Stupid RTB Tricks
Posted: March 3rd, 2010 | Author: vlad | Filed under: industry | Tags: adex, adexchanges, rtb |At BLOOM we’ve been integrating real-time bidding functionality and have been running campaigns through AdGear since November 20o9. We’re plugged in to the DoubleClick AdX 2.0 and although our volume there is relatively small compared to the “traditional” third party delivery, it’s been a lot of fun.
To anyone dealing with the sheer scale enabled by RTB, it ends up being a boundless source of ideas for very questionable practices. This, in turn, raises the issues of privacy and data ownership. There has been a lot of coverage of RTB, and of course AdExchanger has done an amazing job in covering the new generation of ad companies (including us!). But let’s talk about the dark side of RTB. The Stupid RTB Tricks. Media hacking.
1) Browser history retargeting. Imagine that you have a two-sided display campaign. On one end, you run on sites or networks bought direct, with huge reach. Everytime you serve an impression, you check user’s browser history (see a demo of the CSS trick here). What you check for are your advertisers’ competitors’ sites. In the second part of the campaign, you retarget those who have visisted your competitors’ site with a sweet call to action.
2) Über-browser history retargeting. Adding on top of the first trick — create a segment for those who have visited more than one of your competitors’ sites. This might indicate that the person is in a serious shopping mode. Since browser history CSS trick works based on actual URLs and not just top-level domains, you could go really deep inspecting which products on your competitors’ sites were looked at. Targeting this segment through RTB is a no-brainer — bid like you’ve never bid before.
3) Using premium media as audience qualifiers. Buy a direct campaign with a premium publisher that reaches a very valuable audience. Say, WSJ. Run the campaign with frequency cap of 1. Reuse this data to serve to the same exact audience across the RTB universe. Do so for more than one advertiser, compensating the original advertiser whose budget went to WSJ.
Of course, there are many more opportunities of this sort. And although there is nothing really new here, having the possibility of doing it “on tap” without necessarily having a huge scale in the retargeting segments is definitely new. You don’t need to setup anything special with ad networks and run 10 witnessing tags from 10 of them, don’t need to commit ad budgets for retargeting without knowing what the final reach will be, etc.
I’d love to see other people post more examples of media hacking (both in the good and bad sense of it).
[…] you retarget those who have visisted your competitors’ site with a sweet call to action.” Read all about it. Stesin’s observations follow up Yahoo! Ramsey McGrory’s RTB reservations discussed here last […]
There is nothing about these tactics that is specific to RTB. These tactics can be employed by any unscrupulous ad network or ad server with or without Real-Time Bidding.
We don’t use them at DataXu. We consider leveraging browser exploits and re-targeting specific publisher audience to be off-limits.
Bill Simmons
VP Tech, DataXu
You are right Bill, and I mentioned that in the post. The point is that it’s possible and RTB exchanges facilitate this to happen under the radar.
Moreover, since RTB requires you to have data to make buying decisions, there will most definitely be a rise in getting data with whatever means are necessary.
Your comment seems to be more of a plug for dataxu - well done on that.
This article is an example of why you don’t allow children to sit at the grown up table.
this is a short term issue. sure, players are using data which they are not paying for. but eventually, the price that they will pay for inventory would start reflecting the value of the data that comes along…
Hi Vlad
You definitely raise some interesting points. I guess it will eventually come down to a cost thing.
Whilst doing #1 could be done fairly cheaply, going down the #2 route would take a long time to compile and maintain the product level URL list. This might incur a cost that would be more expensive than just buying this data from a competitor or data company directly (assuming, of course, you could convince them of the benefits of doing so). Would there not also be potential issue in checking all the thousands of URLs within the RTB timeframe?
#3 already exists in legitimate form, Audience Science’s Audience Extension product works in a similar way but pays the publishers for the segment. As long as the cost is not prohibitive, this could open the door to a better relationship with the publisher for more complex segmentation, something that would be far more difficult using the underhand method.
Ultimately, as long as it doesn’t cost too much to do things legitimately, I’d like to think that the majority of the companies in the industry would stay above board. Time will tell!
Hi Vlad,
“You are right Bill, and I mentioned that in the post. The point is that it’s possible and RTB exchanges facilitate this to happen under the radar.”
I disagree. First, RTB exchanges have very specific terms and conditions. Second, like I said, these kinds of techniques are possible for any kind of moderately sophisticated ad network or exchange. It really has nothing to do with RTB.
“Moreover, since RTB requires you to have data to make buying decisions, there will most definitely be a rise in getting data with whatever means are necessary. ”
This is also true of all kinds of efficient ad buying, not just RTB. I suppose the only difference is that if you buy through an ad network or exchange and also use their “house” optimization you rely on a third party to have sufficient data to do a good enough job. You are correct, with RTB, the buyer drives the optimization, so the buyers needs both targeting algorithms and data.
In general, I disagree with the undertone of the article, which seems to insinuate that RTB is a seedy way to buy media. Yes, it’s possible to behave badly using RTB, but behaving badly has always been possible through any kind of media buying on the internet. RTB is a just a new way of buying where many buyers have the opportunity to simultaneously compete for a particular impression. There is nothing fundamentally different about it that would encourage these kinds of tactics.
I am not in favor of Internet regulations, but cases like this make me feel if time has come to standardize what constitutes behavioral targeting
These kinds of articles give DSPs a bad connotation before they are really even out of the gate. You could have written a similar article with the headline “Tricks for exploiting Ad Network Buys”, or any online medium, really.
Let’s try and be more conscious of bad-mouthing new opportunities before folks down in the trenches have had a chance to evaluate themselves.
All good points, gents.
What is interesting here is that, as Dan mentioned, this already exists in legitimate form. Audience Science and others do it for audience extension, while a new generation of data companies do it for user’s history. All of it is done without the user’s consent, the same as what I have described above. If legitimacy is only based on whether everyone is getting paid, it’s not enough to make it right for the end consumer.
And it is also true that this can be done with traditional ad networks. The point is that it’s much easier to do with ad exchanges because of the scale of inventory available through them. Even the smallest audience intersections become available on tap.
I would say that increasingly we’ll be seeing companies trying to showcase that they “out-data” others, after years of trying to “out-optimize” in vain. Some even change their names to reflect that.
@john nardone - Not sure what warrants an attack like this from you. I am in no way implying that we are doing this, since we’re serving for some of the biggest, most respected brands in the world. I am raising the point that data ownership, both from the user and media perspective, is an issue that has to be seriously addressed by the industry. Industry players saying that they don’t do it just doesn’t cut it — I don’t believe in self-policing in this one.
I’m hoping that the venerable “grown-ups” at xplusone would agree with this.
This is interesting. Calling #1 “good” or “bad” is quite subjective. Is there a formal legal hurdle to this kind of data usage?
As a publisher of premium content, this makes me a bit uneasy. As a buyer of media with limitations on our own retargeting, I get excited about it.
No doubt the number of players looking for a quick buck will overwhelm those looking for a clear way. Great article and comments.
[…] To anyone dealing with the sheer scale enabled by RTB, it ends up being a boundless source of ideas … […]
[…] To anyone dealing with the sheer scale enabled by RTB, it ends up being a boundless source of ideas … […]