RevenueMantra Blog

Newer metrics for measuring ad effectiveness

shankar — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:07:36 +0000

Among the most popular metrics for measuring ad effectiveness have been –

Impressions – Number of impressions delivered on a campaign
CTR – CTR as we have discussed earlier is a percentage of impressions where a user clicks on an ad and is taken to the advertiser’s site
Sales – Actual sales generated by a campaign.

Newer metrics are now emerging. Among these are –

Instant Reaction–This metric measures where a user saw an ad and reacted immediately. This is an important measure because it resulted in enough interest on part of the user to stop his online activities and visit the advertiser’s site

Longer term impact – This is a measure on the mental impression an ad left on the user resulting in him/her changing behaviour.

How do we measure instant reaction and the longer term impact?

First let’s look at measurement of instant reaction.

Theoretically, the click is the best measure for instant reaction. However, since users do not click on ads all that often, a new set of metrics have been evolved. These are the effective click and the direct click.

An effective click is when, having seen an ad, a user enters the URL of the advertiser and visits their site. This is an effective click because though it is a not a click thru’, it effectively a click because the ad has cause the user to visit the advertiser’s URL.

A direct click is self-explanatory. It is when a user clicks on the ad and goes thru’ directly to the website of the advertiser.

When measuring effective clicks, one needs to distinguish between natural and paid leads. A natural lead is when a user clicks on the ad and goes thru’ to the advertiser website.

On the other hand, at times when a user sees an ad for a suitcase, he doesn’t click thru’. He enters a search string ‘suitcase’ into google which gives him a number of search results. Among these search result is the link to the advertiser website. The user clicks on this link and ends up visiting the same advertiser website albeit in a convoluted way. The credit for this visit will go to the paid marketing programs not to the banner advertising program.

Measurement of ‘Sales Lift’ is slightly more complicated but provides compelling results. It requires creation of two groups – one group to whom the ad is not served and the other to which the ad is served.

Sales out of both groups are compared. And the amount by which sales from the targeted group exceeds sales from the non-targeted group is the sales lift.

Sales lift is one of most powerful metrics of mental imprint an ad leaves on the consumer. It measure both the immediate and long-term influence.

Yield Optimization

shankar — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:51:31 +0000

Yield optimization (YO) is a method used by Ad servers to improve performance of a particular ad creative. The way this works is that the ad server identifies publisher impressions that a performing within the campaign parameters. It distinguishes performing impressions from non-performing ones.

The end objective of YO is to ensure that all creatives run on performing impressions. YO could be take a fairly basic as keeping track of CTRs for a site and optimizing creatives based on it. It could take more sophisticated forms feeding campaign specific parameters like time of day, publisher, ad size etc into an automated system allowing the system to take the decision of where best to place the creatives.

Factors to be kept in mind regarding YO

YO Support

Not all ad servers support YO, though. Many ad servers assume that if you have bought certain inventory, it is an informed decision. The premise therefore is that if you have taken a considered decision to buy certain inventory, it has got to be performing inventory.

Ads exchange and YO

The average ad exchange supports high-level YO. This is so because you are buying inventory on the fly. It makes sense, therefore for you to know whether an impressions is going to give you the required mileage or not.

Learning Curve

Automated or machine learning based YO systems need time to learn. In such systems, in the initial stages some impressions will be lost to learning. In the initial stages of the campaign, the ad server will place creatives with a number of publishers and slowly, based on learning, weed out non-performing impressions. We would eventually get there, but there will be a period of non-performance or more likely, low performance.

To sum up YO is a wonderful tool that an advertiser has. The use an effectiveness of YO to a particular campaign is essentially about understanding an ad server – features and functionally – in depth and harness these features to get optimum results.

Gifts and online advertising

shankar — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:54:46 +0000

An industry which virtually almost completely depends on online advertising is the ‘Gifts industry’. Each one of us has faced the dilemma of what gift to buy a friend, a spouse, a child…Especially if the gift has to be given annually – an anniversary gift to a spouse, for example. It is a huge challenge to select a gift that will appeal to the recipient. Ask a married man how he tears at his hair when he has to decide an anniversary of birthday gift for his wife!

But we don’t need to panic. The internet not only helps you select a gift, but also helps you with the gift idea! Just enter Gift Idea into google and you’ll find the following keywords –

Gift idea for men
Gift idea for her
Gift idea for dad
Gift idea for boyfriend…

The list is endless…

The process of buying a gift starts and very often ends on the internet. There are so many gift ideas that exist out there that we don’t know of. And only the way to get creative with gifts is to throw a generic search string and spend time on the web looking at various gifts and gift ideas that the internet throws up.

Online advertising in context of gifts goes beyond the conventional. It helps a person get creative. It provides gift ideas. Can I get as many gift ideas in a shop as I do on the web? Certainly not! In fact, buying gifts in the shop is dying. This is the one industry where the internet has virtually overrun retail (not obviously including online retail).

Advantages of the Gifts online are numerous –

Gift Ideas

The internet provides a plethora of ideas for the user. It is a part of the creative thinking process that is employed in arriving at a gift type

Targeting

Like I mentioned earlier, online gifts is a part of our psyche. In this scenario, sharply focused targeting is possible within this market. For example we have –

Gifts for children under 10

Gifts for children under 10 in India

Gifts for children under 5

Gifts for children under £1

The choice of keywords is limitless.

Demographic

It is possible to target virtually every demographic in the gifts market. Gifts for men over 50 in the UK for example.

Choice of keywords

There are innumerable keywords around the word ‘gift’ available. And this is a constantly growing list because a number of retailers are either launching a gift range of re-positioning existing items as novelty gifts!

I would love to hear from others on some interesting gift related keywords!

Online Lead Generation in finance markets

shankar — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:54:25 +0000

In an earlier post, I had spoken of the finance industry and online advertising. I had mentioned how credit card companies, banks etc rely heavily on the online to increase registrations, get new customers, create emailing lists etc.

Another area where Finance companies find online advertising handy is generating leads in a debt management (DM) context.

In countries like the UK and US the personal debt figures are staggering. Let me quote some figures –

Total UK personal debt at the end of May 2010 stood at £1,460bn. Individuals owe more than what the whole country produces in a year.

Total US consumer debt stands at nearly $2.5 trillion dollars. That works out to be nearly $ 8,100 in debt for every man, woman and child that lives here in the US.

It’s a no brainer, therefore, as to why debt management companies thrive in these markets. It is quite safe to assume that across the UK/US, there would be a number of families who have fairly substantial sums in outstanding personal debt. For example, the average household debt in the UK is £ 8,716/-.

UK and US are, therefore, very fertile markets for DM companies. The average DM company would be in perpetual quest of good leads. And given the fact that debts are endemic to these markets, DM companies would be looking to target virtually every household with a DM message.

The challenge here is to get a ‘good lead’. A good lead is one that not only has accurate information but represents an individual who needs immediate help and is willing to engage.

DM companies look to target on a regional basis with a ‘I am a local company’ message. Thus you have a campaign run by a prominent UK based DM organization that targets based on postcode.

Lead generation in the DM market can be done in two ways –

A Company specific lead generation campaign
A generic lead generation campaign

Let me explain these two models in detail.

Company specific Lead Generation campaign

In this scenario, a DM company contracts directly with a network to generate leads specific to their need. For example, therefore, a DM company might want leads that fulfil the following criteria-

Debt > £/$ 5,000
More than 3 unsecured loans
Disposable income per month £/$ XXXX

In this situation, the DM company provides the creatives to run the campaign and works closely with the network to monitor quantity and quality of leads.

A generic lead generation campaign

The seriousness of the debt problem and the opportunity it represents has spawned a market of ‘Lead Generation companies’ in the UK/US. Such organizations generate leads fulfilling certain generic criteria using a wide variety of methods, online being one of them.

In this situation, the Lead Generation company runs a banner campaign targeting individuals with debt problems. Leads generated from such campaigns are sold to DM companies.

While online advertising has gained firm root in the financial markets, there still is a huge untapped market in areas like Debt Management. The more focused targeting that networks can do the better they’ll be able to monetize these opportunities..

Healthcare and online advertising

shankar — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:51:32 +0000

Much like other markets, the healthcare industry has come to rely increasingly on the ‘online’ for advertising. The shift from traditional advertising to online is as dramatic in healthcare.

Healthcare online takes many forms –

Hospitals
Pharmacies
Non-prescription medicines

Among the most popular ‘healthcare’ products is ‘Weight loss’ and ‘Teeth Whitening’. The number of campaigns I would have run in these areas is simply not funny. At an average I have had requests for these campaigns once every quarter. Budgets on these campaigns are not to be scoffed at either. About 6 months ago, I had a weight loss campaign in US and UK with a budget of US $ 15,000 in each geography. And these were pre-pay campaigns i.e. where the client paid us in advance!

This tells us two things –

The demand for these types of products and services, and,

The efficacy of online advertising on these campaigns

My observations are borne out by statistics on online healthcare advertising –

75% internet users research health online
75% of users with a chronic health condition confirmed that online research influenced their decision

An integrated approach is a sine qua non for successful health care campaign online. An integrated approach includes –

Search – Paid and Natural
Social – Blogs, networks…
Videos – display and pre-roll
Display – Rich media, banners
Email – in house and 3^rd party emails

A relatively new product/market that has spawned is ‘Medical Tourism’. Medical tourism is about people travelling abroad to get their illnesses treated. Popular medical tourism destinations are India, parts of Europe etc… Enter ‘Medical tourism’ in Google and the results run into innumerable pages.

Benefits of online advertising in healthcare

Ability to Target

Sharp targeting is very much possible in healthcare. In Weight loss for example, targeting can be females in the age group 18 – 35 living in the UK. Suited to this targeting the average network can rustle up highly relevant inventory to get the message to the target market resulting in actions – registrations, purchases etc

Ability to Engage

By their very nature they engage their viewer. How does this sound – 1visit, 1 hour, 0 side effects, pain free, instant result! Holds your attention doesn’t it?

Ability to interact

Healthcare websites are usually high on the interaction quotient. Interaction can be via phone, email, videos etc…

Like any other form of online advertising, online healthcare ads lend themselves to measurability, affordability and accountability.

Do I need to justify online healthcare advertising any more?

The Auto industry and online advertising

shankar — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 10:31:13 +0000

Over the years, the auto industry has dramatically shifted ad budgets from print and TV advertising to online advertising. Online ad spending within the auto industry which was US $ 1.4 Billion in 2005 rose to $ 2.7 billion in 2007.

I remember having read somewhere that the auto buying process begins and often ends on the internet. General Motors which has an annual ad budget of US $ 3 billion spends 50% + on online advertising.

Online auto advertising isn’t only about banner advertising – it encompasses gaming, search, mobile and a broad array of interactive applications.

Much like property advertising, the prospective buyer will look for cars in dealerships which are local to him. Hence a search string like ‘ used cars in Reading’ would be a keyword worth purchasing for Car dealerships in Reading.

Some buyers are, however willing to go that extra mile to get a good deal on a really good car. Hence a search string like ‘Cheap used Nissan cars’ will throw up a wide array of results and hence will be as sought after keyword.

A number of websites offer free online advertising to potential sellers. Benefits of such free online advertising are –

That it’s free J - This really is the case; the advertiser really doesn’t pay anything to advertise

Search – The prospective buyer can search for the car he/she is interested in by entering the relevant details like make model etc

Space – Such advertising usually allows fairly large amount of space to advertise. This is obviously in contrast with print/TV advertising where both space and time are limited

Provide additional information – By logging into your account you could manage your account effectively by providing website links and any other relevant details

www – Given the high accessibility of the internet, a car dealer can get customers from far flung areas

Apart from buying/selling cars, car valuation services are also available online. Enter the search string ‘ what is the value of my car’ in Google and you’ll get a whole host of car valuation websites.

Much like the property market, the only reason one goes to the dealership is to test drive the car. The internet provides complete information in every respect. The prospective buyer can, therefore, spend a few days on web research before visiting a few dealerships to view, test drive and select a car!

Property and Online advertising

shankar — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 23:26:25 +0000

The next in my series of industry-wise online advertising, I am going to discuss property and online advertising.

Much like recruitment and finance, property has also adopted the internet quite some time ago. Different real estate companies have their own websites on which properties being sold/let by them are advertised. Depending upon the geographic reach of the estate agent, a post code search can be done to generate a list of properties in a particular area.

Apart from the real estate companies themselves, there are also property portals that provide links to different property related websites. They also provide generalized information on the property market.

The moment someone decides that he / she needs to buy/let properties, the first action taken is to do an appropriate google search. For example, therefore, if I am looking for properties in Kingsbury in North London, I would enter ‘ Properties in Kingsbury’ as my google search.

The number of keyword choices in this property related online advertising is phenomenal. And since every property dealer wouldn’t want every keyword, the cost of keywords would be lower compared to keywords in any other market where a keyword has national relevance. For example every estate agent wouldn’t want to buy the keyword ‘properties in Reading’… while virtually every credit card company would wish to buy ‘ Cards with 0% interest’…

Property advertising is extremely useful. As a potential buyer, I can spend a few hours on my PC surfing different property sites, zeroing in on the actual properties that interest me. Having found a property of interest, I can then drill down, view the property on the website and, if necessary, speak with the estate agent and book a viewing appointment.

Use of online for property is not merely in context of buying/letting properties. It is also in context of research –

Average property cost in a certain area

Average sale price of properties in a certain area

Movement of properties prices in inflationary / deflationary times

Establishing whether or not the fundamentals of an area are strong vis-a-vis the property market

There is no limitation on ‘type’ of property one could advertise online. Starting from a flat to a mansion all types of properties can be advertised. This is contrast with recruitment, where we had agreed that very senior positions are not amenable to online advertising.

As of now, I see no disadvantages of online property advertising. The one thing you can’t do online is view the property! And there is no substitute for actually visiting and seeing the property. But viewing is done only after a very intensive due diligence over the internet on factors surrounding the decision.

All in all, property and online seem to be ‘made for each other’. With passage of time, usage of the internet for property buying/letting will increase. And more refinements will make it even more worthwhile to spend time on the net before actually rambling around the area one wishes to consider for a potential move.

Recruitment and online advertising

shankar — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:46:05 +0000

It is a cliché to say that online advertising has really taken off. It has now moved beyond the realm of banner advertising. Today we have video advertising, pop-ups, pop-unders, interstitials, supertitials etc.

I often wonder whether how online advertising came to be – did a specific industry think of online advertising which then snowballed into an online advertising movement, or is it the other way around. It’s a chicken and egg situation isn’t it?

The reason for me pondering along these lines is the manner in which some industries are synonymous with a strong internet presence. Finance is one. Recruitment is another. For quite sometime now, both finance and recruitment have had a very strong online presence. Today if one is looking for a job, the first step to take is to get online and visit different websites. Likewise, with different financial products. For example, if I am looking for a credit card with 0% interest, the only thing I do is enter ‘ 0% credit cards’ as my search string in google.

Yesterday, I had discussed ‘The Finance sector and online advertising‘. Today I’ll dwell on Recruitment and online advertising.

It has been proven time and time again that online advertising has an incredible ability to engage with the audience. This ability to engage is unmatched. Various studies have revealed that over 70% job seekers applied for jobs found online. Of these over 65% managed to get interviewed and over 55% of those interviewed actually landed the job! Amazing isn’t it?

Usage of online advertising for recruitment has also moved up the value chain, as it were. Earlier recruitment online was about search and pay-per-click. This is now graduating to a branding focus using online, CV database searches, use of microsites etc.

Advantages of online recruitment

Cost

Sticking a vacancy on your website costs nothing. Posting a vacancy on a job board costs a few hundred $s or £s. Contrast this with using a recruitment agency who you pay approx 25% of the annual wage or the thousands of $s or £s you pay for an ad in a national newspaper and you immediately realize the cost saving of online recruitment.

Quick responses

If a vacancy is put up on a job site in the morning, you have responses by lunchtime. And if the vacancy is posted on the correct jobsites, you could end up hundreds of CVs in hours. Literally.

Better chances of success

To see a print ad, the candidate has to see the ad on a particular page or a particular newspaper. In case of online, the ad is there on the net perennially allowing the user to visit and revisit the page.

Large audience

Following on from the earlier point, you have an audience of millions. In case of print advertising, the audience would be in thousands.

Easy to Execute

Sticking an ad on your website or on a jobsite is child’s play and it happens in seconds. If a vacancy arises today, I can create a job description and post it in hours and have responses by end of the day. Print advertising will take a few days before it appears.

Disadvantages of online recruitment

Online recruitment is not all a bed or roses, however. There a demerits.

Inundated with candidates

It is as easy to respond to an ad as it is to post an ad. Potential candidates will happily post their CVs, notwithstanding the fact that they may not necessarily fit the role. The recruitment guy, therefore, has quite a job sifting thru’ the CVs separating the grain from the chaff. That this has spawned an entirely new industry of ‘creating good CVs’ is quite another matter.

Not all roles are amenable to online advertising

Head-hunters/recruiters have a definite role. There a jobs that a difficult to fill where the head-hunter clearly adds value. A company that is looking for a CXO level person, would rarely advertise online. A potential CXO would, in any case, not look at a Monster for potential openings!

Recruiters should use online recruitment prudently. A clear understanding of where it will work and where it won’t would help select a recruitment model – online or otherwise- which would give best value for money.

The Finance sector and online advertising

shankar — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:53:21 +0000

Total online advertising across sectors is, today, well in excess of £ 2,000 million. Of this paid for search accounts for roughly 55 % of the total share, display around 20% and the rest goes to classified advertising.

Among various sectors, the finance sector has very quickly embraced online advertising. If we think about it, a lot of financial transactions – insurance, banking, credit cards – are done on the web. Speaking for myself, all my insurance decisions, credit card decisions are transacted on the web.

The finance sector accounts for roughly 10% of the online advertising pie. Preceding the finance sector in online advertising are recruitment (predictably), automotive, property and technology.

Within the finance sector, the retail sector has particularly adopted the internet. Account Management and transactions, online bill-pay, banking services, stock trading etc are routinely done over the web.

An effective internet strategy has yielded a number of benefits to the financial sector –

An increase in account balances

Better levels of customer satisfaction and retention

Increased online trading

Among the different demographics the 55 + category have been demonstrated to be particularly keen to shop for online financial products. They were most likely to shop for insurance – home, car and contents, investment products, stocks, pensions etc. A very high percentage of the younger demographic (80%+) bought car insurance on the web.

The finance shopper is very clear about what he/she is looking for. This is evidenced by the observed usage of very specific search keywords. For example, home and contents insurance London. This is in a sense a boon to the online marketers as they have a much larger selection of keywords to select from. They can also have a more sharply focused offering – offering home and contents insurance to Birmingham for example.

The average network would baulk at the idea of taking on a CPL campaign. But when it comes to a finance campaign, networks are open to the idea of a CPL campaign. I recall running a CPL campaign for a finance company that was looking to get in registrations. The campaign had a strong story backed by compelling creatives which resulted in good leads for the customer, automatically resulting in ROI objectives being achieved.

Demystifying terms and terminologies (Contd)

shankar — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:42:37 +0000

Landing Page

The page on a website to which a user is taken after click thru’ an advertisement. This page could be any page on the website; but it is usually designed to provide additional information on the product/service being advertised.

Non-remnant Inventory

Inventory on the website which is sold directly by the publisher. This is as opposite to ‘remnant’ or unsold inventory which is sold thru’ 3^rd parties.

Opt In

A process whereby a user voluntarily agrees to receive emails on a subject of interest to him/her.

Opt Out

This is the opposite of Opt In - process by which user decides to stop receiving emails.

Pixel

Short for picture element (Pixel), a pixel is a measurement representing a single point in a graphic. Most ad units are measured in pixels such as the common 468 pixel x 60 pixel sized banner.

Pop Behind

A type of advertisement which appears in a smaller browser behind the current window. These types of ads tend to be dearer as their visibility is higher and considered less irritating to the user.

Pop Up

A type of advertisement which appears in a smaller browser when the normal web page is loaded. These types of ads tend to be dearer as their visibility is higher. But they are considered irritating to the user.

Rank

A website’s or an ad’s standing in relation to other websites/ads. Website ranking is serious business. One of the better know ‘ranks’ is Alexa. Based on the ranking of the website, inventory can be cheaper or costlier. The higher the rank, the costlier the inventory.

Remnant Inventory

Advertising space that remains unsold. It is often sold just before it is about to be used owing to which it is considerably cheaper than non-remnant inventory.

Return Visits

The number of times a visitor re-visits the same website.

Rich Media

Rich Media is a type of advertisement medium that included richer graphics, audio or video. While GIF ads are static, Rich media ads often enable users to interact with the banner. Rich Media banners are created using HTML, Shockwave, flash…

ROC

ROC – Run of category – is used to define a campaign that will run within a category within a network. For example, therefore, we may have a campaign for weight loss running only within the fashion and healthy living category - i.e the campaign will run exclusively on fashion and health living websites only. ROC is clearly a costly campaign to run than a RON campaign.

ROS

ROS – Run of Site – is subset of ROC, where the campaign will run only specific named sites only. ROS is dearer than an ROC campaign.

Rotation

When one is running a campaign, it could be a one banner campaign which runs only one banner at a time. Or it could be a rotational tag campaign where different banners are served cyclically.

Skyscraper

A skyscraper is an ad unit type which is much taller than other ad unit types. It takes up vertical space but very little horizontal space.

Supertitials

A rich media ad that downloads in the background while a visitor is reading content on a webs page. A browser window will be launched only after it has completely downloaded. Advertisers prefer this as they allow more interactive ads than the traditional banner ads. Besides as they preload in the background, they are less annoying than pop-ups or interstitial ads.

Unique Visitors

Total number of visitors to a website over a certain time period. While unique users or ‘uniques’ as it is often called in this business can be tracked using IP addresses, the most accurate way of tracking unique visitors is to require each visitor to login to gain access to the website.