AdverNET '99 COVERAGE: Building Holistic Campaign Models

From: donna stryk <donna.stryk_at_tenagra.com>
Date: Tue 16 Nov 1999 11:26:36 -0600

The media buying track of AdverNET '99 closed with a
session entitled "Building Holistic Media Campaign
Recommendation Models." This session encompassed a
plethora of topics. It started out with each panelist
again giving specifics on their particular product or
service. Once this was out of the way, the panel
revisited some of the past topics from the conference
and gave opinions on the industry. Overall, the
session was great.

The session started with Dave Zinman, Founder and Vice
President of Marketing at AdKnowledge. He focused his
portion of the talk on the factors that go into piecing
together portal, site, and network buys. He said that
one important thing to consider is the content that
surrounds your ad. It's critical to understand how
your target market will react to the information on the
site you advertise on. If, for instance, you advertise
on a portal site, would you want your auto parts ad to
show up on a page with Pokemon cards? Probably not.
It's more likely that you would buy key words and put
it on pages with other auto related items. Another
thing to study is the frequency that you show the ad to
the same viewer. You do not want too many impressions
in an extremely targeted area. This creates the risk
that the same person will see your ad repeatedly and
only react once, therefore decreasing your click
through rates. In this case, it might have been better
to purchase inventory on a portal site rather than the
highly targeted content site, just to increase reach.
This all depends on the objectives of the campaign too.
Finally, you have to consider overlap. For example,
some of the viewers of site A may also frequent site B
which would lower the total number of unique visitors
exposed to your ad if you purchase space on both sites.

Solbright has different ideas on creating the best
possible media buy. They believe that effective media
buying results from effective media buy management.
Key Compton, Chief Executive Officer of Solbright
explained his company's data management tool.
Solbright produces software that will manage all
aspects of a media buy in one central location. One
of their products, Dispatch, "focuses on providing an
automated environment for advertising planning, for
campaign management, for trafficking, and for
consolidating all of the reporting" said Compton. This
product creates a single database with all buy
information as well as the results of the buy.
Solbright sells this product to agencies to help them
keep all of the information regarding multiple
campaigns in a central location. Solbright has another
solution for site publishers called Ad Traffic Manager.
This automates the process of trafficking including the
use of rich media. Compton didn't go into as much
detail on this product because the conference was
geared toward agencies while Ad Traffic Manager is
geared toward publishers.

Tom DuBois, Chief Executive Officer at Active Research
said that they focus on measuring e-commerce results to
help companies understand why people are or aren't
buying their product online. He explained that the
first step in the measurement process entails taking a
step back and determining the goal of the campaign.
Does the campaign have a media focus? This typically
includes metrics such as awareness, frequency, or
reach. Does it have a commerce focus? This usually
analyzes ratios as well as implicit and explicit
profiles. Lastly, does the campaign use a mixed model?
This is where metrics such as pay per click and
commerce aggregators come into play. Next, consider
the e-commerce sales cycle. A prospect begins with
awareness, which leads them to product selection. From
there, the prospect selects which retailer they wish to
visit to complete the purchase. At that time, they
make the purchase and the retailer delivers the
product. Finally, there should be support service in
place. Active Research tracks visitors as they go
through this process to determine how effective an
e-commerce campaign is.

AdRelevance provides a way to determine the location or
channel that's right for your campaign. According to
Will Hodgeman, their Chief Executive Officer they
provide information regarding your competitors'
advertising efforts. This information resembles the
CMR or VMS only pertains to the online arena. It
includes where they advertise, what the message is, how
many impressions were delivered, and so on. He
provided the example of a small flower shop. First,
they want to know where the "big guys" are. Using
AdRelevance, they can pull up a list of sites with
advertising from 1-800 Flowers. Next, they want to
see what their competitors say in their advertising.
AdRelevance will not only show you the exact sites that
they advertise on, but they also show you the exact
banners that ran there. Additionally, you can get data
on how many impressions were delivered and how many
clicks were delivered. All of this information can be
compiled to help the media buyer determine which types
of sites to advertise on and how many impressions they
will need to reach their objectives.

The last panelist to speak was the session moderator,
Mike Tekulsky. He is the Senior Director of Agency
Development at AdAuction. AdAuction aggregates several
types of media including online, print, and broadcast.
They offer one stop shopping for everything from
branded sites to run of network products to regionally
targeted buying capabilities. Tekulsky didn't go into
a lot of detail because of time constraints and
instead, led the discussion into the question and
answer segment.

The first question took us back to the beginning of the
conference. Where does a media buyer start a new
campaign? Each panelist had a different idea on the
best way to approach a new online campaign.
AdKnowledge has a planning tool, which utilizes
Nielsen/NetRatings data regarding audience, rates, and
traffic levels. They feel that you should begin by
seeking out sites that target your sought after
demographic at the start of the campaign. Solbright
emphasized the construction of an infrastructure. This
includes planning systems with database technology and
partnerships with the appropriate third parties. Tom
DuBois of Active Research stated that there is a very
good opportunity with vertical sites that should be
explored. AdRelevance suggested finding a trusted data
source that can provide information on where you can go
within your budget. The answer that summed up where to
begin the campaign came from our moderator, Mike
Tekulsky. He said to "start with your customers,"
something we should always keep in mind. Before you
can determine which sites to go after, you must fully
understand what your customer wants and who they are.

The next question posed to the panelists was what is a
truly integrated online campaign. The consensus seemed
to be that it varies based on who the advertiser is.
Certain customers will only react to certain types of
media and you should only use the ones that will
attract your target audience to your particular
product. Another aspect of integration is that the
line between online and offline companies is blurring
as both types of organizations move into the other
arena. We have seen a surge of dot com advertising in
our traditional media and that trend makes it
imperative for advertisers to fully integrate their on
and offline campaigns to maintain consistency.

This trend also sparked another question. In the past,
some companies have spent their entire ad budget
online. Are these online campaigns outdated? The
panel says no. They said the key is to know your
audience. The reason that dot com companies are
venturing offline is to reach the population that is
just getting on the internet. One panelist said that
dot com companies are finally beginning to view
customers as real people rather than digital people.
The general consensus on this issue was that online is
not dead, it's just being integrated into a full
campaign which combines these efforts with offline
efforts.

The final question was whether advertisers have been
measuring the right things regarding online advertising
and how will these measurements integrate with other
media. One panelist said that we are measuring the
right thing, we just aren't measuring enough.
Unfortunately, advertisers must also be wary of data
overload. The one thing that hasn't been measured that
would be helpful is competitive context. The key at
this point according to Tom DuBois is to find better
ways to analyze the data we have and learn as much as
we can from it. Once we have this down to an art, we
can understand what data we still need to make our
campaigns even better.

I hope our coverage of AdverNET '99 has provided you
with new insight into the industry. This will be the
last installment of our conference recap. Please, take
advantage of the Online Advertising Seminar taking
place this week on the list.





Received on Tue Nov 16 1999 - 11:26:36 CST