hinder e-commerce and information exchange online. Dave Morgan, who is the founder and chairman of TACODA and chairman of the IAB Public Policy Council was quoted by Online Media Daily as telling congress that “…the proposed "Spyware" legislation could curtail consumer choice and hinder a key economic engine to Web growth.” The IAB has hired lobbyist Mike Zaneis, a guy with moxy and the experience to gain influence in congress on the difference between beneficial technologies and malicious ones. But where are the first party cookie beneficiaries in all of this...? |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| Eric Porres is a partner with Underscore Marketing and he wrote a 6-page In-Focus piece in iMediaConnection today about behavioral targeting entitled: “ How to Conquer an Inventory Crisis.” Eric is a media guy and he knows the space pretty well, moreover he is a BT guy and has made some contributions to the industry on the topic in the past. But this time around where you would hope for some meaty substance and take-away advice, Eric comes up a bit short. Reactionary with Insight... |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| Michael Rosenberg has provided us with a good foundation to use for evaluating and selecting lead generation partners in his Lead Gen 2.0: The New Opportunity from MediaPost’s Performance Insider. Michael illustrates some fundamental requirements that we should be demanding from a solid lead generation partner including: (1) 24/7 real-time reporting (2) Access to multiple verticals (3) Access to and ability to leverage “your” customer once you acquire them (4) Low transaction costs But when you work with a lead generation ... |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| A non-so-funny thing that is going goes on at advertisers, people don’t always take the time to look within and understand how other people do their jobs to figure out how to best work together. “Am I doing my job the best way I can? Is she doing things that I can learn from to improve how I work? God-forbid I expose my bad habits to someone.” Peers seem to fail to look over their shoulders to see how each other do their respective roles. Everyone wants to look competent. Comparing yourself to someone to see whether you are doing something well or efficiently seems to be a sign of weakness. More so, exposing your processes to your manager for scrutiny or comparison or for suggestive advice is like going to the urologist or gynecologist, it can result in the most humiliating examination. This is not about reduction in workforce. It’s about having the right people doing the right work the same way. Fostering an environment within which people feel comfortable to collaborate and interact is half the battle. Cross-product training empowers people to feel like they not only understand the rest of the company they work for but that they can represent it. The one-on-one meeting should not be a manager asking the employee “what can I do for you?” it should be “here are things I can do to help you improve…” |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| Go-Bennett Zucker, a great article on Three Steps to Targeting Nirvana wherein he defines behavioral targeting today and outlines three requirements - an open marketplace, an open technology platform and what he characterizes as ‘an open mind.’ But what he is missing are two more requirements - ad serving that agnostically re-targets with BT and ad serving that Integrates. Bennett does a good job of convincing us that behavioral targeting should be advertiser-managed and not managed by publishers. Auction-derived inventory allows for the hand-picking of exposure, but not necessarily when the inventory is all network-derived. Let’s look at other technologies that Bennett missed which can help us calibrate a targeting weapon that will shoot the ducks in the barrel that a Right Media or AdBrite can provide… |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| As I sit on a plane tonight, I look around and think to myself about all of the people with me. I think about the things they are doing to occupy themselves and the places that they will go after the plane arrives. What are their behavioral types? How will this flight impact their behavior when they get off? There are three kinds of people on this plane and they are being bombarded with targeted ads the entire time they are onboard. Is it effective? What about when they get off the plane? Any impact? What if you could know that they had just gotten off of a plane and could distinguish them as a recent traveler while advertising online? You could target people with relevant ads anywhere across the web based on the fact that they had just visited at least two airports, sat on a plane, breathed re-circulated air, dealt with delays, cabs, parking lots, traffic jams, deadlines, hotels and the pressures and annoyances of travel. Anyone of those experiences can be used for behavioral targeting over the next 12 to 24 hours with a HUGE possibility of advertisements… |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| Why do I link to John Chow dot com? There are many blogs that I follow. Tom Hespos, Brad Berens and John Chow dot com just to name a few. John’s blog covers a million different topics pertaining to technology, and he is a full-time blogger. It would seem that he makes his living running his blog at this point and he is prolific in sharing with people how he does it. But he also gets access to a lot of beta tools and information that would not otherwise be out on the so quickly. If you’re looking for a site that is off-color a bit but where you will also find good dirt on Google, Microsoft and... |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| [x+1]'s VP of product development, Howard Fiderer explains how to make consumer data actionable so that you can tailor users' experiences. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the company, [x+1] is the former Poindexter. Poindexter raised an eight-figure round of private financing in March of 2005 and used the funds to re-define. The conversion from Poindexter to [x+1] was incredibly intelligent because it was a migration toward their core competency. Poindexter’s was not a tier-one ad server in the market. For example, their reporting capabilities were commonly considered to be sub-par. People are not going to change ad servers to adapt to targeting using actionable user data. But they will engage with a company focused on site-side targeting if it improve ROI. Even better to enable integration with other ad servers to stay in the game… |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| Wendy Davis talked about how a federal appellate court is getting ready to decide whether Google’s method of selling paid search ads violates trademark law. Are we no longer going to be allowed to buy the names of our competitors? Can you imagine if the entire concept of buying another company’s name on Google were to become a violation of trademark? Everyone buy’s their competitor’s name when they buy search. People use search engines to discover information not just about companies, but also about their competitors and critics. What would be the impact if we were relegated to only buying descriptors on Google. There go the rates… |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| I had a client call me today and ask, “Why do we need to use an ad server when we have Google Analytics?” He wasn’t talking about ad serving per se, but reporting. Google analytics enables an advertiser to measure counts like an ad server and site analytics software and yet the measurements yield very different results. In fact, the results are always lower, enabling clients to conclude that they must be more accurate. Why do we trust Google’s counts over certified ad servers and analytics software? Wasn’t it just like four months ago that their click fraud rates dropped after being 20-30% for a really long time? The best way to think of metrics across different web analytics programs is to think in terms of trends, especially when it comes to Google. You get what you pay for… |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| Robert Moskowitz introduces a piece on iMediaConnection reflecting industry insiders weighing in on whether behavioral targeting enables advertisers to spend less while getting better results. It’s a light a fluffy piece, citing insight from Bill Gross at Revenue Science, Emily Reilly at Jupiter Research and Dave Hallerman at eMarketer. The gist of it all is that Behavioral targeting allows an advertiser to ‘get more for their money,’ insinuating that they could reach goals with less dollars. Of course that assumption is off. When budgets are set, advertisers will spend those dollars ... |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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| So Bennett Zucker wrote us another good article but I think we need to look closely at some of his arguments.
And from the publisher ad serving perspective I think he is spot-on. Commoditized pricing is an indication that there is little differentiation in the space. If it is just about price, the players are driving head-first into the ground. If someone does not crack the forecasting code it will remain a one-way ticket. Google’s attempt to throw their hat into the game with their free publisher ad server for AdSense doesn’t even bother to take a swing at it. My conversations with them last year yielded that they too didn’t have that problem solved. So if you want to win, and maybe I can help you here....
In terms of advertiser ad servers, it’s not about features, everyone has them and that is why the prices have fallen. Rich media, video and larger file sizes will drive the CPMs back up. Integration and consolidated reporting will keep the leaders alive if they don’t stay asleep at the wheel... |
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| Posted by Ari Kaufman at | | | |
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