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WWCD: Launching A New Advertising Technology Company 0

Lots of new technology company’s launch in advertising every month.  DSP’s, DMP’s, targeting platforms, social platforms, rich media and ad-servers; its almost too many to try and keep up with.  To break through the clutter of the marketplace and secure adoption with agencies and brands can be an arduous task (I know since its what I do for companies), but there’s one very valuable tool in the marketing of a new ad tech company that I can share; it’s your sales people.

Your sales people are crucial hires for more reasons that you probably even know.  The obvious reason is they bring in revenue.  They are responsible for monetizing your platform, they create relationships and they create capital, which your company uses to grow.  All that is extremely important, but you should never overlook just how important they are for the image, perception and awareness of your brand.

Sales people are your first impression in the marketplace.  Your execs may be fantastic, but 9 out of 10 of your customers will not meet the company through your execs, they will meet it through your sales people.  You need to arm your sales people with the right kinds of messaging, a single point of view regarding how your services fit into the marketplace, and the tools they need to create lasting relationships.  Everything they do, everything they say, and every action they take in the marketplace is a reflection on your company, especially in the early days . 

To that end, it is extremely important that you do your homework when interviewing and potentially hiring sales people.  Not only should they be intelligent, energetic and fun, but they need to be responsible, professional and full of integrity.  When you review a potential candidate, don’t forget to check their Facebook page, their LinkedIn page and do a Google search (especially a Google image search) to see what comes up.   You want people who are fun, but not fun to the degree where they could misrepresent you publicly in some manner.  Everyone knows the role of a sales person is to create relationships and sell your product, but relationships are a delicate thing and you want to be able to retain those relationships in the long term. 

Its also good to find out were a sales person has been before, how their previous position ended, and what kind of relationships they are going to take with them in their next roles.  Too often, there are sales people with a history of jumping around and selling their wares as “the best thing since sliced bread”.  After too many of those jumps, their relationships on the agency and client side are toast because everyone knows they’ll be somewhere else in 6 months.  They lose credibility, and once a sales person loses credibility, they’ve lost everything they have that allows them to sell.

Credibility and the ability to create and foster mutually beneficial relationships; these two characteristics transfer over to a company very quickly if the sales person has them as strengths.  In that situation, your marketing efforts, whatever they may be, have an easier time being successful. 

When a VP of Marketing or a CMO enters into a new job with a new advertising technology or media company, they typically will sit down and create a marketing strategy, but they should also sit down and review the assets of the sales team and determine if those assets are in line with the marketing of the company.  If there’s a Chief Revenue Officer or VP of Sales in place, this should be done in conjunction with them, and it should be done right away. 

Sales and marketing typically go hand in hand, but too often it’s about the numbers, and not enough about the characteristics of the teams.  If you’ve got a good plan, but the team isn’t right, nothing you do will be successful.  At the very least, success will be a more difficult up-hill climb than it needs to be.

As for the rest of the secrets I know, those are staying with me for the time being.

How are your sales teams measuring up?

Posted on: 05-8-2011
Posted in: treffiletti.com

The ABCs of DMPs 0

Special thanks to for publishing this first!

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS:
• DMPs deliver marketing performance benefits by helping companies learn from the totality of marketing information they collect and purchase
• Brands deserve to collect and keep all of the information they pay to buy, collect, and base action upon. DMPs bring this all together
• A DMP can take a general target, like women aged 18-34, and subdivide it into groupings that help you plan and execute marketing efforts more effectively

From the beginning digital marketing data have been both a potential boon and a missed opportunity for the vast majority of marketers. The ability to track and analyze virtually every aspect of marketing communications brings with it a very real challenge to do more than react to bits and pieces of that information.

In our changed world we have the ability to learn about our customers and prospects constantly. But this relentless flow of information — from different channels and through different tools — needs to be gathered, combined, and analyzed in a timely manner in order to capitalize on its value.

A new category of marketing services companies is emerging to help answer all these questions: data management platforms (DMPs). Oh, I just detected audible groaning. Another category of middlemen? Call Kawaja to update the slide (no need, I’m sure he’s way ahead of you). I feel your pain, but I also believe that this set of marketing services and companies may really make a difference in our businesses.

In my view, two recent-ish news items reflect the growing importance. The first was the emergence of Red Aril, a start-up led by Jim Soss and Kira Makagon, two well known advertising/ technology veterans. Red Aril is a DMP with a platform created through over 150 man-years of development. The second key item is the recent purchase of DMP Demdex by Adobe. This will add dynamic online ad targeting capabilities to the Adobe Online Marketing Suite.

Both are signs of the likely growth potential in this arena.

The problem: Too many data buckets
The customer relationship management (CRM) team uses Prizm to analyze and segment your hand raisers. The media team buys a variety of third-party data sources to target ads through the exchanges. The market research group commissions important studies that parse and segment customers and provide valuable lifestyle and psychographic insight. And the web team uses Omniture and Quantcast to understand whose visiting and how their demographics and lifestyles impact pages visited, time spent, and purchases. And the social media folks gather learning from activity on Facebook pages and across other online venues.

Sound familiar?

Naturally, marketers have (or should have) some knowledge of all these efforts. But does the data come together? It really really should.

Mark Silva, founder and EVP, emerging platforms for Real Branding, put it this way:
“Think of it as a spectrum that runs from collecting data, to understanding behavior, to identifying and leveraging real insights that answer the question of why people do what they do. In my view, you need to triangulate at least three data sets in order to understand behavior: advertising performance, CRM metrics, and social analytics. Understanding behavior isn’t insight per se, but it’s a critical step in identifying genuine insights.”

Without connecting the dots, too many questions remain either unanswered. Peter Platt, president of PSquared Digital, provided this example:

“Too often, digital efforts are looked at in a silo unto themselves and we miss the real impact that our advertising efforts are having. A great example of this just happened the other day. I was reviewing a law firm client’s web analytics and we saw a huge spike in traffic from search last September. Turns out the hero in this effort wasn’t our search marketing program but rather a heavy TV flight during that time period. In this example we had visibility into the overall marketing effort, but if we hadn’t there might have been erroneous decisions made about how to allocate resources.”

Peter’s effort clearly helped his team find the underlying truth. But why isn’t all our learning leveraged fully? Because, in addition to it being in different places, it’s difficult to rationalize and standardize data sets, and then examine that massive data bank for real insights.

Enter the DMP.

The value of data aggregation
Duh. If you have a tool that can handle it, more relevant data is better. And quite frankly, if we are spending time and money aggregating irrelevant data, well then… I’ll let Tamara Bousquet, SVP-media director of MEA Digital, say it for me:

“My sole focus is to stay ahead of this ever-changing landscape and deliver actionable results for our clients; squeeze every cent of value out of our client’s budget. We find a key challenge for most clients is accurate attribution for different marketing tactics and sales analytics. My team’s analytic approach and deep knowledge of the rich first party information and resources help us understand exactly how all tactics, online and offline, impact our clients business and how to best deliver a positive result.”

Tamara is not alone in leading her team to do this. But the arrival of tools that can do this on a more granular and comprehensive basis can make the process easier, and potentially more effective.


How DMPs work
So what are these things, anyway? In their current incarnations, DMPs deliver marketing performance benefits by helping companies learn from the totality of marketing information they collect and purchase. They represent the antithesis of data silos.

At its core, a great DMP needs to do four things:

•Aggregate data sources: DMPs are designed to take disparate data sets and combine them into a single, actionable data set. We all know that different tools and platforms gather and collect info in different ways. A DSP partner will set up your instance to take into account the sources and differences of your data sets so that information comes together constantly and consistently, with few errors.

•It is essential to know if the platform you select is capable of parsing the information you already have and shows evidence it is planning (or already work with) many more data set flavors. Because one thing we all know is that what we use today may not be what we are using tomorrow. I’m not talking about all of your company’s data (that’s IBM’s job, or Oracle’s). Rather, DMPs focus on marketing relevant information.

•Give you information ownership: Brands deserve to collect and keep all of the information they pay to buy, collect, and base action upon. DMPs bring it all together so that more insights are possible from the combined totality of information.

•Analyze and model: Once the data come together, DMPs offer the means to derive critical information from the data, and work to segment your audience into groups that may warrant tailored marketing efforts. On a blockhead-simple level, a DMP can take a general target, like women aged 18-34, and subdivide it into groupings that help you plan and execute marketing efforts more effectively. This could be based on important demographic criteria, more esoteric psychographic/sociographic ways, or ways you haven’t even considered yet. It may also identify heretofore overlooked populations that may be prime opportunities.

•Drive action: The DMP helps to refine and sharpen ad targeting approaches and purchase media more precisely. For example, a DMP could empower better purchase decisions on the ad exchanges, and continue to collect and refine the learning for greater future precision. This is the “immediate value” DMPs can provide.
Jim Soss, CEO of Red Aril, describes the value proposition of his DMP thusly:

“Red Aril’s DMP was designed explicitly for real-time channels, the ability to leverage all data, and the integration with a broader marketing database strategy. Our clients see the proof every day — data drives relevancy, relevancy drives results.”

A key part of the aggregation service is a standardization of taxonomy. Indeed, it is a critical part of successfully merging data. Scalability is also a critical consideration. A large brand could be experiencing and recording billions of interactions a month across its marketing efforts. The DMP can only be successful if it is able to store, process, and act upon what could easily become an avalanche of data points.

DSP, DMP, LMNOP
Some of you are thinking that other types of marketing service providers offer some of these benefits.

You’re right. They do.

DSPs, for example, are collecting information in real time and using it to dynamically optimize campaigns and programs and enable users to integrate first-party data in real time. Some DSPs are encouraging users to run all their buys through their platforms to provide a more comprehensive audience view.

For example, MediaMath (disclosure, a CSF client) has put a major focus on providing many of the services that are traditionally the turf of DMPs. Their approach is to empower all buying with first and third party data, not just inventory bought on the exchanges. The principle of empowerment through data naturally has big benefits for pub direct. And most brands do not live by exchanges alone. I think it’s natural to expect that all the brands we associate with the DSP sector to move in this direction over time.

The most technologically sophisticated ad networks also work with first-party data, when you choose to provide it. For any business that uses data to define and refine what it is buying or working for you, the race is on to do more with more. As we all know, convergence is the middle name of our industry.

DMP is about driving action from the totality of your marketing-relevant consumer information. You know better than I do whether you are already doing that using a solution that describes itself by whatever name. If not, then the value of the DMP may be significant for you.

In my view, the ideal company for a DMP has data-intensive marketing practices and tactics, and is sophisticated enough that it is focused on incremental marketing improvement. What I mean by that last bit is that a DMP is great for a company that knows it’s doing a lot of things right, and is now looking to drive improvements on their good general direction.

But back to initials. My suggestion is, don’t get caught up in the monikers. Rather, consider whether you think bringing all the data together is likely to provide enough of a business benefit to justify the time and money required to do so. Do you have a strong CRM database? Are you really collecting great information on the site? Are you dealing with multiple media vendors collecting and purchasing data on your behalf separately? If the answer is yes, a DMP may well make sense for you.

Who will adopt these first? DR brands probably come to mind, because the initial focus for actionability will be in ad targeting. But it would be a big mistake for so called brand marketers to discount the value of more complete view of the consumer.

And consider this: data aggregation and modeling is not the same is genuine consumer insight. Says Mark Silva,

“In our business, first customers often have disproportionate influence on how the category plays out. DMPs need to be aware that while their first customers may be DR marketers looking for the magic data bullets that drive incremental sales improvement, behavioral information is not insight. Ultimately their success in the market will be significantly determined by the extent to which they offer the tools and opportunities for brand marketers and agencies to discover genuine behavioral insights. They’re good at getting to the ‘what’ — but they need to also empower us to get to the ‘why’.”

I like that as a concluding thought. It makes sense to get that data together and empower your marketing with it. But don’t leave it at that. It’s not their job to do our thinking for us. We need data to find the answer, and the most effective marketing is going to come from both actionable data and a heckuvalot of noggin’ scratchin’ to discover the seeds of overall brand relevance.

Posted on: 03-12-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

COD: ShareThis and the business value of content sharing behavior 0


The world of advanced targeting has grown a lot more crowded over the past couple of years. And one of the more promising approaches (in my view) is targeting based upon the consumer’s searching and sharing history. is built on using such information to help brands and online publishers better identify and connect with their audiences.

That simple looking “ShareThis” button you see all the time – there’s actually a lot more to it than you think. ShareThis provides the button for free to publishers large and small. It adds instant sociability to content on web pages and blogs. A nice benefit to publishers and content owners because it helps to spread the word about valuable and interesting content.

But the data side of the sharing buttons is even more powerful. Because as users search for content and share it through the ShareThis functionality, the company begins to develop a deep view of their “lean forward” interests.

Further, the data collection process serves to separate active influencers from engagers and viewers. Think about it this way: you’re probably really into something if you decide to share it with your social graph. The people who click on your shares and visit the content are also probably really into the content type, though perhaps a little less than the person who took a sharing action. Finally, there are millions and millions of people who search for and visit content, but choose not to share it. It’s safe to say that their intensity of interest may be lower. And that they are less likely to be influencers, at least in terms of the content type paired with that particular sharing button.

ShareThis acts as a network, using the data to identify and purchase the best inventory for brands on the exchanges. They can also focus media on the click-to-sharers in particular, which may speed the dissemination of a message or content more rapidly than a more broadly targeted buy.

According to ShareThis, using both the evidenced intensity of interest AND the propensity to be an influencer can make a big difference in the effectiveness of an ad program. Sound enough, perhaps, for a test buy to see what they can deliver.

Let’s go back to the pub side for a minute. It’s important to note that pubs can get a lot more from participation than just an easy way to socialize content. One of the ways that ShareThis says it can help pubs is by equipping them with the tools and data to demonstrate both the passion of their viewers and their audience influencer comp. For example, a site could demonstrate that they have a higher total composition of health influencers. That would, it stands to reason, make their impressions more valuable to a pharma company. Finally, they also offer pubs a trending content widget that provides a view of the most shared content on a site, which is sure to drive incremental clicks and views.

ShareThis offers 50+ interest channels and has profiles on more than 400 million people, based upon their behaviors across 1 million web pages. They compete most closely with Clearspring’s AddThis offering, which also buys media for clients based upon sharing button data. They also sell their data on many of the exchanges so that DSP users can benefit from their targeting information.

ShareThis states that they offer a more robust consumer view for both brands and pubs, coupled with more value add on the pub side. AddThis focuses their comparative story on the greater reach that their button network offers. Their buttons appear on more pages.

I cannot tell you if “*.This” targeting will work for you, or which provider would work better for you. What I can say is that to me this approach to advanced targeting is sufficiently different that it warrants taking a meeting to see what they have for your particular business situation. Further, I like that they offer unique things to pubs — because the success of content creators is 1000% vital to the success of advertisers.

All this from those ubiquitous little buttons!

Posted on: 02-17-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

The Holding Company’s Will Be Launching Sales Rep Firms Within 2 Years (Mediapost 1.26.11) 0

Here’s a crazy idea to think about; what if the large agency holding companies start to get into the publisher rep business?  Hear me out on this before you pass judgment, it’s not as crazy as it sounds.

The agency holding companies have a model that requires continued growth and the fact is the agency business is shrinking.  You can see earnings releases from the big 5 that will contradict what I’m saying, but if you slice and dice the numbers you’ll see that as a whole, revenue generated by all agencies in the US put together is probably going down.  Some companies are winning due to consolidation, but margins are getting squeezed, especially when it comes to media.

Hence, the birth and fast adoption of DSP’s and the automated buying tools that many agency holding companies are investing in.  The biggest success of this in the agency world is Cadreon, which seems to be continuing a fast pace of growth.   The agencies are finding a way to commoditize that portion of the online ad business that is based on data and standardized units.  There are also a number of companies that are creating “network” solutions for non-standard units, so the trend here is to automate, decrease the staff, and increase the margin against this portion of the business.   It’s logical.

Not all the online media can be commoditized, and that leaves some large, stand-alone, well-branded publishers who will continue to staff a sales team and service the agencies, but what if the agencies began to pitch the publishers with a model that was based on guaranteed inventory, decreased staffing costs and increased profitability?  That is a formula that many of these publishers, many of which are having profitability issues of their own, would listen to.

If I were the CEO of one of the holding companies, I’d begin to build a business plan that created a rep management service to consolidate the sales efforts, cross media (including online and offline) for vertical categories of publisher and guarantee the revenue to the publishers in exchange for them taking their sales teams off the streets.  In doing so they would decrease the costs of those publishers, they would lock in the premium inventory they need for their clients, and they would become a one-stop-shop for all media (targeted and untargeted) for their clients.  They could still sell the media to their competitors at market prices, probably making money on the deals, and they would sell the media to their own clients, making money on the difference between their upfront buys and the selling price to their clients.

It may sound like a conflict of interest, but if you dive a little deeper you can find that the holding companies are already getting into this business little by little and it makes sense.  Their job is to get their clients messages into the hands, eyes and ears of the target audience.  If they happen to represent that media or buy it separately, there’s minimal difference.  In many cases the holding companies already do deals for kick-backs and commissions on the flip side, so why not just bring it out into the open.  They have to make money somehow, right?  Additionally they already own the DSP’s and in some cases the networks where the money is being placed, so the conflict already exists and many people don’t seem to mind too much.

The rep firm model has taken a nose-dive in recent years, but if you consider that it still works for premium, cross-platform inventory which is not well-serviced through a commodity trading desk than you can see where the opportunity lies.  And for publishers, who are combating rising costs to sell their inventory in a cluttered market, this represents a solution that though unconventional, still satisfies their needs. 

Think about it.  The holding companies are going to reinvent the business at some point.  It may not be overnight, but if they can control the flow of media dollars on both sides of the equation, then they can set prices and maintain profits.  It’s not a monopoly because anyone can get into the market if they can be competitive, but it is an interesting idea.  What do you think?  Tell me on the Spin Board!

 

Posted on: 01-30-2011
Posted in: treffiletti.com

The Companies That Interest iMedia Agency Summit Attendees – Part Four of Four (Tra-Z) 0

Thanks to for publishing this first.

In this fourth installment, I’ll continue to provide capsule descriptions of the companies that iMedia Agency attendees expressed excitement about in a recent survey. Before anyone contacts me wondering why their company wasn’t on the list: If your company is on the list, its’ because you were listed in at least one survey response. If you aren’t, it’s because no one listed you in their survey response.

Traffiq is a web based media management platform that automates many of the processes of planning, buying, reporting, and optimizing digital media. Using TRAFFIQ you can:
• Discover the best sites for your effort
• Distribute and manage RFPs
• Buy inventory
• Bid on audiences in real-time
• Deliver and serve campaigns
• Analyze performance
• Consolidate billing

Transis also promises to simplify the media planning, buying and reporting process. A significant area of focus for Transis has been automating the RFP and negotiation process by eliminating the emails, faxes and spreadsheets that fill a planner’s day and inbox.

Tube Mogul offers a variety of video distribution services, from content to advertising. All the services share a foundation level of tracking and analytics that helps provide marketers greater understanding of the impact they are driving with their efforts. TubeMogul’s core business is a video DSP service that they say offers greater analytics and transparency than other video options available. Many know the company as a video distribution platform that helps brands distribute their own content across the web. The company offers both a free distribution service (OneLoad®) and an ad network (Playtime) that generates views of brand videos by featuring them as standalone content on players across the web. Both services offer extensive analytics to understand who, how, and where videos are being watched.

Visual IQ is a marketing analytics and intelligence products company that promises to improve marketing performance. Their Visual IQ Marketing Intelligence Platform is an online based set of analytics tools that help transform raw marketing data into actionable intelligence.

Posted on: 01-3-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

The Companies That Interest iMedia Agency Summit Attendees – Part Two of Four (D through M) 0

Thanks to for publishing this first.

In this second installment, I’ll continue to provide capsule descriptions of the companies that iMedia Agency attendees expressed excitement about in a recent survey. Before anyone contacts me wondering why their company wasn’t on the list: If your company is on the list, its’ because you were suggested in the survey. If you aren’t, it’s because no one listed you in their survey response.

enables DR marketers to connect online and offline data for more effective targeting. They do this by applying the offline data to their Affiniti™ tags. This enables a marketer to target based upon “real world” behaviors. In addition to offering their own ad network which touches 210MM consumers monthly, they also work with a variety of networks and exchanges to make access to this connected data easier.

is a leading digital media optimization engine that improves the performance of auction based online media buying and execution. Results are optimized based upon the key metric that is most desired by an advertiser, and are optimized across engines or platforms, not piecemeal. They are most known for their SEM optimization offerings, but also can optimize auction based Display. Here’s a vid on their Search service:

is the DSP platform acquired by Google for $81M earlier this year. Their Bid manager® service enables you to buy across multiple exchanges, as well as offer a proprietary exchange practice. The Google acquisition reflects the desire to make Display media buying more like search.

Eye Blaster has changed its name to Media Mind to reflect a sea change in its positioning and capabilities. Once content to bill itself as a turnkey solution to deliver richer rich media, it now messages as an everything platform that serves, delivers rich media, search, standard banners, video, dynamic ads, and mobile ads and lets brands manage and execute it all on a portfolio level. Data is also a big part of their new message, reflecting the ability to target with, collect, analyze, and optimize to relevant data.

Posted on: 01-3-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Looking Forward to 2011… (Mediapost 12.8.10) 0

It’s that time of year once again!  The time of year when pundits such as myself get up on their soapbox and make pointless predictions for the coming year that are little more than rehashed and half-baked versions of the same predictions their peers are making right now. 

Nobody wants to read those.

I like my predictions to be a bit more provocative, so with that I give you my thoughts (some rational, some requiring a bit more explanation) for the next 12 months as we drive into 2011…

First off, following a post I made two weeks ago, I predict that some major Fortune 500 brand will drop its agency in favor of a DSP solution combined with dynamic ad generation for a 100% automated online presence.  They will fully remove customized, integrated placements and rely solely on targeting and machine-based learning and analytics.  This will signal a wake-up call for the agency business that they need to start training their staff and using technology the right way or they will be battling their own extinction for years to come.

I also predict that a major magazine (i.e. ESPN the Magazine, Cosmopolitan or Details) will go 100% online and tablet (iPad, Galaxy, etc.) due to decreased ad page revenue and the costs to maintain a printed version.  Their subscribers will be given total access as a shifted subscriber and the quality of the content will remain very high as they also move to integrate more with technology like that of FlipBoard.

Speaking of FlipBoard, I have to assume that their business model is more than just technology so I predict that sometime in 2011 we’ll see them begin to make publisher acquisitions and start to amass a collection of owned and operated assets beyond just their technology platform.  This move will begin to position Flipboard as the precedent for a 21st century content network.  Flipboard could become the model for companies like Conde Nast; at the core technology driven with a content-centric revenue model.

Speaking of the app space, I predict that Nielsen and Comscore will start counting apps as a media vehicle and applying these to the overall numbers for publishers.  Apps are overlooked in many cases, but if these syndicated tools can begin to track them as a stand-alone medium, I think most brands would be surprised at the volume of activity they represent.

 Outside of the media and advertising space, I foresee some of the following:

  • iTunes will release a cloud-based storage mechanism allowing us to share our music library anywhere at any time rather than having to copy files from one computer to the next and authorize those computers.
  • The iPad2 will release as a thinner version of itself, with a camera.
  • The Amazon Kindle will come out with a color version (for the pictures).

And while standing on a very thin sheet of ice, I predict the following will happen in 2011:

  • Google will buy Yahoo.
  • Microsoft will buy AOL, but no-one will really care.

As tends to happen in the space, Google’s moves will outshine that of everyone else.  Google will buy Yahoo just to stop Microsoft from doing so, and to stop AOL and Yahoo from merging.  Google will mine the various pieces of technology that Yahoo owns, and integrate Google search back into Yahoo.

Microsoft will acquire AOL, but Microsoft won’t really know what to do with AOL and will pretty much leave them alone until someone comes looking to buy up some of the pieces later in 2013.

By then we’ll all be surfing the web on the iPhone6 and iPad3, both of which will fully integrate Flash and HTML5 easily and integrate with the dashboard of your car allowing you to dictate all of your email while commuting to work.

Some of these services are already available, which makes it even more interesting since these predictions don’t really feel too far off!   Until then, please have a wonderful holiday season and enjoy the final weeks of 2010!

 

Posted on: 12-30-2010
Posted in: treffiletti.com