Keith Pieper

Articles by Keith All articles by Keith

• Excel's Long-Tail Black Hole in Real-Time Daily on 12/07/2015
  

  For many advertisers, 50% of programmatic ad buys have a single destination: nowhere. It might sound cliched, but if you're not minding the shop, half of your programmatic buying could be wasted. If you have ever seen a report from your agency or DSP that includes a line item for "long tail," "aggregate" or some other indication that there are too many sites to include in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, then you may have found your black hole.

Comments by Keith All comments by Keith

• A Gold Mine Built On Landfill by Ari Rosenberg (Publishing Insider on 08/06/2015)
  

  Great points here. An additional angle on this is in-banner auto-play video. Auto play is annoying to the end user. Auto play with no follow-on content payoff is worse. This reflects poorly on the advertiser too, who just paid a premium for a tiny player.Because users dislike auto play, they are somewhat the Yugo of the video ad world (in-banner auto-play might be the Pinto). It's these sort of industry practices that push users over the edge to read a different tab while the ad plays (BTW, that impression would be essentially worthless on the viewability metric). Even worse, users download and update ad blockers to avoid this and other ads.There is value in each of these inventory implementations, but its a wide spectrum. I'd suggest transparency and let the buyer decide on the price-value tradeoff. If it's worth the premium for a better user experience or if a low-value video experience is "good enough" based on ROI metrics, let the buyer decide.

• Pay Only For Viewability, Prepare For Failure Of Your KPIs by Andrew Budkofsky (MediaDailyNews on 07/28/2015)
  

  I agree with Jonathan - viewability is likely not the business KPI, rather it is possibly a more suitable alternative proxy than click as a campaign optimization goal. And with regards to Jack's above average viewability - I'd be curious to see where CPMs land for those, since viewability does cost more.

• The Ad-Tech Wave Is Gonna Crash by Frank Sinton (Real-Time Daily on 05/04/2015)
  

  I think this headline is misleading - there is no coming "crash", even though lots of point solution players will certainly see an end to their run.

• Can Awareness and Attribution Live Together? by Dave Morgan (Online Spin on 04/16/2015)
  

  If awareness and attribution don't work together, then your media is not being held accountable. After all, it's often referred to as "working media", but what doesn't get measured doesn't get done.I think part of the problem in the digital, real-time era of today is awareness buys are still wedded to the traditional "brand study" methodology. Brand studies don't lend themselves to real time attribution and optimization. They are static and perhaps a snapshot in time that can be used to inform the next buy.For awareness buys to be attributable (and accountable), they need real-time measurement across the entire buy in a systematic fashion, no different than a click or conversion measurement today. It's not impossible, but it's not easy.

• All Bots Aren't Created Equal: Battling The Good, The Bad And The Ugly by Chevan Nanayakkara (Mobile Insider on 02/24/2015)
  

  Blacklisting doesn't work in today's ecosystem where technology allows impression level control. Why use a chainsaw when you can simply use a hand pruner? This is especially true as so many URLs are masked or fraudulent - the same "content" appears on one domain after another has been shut down.

• Where Viewability Is Today -- And Why It's Critical For Digital's Tomorrow by Sherrill Mane (Metrics Insider on 01/20/2015)
  

  There is a large black hole that gets overlooked and may come back to bite us: "measurable". We hear data referencing "viewability" which is a percentage of impressions where viewability *can* be measured. What about the percent that is not measurable? How large is that group? What do we know about those impressions? Most likely we know very little about those impressions because Javascript is disabled, which is necessary for any viewability or quality control measurements to work. So in other words, there is a variable portion of impressions we have no intel on and no control over. As a buyer, this unknown is a risk.

• 2015 Programmatic Predictions by Tyler Loechner (RTBlog on 12/31/2014)
  

  I think your estimate of 5% programmatic TV spend is a fair amount - much more realistic than the over-optimism from others in the biz. The technology might be there, but it's very fragmented and there is significant inertia within TV and sales orgs that will slow adoption.

• What's In Store For The Ad Tech Industry in 2015 by Tom Shields (MediaDailyNews on 01/06/2015)
  

  "Transparency Helps To Combat Ad Fraud" - For a brand buyer, this intuitively makes sense. However, for direct response buys, one could argue that until attribution models are more prevalent, cookie bombing is more important to capture the last click or view than actual viewability. I have yet to see data that proves viewability translates to ROI.

• Nearly Two-Thirds Of Non-Direct Inventory Deemed Non-Viewable by Tyler Loechner (Real-Time Daily on 11/18/2014)
  

  I agree that TV really suffers the same viewability issue, though due to lack of equivalent measurement in TV, it's hard to quantify...your TV spot loads (~"ad impression" online); the viewer walks away to grab a snack, or switches channels momentarily, or minimizes the PIP, or skips the ad (~"not viewable" online). In either scenario - on or offline, you pay for the "impression". Wouldn't it be swell to pay for TV spots if you had some guarantee of viewability?

• What If Politicians Paid You To View Their Ads? by Steve Smith (Mobile Insider on 11/04/2014)
  

  There have been numerous prior "pay per view" ad models in the past, all of which have failed or morphed into something else. In general, people don't want ads - they want content. And getting paid to view an ad might be an "impression" but it's of low value because the user is not intrinsically motivated to engage with the message.

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