This is a really good execution of the simple idea of self-profiling, makes it look more like a quiz or a game.
Imagine if this was powered by hunch, which could inflect all sorts of other information on the person based on just a few answers.
AdGear RTB on Doubleclick Exchange 2.0 from Vlad Stesin on Vimeo.
Fairly simple retargeting campaign, very simple bidding strategy. Running at around 50 queries per second. Very exciting to see live traffic this way, thanks to gltail.
“While it is in everyone’s best interest (theoretically) to have fewer, better performing ads on a page, in an exchange where little is known about any given placement, a bad actor can exploit good actors in the system to unfairly maximize his yield at the expense of other players. This results in a prisoners dilemma situation. The result is that, in many tests, publishers may find themselves in a death spiral of adding more ads to inventory to increase the effective yield of a page.”
- Cogblog » Blog Archive » Managing Commoditization and Exchanges
Interesting perspective, and definitely one of the challenges when it comes to network buys in general, not just on exchanges.
But one of the main ideas behind DSPs is the benchmarking of sites/URLs across clients and campaigns. Granted, we don’t always have the URL on Doubleclick’s Exchange and it depends on publisher preferences, but frankly right now inventory liquidity is the biggest problem.
“A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read ‘The Lost Symbol’, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.”
The Economist (via mudd up, peterwknox) (via marco)
This is really a huge insight that has repercussions in all sorts of other areas, from digital advertising to iphone apps to search engines. And it’s all based on the age old principle of people being afraid of missing things out. Hence the blockbusters.
Maybe one person’s attention span is composed on one hand of following others (blockbusters) and on the other, finding your own (niches).
My hunch has always been that advertising needs social proof — proof that there are other people that dig an offer or an ad. That ultimately creates curiosity stemming from not wanting to miss out on something that a lot of others are getting.
“While consumer attention has moved to the web, consumer marketing has not. Instead, the web has, in the words of IAB chief Randall Rothenberg, been colonized “by the evil aliens of the direct-response planet.” Those below-the-line marketing budgets are about generating a sale, a clickthrough, a download or a page view. In short, marketing on the web has not been about creating demand so much as reacting to it by delivering the right ad to the right person when they indicate they want it. This has been a boon for Google (and has given birth to 400 ad networks), and represents the best thinking of largely West Coast technologists. But it is increasingly disastrous to content industries that are watching offline revenue erode and finding no equivalent revenue stream online.”
- Advertising: Planning Your Next Move in Ad Land - Advertising Age - News
Digital Advertising: Who Gets the Highest Ad Rates Online? - Advertising Age - Digital:
Shared by Tim
Interesting look at CPMs and roadblock prices from big publishers.
“According to Deloitte’s fourth annual “State of the Media Democracy” report, due out today, 34 percent of Americans cite TV as their favorite medium, up from 27 percent last year. Second through fourth, respectively, were Internet, music and books, all of which are perceived by the average consumer as being less expensive than a night out at the movies.”
“Online display advertising, viewed as inefficient and time-consuming for many marketers, has been a tough sell in recent years. Google aims to change that.”
Display is far from being dead. Another proof.
“Rather than try to reach every conceivable person who fits a particular demographic, marketers will be looking for technologies and ad solutions that allow them to reach only the people who—by their past surfing behavior, search queries, online purchases, social connections, Twitter posts and other digital footprints—indicate that they are likely prospects.”- Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO - eMarketer
There is a slew of challenges there, namely for publishers, but this is the trend we’re very fond of.
“The basic paradox of the Internet can be framed very simply: The very platform that makes advertising both more relevant and more measurable is the same platform that longer-term will challenge and ultimately undermine the basic role of advertising in communicating with customers”
John Hagel, a long time ago
I try to keep that in mind at all times. But the big questions are when and how. If it really goes the way David Koretz claims it has to, we’re closer to this than ever. Because CPC sure as hell will not save publishers, no matter how hard they try at generating clicks. You can’t just ignore the fundamental difference between a click on a search engine and a click on another web site. The context of clear intent is simply not there. In order for publishers to harvest intent the way search engines do, they’d have to create applications where consumers manifest it. Otherwise we end up with CPC punch the monkey ads.
It is also possible that the web consumed in a web browser is doomed to become the cesspool of digital advertising, while other digital distribution channels (like the rumored Apple tablet) will be where advertisers pay the premium.
