Commentary

Programmatic Display: Data Addict In Need Of Intervention

  • by , Op-Ed Contributor, March 15, 2017
The default mindset for online advertising has been “more data yields better results.” That idea has led to massive expansion in the data collected, created, and sold throughout the ecosystem.

However, for most digital ad campaigns, the vast majority of available metrics are completely irrelevant — and, in fact, detrimental.

Imagine you’re a print ad agency in 1994. A newspaper approaches you with novel technology: in addition to knowing the print circulation figures for your ads, you can also know the exact time on Sunday a reader flips to the page your ads are printed on (thanks to some patented Orwellian technique). Neat! Will you now pay more for the ad? Surely, the answer should be no, because those data won’t help the message reach more customers. But that data sure would look fancy in a PowerPoint...

Sadly, this is exactly what is happening in online display. The commoditization of ad inventory via programmatic forces ad networks to differentiate, and one easy way to do this is dressing up inventory with vanity metrics like viewability, click-through rates, social media shares, etc.

While seemingly innocent, these metrics are costly to provide and have created an unholy cycle where middlemen (ad networks, data providers, third-party verification, etc.) are demanding large cuts of the digital spend justified through their “differentiation,” pushing publishers to foist increasingly aggressive advertising upon their users to maintain their revenue. This contributes to an increasing user disdain for online ads, degrading the value of the inventory.

Worse, these vanity metrics have us optimizing useless outcomes and help perpetuate one of the most disliked Internet products: banner ads.

One agency exec summed it up best: “Programmatic for online display has been an exercise in polishing a turd.”

As Internet users, we all understand how terribly ineffective banner ads are. However, as industry participants, we believe that we can use superior targeting, creative, and buying algorithms to reach banner nirvana. Dammit, it certainly feels good to achieve a 0.31% click-through rate when the industry average is only 0.15%.

The key metric for any brand campaign should be brand lift: the direct impact your ads are having on perceptions and behaviors through the customer journey.

The dirty secret is that current programmatic technology is not capable of reporting that metric. Viewability, impressions, clicks, and social media shares are all laughably far away from actually understanding brand lift. Meanwhile, as brands optimize for vanity metrics, ad campaigns with bad user experiences are certainly causing brand harm.

Advertisers and agencies, please do the online ad industry a favor, and help it break away from its dangerous data-pushing habit. Find ways to measure metrics that actually matter, and refuse to pay for ones that don’t. When someone shows you a dashboard with audience demographic visualization or real-time click-through rates, say, “Great. Now how do we see brand favorability lift for our campaign? What’s the methodology?”

When you pull back the curtain of bullshit vanity metrics, many will find a heap of wasted ad spend. Don’t lament; celebrate this discovery! Take that newfound cash and try new things—native ad campaigns, or direct-to-publisher—and, again, measure what really matters.

The advantage of digital advertising is not just measurement. It is flexibility, creativity, and personalization. Let’s take some of those turd-polishing resources and put them toward delivering online ad experiences that produce real results.

2 comments about "Programmatic Display: Data Addict In Need Of Intervention".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 15, 2017 at 9:16 a.m.

    Excellent, Alex. But will "they" listen? Indeed, are "they"--the ivory tower theorists and "acrhitects", "engineers", "data analysts", etc. able to relate to human beings at all---as advertisers must---or will they continue to try to justify their high cost-low yield services by adding more and more bells and whistles?

  2. Kate Kessler from The SLO Tribune, March 23, 2017 at 6:03 p.m.

    Great read.  As I continue to sell digital products and optimize campaigns for my advertisers, I'm finding that there is a need for different reporting, or a move away from fancy metrics that my advertisers become addicted to because they want to know that their digital ads are working.  But what do you measure to "measure what really matters"?  

    Brand lift is a bit of a general term; every advertiser's ultimate end goal is brand lift.  Brand lift is like weight loss: it is the end goal of Jane Doe's myriad [measurable] efforts which may include running 5 miles 5 times a week, cutting calorie intake from 2200 calories to 1800 calories, 35% of which are calories from carbs and 30% of which are calories from fats.  She can specifically track exactly what she's doing (the same way we track click-thru-rate and shares and other fancy metrics), but in the in-between time between tracking what she's cutting and mileage she's running and actually losing weight, she should know it's working but she hasn't reached her ultimate goal yet.  So how do you measure that in-between time?  What kind of reports can show you that you are on the way to brand lift without getting bogged down in fancy metrics?

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