myspace follows Facebook

Almost a month back, Facebook started to use their user's profiles as a targeting tool(Click Here to check my previous article on facebook's profile based Targeting) to monetize its service.And now it is myspace, who is rolling out an ad Targeting system based on their user's profile.It is not just going to be another profile based targeting, more than that , the System sets its targeting based upon user's behavior.For having this done, the Ad targeting system would consume inputs such as user’s age, gender, friends, groups they belong to and what ads they’ve interacted with in the past.

During the test period, myspace has delivered impressive results, particularly among certain categories such as automotive and music. Clicks on auto ads almost doubled and music ad clicks increased 70 percent.It has taken half a year for a 100 man team to launch beta version of its new Ad targeting system.

I believe, the users of myspace must have the same amount of disinterest on using their profile for targeting, which prevailed among users of Facebook, when they unveiled their plans to Target Advert based on its user's profile.All these actions indicates that Social Networking is the best platform for marketers to effectively use their inventory on potential and highly targeted audiences.

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.

Relevancy of Online advertising, a disaster?

In our industry, throwing up advert much relevant to the content and to the Targeted Audience is the prominent factors which determines a good advert.But sometimes, it might leads to disaster.One such case which, I came across today when, I happened to check my email on my 30gigs account.When I opened up the 'Inbox", I saw a leaderboard(728x90) Google Adsense advert on the Top, campaigning to create a gmail account.

Refer to the screenshot below

So whose loss, whose gain?

• Can we blame GoogleAdsense for showing this advert?
• Should we blame the 30gigs team for placing google adsense on their inbox ?

We cannot blame either of them as, GoogleAdsense does not know the 728x90 property details on 30gigs.At the same time even 30gigs does not know what are the Scheduled ads that would be displayed.So sometimes things are inevitable.

So whats the lesson in the store?

Too much of Relevancy not only gets you conversions, but also eats your cake :-)

Yahoo moved the Coin Again !

I came across an article in MarketingVox, which read

Yahoo has acquired ad targeting and delivery firm Blue Lithium for US$ 300 million, reports Advertising Age.The purchase is the latest in moves by major players to coin the behavioral advertising market.Blue Lithium adds a significant number of capabilities and inventory to Yahoo's existing ad offering.

The newly-acquired company boasts relationships with major publishers, which will continue after the purchase. Its inventory will be incorporated into Right Media Exchange, which Yahoo just acquired in full a few months ago.

Blue Lithium will run ads on Yahoo's network of fully-owned sites and services, bringing significant targeting power to ad delivery, something Yahoo aggressively began to target with the introduction of its SmartAds(Read my earlier post on smart ads) offering to the market.

Yahoo hopes adding a performance-based system will bolster the income from marketers looking for more than just brand impressions, characterized as a strength for the company.

Source MarketingVox

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.
  

Fifth Network's Innovative Targeting

Quite a lot of innovations happening in our industry.Much recently an ad network, called Fifth Network has introduced a new baby to the existing family of Targeting.Fifth Network calls this as, an "Attention Targeting".

The idea of this targeting is, nothing but to target ads on pages, where users stays for a longer time.Bill casper, president and CEO, said that, this method has enabled them to offer an e-CPM whose rate is much lower than that of a Premium inventory. Adding to this Mr.casper has told that, this Targeting method is purely a branding product.Usually Multimedia and News related websites are the ones, where users tends to spend more time.So the company, would identify such websites in their network and further filter down to the Page/Zone level to target.

To address few concerns like,
what if an user opens up a website and goes away?
I firmly believe that, not everyone would open a website and goes away.However, the Fifth network has addressed this Q as well.Say, If a particular ad's impressions goes more than 2 and a half minute, it would not be considered.

Also, the Fifth network has planned to associate with Dynamic Logic (Industry leader in online surveys) and InsightExpress to measure the effectiveness of this targeting once the campaign is live.

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

Ad Serving on YouTube

You Tube has started to ad serve.Mainly after much speculations among advertisers and YouTube fans, the GoogleTube now officially started their adverts.

So far on the site, below were the ad units, I have noticed

• 300x35 gif/jpeg banner
• 300x250 gif/jpeg banner
• In line video along with a 300x250 companion gif/jpeg banner

All the adverts are pushed through Doubleclick's DFP.I have taken few screen shots of the same

• A small banner ad below the main video content is displayed(as highlighted at the left hand side), refer screen shot below

• A click on this banner ad, would expand to a Video ad and starts to play which is clickable to the advertiser's page

• A static companion 300x250 banner is displayed at the right hand throughout the main video, which is again clickable
  

Pros:

• Video ads here are less intrusive in nature, and video plays ONLY when the user clicks on the small banner below main video

• When a user clicks on the ad, the acutal video is paused

• YouTube is serving ads only on the popular videos which are rich in quality.Advertisers get big relief by this, as many were doubting, whether would their adverts be displayed on all lousy video uploads by Youtube users

Facebook's New Profile based Ad Targeting System

Facebook, the most popular social networking site has revealed its plans, to monetize through online advertisements which would be targeted based upon it's user's profile. Technically this targeting is known as Profile Targeting.

Facebook works on this profile based ad targeting system with full priority.According to sources, the ads would be Text based and not display banners.Facebook also plans to conduct surveys among its users to evaluate the response for its advertisement program.The company hopes that it would bring them tremendous success like Google by their contextual based targeting system.

All these trends are clear indicative that Web2.0 sites are creating platform for marketers an easy way for indentifying their target audience.Moreover with already available various targeting options such as Geo location, keyword, Zone, Browser, operating system, Time and date in the industry, profile Targeting has better chance for marketers for reaching their potential audience which results in higher conversions.