How much would you pay to target one of your prospective customers? While this question resonates immediately with search marketers, it is still vague for display advertisers. Nowadays, with audience buying platforms, this question becomes more and more relevant than before. This was one of the questions discussed at OMMA Measurement this week in New York.

“There is a disconnect with traditional marketers, where the value of data comes from its scarcity rather than the quality of it,” says Adam Gerber, the Chief Marketing Officer of Quantcast. “Online, every target has cost per lead, cost per impression, so they need to think whether it has the ROI to pay for the data. Marketers need to see if the cost of the data makes business sense in the value that it brings. There is a difference between a one dollar chocolate bar and a car.”


“We can all buy data, and pay a price, but the question is about the value,” said Darren Herman, President of Varick Media Management. “You need to know what you pay and what you get in return.”
While there is the question of the quality of data, it’s more dependent on price. If the data generates conversions or leads in a cost that makes business sense, low cost low quality data may be valuable. “There is no bad data, just bad price,” concluded Greg Skipper, Director of Networks Strategy at Advertising.com.


According to Mr. Gerber, the thinking around value creation is what makes big businesses. In Search, advertisers price the click and see if it fits into the business model, while in display advertising it doesn’t work this way yet. The members of the panel agreed that it is necessary to take steps in this direction, where marketers look at advertising ROI.


Nevertheless, there is another dimension that comes after you have reached your target audience—engagement. “Engagement is like obscenity,” said Josh Chasin, Chief Research Officer at comScore. “It’s hard to define it, but I know it when I see it.” Engagement is the third dimension beyond reach and frequency. The main issue is that in offline advertising there is no engagement, so it is still in its infancy.

Mr. Gerber thinks that while marketers and advertisers are focused on using data for targeting—getting the best audience to target—they can also use data to create relevant ads. He also believes that engagement is created when the creative is relevant and data can be used to serve more relevant ads.


Ariel Geifman, Research Analyst attending OMMA Measurement

In order to help advertisers and agencies understand how to get the most out of their holiday campaigns, Eyeblaster Research analyzed the 2009 online holiday shopping trends. Our latest Research Note shows that while there was an elevated conversion activity throughout the holiday season, some days generated far more conversions than others.  In the 2009 holiday season, conversions peaked around Cyber Monday, during the last five days before Christmas, and during the sales period after Christmas.

Voting with their mouse, shoppers sent two signals to advertisers.  First, customers responded to sales and discounts offered by online retailers, particularly during Cyber Monday and After Christmas Sales.  Second, although online shoppers cannot take the items from the shelf back home right away, they still wait for the last days before Christmas to do their shopping. 

These trends have further meaning beyond holiday shopping.  Even as the economy emerges out of a deep recession, consumers are still very aggressive in bargain hunting.  Thrifty consumers are looking for value, and when they find it, they are willing to open their wallets.

For the full research, please click on the following link.

Click here to download the Research Note on Holiday Conversions.

Ariel Geifman | Research Analyst

While 63% of publishers price display advertising using CPM, 30% of publishers now use CPC according to a survey by Econsultancy and the Rubicom Project cited by eMarketer in December 2009. JP Morgan notes that in the past 5 years, performance based display advertising, such as CPC, gained market share over the CPM based models. The report projects that in a recession environment, spread of performance based models is likely to accelerate, as advertisers place a higher value on a clear ROI.

In CPM, or Cost per Mille, the advertiser is charged a fixed amount for every one thousand impressions. CPC, or Cost per Click, is a pay per performance scheme, in which the advertiser is charged only for clicks.

While some may argue that publishers should be paid according to their ability to generate clicks, publishers only carry a partial responsibility for the generation of a click. The CTR is also affected by the vertical, ad size, format and particularly the ingenuity of the creative. Thus, when publishers are paid by the click, their compensation is at the mercy of others in the advertising chain who make decisions that affect the success of the campaign. Another concern is whether clicks are the proper metric for discerning the success of a campaign. In many verticals, the actual purchase is made in off-line stores, and therefore the value of the ad is in its retention rather than the click. (more…)

Editor’s Note: This article by Dean Donaldson, Director of Digital Experience at Eyeblaster, originally appeared in AdvertisingAge.

The recent surge of research around creative variables like ad shape, format and video puts online creative into the hot seat, and size, it seems, doesn’t necessarily matter. We’ve been groomed to judge online display ads based on aesthetics alone as opposed to trying to match the physical elements with performance to see patterns. This has shown certain assets can positively impact campaign results, but it often overlooks one critical factor — the online environment.

Historically, we create ads in an assortment of shapes and sizes and stick them everywhere, only to find ourselves surprised when the same creative generates a range of results across many environments. It’s relatively obvious, actually: Surely the impact of a piece of creative that works effectively in one in environment will differ — sometimes radically — when placed in another.

That’s largely due to the consumer experience and level of activity found in each location. It may seem obvious that a portal homepage would differ to a social media site, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As consumers spend more and more time online, the environment in which they find themselves matters more and more to them — and not matching the right creative against the right environment can be toxic. As they say, looks will only get you so far; for advertising, it’s location, location, location.

Since the first display ad 15 years ago, a variety of environments have become amenable to online advertising. Take the mega sports homepage portal ESPN, or the opening to news sites like New York Times and Forbes where users skim headlines for few seconds before clicking on various links. Then, contrast destination pages found within these homepages, where the user explores athlete stats or reads specific news articles. Although homepages have mass reach, they also have short attention spans compared to destination pages, which are more likely to retain re users for extended periods of time as the absorb information and content.
(more…)

Eyeblaster Research is pleased to invite you to view two slidecasts based on the recently published Analytics Bulletin: Online Video Advertising: Doubles Engagement, Boosts ROI.

This first slidecast explores the link between online video length and performance.

Video ads tend to be shorter on average, as compared to 30-second TV spots. Nevertheless, ads lasting for 30 seconds are still the most popular kind, accounting for over 20% of total video ad impressions; they are closely followed by the 15-second ads that were featured in 17% of video ad impressions. Ads lasting longer than 30 seconds are rare and may contain several sequenced videos.
There is a clear incentive for advertisers to opt for the shorter option. Unlike on TV and In-Stream video where users have to watch the full ad to resume watching the content, in In-Banner and Floating ads, users can choose to stop the video or just surf away before the video was completed. Therefore, a higher proportion of videos lasting less than 30 seconds is watched all the way through.

The second slidecast reviews where and when online advertising is most (and least) effective.

Users are more likely to engage with an ad and to watch video for longer in some online environments/sections rather than others. Sites with editorial content such as news, sports, music and finance and sites providing email services tend to have superior video performance. The superior performance is tied to people’s tendency to spend a longer amount of time in these environments, browsing content and writing and reading emails. In social networking and games sites, users tend to engage with video ads less frequently, and also have a lower proportion of videos are played to their full duration. In social network environments, users tend to spend a short time on each webpage, despite spending a long time in the environment overall.
Video ads played reach their peak during business hours, between 9am to 5pm, unlike TV spots that reach their peak in the evening. During the night, users tend to have less patience for video ads, as less of them are played in full.

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Ariel Geifman | Research Analyst