http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=list+of+online+ad+serving+tools&meta=&aq=f&oq=
http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/31873.htmlhttp://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=29
http://www.google.co.in/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATAPP10966989&id=rnikAAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=publisher+role+%3Epublisher+creative+placement,+publisher+campaign+setting,+publisher+keyword,+publisher+ad+trafficking,
http://champtec.googlepages.com/
http://www.1234-find-web-designers.org/marketing-specialists.html
http://www.googleopoly.net/googleopoly.pdf
https://www.google.com/admanager/login/en_US/features.html
https://www.google.com/adplanner/authorization/login?layout=false&redirect=https%253A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fadplanner&gsessionid=AgLwlDwJI5i6fwGRyDIlnQ
content network :
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=81
Atlas
http://www.atlassolutions.com/uploadedFiles/Atlas/Atlas_Services/Inventory_Management/Publisher_Tools/GettingStartedGuideforAtlasPublishers.pdf
Yahoo :
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/optimize/sales/sales_cam_setup.html
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/screenref/16537.html
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/nl_NL/legal/piterms.php
DoubleClick :
http://www.doubleclick.com/insight/blog/index.html
http://www.doubleclick.com/products/richmedia/index.aspx
http://www.doubleclick.com/insight/blog/archives/search-solutions/
OtherPages:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/09/adwords-101-setting-up-campaign-part-2.html
http://online-advertising-network.blogspot.com/2008/11/benefits-of-ppc-advertising.html
http://www.adoperationsonline.com/2008/11/11/trafficking-101-how-to-traffic-flashtalking-ads-in-doubleclick-dfp/
http://www.adoperationsonline.com/
http://interactiveadops.com/
http://interactiveadops.com/archives/93
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adwords/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adwords/3627022.htm
http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1455
http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1476
http://www.iab.com/index.php
http://www.clickz.com/
http://www.clickz.com/3490271
http://www.clickz.com/3625716
http://www.knexusgroup.com/tracking
http://www.businessballs.com/market.htm
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/44213/294909115.pdf?sequence=1
http://www.webmarketcentral.com/Agencies.htm
http://www.ego7.com/#pageID=579
http://www.serversidedesign.com/ppc-news.php
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018064.html
http://www.submitedge.com/index.html
http://blog.mywebgrocer.com/index.php/2009/01/
http://blog.madisonavenue.com/advertiserinformation/
http://www.netprofitstoday.com/articles/85/1/Contextual-Advertising-Alternatives-to-Google-Adsense/Page1.html
http://killeraces.com/z-list-ad-networks-affiliate-programs-and-more
http://www.adtags.info/features/an-introduction-to-online-marketing.html
http://www.247realmedia.com/EN-US/us/campaign-management.html
http://www.chmlsrucnoc.com/
http://www.mediamath.com/articles.html
http://www.promotionworld.com/marketing/article/EffectiveE.html
http://servicexen.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/online-advertising-effectiveness-measurement-part-9-of-9/
http://www.mastheadonline.com/news/2009/20090316717.shtml
http://www.opentracker.net/en/articles/hits-visitors-pageviews.jsp
http://www.jellyfish.co.uk/paid-search-ppc-specialists/pay-per-click-ppc
http://www.performics.com/about-us/who-we-are
http://www.zoommetrix.com/reporting/
http://www.mrweb.com/results/artsrch2009421215728.htm
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/
https://cache.trustedpartner.com/docs/library/000297/News/PublishingWhitePaper.pdf
http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html
http://advertising.haoask.com/
http://www.jiad.org/article117
http://xonmarketing.com/2007/09/05/dont-let-the-last-cookie-crumble-your-campaign-2/
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2006/08/competitive-intelligence-analysis-metrics-tips-best-practices.html
http://www.marketingevolution.com/downloads/industry_related/me_white_paper.cross_media_methodology.pdf
http://www.slideshare.net/qsirnawaz/brand-advertising
http://directory.excite.co.uk/business/marketing_and_advertising/internet_marketing/marketing_services
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.printEdition&art_send_date=2003-11-4&art_type=13
Ad Trafficking
http://www.blogcatalog.com/post-tag/learn+ad+trafficking/
http://www.blogcatalog.com/post-tag/learn+ad+trafficking/
http://www.trafficsolution.com/pub_terms.html
http://www.invesp.com/blog/seo/top-15-site-analytics-tools-to-help-optimize-your-site.html
http://technotarget.com/find-out-who-is-visiting-your-site-website-traffic-tools/
http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/adtraffic/
http://www.google.com/Top/Business/Marketing_and_Advertising/Internet_Marketing/Traffic_Measurement/
http://techmagazine.ws/track-website-traffic-40-great-tools/
Search Engine Optimization :
http://seo101blog.com/2007/06/27/seo-vocabulary/
http://www.weseo.com.au/seo-onsite-optimisation-website-optimisation
http://www.magical-seo.blogspot.com/
http://www.searchforecast.com/
http://www.naturalsearch.co.in/seo.asp
http://www.semexpertise.com/google-analytics/
http://blog.performics.com/search/search_marketing_strategy/index.html
http://www.seroundtable.com/
http://www.thesemblog.com/search_engine_marketing/index.html
Standard Placement Sizes : http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=imagesamples.html
Advertising Terminology :
http://www.rethought.net/glossary.htm
http://www.webtrendslive.com/Resources/WebAnalyticsGlossary.aspx
http://www.valueclickmedia.com/pub_display_glossary2.shtml
http://www.adglossary.com/
http://www.netprofitstoday.com/articles/154/1/Glossary-of-Internet-Marketing-Terms/Page1.html
http://www.ultimatesitepromotion.com/free-dictionary-online-marketing-terms.htm
http://www.opentracker.net/en/support/faq/definition_faq.jsp
http://www.davechaffey.com/E-marketing-Glossary
http://en.mimi.hu/marketingweb/insertion_order.html
http://www.glossarist.com/glossaries/business/management/marketing.asp
http://www.acromediainc.com/glossary_interactive_web_development
http://www.smartbiz.com/article/view/1257/1/54
http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/
http://www.myadbase.com/cgi-bin/terminology.cgi
http://www.marketing-online.co.uk/glossind.htm
http://www.themediateam.com/lib.htm#libGeneral
http://www.nielsenmedia.com/glossary/
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci211535,00.html
http://www.udel.edu/alex/dictionary.html
http://econsultancy.com/reports
Digital Marketing, Privacy & the Public Interest : http://www.democraticmedia.org/current_projects/privacy/adwatch_archive
http://www2.aaaa.org/Portal/Pages/default.aspx
Web Analytics :
http://www.bruceclay.com/web_analytics.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics
http://webserviceswiki.org/Website_Analytics
http://www.webanalyticsworld.net/2008_05_01_archive.html
http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/
http://www.webtrendslive.com/Resources/WebAnalyticsGlossary.aspx
http://webanalyticsindia.net/blog/2008/08/future-trends-kpi-online-travel-industry/
http://www.conversationmarketing.com/web_analytics/
Publishers report
http://www.mindbranch.com/Publishers-Profit-Contextual-R575-0002/
http://www.valueclickmedia.com/Publishers.shtml
http://top10.mangoxl.com/weblog/?p=16
http://www.marketingvox.com/untapped-online-ad-revenue-opportunities-await-publishers-037815/
http://www.mosaictraffic.com.au/services_publisher.html
http://www.lucidmedia.com/blog/tag/publishers/
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2008/07/09/increase_online_ad_revenue_professional.htmhttp://www.adrants.com/subject/publishing/
http://www.abacusepublishing.com/section.asp?catid=99&docid=350
http://publishing2.com/2007/06/13/can-online-publishers-take-back-control-from-ad-networks/
http://www.digitalstrategyconsulting.com/publishers/
http://getanswers.co.in/faq
Online Ad Performance Report
http://www.affiliatefuel.com/advertisers/adterms.html
http://www.cybage.com/IndustryFocus/Cybage_InternetAdvertising.htm
http://www.capstonemedia.com/images/Third_Party_Ad_Servers.pdf
http://militarytimes.com/advertise/files/2009OnlineTCs.pdf
http://www.adify.com/
http://www.theadnetwork.net/
http://www.advmediaproductions.com/newsletter/NL_Online-Media-Planning-Buying.html
http://www.openx.org/
http://advar.tybit.com/content/faq
http://vadpay.com/publisher/faq.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance-based_advertising
http://www.everyone.net/private-label-email/agreement_ad.html
http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/performance-based-ads-to-increase-in-%E2%80%9809-7919/
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=134787
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3ic19bb33a86fd66429b985553373d44b0
http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/marketing-advertising/5293787-1.html
http://www.reelseo.com/ad-performance-eyeblaster/
http://www.adhub.co.nz/blog/2009/03/11/razor-fishs-digital-outlook-report/
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1113603/customer_acquisition_networks_interclick_rated_nations_fastest_growing_internet_ad/index.html
http://www.f5.com/f5world/articles/volume5/F5World05-adGame.pdf
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpindustry/advertising/advertising.html
http://www.articlearchives.com/marketing-advertising/marketing-advertising/33567-1.html?
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/442/RipOff0442589.htm
http://www.vinnylingham.com/special-report-profit-sharing-the-performance-marketing-model-of-the-future.html
http://www.signalversusnoise.com/internet-marketing-news-001/VN-4002-091707-02141692076482.shtml
http://www.masternewmedia.org/
http://www.marketresearch.com/browse.asp?sortby=dd&categoryid=291&g=1
http://ezinearticles.com/?Advertising-Writing-Tips-And-Strategies---Squeeze-Top-Performance-From-Your-Ads-In-All-Media&id=905553
http://searchenginewatch.com/3631079
http://www.libraries.uc.edu/research/subject_resources/business/research_res/marketing_us.html
http://www.mkhoj.com/home/terms/publisher-terms/
http://blog.rightmedia.com/category/right-media-ad-network/
http://blingads.biz/pub_terms.html
http://www.adexchanger.com/
http://www.agencysearch.ca/Publications.asp
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/tag/publisher/
http://www.addynamix.com/media/pw_publisher_tc.pdf
http://www.marineadvertisingnetwork.com/publishers-terms.php
http://www.advertisingz.com/terms.htm
http://www.sabione.com/view_category.php?intcatID=3
http://www.cpago.com/terms.html
List of Top Ad Networks
http://www.richsage.com/top-100-ad-network/
http://www.freakitude.com/2008/01/03/best-cpm-network-top-10-cpm-ad-networks-highest-cpms-program/
http://www.myseoblog.net/2008/02/29/lists-of-advertising-networks/
http://www.o-a.com/archive/0302/6841.html
Ad Formats :
http://www.clicksor.com/adformat/
http://adverlicio.us/
Ad Agency Informations -
http://www.adendum.com/search_engines/web_interactive_agencies.htm
http://www.thelogofactory.com/Advertising-Agencies_res.html
http://www.aef.com/on_campus/classroom/class_syllabi/data/2526
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=DZfFCVXd7xIC&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=%22directory+of+ad+agency%22&source=bl&ots=-HjNQE2tQ0&sig=aAqF172P8mvqfy5UGJfHR_mAZtE&hl=en&ei=uecLSr2mLcuXkQWDt7CzBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4
http://www.siu.edu/~aaf/agency.html
http://www.allbusiness.com/advertising-agencies/3061255.html?cmpid=40528120-1045945930-10051520-2899296220-1
Ad DELIVERY IN GENERAL
http://www.omstrategy.com/70/how-to-calculate-your-roi-return-on-investment
http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/3/
http://www.247realmedia.com/EN-US/tech/oas/57/EN_OAS57_IM-TechOverview_Rev-A.pdf
http://www.medbanner.com/technology.html
http://marissalouie.com/2008/10/17/172/ 10 types of targeting
http://www.o-a.com/archive/0008/2226.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_serving
http://www.thelogofactory.com/Advertising-Agencies_res.html
http://www.aef.com/on_campus/classroom/class_syllabi/data/2526
http://www.siu.edu/~aaf/agency.html
http://www.emarketer.com/Reports/All/Targeting_may06.aspx
http://js.docstoc.com/docs/951966/The-Buyers-Guide-to-Ad-Exchanges-and-Netowrks
http://www.allbusiness.com/advertising-agencies/3061255.html?cmpid=40528120-1045945930-10051520-2899296220-1
http://adgroups.com/
Banner
Bluestreak Video, DoubleClick, Eyeblaster, Flash, HTML, PointRoll, Unicast, Viewpoint, AdMotion, United Virtualities, Real
Media
Expandable/Out-of-Banner
Atlas, Bluestreak, DoubleClick, Eyeblaster, PointRoll, Unicast, Viewpoint, AdMotion, United Virtualities
Floating Ads
DoubleClick, Eyeblaster, Atlas, Viewpoint, AdMotion, United Virtualities
Approved Research Vendors
Dynamic Logic, Insight Express
atlas, bluestreak, doubleclick motif, eyeblaster, eyewonder, eyereturn, flashtalking, mediaplex, pointroll, tangozebra
http://www.coolwhois.com
http://www.aboutus.org/
http://www.who.is/nameserver/yahoo.com
The agencies serving on this year's Re-Imagining Interactive Advertising task force include:
- Barbarian Group
BBDO Worldwide
Carat Interactive
Cars.com
CBS Interactive
Condé Nast Digital
Digitas
Disney Interactive Media Group
Google, Inc.
McKinney
Microsoft Advertising
New York Times Digital
Ogilvy Interactive
Platform-A
Razorfish
R/GA
ShortTail
Time Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System
Universal McCann
Univision Online
Yahoo
The 27 participating publishers are:
- BabyCenter
- Bizjournals
- Bloomberg
- BusinessWeek
- CBS Interactive
- CNN
- Condé Nast Digital
- Discovery Communications
- ESPN
- Forbes.com
- FOXNews Digital
- IDG
- iVillage Network
- Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
- Meredith Interactive
- msnbc.com
- MTV Networks
- NBC Universal
- New York Media
- The New York Times
- Reed Business Information
- Reuters, Time Inc.
- USA Today
- The Wall Street Journal Digital Network
- Weather.com
AD SPECS
http://www.rogersdigitalmedia.com/ad-guidelines
http://www.parisnewvideo.com/full/banner.html
http://adspecs.yahoo.com/index.php
https://www.google.com/adsense/static/en_US/AdFormats.html?hl=en_US&gsessionid=DN2ZPB4yEYufdeEZKUo4wA
http://www.eyeblaster.com/content.aspx?page=Ad_Formats&pageNum=1
http://www.wsworkshop.com/money/ad-formats.html
http://www.devlounge.net/extras/the-designers-list-of-ad-formats
http://www.adspeed.com/Knowledges/40/Ad_Serving/Support_All_Ad_Dimensions.html
http://hk.solutions.yahoo.com/adspecs/ad70.html
http://adverlicio.us/chevy_camaro_transformers_bumblebee_camaro_sweepstakes_160x600
http://mediakit.go.com/abcotv/standard/index.html
http://www.evolveitv.com/banners/WB_ccf_viral_300x250_violet.html
http://sales.marketwatch.com/ad_specs.htm
http://www.kayak.com/h/advertising/technical.vtl
http://www.kayak.com/h/advertising/technical.vtl
Maximum expansion size (pixels) and direction:
Initial Ad Size Max Expanded Size Expanded Direction
728x90 728x360 Down
120x240 240x240 Right
120x600 240x600 Right
160x600 320x600 Right
300x250 500x250 Left
300x600 No expansion permitted
http://www.alchemyuk.com/resources/online_advertising_formats.php
Online Advertising Formats
There are many different formats used in online advertising in today’s market. We, at Alchemy Interactive have put this guide together to highlight the main types used in the creating, planning, buying and selling of interactive marketing and advertising.
NOTE: All dimensions are in pixels.
Rectangles and Pop-Ups
Recommended | Recommended | |
300 x 250 IMU - (Medium Rectangle) | 40k | :15 |
250 x 250 IMU - (Square Pop-Up) | 40k | :15 |
240 x 400 IMU - (Vertical Rectangle) | 40k | :15 |
336 x 280 IMU - (Large Rectangle) | 40k | :15 |
180 x 150 IMU - (Rectangle) | 40k | :15 |
300x100 IMU - (3:1 Rectangle) | 40k | :15 |
720x300 IMU – (Pop-Under) | 40k | :15 |
Banners and Buttons
468 x 60 IMU - (Full Banner) | 40k | :15 |
234 x 60 IMU - (Half Banner) | 30k | :15 |
88 x 31 IMU - (Micro Bar) | 10k | :15 |
120 x 90 IMU - (Button 1) | 20k | :15 |
120 x 60 IMU - (Button 2) | 20k | :15 |
120 x 240 IMU - (Vertical Banner) | 30k | :15 |
125 x 125 IMU - (Square Button) | 30k | :15 |
728 x 90 IMU - (Leaderboard) | 40k | :15 |
Skyscrapers
160 x 600 IMU - (Wide Skyscraper) | 40k | :15 |
120 x 600 IMU - (Skyscraper) | 40k | :15 |
300 x 600 IMU - (Half Page Ad) | 40k | :15 |
The Guidelines:
Format Category | Format (WxH) | Max Initial Load File Size * | Add’l | Flash Specifics | Audio Initiation | Maximum Animation Length | Controls | Web Site Labelling |
In-Page Video Units | See IAB Ad Unit Guidelines, for example, 300x250 | 40 KB | 1.2MB** | 18 fps | User Initiated (on click) | Anything up to 15 seconds | • Control = “Close X”, Play, Pause, Rewind, Volume | • Label = “Advertisement” |
Expandable/ | User-initiated Expandable Ads: See IAB Ad Unit Guidelines. | 40 KB | 80 KB | 18 fps | User Initiated (on click) | Anything up to 15 seconds | • Control = “Close X” | • Label = “Advertisement” |
User-initiated Retractable Ads: Maximum width of 600 pixels. | Expansion: | |||||||
Pop-Up or Pop-Under Units | Pop-ups: 250x250; 300x250 | 40 KB | 80 KB | 18 fps | User Initiated (on click) | Anything up to 15 seconds | Provided by Browser Window | See IAB Pop-Up Guidelines for more details |
Pop-up Large: 550x480 | ||||||||
Pop-under: 720x300 | ||||||||
Floating Units | Variable Landing Spots for Floating Ads: See IAB Ad Unit Guidelines | 80 KB | 160 KB | 18 fps | User Initiated (on click) | Floating: | • Control = “Close X” | • Label = “Advertisement” |
Between-the-Page Units | a.k.a., Transitional Ads: See IAB Ad Unit Guidelines | 80 KB | 160 KB | 18 fps | User Initiated (on click) | Transitions: | • Control = “Skip Advertisement” | • Label = “Advertisement” or “Brought to you by” |
*300x250 ads only need to expand to 500x250
**If video is part of any other rich media units, polite download file weight should adhere to In-Page Video Limit of 1.2 MB.
http://www.casalemedia.com/ad_specifications/
http://adspecs.yahoo.com/search.php?site=none&adunit=300x250&position=none
http://www.autotrader.com/adspecs/adUnitSpecs.jsp
http://www.burstmedia.com/performance_advertisers/creative_specs.asp
http://blog.mywebgrocer.com/index.php/tag/online-advertising/
http://www.webmarketcentral.com/ad_networks.htm
http://www.adtech.info/publishers/
http://www.adendum.com/search_engines/web_interactive_agencies.htm
http://mediakit.philly.com/pages/specs.html
http://uk.adinfo.yahoo.com/euroadspecs/adspecs/stdads.html
http://www.adoperationsonline.com/2009/05/06/iab-to-revise-interactive-ad-unit-standards-brings-together-task-force-of-top-talent-to-re-imagine-interactive-advertising/
http://pulse.heartbeatdigital.com/archives/digital_marketing/index.html?c=35
agency works closely associated with advertiser, in terms of developing plans, building their creatives, getting best deals, publisher works closely with site to get good revenue.
Revenue share % of sale btn publisher and a site or type of contract btn publisher and site.
Descrepancy report : publisher
Advertiser pays – agency pays (keeping comsn) publisher
Self – thirdparty/ self
ROI (net revenue) spend-revenue(income) divdided by spend
Descrepancy
http://www.google.com/support/admanager/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79231
http://www.business-advertising-publicity.com/advertising-agency.html
There are many web analytics tools out there, choosing a right web analytics tools is depending on your budget and business objectives. The following are some of the web analytics tools:
- WebTrends
- WebSideStory (HitBox/HBX)
- CoreMetrics
- Omniture SiteCatalyst
- Urchin
- Visual Sciences
- IBM SurfAid
http://www.searchengineprojects.com/web-analytics-services.htm
Creating an Online Revenue Budget
The budgeting process is built around three elements.
- Inventory
- External Market Conditions
- Sales Strategy
Inventory
The purpose of identifying, segmenting and quantifying the exact amount of inventory to sell is to arrive at a solid estimate of the number of impressions available to sell in future months for each classification of inventory.
The budget process is driven by building an inventory catalog for the entire site one page at a time, one month at a time.
Identifying Inventory
Identifying the site’s inventory is the process of knowing the specific ad placements available on different types of pages and their position on the page.
For example, the site’s home page may offer a 728x90 leaderboard, two 300x250 skyboxes and a 160x600 skyscraper. One of the two skyboxes is above the fold and one is below the fold.
The main pages of each section of the site may offer a slightly different configuration, for example, one skybox and one skyscraper.
If the site is properly tagged, an analysis of the server logs will reflect the usage of the overall site on a granular level. For example, the data will show how many visitors in a specified time period visit each page. This is reflected by how many times the requested page loads, or is viewed by a visitor.
Applications such as Omniture and DART, which report server log data, are useful for this process.
For example, the data may show that the home page generates an average of 5,000,000 page views a month. This means that theoretically there are 5,000,000 leaderboard, 10,000,0000 skybox, and 5,000,000 skyscraper impressions to sell each month.
Projecting for Delivery Discrepancies
Sales managers should recognize that a publisher typically enters into an agreement with each client where impression deliveries are measured by a third-party ad-serving source, such as DoubleClick or Accipiter.
This practice creates a scenario where it is not unusual for campaigns to under-deliver in the 5-10 percent range, which prompts the publisher to incorporate a commensurate degree of over-delivery. The under-delivery occurs because of the difference between the data provided by a publisher’s server logs and the logs of the ad-serving source.
To account for this, sales managers should recognize that the total available impressions, net of discrepancies and anticipating under-delivery issues, may be 5-10 percent lower than first estimated and make appropriate adjustments early in the budgeting process to account for these differences
Thus, sales managers should budget for a 10 percent discrepancy and lower their revenue estimates from estimated impressions by 10 percent to be on the safe side.
Projecting Future Inventory
Past impression data, properly interpreted, serves as a prologue for future impression delivery.
But just because a site delivered X impressions in October, 2008 doesn’t mean it will deliver X impressions and a projected percentage increase in October 2009. Sales managers should look beyond the numbers and understand content, context, and events driving usage.
This concept is important because the estimated number of impressions available to sell must be delivered to an advertiser. Few miscues anger clients as much as under-delivery.
What does “looking beyond the numbers” look like?
Let’s take any site in the tech vertical. The introduction of the first Google mobile phone in October, 2008 may have created short-lived spikes in traffic that are not projectable to October 2009.
The process of projecting inventory growth should involve the careful analysis of usage. This is best achieved as a collaborative exercise between sales management and editorial management.
Along with an analysis of past traffic, it is important to know what new content, features and tools will be launched in the upcoming year, and attempt to reasonably quantify how these will impact site traffic and impressions delivery. And when you present your revenue budget, it is important to state your assumptions about new content and features that might impact delivered impressions.
Building the Revenue Budget Page by Page: Getting Granular with the Inventory
Assigning a projected value to each piece of inventory, and projecting a percentage of sellout will lead to an understanding of the value of the page, and how impressions and revenue should be projected against a given page, or group of pages.
Using the home page example and assigning arbitrary CPMs, the standard currency of major publishers’ online display advertising, we can arrive at a rough revenue projection.
Inventory Impressions CPM* SO% Revenue
Leaderboard 5,000,000 $12.00 100 $60,000
Skybox (ATF)** 5,000,000 $14.00 100 $70,000
Skybox (BTF)** 5,000,000 $9.00 100 $45,000
Skyscraper 5,000,000 $15.00 100 $75,000
Total $250,000
* Net, after agency commission
** Above the fold and below the fold.
Repeating this page-by-page process for each page on the site will help develop a monthly revenue total for the site. But this is only the first step. There are other considerations to be made to arrive at a reasonable and attainable revenue projection.
Percentage of Sellout
Our first pass that projected $250,000 net monthly revenue from the site’s home page assumes 100 percent of all classes of inventory will be sold at premium rates. If only half the inventory is projected to be sold, revenues need to be adjusted accordingly.
Inventory Impressions CPM (net) SO% Revenue
Leaderboard 5,000,000 $12.00 50 $30,000
Skybox (ATF) 5,000,000 $14.00 50 $35,000
Skybox (BTF) 5,000,000 $9.00 50 $22,500
Skyscraper 5,000,000 $15.00 50 $37,500
Total $125,000
By researching historical sales data, managers can identify what classifications of their inventory generate the strongest demand. Analyzing this not only helps sales managers arrive at a realistic revenue projection, but also allows them to:
- Increase pricing in high demand areas.
- Direct the sales staff to put a greater emphasis on packaging inventory that generates lower demand.
These considerations can help create a more accurate revenue projection.
Inventory Impressions CPM (net) SO% Revenue
Leaderboard 5,000,000 $12.00 50 $30,000
Skybox (ATF) 5,000,000 $14.00 80 $56,000
Skybox (BTF) 5,000,000 $9.00 10 $4,500
Skyscraper 5,000,000 $15.00 50 $37,500
Total $128,000
Monetizing Creative Units: Rich Media
Another revenue projection consideration: what share of total inventory sold will be rich media, which commands a pricing premium, versus static banners.
A sales manager may determine that she can sell 25 percent of the overall inventory to partners running rich media, and that these campaigns will allow her to charge a 20 percent premium.
Because she believes the demand for rich media units is strong, and because she is projecting an overall lower number of impressions to be sold, she projects a higher sellout percentage than for the static units.
Inventory Impressions CPM (net) SO% Revenue
Leaderboard 3,750,000 $12.00 50 $22,500
Leaderboard R 1,250,000 $14.40 80 $14,400
Skybox (ATF) 3,750,000 $14.00 80 $42,000
Skybox R (ATF) 1,250,000 $16.80 90 $18,900
Skybox (BTF) 3,750,000 $9.00 10 $3,375
Skybox R (BTF) 1,250,000 $10.80 30 $4,050
Skyscraper 3,750,000 $15.00 50 $28,125
Skyscraper R 1,250,000 $18.00 80 $18,000
Total $151,350
Along with estimating revenues derived from rich media, the sales manager should consider supplemental revenues from units such as video, audio, roadblocks, takeovers, and interstitials.
Network Revenue
Many sites work with online ad networks to supplement revenues. Typically, the networks sell remnant inventory at low CPMs. It is typically a commodity play.
If a partnership with a network, or networks, is in place, sales managers projecting revenues should make sure network revenue is accounted for.
The following scenario assumes that 100 percent of the site’s unsold inventory will be sold by a network partner or partners. (For the purposes of this projection, rich media for network sales is not taken into account, although it could be.)
The 100 percent sellout for network inventory is based on the unsold percentage of each ad unit. In the case of the leaderboard, the 1,875,000 units sold represents 100 percent of the 50 percent unsold by the publisher.
Inventory Impressions CPM (net) SO% Revenue
Leaderboard 3,750,000 $12.00 50 $22,500
Leaderboard R 1,250,000 $14.40 80 $14,400
Leaderboard N 1,875,000 $1.00 100 $1,875
Skybox (ATF) 3,750,000 $14.00 80 $42,000
Skybox R (ATF) 1,250,000 $16.80 90 $18,900
Skybox N (ATF) 1,875,000 $1.00 100 $1,875
Skybox (BTF) 3,750,000 $9.00 10 $3,375
Skybox R (BTF) 1,250,000 $10.80 30 $4,050
Skybox N (BTF) 1,875,000 $1.00 100 $1,875
Skyscraper 3,750,000 $15.00 50 $28,125
Skyscraper R 1,250,000 $18.00 80 $18,000
Skyscraper N 1,875,000 $1.00 1.00 $1,875
Total $156,975
Additional Revenue Sources
Standard inventory does not encompass all of the assets a site can monetize. Custom sponsorships, permanent placements, video players, text ads, broadcast e-mail, and interstitials represent potential opportunities.
Creating sponsorship opportunities in advance of flight dates does three things.
- It turns an intention into a financial goal by attaching projected revenue.
- It allows for necessary lead-time to sell.
- It gives salespeople an opportunity to collaborate with the client on tailoring the sponsorship to address specific marketing objectives, and becoming truly custom.
Continuing with our modeling of home page revenue, let’s create two home page sponsorships. Each provides a permanent placement for the partner and some degree of integration available only with the sponsorship.
Because the advertiser’s brand messaging has been woven into the site’s content, the publisher is justified in seeking a long-term relationship.
For the same reason, because this marketing environment is, by nature, differentiated by the manner in which it is built and integrated, it should be differentiated in the manner it is priced. A flat fee rather than an impressions-based model is appropriate.
Inventory Impressions CPM (net) SO% Revenue
Leaderboard 3,750,000 $12.00 50 $22,500
Leaderboard R 1,250,000 $14.40 80 $14,400
Leaderboard N 1,875,000 $1.00 100 $1,875
Skybox (ATF) 3,750,000 $14.00 80 $42,000
Skybox R (ATF) 1,250,000 $16.80 90 $18,900
Skybox N (ATF) 1,875,000 $1.00 100 $1,
Skybox (BTF) 3,750,000 $9.00 10 $3,375
Skybox R (BTF) 1,250,000 $10.80 30 $4,050
Skybox N (BTF) 1,875,000 $1.00 100 $1,875
Skyscraper 3,750,000 $15.00 50 $28,125
Skyscraper R 1,250,000 $18.00 80 $18,000
Skyscraper N 1,875,000 $1.00 1.00 $1,875
Sponsorship 1 50 $17,500
Sponsorship 2 50 $17,500
Total $191,975
In this model, the staff has two sponsorship opportunities to monetize. Each is priced at $35,000 monthly. The sales manager assigns each campaign a 50 percent chance of selling, so we project $17,500 revenue for each.
Seasonality and Trends
The scenario we are using assumes a constant availability of impressions month-to-month. This balance is not typically seen by publishers. The reality: seasonal spikes in traffic because of the topicality of content.
It is prudent to create monthly revenue projections using month against month data. An entertainment site may generate five times the traffic in April that it does in May because of its Academy Awards coverage.
It is also prudent, when negotiating deals, to spread impressions between start and end dates, not allocating them specifically by month, so that the publisher retains full flexibility and the advertiser gets guaranteed impressions.
External Market Conditions
Conducting a Prudent Analysis of Financial Data
A watchful eye on external market conditions is essential. It is good to have a sense of the strength of the online advertising market as it relates to pricing and knowledge of competitive situations.
But sales managers should be cautious and discerning when using third party sources to project revenue.
eMarketer is a good source of revenue projections. However, the sales manager should be cognizant of a number of factors that makes the notion of a rising revenue tide lifting all boats a flawed concept.
Large sites such as AOL and Yahoo! often absorb disproportionate shares of marketers’ online budgets. Leaders in verticals such as ESPN.com are sometimes able to leverage offline assets to secure similarly disproportionate shares of advertisers’ budgets.
Certain verticals and content categories may inherently outperform others. And the Google factor, where enormous amounts of money are funneled into a large number of relatively small search campaigns, needs to be taken into account.
Understanding these situations helps the sales manager use industry forecasts as a general barometer rather than a specific compass.
Sales Strategy and the Budgeting Process
The strength of an organization’s sales strategy will largely determine the extent to which revenues can be maximized.
In an environment where proactive selling leads to client-side relationships where key marketing challenges can be identified and tailored solutions developed, presented and sold, revenues will be higher than in an organization of reactive order-takers.
In this type of organization, where the creativity exists to build innovative sponsorships and integrations, less pressure will be placed on standard ad units.
Less reliance will be placed on commoditized CPMs booked via RFP-driven deals. Similarly, the dependence on low cost network CPMs will be lessened.
A sales strategy that rewards salespeople for selling higher CPMs and customized solutions can help insure the achievement of higher revenues, as demonstrated by the impact of sponsorship revenue.
Summary
Creating an online revenue budget is replicating a series of small steps.
Using pages as building blocks and incorporating quality data on page visits, sellout percentages, and pricing, a thoughtful forecast can be created.
Revenue projection data from third-party sources should be carefully interpreted and discrepancies accounted for.
And publishers can most effectively maximize revenues by having a sound sales strategy in place.
List of Ad Servers
24/7 Real Media
Ad Manager
Ad Serving Solutions
Atlas
Bluestreak
Burst AdConductor
CheckM8
DoubleClick
e-planning
Eyeblaster
Falk AdSolution
Mediaplex
OpenX
Operative
PointRoll
Solbright, Inc.
Thruport Technologies
Value Ad
Zedo
DART for Publishers
AdTech
Mediaplex
Pubmatic
Right Media
Rubicon
3 comments:
Brilliant work. Thanks for updates......
Thank you for listing our site as a resource, Patrick from We Seo
Functionality of Online Advertising
How Online Advertising Works The ad server delivers online advertising campaigns successfully by distributing ad impressions across the publisher's website. The ad server must keep track of multiple campaigns and their prescribed delivery requirements. How can it know how many people are going to be visiting the site in the future? It is actually an assumption based on data recorded over previous months. An ad server must accurately calculate traffic patterns to ensure that allotted ad impressions meet delivery requirements by the campaign end. When it is delivering the campaign, the ad server must track a lot of information. Variables include how many days are left in the campaign, the number of remaining impressions, the maximum number of times an ad can be served to a user and much more. Who Is Involved In Ad Serving? Ad serving operations do not occur in a vacuum and they can affect many different people throughout the publisher's company. Whom exactly they affect will depend on the organization and will vary from publisher to publisher. It will also vary largely on the functionality provided by the ad serving solution. For instance, the ad server may provide billing functionality that your Accounts Payable department will be using. Ad Serving Choices Ad servers come and go, although there are a few who have been around for the long haul: both DoubleClick's DART and 24/7 RealMedia's OpenAdStream are currently the industry standard heavyweights. However, both carry significant expense and may not be an option for smaller publishers. Other long-term ad serving solutions do cater to smaller publishers such as Thruport's AdJuggler, but be aware of limitations on functionality. For instance, Ad Juggler divides your booked inventory so that it knows how many ads will require serving on a given day. From there it assigns a quota of paying ads to each hour. The problem occurs when AdJuggler serves all of your paying impressions beginning at the top of each hour, rather than distributing inventory evenly. If your inventory is only partially booked your site will display all of your paying advertisements for the first part of the hour, and once the quota runs out you'll be stuck serving public service announcements and house ads until the turn of the hour. If this problem is now fixed please let me know. Furthermore, there is the option of running your own ad server in-house. Options and costs vary; generally, the higher priced options will provide you with more functionality. If all you require is bare-bones ad serving there are even free scripts available. However, if you wish to court larger advertisers you may find that using a third party service gives advertisers a level of confidence that an impartial company handles the ad serving. Ad serving is an evolving industry and your options will always be changing. A good place to begin is to look at the websites of your competition and compatriots and identify which ad serving solutions they are using. You can usually recognize the ad server used by a site by mousing-over one of their ads and noting the path in the status bar of your web browser. Chapter 4 How to choose and Adsever. Making a Choice In order to effectively choose an ad serving solution that will work for everyone involved, it's a good idea to form a committee and involve everyone in the decision making process. The overall objectives of this team are: To choose which ad server to use Divide the site into advertising sections Choose which ad sizes to offer Decide on optimal ad placement within site page templates The OAC will have different members at different points in the process, depending on requirements. The size of the committee will be largely dependent on how many people are in your company. However, general roles should remain the same whether your committee contains one or ten members – smaller committees just mean that members will be "wearing more hats". The OAC breaks down into the following core roles: The Project Manager: the committee head who is ultimately responsible for the successful select and implementation of an ad serving solution. The Sales Lead: this person is the sales expert and fully informed on the needs of the advertising clients – as well as what the sales team will need to effectively sell. The Technical Lead: this person should be intimately familiar with the workings of the website and is most likely the Webmaster. The Design Lead: this person is accountable for maintaining the standards of the website's design. The Usability Lead: the person who ensures that the site is usable and useful and that the keeping the needs of site visitors in mind during online ad integration. The Ad Trafficker: this person will be responsible for booking and management of the online campaigns. Your team may involve more people, depending on the structure of the company, the nature of your site and the functionality provided by the ad server. For instance, if you want to ensure that you can tap into your database of user registrations with your ad software to serve targeted advertising, you may want to include your Systems Administrator during the process of evaluating ad servers. Alternatively, your committee's Sales Lead may be your Advertising Director, but you want should also involve the appointed dedicated Online Advertising Rep. In other words, the composition of your committee will be largely dependent on the specifics of your operations. Project Manager's Initial Steps The project manager is the person whose ultimate responsibility is choosing and implementing an ad server solution. Someone dedicated to the project who has the responsibility to become as informed as possible regarding the myriad considerations involved. This perspective allows the project manager to best identify other people from the organization who should be involved in decision-making process. The project manager's key objective is to keep things on track from start to finish. Researching Your Ad Serving Options In your search for an ad server, your first task will be to identify the choices. Take some time to research vendor websites, noting desired functionality. Create a list of pros and cons and then create a list of ad servers that look like potential options. Identify and contact a few of the sites that are using the technology and ask for their honest opinions about its benefits and shortcomings. Note how quickly ads deliver to the site and if there appear to be any problems with lag times or if the ad serving is influencing the site load. Call up a sales rep from each company on your list to obtain additional information such as pricing. Pricing is often determined by site traffic levels and subject to negotiation; as many factors affect pricing it is often not available on the vendor website and you will have to call to get a quote. You will need to know your site traffic levels, including page impressions and unique visitors and your projected number of ad impressions would also be beneficial (even if you're only estimating based on your page impressions and the average number of ads you will feature per page). If a solution is still within your budget, schedule a walk-through. Keep your list of pros and cons handy, making any changes where necessary. If you do not know the number of ad impressions that you have, then it is suggested that you do the following. Take the number of page impressions and reduce by 30%. Multiply the number of remaining page impressions by the number of ads that will be appearing on each page. If in doubt here, simply multilply by 3.5. This process should allow you to narrow down your choices to two or three top options: your shortlist. Choosing an Ad Server At this point, you will want to include the other project stakeholders: those who will be involved or impacted by the online advertising operations - especially those who will be relying on the software, directly or indirectly. OAC Members and Contributions Identify members and assign roles within the committee. The project manager may wish to meet with members individually or communicate via email. Outline why that person's participation is required and what commitments and contributions are going to be necessary. Sales Lead The person in this role must identify the needs of advertisers with regards to the ad serving solution to ensure that the chosen product meets these requirements. If the sales team will be using the ad serving solution, the Sales Lead will also be required to examine interfaces for suitability from this perspective. Technical Lead The person acting as technical lead is an authority on the website's technology and processes. This person provides required technical expertise during the evaluation process and ensures that the chosen solution will be compatible with existing systems. Ad Trafficker The Ad Trafficker will be the person using the software most frequently and intimately. His/her objective will be to assist in choosing a solution that will promote efficient and effective ad trafficking. In addition to the roles outlined above (including the Project Manager), your organization may have other roles that require representation at the meeting. Think carefully about the structure of your organization and the relationship that different departments have to the website operations. Consult with other members of your company to arrive at a consensus of which interests require representation, who to enlist, and at when particular people should be involved in the process. Project Manager: Preparing For the Committee Meeting Assist those members who may be unfamiliar with the basics of online advertising and terminology by providing reference materials. By understanding the fundamental concepts of online advertising, committee members will be much more effective in their roles at the meeting. A few days before the meeting, send all invitees an email with a brief description of each of the solutions on the shortlist and links to the corresponding websites. This will allow members to prepare in advance. Arranging Walk-Through Presentations The focus of the meeting will be walk-through presentations of each of the ad serving solutions on your shortlist, followed Q&A with the vendor representative and internal discussion of each product. When scheduling the product walk-through portions with each vendor inform the representative of the nature of the meeting: who will be attending, the length of time allotted for the presentation and specify particular functionality that you would like the rep to highlight (or skip if it does not apply to your company). Most likely, these presentations will be conference calls but may be in-person visit from the vendor representatives. Ensure that everything is set-up ahead of time, preferably half an hour in advance. If you are using a projector, make sure that it is operating properly (and tweak the settings so that the sites on the screen will be clearly visible). Obtain demo site logins and make certain that they are active so that you can iron out any bugs with the vendor reps before the rest of the attendees arrive. The Meeting Agenda Your meeting agenda will most likely look something like this: Review Advertising 101: 15 minutes (if necessary) Ad serving solution A Walk-through presentation by rep from Company A: 25 minutes Question and Answer period: 10 minutes Repeat step 2 for solutions B & C General discussion of A vs. B vs. C Pros and cons for sales Pros and cons for tech Pros and cons for trafficking Pros and cons for project manager Etc. Compile a list of questions for follow-up with Company A, B and C. Depending on the complexity of your ad serving needs and the number of vendors on your shortlist, you may require one or more meetings before making a choice. Once you have selected an ad server that fulfils the requirements of your organization, everyone on your team should be well versed in all of its capabilities, functionality and limitations. You should already have ideas about how you can put it to use. It is time to begin preparing your site to utilize the new ad serving solution. Inventory Categories Your site most likely features various sections: About Us, News, Reviews, etc, but these divisions of content may not be directly translatable to advertising sales. A completely different approach for assigning pages to advertising categories will be required than the method originally used to establish the site breakdown for content. You will need to factor in your potential advertising clientele's requirements, your site traffic patterns and the topics of your content. These factors will largely dictate how to create ad inventory categories. Ideally, the result should be maximum flexibility for deployment of advertising campaigns. This is a critical stage in making the most of your chosen ad serving solution. It is time for another committee meeting. This meeting should include representatives of the web and sales department to represent the both the technical and sales perspectives. Crucial attendees include the Project Manager, the Sales Lead and Tech Lead. To get the best results from this meeting it will help to be prepared with information from the participating departments. Sales Benchmark what inventory categories competitor sites are using (if you have no competition, look at sites similar to your own). Obtain media kits and rate cards. Research and anticipate potential advertisers' requirements: advertiser target audience, industry type, specific site content that is especially sellable, etc. Demographic information about site visitors and the pages or areas frequented by specific demographic groups, especially if there are large differences. To obtain this information from your audience use surveys focus groups. You may wish to do this in house or to outsource it to a company who can provide audited results. If created internally the survey will be a joint effort between the sales and web departments. Sales can design the survey questions with feedback from the web team who will in-turn deploy it on the site. Short surveys are more likely to receive responses, so if you have too many questions you may want to divide them into several surveys. Leave ample time to gather responses prior to the meeting: the more surveys you collect, the more meaningful the information will be. Web In-depth site statistics of traffic patterns from server log reports. The committee should address questions similar to the following: Do particular areas of your site interest a specific audience or relate to a particular topic? In online advertising terms, your goal is to break the site down into inventory categories targeted towards distinct groups of people who advertisers are trying to reach based on demographics, psychographics and behaviours. Examples include professional women (demographic targeting), technophiles (psychographic targeting) and prospective buyers of a new car (behavioural targeting). Some inventory categories are more sought after by advertisers than others. The premium inventory categories are auto, technology and business. Other big ones are travel and health. Keep this in mind when creating your category list. Do any areas see significantly different traffic patterns than others? For example, you may have several pages that do not fit into a specific content category but together they account for a significant inventory: you may wish to define these pages as an inventory category and offer them at a reduced CPM to make the inventory more desirable to advertisers. Another example is to create an inventory category made up of the leading pages (first pages) of your site sections. Likewise, you may wish to group your highest traffic pages. Are there any areas of our site that should be completely separate site pools? For instance, an adult area should be a completely separate advertising site (from the ad server's perspective) so that adult ads do not accidentally display in inappropriate places. Do you have content that only runs for a limited time during the year? It may be a popular poll, film festival, holiday issue, etc. Special sections or minisites may merit higher CPMs or unique advertising opportunities. Keep in mind that you can create new inventory categories as required and insert them into new templates. Choosing Ad Sizes and Placements Once you have decided on sections, the next step for the web and advertising committee will be to choose ad sizes to feature. At this point, the committee's focus will broaden. Inserting new ad placements into existing site templates requires maintaining design standards and addressing of usability issues. Consistently using suitable numbers of ad placements in appropriate spaces in a given template will avoid disrupting site design and the user experience. If there are people in the organization responsible for site Usability and Design standards, those individuals should be involved in these decisions. If not, create the role and appoint a qualified individual. Chapter 5: Ad Trafficking and Management: Process and Procedures Organization is of key importance for the ad trafficker, who will be working with several campaigns simultaneously, as well as keeping an eye out for future campaigns. He/she may be working with several different sales reps. The Ad Trafficker may also have to work directly with clients as a technical contact, answering any questions regarding the specifics of the ad. The Insertion Order The best way to stay organized and avoid miscommunication between Ad Reps and Ad Traffickers is to use the Insertion Order. This is the purchase order form provided to the advertiser client and contains all information necessary for booking an ad campaign into the ad server. See Figure 1: Sample Insertion Order.
Figure 1: Sample Insertion Order Added Value "Added value" is a sales incentive, usually based on the total value of the ad spend. Keeping this amount as a dollar figure allows the Ad Trafficker flexibility in determining which campaign ads units and placements to use. For instance: if a campaign has booked both skyscrapers and rectangles and there are several other advertisers running skyscrapers the Ad Trafficker may choose to allocate the added value impressions all towards rectangles. By keeping the figure in dollar form, the Ad Trafficker can easily allocate these impressions, even if skyscrapers and rectangles are priced at different CPMs. Added value ads are typically trafficked with the same parameters (inventory categories, frequency caps, geo-targeting, etc) and requirements as their paid counterparts. Booking ads into the server The procedure for trafficking an ad is fairly straight-forward: upload the ads to the ad server. Each campaign will have myriad settings that can be adjusted and all details should be specified on the insertion order. Most campaigns function in this manner. Occasionally, in cases where an ad agency is involved, that firm may desire to run the creative through a third party ad server. Ad Testing All rich media advertising creative requires advance submission to the Ad Trafficker to allow ample time for testing on the publisher's site. Usually the time specified is a week in advance of campaign launch. This provides time for placement of the ad into test pages to verify that everything is in working order. When testing check in all four of the major browsers: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape and Opera on PC, check Netscape and Safari on Mac and check Konqueror on Linux. Check the ad with multiple versions of those browsers. Checking multiple versions of the browsers can also be beneficial. Your server logs will provide "user agent" data informing you of exactly which browsers your site visitors are using. Use this information to ensure that you are testing with the browsers that your audience use. Obvious things to look for include page content appearing incorrectly but also look for not-as-obvious signs of problems such as lag. Your office may not be the best place to test for this: test at home, if you have high-speed also see what it's like on dial-up (most packages include a number of free dial-up hours anyway - might as well take advantage of it!). Flash ads must also contain clickTAGs: code that allows the ad tracking of click throughs. Macromedia's Ad Serving Guide contains more information. See: http://www.macromedia.com/resources/richmedia/tracking/adserving_guide/ Chapter 6 Ad Trafficking and Management: Managing Campaigns and Inventory The art and science of ad trafficking comes down to managing campaigns and advertising inventory to the best of your ability. And life wouldn't be interesting without a few hurdles to have to jump over right? Third party ad serving can be one of those gotchas... Third party Ad Serving Third party ad serving allows advertising agencies to serve ads to your ad server via their own. This has several advantages for the agency, including complete access to reporting and the ability to make changes to the creative without assistance from the publisher. Another big advantage is the ability to treat a campaign running across several publishers' websites as a single entity, enabling the agency to track and compare performance and make necessary changes. Trafficking third party ads is very similar to regular campaigns: the main difference is that instead of uploading ad creative to your ad server you supply a link to the third party server. The ad appears as any other served on your site. The biggest problem with these types of campaigns is that discrepancies between the numbers of impressions served by your ad server and those reported by the agency ad server are commonplace. This is to be expected and an acceptable margin of error should be stated in the contract along with an agreed upon course of action (split the difference, etc). Subsequently, ad traffickers should make an effort to have the latest information and prepare for inconsistencies between the numbers reported by their own and the third party ad server. Monitoring third party campaign performance diligently and regularly obtain reports from the third party ad server, compare them to your reports and inform the client of large deviation if they occur. Common Sources of Discrepancies All ads served by a third party must contain a P3P privacy policy. Unless the agency includes a P3P Internet Explorer 6+ and Netscape 7+ refuse the cookies. The result is that the agency's server is not counting those users, even though they are seeing the ad (and of course, Netscape and IE users still make up the vast majority of web surfers). Even though the P3P policy became effective in 2001 and all agencies should be on track, I had a personal encounter with this problem in 2003. The agency insisted that we were not delivering on the campaign. After diagnosing the problem and proving that it originated on their end, they relented: previously they had been demanding that we owed them another entire campaign as a make good! It only gets more complicated Even if the P3P is used, a web surfer can set their web browser to refuse third party cookies. To further compound the problem, an increasing number of users are installing anti-spyware software that removes unwanted cookies. Keep abreast of technology trends and browser functionality. At the time of writing, there are five major browsers and several versions of each in commonly used: Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera and Safari. Also investigate how dependent your ad serving and statistical tracking capabilities are on cookies. Once an extremely useful tool the cookie is seemingly becoming a less reliable as users seek out and destroy what they perceive to be malicious files. Unfortunately, there is no way of distinguishing "good cookies" from "bad cookies". Some site visitors may think of even those that you consider good, the ones that help you to track user behaviour on your website, as a “nasty little spies”. Jupiter Research published a report saying that 39 percent of Internet users it surveyed had regularly erased cookies.* This is a hotly contested issue though and a consensus is not available. Cookie deletion also relates to your site visitors: those who are tech-savvy or very concerned about online privacy will be the people most likely clean out their cookie caches regularly. Pay special attention to testing of campaigns served via third-party servers. Latancy can be a big problem: a huge lag between the delivery time from their server to yours. It can be caused by several different factors and effect your site adversely, resulting in your site slowing to a crawl. Test at peak times to see what things are like during high usage periods. It can happen at any time though, so you may want to have an agreement with the agency that for short-term occurances a temporary hold on the campaign will be applied until the problem resolves itself. Managing Campaigns It is very important that to keep a record of current and future advertising campaigns to ensure that a site properly manages its inventory. Ad reps must provide advance notice to the person who manages the inventory about potential campaigns, especially ones that will require large amounts of inventory. Commonly frequency caps to campaigns. These will impact on your inventory as it become more dependant on your unique user counts rather than your available advertising impressions. Regular reporting and keeping track of statistics is vital to ensure that campaigns progress effectively and that you are able to deliver the required number of ad impressions. Staying informed with your reports will help you catch that underperforming campaign or avoid other potentially costly problems. As a side note: the cookie deletion problem noted above will also effect your frequency capping. If a user constantly removes the frequency cap cookie the ad will be served multiple times to that person.
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