Digital display is remarkably complex. Standard campaigns can involve multiple vendors of different technologies and types of media.
Today, Econsultancy launches Best Practices in Digital Display Advertising, a comprehensive look at how to efficiently manage online advertising. We asked the author, Chris O'Hara, about the report and work that went into it.
Why did you write Best Practices in Digital Display Advertising?
In my last job, a good part of my assignment was traveling around the country visiting with about 500 regional advertising agencies and marketers, large and small, over three years. I was selling ad technology. Most advertisers seemed extremely engaged and interested to find out about new tools and technology that could help them bring efficiency to their business and, more importantly, results to their clients. The problem was that they didn't have time to evaluate the 250+ vendors in the space, and certainly didn't have the resources (financial or time) to really evaluate their options and get a sense of what's working and what isn't.
First and foremost, I wanted the report to be a good, comprehensive primer to what's out there for digital marketers including digital ad agencies. That way, someone looking at engaging with data vendors, say, could get an idea of whether they needed one big relationship (with an aggregator), no data relationships, or needed very specific deals with key data providers. The guide can help set the basis for those evaluations. Marketers have been basically forced to license their own "technology stack" to be proficient at buying banner ads. I hope the Guide will be a map through that process.
What was the methodology you used to put it together?
I essentially looked at the digital display ecosystem through the lens of a marketer trying to take a campaign from initial concept through to billing, and making sure I covered the keys parts of the workflow chain. What technologies do you employ to find the right media, to buy it, and ultimately to measure it? Are all of these technologies leading to the promised land of efficiency and performance? Will they eventually? I used those questions as the basis of my approach, and leveraged the many vendor relationships and available data to try and answer some of those questions.
What's the biggest thing to take away from the report?
I think the one thing that really runs through the entire report is the importance of data. I think the World Economic Forum originally said the "data is the new oil" [actually, the earliest citation we can find is from Michael Palmer in 2006, quoting Clive Humby] and many others have since parroted that sentiment. If you think about the 250-odd technology companies that populate the "ecosystem," most are part of the trend towards audience buying, which is another way of saying "data-driven marketing." Data runs through everything the digital marketer does, from research through to performance reporting and attribution. In a sense, the Guide is about the various technologies and methodologies for getting a grip on marketing data—and leveraging it to maximum effect.
There's an explosion of three letter acronyms these days (DSP, DMP, SSP, AMP, etc.) that marketers are still trying to sort out. Do we need all of them? Is there another one around the corner?
I am not really sure what the next big acronym will be, but you can be certain there will be several more categories to come, as technology changes (along with many updates to Guides such as these). That being said, I think the meta-trends you will see involve a certain "compression" by both ends of the spectrum, where the demand side and supply side players look to build more of their own data-criven capabilities. Publishers obviously want to use more of their own data to layer targeting on top of site traffic and get incremental CPM lift on every marketable impression. By the same token, advertisers are finding the costs of storing data remarkably cheap, and want top leverage that data for targeting, so they are building their own capabilities to do that. That means the whole space thrives on disintermediation. Whereas before, the tech companies were able to eat away at the margins, you will see the real players in the space build, license, or buy technology that puts them back in the driver's seat. The Best Practices in Digital Display Advertising guide is kind of the "program" for this interesting game.
To learn more about the Best Practices in Digital Display Advertising guide, download the report here.
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