Tags containing: "metrics"

Banners or Trust Parasites? Let’s Focus on What Matters

November 7, 2014 Jason Kint, CEO – DCN

Like many in the media, I ended the day Wednesday reading Farhad Manjoo’s column on the Fall of the Banner Ad: The Monster That Swallowed the Web. My immediate take was that, although Manjoo’s overall premise about the problems with online advertising isn’t incorrect, he unfairly puts the blame on “the evil banner” perhaps just because it is visible; in the troubled world of online advertising it’s the one thing we can easily put a face on. However most things in digital are not that simple. Here, the real culprit lurks in the darkness and I believe Manjoo buried the lede; in fact, he says as much at the end of his article: “You can’t blame the web’s decline entirely on the usability nightmare perpetuated by banner ads.”

Industry leaders, including the IAB’s CEO Randall Rothenberg, are responding to Manjoo’s column with their own opinions (read Rothenberg’s In Defense of the Banner Ad) all expressing differing opinions and healthy dialogue. However, I believe that, as stewards of the future of a great industry that we’re still building, opinions that simply defend the status quo and broadcast “all is well” are irresponsible.

The banner didn’t swallow the web. The banner is simply a format, merely a pattern of pixels on the screen. Pixels can entertain, pixels can inform, pixels can influence. But pixels can’t single handedly gobble up the digital ecosystem. The shape and format of the pixels is the art on our canvas and has nothing to do with the challenges that Manjoo rightly points out. The banner is the most popular, and therefore most maligned, format so it’s the easy scapegoat but we’re foolish if we think the banner is the villain. If any other format replaces the popularity of banner ads, we’ll have the exact same issues unless we solve the real problems which Manjoo buried in the column.

So who or what swallowed the web? The trust parasites. The real problem is that, in a gluttonous race to easy short term revenue, the web breeds bad actors. Let’s break this down a bit:

Problem #1: The industry never constrained the supply of banners in a desperate attempt to grow as quickly as possible. Unlimited banners could be placed anywhere on a page, below a page, off a page, automatically refreshed, hidden under a pixel (where I grew up, we called this fraud).

Solution: Only when pinned against the wall have we now begun to address the roots of these problems with anti-fraud efforts and the move to transacting on “viewable impressions.” The mistrust in the supply chain has led to an imperfect market that has delivered great business opportunities for the intermediaries sitting in between the brand marketers and the brand publishers. Up to this point, the market has spawned hundreds of companies profiting from this arbitrage business. A number of these incumbents are attempting to abuse the transition to viewability as a tactic to garner short-term wins.

Problem #2: The industry has allowed any single banner to usher in dozens of third parties that provide little or no value for the marketer, the publisher and, most important of all, the consumer. One ping from an ad server often fires off dozens of tracking cookies and data collection beyond any consumer’s worst expectations. This has resulted in consumers trusting online advertising less than any other platforms whether print, radio, television or billboards.

Solution: Consumers still need a more simple and effective way to opt-out of third party data collection across digital media. It’s my belief that the Do Not Track setting in the browser is that solution if the industry would stop resisting progress on behalf of consumers.

Problem #3: The industry allowed the success of the banner to be defined by the interaction with it rather than the time in which it was exposed. As soon as the industry began to judge success and failure based on clicks, the creative artists left the room and the data scientists took over. Rather than marrying the art and science together in a powerful way that only the web can do, the banner became the greatest direct response vehicle in the history of media. With free flowing data and the lack of postage and printing costs of postal mail, advertising solved many problems for marketers. It’s worth noting that Rothenberg’s defense of the banner ad included a comparison in yield to direct mail. Point made.

Solution: Moving to metrics that actually measure the exposure of an ad impression. The significant discussion around time-based measurement is interesting and at Digital Content Next we’ll continue to explore the possibilities for the industry.

The banner is not the problem. It is a convenient target given its visibility to those of us in the industry who are frustrated with the state of digital advertising. We cannot afford to allow ourselves to focus on a symptom. We need to put our efforts into eradicating the underlying rot and constructing a viable digital advertising ecosystem that delivers sustainable revenue derived from effective marketing and consumer value.

Perspectives

Defining Bricks to Build the House of Time and Attention

October 29, 2014 DCN

This year may go down as one of the most pivotal years in the digital revolution as we transition into an AV world (After Viewability).

Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff-Davis and Chairman of the IAB did a terrific job earlier this month at IAB MIXX and in a WSJ op-ed reinforcing why viewability is critical, while also explaining the important work that still needs to be done. This coincided with the reconvening of the Blue-Ribbon Committee (which I served on in its first phase to define the standard). It also led to the MRC’s advisory to media, which included these important guidelines:

If an impression’s viewability can’t be measured, then it doesn’t mean it’s not viewable or worthless;
It is not realistic (or even possible) to expect 100% viewability so there needs to be a more a measured set of expectations during this complex transition. As Vivek stated, no other media has attempted this level of measurement.

Publishers can’t bear the cost of the entire transition and, as such, the agencies using this opportunity as a price-negotiating tactic are doing a great disservice to the industry, their clients and publishers. Additionally, any marketplace confusion is not helpful in establishing this new currency. It’s why a group of advertisers, agencies and media companies agreed on the standard of 50% of a display ad for a minimum of one second.

Let me illustrate why these points are essential in evolving viewability with a personal story: I have a bedtime routine with our two toddler boys where they can ask dad any question they want to. Any parent reading this will realize that dad often doesn’t know the answers to their questions. Last week, our five year old made some significant inquiries into the nature of bricks: What are they made of? Why are they all the same size? Why do they sometimes have holes in them? How are they so strong? And like many parents out there, after a kiss goodnight, I headed straight to Wikipedia so that I could have better informed answers ready at the breakfast table. It turns out bricks are the same size so that they fit in the mason’s hands and are interchangeable. The mason’s craft shapes these bricks into something useful and enduring.

Viewability is our brick. If we–marketers, publishers and everyone who serves their interests–don’t get it right and make it as strong as it can be, then our building will crumble. Our first go at building this digital landscape was built off of impressions defined by pings of ad servers. It turns out that those ads served weren’t viewable as much as 80% of the time. When technology improvements allowed us to see this problem, the need for a different standard for an impression became clear, preferably one not based on clicks and direct response metrics that undervalue the trust and equity of brand marketers and high quality content companies. The good work of the IAB, ANA and AAAAs has now given us a standard for our brick that is fair to everyone. Rolling it out won’t happen overnight and we all need to share equally in that effort.

But if we can agree that viewability is the brick, then what are we going to build? I believe the answer is the house of time and attention.

I was thrilled with all of the discussion and positive reaction to my column during Advertising Week on Why Attention is Worth More than the Click. Transacting on time was something that we discussed early on in 2012 as the natural next step of viewability and it is clear that, in the intervening years, progress has been made on this front. Here at Digital Content Next (formerly the Online Publishers Association), we conducted research among our members to examine time-based measurement and just last week we released a whitepaper “How time-Based Measurement is Grabbing Digital Publishers’ Attention,” which explores the results. We also had the opportunity to discuss the topic with industry leaders at a private member event.

And the evidence is clear: The time is right to build a more robust and resilient digital ecosystem in which we evaluate engagement and measure impact on something sturdier than crumbling clicks. Viewability is the brick from which we can build meaningful time-based measurement. This will require both strategic and technological changes. At DCN, we recommend that organizations reassess their measurement capabilities; implement viewability (if you’ve not already), report the total attention time on campaigns, whether advertisers ask for it or not; and equip ad operations and yield management teams with the tools to understand the value of the time your audience spends with your content. As Mike Donahue, EVP, 4A’s noted to me recently, this isn’t a quick fix but we know the steps: “Once we have the opportunity to see (viewability) nailed as a first step cross-platform currency, the sequential next step currency is engagement. Short of scalable, affordable neuro measures (of emotional response), time is the best surrogate to measure engagement.”

Innovation | Revenue

DCN Panel of Early Movers Sheds Light on the Evolution of Time-based Measurement

October 24, 2014 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

From the threat to cookies to inventory-glut, banner advertising was already in enough trouble when the dire statistics about viewability started to come in. In 2012, AdSafe Media found that, on average, 20% or less of all ads were in view for 15 seconds or more prompting the Media Rating Council (MRC) to issue a viewable impression advisory in November of 2012 aong with a call for the industry to develop intelligence around non-viewable ads. Though momentum was building. In June 2013, comScore still found that 54% of display ads were not seen at all, creating even more pressure on the marketplace to deliver solutions that factored in viewability.

And the industry responded. This March, the MRC lifted its advisory of viewability and industry interest in buying and selling on this metric began to heat up.advertisers became able to buy and sell display ads based began in earnest. The standard for a viewable online impression was set as 50% of its pixels remaining in-view for one continuous second or two for an online video ad. While there are differing opinions on where this bar should be set, a viewability standard is a solid start in developing digital advertising metrics that demonstrate effectiveness. Seeing an ad is certainly a step in the right direction given that the goal of advertising is to capture the attention of an audience long enough to make an impact.

So while viewability sets a baseline, many believe that that the true measure of ad-effectiveness is time-spent. Our research shows that 60% of premium publishers are already considering transacting based on time and 8% will begin testing it this year. And 4% of those participating in the research are already testing time-based measurement.

Among the early leaders are Gannett and FT.com, both of which participated in a panel on time-based measurement at a Digital Content Next members-only event on October 22^nd. The program featured a panel of experts that included Josh Schwartz, Chief Data Scientist at Chartbeat; Jonah Goodhart, Founder/CEO of MOAT; Daniel Rothman, US Director of Marketing & Insight at the Financial Times; and Steve Ahlberg, Vice President, Advertising Solutions and Product Management at Gannett Co. Inc. Ad Age reporter Michael Sebastian moderated the panel.

Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint noted in his opening remarks, “I’ve never seen a topic pick up this kind of momentum in the market. Viewability is part of our world going forward but time based measurement will absolutely be part of that future.”

Gannett was early on board for viewability, implementing validated impression measurement and guaranteed viewability in 2012. However, as Ahlberg pointed out, “We still have a long way to go before there’s value to everyone in the ecosystem. This problem has been going on so long that it has caused a lack of trust.” In fact, he predicts that it will be another 18 months before the advertising world is widely transacting on time. “Engagement isn’t something we see in DFP [DoubleClick for Publishers] right now,” he said, making the point that all of the components of forecasting, billing, etc. must be designed to incorporate engagement metrics, of which time-spent is a telling factor.

This summer, the Financial Times began to test a method of buying and selling inventory using time-spent. The company believes that viewability is a positive development, but that it doesn’t go far enough. During the panel, Rothman outlined FT research which found that the tipping point for ad engagement is not one or two seconds. “We can prove that five plus seconds matters,” he said. Ad recall, familiarity, association and consideration all get between 51% and 58% uplift at the five second mark according to Rothman. Thus, he is piloting a program in the New Year that will guarantee 100% viewability for five seconds. “We recognize that not all impressions are created equal. The research has proven that this is not opinion. This is fact. We need move the conversation on from quantity metrics.”

The FT works with Chartbeat, which got its start by providing real-time insights on content for editors and reporters. The editorial side of the house, according to Schwartz, “got it immediately. They want people to spend time with their articles; that’s why they write them. And, with the advent of viewability, it starts to matter to the business side of the house.” To his mind, monetizing on time better aligns both sides of the content business.

While Schwartz said he would be “highly surprised if the exact model that companies Gannett and FT are using right now is what we end up with,” he applauds the experimentation so that the industry can move towards metrics that provide value to the entire ecosystem. MOAT’s Goodhart cautions against counting on any publisher’s solution (or any single metric) dominating the industry. “It is a mistake to make it about one nuance of the idea of attention. We believe in attention, but we think it might be a combination of time and other things. We need to move people away from impressions and clicks, but give them options.”

Certainly, this transition away from CPMs will not happen overnight. At the FT, Rothman says that all of the agencies and partners they are working with “find this interesting and exciting” however they also hear that time-based measurement doesn’t fit in with how they are already buying media. “There’s a need for them to look outside their spreadsheets.”

Goodhart reports that, in just a matter of months, he has seen a huge shift in the understanding of viewability and finds CMOs are asking for it and that for 2015, he believes that a large number of agencies will “put a stake in the ground here.” And when that happens, Schwartz predicts that programmatic will take a big hit and that “publishers that redesign their sites around viewability are going to benefit.”

And, referring to the new Digital Content Next Research “How Time-Based Measurement is Grabbing Digital Publishers’ Attention,” Ahlberg said “For the five percent that said viewability that doesn’t matter, go back and tell your business leaders it is here. Educate your sales teams about the metrics that work and be confident in your story.”

Other coverage of this event and the related research:

Survey: 80% of Premium Publishers Want to Sell Ads Based on Time (Ad Age)
Online Publishers Are Serious About Selling Ads Based on Time (WSJ)
Survey: Publishers embracing shift to time-based metrics (Capital NY)
DCN: 80% Of Pubs Using Time-Based Metrics (NetNewsCheck)
80% of Publishers Interested in Transacting on Time: Digital Content Next Report (Chartbeat)

Perspectives

Evolving the Viewability Standard with Analytics

September 2, 2014 DCN

Back in October 1994, while we were at the movies watching Pulp Fiction and celebrating the illustrious career of Hall of Fame NY Giants’ Linebacker Lawrence Taylor, the very first “banner ad” was being served. The underlying client-server nature of that first transaction – browser request leading to ad server response – led to the inevitable: the widespread issue of discrepant impression counts.

Over the next decade, countless inefficient hours were spent dissecting log files and calculation methodologies in an effort to settle on a mutually acceptable final impress count for the purposes of measurement and billing.

Ten years later, the IAB published the Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines report, which clearly defined the “how and when” to determine valid impression counts. The definition reflected the first industry-wide move to establish a standard that emphasized proximity to an actual ad view as the trigger and basis for a valid impression count.

It should come as no surprise that it has taken another decade of maturity for the collective focus to shift to the next logical step: viewability .

The current viewability standard builds on the 2004 effort. The distinction between the two standards was brilliantly summarized by Yaakov Kimelfeld, chief research officer at Millward Brown Digital, as follows: “Until now the ad impression was, essentially, a mechanical event — the creative file being loaded on the Web page. The viewability standard transforms an impression into an opportunity to see event: something of inherent value to a brand, just as in traditional media.”

Most in the industry agree that viewability is a positive development. Even Rob Hof, Forbes contributor and tech writer, who described the standard as an “appallingly low standard,” in a Forbes piece on the topic, grudgingly admitted that it was a good first step although one that is “unlikely to be enough.”

The current viewability standard, while clearly nascent, serves an important purpose. It introduces a baseline criterion for and measure of accountability. At the end of the day, it is a means to a larger end: increased brand spend that better aligns with time spent online.

Viewability is not an all-encompassing, be-all-and-end-all metric, especially in the realm of digital video. The brand experience begins where viewability (as currently defined) ends. The good news is that with a strong analytics platform in place, brand marketers can capture and analyze, in great detail, the underlying dynamics of the consumer viewing experience throughout the entire duration of the video ad. This deeper view — beyond the viewability event — provides the insights that help uncover the true value, impact and cost of video placements.

It may well take another decade to reconcile the numerous challenges — both business and technical. As with the case of discrepant impression counts in the first decade of our industry, issues will inevitably surface as application and adoption of the new standard gains traction. For now, let’s ensure we don’t make perfect the enemy of good. After all, is there an adage that better reflects what is ultimately at stake in our quest for brand dollars than “out of sight, out of mind?”

As Managing Director of Tremor Video’s buy-side enterprise platform, Neeraj Kochar oversees sales, steers the marketing objectives, and anchors product development for the company’s VideoHub® DSP and analytics suite.

Prior to Tremor Video, Neeraj was the Managing Director of Programmatic at MAGNA GLOBAL, the strategic investment unit of IPG Mediabrands. In that role, he drove the development and application of programmatic buying to power smarter media buying and drive better client ROI. Previously, he served as Managing Director of Reprise, IPG¹s search specialist agency. Neeraj is a veteran of digital marketing and began his career in 1998 at online advertising pioneer DoubleClick. He has also held senior management positions at major agency holding companies, including WPP GroupM, Starcom MediaVest Group, and MDC Partners.