Measuring Brand Activity through RTB

Harley Norrgren studied Statistics at University College London and after a two year tenure is currently heading up Infectious Media’s Analytics Team. Being with Infectious throughout their entire working relationship with RTB he’s had the opportunity to watch the space develop since the start of RTB’s European adoption.

If you’re spending large portions of your media budget on brand activity, you’ll want to ensure that you’re getting the best performance for your money, yet the effect of brand activity is typically hard to measure as it poses a few difficult questions to advertisers:

• What metrics can we use for measuring brand engagement?
• How can we get access to user level data from predominantly offline channels?
• How can we integrate cross-channel data to get a full picture of the effect of our branding spend?

It is our proposition that buying via RTB on Ad Exchanges makes brand advertising measurable and increases the accuracy of any direct response path to conversion analysis and attribution modelling. We currently create bespoke branding metrics (in conjunction with our data partners) and marginal attribution models, which help to give advertisers better insight into the effect of their brand spend and facilitate optimisation towards branding goals. These bespoke metrics are called ‘Brand Units’, and are a standardised unit of any combination of different brand measurements, such as exposure time or brand related search uplift, which can either be a proxy for conversion or reflect other incomplete path brand objectives.

Exchange generated impression level data feeds provide unique opportunities for data providers to integrate their data with unprecedented granularity. We are currently working with data partners to provide us with impression level exposure time metrics, enabling us to optimise towards advertising face time and to buy display in terms of view duration rather than per impression. The combination of engagement, search uplift and on-site activity density means that we can measure brand effect on a per user basis, rather than resorting to surveys, and optimise campaigns against these metrics in real time.

The unique user level insights generated from brand activity can be coupled with post brand engagement and ultimately conversion/post-conversion activities, allowing us to fit brand activity directly into the conversion path, as well as attribution models, providing advertisers with more insight about the path to conversion than was ever available before from a single channel.

One of the main considerations about running brand activity through exchanges is the perceived ‘remnant’ status of most inventory available. It’s important to remember that just because an impression is remnant, it doesn’t mean it’s of poor quality. Through the use of ad exposure times we can identify and optimise towards the best value Cost per Face Time inventory sources, giving advertisers more clarity and better value than direct buying could. Furthermore, the presence of private exchanges and the market wide increasing adoption of ad exchanges means that more and more ‘premium’ inventory is made available every day. Via exchange buying, adverts can be purchased on premium inventory on a per-impression basis and made measurable enough to get a stronger indication of the real value of each advert shown.

These insights represent a large step forward for a communication goal which is generally hampered by industry standard attribution models. We hope that the unprecedented feasibility of marginal attribution models and access to user level data means that more opportunities can arise for branding activity to be bought on exchanges and start to drive a shift away from historically retargeting heavy DR budgets.

For more information please visit http://www.infectiousmedia.com/index.php?page=our-products

Striking the Consent Balance

Rachael Morris is an Account Analyst at Infectious Media working on campaigns for clients in the telecommunications, technology, retail and travel sectors. In her day-to-day role, Rachael analyses large amounts of data and ensures campaigns meet their targets. Here she discusses issues around data privacy, recently brought into focus by the EU ePrivacy directive.

Images of Big Brother spring easily into the minds of a generation brought up on endless dystopia novels. We feel surrounded by governments whose desire to know all about their people is exceeded only by their fiendish organisation and ability to sift through reams of data almost instantaneously. Stories of leaked data abound*, growing ever more worrying as we realise just how much information we routinely put out into the world. And, much as we might like to say otherwise, this isn’t entirely unjustified: 90% of people have shared information with at least one site**. There is a lot of information out there about all of us. On the other hand, the sheer volume of data floating around is one of the very things that makes this sort of nightmare scenario so unlikely – the difficulty already involved in getting meaningful information about any given individual is only increased by the amount of noise that is now out there. Equally important is the fact that none of the information being made available is personally identifiable. It sounds like a small point, but the difference between the knowledge that Susie Johnstone was recently looking at flights to Italy and bought a bikini and the knowledge that computer 856076815463 did the same is huge.

Interestingly, the more people know about how the information about them is collected and what it is used for, the happier they are about it – after hearing details about behavioural advertising, 74% of consumers felt more comfortable with their data being used**. This kind of data and the ability to tailor the advertising served to someone’s needs and wants is what differentiates digital advertising from other forms, so it is vital that we reach some kind of consensus on what is and isn’t acceptable. The only way to do this is going to be opening a dialogue with consumers, asking their opinions and ascertaining exactly where their limits lie as well as making as much information as possible freely and easily available. Until consumers feel comfortable with the information we hold about them and how it is used, we will not be able to move forward and exploit the full potential of online advertising.

The recent EU ePrivacy directive heralds a change in the industry’s attitude to privacy. The requirement to obtain informed consent for all non-essential cookies will force advertisers into clear disclosure of the implications of a visit to their website. The difficulty lies in striking the appropriate balance – we do not want to adhere to the regulations at the expense of user experience. Over the next year, we will all need to work to reach a consensus on acceptable forms of consent, which best achieve this balance. As members of the IAB, Infectious Media is actively involved in policy development and best practice data usage in advertising, and we see this as a real opportunity for positive change.

*http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/27/playstation-users-identity-theft-data-leak

** Statistics from IAB’s September 2009 study, in partnership with Olswang.

The Antisocial Network

Hashmi Parmar is an Account Analyst at Infectious Media, responsible for strategy, set up and the day-to-day delivery and optimisation of client campaigns. Here she talks through some of her best practice guidelines around ‘network’ builds and optimisation.

In a business revolved around display advertising, one of the essential parts of getting a campaign to perform is to build an appropriate Network (a Network is a list of sites on which we choose to display our campaign adverts on).
Remember the phrase “Location, Location, Location”! Well, location can, arguably, play a major role in determining the success of a business. E.g. A clothes shop located on a high street will attract more customers than if it were located miles away from civilisation.

The same concept applies for online advertising. To get the best out of our campaigns, we need to locate our adverts on sites with high reach to our target audience.

Now we understand the importance of a Network, let’s look at how to build one. How do we decide which sites to add to our Network?

What not to do….

1. Rely only on standardised industry classification methods
2. Judge a site by its name
3. Classify sites once
4. Label sites- black and white
5. Adopt a “one size fits all” policy where you use one Network for multiple campaigns

Building Networks may seem simple, however, if you don’t get the basics right, it may be harder than you think!

What to do…

Start by answering these questions

• What brand safety measures should you take?
• Who’s the target audience?
• What are you trying to achieve? (e.g Conversions, Brand Awareness…)

Always bear in mind the answers to these questions while building your network.
Search for sites you can bid on, use keywords and categories.

CHECK THE SITE! Checking the content of the site is the simplest and most effective way of deciding whether or not it is appropriate for the particular Network you are building. Remember, if you label a site inappropriate for one Network, it could still be appropriate for another Network.

Now you’ve got the basics down continue building the Network with some smarter insights. What sites worked well in the past when similar goals were required? Could they still be relevant? Why would the audience be likely to convert? What sites are they likely to visit because of this reason?

Remember, be brand safe, reach your audience, optimise towards your goals. Get these right and you’ll get a network that works!