mark 380 week 10/11: additional reading
challenges of online advertising
-A lot of display advertising is intrusive, so popup blockers can often prevent adverts from being served as they were intended by the advertisers. -Bandwidth can also be an issue, although this is a shrinking problem. -Consumers are suffering from advertising fatigue, so while new technologies can provide great results, as soon as the market moves mainstream it can get saturated.
Advantages of online advertising
-Banner advertising goes a long way towards bridging the advertising divide. -Online advertising can take advantage of the emotive qualities of images, videos and animations. Some campaigns are better suited to images rather than plain text. -Since banners can contain rich media, they offer levels of interactivity that other forms of advertising cannot achieve. -Modern online advertising is able to bring together a number of other online marketing tactics such as animations, games, video and Flash.
IAB Arena: Understanding the Digital Advertising Ecosystem article
-The IAB Arena is simplified representation of the digital advertising ecosystem that illustrates how the different pieces and players work together to create and deliver advertising to consumers, leveraging campaign optimization and measurement for the best results -The IAB Arena depicts the ecosystem in six rings, each representing a distinct activity area that encircle brands, where all actions originate from. Each of these areas is broken down into sub-segments of activity. 6 rings from out to in: 1. business intelligence 2. media enhancements 3. execution technologies 4. media vendors 5. content creators 6. media planning and buying in middle is BRAND
payment models for display advertising
1. CPM 2. CPC 3. CPA 4. flat rate or sponsorships 5. CPE
Facebook offers four paid-for advertising solutions:
1. Facebook Ads are standard adverts that appear in the user's right-hand sidebar. They have no minimum spend and can be bought on either a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) or cost per click (CPC) basis. 2. Facebook engagement Ads are similar to standard ads, but include an element that fans can engage with, such as a Like or Share button, a video, an event, or a poll. These are bought on a CPM basis with a minimum spend threshold. 3. Sponsored stories are posts that are created whenever someone engages with a speci c element of the brand's Facebook Page; these then appear in their connections' news feeds. You allocate a budget to the speci c post, and this is spent to have the ad appear. 4. Promoted posts allow you to publicise an existing post that you have made. A page must have at least 400 Likes before this option becomes available.
The benefits of ad servers
1. Rather than distribute copies of each piece of creative advertising to each publisher or media buyer, you can send out a line of code that calls up an advertisement directly from the ad server each time an advert is scheduled to run. 2. provide a wealth of data, including impressions served, adverts clicked, CTR and CPC. 3. provide a consistent counting methodology across the entire campaign enabling the advertiser to gain an 'apples to apples' comparison of performance across the entire media schedule, which includes multiple websites. 4. allows sophisticated targeting of display advertising.
types of display adverts
1. banner adverts 2. interstitial banners 3. pop ups and pop unders 4. floating adverts 5. wallpaper adverts 6. map adverts
3 social media objectives
1. brand awareness -measured through tracking studies and surveys. Online, however, marketers have a number of ways to track brand awareness -ex: free Starbucks on SNL 2. brand engagement: en- hanced through social media in various ways, and the results can be strikingly positive. In an effort to engage its customers, Southwest Airlines revamped its "Nuts About Southwest" blog with podcasts, vid- eos and other social media tools. Visits to the new and improved blog rose by 25% 3. word of mouth: Once consumers are aware and engaged, they are in a position to communicate their opinions to other consumers. Satisfied and loyal consumers communicate their positive atti- tudes toward the brand itself or toward the social application created by the company -also works in opposite way with negative views
online advertising objectives
1. building brand awareness 2. creating demand 3. satisfying demand 4. driving direct response and sales
An ad supported web grows quickly and is open to those who can't or won't pay. But it has at least four downsides as a default business model:
1. while advertising without surveillance is possible—unverifiable advertising was the only type of advertising through most of the 20th century—it's hard to imagine online advertising without surveillance. 2. not only does advertising lead to surveillance through the "investor storytime" mechanism, it creates incentives to produce and share content that generates pageviews and mouse clicks, but little thoughtful engagement. 3. the advertising model tends to centralize the web. 4. even attempts to mitigate advertising's downsides have consequences.
The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets article
A Journal investigation finds that one of the fastest-growing businesses on the Internet is the business of spying on consumers -monitored by Lotame Solutions Inc., a New York company that uses sophisticated software called a "beacon" to capture what people are typing on a website their comments on movies, say, or their interest in parenting and pregnancy. Lotame packages that data into profiles about individuals, without determining a person's name, and sells the profiles to companies seeking customers -Tracking is done by tiny files and programs known as "cookies," "Flash cookies" and "beacons." They are placed on a computer when a user visits a website. U.S. courts have ruled that it is legal to deploy the simplest type, cookies, just as someone using a telephone might allow a friend to listen in on a conversation. Courts haven't ruled on the more complex trackers.
eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
A standard used for creating structured documents.
Cookie
A text le sent by a server to a web browser and then sent back unchanged by the browser each time it accesses that server. Cookies are used for authenticating, tracking, and maintaining speci c information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of their electronic shopping carts.
Premium blind networks
Advertising on premium blind networks tends to be more expensive, but allow the advertiser to target better-known brands and high-traf c sites. Broadcasters or operator portals fall under this category.
Action and reward
Af liate marketing can be used to promote any type of website - there just needs to be an agreed-upon action resulting in an af liate earning commission. Different types of merchants will have different required actions. The actions and the type of commission can be summed up as: • Cost per Action (CPA) - a xed commission for a particular action. • Cost per Lead (CPL) - a xed commission for a lead (that is, a potential sale). • Revenue share (also CPS or Cost per Sale) - an agreed-on percentage of the purchase amount. • Cost per Click (CPC) - a xed amount for each clickthrough to the website (although this forms a very small part of the af liate marketing mix).
Tools of the trade
Af liate marketing today forms a fundamental part of most online retailers' strategies. So what tools does a merchant need to have a successful programme? Any retailer should have a product feed, in either XML or CSV. A product feed is a way of providing information about the products on a merchant's website in a way that breaks up the information easily, and is standardised. A product feed will probably contain the following information for each product: • Product name • Product URL • Picture • Price • Description Merchants need to consider who will be monitoring and driving the success of the af liate campaign. also need to keep in touch with affiliates
affiliate networks
Af liate networks publish the terms of the af liate programme, provide tracking solutions, report on programmes, host creative banners, give commission payment options, and support both af liates and merchants. Some leading af liate networks are: • Commission Junction - www.cj.com • LinkShare - www.linkshare.com • Af liate Window - www.af liatewindow.com • TradeDoubler - www.tradedoubler.com
What tools does an af liate need?
Af liates need to get to grips with the spectrum of digital marketing tactics, and choose what works best for them. Paid search af liates will focus on PPC tactics, while af liates running bespoke websites will probably put a lot of energy into SEO. For af liates, keeping up to date with merchants, other af liates and the industry is probably the key to growth. That, and nding the time to put it all into practice! Joining forums and keeping tabs on industry leaders will help to do just that.
define affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing occurs where a third-party advertises products or services on behalf of a merchant in return for an agreed commission for a sale or lead.
Driving direct response and sales
All forms of digital marketing need to drive traf c and sales in the long term. However, the immediacy of online advertising also drives traf c and sales in the short and medium terms. Unlike traditional media advertising, online advertising can turn the potential customer into an actual customer right there and then.
Social Media Objectives Drive Social Media Metrics
As a first step, marketers should focus on objectives that explicitly recognize the value of operating in the social media environment -Sales, cost efficiencies, product development and market research are obvious objectives, but in our development of appropriate social media met- rics we want to emphasize objectives that take advantage of the distinctive characteristics of social media
Popups and pop-unders
As the name suggests, these are adverts that pop up, or under, the web page being viewed. They open in a new, smaller window. You will see a popup straight away, but will probably become aware of a pop-under only after you close your browser window.
RELEVANT METRICS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA APPLICATIONS ORGANIZED BY KEY SOCIAL MEDIA OBJECTIVES
Blogs •number of unique visits •number of return visits •number of times bookmarked •search ranking Cocreation (e.g., NIKEiD) •number of visits •number of creation attempts •number of references to project in other media (online/offline) Social Bookmarking (e.g., StumbleUpon) •number of tags •number of followers •number of additional taggers Forums and Discussion Boards (e.g., Google Groups) •number of page views •number of visits •valence of posted content +/-
CPA
CPA refers to cost per acquisition. This model means that the advertiser pays only when an advert delivers an acquisition after the user clicks on the advert. De nitions of acquisitions vary depending on the site and campaign. It may be a user lling in a form, downloading a le or buying a product. CPA is often the best option for advertisers because they pay only when the advertising has met its goal. For this reason, it is also the worst type for the publisher, as they are rewarded only if the advertising is successful.
CPC
CPC stands for cost per click. This means that the advertiser pays only when their advert is clicked on by an interested party, regardless of how many times it has been viewed. CPC advertising is normally associated with search advertising, although it has become very popular in display advertising too, especially when using ad networks.
what payment model can you expect?
CPM favours the publisher, while CPA favours the advertiser. Sometimes, a hybrid of the two payment models is pursued. High-traffic, broad-audience websites (often referred to as 'premium' or booked media) will typically offer CPM advertising. Niche websites with a targeted audience are more likely to offer CPC or CPA advertising to advertisers with an appropriate product. These can also fall under the umbrella of af liate marketing.
CPM
CPM stands for cost per thousand impressions (M is the Roman numeral for a thousand). This means the advertiser pays for every thousand times the advert loads on the publisher's page. This is how a campaign is normally priced when brand awareness or exposure is the primary goal.
Cost per Lead (CPL) Merchant Referrer Revenue share Return on investment (ROI)
Commission structure where the af liate earns a xed fee for a lead sent to a merchant. The owner of the product that is being marketed or promoted. When a user clicks on a link from one site to another, the site the user has left is the referrer. Most browsers log the referrer's URL in referrer strings. This information is vital in determining which queries are being used to nd speci c sites. Commission structure where the af liate earns a percentage of a sale. The ratio of pro t to cost.
Deleted cookies
Consumers sometimes delete cookies from their computer. If this happens, then the sale will never be attributed to the affiliate.
Creating demand
Creating customer demand is a three-step process: inform, persuade and remind. Customers can't want what they don't know about. Advertising needs to convince them about what they should want and why they should want it. Online advertising provides a great way to communicate the unique selling points (USPs) of a product, helping to stimulate demand and reminding customers about the product and why they want it.
How can you tell whether social media are working?
FINDINGS Forget traditional ROI. Instead of cal- culating the return on the company's investment, mana- gers should assess consumer motiva- tions to use social media and measure the social media investments cus- tomers make as they engage with the marketers' brands. Measuring cus- tomer investments in a social media relationship reveals the likelihood of a long-term payoff, not just short-term results.
CPA
Here, the action could be anything from downloading a white paper or software to signing up to a newsletter.
Placing an order by another method
If the customer completes the action, but does not do so online, the af liate will not receive commission
Turning Your Thinking Upside Down
In calculating social media ROI, most marketers start by measuring the cost of launching a blog, for example, and then seek to calculate the return on sales, say, from that social media investment. But a company could also start by thinking about what marketing objectives such a blog might satisfy (e.g., brand engagement), why its customers would visit the blog (e.g., to learn about new products) and what behaviors they might engage in once they got there (e.g., post a comment about a recent con- sumption experience) that could be linked to the company's marketing objectives . These behaviors then can be considered (and measured) as customer investments in the market- er's social media efforts. This suggests that returns from social media investments will not always be measured in dollars, but also in customer behaviors (consumer investments) tied to particular social media applications.
LinkedIn Ads is a self-service advertising platform that allows you to create and place adverts on prominent pages on the LinkedIn website, including a user's home page, search results pages, groups and more. There are many targeting options available, including job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender, company name, company size, and LinkedIn Group.
Tracking Tracking code Traditional media
Measuring the effectiveness of a campaign by collecting and evaluating statistics. A piece of code that tracks a user's interaction and movement through a website. Newspapers, magazines, television and publishing houses are the realm of traditional media.
CPL
Merchants who offer CPL commissions are usually those who need to convert a lead into a sale of ine. This means they will generally need to complete the transaction over the phone with the customer, or that the process is quite complicated. -affiliates prefer this
Clashing cookies
Merchants will often use some kind of tracking so that they can better optimise their own marketing efforts, or a merchant may make some kind of technical change to their website. It is crucial that any of these changes are tested rst with the tracking software, to make sure that they do not create any con ict.
Satisfying demand
Once somebody wants a product, they need to nd out how to satisfy that desire. At this point it is important for the marketer to show the customer how their particular brand or product will best meet that need.
define online advertising
Online advertising = advertising on the Internet. Online advertising encompasses display adverts found on websites, adverts on search engine results pages, adverts placed in emails and on social networks, and other ways in which advertisers use the Internet. not just limited to computers - digital advertising can be found anywhere you access the web, for example, through mobile devices.
The key differentiator
Online advertising is able to drive instant sales and conversions. Unlike other advertising mediums, the consumer can go from advert to merchant in one easy click. Because of the connected nature of the Internet, online activities are highly trackable and measurable
Building brand awareness
Online advertising is largely visual, making it an ideal channel for promoting brand imagery and making people familiar with its colours, logo and overall feel.
Cost per acquisition (CPA) Cost per click (CPC) Cost per mille (CPM) Display network Google AdWords
Refers to the cost of acquiring a new customer. The advertiser pays only when a desired action is achieved (sometimes called cost per acquisition). Refers to when an advertiser pays only when their ad is clicked on, giving them a visitor to their site - typically from a search engine in pay per click search marketing. Amount paid for every 1 000 impressions served of an advertisement. Content websites that serve pay per click adverts from the same provider, such as AdWords. Google's PPC program, which allows advertisers to display their adverts on relevant search results and across Google's content network.
Revenue share
Revenue sharing is the ideal commission structure as both the merchant and the af liate are rewarded for performance - the more sales, the more revenue generated for the merchant, and the more commission for the affiliate -merchants structure commission so affiliates who perform better earn higher commission (ex: • 1-10 sales: 10% commission • 11-25 sales: 11% commission)
Paths to Effective Social Media Strategy
STRATEGIC OPTIONS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MEASUREMENT Every manager's goal should be to move away from fuzzy measurement and toward quantifiable metrics.That way, a manager can understand what's working and what's not — and revise the approach accordingly. y axis: managers ability to measure effectiveness x axis: menage's subjective valuation of effectiveness down to up = fuzzy to quantifiable, left to right = failing to succeeding top left: measure and adjust (failing and quantifiable) top right: iterate for success (success and quantifiable) bottom left: dead end (failing and fuzzy) bottom right: naive optimist (success and fuzzy)
Flat rate or sponsorships
Sometimes, owners of lower-traf c sites choose to sell banner space at a at rate - in other words, at a xed cost per month, regardless of the amount of traf c or impressions. This would appeal to a media buyer who may be testing an online campaign that targets niche market
Tracking issues
Successful tracking is fundamental to any digital marketing campaign, and especially so to af liate marketing. As affiliates are paid only for performance, if anything goes wrong in the tracking process, it is the af liates who suffer. The merchant will still get the desired sales, but the affiliates won't be rewarded.
Internet protocol (IP) address Internet service provider (ISP) Marketplace Ads Paid search advertising Popup
The Internet Protocol (IP) address is an exclusive number which is used to represent every single computer in a network. Internet Service Provider - this is the company that provides you with access to the Internet, for example, MWEB or AOL. Facebook ad space units, a type of advertising available on Facebook. Usually refers to advertising on search engines, sometimes called PPC advertising. The advertiser pays only for each click of the advert. Unrequested window that opens on top of the currently viewed window.
Why You Want to Do It This Way
The advantage of starting with consumer motiva- tions, as opposed to trying to figure out what social media application to use, is that it makes clear how seemingly disparate applications are actually quite similar if they share the same underlying motiva- tions for use.
How do affiliates promote merchants?
The basic aim of an af liate is to send targeted traf c (that means customers who are very likely to perform the desired action) to a particular merchant's website. Af liates may promote as many merchants in as many industries with as many tactics as they want, but they usually specialise.
The building blocks of af liate marketing
The core of af liate marketing is a simple process: 1. An af liate refers potential customers to a merchant's website or other offsite destination (such as a Facebook tab). 2. Some of those customers perform a desired action. 3. The merchant rewards the af liate for each desired action that results from the af liate's referral.
Tracking
The key to affiliate marketing is being able to track the whole process from potential customers being sent to a website through to a completed action, so that the merchant is able to award the correct af liate with the correct commission. Affiliates send traffic to merchants through links or URLs, and the tracking software allows each af liate to have a unique identi er in the URL some of the information being recorded. It has been shown in bold in the URL: • The af liate network - Affiliate Future • The ID of the affiliate (238) • The ID of the merchant (214)
main objectives of online advertising
The main objectives of online advertising are to 1. increase sales, 2. improve brand awareness and 3. raise share of voice in the marketplace. It is based on the simple economics of demand and supply. Advertisers aim to stimulate a consumer need (demand) and then satisfy that need (supply). Online advertising, naturally, follows web user behaviour.
Affiliate Commission
The person who markets the products of the merchant. Also called a publisher. The bounty paid by a merchant to an af liate when the af liate makes a successful referral.
Ad server Animated GIF Banner
The technology that places ads on websites. A GIF (type of image le) which supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colours for each frame. An online advertisement in the form of a graphic image that appears on a web page.
Tracking
The trackability of online advertising is what makes it so superior to conventional advertising. Not only can an advertiser tell how many times an advert has been seen (impressions), but also how many times the advert has been successful in sending visitors to the advertised website (clicks)
Interstitial banners
These are banners shown between pages on a website. As you click from one page to another, you are shown this advert before the next page is displayed. Sometimes the advert can be closed.
Premium networks
These networks often offer sales as a direct extension of the big brands that they offer. More detailed targeting and sales support is available, but they also charge higher rates
blind networks
These networks target a large number of independent mobile publishers, and generally allow you to target by country or type of content, but not by speci c websites.
Floating adverts
This advert appears in a layer over the content, but is not in a separate window. Usually, the user can close this advert. In fact, best practice dictates that a prominent close button should be included on the advert, usually in the top right hand corner.
Wallpaper adverts
This advert changes the background of the web page being viewed. It is sometimes possible to click on an advert of this type, but not always. The effect of these adverts is dif cult to measure as there is often no clickthrough, and its chief purpose is branding.
Map adverts
This is advertising placed on an online map, such as Google Maps. This type of advert is ideal for local businesses and is usually based on keyword searches for the brand's offering.
"Facebook 'Amazed by Volume of Valueless Inventory,' Abandons New Ad Buying Platform for Atlas" article
Through Atlas and the people-based layer that powers it, we've been able to identify and measure where most waste comes from: exchanges and banners. We realized this by testing out a buying platform in Atlas last year. During that test, we plugged into a number of the usual exchanges and bought across several formats. There were two major takeaways: We were able to deliver ads to real people with unprecedented accuracy, but came up against many bad ads and fraud (like bots). While we were fortunately able to root out the bad actors and only buy quality ads, we were amazed by the volume of valueless inventory. Only two ad formats delivered significant value: native & video. quality or value? --> value is longer term view, mobile also important in addition to native and video Atlas, which is built for cross-everything ad serving and measurement, we can help every marketer see where their "Wanamaker waste" lives. Offline Actions, a measurement tool that ties offline sales to online ad spend and ensures digital investments get the credit they deserve. Advertisers who measure their ads with Atlas can now upload their point-of-sale (POS) data and understand within minutes if their online ads are influencing offline purchases
Twitter offers a self-service ad platform with several options and allows a degree of speci c targeting. 1. promoted tweets: top of user's timeline 2. promoted accounts: who to follow, left of user's profile 2. promoted trends
Unique selling point (USP) Web analytics
Unique selling point (or proposition) - what makes your offering different to your competitors'. A software tool that collects data on website users, based on metrics to measure its performance.
Multiple referrals, one sale - who gets the bounty?
Usually the most recent referral is awarded the commission, although there are some merchants who also offer compensation to other af liates involved in the sales process.
CPE
With the cost per engagement (CPE) model, advertisers pay for interactions with adverts, normally placed in videos or applications (such as Facebook applications). An interaction, referred to as an engagement, usually starts with a rollover (or mouse-over) that expands the ad.
YouTube
YouTube offers a wide range of advertising formats and options for businesses. These are covered in detail in the chapter on video marketing.
banner adverts
a graphic image or animation displayed on a website for advertising purposes. Static banners are in GIF or JPEG format, but banners can also employ rich media such as Flash, video, JavaScript, HTML5 and other interactive technologies; these allow the viewer to interact and transact within the banner. Banners are not limited to the space that they occupy; some banners expand on mouse-over or when clicked
The Internet's Original Sin article
advertising is the original sin of the web. The fallen state of our Internet is a direct, if unintentional, consequence of choosing advertising as the default model to support online content and services. Through successive rounds of innovation and investor storytime, we've trained Internet users to expect that everything they say and do online will be aggregated into profiles (which they cannot review, challenge, or change) that shape both what ads and what content they see. Outrage over experimental manipulation of these profiles by social networks and dating companies has led to heated debates amongst the technologically savvy, but hasn't shrunk the user bases of these services, as users now accept that this sort of manipulation is an integral part of the online experience. Users have been so well trained to expect surveillance that even when widespread, clandestine government surveillance was revealed by a whistleblower, there has been little organized, public demand for reform and change. In theory, an ad-supported system is more protective of privacy than a transactional one. Subscriptions or micropayments resolved via credit card create a strong link between online and real-world identity, while ads have traditionally been targeted to the content they appear with, not to the demo/psychographic identity of the user. In practice, part of Facebook's relentless drive to ensure all users are personally identifiable is to improve targeting and reassure advertisers that their messages are reaching real human beings.
mobile advertising
blind networks premium blind networks premium networks
four key motivations —
connections, creation, consumption and control — drive consumer use of social media.3 This "4c's" perspective is important be- cause it leads to a consumer-oriented framework for evaluating social media.
Social media advertising
facebook twiter youtube linked in
Advertising networks
group of websites on which adverts can be purchased through a single sales entity. It could be a collection of sites owned by the same publisher or it could be an affiliation of sites that share a representative. The Google Display Network is one of the largest advertising networks in the world. acts as intermediary between advertisers and publishers
"measure and adjust"
marketer has a reasonable ability to quantify his social media efforts, and these measurements lead him to be- lieve that his efforts are not working (failing). This is distinctly different than the "dead end" scenario, be- cause even though the manager does not believe he is succeeding, at least he is making some attempt to mea- sure social media effectiveness
"iterate for success"
marketer has both a reasonable ability to measure his social media efforts (quanti- fiable) and the belief that his efforts are working (succeeding). Since the components are being mea- sured, the manager can purposefully iterate to improve even more
"dead end"
marketer has only a limited ability to measure his social media efforts (fuzzy) and believes that his ef- forts are not working (failing). Managers find themselves in this quadrant as a result of the "throw it on the wall and see what sticks" strategy and perform arbitrary changes with no way to measure their im- pact.
naive optimism
marketer has only a limited ability to measure his social media efforts (fuzzy), yet believes that his efforts are working (succeeding). We believe most marketers actually start here.
Consumer investments include
obvious measures such as the number of visits and time spent with the application (the blog in this case) as well as more active investments, such as the valence of blog comments and the number of Face- book updates and Twitter pages about the brand. These investments can then be used to measure key marketing outcomes such as changes in awareness levels or word-of-mouth increases over time.
benefits to affiliate marketing
pay for performance marketing sales force just became bigger very low barrier to entry
challenges to affiliate marketing
there are seldom contracts in place between affiliates and merchants still little to no industry regulation some merchants fear loss of brand control affiliate programs not easily scalable
how long does cookie last?
up to the merchant to decide what the cookie period should be. Some merchants make the cookie last for the session only (that is, if the user leaves the website, comes back the same day, and then makes the purchases, no commission is rewarded). The standard cookie period for af liate marketing is 30 days, although higher-value items with longer purchase considerations, such as package holidays abroad, can last as long as 90 days.
Advertising exchanges
where unsold advertising space - called inventory - is placed by publishers for bidding. The inventory is sold to the highest bidding advertiser. Giving advertisers far more control, this type of advertising mimics the PPC model of search advertising (Generalised Second Price auction) - but bids are for audience pro les and space rather than for keywords.
Premium booked media
works very much in the traditional way of booking advertising - the advertiser contacts the premium media provider (usually a single group that oversees a key, high-pro le online space) and discusses options for placing an advert. This will involve negotiating on targeting and pricing for the space desired, and is usually a costly but high-profile option.
Can You Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Marketing? article
yes, But it requires a new set of measurements that begins with tracking the customers' investments — not yours.
ad servers can offer advertisers:
• Frequency capping: this limits the number of times a speci c user sees the same advert in a set time period. • Sequencing: this ensures that a user sees adverts in a particular order. • exclusivity: this ensures that adverts from direct competitors are not shown on the same page. • Roadblocks: this allows an advertiser to own 100% of the advertising inventory on a page.
ad server can also target adverts based on the business rules of the advertiser or the profiles of the users:
• Geo-targeting: online advertising has the ability to target markets by country--> This is also known as IP targeting. • network or browser type: markets can further be targeted via networks or browser types such as Mozilla Firefox • Connection type: users can be segmented and targeted according to their Internet connection type • Day and time • Social serving: websites gather demographic data about users and then serve each user targeted and relevant advertising. • Behavioural targeting: the ad server uses the profile of a user (built up over websites visited previously) to determine which adverts to show during a given visit. -also remarketing • Contextual advertising: the ad server deduces the optimum adverts to serve based on the content of the page.
Affiliate tracking software collects information even if no action is completed. This is vital to the af liates and to the merchants to see where they can optimise their campaign. Information collected includes:
• Impressions • Clicks • Conversions
The main types of af liates can be broken up as:
• Personal websites. • Content and niche sites. • email lists. • Loyalty sites (points, cash back or charitable donations). • Coupon and promotions sites. • Search advertising.
Getting your ads online To get your ads to appear online, you need to nd and pay for the space where it will appear. There are several options for doing this:
• Premium booked media • Advertising networks • Advertising exchanges • Social media advertising placements • Mobile advertising • Ad servers
Af liates will nd any means possible to promote offers. As new products and platforms become available, marketers and af liate marketers nd new ways to make them work. Some other examples of af liates promoting merchants include:
• Toolbars and other browser extensions • Social network applications All that is required is that the clickthrough to the merchant's website is tracked.