Gil Snir, CMO @ Benchmarketing

7 Deadly Sins of Programmatic

Viewability• Viewability is a unstandardised and

problematic metric• Google defines viewability as 50% of

the pixels of an ad loading within your browser for a continuous 1 second

• Video standards are dependent on the publishers

• Youtube = 30secs• FB = 3secs• Snapchat = 1sec

If an ad loads in a browser and no one is there to notice it, does it really

matter?

Fear of Ad Fraud + scary sites

• Ad fraud primarily effect proxy metrics such as impressions

• Optimising to goals beyond impressions mitigates the impact of ad fraud

• Default features also reduce the risk of ad fraud

• Whitelisting• Blacklisting• 3rd Party Tools

Aviva.co.uk (Zenith Optimedia)

Vodafone.co.uk (OMD)

Cathaypacific.com (UM)

Tiffany.com (WPP)

0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00% 70.00% 80.00% 90.00% 100.00%

Traffic Contribution of GDN

Others GDN

Display Traffic Share

Adve

rtis

er

*Data sourced from Similarweb on 17/5/16

• GDN scored lowest in brand safety based on factors around whitelisting, black listing, site blocking, custom targeting and negative news adjacency.

• Yet, it is the most commonly used RTB source for the Agency Trading Desks

• Main way to mitigate this is to utilise multiple sources and verify which yields the most brand safe placements/traffic

Time based campaigns only

Time-based programmatic

• Marketing campaigns are traditionally based on time intervals and seasonality

• Stopping a campaign disrupts optimisation

• It results in gaps in analysis and false blame

Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec2.5

2.7

2.9

3.1

3.3

3.5

3.7

3.9

4.1

4.3

4.5

Time-based Performance

Campaign 1Campaign 2Campaign 3

CPA

?• Time

between campaigns results in loss of learnings

• Results can be blamed on unknown factors

• Limits accountability

• Staying in market improves performance

• Key is to establish an Always-on baseline and run time-based campaigns over that baseline

Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec2.5

2.7

2.9

3.1

3.3

3.5

3.7

3.9

4.1

4.3

4.5

Time-based Performance

Campaign 1Campaign 2Campaign 3

CPA

Establish a baseline

Not disclosing Attribution Models

PC 1 PC 7 PC 30 PV 1 PV 7 PV 300

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

Sales vs Attribution Windows

Sales

The Mystery of Attribution• Too many marketers

don’t know the attribution model used in their reports

• Graph shows real data from a national e-commerce advertiser

• Important to understand the proportion of conversion coming through via a click-thru window versus a view-thru window

• Not disclosing the attribution model and window is misleading and deceptive

Error Magnitude

The further you get from the buyers true goal, the greater the error (and it’s cost)

Click

ROMI

View

Error

Acquisition

Reporting magic Tricks

CPM CPC Clicks Conversions$3.20 $3.84 1570 62$1.80 $2.16 1874 54$2.40 $2.88 1953 71$1.20 $1.44 2044 97$3.90 $4.68 1453 57$4.10 $4.92 1653 48$3.20 $3.84 1754 66$2.40 $2.88 1955 74

RED FLAGS• Totals only

(missing columns)

• Method used to hide the ‘performance’ of the campaign and eliminate the possibility for benchmarking against industry standards

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 80

20

40

60

80

100

120

Conversions

Conversions

RED FLAGS• Graphs only (no

trends) makes it difficult to develop findings if no analysis is given for the peaks and troughs throughout the campaigns

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 80

20

40

60

80

100

120

Conversions

Conversions

RED FLAGS• Selective

timeframes and hiding negatives

• Results always looking great is also a sign that lack of transparency and obfuscation of data could be occurring

• Blocking the ability to see raw data or edit excel reports is another big red flag

✔

Mandates and conflict of interest• Many agency groups

have a mandate to only use their in-house trading desk

• This creates a conflict of interest and agencies fail to act within the best interests of the advertiser

• Advertisers have the right to know and control where their ad dollars are spent

Setting the barLow • Major problem in the

industry around agencies intentionally limiting expectations

• Advertisers should avoid proxy metrics and focus on the goals that matter

• Programmatic advertising can be accountable to true performance goals such as engagement, leads, sales and revenue.

Seller vs Buyer• Seller

• Cost per Thousand Impressions(CPM/RPM)

• Revenue per Page• Revenue per Visitor• Cost per Click (CPC)

• Buyer

• Cost per Click (CPC)• Cost per Action (CPA)• Lifetime Value (LTV)• Return on Marketing

Investment (ROMI)

CPM CPC CPA

STOMP

STOMP

trategyechnologyperationsediarice

Strategy• Do your business goals align with your

campaign goals?• Is your strategy talking to customers at

different mindsets and not just awareness or acquisition only?

• Is your media plan adaptive or static? How does it change based on interactions and performance?

Technology• What technology is enabling the campaign

to succeed?• Is the tech proprietary to the vendor/agency

or is it leased?• What is the cost of ownership?• What was the decision in choosing this

technology?• How does it add value to the success of the

campaign?

Operations• Do you know the structure of the team

delivering the programmatic solution?• Do you deal with an account manager only

or do you have interactions with other roles such as strategist, campaign manager and digital/tag manager?

• How long have they been in this space?• What other solutions do they manage as this

will highlight whether they are a generalist or specialist?

Media• What channels are you utilising in your

media strategy? Are these channels the most beneficial to achieving your business goals?

• What sources are chosen to deliver these channels? Why were they chosen? Are they agile and adaptive based on performance?

• What are the triggers for why new sources are used? How often does this happen?

Price• What pricing model is the media based on?

Is it dynamic or flat? Are their limits to the budget and bidding price?

• What goals is the price optimising towards?• How much are you paying your provider?

What is this based on, hours or %?• What value are you getting in return?