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DataView: The DataXu Blog

Category: digital advertising

  • DataXu MarketPulse: “Comparing Exchange Targeting Strategies: Following the Crowd Will Cost You”
    09/09/2010 | Categories: , , , , , , , , ,

    Today, we released our fourth MarketPulse  newsletter, a regular publication utilizing DataXu’s proprietary data to uncover and reveal interesting trends in digital advertising.  This month’s issue compares exchange targeting strategies – Audience Targeting, Retargeting and Optimization – to find the real cost of the media.

    The full pdf is available here: DataXu MarketPulse_Exchange Trading Strategies_September 2010 and below is snapshot of the report.

    DataXu MarketPulse: September 2010

    “Comparing Exchange Targeting Strategies: Following the Crowd Will Cost You”

    This analysis was prepared averaging cost of media across campaigns for consumer electronics, financial services, software, and automotive.

    Data Highlights:

    • The cost of media for Optimized ROE is 1.2X more expensive than media for general ROE buys
    • The cost of media for Audience Targeting is 3X more expensive than ROE (but effectiveness as measured by CPA was 2.7x better for Optimized ROE than for Audience Targeting)
    • The cost of media for Retargeting is on average 3X more expensive than ROE
    “The data shows what the smart media buyers know: Audience Targeting and Retargeting are effective, but the scarcity of placement opportunities causes media prices to spike and impedes campaign scale,” said Sandro Catanzaro, VP of Analytics and Innovation. “Optimization, however, is not similarly constrained as it works across a much wider swath of impressions, which enables more buying efficiency and scale.”

    For the full MarketPulse report, you can download the pdf here: DataXu MarketPulse_Exchange Trading Strategies_September 2010

    DataXu’s MarketPulse explores the data that defines today’s digital advertising marketplace. Sign up here to have future MarketPulse newsletters delivered directly to your inbox.


  • DataXu’s VP Sales to Speak on ‘Evolution of Display’ at FRWD Event in Minneapolis
    08/04/2010 | Categories: , , , , , ,

    DataXu’s VP of Sales and Go- to-Market strategy Steven Golus will speak at the FRWD event: “Pushing Boundaries: Exploring the Evolving World of Display Media”, on August 11 in Minneapolis.  The event will consist of an afternoon of discussions with industry leading Publishers, Demand Side Platforms, Data Aggregators, Verification and Survey tools providers.

    Steven will speak on the first panel of the day at 1:30 p.m. CT on the topic of “Leveraging Data in Display Targeting.” Joined by Brad King from BlueKai and Frost Prioleau of Simpli.fi, Steven will be discussing the integration of 3rd party and 1st party data into online display campaigns.

    Pushing Boundaries: Exploring the Evolving World of Display Media
    When: Wednesday Aug. 11, 2010

    Time: Registration- 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM CT
    Program- 1:00 PM- 5:00 PM CT
    Happy Hour- 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM CT

    Where: Fine Line Music Cafe: http://www.finelinemusic.com/directions.html

    Cost: FREE

    To learn more and register for this free event, see: http://www.frwdco.com/events/


  • DataXu MarketPulse: “Last Click Attribution: A Simple Way to Misallocate Your Budget”
    07/28/2010 | Categories: , , , , ,

    Today, we released our third MarketPulse newsletter, a regular publication utilizing DataXu’s proprietary data to uncover and reveal interesting trends in digital advertising.  This month’s issue focuses on a highly contentious issue in the online advertising space – Last Click Attribution.

    The full pdf is available here: DataXu MarketPulse_Last Click Attribution_July 2010 and below is snapshot of the report.

    DataXu MarketPulse: July 2010

    “Last Click Attribution: A Simple Way to Misallocate Your Budget”

    Taking a look at data for six client campaigns, the DataXu team identified some interesting attribution trends.

    Data highlights

    • For all campaigns, last click attribution ignored 97% of spend driving conversions — which often results in over-spending in search and re-targeting, and under-spending in display that drives demand creation.
    • The recommended attribution period for short consideration products, such as CPG, is two weeks. In the campaign shown above, this window includes 90% of impressions  that converted.
    • The recommended attribution period for long consideration products, such as Insurance and Autos is five weeks.
    • The length of time it takes to attribute 90% of conversions varies by 250%; each product requires its own distinct attribution model
    Ultimately, no two campaigns are alike, and what drives their success is tough to predict at the outset, but incredibly valuable to understand.

    For the full MarketPulse report, you can download the pdf here: DataXu MarketPulse_Last Click Attribution_July 2010

    DataXu’s MarketPulse explores the data that defines today’s digital advertising marketplace. Sign up here to have future MarketPulse newsletters delivered directly to your inbox.


  • Mike Baker in 140 Characters
    07/23/2010 | Categories: , , , , , , , , , ,

    Per our recent blog post, DataXu CEO Mike Baker was a busy man this week. He was in L.A. Monday for an OMMA AdNets panel in the afternoon and Dapper panel in the evening. Then off to Chicago on Tuesday for a panel at the Right Media Open.

    With 3 panels in 2 days, Mike had plenty to say; in fact the Twittersphere did a great job of capturing some nuggets from each of Mike’s panels. But if you weren’t at the events, we thought these 140 character sound bites might be confusing, see the below for some additional context and detail from Mike Baker…

    • MB: This was part of a discussion regarding the increasing complexity of the media buying and ad technology space. Here I was making the point that instead of existing companies innovating to include new features, what seems to be happening is that entirely new companies are popping up with products that could have simply been rolled into existing technology platforms thus the space gets more complex and crowded.
    • MB: At the Right Media Open, I was on a panel about the evolution of agencies in the digital media world. I’ve always been of the mind that machine-learning technology, like that of DataXu, can handle the tactical execution of media buying and planning, allowing overburdened media buyers  to focus their energy and time on more strategic marketing initiatives.
    • MB: As I wrote about on Forbes.com a few months back, Google’s acquisition of Invite Media and expansion into the DSP (Demand Side Platform) space is exciting and validating for DSP technology, but there are still some concerns around Google’s neutrality.  Google is the largest digital media seller, yet they’re going to remain an impartial  buy- side advocate for OMG?  Seems unlikely.

    Stay tuned for more event news and updates and remember, you can always find us on Twitter at @dataxuinc!


  • Industry Leaders Collaborate to Make Digital Advertising More Efficient
    07/16/2010 | Categories: , , , , , , , ,

    Digital is the fastest growing and arguably most strategic sector of the advertising market, yet an agency executive recently told me that transaction costs are 300 percent greater than for television.

    As is often the case with rapidly innovating industries, marketers are struggling to master and manage the media planning and buying workflow.  With the recent launch of a coalition dedicated to developing industry standards, it seems that we may finally be able to make the business of digital advertising more efficient.

    The complicated display advertising ecosystem (see diagram here) exacerbates work flow issues for agencies and their clients.  Campaign data gets pushed through third party intermediaries, ad networks and exchanges, demand side platforms and more.  Reporting, tracking and reconciliation tends to be manual and thus very inefficient.

    Last week, Interpublic and Microsoft announced “MOMS” (Media Operations Management System), a program to overhaul the workflow involved in planning and buying digital media. The hope is that The American Association of Advertising Agencies will expand the initiative to a coalition of agencies, marketers, media and technology solution providers; developing standards for streamlining digital advertising with automated technology processes.

    Beyond removing needless cost, initiatives like this inevitably streamline the ecosystem, hopefully weeding out the low value middle men that populate the landscape today, and shining a light on what specific points of value each vendor is providing.  No doubt that these reform initiatives will become increasingly important to the industry’s survival much less growth over the next 5 years, with additional holding companies announcing similar efforts and embracing technology standards that will allow them to better leverage economies of scale in the age of digital data.

    In fact, we’ve seen similar reform efforts in other industries; from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems streamlining resource allocation in the enterprise, to Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) making B2B transactions more standardized and efficient, and even recent efforts in the medical industry to address the security and privacy of health data with the Health Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

    Why is the advertising industry so late to the game?

    - Mike Baker, CEO, DataXu

    (**This piece was also posted on the MarketShare blog at Forbes.com: http://blogs.forbes.com/marketshare/2010/07/16/digital-advertising-efficiency-agencies-ad-networks/)


  • DataXu’s Mike Baker Makes the Rounds – 2 days, 3 Events
    07/12/2010 | Categories: , , , , , , , , ,

    They say you can’t be everything to everyone, but for DataXu CEO Mike Baker you CAN be everywhere with everyone.  Next week, Mike will be speaking at 3 different industry events.

    12:15 p.m. PT, Monday, July 19, 2010:

    OMMA AdNets – Los Angeles, CA

    An annual OMMA event, this year’s OMMA AdNets seeks to uncover the value in the many layers of the digital advertising ecosystem. Mike will be speaking on a pre-lunch panel, at 12:15 p.m. PT, titled “Simplify the Stack: Fighting the New Cost and Complexity of Media Buying.” Moderated by David Szetala, CEO, Clix Marketing and joined by panelists from Razorfish, Click Forensics and Catalyst, Mike will discuss strategies for improving the efficiency of the media buying process.

    7:00 p.m. PT, Monday July 19, 2010:

    Dapper Fixing Advertising Panel – Los Angeles, CA

    Co-hosted by the Rubicon Project, Fixing Advertising Los Angeles will explore the tremendous changes and opportunities in display advertising today as innovations in user data, intelligent media buying, and dynamic creative drive new efficiencies and performance gains – at a remarkable scale. The panel will also take a deep dive into the ways that the new data-driven ecosystem is affecting publishers, including insights into which data is owned by publishers, how well they are represented by supply-side platforms and whether or not they are capturing enough of the value chain. The panel will be moderated by Peter Kim, General Manager, Yahoo! Smart Ads, and joining Mike as panelists will be executives from The Rubicon Project, Triggit and more.

    2:30 p.m. CT, Tuesday, July 20, 2010:

    Right Media Open – Chicago, IL

    Yahoo’s Right Media Open is an annual event that brings together online advertising leaders to share insights and discuss industry challenges.  This year’s event will be keynoted by Terence Kawaja, Managing Director, GCA Savvian and Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Mike will be on a panel alongside executives from Cadreon, MEC and MediaBank to discuss the question, “How Are Agencies Evolving to Meet the Digital Future?”

    Stay tuned for additional insights, content and recaps from these events.


  • DataXu MarketPulse: Ad Price Volatility Is Opportunity for Advertisers
    05/21/2010 | Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Yesterday, we distributed what we hope will be the first of many “DataXu MarketPulse” newsletters. Designed to highlight compelling trends in the digital advertising space, the DataXu MarketPulse was created in response to our customers’ requests for visibility and insights into the rapidly evolving world of biddable digital media.

    DataXu MarketPulse, May 2010

    Extreme Price Volatility Across Ad Exchanges Presents Opportunities for Buyers

    DataXu analyzed the price paid for ad impressions across ad exchanges over the past 30 days, and discovered that the average daily price varied by over 100% during the period.

    This analysis is drawn from our leading cross-exchange advertising optimization platform, which evaluated over 175M unique user visits and hundreds of billions of ad impressions from all of the major suppliers of biddable display advertising during the measurement period.

    “With the tremendous growth of exchanges for bidding on digital display ads, we are seeing a persistent price volatility across all points of supply,” said Mike Baker, CEO of DataXu. “This presents innovative advertisers with a huge opportunity to boost media effectiveness and efficiency. But to do so, they have to move beyond static media buying to dynamic decision systems that keep pace with the volatility.”

    Advertisers know that exchange-traded inventory varies in value, but this significant volatility in prices for fungible placement opportunities may serve as a wake-up call. When it comes to display ads, are you confident that you are getting what you pay for?

    Over time, across large campaigns, such price variances can have a significant impact on ROI, if an advertiser is not employing the right analysis and tools to ensure that their higher cost impressions are also the highest value impressions for their specific goals.

    The Average Daily CPM Price for Display Ads Across Exchanges Varies by Over 100%

    The fluctuation of ad CPM prices outpaced other dynamic values — even during a period that included the stock market’s “flash crash” and the Goldman Sachs’ investigation.

    DataXu’s MarketPulse explores the data that defines today’s digital advertising marketplace. Stay tuned for future insights from DataXu.  For a pdf of this report see DataXu MarketPulse: Ad Price Volatility, May 2010 and to sign up for future MarketPulse newsletters, send an email to marketpulse@dataxu.com.