Doubleclick's DFP going Web2.0

These days I find hardly enough time to spend, some time on my blog.Today during my daily routine of checking my favourite website, I came to know that Doubleclick has come with a widget feature for it's publisher solution DFP.Doubleclick announced the availability of the DART® for Publishers (DFP) Dashboard, an innovative, time-saving solution for ad operations professionals. The new DFP Dashboard combines Web 2.0 flexibility, intuitive functionality and vivid graphical displays – transforming common advertising operations tasks such as monitoring campaign performance and troubleshooting delivery issues.

Screenshot

With the DFP Dashboard, information is presented in customizable tools called widgets designed to enable users to configure their dashboards to show the information most relevant to their role. This new tool is fully integrated with DFP and included at no additional cost to all existing DFP users.

For More details Click Here !

Interstitial Ad-the Ambush

Penned down lines would find its usefulness for those, who's wanting to know what an Interstitial ad is.

Interstitial ad, is one of the most popular Rich Media ad type.Also, commonly known as Metastitial ads or transition ads.Interstitial ads are those, which would appear when an user navigates from one page to another page.There are some interstitials that would appear, when an user closes the web browser session.Technically, all these interstitial ads gets downloaded to the user's cookie, when an user visits a web page, which has an interstitial ad scheduled.And so, the downloaded interstitial ad would begin to monitor the user's behavior and when it finds that the user navigates to someother page or closes the browser, instantaneously the ad gets triggered and appears to the user.Depending on how the interstitial are programmed by the creative team, the interstitial appears either while navigating between pages or closing the browser.

Below is an example for an interstitial POPUp ad

In general, an interstitial ad type would be deployed for branding campaigns.Many people normally gets confused between an interstitial and superstitial ads.Actually, the nature of how these ad loads in both the ad types are the same, the only difference is being, a Superstitial ad appears on the background.One more thing on interstitial ad, I am not sure though is, some interstitials works on web browsers which has "Java Virtual machine" installed, a software addon for the web browser.

Traffickers !!!

Points to be noted While Trafficking Interstitial ads

Traffickers, normally interstitial ads would be of Tag form and you would need to make special settings on your ad server to traffic intersititals unlike normal ads.Moreover, you may need to make additional modification the interstitial creative tag before uploading on the Ad server so as to ensure impressions and click recordings.I would highly recommend the Traffickers to check with your Ad sever manual to know how to traffick interstitial ads.

SEM + Display Advertising == Search Re-Targeting

24/7 RealMedia, very recently introduced a new concept of its kind, known as "Search Re-Targeting" for its Ad network "Global Web Alliance".Before getting on the story, first let us digg Re-Targeting

What is Re-Targeting?
Re-Targeting as it name implies, a method where an Advert is targeted to users who previously failed to complete a transaction.It is also called as re-marketing or re-messaging.

So, what is Search Re-Targeting?

A display advert is shown to an user who visits a website by clicking on a Text ad on a search engine through a Keyword/Keyword group Query.Feeling complicated ?

Actually, I myself iterated the Article several times to understand, and apparently ended up deciphering, it to a level :-)

I think, an example would help to get a clear picture

An user goes to search engine like Yahoo, google, MSN,..And types in a keyword.The user would get sponsored links/Text Ads related to the keyword typed.The user now clicks on the text ads which would take to an advertisers page.For some reason, if that very user incompletes the transaction, the 24/7 RealMedia system records that user, in terms of the user behavior, demography, Geo-location, etc(To remember this unique user).So, next time when that very user access any web sites which belongs to Global Web alliance, a display advert related to the keyword of the same advertiser would be shown.

In addition to Search Re-targeting, the system also enables advertisers to create dynamic ads which can be customized based on Keywords, the web users types.After running few pilot campaigns based on this targeting concept, 24/7 proclaims that, the method has boosted the conversions pretty high than usual.

Trafficking Text Ads containing Special Characters

Trafficking Text ads, ain't simple as they appear.One have to be utmost cautious while dealing with such ads.Important point is, when you Traffick a Text ad, which contains special characters or any Double byte characters such as "$,#,.." would be truncated on the web site.Because web browser might not properly interpret the special characters pushed through an ad server, so the aftermath would result in either Special characters not thrown up on the web site or the character would gets altered.

Example:

Actual Text creative: Buy TV for 430£ HURRY NOW !

Displayed Text Ad: Buy TV for 430 HURRY NOW !

Observation:The "£" is missed in the Displayed Text ad.

There's a work around for this.All you got to do is, replace the special characters with its HTML equivalent while setting up on your Ad server.Download document which contains Special characters and their HTML Equivalents " Click Here to download "

Note:

• Once you replace the special characters with its HTML equivalent, Please preview the ad and ensure it displays properly.Also run a Test campaign on a Test page before you Turn the actual ad live

• I would highly recommend that you check with your ad server vendor or refer to Ad server manual to know whether you need to replace with HTML Equivalents.
  

TribalFusion's Dynamic Ads

Few days ago, Yahoo launched it's behavioral based and dynamically customizable Smart Ads ( See my earlier post on Smart Ads).And it is now Tribal Fusion, which has come up with a slightly similar concept known as Dynamic Ads.

According to Tribal Fusion, Dynamic Ads would enable advertisers to instantly customize their creative content and landing pages based upon the attributes the Online users contributes such as demography, geo location and online behavior.

Example:A real estate company which uses Dynamic Ads can show different houses for sale to users in each zip code. When an user clicks on the listing, they would be taken to a dedicated page for that specific house.It means more relevant advert along with a relevant Landing page to a targeted user.

Creative contents are easily customized by using a simple Template and thus reducing the time consumption for advertisers to make huge number of creative and labor.Tribal Fusion proclaims that their DynamicAds has resulted upto 80% more conversion.

While speaking about this, I must admit that, in my experience I have done a similar optimization to my client which resulted in good conversions, where I would render different landing pages to users based on creative concepts.Say, If my campaign has 5 different concepts, I would assign 5 different landing pages designed exclusively for each concept.So when an online user clicks on an ad, he sees a much relevant landing page.Because of this we establish the same feel on the user on the landing page as that of the creative rather assigning a common landing page which would result in disconnect between creative and landing page.

Try this way, it should give you better conversions

Yahoo Debuts Behavioral Targeting

In my earlier post(Title:Yahoo!'s Smart Ads a Behavioral Targeting) I discussed that Y! kick started their beta testing on behavioral targeting which they call as Smart Ads.Now Y! Debuts this service to all its users.

With Smart Ads, Y! apart from just targeting a potential user based on web behavior patterns, also has the ability to dynamically customize the online ads, so the ad would get greater influential rate.So as to do this, the advertisers would provide various backgrounds, text and other materials of the ad.All this would be later uploaded on their ad server and set up made accordingly.

As a result of this, a potential user not only just sees a relatively advert according to his/her mind, but also an attractive ad. So, Y! firmly believes that this combination would soar their position in display advertisement segment.Furthermore, the beta test conducted on their Yahoo travel portal already proved success.