Marketers have always known that display (i.e. brand) advertising influences paid search and, ultimately, revenue. The missing link has always been the proof. As if on cue, here comes Harvard Business School with a new study, “Do Display Ads Influence Search?”, that begins to make the link. But the report doesn’t stop at making the connection, it also goes on to discuss the magnitude of the effect and what it means for future budget allocation. And that, my friends, is the core of the issue.

After all, proving your instincts are right is one thing, but taking action…that’s the hard part. It’s Bid Data’s big obstacle; using it to uncover meaningful insights into how display is effecting paid search results, and then putting those insights into action to improve the performance of both as the next logical.

In this, the era of optimization, there are several ways to take that step, most of which are hampered by limitations inherent in using cookies and clicks as the source of data, such as multiple device usage. Technology is responding to the issue with solutions that go beyond cookies, factoring in all display impressions and returning a full-funnel value for them.

Yes, Virginia, display ads to influence paid search results. Uncovering the relationship and acting on it is the first step to improving the performance of both channels – individually and collectively.

 @OptiMineInc

Tweet

Innovation will pave the way for a cookie-free world

It’s Girl Scout Cookie season and we’ve had our share of Thin Mints and Dulche de Leches. But another type of cookie – the third-party cookie – is in the news of late, and the battle brewing around it is bringing renewed attention to the issue of Internet privacy and how much tracking is too much.

What’s prompted the latest uproar is Mozilla’s recent announcement that Firefox 22 will join Apple’s Safari in blocking third-party cookies by default. When that happens, almost 30 percent of the browser market will prevent ad publishers from putting cookies on Web-user computers. It’s a critical mass that has some in the industry gnashing their teeth.

In a March 15 article on Digiday, Are Third-Party Cookies Worth Saving?, Brian Morrissey writes:

Yesterday, IAB [Interactive Advertising Bureau] CEO Randall Rothenberg made the case that Mozilla’s move to block third-party cookies in the new version of Firefox is a war on small publishers. It was clear the IAB is issuing a call to arms. The Association of National Advertisers has joined this fight, calling it a “dangerous and highly disturbing development.”

OptiMine asks a slightly different question: Are third-party cookies even necessary?

Cookie data at its best poses challenges (more on this to come in a future post); besides being short-lived, third-party cookie data often misses the complete picture. And the challenges when it comes to cross-device tracking on mobile, tablets and the like are well-known. Now, with almost one-third of the browser market blocking third-party cookies, advertisers and many of the publishers that rely on cookies for ad targeting and optimization are rightfully concerned.

The other side – the one that OptiMine occupies – argues that, yes, the industry is going to change, and the new landscape will see some companies adapt, others falter and still others be born. When technology meets data, there is no telling what the outcome will be. The key is innovating to adapt with the changing landscape.

Alex Magnin, COO at Thought & Expression, publisher of Thought Catalog, had this to say in Morrissey’s article:

“What I don’t like is the argument that keeping cookies is all about consumer choice,” Magnin said. “Third-party cookies have always been sketchy. You don’t have a ‘right to cookie’ any more than you have a right to slip a homing device onto my jacket as I pass by your storefront. It’s not enough to do well by consumers. We must also do right by them. And I have no doubt the innovative minds of this industry will find a post-cookie way to do just that.”

Our sentiments, exactly.

Change in the world of digital marketing is constant. The companies that continue to prosper will be those that anticipate change, accept it, and embrace innovative technologies that will help them capitalize on the new landscape.

@OptiMineInc

Tweet

By now you’ve heard Mozilla’s announcement to set the cookie default to “block” in the release of Firefox 22. With the current version sitting at number 19 it may be a while, but the end is nigh for 3rd party cookies. Looking for response from the industry ADOTAS reached out to OptiMine today and asked CTO Rob Cooley what he thought the impact would be.

You can read his entire answer here, or go with the pasted text below, but the gist is that attention-based advertising has always struggled because it is difficult to place a real value on it using cookies alone. Add the explosion of multi-device usage and the change to Firefox will only only make the problem worse. So, what’s an advertiser to do? Look to impressions:

“Mozilla’s announcement reinforces the risk in relying on cookies alone to value the impact of attention-based advertising, such as display and Facebook. In addition to challenges posed by browsers (among others), cookies fall apart when it comes to tracking across multiple devices. The good news is that there are now ways to use cross-channel modeling to calculate the true value of digital advertising impressions, independent of a specific tracking mechanism such as cookies. In addition to overcoming cookie-inherent limitations, a Value Per Impression (VPI) approach provides advertisers insight into the full-funnel value of their impressions, including the perennially important – but often elusive – brand effect.”  – Rob Cooley, CTO

 The bottom line: Cookies are nice, but the cookies-only strategy is on life support, and Mozilla’s move to block cookies by default is just the latest nail in the cookie coffin. If you really want to know the value of attention-based advertising, VPI is the only approach.

@OptiMineInc

Tweet

We’ve fielded a lot of questions recently about the potential impact of Google’s Enhanced Campaigns on bid optimization, specifically with respect to the new bid adjustment options. The official Google description of the new bid adjustment options is here. The bottom line is that the performance of campaigns that were previously device-targeted (PC, mobile, tablet) will change with Enhanced Campaigns. The exact nature and magnitude of the change will vary from advertiser to advertiser, depending on its current account structure and the relative importance of the different devices for its business.

From a bidding perspective, the key question is how the new device and location bid adjustment options will affect performance. The new options will function very much like the current ad scheduling options where you can bump all of the bids within a campaign up or down by a fixed percentage during certain days or times of day. In fact, the existing ad scheduling options have been merged with the new device and location options under a section called “bid adjustments.”

OptiMine recommends the following for testing the new bid adjustment options associated with Enhanced Campaigns:

• Treat all of the bid adjustments as an additional factor with which to experiment, separate from the actual keyword-level bids. The adjustments act on the entire campaign, so the level of testing will be much more granular than normal keyword-level bid tests.
• We recommend initially making changes weekly to test the effects of the new options. If you believe that mobile bids should be lower in general, reduce the mobile bid adjustment for a few campaigns and measure the effect compared to campaigns that were not changed.
• Once you’ve settled in on a reasonable adjustment factor (which may end up being no adjustment!), run tests once a month or quarter to double-check for changes. This should be similar to the way you test ad copy, landing pages, and campaign structure.

A good deal of paid search management consists of test-observe-react. The key is to execute carefully-selected manual tests of the new campaign-level bid adjustment features in order to explore and understand the impact of Enhanced Campaigns on your business.

@OptiMineInc

Tweet

ADOTAS has put forth an Op-Ed that takes a look at the at trends in the digital advertising space. It drew on several sources, including eMarketer and Forrester, and considered, among other things, spend – current and future, media mix, and influencers. Of the several conclusions drawn, three that pertain directly to paid search are:

1. Budgets continue to shift to digital advertising channels
2. Paid will remain number 1 for, well, forever it seems
3. Value is driving budget distribution.

The first two are not a surprise, but number three, that is something new. OK, maybe not new new, but definitely newer.

Where this plays a pretty major role is in display advertising. Long considered a branding exercise, marketers have struggled for years to tie display to any real monetary value. Paid is much easier: Clicks lead to conversions and conversions to revenue. With display it’s been all about eyeballs and, now, how many times a particular set of eyeballs sees a particular ad (vCPM). The great unknown is which, if any, of those views turn directly into revenue or, at the very least, contribute to a conversion through another channel.

But will vCPM drive more spend into display?

To the article we go:

This year our industry has seen the birth of a new acronym: vCPM. Viewability seeks to measure how frequently an ad is actually seen by a user, and not merely the number of times it’s served by a site’s ad server.

At the same time, Forrester reports that viewability will have a neutral effect on overall ad spend. If this is the case for 2013, look for brands to focus their display ad spend on viewable impressions.

Brand-awareness is still important, but most advertisers are shifting their focus to performance-based pricing models. Year-over-year growth in display related ad formats…is in outright decline. [emphasis added]

It’s the whole Jerry McGuire thing. If it can’t show ‘em the money, marketers are going to use the channel as little as possible. That, and everyone is still trying to figure out which half of their budget is being wasted and, without a clear link from display to revenue, display finds its way to the chopping block.

What marketers need, what will give them peace-of-mind, and the potential for a huge career boost, is the missing link; the connection that lights the path between display – not to mention other channels – and revenue. But why stop with a straight-line path. Let’s go for the kit and the caboodle: Honest-to-goodness cross-channel attribution.

True visibility into the effects across, among and between all digital channels so marketers can not only find the 50% of their budget that’s being wasted, but put it to work generating bottom line results.

Some say Utopia doesn’t exist, but it may be closer than you know.

@OptiMineInc

Tweet

MediaPost’s Online Media Daily takes a look at the future following a holiday season that saw an increase in digital advertising spend. Several experts were consulted, including OptiMine CTO Rob Cooley:

Rob Cooley, the CTO of OptiMine Software, suggests marketers keep an eye on macro marketing trends to determine transactional prices for display ads, as well as budget percentages for each media.

If you get to atomic level analysis – individual keyword in paid search, individual ad in display – you’ll discover better data, more insights and significantly better decision making.

You can find and read the entire article here. Then, come back in early 2014 to see how the experts did.

Tweet

An article recently published in Forbes highlights the findings from a Economist Intelligence Unit report called “Outside looking in: The CMO struggles to get in sync with the C-suite”. The upshot is there is little agreement between CMOs and their fellow C-suiters about the former’s role and performance metrics. The problem, of course, is that disparate visions lead to confusion, not success.

Contributor Lisa Arthur, CMO at Aprimo, points out three major areas CMO’s need to address in 2013 to find and hang onto relevance among their C-suite colleagues. Would you be surprised to find that data and technology are at the core:

1. Data-driven marketing is critical to driving relevance
2. Most new investments will be focused around technology
3. Consistent, personalized, customer-centric marketing requires integration, collaboration and tech expertise

We’ve been talking about “Big Data” for quite a while and it looks like 2013 is the year technology will catch up and allow marketers to finally tap into power of all that data they’ve been collecting. After all, all the bits and bytes are no good if you can’t use them to understand your customers and deliver products, services, and offers that are relevant to them.

If there’s a bottom line to the article it comes back to the age-old challenge in marketing: Proving the value, i.e. revenue, of the investment in marketing. Getting a handle on the data and technology, and using the lessons learned to drive revenue will help COMs overcome the challenge and give them an equal seat at the C-level table.

Update: The report from EIU can be downloaded here.

Tweet

If you’re wondering how consumers intend to behave this holiday shopping season, Google and Ipsos OXT have released a report that should take some of the mystery out of it for you.

For your convenience we’ve embedded the report below, or you can download the pdf here.

Tweet

Bid testing is critical to paid-search success and Rob Cooley, OptiMine CTO, makes the case for a robust testing program in the Fall 2012 issue of Search Marketing Standard.  In addition to the reasons you should have an ongoing bid testing program, “Bid Testing and Budgets” compares the three most common methods – current bid, position-based and value based – and explains why value based is the best for driving increased financial returns and generating data you can use to make your programs stronger.

Most every paid-search marketer engages in bid testing of some form, even if they don’t realize it.  But an ongoing, systematic approach is necessary to maintaining a strong program that will help you continually achieve your financial goals.

By now you know OptiMine places a great deal of importance on the practice of bid testing.  In addition to the new article, we’ve authored a white paper, and Rob addressed a live audience at SMX East on the subject (more on that to come in the near future).

So, yes, we believe bid testing is critical to building and maintaining a robust paid-search program.  We also believe value-based is the best of the methodologies in use today.   Download the article and white paper today and become a believer.

Tweet

We are getting to the time of year where two things occupy our minds: Ending this year with a head of steam and launching the next on the back of that momentum.  For those of you who manage complex paid search campaigns, OptiMine has a trial program that will help you do both: OptiMize 2013.

This industry-unique trial can be summed up with three numbers:

3- The number of weeks it takes for most advertisers to be up and running with OptiMine
5- The number of weeks until you start seeing financial results from OptiMine
8 – The number of weeks until you see how much OptiMine can move the needle

No other solution can take you from 0 to increased financial results in just 8 weeks.  And no other solution guarantees you an minimum increase of 25%.  In the most recent trials, 40% have seen increased financial results of more than 50%.

This time last year eBags took advantage of the trial program and enjoyed a record-breaking holiday season:

“eBags got up and running quickly last year with a trial at the onset of our most critical time of year, and we were delighted to experience our best-ever holiday shopping season for search.”

Amy Viverito
Vice President, Marketing
eBags

With 98% of OptMine customers realizing increased financial results, doesn’t it makes sense to take the first step towards a full-throttle 2013 now?

Tweet