Blog and Article Sharing Corner
The Blog Post below is from Pete Kluge, Group Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Media Optimizer
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Supercharge your Retargeting Campaigns with Dynamic Creative
Forty-six percent of major brands have set aside budgets just for retargeting campaigns. Retargeting allows brands to reconnect with users that have previously visited their website as they peruse content across the web. These site visitors have already shown interest in the brand by visiting the website, and show intent with actions such as visiting product pages, filling a shopping cart, or interacting with content, but they have not converted. Retargeting gives the brand a second chance at driving a conversion.
Retargeting is a popular display advertising tactic, which is not surprising when you consider that retargeted visitors are 70 percent more likely to convert on your website, according to CMO.com. However, what if your retargeting campaigns could deliver more relevant and personalized ads? Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) is the catalyst to supercharge your retargeting campaigns.
The Data Feed Powers DCO Personalization
DCO can boost ad efficiency and effectiveness across all verticals, and has benefits for any advertiser with granular audience data used for personalization. Retargeting requires an advertiser to maintain a data feed that houses the dynamic outputs that populate the dynamic ad. I’m often asked how the data feeds works to personalize a DCO ad, so let’s take a look at examples for the most common verticals: retail and travel.
In the retail vertical, DCO is a key element for effective site retargeting. A unique product ID, such as a SKU, is captured by a pixel on the product page and added to a user profile. The SKU will act as the dynamic trigger for content in the advertiser’s data feed. Geo-location and audience segments identified with a data management platform (DMP) or analytics solution are other elements that can trigger dynamic ad elements.
When the demand-side platform (DSP) buys the user impression, the SKU in their profile is cross-referenced with a file on the backend that tells DCO the product name, its description, what product image to pull, price, promotional copy, and any other relevant information. The dynamic ad is assembled and delivered using the content in the data feed in real-time. Anything that’s captured with a pixel can be used to trigger content from a feed.
For travel and hospitality, the concept is the same. However, instead of a product SKU, the dynamic trigger could be a hotel property ID or origination and destination travel city:
The Results Speak for Themselves
Lower funnel tactics like retargeting with DCO can drive a significant lift in performance for an advertiser. As we move down the funnel, we know more about the audiences and the targeting gets more specific, resulting in higher click-through and conversion rates. For example, for one advertiser we work with, retargeting individual property pages using DCO resulted in a lift in CTR of 71%.
DCO and Retargeting, A Powerful Combination
When planning your next display campaign, consider the power of retargeting with DCO. Display ads get a click-through rate of 0.07%, but retargeted ads get a click-through of 0.7%. The data feed allows for a deep level of personalization, allowing you to deliver more relevant ads, and drive better ad engagement and performance.
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Read the original blog post at - https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/advertising/supercharge-retargeting-campaigns-dynamic-creat...
The Blog Post below is from Joe Martin, Head of Social Insights at Adobe
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Influencer Marketing From the Influencers
Who has influenced you — Abraham Lincoln, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mohammed Ali, Thomas Jefferson, Michael Jordan, maybe Oprah Winfrey? According to a survey done for Variety this year, 8 out of 10 teen consumers didn’t name celebrities at all, but rather, chose influential YouTube stars such as the comedy team Smosh. Another survey, this one conducted by Tomoson, reported that 51 percent of marketers believed they obtained better customers through influencer marketing than through more traditional channels.
Influencers don’t have to be famous, but — as they are often focused on specific niches — should definitely be both knowledgeable and accessible. The explosive growth of social channels, paired with the ease of video and image production, has birthed a new group of rock-star influencers who travel the globe, teaching others everything they know about influencer marketing.
Over the past few years, I have been able to present, interact, and meet with many of these thought leaders such as Brian Fanzo (@isocialfanz), Stephanie Be (@stephbetravel), Amy Jo Martin (@amyjomartin), Marsha Collier (@marshacollier), Diana Adams (@adamsconsulting), Ted Coine (@tedcoine), Winnie Sun (@SunGroupWP), Sam Hurley (@sam_hurley), Rachel Miller (@rachelloumiller), and countless others. Most recently, I spoke at a conference with Emily Thomas (@emitoms), Pam Moore (@pammktgnut), Stephanie Be (@stephbetravel), and Sean Gardner (@2morrowknight).
Talking with each of these extremely talented, intelligent, and motivated people has taught me that there are a few common themes that make influencer marketing great as well as one of the fastest-growing areas of focus for businesses.
Influencers Are Real People Who Engage in Brand or Industry Conversations.
Influencer marketing’s enormous growth was created mostly by social media — not because of the actual networks but because consumers, businesses, students, and daily users craved the personal connections of thought leaders. It’s the modern iteration of websites’ testimonial programs. We want to connect a face with a brand, an industry, or a topic — someone we can relate to and converse with in a world full of automated messages and chatbots.
Influencers Are Smart and Forward-Thinking.
One of the best Twitter #Adobechats I have ever attended (every Wednesday at 1 pm pt) was about the future of digital marketing, and it was littered with marketing influencers. Those who attended brought up insightful — and sometimes challenging — conversations on everything from virtual reality and artificial intelligence to chatbots and personalized customer experiences. It was a tremendously engaging conversation that had the potential to improve the futures of many businesses. For example, Diana Adams (@adamsconsulting) — a globally respected influencer who is focused on the future — presented us with this incredible insight about digital marketing:
Influencers Have Passion and Energy for Their Specialties.
This is the most common theme among the influencers I call friends. Travel, business, marketing, customer experience, tech — it doesn’t matter what their expertise, influencers learn everything there is to know about it, epitomizing this quote from Henry Ford:
“None of our men are ‘experts.’ We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job … thinking always, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible.” — Henry Ford
Would I hire myself or any other influencers to evangelize my brand? Absolutely. Should you start formulating an influencer plan to capture some of the knowledge share in this growing social market? Yes. You need to make a decision now: Would you rather have #Brangelina championing your brand or dozens of influencers providing a true interactive face. As for me, I will take the influencers.
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Read the original blog post at - https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/social-media/influencer-marketing-influencers/
The Blog Post below is from Gauri Bhat, Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Media and Advertising solutions
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Don’t Be Guilty by Association: Seven Ways to Maintain Brand Safety
Once upon a time, digital advertisers had to approach publishers directly to place their ads on websites. It wasn’t cost-effective, and it definitely wasn’t a very scalable way to operate, as marketers had to piece together each advertising campaign by individually contracting with hundreds of individual websites and publishers. However, on the up side, it gave advertisers control over where their ads were being placed.
Then, ad networks emerged as middlemen, offering a way to reach audiences across many publishers. But, ad networks are not necessarily transparent about their fees, margins, and inventory, and they lack efficient controls (like frequency-capping or budget-management) across multiple exchanges.
Now, over the last few years, the programmatic — or automated — purchase of display ads has been on the rise. This year alone, more than two-thirds of all digital display content will be purchased programmatically. Advertisers can now access multiple inventory sources and ad exchanges through a single unified platform (called a demand-side platform, or DSP). An auction is held to serve an ad to a particular visitor, and the price can be determined in real time. Further, with DSPs like Adobe Media Optimizer (AMO), there is transparency in the margins the advertiser is paying, which was never the case with the cloudier ad-network buys.
But, with all these advantages, there has also been a rise in concern regarding where ads are appearing.
- Is the publishing site agreeable with the advertiser’s brand?
- Is the content on the specific page where the ad will appear consistent with the messaging of the ad, or will the ad/brand perhaps appear insensitive given the content on the page?
- Are there any legal issues that may arise when advertising certain products and/or services with regulatory restrictions adjacent to certain types of content?
The Importance of Brand Safety
Countering risks such as these is what we refer to as brand safety. For instance, a reputable news site may be an ideal advertising destination to place an ad for a truck manufacturer — except if the ad were to be placed on a page reporting an attack in which suspects used a truck to carry out the tragedy. Another example of poor ad placement is an airline advertisement being displayed on a page covering news of a recent flight disaster. Brands also may not want to show their ads on pages that contain pirated content. In some countries, ads for products like cigarettes and alcohol are banned from sites that children may frequent.
Failing to pay attention to where your ad is appearing, as well as the resulting audience sentiment, can make even the most reputable brands appear insensitive and expose them to both legal and social scrutiny.
According to the Integral Ad Science’s (IAS) H1 2016 Media Quality Report, brand-safety risk within programmatic advertising is 62 percent greater than publisher-direct ad buys. In a world where people are growing progressively more aware of brands’ images — and are more likely to support the companies they perceive as being ethical and fair at all levels of their product’s life — it makes sense for advertisers to become familiar with ways in which they can preserve their brand safety in the world of automated digital-ad buying.
Seven Ways to Ensure Brand Safety
Below are some tips that advertisers can use to counter brand-safety risk. The first two are basic steps that any responsible advertiser should take, but they deserve mentioning, nevertheless.
1. Partner Responsibly.
It is important for an advertiser to partner with a reputable DSP that is either certified in brand safety or has partnered with a certified vendor. Among other things, this will allow only a filtered inventory of sites to be made available for bidding, and thus, reduce brand risk.
2. Know Your Audience.
Most advertisers know the age, gender, and location of their target audience. Layering on more targeting — for instance, education level, memberships, or family size — may decrease your audience size but will give you access to the right people in the right environment or domains. This especially works for advertisers that are focusing on more than just impressions.
3. Use Pre-Bid Decisioning. (Highly Recommended)
Often, brand-safety analysis is done in hindsight, as many companies rely on post-bid reporting to show where ads were placed. However, if inappropriate content is discovered, it’s often too late to protect the brand’s reputation.
By contrast, DSPs like Adobe Media Optimizer have partnered with IAS to do pre-bid decisioning before ads are placed. Pre-bid decisioning involves thorough evaluations of webpages on multiple variables, including URL analysis, semantics analysis, images, inbound/outbound links, and metadata analysis. Each of the areas can be further customized with keyword blocking, geo-compliance, and custom site lists. Pre-bid decisioning is a preferred strategy for brand safety because most sites can be assessed both thoroughly and quickly before any advertising appears.
4. Run Your Domain Report Post-Bid.
If advertisers lack access to a sophisticated DSP that provides pre-bid decisioning to prevent ads from being placed on questionable websites, they can at least run their domain report after-the-fact to determine what sites received the impression. Though this obviously won’t prevent ads from being published on offensive websites initially, it does allow advertisers to exclude offending sites from future ad buys.
5. Eliminate Harmful Websites by Category.
Sites on the Internet are filtered into categories based on their content, and these category names are then made available to advertisers to include or exclude. Generally, the following entire-site categories that tend to be eliminated as harmful are adult-themed, alcohol, adware/malware, hate speech, illegal downloads/pirated content, illegal drugs, offensive language, and violence. Of course, these are just the most common categories that brands should consider — each brand is different, and there is no right or wrong answer. Each brand will need to weigh the opportunity presented by the audience it can reach with the impact of the content it associates with.
6. Create Keyword Lists.
Keyword lists can help identify content that may exist on sites in otherwise “safe” categories. They are also used to block content and geographies, as needed, in an advertising campaign. To build upon an earlier example, an airline may want to include keyword terms related to flight disasters that may be reported on news sites or blogs to avoid showing ads on those specific pages.
7. Buy in Private Marketplaces.
A private marketplace is an invitation-only, real-time bidding (RTB) auction in which a publisher (or several) will invite a select number of buyers to bid on its inventory. The purchases are fully transparent, and the buyer knows exactly which site the ad will run on. There are some platforms (including Adobe Media Optimizer) that allow both programmatic and private marketplace buys via a single platform.
It is obvious that, although automated buying may increase brand risk in the short term, it is this very same automation that is now working to create scalable ways to maintain brand safety. With the right partnerships and correct proactive measures, advertisers can eliminate brand risk entirely.
Partnering With IAS: The Way Forward for Adobe
Adobe Media Optimizer is a leading DSP that has chosen to partner with Integral Ad Science (IAS), the industry’s recognized leader in brand protection, ad verification, and ad-viewability data. IAS is a global technology and data company that empowers the advertising industry to effectively influence consumers everywhere and on every device. IAS references its certification by the Media Rating Council (MRC) to validate their brand-safety technology. By partnering with IAS, Adobe ensures brand safety at the page level while remaining protected against fraud and several content risk categories.
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Read the original blog post at - https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/advertising/dont-guilty-association-seven-ways-maintain-bra...
The Blog Post below is from Pete Kluge, Group Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Media Optimizer
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The Power of Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) Beyond Retargeting
Many advertisers are using dynamic creative optimization (DCO) for retargeting high-value website visitors who, based on their actions on the brand’s website — such as visiting product pages and adding items to shopping carts — have shown purchasing intent. Advertisers get a second chance to drive a conversion. Retargeting is a proven, always-on tactic for most advertisers. DCO allows deeper personalization of retargeted ads, driving better engagement and performance.
While we hear a lot about using DCO for retargeting, what about employing DCO for prospecting campaigns?
Advertisers can use DCO across the marketing funnel — for everything from retargeting and loyalty programs to new-customer acquisition and awareness campaigns. Even if very little is known about the audience or user that is viewing the ad, DCO can deliver a lift in performance. For one Adobe customer, using algorithmic creative optimization for geotargeted campaigns resulted in a 10-percent lift in click-through rate (CTR) over standard display ads. The more we know about the audiences across the funnel, the better the performance. Performance results for this brand ranged from a 10-percent lift in CTR for prospecting campaigns to a 71-percent lift in performance when retargeting users who visited specific property pages.
Target Audiences Across the Funnel With DCO.
Algorithmic Creative Optimization
For prospecting campaigns, the creative elements within the ad — images, border and button colors, messages, offers, call-to-action text, data-feed components, and recommended products, for instance — are optimized to meet the advertiser’s performance objectives. An advertiser could simply target their ads by region or zip code and allow DCO to optimize the ad’s creative elements to drive the best engagement and performance.
The DCO algorithm evaluates all possible ad permutations and optimizes delivery to the winner. Below is a simplified example.
Advertisers are able to turn creative optimization on or off as desired. For retargeting campaigns, an advertiser may prefer to set rules to drive ad-content decisions using the data feed. Once the feature is turned on, the settings below — some of which are customizable — are activated.
- Confidence level (99.1-percent default settings)
- Optimization key performance indicators (KPIs): Clicks, conversions
- Impressions per permutation (75,000 default)
- Lookback window: Data to be considered in learnings (30-day default)
- Test allocation: Percent of test-campaign impressions (15-percent default)
Other Cool DCO Capabilities
DCO has many features that can help deliver better performances for your prospecting and retargeting campaigns. Personalize your ads with DCO and spice them up with some of these features:
- Promotion Countdown Clock: Your ad includes a timer that counts down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until your next sale, promotion — or the weekend.
- Search Box: Users can search for city location, zip code, product, and more.
- Drop-Down Menu: Users can select an option from the menu and be directed to a relevant landing page.
- Product Carousel: Users can scroll through product recommendations within the ad.
- Retail Circular Ads: Promote products from weekly circular ads within the ads.
- Product Price Comparison: Within the ad, you can show your low price compared to competitors’ rates.
- Adobe Marketing Cloud Audiences: Both Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager segments can trigger an ad layout in DCO for deeper personalization. Audience Manager segments can include first-, second-, and third-party data.
Moving Beyond Retargeting to Get the Most of DCO
DCO allows an advertiser to target audiences across the marketing funnel. Beyond using DCO for reconnecting with and retargeting site visitors, advertisers can use DCO to deliver relevant experiences and better performances — for new-customer acquisition and awareness programs — and help fill the upper marketing funnel. Consider applying the full power of DCO to all your marketing programs to deliver deeper personalization and more relevant experiences for your users as they travel through the customer journey.
This is the fourth article in a five-part series on DCO. Check out the first three articles:
- 5 Reasons Now Is the Time to Implement Dynamic Creative
- Creating Relevant Ad Experiences Without Thousands of Ad Units
- Supercharge your Retargeting Campaigns with Dynamic Creative
And stay tuned to learn more about what DCO can do for advertisers.
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Read the original blog post at - https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/advertising/power-dynamic-creative-optimization-dco-beyond-...
The Blog Post below is from Pete Kluge, Group Manager, Product Marketing
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Optimizing Experiences Across Customers’ Journeys With Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO)
While a recent Adobe Digital Insights survey revealed that 78 percent of Americans want personalized ad experiences, advertisers aren’t delivering. Only 28 percent of respondents believe that the ads they see are relevant to them, which is one of the reasons that ad blockers have increased in popularity — people just don’t want us to waste their time with irrelevant ads.
This year, $40B is projected to be spent on display advertising — $16B of that on banner ads alone (eMarketer’s “US Digital Display Advertising Trends,” January, 2017). Clearly, display is popular because it works; and in many cases, it takes only one or two viewers (out of 1000 ads) to buy your product for the campaign to be profitable.
But, imagine if we could do it even better. Imagine what would happen if conversion rates could be higher, resulting in more revenue for your business and a greater return on ad spend. The solution is dynamic creative optimization (DCO).
DCO Campaigns Offer Flexible Rules-Based and Algorithmic Options for Personalization.
Businesses that are delivering relevant ad experiences across customers’ journeys are reaping the rewards in terms of increased ad engagement, website traffic, conversions, and revenue.
DCO is flexible and can help advertisers — regardless of vertical — deliver more relevant ad experiences across the marketing funnel. When setting up a DCO campaign, there are three core elements to work with — the ad layout, dynamic attributes, and data feed. Each is flexible, customizable to advertisers’ specific needs, and offers rules-based and algorithmic options for testing and optimization.
Caption 1 — Rules-Based & Algorithmic Experience Optimization
DCO Ad Layout Acts as a Shell for the Dynamic Content Within the Ad.
The ad layout (or template) acts as the shell for the ad experience. Based on whomever is viewing the ad, ad content is dynamically populated within the ad layout in real time. Advertisers can set rules to determine which ad layouts are delivered to which audiences. For example, an audience segment built in Adobe Advertising Cloud’s demand-side platform (DSP), Adobe Analytics, or Adobe Audience Manager can trigger an ad layout for deeper personalization of the ad experience. Advertisers can also test three or four ad layouts for the same audience segment and allow algorithms to optimize delivery to the best-performing layout.
Dynamic Attributes Allow for Easy Offer and Message Testing Within One Ad Unit.
Dynamic attributes are elements in the ad that are not referenced from the data feed (these can include headline, call to action, images, etc.) and can be changed easily for updates in messaging or testing.
When using dynamic attributes, an advertiser can test various elements of the ad without creating new ads for each test. The ad layout does not change, but advertisers can easily make changes to ad elements.
Advertisers may want to test any number of headlines — and it’s simple to do within one DCO ad unit, making it ideal for businesses that may need to quickly update ad messaging or promotional copy or do A/B testing of ad elements.
Alternatively, advertisers can let algorithms do the work by simply turning on the algorithm for multivariate optimization of creative elements, and the algorithm will look at different combinations of creative elements and deliver to the permutations that are performing best in meeting advertisers’ objectives.
Dynamic attributes are fantastic for improving the performances of prospecting campaigns. Let’s say, for instance, you are executing a geotargeted awareness campaign. The DCO algorithm can optimize the creative elements to ensure that awareness goals are reached.
Data Feed Is a Strong, Flexible Tool for Personalizing Ad Content and Scaling Creative.
The data feed (or catalog) is a file containing content that is referenced to populate the ad. The data feed allows you to scale your ad creative in a way that you just can’t do when manually building ads. Imagine a retailer with tens of thousands of products, or a travel site with thousands of combinations of travel originations and destinations — you just can’t build thousands of individual ads cost effectively. However, this can be accomplished easily using DCO — with just one ad layout and one data feed.
The most common use case with the data feed is product retargeting — when a user visits an advertiser’s website, researches a product, and then abandons the shopping process. Later, as the user is surfing the web, he or she sees a personalized ad for a relevant product on the website (produce, price, image, etc.).
The data feed is not just for retargeting but, rather, can power experiences across the customer journey. For example, the data feed can be used to trigger cross-sell and upsell offers after checkout, or it can deliver experiences consistent with offline marketing programs (such as circulars or direct mail) triggered by geolocation. Marketers can also leverage either rules-based or algorithmic options — letting the algorithm decide, for instance, which products from the feed to show in the ad.
A popular aspect of the data feed is that, once set up, it runs in an automated fashion. An advertiser can easily update the data feed, those changes then deploy across the system, and ads will be automatically populated with the most recent content.
DCO Delivers Personalized Ad Experiences Across Customers’ Journeys.
When all these elements work together — the ad layout, dynamic attributes, data feed (or any combination thereof) — you get the ad experience end users will see as they are surfing the web. DCO can personalize the experience across the customer journey, as well as common display-advertiser tactics — from loyalty and conversion to awareness and prospecting programs.
Caption 2 — Optimizing Experiences Across Customers’ Journeys
Is DCO for Me?
If you are still wondering whether DCO is for you, ask yourself these questions:
- Creative — Are you iterating fast enough? Are you getting your messages and promotions to market quickly?
- Performance — Are you meeting your performance goals?
- Targeting — Are you able to reach your audiences with the right messages and at the right granularity?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no,’ you’re a candidate for DCO.
DCO is a standalone solution that is tightly integrated with Adobe Advertising Cloud — the first independent, end-to-end platform that unifies audience data, media execution, and creative personalization, enabling full-funnel ad-buying and optimization from both lower-funnel performance tactics (search, display) and upper-funnel brand tactics (video, linear TV), into the Advertising Cloud DSP.
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Read the full blog post at - Optimizing Experiences Across Customers’ Journeys With Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) | Adobe
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