Atlas Partner Summit

I’m away today for a conference held by Atlas (one of the companies that I use for paid campaign bid management).

They are an expensive bidding tool, but attending a conference like the one they are putting on today is one of the benefits of paying a premium – there is some serious IQage in this room today and they are very openly sharing a lot of cutting edge and really fascinating insights.

It's just too bad that there is some guy from Canada in the room who keeps sticking his hand up to ask questions CONSTANTLY ... but I guess there's always one in every group. ;)

Because Atlas also supports online media as well as Search (and as I’m learning, other areas - VOD for example) some of what I’m learning today is not necessarily Search related… though interestingly, newer and emerging opportunities seem to be sharing more and more similarities with Search.

Here is a run down on some of the speakers and ideas:


Young-Bean Song
Atlas

Young reviewed the concept of Tipping Points (I REALLY need to read that book – I hear about it so often and like the concept).

I have felt recently that we are at a tipping point in this industry right now – just given the amount of money I’m seeing poured in; as well as the amount of interest people are expressing to me about Search marketing recently. Young says that since only 6% on average of ad budgets are going to online media, we aren’t at the tipping point yet.

He also provided some interesting stats, such as the fact that 91% of all ad impressions are being delivered to broadband users now.

I asked him later if this meant that 91% of ad impressions are being delivered to 50-60% of the population (since these are the broadband penetration numbers I’ve seen)… in which case it would seem quite disproportional – and not the direction we’d really want to go in. Young corrected me – this might be the broadband @home penetration, but those 91% of ads are getting shown to a much larger chunk of the population since many people are browsing at work on high speed.

It did make me wonder if there was any point in paying a premium for broadband targeted media since impressions are already showing up on high speed 91% of the time.


Scott Ferris
SVP, GM Atlas

Scott spoke about digital media such as PVRs and VOD. While I’m a PVR user (and will never watch TV in the same way again), I don’t know much about digital media as an ad medium… so this was probably one of the most interesting sessions for me. One of the insights was seeing how Atlas will be tracking digital media in the future – Scott showed a diagram of how a video file will be inserted into a videostream to allow tracking.

As I learn about new media I always wonder which existing skills sets will lend themselves to expertise in the new media. For example, I think some of the best organic search marketers are people who have run their own online businesses, know how to build a website from the code up, and have agency experience. The best paid search marketers are ones who have run their own online businesses and have a passion for analytics. The best online media buyers are people who have a great understanding of internet and new technology and have traditional agency experience. So who are the people who will become successful in the world of PVR and VOD advertising? I think it will be people who have done traditional media buying and online media buying who will best be able to adopt it. Sorry, I digress.

It was interesting to see that there are parallels between PVR/VOD advertising and Search advertising. As Scott pointed out… “we want to target an ad in a TV format at the exact moment it is relevant to the viewer” -- this sounds quite familiar to my sales pitch for Search marketing.

To close off, Scott ran through a top ten list of reasons this medium should be import to marketers… one of his final ones was, “bury your head in the sand and that’s where it’ll be when your client takes his business elsewhere”. Great point… and makes we worry a little for the some traditional advertisers I know who have their heads a little too close to the sand.


Beyond Search – Aaron Easterly, Atlas; Maziar Sattari, MSN

I learned quite a lot in this session, which reminded me at some points of an economics class since it is very much related to supply and demand. The term ‘parabola’ was also used for the first time in the conference ;)

Probably the main thing I learned is that if I ever want to get into the emerging and fascinating area of Image Auctions, I will call Aaron Easterly – he and Maziar from MSN really know what they are talking about.

Just to touch the surface of this area, basically what an image auction is, is the auctioning of inventory on publisher sites which is considered ‘remnant’ inventory. For example, some inventory is easy for publishers to sell & book, and may never need to be auctioned. Other inventory levels may fluctuate dramatically depending upon seasonality or other events/contracts and before this inventory expires it can be auctioned.

As with VOD, there were some interesting similarities to search marketing… (the auction approach for example), as well as areas which make it completely different to search… and closer to online media.

I also learned a couple of new terms – Yield Management (where a publisher makes decisions that will optimize results); and ECPM (Effective CPM).

This was one of those sessions that contained a lot of information that went above my head – but in a good way. I’d much rather learn about things that are new to me then go over the basics of something I’m already familiar with.


Scott Howe, President of Drve Performance Media
Michael Hayes, VP, Initiative

Segments not Placements – a Primer on Online Targeting

Scott gave some very funny examples of ‘uncovering hidden wealth’ – such as finding a vase worth $4000 at a garage sale and buying it for $4. Then he pointed out that those atlas tracking tags on everyone’s sites are the key to unlocking data which could reveal hidden wealth.

At first I felt that maybe I’d walked into an infomercial – maybe the ‘no money down real estate investment seminar’, but it was a funny way to start off and he got his point across.

One point Scott made that I have my doubts about is dayparting. He used the following example: if you are a not-for-profit, data shows that a peak time for donations is on Sunday afternoon, right after church. He argued that there was no point in showing those ads during a Wednesday afternoon then since very few conversions occur during this period. Turning off impressions on Wednesday afternoon thus allows you to optimize cost per donation based on dayparting.

I’ve heard this point (using different example) made before – and I’ve found it to be something of an ‘a-ha!’ moment for clients when they hear about this kind of capability, because they love the idea that online media can allow this flexibility, and I think it also allows traditional media folks to see online media in a context that they are comfortable with.

But I think that this approach is a little short sighted… the reason is that it ignores traditional media thinking that advertising has to ‘touch’ a consumer many times as they move through a buyer cycle, or acquisition cycle. This is an error online marketers make all the time unfortunately – to our detriment.

Following the example, we know from the data what the last touch point is – the point of donation. But no bid management or acquisition measurement tools can yet clearly identify and provide analysis on what the patterns of first, second, third, fourth etc. touchpoints were. Maybe the most critical touchpoint – the touchpoint that plants the seed of awareness in an individuals’ mind – occurs on a Wednesday afternoon when a bored, unfulfilled company drone is sitting in front of their computer at work, wondering how resolving the latest marketing ‘emergency’ is leaving a lasting imprint on the world. Maybe no one ever converts at this point, but maybe it is still the most critical moment in the donation process. Dayparting, and turning off impressions during this period may have a short term improvement in CPA, with an untrackable and highly negative impression on longer term conversions and CPA.

I asked Scott about this dayparting issue after his presentation and he agreed with my points and we had a great discussion – thanks for the interesting conversation Scott!


Michael Hayes… Initiative – A Real World Story of Targeting Riches

What a fabulous radio voice!

Michael showed a very nice summary/continuum which showed targeting methods, ranging from least to most complexity and depth of targeting:

- Demo & Geo
- Day Part
- Technolgy
- Interest Category
- Search Behavior
- Custom Behavioural
- Psychographic (ie. Prizm)
- Customer Models

What a pleasure sitting next to Michael and Anthony Haney at dinner later… drowning out the crude conversation on the other side of the table. Space what? ;)


Search Optimization
Search Marketing Continuum
Ian Westbrook – Sr. Acct Mgr, Atlas Search
Maria Papa – Classified Ventures, LLC

Ian had some basic and easily understandable recommendations for campaign optimization. I was hoping for something a little more advanced, but it never hurts to get a refresher once in a while. Ian covered the following:

- Methodology: benchmark -> optimize - > expansion
- Categorization of terms across engines:
o Top performers – ie. keywords that drive 80% of revenue volume within 20% of your profitability metric. Daily optimization of these terms.
o Branded terms – bid to position strategy. (ie. goal of always being in position x)
o Buckets of categorized keywords (implied Conversion Categories): MaxCPC=(CPA goal)/ (1/Conversion %) – see slide example. Great tool.
- Expansion:
o Top performers – get every iteration and spelling
o Branded terms – every iteration on every engine, every misspelling.
o Look at top 10% of keywords within top performing categories

- Next optimization actions:
o Look at creative
o Look at other areas of optimization
o When all else is done look at search path data (I didn’t realize this but apparently Atlas can provide this data, but it is almost impossible to get value from it at this point b/c analysis/crunch tools aren’t there yet)

After the presentation I spoke with Ray Elias from Stub Hub. Wow – now there is a guy who has really delved deep into the complexities of paid search – very smart points from him.



Landing Page Optimization
Adrian Chiu

A good speaker – his presentation was also a little on the basic side, but I enjoyed a few of his more complex insights too – such as weighing different kinds of actions on a landing page (ie. 1 point for a resume submission click, .25 points for a job search click)

- His equation for CPA = Cost/(CTR x CR)
- Setting up optimization testing:
1. What should I test? what page elements matter?
Screening test;
• Choose variables (ie. branding or links or text or colour)
o Vary the element one time
o Measure the results
o Look for SWING
• Test metrics – figure out where drop off happens
o Users who reach page
o Users who interact w. page
o Users who begin the form
o Users who submit the form
o Users who convert

How should these page elements be tested?
? A/B testing vs. multivariate testing
• A/B – create large pages between two pages
• Multivariate – test small changes across several versions


Carl Schwartz, VP Analytics from Monster.com

I find that there are no wiser people in this industry than the marketing folks who work in companies who rely on the web for their business, and who have developed in-house teams to manage the details of search marketing. Carl is no exception (and Ray Elias, mentioned earlier). Carl seems to have taken a gutsy, methodical approach to getting results and finding incremental improvements for Monster.com. I won’t share much of the detail here because he was kind enough to share information that he might not want competitors to come across. Generally though…

• Two goals in his landing page optimization:
o increase clicks from the landing page (diminish drop off from landing pages)
o increase conversions
• They have a great track record of lowering CPA and increasing conversions gradually over time.
• Methodology:
o Goal setting
o Design/construction – “garbage in garbage out”
o Implementation
o Interpretation
o Action
• He ran some testing through one vendor, but recommends using Atlas to do landing page analysis.
• Via the Atlas testing they took the key learnings from several different landing page styles and created one best version.
• Testing is expensive (15-20k)/page. Monster’s point was that it is more expensive not to do it.


Saar Safra – Atlas Rich Media
Jason Kelley – Real Branding

Interesting review of history of rich media companies. Demo’d some fun creative … ali g ad, milk scandal ad (also neat b/c it used a text ad look very effectively) and more.

It was also great to hear Jason Kelley speak. I knew that I had looked at Real Branding years ago and respected them, and finally figured out where I knew them from. When I worked on Beer.com, one of our models of success was RealBeer.com – which was the company that Real Branding grew out of.

This background is perhaps one of the reasons why Real Branding is so successful – they started out with a great grounding in online business – not just creative.
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On a sad note, it is now time for me to leave and I've lost one of my new pink mittens.

Small price to pay for such a great time though... Atlas did an amazing job of bringing together some leaders in Search and Online Media. I’m leaving the conference with some new ideas of things I want to try … just have to find the time!

And talk about cutting edge - I've never seen a corporate logo carved into an ice sculpture and used as a shot funnel before - and maybe never will again.

What a great bunch of people and a really well organized event. Thanks everyone from Atlas.