Commentary

Automation Will Run Your Entire Ad Campaign

See the headline? For generations, many have believed that machines can do things better than people. How many times will you see a search ad before getting disgusted and thinking enough is enough? There are checks and balances for search, but they don't seem to always work. Automation continues to play a bigger role. Marin Software, through its newly created Labs unit, this morning introduced a tool that senses shifts in ad position and increases or decreases bids to keep the paid-search campaign in the top spot.

Some of the processes in search marketing have been automated for years -- even bid automation -- but expect to see more aims at improving returns from the Google AdWords, Yahoo/Bing Network, adMarketplace, and affiliate networks in the coming year to improve reach, personalization and performance.

Similar in display ads, audience measurement provides insight into how often and what part of an ad gets seen. It's a tool to audit media purchases, and optimize campaigns. It provides a summary of key audience metrics like total impressions, unduplicated reach and frequency, GRPs, and targeting efficiency.

Media Analytics company InsightExpress released a tool this morning to monitor demographic profiles like age, gender, income, race, presence of children, marital status, education and employment. It also supports behavioral data to monitor Web site visits and inventory that run through ad networks, trading desks and Data Management Platforms (DMPs). They call it MediaInsights.

While there has been focus on in-view metrics as a source of wasted media, "the elephant in the room, in terms of waste, is not in-view metrics, but rather the over-saturation of ad frequency across multiple browsers, devices and locations" that isn't captured by traditional audience reporting, said Marc Ryan. He describes "in-view metrics" as a measurement focused on impact of placements above or below the fold, how long it was seen, and more. Industry folks know that as "viewability."

Automation will improve return on investments. Analyzing 100 billion impressions, analysis by InsightExpress reveals that the average digital campaign wastes 53% of impressions from oversaturation, meaning that more than half of advertisements served to consumers are worthless or unnecessary.

When it comes to display ads, some media buyers have assumed their media gets capped, but flaws in the technology and unreliable cookie data to control frequency still exist.

Traditionally, most common approaches to collecting impression data have been based on cookies subject to deletion or metered solutions that only cover home online behavior and a fraction of a consumer's total devices.

InsightExpress drew a sample from the more 1,100 campaigns and identified that the frequency calculated using browser cookies was understated by 64% and frequency calculated using meters was understated by 23%, as compared to frequency data collected with MediaInsights.

All in the name of real-time marketing, personalizing, and optimizing.

"Robot" photo from Shutterstock.

Next story loading loading..