Author: Patrick Allingham

THE FUTURE IS RICH

It seems that rich media is the future for digital advertising; Forrester predicts almost 150% growth over the next four years. We’ve been speaking to iMedia Connection about the impact of rich media and what that means for brands.

Firstly it’s about aesthetics; brands are trying to find creative ways to cut through the noise online and deliver memorable experiences for consumers.

Secondly, it’s about using data to deliver bespoke experiences to consumers. Combining cross channel data to ascertain user insights, integrate them together and implement learnings into rich media advertising. This means providers can craft executions that leverage all aspects of a user’s profile.

Finally, it’s about collecting data from rich media. Building more of a picture about how a brand’s advertising strategy is working and what audience is responding.

The future of advertising will be about learning more about consumers and engaging with them creatively and building a better advertising strategy from this. Here’s the iMedia Connection article so you can read even more about how rich data is going to transform the display industry.

Mediaplex featured in Econsultancy PPC Bid Management Technology Guide

Econsultancy has compiled a buyer’s guide aimed at paid search advertisers and agencies who want to look for and compare new technologies in the global marketplace. It’s great to be featured in a guide from such a respected source as Econsultancy, and it helps to reinforce Mediaplex’s position in this competitive market space.

The guide starts by delving into current trends within the marketplace assessing the sectors strengths and weaknesses. This covers insight on topics such as ‘how mobile bolsters further growth in paid search’ and ‘how real-time bidding provides new opportunities for search marketers’. This overview of the sector is then followed by various vendor profiles, including Mediaplex.

In addition to being a great source of information for prospective technology buyers the guide will be of use to others, such as vendors and analysts. It provides a valuable resource for the industry and serves as a platform for people to understand more about how Mediaplex can be of benefit to them. Further details about the guide can be found here.

Khara Hutchinson is Mediaplex’s Media Campaign Operations Supervisor based in the US; she is also an advisor to the MOJO Demand Side Platform (DSP) product team. She recently spoke to us and was featured in Mediaplex’s US blog discussing real-time bid strategies on exchanges, misconceptions, and the client launch of MOJO DSP.

At a high level, what is a demand side platform(DSP)?

A DSP, at its heart, is a kind of ad server focused on engaging with real-time inventory sources. It has a predictive engine and the ability to automate bidding based on its algorithm’s ability to understand data and business criteria. The reason for using a DSP is to manage the sheer volume of both opportunities to bid and data required to execute a bid. These both require a high level of automation.

DSP should also have in place mechanisms for brand safety, targeting by geo, white and black lists, and segmentation. They should also support incorporating first-party and third-party data to drive the algorithmic engine.

In short, the most important aspect of a DSP is to use data to accurately predict the value of a user. And specifically, how do you value impressions and users on non-guaranteed inventory.

How do DSPs facilitate real-time bidding (RTB) on ad exchanges?

Ad exchanges have independent user interfaces you can go through. But if you’re trying to manage multiple exchange buys, a DSP not only enables efficiencies across multiple inventory sources but is the brains behind the operations. DSPs provide a way to programmatically buy in large numbers across multiple properties and enables efficiencies by aggregating workflow.

One benefit to a DSP is it supports a dynamic CPM on the exchange. This means that the winning bid pays the second-highest bid amount. The advantage to this is your winning price reflects the marketplace versus a set price by a publisher.

KING.COM COMPARES RETARGETING PLATFORMS WITH MEDIAPLEX

Campaign: Against the competition with King.com

Format: Mastering retargeting

Advertiser: King.com

Campaign Info: King.com, the world’s largest gaming site, wanted to test the best platform for retargeting. They specifically wanted to retarget money players with the aim of driving subsequent deposits from users who had already played with cash. To test the different platforms, King.com worked with Struq, a DSP without Mediaplex and a DSP with Mediaplex.

Results: The test showed that Mediaplex’s instant retargeting combined with the DSP was by far the most effective programme and returned CPAs over 4.5% lower than any other platform.

Click on the image below to learn more:

Alternatively, click this link: Mediaplex & King.com Case Study

IMPROVING ROI FOR DELL

Campaign: Improving ROI through instant retargeting for Dell

Advertiser: Dell with Mediacom

Campaign Info: Dell wanted to leverage Mediaplex’s market leading retargeting technology which can instantly establish and retarget micro-segments set by a combination of paid media interactions and direct visits to categorised content pages.

Results: Mediaplex devised a creative technology solution to enable unlimited creative versioning. Success came was achieved by removing the necessity for the agency to produce fresh creative. This was done by piping creative into pre generated banner ads already live on publisher sites, automating creative production.

Client quote: “We’ve all come across technologies to tag advertiser pages and follow these prospects around the web – what Mediaplex can do here is way beyond what you might imagine. We are retargeting display creative and deeplinks on a customer-centric basis according to business logic, responding to the interactions a browser makes with the paid media, across all digital channels, combined with every interaction a browser makes on Dell
content pages and transaction pages.

The significant step here is the ability to derive meaningful micro-segments from fact data in a profile database and respond to it instantly with creative which is pre-generated to the same granularity as the micro-segment. Sounds complex, it is but the client service team have deep experience across digital and execution is flawless. The funny thing is that Mediaplex offer this unique capability and call it standard adserving! It’s not really
adserving as you know it.”

Justin Barton
Mediacom, Associate Director EMEA

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Improving ROI for Dell

MEDIAPLEX ON EXCHANGE WIRE

Our omnipotent leader and country manager, Mr Robin Davies has today been featured on Exchange Wire, discussing why we should be re-thinking attribution and why the industry should be basing models more on statistical analysis.

We always have opinions and thoughts on how the market is progressing and it’s great to share these with a wider audience. Digital marketing is supposed to have solved John Wanamaker’s question: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” But the reality is that while digital media is strides ahead of “old” media in terms of accountability, there is still some way to travel before we can give brands a wholly accurate account of the multiple variables that influence people’s online purchase decision-making.

You can read more about the issue on Exchange Wire, and if you agree with us don’t forget to get in touch.