The Rate Card is Gone…

Posted on May 25, 2011 by admin

By Hernan Burak, Regional Sales Director for Latin America @ Ybrant Digital

We live in an economic reality where commodity prices rise and fall daily, and there is no reason why digital marketing should be any different. If you are not the direct owner of the media, or its exclusive representative, you sell different kinds of media, which are probably sold by other media suppliers too: In other words – commodities.

There are some key points which are universally important for media buyers to make the right decisions: Service, Technology, Payments terms and RATES!

Every click, be it on Display Media, Mobile Media, or a click on Social Network Ads, is driven towards a standard rate card, and raises the same questions: Is this rate a deal breaker with the buyer or their agency? How you can know for sure that your rate card is competitive enough in your market?

Around the globe, agencies typically work with different kind of discounts on media buys: Agency Commission, Advertiser Discount, and “Kickback” or “Rebate”.

But not every agency uses all 3 discount methods, and the commission percentages are not standard in any market. So, why do media suppliers feel the need for an official rate card? Why take a “guess” on what should be the best rate in the market? And is this rate the best in terms of discounts or long term agreements?

Can you build a standard Rate Card for commodities? Seems unlikely. Source: IMF Research

We can do a much better service by understanding the specific needs of an agency and its environment, and by designing special rates for the negotiation prior to the campaign. This is what creates “win-win situations”.  A good relationship with your customers, and gaining their trust, are key factors to make this work. Yes, trust is the most important asset you need from a client. Technology, service, commercial and payment conditions are worthless without trust.

To sell under cost, one does not need a sales team. One can go out to the street with a sign saying that they sell under the market cost. So think how you can gain trust from the other side, and work to get results together and make a partnership. This is summed up very well by the famous quote: “The only place where SUCCESS comes before WORK is in the dictionary”.

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Posted in Markets | Tagged advertiser, agency, campaign, click, Digital Marketing, digital media, display, media buy, mobile, social networks, technology | Leave a comment

Social Networking – The Chinese Way

Posted on May 11, 2011 by admin

By Brent Cohen, Managing Director, China @ Ybrantdigital

With 420 million users online and another 6 million joining each month, China is home to the largest number of Internet users. McKinsey reports that this number could easily mushroom to 750 million over the next 4 years.

What are all these people doing online? More than 200 million Chinese are experimenting with social networking sites (SNS), with most active users coming from the coveted middle-class. SNS sites like RenRen and Kaixin001 are winning converts from long-time audience favorites including portals like Sohu, making them attractive to advertisers. About half of China’s net users have registered an SNS account.

Last year, for the first time, SNS growth stalled as the rise of “Twitter-like” microblogs – particularly Sina’s Weibo – siphoned away user attention across every metric. As a result, advertisers are turning to niche players like Taomee, Jiayuan and Douban which appeal to users with unique interests, from children to urban singles looking for love. With fans less fickle, these sites act as a credible conduit to related e-commerce opportunities.

The Data Center of the China Internet (DCCI) and Chinese social platform and service provider Comsenz jointly released the 2010 China Social Network Service Report showing that SNSs still appeal to users who want deeper personal connections. In this way, they are different from microblogs, which are more about broadcasting events and opinions.

Compared to search engines and portals, the SNS platforms are not yet powerful enough tools for grabbing significant share from ad budgets. Contrary to our experience in the rest of the world, Digital Marketing in China is more about reach,  and less about user data-mining to intelligently place ads.

Virtual product placement within SNS games is becoming one of the most profitable sources of revenue for these properties, generating between US$200,000 to US$500,000 per month on product placement for sites.

Top interests for Chinese SNS users

Similarly to Facebook elsewhere, RenRen and Kaixin001 launched DIY ad platforms at the end of 2009 and 2010. DIY ads are a key revenue generator for Facebook, bringing in at least a half of its ads revenue. But we don’t expect China’s SNS sites to rely on them as much in the near future.

Ybrant Digital is closely monitoring the changing online ad market in China. Working with advertisers, publishers and a wide variety of Chinese ad networks, we are implementing strategies designed to ensure that everyone benefits from this activity.

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Posted in Markets | Tagged audience, china, data mining, Digital Marketing, e-commerce, facebook, internet, microblog, online advertising, platform, portal, social media, social networks, twitter, ybrant digital | Leave a comment

The Evolution Cycle of Display Ads

Posted on April 27, 2011 by admin

By Shirley Lowenstein, VP, Global Ad Operations @ Ybrant Digital

As internet users grew increasingly thicker skins to intrusive displayed messages such as pop-ups, banner creators invested in making banners less intrusive, and designing them in a variety of sizes to fill different locations on the page; a method which became an accepted industry standard. However, the standard sizes were soon not engaging enough for the users, and more formats were added in order to attract the users such as “Expandable Banners”, “Sliders”, “Floaters” and more.

Video ads began with TV-like “pre-rolls”, “mid-rolls” etc, and evolved to “text-on-video”, “overlays”, “interactive videos”, etc. Social Ads seems to be in the earlier stages of the same genetic development path….and who knows what’s next? After all, the main goal behind these formats is to show more information to the user in the ad itself, catching their attention without having them leave the page. Marketers are driven to think out of the box and find the best way to engage the user, while maintaining the general look and feel of their original content.

So display is maybe less new than video and social, and staying in front of the digital marketing game is becoming more complex, but as recent data shows it still is the major revenue generated from online advertisers, even when sticking to plain simple banner ads. It remains popular because it is still one of the less intrusive forms of online advertising, and was constantly able to allow new technologies and techniques.  Despite doomsday predictions during the 2009 recession, back in 2010 Display ad impressions were shown to regularly increase from year to year, outpacing other formats in growth. Many advertisers will spend more on display ads in 2011 than they did in 2010.

Besides the formats, also the way Advertisers think has changed: Not just new users, but the right users, and more information about them in order to more efficiently generate revenues. It increased demands by advertisers to know where and when their ads will be placed, as well as how consumers engaged their product or content. Data is a crucial aspect when managing online campaigns, used to make smart decisions such as whether to an ad at all, how to customize the creative according to where the user is in the purchasing funnel, and also how to monitor the ad budgets according to the specific end users.

Banners can step out of their boxes to take front stage and get more attention, only minimally disturbing the visitor’s experience

All of the above has proven to increase engagement and conversions, and combined with recent technologies such as Real Time Bidding, advertisers also have better access to ad pricing. While the auction model determines that only one buyer can purchase the impression at a time, the data gathered from the other buyers is stored for analysis and pricing determination on all future bids.

To summarize, Online Display has evolved and in order to engage the user advertisers must think out of the box and be much more creative than before. Correct use of data can help us develop new ways to grab the attention of the users without frustrating them, and at the same time to know how to deliver the message and to make them react to the advertised product or service.

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Posted in Display | Tagged advertiser, auction, banners, bid, consumers, content, conversion, creative, data mining, Digital Marketing, expandable, facebook, floater, format, impressions, online advertising, online marketing, overlay, pop-up, pricing, Real Time Bidding, revenue, slider, technology | Leave a comment

Who will eat the apple?

Posted on March 30, 2011 by admin

By Stephane Pitoun, General Manager @ Ybrant Mobile

The Ipad 2 was already sold-out when released, same as happened when Steve Jobs announced the Ipod, the Iphone 1, the Iphone 2, and the Ipad 1… Needless to say, Apple was, is and will always be a trendsetter and great marketer, and will always profit from those abilities (After it almost died losing the Operating System war vs. Microsoft last decade). With the touch-screens, the application ecosystem, and other gimmicks, the user’s life converges around the mobile device. Smart-phones were indeed invented by smart people.

Mobile phones have become our best friends (I’m sure many of you prefer a smart-phone over a dog). Even with less-than-average income, people buy devices and are willing to be part of the smart-phone story. This is where other smart people entered the picture. Small companies like Google decided that it was a good idea. And guess what? Microsoft, Apple’s PC nemesis, also decided to make some noise with its new operating system and to partner with the biggest mobile seller in the world: Nokia. Apple is still selling tons of devices all over the planet, but Google is selling way more with its non-exclusive strategy. It seems that what counts in the end is the user experience, not the brand on the device.

Apple also took another very smart decision to enter the advertising realm, and why not? They have the control on their devices, and they built their own app hub. It was only obvious that they would want to benefit from any ad revenues. So iAd was born, with a very clear strategy: Unique, exclusive, and sexy. Very smart, very Apple… And again, Android and Microsoft OS are bundled on more devices than Apple. Those other devices are overtaking the Smart-phone market like the Windows PCs did in the past. The millions spent on advertising by now on smart-phones (including Iphone/Ipad), and the billions spent on apps, are migrating to Android and Microsoft OS.

Now let’s develop a not-so-crazy scenario where Facebook, a very legitimate player in the mobile industry, launches its own device… with 600 million users in hand. Facebook allegedly already showed interest, and when thinking about the recent valuations of this company and all the industries they touch, you may consider that crazy decisions may sometimes create crazy value.

The global Mobile Platform Ecosystem is still extremely diverse. Image courtesy of iCrossing

Mobile is supposed to eventually be a bigger market than PCs, and the challenge is tremendous. On top of revenues from selling the devices themselves in the billions, the revenues from advertising and from apps will become the biggest virtual economy in the world. Billions of dollars will become 100s of billions because mobile penetration is reaching 100% in every country, so whilst you couldn’t reach some people with ads on PCs, you can go mobile, and also have additional targeting options that this digital marketing channel is offering. This world is already exploding: couponing, video ads, SMS/MMS, app download, Location-based advertising…

I would be very careful to frame Apple as only an innovative trendsetting company- I bet they have their idea about the next phase in business already – and I’m certain that mobile devices are involved.

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Posted in Mobile | Tagged advertising, android, apple, apps, brand, device, Digital Marketing, facebook, google, ipad, iphone, microsoft, mobile, nokia, smartphone, SMS, virtual | Leave a comment

Winning the Ad Game

Posted on March 24, 2011 by admin

By Christopher Cummings, Director of Product Management @ Lycos Inc.

Effectively leveraging Premium Advertising

With the advent of virtual goods and lead generation in casual and social games, much of the monetization discussion has naturally focused on those two revenue sources. Given the popularity of the video ad format and the staggering amount of time casual gamers spend playing games, according to latest research from PricewaterhouseCoopers, video has tremendous growth potential as an ad format that is effective—and that casual gamers appreciate.

What Video Ad Buyers Want

Generally speaking, video ad buyers are looking for pre-roll spots aimed at specific demographic or psychographic targets. Click-thru rate (CTR) is the most common performance metric, but branding metrics (such as awareness, purchase intent, and favorability) are starting to rise in importance. Given that many video ads are repurposed television commercials, the focus on branding is not especially surprising. At the same time, “quality of inventory” is a very important consideration factor for ad buyers. “Quality” in this context does not just apply to the overall aesthetic of the game with which the video ad will appear; it also applies to the brand of the site the game appears on, the content of the site, and the placement and targeting of the ad. In other words, ad buyers are looking for games for which consumers have a deep affinity, games with content that resonates with the brand or product/service being advertised, games which offer the best opportunity to reach consumers at a time when they’re engaged and receptive to advertising.

There is growth, and there is big growth.

What This Means for Games Publishers

Publishers who want to take advantage of premium game advertising, must do more than just make fun games that appeal to certain audience segments. They must also create play experiences that have natural ad breaks built into them. For example, Quick-Draw Poker at Gamesville.com is built around the conceit of a game show in which contestants compete for free to win real cash prizes—a five-minute massively multiplayer experience with a defined beginning, middle, and end. You might think of it this way: While a game is loading, you have the player’s undivided attention, so taking advantage of that time and space for a pre-roll ad is one easy way to implement video advertising. Wherever the video ad is placed, it must be immediately visible and actionable; otherwise, it will go unnoticed, which doesn’t help the ad buyer, the advertiser, or (ultimately) your bottom line.

Don’t Leave Money on the Table

Billions of dollars in premium advertising are looking for a new home—and casual games are perfectly poised to thrive in that kind of environment. Integrating video advertising into your digital marketing ad mix can help create real value for both consumers and marketers.

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Posted in Casual Gaming, Video | Tagged audience, brand, branding, casual games, Digital Marketing, gamers, lead generation, metrics, pre-roll, premium, segments, social games, video, video ads, virtual goods | Leave a comment

Value in Digital Media: A Matter of Perspective

Posted on March 15, 2011 by admin

By Ori Elraviv, VP Operations @ Ybrant Digital

The NY Times recently published an interesting article on large online publishers that have decided to manage their own inventory of lower-priced ads, and sell that space directly through a self-managed ad exchange. This kind of move will probably work for some and not so much for others. It depends on scale, and on the ability to remain cost-effective (not everything that looks nice on the revenue side, looks as nice on bottom-line performance).

Similar trends inside the volatile digital media advertising space occur quite frequently.  In fact, they come and go so quickly that it may be hard to follow who’s who and how this whole thing called “Digital Marketing” actually works.  The NY Times article merely steered an interesting point that we have been pondering for a while.

At the end of the day, what really matters is the connection we look to create between Advertisers and their Audience, and the value proposition we bring into that connection.  Online publishers, or any other media, have their own agenda to take care of, which is understandable, but what we need to keep in mind is that advertising these days is mostly about creating a positive interaction the Advertiser and its potential clients: First grabbing the attention of the users, and then enabling a positive connection that is somewhat of a “Win Win” to both the advertisers and the audience. This is what digital media technology enables us to do.  We do not only grab attention, but we also facilitate a connection.

Popular publishers have a familiar look and feel, destined for returning audiences of particular characteristics and interests

From my perspective, each media channel has a certain characteristic to it, a DNA.  Each media channel draws certain users, at certain times, from a specific geographic location around the world, and with a particular state of mind.  This combination creates the channel’s DNA from an advertising standpoint, which in turn determines the fit to a certain type of advertiser, and the kind of campaigns that would work best to enable the connection we are looking for.

Media channels are means to an end from an advertising angle, and while they are an important link in the value chain, their value diminishes as standalones. We look at Digital Media as one “Master Channel”, because we believe that to grab the attention of users you need to do that using multiple touch-points.  This brings us back to the DNA of each channel, and the need to diversify the touch-points as well as the message of each campaign.  It doesn’t really matter if an online publisher is self-managed, or if it is a part of a larger network, as long as the entire value chain is nurtured.  The days of shooting messages into the air and hoping that someone will notice are long gone.  The positive connection can only be reached by understanding that this is about Advertisers and Users, not about the specific channel.

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Posted in Online Media | Tagged advertiser, audience, campaign, channel, Digital Marketing, digital media, online marketing, performance, publisher, revenue, technology, user, value | Leave a comment

Mind the (g)App!

Posted on March 7, 2011 by admin

By Netta Lev Sadeh, Head of Media @ Ybrant Digital

If you haven’t spent 2010 on a desert Island, it was pretty hard to miss the giant push (from advertisers) and powerful pull (from publishers) towards display in or near social media content. This is easy to rationalize: Typical content pulls typical audiences – generally profiled to relevant buying decision makers – be it young couples with disposable income on some apps, working mothers for some other apps, or gadget-thirsty young males for yet more apps, as reports show.

When Facebook released its revised Platform Terms for Advertising Providers last December , the announcement made noise only within the relevant circles – Facebook Application Developers with display inventories and ad providers with a significant amount of Facebook Application publishing partners. Suprisingly, some of the biggest global ad providers missed the boat, and after the deadline expired last week, they are currently out of the list.

The argument whether this was designed as a show-stopper for Facebook’s biggest competitors, or is just a natural move to reflect the same standards as on Facebook’s own Social Ads system, is futile. Fact is ft, if you want to be on or have access to one of the hottest media properties in the online market, you need a solution that meets the new guidelines. And if you require large quantities, you need it to be scalable, easy to implement and ready to roll, starting yesterday.

Source: Inside Facebook Gold

For some App Developers this may be an existential question. This has probably been their biggest concern for Q1 of 2011, and they will work first with Facebook Ad Providers who can feed them the large volumes they require to monetize their inventory overnight, within the new and demanding quality framework.  No doubt, some pretty big players have for now been left out of this game, and the challenge for those remaining is to fill in the gap that was created.

This raises the general question, broader than just Apps or other specific niches, whether mammoth digital marketing companies are really necessary to effectively monetize popular inventory. In my mind, this is an opportunity for innovative and efficient providers to assume a more substantial role.

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Posted in Online Media | Tagged advertiser, content, Digital Marketing, display, facebook, facebook applications, platform, publisher, social ads, social media | Leave a comment

“It’s the people, stupid!”

Posted on March 1, 2011 by admin

By Facundo Maldonado, Business Development Director for Social Media @ Ybrant Digital

In 1992, Bill Clinton based his presidential campaign on the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid!” which became symbolic because it diverted attention from many small and separate things, to what really mattered to Americans, and won the Democrats the election after decades of Republican dominance. These days, commercial brands also realize that it’s not the separate components of their site, its content, or its SEO capabilities, but rather the overall package and how it’s customized for people. As the Internet is relatively new in terms of human history, it can be summarized in 3 stages:

- In the 1990’s, Internet was browsing: The “Big Sites Era”. Someone wrote, and we all read.

- In the 2000’s, web was about search.

- The current decade is about discovery.  The focus moved from “what” to “who”.  And “who” would we trust better than someone we know and respect?

Facebook recently launched a new Ad format, called “Sponsored Stories”, because the best form of recommendation is one you get from a friend. Social Media is, after all, about people. It lets us target and engage people based not only on age, gender and location, but also on likes, interests, relationship status, and even jobs or schools. As one of the biggest Facebook Ads spenders outside the USA we have managed, literally, thousands of campaigns. From that experience, I would like to share some highlights:

CTR is not everything. Facebook CTRs may be low compared to other media, but the depth of relationships and the targeting abilities make this comparison worthless. Facebook has even increased the number of ads per page (from 3 to 5) some months ago, because it’s not about CTR, it’s about goals.

Cost is not everything: Social Media average CPCs are steadily rising. However, if the ads are relevant for users, and the Unique Click Ratio is higher, they will go right back down.  For this, one must produce personalized ads, delivered only to the people who are most compatible with the message.

Get it while it’s still affordable: Demand for Facebook Ads is outstripping supply. Considering that display advertising CPMs are much higher, extremely targeted Facebook traffic is a great bargain at any metric applied. Comparing the Google growth curve to what Facebook prices are about to experience, 5 cent clicks in 2002 on AdWords are now 50 cents. On Facebook, a similar curve is likely to apply.

Let's not forget: Measuring interaction between people is about the people rather than the measurement

Contrary to general belief, the best analogy to Social Media Marketing is actually e-mail Marketing.  When an email is classified as spam, 99% of the mails are not opened, and the CTR is extremely low, as well as the obtained results.  But if you deliver relevant messages to a limited user list, of people who are really interested in your brand or product, then response rates exceed 60%.  For e-mail, mailings lists are often not scalable. The ideal goal is to build a message which is helpful, personalized and informative, reaching as large an amount as possible of the “right” people. When this goal is achieved, the value per click is not an issue anymore, and large social networks allow this.

Social Marketing is about knowledge. Fans, Social Actions, and now Sponsored Stories, are only the beginning of this epic.  Fans are more valuable when they impact their friends. Social Actions and endorsed ads are twice more effective than regular ads, and Sponsored Stories are showing 3-times-better metrics. Social Media changed the way people use the internet, in every corner of the world, and this change is here to stay.  To understand this change, and to take advantage of it, is the digital marketing challenge of this decade. So we must focus on the right stuff, because “It’s the people, stupid!”

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Posted in Facebook | Tagged adwords, CPC, CPM, CTR, Digital Marketing, facebook, fans, knowledge, relevance, Search, SEO, social actions, social media, social media marketing, sponsored stories, unique clicks | Leave a comment

How many times have people clicked on your posters?

Posted on February 21, 2011 by admin

By Dave Katz, Managing Director, UK @ Ybrant Digital

Do you advertise in multiple media channels? TV, radio, print, outdoor (posters) and digital?  How many times have people clicked on your TV ads, or your posters?  0.5%?  1%?  0%?  I know, it’s a bit of a rhetorical question, because nobody can click on a poster.  And yet, strangely, you still accept the logic that such advertising might be great for your brand, even if there was no obvious way of measuring a direct response.

Nevertheless, with digital media, we seem to be completely obsessed by ways of measuring ROI.  Click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, look-to-book, cost as a percentage of revenue; it feels as if in many instances, there is no scope within digital for what we accept on a regular basis within conventional media channels – that some environments are simply ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for a given brand. This means disregarding whether or not someone ‘responds’ to the ad by directly clicking on it as soon as they see it, or even later on down the line. Perhaps, in such instances, people notice the ads and the ‘response’ should be measured in a more conventional way, such as a shift in brand perception, related searches or spontaneous recall.

Despite the title of this post, we are not really asking why you don’t measure your conventional media activity in the same way that you might look to measure your digital media – that’s not our business.  The Digital Marketing business is concentrated in ensuring that you get the most mileage from every penny spent. Whether it’s in social channels (such as Facebook or Linkedin); conventional display media on a network basis; owned and operated channels (eg Lycos); mobile; or email; we want to ensure that you are obsessively measuring the right things.

Courtesy of Microsoft Advertising

We know that ‘brand’ is really a proxy for ‘response’.  That the only reason to really ensure that people ‘like’ your brand and/or know/feel warm to it is so that – at the relevant time – they respond with their wallets, by purchasing.  BUT it is just as important in the emerging digital economy to understand that people are not necessarily likely to be ‘in market’ for your product at any given moment in time – that the important thing is to ensure that they recall your brand and feel warm to it at the point in time when they are considering purchasing a product within your brand’s category.

Online marketers should be keen to ensure that advertising money is well spent, and that their actions are part of a brand’s success story.  This is what generates repeat business, on a regular basis – even if you don’t get to ask how many posters have been clicked on lately…

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Posted in Online Media | Tagged banners, brand, click, CTR, Digital Marketing, digital media, email, facebook, linkedin, lycos, online marketing, perception, ROI, Search | Comments Off

Multi-Platform is more than just a Buzz Word

Posted on February 15, 2011 by admin

By Gal Ekstein, General Manager – Online Media @ Ybrant Digital

Already several years ago, it was plain and obvious to many of us in the Online Advertising Industry that performance will be increasingly dominant for digital marketing campaigns. The doomsday scenarios for brand campaigns pictured a world where measured buying action is the only important parameter. At the same time, we could already feel the impact of social platforms and the way they empower the users, putting brand value and the marketing concept back in center stage.

Like most things in life, the prophecies met somewhere in the middle. Today the ultimate brand messengers, within the biggest advertising agency groups, have embraced the data-driven model. Even for brand-only initiatives, many parameters are important to track, measure and bench-mark.

At the same time, it’s definitely less common nowadays to have an online presence without a supporting Facebook page and an adaptable website format for Smartphones. In order to support this, brands need to continuously supply original and genuine thoughts and concepts. One only needs to follow the evolution of Facebook profiles over the last 7 years to visualize how despite total user control on sharing preferences, and personal adaptation of almost every feature – content is still king!

Most Digital Platforms are relevant for modern audiences and can be leveraged with technnology

The emerging reality enables technology-backed aggregators to find the relevant audience no matter where they visit and through which device: PC, Mobile, Tablet, Smartphone and their various hybrids. The real power behind this model lies in the ability to apply learning from one platform to another. User trends on Display, Social, Mobile, Email and Search activity are “cross-pollinating” because they are pieces of a bigger, overall user interface. The devices and their software applications are touch-points that people use to access their “personal sphere”.

Through Data Mining, those individual spheres can be related to many different relevant and overlapping categories, in other words “colored” according to their preferences. This allows advertisers to maintain ambitious performance goals across all the different platforms, seeking the best results at a campaign-wide level, while at the same time staying consistent with aspirations for brand value. This way, measurable goals can be tied-in to valuable brand content, instead of pushing it to the sidelines.


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Posted in Online Media | Tagged brand value, data mining, Digital Marketing, display, email, facebook, mobile, online advertising, online marketing, performance, Search, social, social marketing, technology | Leave a comment