Mediaplex's MOJO Blog

Regularly reviewing your account structure and organizing it for relevance is very important for paid search campaigns. Not only will it improve performance but it actually raises the potential of your campaign (more relevant traffic at a lower cost).

Commonly, the structure of campaigns is overlooked as they grow – new keywords and creatives may start to become grouped when they should not be. When this happens, it means users are not presented with the most targeted message for their search (this will affect your click-thrus and conversions) and ultimately lower the quality score determined by the engine. A lower QS will reduce the chance of your ads appearing on the results page while adding an unnecessary premium on the cost-per-click.

So, what is a well organized account structure? That’s not a simple answer, but some general ways to begin setting up campaigns and groups is to categorize keywords based on the following:

• Products (or product type)
• Keyword type (i.e. branded terms, general terms, competitors, etc.)
• Geography
• Your website’s site-map

Other considerations may be budget, potential return, traffic and more, but the list above is a good starting point.

Once you have a general categorization setup, and have written creatives for each of the groups, review your structure with the following three questions in mind. They’ll help you identify if there is a need to modify the groupings and shift keywords and creatives.

1. Are there any generalizations in my creatives that can be more specific? (i.e. “electronics”, “vacation destination”, “software”)

As you answer this question for your creatives and can be more specific on the creative message (i.e. laptops, cameras, mp3 player), it’ll reveal if any of the keywords within the same group will become irrelevant (i.e. when you change a message that says “electronics” to “camera”, then any music player keywords will not work with that creative) – a clear sign that you need to separate out those keywords to another group.

2. Are there groups that have landing pages pointing to a different area of my website? (also phrase the question as “Are there groups that should have landing pages pointing to a different area of my website?”)

More than likely, your website has two types of pages: (a) general pages to describe a concept general area of your business that links to (b) individual separate pages for each of your products or services. If you’re directing users to the general page or if you have landing page in the same group leading to two fundamentally different areas of the site, this is probably another good indication to review that group.

3. Are there any keywords or creatives which have a significantly lower click-thu rate (CTR) or conversion rate from the top keyword and creative performers in the group?

When identifying keywords with significantly lower click-thru rates compared with the group, this could mean that searchers have given you an indication that the creatives being presented for these keywords are not as relevant.  Of course, remember to consider statistical significance here and ensure there are enough impressions across all the keywords before considering splitting the group. If there is a clear CTR separation between top performing keywords and the lower performing keywords, then it may be beneficial for a more specific message.

Don’t take this exercise too far and have groups where there is only one keyword. That’s not the point and usually un-necessary as you can use tools like keyword insertion if  it comes to that point. Finding a good balance will provide you the flexibility to deliver a very targeted creative message for every keyword in the group, while keeping it simple to manage your campaigns.

I think you’ll find going through that exercise will be revealing. If you do that this regularly, QS should improve and more targeted traffic will come along with a lower CPC.

I want to leave you with one last benefit of having a well organized structure for your SEM campaign. It will also make it simpler to take advantage of Mediaplex’s search remarketing capability that allows you to serve targeted creatives on your display buys based on prior search interactions. More on that in a later post, and you can always contact your account manager to learn about it.

Internet-enabled mobile communication devices are maturing as a marketing medium. The mobile phone in particular has reached penetration and engagement levels warranting new marketer focus and spending. Increased usability and improved functionality make smartphones attractive to advertisers. In the past 18 months we’ve seen mobile-focused networks and agencies rise, some technology barriers fall and advertiser budgets grow. Operators, networks, app developers and other entities offer new utilizations of the phone for advertising.

Increasing sophistication – better handsets and software, faster connections, richer content – has heightened interest in the medium. Unfortunately, it’s still complex to consistently deliver and quantify marketing experiences in mobile. This is a short-term issue indicative of mobile marketing’s current development stage. Leveraging best online media practices and standards eventually will increase mobile’s utility. Advertisers will embrace it and demand fully enabled ad delivery/reporting technology from providers like Mediaplex.

Mobile Advertising Business Notes:

• By 2009’s end, four-fifths of the U.S. population had a mobile phone, nearly 45 million people used the mobile Internet regularly, and nearly three-quarters of these users were reached monthly by a display ad network
• Although mobile ads take many forms and SMS continues to be a dominant platform, many marketers are working with display banner and text ad units
• Industry sources predict U.S. ad spend will reach 400M-500M dollars in 2010, up from >200M dollars in 2008. The “mobile ecosystem”, as defined by the IAB in 2009:

• The IAB also notes how mobile inventory types are used for different marketing goals:

• The mobile display planning and buying process has become similar to other online media
• Mobile display ad budgets and rates have risen from the perception that adopter behavior and limited clutter mean higher click/response rates
• Mobile display production costs are lining up with web advertising. Landing page production can be costly and time-consuming, as mobile browser page rendering isn’t standardized and most advertisers haven’t optimized development best practices for mobile-specific content.

 Mobile Advertising Technology Notes:

• Mobile Internet Browsers:
  • Standard HTML rendering is becoming a norm with iPhone/Android penetration
  • Display creative standards are emerging for easier production and trafficking
  • Rich ad capabilities are limited but will grow as enabling technologies – Flash particularly – come online. However, adoption outside of the app market could lag due to network bandwidth limitations and emerging data plan pricing models
  • New mobile technologies and ad platforms, like those introduced by Apple this year, will push the boundaries of what’s possible creatively beyond browser technical limitations.
  • The browser market remains fragmented. It is still difficult to manage user/session ID, deliver targeted ads and analyze post-click user experience across browser platforms.

• User Targeting and Tracking
  • Major browsers allow cookies and user management of cookies, script and pop ups
  • Carriers are still gatekeepers. Some strip cookies at the network or handset level.
  • Third-party mobile demographic data isn’t widely available – yet. Numerous vendors are making significant inroads in mobile app ad targeting/analytics, and carriers do provide network-level data.
  • Carriers/manufacturers have offered behavioral targeting and location-based targeting, but demand is limited. Privacy considerations are making marketers conservative in initial approach.
  • Technical issues limit wide availability of reporting and analytics, as unique user ID, de-duplicated user data and standardized reporting aren’t always available across carriers/networks.

Mediaplex Position

The demand for Mobile display on the web and in applications is legitimately heating up. In 2008, mobile agencies and networks started educating the market and introducing product. 2009 saw new display budget allocation by many large advertisers – some with previous SMS and mobile marketing experience, many without. As the business, technology and decision data mature, 2010 will see mobile display and search ad spending tick upward and become a solid part of standard budget planning.

Ultimately we will navigate a world with full mobile graphical, video and text ad capability. We will also consume mature mobile response and branding analytics data. While this won’t happen right away, we wish to make it easier for our clients to start working with mobile right now. You should have the ability today to work with mobile publishers or networks, and to integrate the mobile channel for ROI and learning purposes.

As a result, Mediaplex is introducing new enhanced targeting support for mobile display ad campaigns. The enhancements make it easier to create targeting rules based on mobile device recognition. When used together with MOJO Adserver Mobile Channel reports, our Rules Wizard update facilitates extending IAB standard campaign serving and delivery reporting to mobile. And our standard view-click-ROI correlation and Channel ROI performance metrics apply in most cases.

For more information on MOJO Adserver mobile channel targeting and reporting, please contact your account representative.

Mediaplex will be participating in the upcoming AIMA awards as the VIP sponsor!  The Atlanta interactive Marketing Association (AiMA) has established the AiMA Awards to recognize Atlanta-area companies, agencies, and individuals or national agencies with Atlanta-based clients or offices that are leaders in the field of interactive marketing. This event is scheduled for Thursday, April 29^th.

Attending the 2010 AiMA awards and Want to Be a VIP?

If you would like to join Mediaplex in the VIP area during the awards night, please email your interest to ekirk@mediaplex.com. Space is limited, so please reply ASAP!

Whether your interactive campaign goals are targeted toward brand awareness, direct response, or somewhere in-between, using an optimizer is a great way to get better campaign results.

Mediaplex offers an automatic optimization tool as part of the MOJO Adserver platform that makes it easy for our clients to optimize entire campaigns or individual placements.  Unlike other tools for optimization in the market, the Mediaplex Optimizer requires no “pre-campaign configuration” and is automated once you set up your optimization criteria.  Meaning, you can turn on an optimizer whenever you choose.

For brand awareness campaigns, you can optimize the best performing brand message.  For direct response campaigns, you may want to make sure that the best performing creative gets the maximum exposure to drive conversions.  Once your optimization criteria is set, the tool automatically adjusts creative weighting to find and deliver the best performing creative.

It is important to remember that no optimizer in the world can fix bad creative. If the creative you use is not engaging, you aren’t going to remedy a campaign by simply using an optimizer. However, having quality creative on the right websites can be complemented by an optimizer.

Setting up the Mediaplex Optimizer is easy. 
Advertisers have the option to:

1. Choose your Success Metrics:
    -  Click thru Rate
    -  Conversion Rate
    -  Custom Formula – Whether it is a Rich Media Interaction formula, weighted averages, or weighting a recent event more heavily than another, the custom formula is a power tool that gives you the kind of  customization needed to fit even the most complex criteria.

 

2. Choose the ROI metric/s you wish to track:
    - Conversions
    - Quantity
    - Revenue
    - Or any other metric tracked
   

 

3. Select how aggressive you wish to optimize
4. Set up any delivery thresholds and time parameter to be considered
5. Run in Test Mode – Preview the optimization results before  running the optimizer live

If you are a Mediaplex client and haven’t already used the Optimizer, give it a go.
If you are unsure of how it works, contact our customer support team at customersupport@mediaplex.com