Being John Malkovich, media planner edition

Alright, I got a budget from a client.  We have a job to do - it’s a big client, a big brand. Of course they want people to buy their products but we also know that it’s not going to happen on impulse. And it not necessarily going to happen online. So it can’t be all DR, it has to be somewhere in-between.

Breathe in, breathe out. SEM gets a piece, it’s a no-brainer. Lower funnel, gotta work it. Volume won’t be as high as I would want. That’s just common sense. And I read studies that show how display adds lift in search, maybe 155%. Google published a study like that recently, too. Great - let’s do display too. Hopefully there will be good offers in place and the creative is good. Alright.

Display. OK.  Breathe in, breathe out.

Ad networks, DSPs, premium direct publishers.

How do we optimize? Is it on clicks?  Nah, there is the “natural born clickers” problem. Can’t really do it on clicks. Well, I could, but I wouldn’t know how to justify to the client if he has read that study. If I optimize on clicks I am optimizing only for a small group of people who click - the client’s customers are much more diverse than that.

Well, there is also the viewthrough conversions or even visits. Google says it’s good - there must be at least some truth to it. We could do that to pad the results of the campaign.

For brand awareness lift we could use Dynamic Logic or something similar - it will always show a wee lift, we could extrapolate and say that for the entire campaign can expect the same lift as on premium sites where DL was used. Cool.

Speaking of sites, it’s much cheaper to go with any number of the hundreds of ad networks out there, plus, the vultures they are, they will optimize for me and schmooze me out for lunches. But I’ve read that online advertising is more effective when it appears on a site that you know and that you trust. So premium would be better, but if performance is 5 times better, and the price is 10 higher, it doesn’t make sense. Or does it? Plus I’d have to negotiate prices before coming up with the actual ratios.  Would have to call a bunch of them and make deals. That’s annoying. 

And what about frequency? The more ad nets and publishers I use, the higher my average frequency could be if there is duplication between those sites.  And there is duplication between sites, of course. People hate high frequency. It would better to just do one buy over a DSP and manage frequency through one channel.  Whatever - that’s the price we gotta pay, can’t put it all in DSPs for now. It’s going to take a while to figure out which DSPs to use - and since ad networks buy over exchanges maybe I could just throw all of my budgets through a respectable ad network.

Uh, but we also need to show the client that we’re an innovative media agency, have to create some strategic control.

Data.

We could buy data, accumulate data, work our data. We’re still using a DSP like other agencies, and we got a multi-year deal for a third-party ad server from GOOG/Microsoft, so it doesn’t really matter, of course - we’re not creating much strategic control, but it’s a message that sticks these days.  And where is this data we’re buying coming from? Publishers who sell data don’t want to be upfront about it, so there is a lot of trust involved with data exchanges. Kind of like with “behavioral advertising”, whatever that means these days, it’s just that the use of the data is now my own responsibility instead of someone else’s.

And what about retargeting? Have to drop some pixels on the advertiser site.  Ugh.

Almost forgot! What about auditing! Don’t want to be ripped off by any of the ad nets and direct publishers that throw junk inventory my way. Below the fold or above the fold? Does the creative even go through the viewport? And does the fold matter? Designers say it doesn’t! But it would make sense to at least track when the creative crosses the viewport. Oh but it will only be for placements where we don’t go through iframes and maybe some publishers or ad nets won’t let me do it.  Will have to try anyway.

DING! New email in my inbox. Looks like it’s the creative for the campaign!

This creative makes no sense. It’s a set of the ugliest 300×250’s I’ve ever seen (or since the last campaign, at least). The animation is way too long before the message becomes comprehensible. The call to action is terrible. Don’t understand what the offer is. But this went through a very long round of client approvals and there is no way to go back.

…I guess I’ll have to make it work somehow.