Now that the “Google Content Network” has been magic-wanded into the “Google Display Network”, there is the potential for a lot more advertisers to come to the display party. But that party is hosted by a whole slew of acronyms. Here’s our quick and dirty guide to what they all mean:

CPM: Cost per thousand. This is your cost per thousand impressions, or the number of times your ad is viewed. A lot of display media is still bought this way.

DSP: Demand-side platform. Software used to purchase media across various ad networks and exchanges, generally with the use of third-party data and some sort of universal frequency cap to the number impressions any given consumer is shown.

RTB: Real-time bidding. Instead of buying a bunch of impressions from publishers and then auctioning them off, impressions are evaluating and purchased as they are generated.

BT: Behavioral targeting. The combination of learning from user behavior and third party data to more effectively target online advertising.

PBS: Preemptive brand safety. Some “brand safety” is really an after-the-impression assessment of potential appropriateness problems with the placement of an ad. Preemptive brand safety offers evaluation of the page prior to placing an ad there.

CPA: Cost per action. An act performed by a consumer in response to an ad, also the type of advertising that is sold on this basis. Also CPL (cost per lead) and CPD (cost per download).

RON: Run of network. Ads shown on all the web properties of any given publisher.

ROS: Run of site. Ads shown on just one specific website, though not on a specific page of that site.

IAB: Interactive Advertising Bureau. Group dedicated to the growth of interactive advertising and that also recommends standards and practices for online advertising.

NAI: Network Advertising Initiative. A group of third party network advertisers who are committed to increasing consumer confidence and contributing to the growth of electronic commerce.

RTA: Real Time Assessment. The ability to evaluate an impression in real-time for content, quality, and performance reasons before you buy or bid to lift efficiency and reduce the need for pass-backs.

ROI: Return on Investment. The calculation of revenue derived from spending on online advertisements. Also ROS (Return on Spend) and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).

So what did we miss? Define other acronyms in the comment section below!

There are all sorts of DSPs out there now. In fact, another company announced last week that it would be bringing a new DSP to market and there are already half a dozen major players in the space. So when it comes to choosing the right one for your business, how do you make a decision? If the three options below are important to you, you might be interested to know that no one besides LucidMedia has the capacity. And if you’re a current client, you might review this list anyway just to make sure you’re taking full advantage of our features.

Preemptive brand safety

So few DSPs can provide preemptive brand safety that skepticism about the possibility of it is rampant. The fact is that it is possible. In fact, it’s been done, but it requires a DSP with more than a UI and a handful of relationships with aggregators. In fact, it requires a robust, search engine like crawler partnered with proprietary semantic technology that not only identifies the true “about-ness” of every available impression, it also identifies potentially objectionable content. Preemptive brand safety isn’t simple and it isn’t easy and chances are, your DSP doesn’t have it.

Custom data integrations

Every reputable DSP has relationships with the big data suppliers like BlueKai, eXelate and AlmondNet. So do we. For most advertisers, buying data through our platform from one of these suppliers will be sufficient. But one advantage of starting out as a technology company is that we have brilliant engineers on staff. And our brilliant engineers do more than just build new features into our DSP. For large agencies and advertisers, we can also build custom data integrations so you can use your data within our DSP. You worked hard to collect and categorize, now we can help you put it to work.

Impression avails insight in real time

Real-time bidding has proven to be a powerful tool for many advertisers and most DSPs have access to real-time sources. The key to effective real-time bid management though is not only being able to buy in real time, but being able to make decisions about the value of impressions in real time before you buy. So when it comes to using data, either behavioral or contextual, our clients find our graphs of real time inventory availability for those segments exceptionally helpful. By turning different segments on and off, you can see what the impact to impressions, clicks and conversions could be. It’s an incredibly powerful forecasting tool that you just don’t see in other platforms.

These features won’t be important to every advertiser, but with the number of DSPs on the market now, it’s always nice to see what features are out there that your legacy DSP might be missing. Or if you haven’t selected a provider yet, the benefits you could be leaving on the table by continuing exclusively to work with networks or buy inventory directly from publishers. As you can see, a DSP is not just a new variation on an ad network or exchange, it’s a way to manage your display buying more efficiently.

If you’re an advertiser accustomed to purchasing inventory from individual publishers or publishers with groups of sites, working with a network, exchange or DSP is an entirely different ballgame. For one thing, you’ll be looking at information for thousands of sites instead of just one, two or a dozen. So questions like, “What are your site’s demographics?” are unlikely to yield useful information. It’s a new advertising world, one where you can give your preferred audience requirements to the network, exchange or DSP and they’ll deliver impressions to users who meet your requirements wherever they exist online.  This is instead of picking among several sites to see who has the best demographic profile and then hoping those users show up which is the way the direct buys work.  So in this brave new world of aggregated advertising with unlimited reach and scale, what questions should you ask when trying to select the right online advertising platform to manage your media buy so that you get the best return on your ad spend?

Can you apply a universal frequency cap?

If you’re working with a number of different networks simultaneously, it’s possible that your ad may delivered more than the maximum number of times to a single individual browser than is really optimal. Even premium publishers sell their remnant inventory on the exchanges so your ad could turn up for a single user from both sources more times than you would have planned if you’d had a choice. De-duping your media plan has historically been one of the big efficiency killers in display adverting and reach extension programs.  Managing your buy through a unified display advertising platform that allows for a universal frequency cap across all sources can help you reach your conversion goals in the most efficient manner.

What is the cost of the third party data you will be using to create my audience segments?

Unless a company has proprietary audience segments (which some do), they will most likely be purchasing data from a company like BlueKai, eXelate or AlmondNet. This data is not free, whether the company has a comprehensive agreement with one of the data companies that allows for the purchasing of data on platform or not. The cost will be built into the price somewhere and it may be beneficial to determine the cost of that data compared to a contextual system that targets specific keywords and key phrases or to a direct from publisher model that allows you to target certain sites or certain pages of sites.

Is the targeting used broad or narrow, optimized or fixed?

The direct buys were frequently limited in how much scale they could bring to the table.  You bought a site or a network of sites and your ads ran there, usually within a channel or two as a rudimentary form of “targeting”.  The new breed of aggregated campaigns can run as wide as the web so you need to stop and think about the approach, audience, content and scope of your campaign.  Do you want to reach a specific demographic trait like the lucrative A18 to 49?  Or is it more detailed like “Moms with Kids”?  Or do you want to run on certain kinds of content like golf equipment or hybrid SUVs?  These are fixed-type campaigns with a specific segment to reach.  Do you want to limit your campaign to only those requirements or do you want to run wider to make some serendipitous performance discoveries?  Running wide will often expose whole new pockets that perform for your brand.  We often see with our learning impressions that there are great performing segments, in audience and content and behavior, that can be exploited online to exceed goals.  These kinds of optimized campaigns run a parallel stream of wide learning media using an optimizer to maximize the learnings.  Then use your platform to scale the learnings to hit that perfect balance of pacing, price and performance.

The new frontier in advertising means asking a whole new breed of questions on how your buy will be put together. To ensure that you are getting the most return from your buy, make sure you’re asking the right kind of questions so you’re getting the kind of data you really need to succeed in a real-time world.

There’s something about advertising online that makes some marketers forget all they once knew about the marketing basics. We’ve seen it most dramatically recently in the full-scale social media pushes that some companies are making. For example, in the gold rush to grab precious social media eyeballs, all strategic concerns are forgotten. So if you’re considering moving a portion of your traditional ad spend online, here’s a list of common mistakes that we see some display advertisers make when they start managing their own campaigns for the first time.

1.  Not Testing Creative

When it comes to basic industry best practices, display is no different from any other advertising medium. Though experience helps in determining what creative, tagline or call to action will work best for your brand, the most successful advertisers allocate a portion of their spend—particularly early on in a campaign—to A/B testing creative elements. It might not seem like a color, word change, or even an exclamation point could make a huge difference, but it often does.  You test layouts and colors and fonts in your print ads so why not do it online too? Try different things online in small batches across a broad swath of media and heavy up on the components that work.

2.  Not Ramping-up Properly

Any campaign can benefit from a ramp-up period. The temptation at the start of a campaign is to want to see dramatic results quickly. However, particularly when you’re working within an auto-bid or optimized framework, the results will be better later on if the campaign starts slower and makes common sense optimization changes incrementally until the optimum performance pockets are found and scaled. This lets your platform of choice learn where the valuable impressions are and pick more like those in the future.

3.  Not Focusing on Performance

With the proliferation of all sorts of data, there is a strong temptation to want to limit buying to a very narrow demographic segment because you have always marketed to that particular audience effectively. However, just because you can buy highly specific segments doesn’t mean you should when online. Most campaigns are more effective when there are a wider range of potential impressions to bid on. Some campaigns can benefit from a very high CPM and a very narrow slice of the population, but this is not true for most advertisers. If this is your first foray into display, cast your net a little wider and look for those wonderful serendipitous discoveries that work for your brand.

4.  Not Addressing Saturation

You can saturate your audience with a message in any medium and nowhere is that more true than when you are online because it’s so easy to acquire massive amounts of media.  It’s easy to launch your campaign, arrive at the right media mix and creative elements, then let it run its course.  But a long, multi-month flights should have multiple creatives and messages ready if and when performance drops off.  A smart frequency capping strategy helps but even with just a few daily exposures your customers can get turned off quickly.  Change it up regularly and see if that doesn’t keep the conversions coming right up to the ending bell.

If you can avoid these simple newbie mistakes you’ll be on your way to a successful display campaign. All it takes is a little know-how, a little experience, and a lot of common sense and you will quickly find the combination of tactics that work for your particular brand online.

Brand safety is a major concern for advertisers and agencies. When you pair our contextualization engine with real-time bidding, you get a brand-safe environment for your display advertising.

But what happens when you throw images or video into the mix?

LucidMedia has partnered with Milabra to  contextualize visual data to improve brand safety and increase audience engagement through serving more relevant ads.

Sam Cox, CEO of Milabra had this to say about the pact:

“We are excited to work with LucidMedia to enable its advertisers to move beyond text and semantic content categorization into visual verification and optimization by understanding the visual context environment of their ads on a page. Our visual recognition capabilities fit in ideally with LucidMedia’s digital media platform and DSP to provide advertisers and agencies a comprehensive base of visual data and brand-safe media that now extends into images and visual elements.”

And Ajay Sravanapudi, Founder and CEO of LucidMedia said this:

“Adding Milabra’s visual intelligence data and brand safety technology to our platform is another important step in LucidMedia’s ongoing mission to provide the online advertising industry’s most comprehensive and transparent targeting capabilities for advertisers and agencies. This important new offering combines effectively with our recently announced preemptive brand safety capabilities as well as the breadth of targeting data and proprietary technology we offer.”

We’re looking forward to working together to provide the most brand-safe campaigns in the industry.

If you’ve been online at all this afternoon, you may have noticed that the entire internet is buzzing over Google’s new “instant search” feature. When you start typing a search query from the Google home page (and, for now, if you’re signed into a Google account), you start getting suggestions, not just in the Google suggestions box, but on the actual search page.

So for now, here is the alphabet according to Google, based on typing the first letter of the alphabet into the search box to see what came up first (at least here in the DC metro area).

Read the rest of this entry »

Reprinted from iMedia Connection

Overview:

DSPs are really just networks in disguise, they will make networks obsolete, and are a fad with no real staying power.  All false.  In just a few short months, the term demand-side platform (DSP) has become ubiquitous in the online advertising industry. It has become synonymous with all things real-time bid, exchange-sourced, display advertising — in many cases replacing the mainstay term “network” as the model of choice for advertisers. All kinds of media brokers are now scrambling to offer a DSP solution, relegating words like “network” and “optimizer” to the dustbin of display terminology. But as more platforms wade into the opportunity waters, it seems like an equal amount of fog is being injected into industry discussions. So I thought it would be an opportune time to lift some of that fog and expose several of the bigger DSP myths being perpetuated today.

Myth 1: DSPs are really just networks in disguise

False. There are some real differences between DSPs and networks, but recent trends have blurred those lines and given birth to this popular myth. At a fundamental level, traditional networks rely on a large stable of direct publisher relationships to deliver premium placements, easy reach, and ample scale, while owning the media risk and performance responsibilities. Many of these traditional networks live on today amid the DSP wave, successfully delivering campaigns along the way. But networks have begun to rely on exchanges as easy aggregation points for quick scale, and that is what started the move to DSPs. Then when the networks began to layer on automated optimization and advertiser-facing controls alongside their exchange-sourced media — either managed or self-service — they started to look like a lot like DSPs. This is how the whole DSP phenomenon began to accelerate. As networks began to rely heavily on exchange-sourced media while automating the trafficking process and exposing levers and knobs to the advertiser, some essentially became demand-side platforms. With the scale of the real-time bid exchanges and external facing controls, yesterday’s traditional ad network becomes today’s “hot” DSP. But there aren’t going to be as many DSPs as ad networks — read on for why.

Myth 2: DSPs will make networks obsolete

False. It will remain so until all available inventory is transacted on the exchanges. That said, DSPs are creating a “sofa bed” problem (neither a sofa, nor a bed) in the network business. At one end are networks — and publishers in some cases — delivering high-value inventory perhaps with custom or innovative creative. At the other end is the pure performance network that shoulders the media risk and runs cost-per-action performance campaigns. In this scenario, the exchanges are a fabulous source of cheap inventory for the performance networks. In the middle of this are the networks with a rapidly eroding publisher base. It is these networks that are in the greatest danger of obsolescence.

Myth 3: Using a DSP means you get brand-safe campaigns

False. It seems like brand safety is being treated like transparency in our industry. Everyone offers it in one form or another, but like transparency, brand safety means different things to different organizations. Just like transparency, everyone defines brand safety differently. There is one thing that separates effective brand safety from all the other forms of impression analysis and delivery verification out there today: preemptive filtering. Is your flavor of brand safety truly preemptive? Or is the “brand safety” you are getting really just post-impression analysis? Is it reactive?

Automatic brand safety is another of the industry myths perpetuated by networks rushing a DSP to market. Real brand safety, meaning a demonstrably safe environment for a brand advertiser to promote its message online, comes from truly preemptive brand safe filtering. But in practice, pre-impression analysis for relevance and safety is difficult to do. Evaluating a billion impressions a day for applicability takes a robust platform and intelligent integration with all of the real-time sources – and this requires investment in technology and people to do it right. But preemptive filtering pays huge dividends in efficiency and thus returns. With truly preemptive brand safety, you only buy what is safe and there is no waste. No wasted targeting, optimization, time, or ad-spend.

Myth 4: There are dozens of DSPs today, and there will soon be hundreds more

False. There is no shortage of organizations claiming to be a DSP. But you can count on one hand the number of solution providers able to deliver a truly successful DSP campaign (perhaps even minus a couple of fingers). In the heyday of networks, there were reportedly more than 300 ad networks out there, but few had a significant amount of their own proprietary technology. It is the large, technology-rich networks that have successfully transitioned to become real DSPs. The rest are scrambling to rely on relationships for their technology, as they had little or no technology of their own to expose when the DSP tsunami hit our industry’s shores. Because of the technology required, there will be far fewer successful DSPs than there were ad networks. Dozens? Maybe somewhere down the line. Hundreds? No way.

Myth 5: DSPs are a fad and will not have real staying power

False. Far from a fad, the DSP trend is about control, efficiency, and profitability. Advertisers never wanted to outsource all of their control; they did it for the quick scale and reach that networks provided. Now that the exchanges have matured and have exposed real-time bid APIs, control can move back to the advertisers, while retaining all of the scale and reach that networks can offer. Once we go down this road, there will be no turning back. The DSP trend is causing a fundamental change in the nature of how display media is used.

With any significant new trend, there is bound to be some confusion. Hopefully this clears the air around some of the more prevalent myths in our industry. There are sure to be more myths and many different viewpoints, but this is a start. What is certain is that the trend toward the self-service DSP model is going to have some staying power. It has already made an irrevocable impact on how display media is brokered and continues to drive upheaval. It was way back in 475 BC that the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “The only constant in life is change,” and those words are just as true today. The display advertising industry has gone through constant change since Hotwired ran the first banner ad in 1993, and the nimble organizations will be the ones that continue to flourish.

Nearly every online marketer is concerned with transparency and brand safety.  These seem to be the biggest roadblocks to brands embracing display.  A quick search on AdExchanger reveals a dozen articles on both subjects in the last few months.  We’ve all talked about it yet there still seems to be more misconceptions than fact surrounding what is possible when it comes to real brand safety.

In April of 2010 Winterberry Group LLC reported that “transparency and brand safety have conspired to inhibit billions in potential online display ad spending.”  Brand safety continues to undermine a broad investment in display advertising by brand advertisers despite the obvious efficiencies being delivered by today’s ad networks.  This is because truly preemptive brand safety is difficult so most have settled for simple post impression verification and are therefore not getting a truly brand safe environment for their message.  But the DSP trend changes all that.

With the advent of contextual display advertising, a host of new advertising opportunities opened up for marketers across every industry.  Whether contextualization is done at the site level (i.e. ESPN.com is about sports) or at the page level (i.e. automotive content on CNN.com), the ability to target ads around content—in addition to demographic and behavioral profiles—is pretty powerful stuff.  But with these big opportunities comes an equal amount of risk.  Imagine an automotive ad next to a news story about a horrific car crash or an ad for a vacation package next to tsunami news coverage of the same destination.  We see it in contextual search as well as display.  It’s enough to make any brand marketer anxious about any sort of online advertising.

The good news is that advances in targeting technologies and demand-side platforms (DSP) with real-time bidding (RTB) are creating truly brand safe environments for brand advertiser.  But like transparency, everyone defines brand safety differently.  There is one feature that separates effective brand safety from all the other forms of impression analysis and delivery verification out there today.  It‘s preemptive brand safety.  Is your trusted flavor of brand safety truly preemptive?  Or is the brand safety you rely on from your DSP really just post impression analysis disguised as safe filtering?  This is another great myth in our industry often perpetuated on purpose only because preemptive is difficult to pull off.

Real brand safety, meaning a demonstrably safe environment for brand advertisers to promote their message online, comes from sanitizing the ad space before the ad is served.  Of course pre-impression analysis for relevance, performance and safety is very difficult to do so it’s the least prevalent form out there.  Evaluating billions of impressions a day for relevance takes a robust platform and deep integration with all of the real-time bid aggregation points.  But it pays huge dividends in both safety and efficiency by guaranteeing quality impressions and eliminating the need for pass-backs.  With truly preemptive brand safety you only buy what is safe with no waste in the equation.

But when pages are not categorized for meaning in advance, ads get served next to inappropriate content and the advertiser simply gets a report indicating that it has happened again.  That isn’t preemptive brand safety, that’s reactive reporting.  It’s the equivalent of closing the gate after the cows get out (and wander down the middle of the highway disrupting traffic and endangering your brand investment).

Everyone knew it would take third-party providers to deliver real brand safety.  Back in March, Jonathan Margulies at Winterberry Group acknowledged as much right here on AdExchanger.  It isn’t in the publisher’s best interest to exclude their own content from advertising—for a publisher the more bidders the better.  The interest in such technology falls on the demand side but most advertisers lack the engineering infrastructure to build such a solution.  In the display advertising landscape, providing preemptive brand safety is the responsibility of the demand-side platforms.  Various platforms provide this ability in varying degrees – from zero to truly preemptive.  Ask the question.  Make sure you are getting the truly preemptive kind that boosts efficiency and return on spend.

Reprinted from AdExchnager.com Data-Driven Thinking column, a media community blog containing fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Follow LucidMedia on Twitter @lucidmediaVIP and follow AdExchanger.com @adexchanger.com.

It seems like “brand safety” is getting to be like “transparency” in our industry; everyone offers it in one form or another but like transparency, brand safety means different things to different people.  And just like transparency, everyone defines brand safety differently.  There is one thing that separates effective brand safety from all the other forms of impression analysis and delivery verification out there today.  Preemptive.  Is your flavor of brand safety truly preemptive?  Or is the brand safety you are getting from your demand-side platform (DSP) provider post impression analysis?  Is it reactive?  This is another of the industry myths perpetuated by other solutions rushed to market.  Real brand safety, meaning a demonstrably safe environment for a brand advertiser to promote their message online, comes from truly preemptive brand safe filtering.  But in practice pre-impression analysis for applicability and safety is very difficult to do.  Evaluating a billion impressions a day for applicability takes a robust platform and intelligent integration with real-time sources.  But it pays huge dividends in efficiency.  With truly preemptive brand safety the pass back is meaningless.  With truly preemptive brand safety you only buy what is safe and there is no waste.  No wasted targeting, optimization, time, or ad spend.  Make sure your brand safety is preemptive before you put your message out there.