When a senior CMO friend and I caught up recently our conversation turned to surprising work place discussions.
My colleague had found herself in a board meeting explaining programmatic advertising and justifying her reluctance to buy online inventory through open exchanges.
She’s expected to manage her ad budget as efficiently as possible, so digital channels of course feature in her schedule.
Yet she’s acutely aware that not all online environments are safe or effective for her brand, and in detailing this her board presentation took an unexpected side-tour through the world of blind buys, bot nets, ad bots, fake name harvesting and cookie-stuffing.
Some 30-40% of traffic on open exchanges, which are un-policed, are fraudulent, she explained – a massive number when you’re spending decent money, and completely counter to the assertion that programmatic buying is efficient.
Meanwhile a significant proportion of legitimate open exchange traffic comes from websites that at best have no relevance to her brand, and at worst are harmful environments. To date she’s heard of no foolproof whitelist, and so maintained the ‘cheap clicks’ that open online ad exchanges tout are anything but.
She’s also cultivated a healthy scepticism of data-myopic planning, having seen too many examples of ‘targeted’ campaigns miss the mark: yes our luxury spa getaway ad reached the high-achieving female executive, just when she was sharing her iPad with her nine-year-old son to watch his latest favourite YouTube clips. As any busy parent will appreciate, this is hardly a time at which she was likely to absorb that message.
To underscore that point, my friend referenced marketing science expert Phil Harden, who writes in ‘Decoded’ the context in which consumers encounter marketing messages has an enormous, and often sub-conscious impact on their actions, famously asking: would you buy a Rolex in Woolworths?
When concluding her board presentation, my CMO friend said that programmatic is certainly the way forward for acquisition campaigns and brands and what can be automated will be. Her aim is to make the most of technology but also be selective about the environments to which she entrusted the brand.
She finished to silence around the board table. A moment of terror – in which she worried one of the group had a side business in online advertising – subsided when the lead independent director thanked her for the perspective and confessed to having had no idea about the ‘wild west of the advertising web’.
When it was my turn, the story I shared was less surprising than disheartening: a leading publisher lamented he had just signed off on $250,000 software to prevent rampant click-fraud and non-human activity falsely inflating his traffic figures. It was the third time in less than three years he had tried to outwit the bots and still he felt he was losing the battle.
My CMO and publishing colleagues’ concerns are not unique.
Premium publishers invest a lot of money in creating content that is fundamentally different – and almost always better – than the amateur-created. Their inventory needs to be priced differently, and it certainly deserves to be rewarded with genuine customer traffic.
And as the marketing world rushes to make data king, it’s essential to remember the importance of context and environment. Data is very important, but it’s context that creates meaning for brands, and premium publishers have that in spades.
Persistent presence in an inappropriate context degrades brand perception and, therefore, value. This is an important consideration for any marketer thinking about cheap CPMs or acquisition campaigns using open exchanges, where they cannot control where their brand appears.
Real-time bidding exchanges require liquidity and scale to work. Premium private exchanges bring quality publishers together to create a scaled alternative to the open exchanges. They ensure brand safety, avoid ad fraud, provide crucial context and environment while delivering the value and efficiency of programmatic trading.
It’s an exciting time for premium alliances, which are increasingly improving their proposition to advertisers. In the near future technology will allow us to easily create universal IDs across all platforms and devices that will make the process of buying known – albeit anonymous – consumers seamless.
Our goal is to make smart use of data, technology and premium environments to create the cleanest, and most effective, transactional space between clients and publishers.
By CEO of APEX Advertising, Pippa Leary