Features of Real Time Bidding (RTB) Platform

How to investigate discrepancies – Third Party

Reporting discrepancies are common and expected when multiple systems are used to measure line item delivery. If you want to investigate a reporting discrepancy, use the resources below for assistance. It's best to investigate discrepancies while a line item is still running, since there are fewer troubleshooting steps available after a campaign has ended.

Third-party discrepancies

When an ad server delivers line items that are hosted by a third party, reporting discrepancies between the two systems will occur, and it is common to see campaign variances of up to 20%. Check the lists in "More about third-party discrepancies," below, to learn why discrepancies may occur and what you can do to prevent them.

Discrepancies may result from:

Latency: Lag between an initial line item request and the appearance of the creative can lead to differences in counts. For instance, a user will often navigate away after the browser receives the DFP line item request but before the third party responds with the requested line item, or a user may click on a link but navigate elsewhere before the landing page has loaded.

Network connection and server reliability: A third-party ad server may fail briefly or encounter an issue that prevents it from logging an impression.

Ad blockers: Ad blocking software can prevent the line item from being delivered by the third party after DFP has already counted an impression.

Low impression goals: A small numerical discrepancy can cause a high percentage discrepancy if the line item delivered few total impressions. For example, if you have a campaign delivering 100 impressions per day, a single-day discrepancy of 30 impressions will lead to a single-day discrepancy of 30% even though the actual number of missed impressions is low.

Tracking methodologies: DFP counts line items requests, but a third party may record an impression at a different time (e.g., when a tracking pixel is rendered).

Filtering: Ad servers have different methods for filtering impressions from spammers, bots, spiders, back-to-back clicks, link analyzers, and other automated or non-representative web traffic.

Things to check:

1. Are macros implemented properly?

2. If DFP recognizes the third-party ad server you are using, let it automatically insert the macros. If you are unsure of where to place macros, talk to your creative developer, advertiser, or third party for guidance.

3. %%CACHEBUSTER%% -- Make sure there's a random number properly inserted in each call.

4. %%CLICK_URL_ESC_ESC%% or %%CLICK_URL_UNESC%% -- Verify that the click macro is included in the correct portion of the click-through URL in your code.

5. %%VIEW_URL_ESC%% or %%VIEW_URL_UNESC%% -- For interstitial creatives, ensure that this macro is included in your creative's code.

6. As a best practice, we recommend using an unescaped (...UNESC) click macro when the creative hosted by another server is a standard image file such as a GIF or JPEG. You should use the double-escaped (...ESC_ESC) click macro for Flash creatives and certain third parties.

7. If you are using Google Publisher Tags (GPT), have you defined more ad tags in the webpage header than you display in the body section of your webpage? Ad tags that are defined in the header but not displayed in the body will be counted as impressions whenever the tag is loaded, but they won't make calls to third-party servers. That will lead to discrepancies. Make sure that all ad tags defined in the header are also displayed in the body of the webpage.

8. Are you comparing the same date range across the third party and publisher?

Do both DFP and the third party use the same time zone? Ad servers that report based on different time zones will return different results.

9. Are you comparing the same line items/ads?

10. Do you use the same third-party tags in any other line items in your network?

11. Did you confirm with the third party that the same tags have not been provided to any other publishers?

12. How large is the creative asset? Large creatives can have long load times and can cause differences in impression count timing.

13. Does the DFP report include unfilled impressions? Unfilled impressions will inflate DFP’s numbers by including instances where the third-party ad server was not called. 

14. Is the line item using geographic targeting on the third-party ad server? Different ad servers map IP address location data differently, leading to significant discrepancies.

Is the line item day- or time-parted on the third-party ad server? Day- or time-parting on the third-party ad server can lead to DFP counting impressions in situations where the third party does not return a line item.

15. Does the creative require calls to multiple third-party ad servers (also known as "daisy-chaining")? Each third-party ad server can lead to campaign variances of up to 20%. If one third-party server points to yet another third-party server, the expected discrepancy increases. (With 80% accuracy between each server, this results in a normal discrepancy of up to 36%, as shown in the following calculation: 1 - (1 - 0.2) × (1 - 0.2) = 0.36).

16. Does the third-party ad server use frequency capping? A third-party frequency cap will prevent an ad request from being filled despite the fact that DFP has counted an impression.

Source: Google support

How to Read Doubleclick Ad Tags and Ad Tag Variables

The term ad tag is thrown around quite a bit, and can usually refer to any link involved in the ad serving process, on the publisher, or marketer side. Strictly speaking, Ad Tags are the HTML code a browser uses to fetch an advertisement from an Ad Server – it is a redirect to content rather than content itself. 

There are also click tags, action tags, view tags, and other more specific variants to the general ad tag category.  For this particular example, we’ll look at publisher side tag; because our purpose is to show how ad tags help publishers organize their content into targetable products.

Ad Tag Components

So, without further ado, feast your eyes on this example a DoubleClick ad tag:

http://ad.doubleclick.net/ADJ/publisher/zone;topic=abc;sbtpc=def;cat=ghi;kw=xyz;tile=1;slot=728x90.1;sz=728x90;ord=7268140825331981?

An ad tag can tell you quite a bit about how which ad ends up on a page – if you want, navigate to any major publisher and look at the source code; you can probably find a real-life example of a working ad tag. So how can you tell what the ad tag says about the publisher hierarchy and ad targeting? Let’s break it down piece by piece:

http://ad.doubleclick.net/ – this is the host address for the Ad Server – you can see that it is not a publisher’s website, but an independent technology company that has nothing to do with publishing content.  In this example, we’re talking about DoubleClick, the Ad Serving powerhouse that was acquired by Google for $3.1 billion dollars in 2007.

/ADJ – this code defines a specific type of ad call, and what the response can be, i.e., images vs. XML vs. scripts.  For this example, the code ‘ADJ’ is the most common and only returns images, which will serve via JavaScript.  Other responses can include ADF (only image creative in a frame), ADX (only image creative served through streaming technologies), as well as others. 

/publisher - this is the site code that DoubleClick uses to distinguish one publisher property from another.  For example, the New York Times owns NYTimes.com, About.com, and Boston.com among other properties.  If they are a client of DoubleClick, the corporation likely pays the bill, but each site would have its own site code so ads could be targeted to a specific paper and not the entire network.

/zone - the zone is akin to a channel level, so the Homepage vs. the Arts page, vs. the Sports page.  These content verticals are likely to attract different advertisers, so it’s important for publishers to be able to target to this kind of granularity.

Zone-Based Hierarchy vs. Topic Based Hierarchy

Here is where tagging logic starts to diverge in DoubleClick.  Some publishers prefer to deeply categorize at the zone level, while others keep moving down the hierarchy to the topic level.  The benefit of using zones over the topic, subtopic, category, or keyword levels that we’ll talk about in just a minute is that the zone is the last level in which you can pull historical reporting.  So you might have sports/baseball or even sports/baseball/nymets so you can pull traffic statistics going back months or years.

The downside with this method is that zones are vertical structures, so if you had multiple verticals on your site that all had a games section, you would have to select each games zone every time you wanted to target all games when traffic the ads, rather than just targeting a single “games” key value.  This sounds easy on paper, but ads up to lots of extra time for your trafficking staff if you have lots of subcategories in each zone.  It would not be difficult to imagine needing 50 zones or more per content vertical to tag to the lowest level of granularity.

That is why most Publishers tag at a higher level, and leave the granularity to the topic variable and below.  A great benefit of granular topic tagging opposed to granular zone tagging aside from being able to use the same topic tag across multiple zones is the ability for topic tags to handle wild cards when trafficking. 

This means if you had topic=newyorkmarathon and topic=bostonmarathon, you could simply target topic=*marathon* and ads would automatically fall into both areas.  This makes trafficking much easier, but has the downside of no historical reporting, which can be a challenge for your Yield or Inventory teams.

topic=abc – next in the hierarchy is the topic level. As mentioned above you can use the topic level to tag similar content across zones.  For example, games in multiple content verticals or within them.

sbtpc=def – next in the hierarchy is the subtopic level.  You might use this to target sports games vs. adventure games for example.  Again, you can use this to target across content verticals or within them.

kw=xyz – the keyword segment isn’t really another level in the hierarchy but a way to describe the page for contextual targeting.  The benefit here is multiple keywords are allowed.  These are typically used in guides and directories like a recipe, where you would want to be able to target chicken recipes vs. vegetarian recipes vs. winter recipes, and etc., allowing some overlapping targeting.

tile=1 – the tile variable sets a unique value for each ad call on a specific page.  If there were two or more of the same size ads on a page, separate tile values would prevent the browser from trying to serve the same ad to multiple ad slots at the same time.

slot=728x90.1 – typically defines the location of the ad tag, but is really just another type of key-value.  While this may seem duplicative with the tile value, it isn’t.  For example, tile values are often set dynamically, in the order they appear on the page.  So the first call is tile=1, the second is tile=2, and so on.  But websites use different templates all the time so the homepage may not have as many ad calls as a category page which may have a different number of calls than an article page, so the tile value isn’t designed to be a consistent variable for use in targeting.  The slot however, is.  For example, if a publisher had two of the same ad units on a given page, say a 728×90 unit at the top of the page and a 728×90 at the bottom of the page, the slot value allows them to target specifically to one or the other. That said, the publisher could just as easily set the value of this to anything they want, and it’s common to see sites re-purpose this key value for another purpose, use a text value such as “leaderboard”, or not use it at all.  See Jared’s post in the comment thread below for more detail.

sz=728x90 – defines the ad size of the unit for the ad server logic.  To be clear, this doesn’t restrict the size of the ad in the unit, it just provides a targeting attribute for the ad server.  If a trafficker were to mistakenly target a 300×250 ad to a market segment with a sz=728×90 attribute however, the 300×250 creative would still serve to the 728×90 call, it would just be cut off.  It isn’t uncommon to catch one of these mistakes from time to time as you surf around the web. Additionally, you can actually include multiple values into this attribute, separated by commas.  (Thanks to Jared for correcting!)

ord=7268140825331981 – this number is a random value better known as a cache-buster.  As users move back and forth between pages of content, they often return to pages they’ve seen before, especially navigational pages like the homepage.  Browsers today try to save as much content as possible to speed up load times.  

To prevent browsers from reloading the same ad multiple times (so publishers can maximize revenue and advertisers can get accurate reporting), a random number is tacked on to the end of each ad call so it looks unique to a browser and forces a new series of calls through the ad server. 

Source: www.adopsinsider.com

Why Do Publishers and Advertisers Have Separate Ad Servers?

At first glance it might seem confusing why Publishers and Advertisers both maintain their own Ad Servers. After all, what’s the point of forcing a browser to make so many trips across the internet, bouncing from Ad Server to Ad Server when technically all you need is a single Ad Server to deliver an ad?

The answer is mostly convenience, but also so Advertisers and Publishers can audit each other when it comes time to bill.

Ad Servers are convenient because they allow Publishers and Advertisers to centralize the nuts and bolts of getting an ad on a web page. If an Advertiser bought media across ten different sites for example, without an ad server every time they wanted to change their creative assets they would have to talk to ten different publishers. Not only that, but when it came time to report on how well their campaigns did, they would have to compile ten different data sources into a single report. For a sophisticated advertiser advertising multiple products to multiple audiences with multiple messages, this quickly becomes unmanageable and is distasteful from the start.

However, with an Ad Server, an Advertiser can update their creative in a single place, whenever they want, and do so without needing to contact a publisher. Moreover, they can pull reporting on-demand from one place that uses the same tracking methodology.

Publishers maintain an Ad Server for the same reasons – they have multiple clients running multiple creatives for varying amounts and with different targeting requirements. Publishers also want a single source for reporting, and where they can efficiently track that they are delivering on schedule so they can bill clients in full.

Lastly, separate Ad Servers allow both parties to maintain their own independent set of reports. This forces both parties to rely on the technology when it comes time to bill rather than each other’s honesty. Of course, using two Ad Servers that count at different times, even milliseconds apart creates the possibility for Ad Serving Discrepancies, the bane of Publishers and Advertisers alike.

Source: www.adopsinsider.com

Ad server – An Overview 

Computer system which stores, maintains and serves (uploads) advertising banners for one or more websites. Ad servers program, track, and report several statistics about website visitors which are used by advertisers to custom tailor ads and offers to suit different categories of visitors.

How Does Ad Serving Work?

Interactive ads are everywhere these days, but when it comes to the technical process of getting an ad on the page and how publishers and marketers verify it delivered, not many people can explain what actually happens in detail.  Read this article though and you’ll be one of them!  Below I’ve detailed step-by-step how a browser gets from the initial call to a publisher’s website to the final ad creative, and when and how each party counts an impression.  You can view a diagram of the ad serving process at the bottom of this post – the numbers in the text refer to the steps labeled in the diagram.

So, without further argument -

When a browser navigates to a publisher website (1), the publisher’s web server sends back a bunch of HTML code (2) that tells the browser where to get the content (3) and how to format it.  Part of the HTML code returned to the browser (4) will include a coded link known as an ad tag.

Here’s an example of what an ad tag from Doubleclick, one of the major ad serving companies, looks like:

http://ad.doubleclick.net/ABC/publisher/zone;topic=abc;sbtpc=def;cat=ghi;kw=xyz;tile=1;slot=728x90.1;sz=728x90;ord=7268140825331981?

The ad tag points the browser to the Publisher’s Ad Server (5), a system designed exclusively for delivering and tracking advertising.  In most cases, the Publisher’s Ad Server is actually a network of cloud servers owned and maintained by a separate company.  In this case, the content server tells the browser to fetch the ad from Doubleclick, a company owned by Google that then makes the very complex decision on which ad to serve using a program called an Ad Selector.

In many cases the ad server is deciding among thousands upon thousands of potential options in mere milliseconds.  The computational power behind the Ad Selector is mind blowing – Atlas, the major rival to Doubleclick calls the supercomputer running its Ad Selector “WARP” and it is among the most powerful in the world, making billions of decisions a day and trillions in its lifetime. 

The Ad Server makes a decision, and in most cases sends back another ad tag (6), or redirects the browser by pointing it to the Marketer’s Ad Server.  These redirects are technically speaking 302 redirects, which tell the browser the page has been “temporarily moved”. 

This allows Ad Servers to count the 302 call as an impression and host the actual ad content on a different server.  Once the publisher’s ad server sends the browser a redirect to the marketer, it counts a delivered impression in its own database (star).  The only exception here is if the publisher decides to deliver a house ad or the marketer has asked the publisher to “site-serve” the ads, both of which requires the publisher load the actual creative files into their ad server, meaning the publisher is the final destination, and the browser can skip the loop through the marketer side (steps 7,8,11,12).

The browser now calls the Marketer’s Ad Server (7) and is redirected yet again to a Content Delivery Network, or CDN, (8) a global network of cloud servers that actually house the raw creative graphics to fetch the actual Ad. 

Why, you ask?  Well, as powerful as ad servers are, they just aren’t equipped to handle the volume and bandwidth required to deliver content as heavy as image files.  Redirects are often nothing more than a 1×1 pixel requiring just a few bytes of memory.  Image files on the other hand are kilobytes or even megabytes in size, could be called millions of times a day, and require a much faster and robust infrastructure. 

Ad Servers might maintain three to six data centers across the world, but a CDN can process the heavy bandwidth and deliver the content faster because they operate hundreds of data centers and can route requests to the one nearest to the user, no matter where they are on earth.  You can think of the ad server as the brain and the CDN as the brawn.  Ad Servers aren’t the only companies that use CDNs; in fact many websites host their bandwidth intensive files in these cloud networks.  A CDN is almost always another independent company, such as Akamai, that hosts the heavy creative assets so the Ad Server doesn’t have to. There used to be a handful of these companies out there, but Akamai has acquired almost all of them and is the largest player by far in the space.

Here’s what a CDN redirect to an Akamai server hosting a flash file looks like:

http://spe.atdmt.com/ds/ABCDEF12334/filename123_300x250.swf

In addition to sending back the redirect to the CDN, the Marketer’s Ad Server also appends a second redirect (10) back to itself with a query string to fetch a 1×1 pixel (11) after the ad content has been called.  When the browser fires this last redirect calling a 1×1 pixel from the Marketer’s Ad Server (11), the Ad Server knows the ad was successfully downloaded and it finally counts an impression in its own database (star).

In many cases, your browser has to make at least four calls for site served ads and six in the case of third-party served ads for this whole process to work, if not even more, but shouldn’t take more than a second regardless of the number of parties involved. To visualize the process explained above, please see the diagram below – 302 redirects are highlighted in blue, and the ad creative is highlighted in red.

Source: www.businessdictionary.com and www.adopsinsider.com 

Ad exchange

Ad exchanges are technology platforms that facilitate bided buying and selling of online media advertising inventory from multiple ad networks. The approach is technology-driven as opposed to the historical approach of negotiating price on media inventory. 

This represents a field beyond ad networks as defined by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and by advertising trade publications Advertising Age, iMediaConnection and ClickZ.

The major ad exchanges include AdECN, which is owned and was purchased by Microsoft in August, 2007 but may have recently been closed down, Right Media, which is owned and was purchased by Yahoo! in April 2007, ContextWeb's Exchange, the leading independent exchange, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which is owned by DoubleClick, a Google subsidiary purchased in May 2007, QZedia, Adkaw, Adbrite and Zinc Exchange, an exchange selling guaranteed impression delivery on newspaper sites.

Ad exchanges can be useful to both buyers (advertisers and agencies) and sellers (online publishers) because of the efficiencies they provide.

Source: Wikipedia.org

Disadvantages of Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Like with anything else in internet marketing pay-per-click advertising would have its own set of pros and cons.

Internet marketing is getting more and more competitive each and every day. Because of this reason, why a lot of marketers are finding various types of marketing campaigns for their products and services. Pay-per-click advertising is both easy and quick to put into operation. It also has the potential to be an extremely cost effective means of advertising, but only if approached with the right strategy and knowledge.

As easy as it is there are still many online marketers who seem to give up at the first sign of difficulty without realizing the wonders of pay-per-click advertising. We hear the similar issue all the time from new marketers: “How come my click-through is not converting?”

As good as it seems pay-per-click advertising has its own set of disadvantages and drawbacks. Let us go over some of these things so that at least you have a better picture of pay-per-click advertising.

Easy

You might be thinking that being an easy strategy should not be a disadvantage. There are two sides to this, yes, it is true that pay-per-click advertising is easy to get going, however it does not mean that success is on your side right away.

Before you fall into pay-per-click advertising you have to do careful keywords research to ensure you are not going to be part of an overflowing market. A sorry excuse for a copy will surely affect your ad’s ranking which means you are spending unnecessarily.

Click fraud

To explain this in non-technical language, click fraud happens when your competitors click on your advertisements because eating up your budget. Click fraud in per-pay-click advertising can be done by an actual person or it could be done by a program that is designed to click on ads without detection.

Be sure that you check the conversion rate of your pay-per-click with each search engine that you use. After getting this information drop whatever it is that is not doing well and save some money in the process.

Do not go thinking that since Google is the biggest search engine right now that you should only use that. It sure is big but together with that, there is a lot of competition. You stand a better chance of getting conversions if you use small pay-per-click programs, and not to mention it is less expensive.

Poor keyword research

What are your prospects doing to find products like yours? Do you know what they are typing in that search box? If you are guessing as to what that is then you are costing your business unnecessary expense.

A well-researched keyword phrase will clearly show what the main purpose of the search is. So when you think you have found a keyword, ask yourself, “What problem is this person trying to solve? What are his issues?” If you are not able to answer those then what you have is too general so you have to research again otherwise you are going to lose money.

If you are just starting out you might want to try out Google Adwords because that is for free and it can help by providing you an amazing range of information that will help you zero in on inexpensive, targeted keywords that will bring in people with a problem that your product can solve.

Scatter gun Ads

Every advertisement that you think of should be based on one keyword phrase that is relevant to one specific problem. Using an advertisement that is too general might result to clicks that are not valid. What do I mean? Someone might click it but in reality, these people are actually looking something entirely different.

In writing your advertisements make sure that you do it right, spend some time on it. Write as if you are the one with problems that needs resolution. Use your keyword in the header and try to integrate it to the body of the advertisement. In the body of your advertisement, be sure to mention the product benefits instead of just mentioning the features.

Unrelated landing page

People click on your advertisement because they want to know if you can solve their problems, so if you link unrelated landing pages and prospects see it is a different thing then they will for sure close that window and never click on your advertisement ever again.

If your prospects click, on an advertisement, that sells handbags and then they are taken to a landing page with all sorts of other products, or they have to figure out how to navigate to get to the handbags section then chances are you have lost a sale.

Click-through cost money and conversions keep you in business

So be sure that you make the most out of each click you receive. The conversion of each click is what keeps your business going.

Continuous work

If your advertisement is not working, test other advertisements against it by modifying some elements and running them against each other. Think of your original ad the control ad, change the headline, and see if the new ads yield better results. Keep doing this until you get the results that you want.

Source: internethomebasedbusiness.startup-internetbusiness.com

Disadvantages of Online Advertising 

Since many consumers spend time shopping online for everything from groceries and clothing to electronics and cleaning supplies, many businesses include online advertising in their marketing strategies. While the benefits of advertising online include the potential to reach a large market and the ability to measure results, online advertising also presents some disadvantages.

Customers Ignore Ads

Consumers are so used to seeing advertising on television, hearing radio commercials and flipping through advertisements in magazines, they've developed an aversion to all forms of advertising. This is also the case with online advertising, where consumers can avoid clicking banner advertisements, bypass ads in online videos they watch and close pop-up advertisements as soon as they come up on their screens. Customers are in control of which advertising messages they want to click and respond to.

Viewing Problems

Website downtime, lags in website or video loading and browser complications can reduce the number of times consumers see online advertisements and how well they see them. When technical issues occur, companies lose the opportunity to broadcast advertisements for their products and services and may lose potential sales. Viewing problems can occur because of problems with a website or if a consumer is using a smart phone or other mobile device to view a website, has a slow connection speed or does not have the correct applications and programs installed on his computers for proper viewing.

Expensive Ad Prices

Pricing for advertising online can range from inexpensive -- $20-a-month placements on local parenting blogs -- to thousands of dollars on popular sites such as the New York Times. The cost for banner, text and video ads vary depending on the amount of traffic and the type of readership a website or blog receives. Online advertising through pay-per-click campaigns and social media sites can also wreak havoc on a company's marketing budget, potentially yielding little to no return on investment.

Consumers Get Distracted

When customers visit a website, they typically have a goal in mind, whether it's to catch up on the latest celebrity gossip, read the news, chat with friends, and download music or shop for a specific item. Websites present customers with various options that can easily distract them and pull their attention from your online advertisements.

Too Many Options

The Internet offers a wide range of websites on which companies can place advertisements. This can be overwhelming, especially for small business owners. With so many options, it's difficult to narrow down the choices to the websites that will attract the most potential customers and sales. Once a company selects a website, it is then presented with a variety of ways it can advertise its products or services on the site, such as through banner advertisements, video marketing or by sponsoring a post. Companies have to determine which type of advertisement yields the best response from their target markets.

Source: smallbusiness.chron.com