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Category: audience buying

• Hyper Target without Sacrificing Scale: DataXu Introduces Audience Optimization
  06/22/2010 | Categories: audience buying, audience insights, audience optimization, audience targeting, campaign parameters, data, demand side platform, DSP, impressions, performance, real-time bidding, RTB, target audience, targeting, third party data

  As digital moves from the fringe to the core of most media plans, marketers are looking for more effective ways to engage the online consumer.  From traditional demographic targeting to social influencers to search intenders, finding your audience and delivering the right message is key.  Third party data enables advertisers to more precisely target their audience, but advanced targeting techniques can also have the unwanted effect of limiting campaign reach and scale.

  Today, we announced our Audience Optimization program that allows advertisers to easily integrate proprietary and 3rd party data into the DataXu system for advanced audience targeting, optimized campaign performance and sophisticated audience insights.

  What makes DataXu’s Audience Optimization unique is actually the same thing that makes DataXu unique, our proprietary learning system.

  Unlike other DSPs, DataXu is able to not only target specified audience segments, but actually learn the most effective combinations of creative and context within those segments and apply those learnings to extend the campaign beyond the originally defined audience segment.  This solves the scale problem that plagues pure play audience buying strategies.  DataXu’s real-time bidding system then uses a variable-pricing model to “bid down the curve” or value impressions relative to how closely they resemble the optimal performance patterns.

  Here’s how it works in practice: a financial services company is looking to target 34-54 year old males with a high household income for a new “retirement product.”  Their media plan projects a target audience of 2 million consumers  online, but with the specific campaign parameters in play, they are able to reach only 250,000 unique impressions initially.

  Using DataXu, the advertiser can then run an Audience Optimized flight across an additional 1.75 million uniques, all of which resemble the consumers that are converting on the offer.  The Audience Optimized flight is built from impression- level data and web site activity and predicts which combination of consumer, ad creative and context signals are most likely to result in a conversion – pattern matching from our learning system.  The media is valued and purchased, and creative selected, based on how closely the pattern resembles the target audience conversions.

  For more about our new Audience Optimization capabilities, see the full press release here: http://www.dataxu.com/news/audience_optimization.php or contact us at sales@dataxu.com.

  -Mike Baker, CEO, DataXu

  
  
• If 6 Turned Out to Be 9
  05/24/2010 | Categories: algorithms, audience buying, data, demand side platform, DSP, Google, Invite Media, media, media planning, online display advertisers

  It’s no secret that Google has been shopping for a so-called Demand Side Platform (DSP) for some time.  With the AdMob acquisition signed off by the Feds, the rumors are that Google will acquire Invite Media (http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100523/with-admob-out-of-the-way-is-google-set-to-buy-invite-media/), a DSP known primarily for a user interface that enables audience buying across exchanges.  This move seems sensible enough as a way for Google to shore up its exchange user interface, which even Google concedes needs more care and feeding.  But would it undermine the core value proposition of the DSP?

  A history lesson: before DSPs, online display advertisers have had to rely on the sellers of media to target, price, and optimize media.  That’s why agencies have become so reliant on ad networks.  And that’s why their clients increasingly are questioning the value added and the fees paid for media planning in the digital era.  Enter the DSP.  Using a DSP like DataXu, an agency and its client can for the first time effectively crunch their own proprietary data, develop their own campaign algorithms, and seek price/performance optimality across multiple sellers, effectively breaking the reliance on the seller to deliver all the value.

  So the question is: would buyers rely on the largest digital media seller for their media investment allocation decisions?  Would a Google system ever have a buyer take money out of Google media and allocate it to Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple or other supply-side aggregators?  Consider the potential similarities to Google’s search engine marketing model – very efficient, but advertisers must accept the one-size-fits-all approach and seller-controlled black box algorithms.  If you’re a managing director of a digital agency, consider how much value you are creating for yourself and your clients if you leave the work to the seller.  Isn’t that how the agencies got into the current pickle in the first place?  It will be interesting to see how this all plays out!

  (**Another history lesson: For those who may not be Jimi Hendrix fans, the title of this post references one of his greatest tracks – and the potential role reversal of sellers becoming buyers.)

  - Mike Baker, CEO, DataXu