Mediaplex's MOJO Blog

Did you know custom formulas can be created in Analytics Campaign Performance Reports to allow for additional data columns? For example, you can add up a set of ROI parameters and include them as an additional column in reporting (i.e. Total ROI = ROI1 + ROI2 + ROI3 + ROI4). Custom formulas derived from other performance parameters can also be created. For example, if you want to display Effective CPM for a particular ROI parameter, a formula similar to this can be set up: Order eCPM = (TOTAL_REVENUE/IMPRESSIONS)*1000.

If you typically manipulate data in Excel to create custom equations or formulas for analysis, there is a good chance those formulas can be created directly in MOJO Reports to save you time and effort. Once formulas are created either for a single client or for multiple clients, they are available through checkbox selection in the same area where you would normally select ROI parameters.

Today, online advertisers have the ability to track quite a few performance metrics to determine the ROI, ROAS or overall branding effectiveness of their campaigns.  However, many advertisers don’t realize that they can also track offline conversions and tie those back into their online initiatives.  

Here are some examples:

Example 1:  A car rental company has customers who make their car reservations online, but have to visit their offline car rental location in order to pick up the car.  In this example, offline conversion tracking is essential.  The rental car company might view the online reservation as the first step in the process, but the true conversion occurs when the customer physically drives the car off the lot.   True ROI measurement requires some way to tie in that offline conversion with the online campaign that got the customer to the physical location.

Example 2: A hotel chain allows patrons to book rooms through an online advertising promotion, but still requires an in-person “check in” at the hotel.  In such an example, the hotel chain wants to track both the online reservation as well as when that guest actually picks up the keys to the reserved room.

But how is this done?

Using a third-party ad server such as Mediaplex, an advertiser can automate the process by scheduling offline data feeds right into the MOJO database.  This process effectively eliminates the manual element of offline reconciliation.  Now advertisers can not only report on this data, but also optimize the creative that is driving the best offline performance.

Why is offline conversion tracking useful? 

The “Copy Campaign” feature allows you to create a copy of a new campaign from an existing campaign. Using this feature, you will be able to copy over all your active placements, creative assigned to those placements and any rules that have been setup. Please note that it will not copy placements that are stopped or that have never been submitted. This feature can save you a tremendous amount of time if you are creating a new campaign that is similar to an existing one.

To use this feature, you will need to begin at the client level where the campaign you want to copy exists. You should now have a listing of your campaigns under this client. Next, you will click on “Update” to the right of the campaign you want to copy. You will notice a “Copy” option in the upper right corner of the campaign details. Click on “Copy” and this will bring you into your new campaign setup. Next, give the appropriate name for your new campaign and make sure to assign the proper flight dates. Once you have updated all the needed information for this new campaign, just click on “Submit”.

Join Mediaplex tomorrow at the Hilton Bayfront for San Diego’s Interactive Day. Mediaplex will be a sponsor and will be joined by 300+ interactive marketers participating in topic driven panels and workshops with the internet’s premier through leaders, including Paul Ollinger of Facebook, Joel Book of ExactTarget, Rand Fishkin of seomoz.org, Torrey Lincoln of Linkedin, Jack Meyers of M.E.D.I.Advisory, Tod Sacerdoti of Brightroll, and more.

Whether you’re a marketing manager/director, advertising agency, media representative, digital/social media specialist or vendor/supplier to the San Diego advertising industry, discover best practice approaches to online media. Event Details.

Mediaplex recently launched its new Rich Media website, complete with a Rich Media Gallery, Documents, Specifications, and other useful links. 

Check out the new site at http://www.mojorichmedia.com/.

As reported on Business Wire

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.–ValueClick, Inc.’s (Nasdaq:VCLK) technology division, Mediaplex, today announced it has released its site analytics reporting suite for agencies and marketers. With the new release, Mediaplex is now the only third-party ad server to deliver both site analytics and cross-channel campaign tracking on a single, integrated platform. Built to work seamlessly with existing advertiser conversion tracking tags, the implementation is quick and easy, requiring only the deployment of a single tag to begin tracking and reporting.

“The latest addition of site analytic metrics rounds out our existing site reporting for Natural Search and cross-channel conversion tracking”
Mediaplex’s site analytics reporting suite gives advertisers a comprehensive view into all aspects of their marketing programs by uniting campaign data from all advertising channels with their site side data. Agencies and marketers will also benefit from the union of their site analytic data when applying Mediaplex’s tools such as dynamic messaging and behavioral targeting.

For Mediaplex’s agency clients, the ease of configuration provides great efficiencies by allowing them to quickly begin incorporating site analytics tracking for multiple clients. Rather than installing a separate system to gather information for each client’s website, agencies can easily attain site side data for their clients by simply implementing the same tags used to track media conversions.

“During our Beta test, the Mediaplex site analytics reporting package enabled us to track and manage existing campaign data alongside site side data for one of our clients providing a unified data set, all on a single system,” said Charlie Ballard, manager, measurement & analytics for One to One Interactive. “This in turn empowered us with better insights into the final stages of the conversion funnel across a diverse set of marketing campaigns – all with minimal time and effort.”

“The latest addition of site analytic metrics rounds out our existing site reporting for Natural Search and cross-channel conversion tracking,” said Ann Hoey, general manager of Mediaplex. “This enables us to deliver further on our commitment to providing our clients with a unified, enterprise-level solution that brings all of our clients’ marketing programs together.”

The iMedia Brand Summit starts this weekend in sunny Miami, Florida at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa.   

Mediaplex will be attending along with hundreds of industry leaders to meet, mingle, and discuss future business relationships.  The multi day event will include workshops, networking events, and speaking engagements.  Further details about the event are Here  

  Keynote speakers at iMedia will include:  

• Mark Snyder
  CMO
  KMART
• Mike Parker
  Co-President
  Tribal DDB
• Chris Terrill
  CMO
  Nutrisystem
• Jeff Rosenblum
  Founding Partner
  Questus

  

As published on AdExchanger.com

The arrival of Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) may very well signal a better way to access exchange media inventory, but if you are thinking that means doing away with your third party ad server, keep reading.

DSPs have arrived in a big way, and a lot has been written lately about how they will help influence the future of online advertising. After all, DSPs are all about delivering on the promise of how to most effectively and efficiently utilize data, eliminating wasted time and resources to generate better results for your online marketing programs. While the future for DSPs looks promising, it’s important to not lose sight of a fundamental backbone technology piece that will continue to play a critical part in the advancement of DSPs: the third-party ad server.

Third-party ad servers provide the fundamental tools for managing, tracking and reporting on display advertising campaigns. Marketers must be able to monitor all types of campaigns and report on creative and targeting performance in order to fully leverage the demand side technology. Having an additional tool to acquire media and leverage data is great, but that is only part of the solution.  A truly viable solution requires a complete display management system.

Here are just a few reasons why third-party ad servers are necessary in the emerging DSP market:

1. Ad servers provide comprehensive tracking, retargeting, optimization and reporting of all media buy types. Whether it’s a CPA affiliate campaign, a CPM buy from a niche site, or a CPC deal with a direct site, ad servers are designed to track and report on all activity across channels. In addition, some ad servers even incorporate tracking of natural search, paid search and email. The vast majority of Demand Side Platforms are specifically designed to mainly track and manage Exchange buys.

 

2. Ad servers de-duplicate conversions across media buys by attributing a conversion event to only one media vendor. Without this type of de-duplication, advertisers end up misinterpreting which suppliers are really driving conversions and, in the case of CPA buys, advertisers can end up paying rev-share fees multiple times for a single conversion.

 

3. Industry consolidation and competition has weeded out all but the most reliable and effective ad servers. You’ll also find that these ad servers can be counted on for 99% up-time, reliability, and IAB and NAI compliance – to name a few. The DSP life cycle, on the other hand, has just started. One can expect a lot of hope, hype and future promise among DSP vendors, but not necessarily proven track records.

 

4. Ad servers have expertise and highly developed tools for creative rendering and tracking. It will be a long time before DSPs can provide things like auto-optimized dynamic messaging, where the best performing combination or iteration of creative variables are systematically determined. Support for Rich Media formats, such as floating, expandable or tandem, are another area where current DSPs are lacking – not to mention Rich Media reporting and publisher acceptance.

 

5. Marketers buying exchange and network inventory don’t always have control over where their ads are displayed. Typically, they have transparency after the fact. Marketers will continue to buy inventory directly from specific sites to ensure targeted reach and appropriate brand exposure. Although DSPs in some cases have partnered with brand safety companies, they are not designed to buy inventory directly from specific sites.

 

6. Third-party ad servers have highly-evolved reports, such as Path to Conversion, Site Overlap and Reach and Frequency reports that allow marketers to fully understand how and when users are interacting with the media. DSPs have barely scratched the surface in terms of their reporting capabilities.

Ad servers have been effectively managing the demand side of display for more than a decade and will continue to be a critical tool in managing display campaigns. It makes sense to assume that the lines between DSPs and third-party ad servers will cross and eventually achieve total integration in the years to come. However, in order to effectively manage the demand side, DSPs will need to build out the functionality which today is only available with a third-party ad server. As the exchange market grows, these ad servers will most likely integrate with exchanges directly or partner with a DSP that does. Until that time, third-party ad servers will continue to fill a critical role in the management of display advertising.

On May 27^th, Mediaplex sponsored the Las Vegas Interactive Marketing Association (LVIMA) event at the Rio Hotel in sin city.  This event showcased Mediaplex’s own Chris Squire who gave a terrific presentation about Performance Data. 

Here is that presentation:  Mediaplex – LVIMA May 2010. 

Besides Chris, Mediaplex had  some other familiar faces walking around such as Mark Aronoff (Sales Executive) and Brandon Kuhl (Rich Media Specialist) all supporting the event.  All of the us had the chance to see quite a few friends and clients at the event while meeting some other contacts. 

This was a very successful event and plan on participating with LVIMA soon.

Here are some pictures from the event.

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You may have already heard the term HTML5, but what makes it relevant to our industry today, years ahead of the official adoption? Simply put, HTML5 is a paradigm changer for the whole of the internet in general and for the ad serving space in particular. This evolution in the way we view the web will lead to more rich, dynamic content and allow browsers to become much more powerful user advocates. The specification not only simplifies and standardizes concepts which emerged during the web 2.0 revolution, but it also opens doors for possibilities we have not yet imagined. Embedded video without the use of flash, concept of client-side threading , and geolocation features are just few of the many technical gems that will be part of the toolbox.

HTML5 is still highly in flux and according to the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, it will reach the W3C Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012. It will take years longer to receive the full W3C recommendation status. However, many modern web browsers already partially support some of the new functionality offered by HTML5, visit html5test.com to see how the browser you are using right now stacks up.

Advanced functionality offered by this specification will come with a set of challenges such as cross browser support and backward compatibility. It will also intensify browser wars of today as each vendor takes a different approach to specification implementation. It is important to prepare for the exciting road ahead and be ready to adapt quickly. We are closely monitoring the evolution of HTML5 and positioning ourselves to leverage this revolutionary technology to offer exciting solutions to our customers.