Some great things are going on at Simpli.fi, and we aren’t just talking about search retargeting. We are proud to introduce our newest hires to the already stellar sales team: Grace Gonzalez located in the Fort Worth office and Michael Logan – located in our newly opened New York office. (See picture).
Grace is the newest National Account s Manager and has extensive experience in managing and growing client relationships in the digital space, before joining Simpli.fi Grace was a Global Online Accounts Manager at FareCompare.com.  Michael is the Sales Director, East Region and has been in the online media sales space for over a decade, both on the network and publisher sides. Before joining the Simpli.fi team Michael worked at Quadrant One as a Senior Account Executive, he lives in New York and has two children. And, we recently acquired the other half of the second floor wing in our Fort Worth office to make room for our growing team, and opened an office in New York.

Getting to know Michael Logan:

1.) What’s your superpower? – Ability to juggle two kids at once and only occasionally drop them

2.) If you were a car, what car would you be?- 2011 GT 500 Shelby Cobra Super Snake (my daughter’s name is Shelby) and in memoriam for Carroll Shelby who died recently

3.) How many 5 year olds could you take in a fight? - I have successfully and often taken on 5 or 6 at a time at the local playground, they are no match for me (special my @**!)

4.) Favorite Drink- Strawberry flavored Nestle Quik

5.) Do you believe in magic? Only as it pertains to helping me close a deal!

6.) Biggest fear- Rats, huge disgusting, disease ridden NYC rats

7.) Celebrity you love to hate- I don’t hate anyone but I really, really dislike Donald Trump

8.) Biggest accomplishment- Corny I know, but raising 2 kids in NYC that say please and thank you

We released our new search retargeting infographic today showing how search retargeting combines the effectiveness of search with  the reach and brand impact of display. Search retargeting harnesses the power of both mediums to deliver highly relevant display ads to users who have expressed interest and intent.

Because user intent is indicated by the keywords used in a search, the process offers the greatest opportunity to increase share of voice outside of search engines among active information seekers and/or in-market shoppers. Search retargeting allows for a continued conversation with prospects that traditional search does not provide. Marketers typically deploy strategic keyword segments strategies such as branded terms, category terms and/or competitor keyword lists in targeting for best results. This value was recently evidenced by a case study on a search retargeting campaign for ADT Small Business.

 

In the world of online advertising, sometimes two effective targeting techniques are even more effective when used together.

Search retargeting is a highly effective targeting technique that has been attracting lots of buzz lately. Using search retargeting leading brands and agencies around the world are deploying successful display campaigns targeting online consumers based on search behavior.

Search retargeting has been hailed as a major leap forward in both reach and effectiveness for search marketers and display marketers alike. Traditional paid search conversion rates are typically less than 5%, but search retargeting has given marketers the ability to continue the conversation with the other 95% through relevant display ads across thousands websites while maintaining the same keyword level bidding and optimization control search marketers have spent years mastering.

Recently there have been a number of articles and commissioned studies cautioning against click based attribution models. These studies generally show that there is growing evidence supporting conversion- and engagement-based campaign optimization metrics. I tend to agree with these studies. In fact, almost all deep-thinking industry types that I know agree that optimization metrics should be conversion and engagement based. The only possible exceptions are some PPC shops and display vendors who have wrapped their value proposition around a pricing model that arbitrages on the click.

Elephant In The Room

I believe the debate around the click is largely moot. The industry recognizes that the vast majority of consumer value related to online display campaigns will occur post impression, with or without a click. However, there is an elephant in the room that plagues our industry and sabotages genuine attempts to deliver good online marketing. This elephant is called “last touch”, and it is the most commonly deployed attribution model in use today.

The Logic Behind The Logic, I think?

Last touch attribution is the practice of pitting multiple vendors deploying multiple targeting strategies across single or multiple online channels and awarding full credit to the last vendor to serve an impression prior to the prospect converting. The flaws in this logic are numerous. Worse yet, last touch drives vendors to deploy unrealistic strategies that waste money and the brands that they are advertising. Because of this, enlightened brands are migrating rapidly to more effective attribution technologies and agencies that embrace them.

And The Beat Goes On…

Alas, with rapid growth in digital advertising, another year will go by with hundreds of agencies, trading desks and brands opting not to implement sound attribution technology. With that in mind I present 10 “strong” candidates for alternative attribution models:

Top 10 Alternatives to “LAST TOUCH” Attribution

1. TALLADEGA NIGHTS TOUCH

The advertising vendor who serves the first impression gets full credit when the prospect converts. Why? Because this makes just as much sense as giving credit to the last vendor who touched the prospect. If you’re not first, you’re last.

2. MOST TOUCH

The advertising vendor who serves the most impressions to the prospect before they convert is given full credit. Why? Because clearly this vendor delivered the most advertising per dollar invested.

3. BOOKEND TOUCH

The advertising vendor(s) who serve the first impression and the last impression will equally receive 50% of the credit. Why? Every conversion, like every great story must have a beginning and an end.

4. “THE” TOUCH

A recent conversion path study states that on average it takes 6.8 impressions to influence a conversion. Therefore, full credit will be given to the advertising vendor delivers crucial touch number 7.

5. RACE TOUCH

The first advertising vendor to touch a prospect 7 times is given full credit. It takes 6.8 impressions to convert a prospect on average and, who doesn’t want the fastest possible conversions. The one who hits the client imposed user impression cap first wins! And they’re off…

6. HUNGER GAMES TOUCH

If more than one vendor serves the converting prospect an impression, the opposing vendors cancel each other out. Full credit will be provided if AND when a vendor alone converts a prospect without another vendor tainting the prospect with one of their impressions. May the odds be ever in your favor!

7. LAND GRAB TOUCH

Full credit for each conversion will be awarded to the company who consumed the largest total viewable area. This is, of course scientific and unbiased as it adds up the total impressions served to a prospect and multiplies the independent vendor impression quantity by the sum of ad creative circumferences displayed.

8. PUB TOUCH

After a prospect converts, all advertising vendors who served an impression to this prospect will report on exactly which publisher domain the impression occurred. Full credit will be given to the advertising vendor whose ad appeared on the website most recognizable to the media buyer. Know your media buyer!

9. UNDERDOG TOUCH

The second to the last advertising vendor to touch the prospect will receive full credit. This model is deployed because clearly the actual last touch was earned through technical trickery and expertise designed to beat last touch attribution models. The second to the last advertising vendor is the virtuous actual influencer and is rewarded as such. Good will prevail.

10. OMNI TOUCH

Full credit for each conversion will be divided equally ,100% between all advertising vendors who served an impression to each converting prospect. The more vendors who touched the prospect the lower the percentage everyone gets credit for. It’s just like winning lottery along with everyone else. Everyone knows ife isn’t fair…. And the lottery is a curse.

Other Options

Of course, there are alternatives to the options above. Online attribution companies such as Convertro, C3 Metrics, and ClearSaleing are finally giving brands deep insight into how various forms on advertising work together to deliver conversions. These types of companies enable brands to understand how a Google text ad, a well written blog, a timely email coupon, a relevant retargeted display ad and a late night TV commercial may have all played a role in producing a conversion.

The Simple Truth

Attribution technology often reveals that adjustments in one channel or vendor impact the performance of an alternative channel and/or vendor. The simple truth is that there is a better way to do attribu

tion than last touch, and the brands and agencies that embrace a more enlightened approach will be able to spend their advertising budget much more efficiently. The technology exists, it’s affordable and it makes sense.

About the Author

James Moore is the Chief Revenue Officer for Simpli.fi, he has more than 15 years of experience in the digital space and has been involved in many leading companies who are paving new paths in digital space.

The Simpli.fi team is proud to announce the release of our first video, intended to better aid marketing professionals in quickly outlining the value of keyword level targeting.

Search Retargeting: How it Works

• Instant access to valuable element level data on consumers (online behavior and actions, pages visited etc.)
• A custom audience of users is created who have searched on the keywords you want to target
• Display ads reach your audience globally
• You acquire new customers

Keyword Contextual Targeting: How it Works

• Allows you to target consumers who navigate directly to websites without performing a search at all.
• Target users based on the keywords found in the pages they’re visiting

What makes our search retargeting and contextual targeting so much better than the rest?

• Full strength immediately vs. slow building cookie pools
• Transparent platform gives flexibility and visibility to optimize continuously, change keywords, bids etc.
• Campaigns perform better
• Marketers get deeper insights into their customer’s behavior

Some offices tout a shiny foosball table with sleek styling, chrome-plated steel rods, thick sidewalls, a laminated cabinet …. I mean you could eat off the thing. At Simpli.fi, well our foosball table has character, the score markers on one side are bolts instead of markers and there’s a gash in the table reportedly suffered at the hands of a sword. The wound was apparently incurred under the previous owner, who was a hoarder, but…more on that later. All of the foosmen have been replaced, “It’s been monkey-patched hardcore,” Josh Taylor, a member of the SiFi development team says and I can’t help but stifle a laugh. But the development team guys wouldn’t have it any other way, self admittedly they abuse that table, and I don’t think the other guys’ spiffy new table could take it.

So, I’ll let the cat out of the bag – I’m a girl, now that we’re clear on that…I’ve won Foos once over the course of employment at Simpli.fi. (It’s harder than it looks people). You might be tempted to tell me, “Oh that’s not that bad,” or offer some other line of encouragement, but save it – I know I suck. I have won a single game – one single glorious game….and that’s only because I got to partner with one of our dev team guys.

The dev team takes much deserved breaks at  least 3 times a day – and they’re pretty darn good. So, I thought of a pretty brilliant evil master plan — ask for some “tips and techniques”  masked under the veil of… “Oh, I’m writing a blog”. All in the name of research. Smart…. I know.

I got some pretty good feedback:

When asked the hardest part of foosball Jake Good, states that passing between rows is the toughest aspect. “Foos takes a lot of hand/eye coordination …. it’s all about timing,” he says. — This explains a lot as to why my foosball skills are so bad…. I’ve got about this many patience (0). Duly noted Jacob…. Thank you good sir.

Moving on. When asked his favorite shot, Brandon Aaron, oddly… gives me his most hated shot. The DEMORALIZER – which occurs when the defense is hitting the ball across the field and the offense immediately blocks it and powers the ball into the goal. He then proceeds to tell me his least favorite serve – Michael Peck’s “In the Air” serve, where according to reports Michael literally throws the ball into the hole and one of his foosmen hits it before it even touches the table and… score.  FYI: He also hates 5 guy goals – where the row of 5 guys has the ball and they take a shot and then they make it. “It’s hard to block, got lots of speed and is short field,” he says. I feel less good about this tips and technique acquiring tactic now… it seems Brandon has a lot of pent up anger, would probably kick my @**, thus playing him will only further embarrass me.

Michael Peck’s fav move: The Double Deception – this happens when he unintentionally misses a shot only to pretend he was faking someone out.  I determine I cannot employ this tactic — because in order to do so, first I would have to get good enough for the other players to believe  me when I pass a miss off as a fake out, and I’ll just go ahead and say now that this isn’t happening for approximately…. 6 years.

So, the final question I ask is: On a scale of 1 to 5 how would you rate your foos abilities? (Master question, two pronged approach designed to identify the weakest player, thus the guy I need on the other team AND the best player to recruit for my team —- winning strategy? I think so)

“Let’s just say this,” Brandon starts, “I think if we went to a bar we could get free drinks all night off foosball.”

Josh: “Not if we went to a foosball bar, then we’d get killed.”

…..Mission Accomplished. See you on the field boys.

Simpli.fi employs some of the most incredible programmers, hackers and general all around data gurus.  Together they are building ad technology that is changing our industry and we genuinely adore this team. Click here if you’re interested in joining the dev team – we are looking for talented hackers.

Simpli.fi’s CRO James Moore attended Ad Tech and the eMarketing Association Conference.

Check out his video blog here:

Yesterday, (April 3, 2012) a series of as many as twelve twisters touched down in the Dallas Fort Worth area. While Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton made Twisters in the disaster drama from the mid 90’s look glamorous – there was nothing glamorous about these tunnels of destruction. Countless pictures tell the story of Mother Nature’s awesome power and tug at viewer’s heartstrings.

Thousands were left without power, hail the size of tennis balls was reported, and homes were thrashed, left looking like something out of a horror story. The tornado whipped up homes, cars and semis as if they were toys. One of the most touching stories came from Forney, Texas where a grandmother who was babysitting her 2 grandchildren is being hailed as a hero. The grandmother gathered 2-year-old Abigail and eighteen-month-old Lane and got into the bathtub. What happened next is truly horrifying, “She held onto his feet — just by his feet — and the  wind kept taking him, but she hung onto him, and he’s fine… he’s here,” the mother of the 2 children, Lindsey Enochs said. The father of the children, Andy Jones, said this about arriving on the scene, “I took off running across the field, and got to the house.” “And when I turned to the corner, I looked, and the house wasn’t there.” “I thought everybody would be dead,” he said. “There was only a couple rows of bricks and a foundation left. The whole house was gone.”

Yards are draped in blankets of debris, the twisted remains of memories left to lie amidst the devastation.  It’s been reported that 650 homes were damaged, as many as 450 flights were cancelled at the DFW airport, and although some injuries occurred so far the death toll remains at zero. Some attribute the lack of loss of life to social media – Twitter mainly, for continuous and timely updates. Whether the lack of loss of life is due to early warning or social media the event’s true impact will be felt for some time.

In the midst of calculating the true effects today, we at Simpli.fi are grateful not to have endured the damage and our thoughts go out to those left picking up the pieces.

Yesterday Google announced “A Better Way to Buy Display” with their new “revved up contextual engine” that promises to improve their contextual targeting capabilities.

Simpli.fi would like to congratulate Google on the announcement, and welcome Google to the world of what we call keyword contextual targeting, which we announced a few weeks back! It is one of ways we enable advertisers to combine the reach of display with the precision of search.

Here at Simpli.fi, we offer some advantages with our approach to keyword contextual targeting. So, in addition to matching ads to pages based on keywords, we also provide:

• Greater Reach. In addition to providing keyword contextual on the Google AdX, we also provide this capability across 11 other exchanges, including Rubicon, Pubmatic, OpenX, and others.

• Complete Transparency. As a fully transparent platform, we report exact on costs, clicks, and conversions, for each keyword, domain, exchange, daypart, etc.

• Audience Expansion. Using our unique “Look-A-Like” analysis, we report to advertisers the most common domains and keywords visited by users who convert on your offering. This enables both improved performance and increased reach on campaigns.

• Even More Precision. Say you want your ad for a new women’s multivitamin only appear on “women’s health” pages containing the keywords “multivitamin”, “health supplement”, and/or “calcium”.  With Simpli.fi you can do that by selecting keywords and contextual categories simultaneously.

• Great Client Service! Yes…you can also give us a call and talk to real people who will help you set up and manage your campaign. Of course…if you don’t want to talk to us you can always use our intuitive UI!

So…if you are intrigued by the opportunities for Keyword Contextual Targeting, give us a holler! We think that you will find that it is an even better way to buy display!

With full disclosure I must admit that I have spent many years sitting in front of media buyers and business leaders as a salesmen representing the latest in online display retargeting solutions.  I have built and trained sales teams to evangelize search marketing’s massive reach; personalized creative and value laden managed services in the grand pursuit of more incremental conversions!  Certainly this is a noble calling.

Having met with hundreds of search marketing decision makers; I recently paused to put myself in their shoes and wonder what it must be like to have countless companies pitch their solutions as “THE ANSWER”.

A senior level contact of mine at a major online retailer amused me last month with his account of no less than ten companies who have reached out to him in the last thirty days claiming to have the most effective retargeting service. Three ad networks, four managed service retargeting companies, two demand side platforms and one company that he gave up trying to classify.  Some offered site retargeting, one pitched search retargeting, another claimed to do both and he is almost certain that at least one company was simply reselling one of the other companies under a different name.  I fear that anyone with media buying responsibility can relate this experience all too well and all too often.

So what if I was in the media buyer’s shoes?  What if, in some strange twist of fate I found myself sitting in the chair of a media buyer listening to sales professionals steer me down a path of enlightenment sprinkled with the latest technique in reaching the ideal customer, packaged in the newest performance based pricing model and advocating technical advantages that can only be classified as heaven sent?  Knowing what I know, I would certainly be asking some very direct questions. So, it occurred to me that I should compile the questions I would ask and share so media buyers everywhere can ask the tough questions and get the right answers.

• How much does the media really cost?

Never has this been a more important question. Search and site retargeting offer a crop of solution providers hungry for your business and capable of supporting your marketing needs.  Unfortunately in the race to differentiate, the majority of these companies have found that dynamic ad personalization and managed campaign services are all too common.  Enter the pricing model wars.  One company claims to be “the CPC retargeting company”.  Another offers their “Cost Per Engagement Pricing”, while others tout their willingness to provide services on a 100% Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) basis.  No matter what the pricing model the fundamental question remains.  How much does actual media cost? Take the total bill and divided it by the total number of impressions - there you will find your Cost Per Thousand (eCPM).   What seemed like a bargain at a $5.00 CPA might have you scratching your head as you now realize that company after company is really billing you between $5.00 and $15.00 CPM.  We all know that the actual media costs are significantly

less.  In most cases these companies are leveraging real time bidding through DSPs, networks or perhaps tapping directly into multiple exchanges and purchasing inventory between 50 cents and $2.00 per thousand.  The difference you are paying is their (often-undisclosed) high profit margin, and the value these companies are providing under the all-encompassing heading:  “Managed Services”.

• What exactly are the  “managed services” I am paying for?

Once explained fully, most salesmen could have your head spinning with the immense workload their company is removing from your plate.  After all they are handling the campaign planning, media buying, account setup across multiple traffic sources, brand management controls, campaign optimization, ad serving, campaign reporting and often times building the creative as well.  I know first hand that several companies are in fact investing a lot of time and effort into campaign management and perform quiet well.  However, I also know from experience what lies just under the surface in many companies.

For some service providers the process has become highly efficient and automated as they seek to reduce errors and remove their own internal labor costs.  Saved user settings in the media buying platforms or APIs from homegrown interfaces have made account set-up and management perform well on autopilot.   This is online advertising’s version of the famous infomercial catch phrase, “set it and forget it”.  Auto optimization algorithms, which are available to anyone in many of the media buying platform, utilize machine learning to optimize campaigns across known variables such as ad frequency, day parting, keyword bids, white listing, black listing, ad creative performance, and more.  This has me wondering; “how much time is really spent working on my account that I could not do on my own”?  It’s eerily similar to paying lofty handling fees when buying tickets to a concert online.  I know I have to pay the fee, but I question what I am paying for when I did all the work in 60 seconds through a computer.

On the other side of the coin you might be surprised to learn that underneath that retargeting company’s flashy creative and colorful reporting lurks a model of inefficiency and error.  Teams of overworked account managers struggle to maintain sanity as they log into a half dozen or more separate user interfaces across multiple DSPs and Ad Networks, each with their own unique steps and intricacies involved in campaign set up, reporting and optimization.  You will find employees juggling excel spreadsheets and prioritizing one account over another. Something must give way when trying to appear integrated while attempting to hold together 100 separate moving pieces.

In the end I know that vendor managed campaigns are vital to over-worked media buyers and marketing executives.  But if I were doing the vendor selection I would ensure I wasn’t paying for something automated with tools I can access, Nor would I be paying to support a labor heavy, chaotic organization sure to produce errors.   Transparency into the services a vendor supplies and the associated costs are key principles in determining which company to use and if their pricing model is aligned appropriately with the level of value they are supplying above and beyond the costs of media.

• Can you do more than just produce conversions?

I don’t know about you, but if I ran a website I would take every opportunity to learn as much as possible about my customers.Too often companies selling online display ads perform a quality service, produce conversions yet hide so much of the work behind the scenes. Doesn’t it make sense that any vendor working on your behalf is going to experience both success and failure as they manage your campaigns? These successes and failures are valuable lessons that can tell you a ton of information about your customers.  More importantly, these display vendors can likely tell you how your customers behave and convert compared to other sites in your industry across dozens of data points.

Unfortunately for a large portion of our industry the recipe for success remains a black box of mystery oblivious to the global trend of knowledge sharing that can benefit us all.  Who were the traffic sources used in my campaign and which is performing best and why?  What domains are my clients converting on and what are their trends in the contextual subject matter?  What data drove what decisions?  How exactly do my clients behave online and what changes did you make to produce the results that I am left analyzing?

If I am the media buyer I am not looking to be amazed and entertained like I am attending a magic show.  I want a partner who will perform a magic trick and then break down that trick with total transparency so the smallest level of detail is revealed.  The future of our industry belongs to the companies who can leverage massive amounts of unstructured data to report and optimize on the most elemental level data known about your customers and your campaigns.  The ideal vendor partners are those who will partner with you to incorporate your first party data into the recipe and work side by side with you to give you a deep level of insight into demystifying the magic trick of converting your customers.  They are your customers after all.

At the risk of being labeled a traitor among sales professionals everywhere and a defector among managed display companies across this vast ad tech space; I challenge you to demand more transparency in your online display vendor partners.  Efficiency gains, costs reductions and incremental campaign improvements lurk in all the areas where solutions providers can’t or won’t share openly.  Your partners need to do more than just run effective media campaigns.  They should help you gain a deeper understanding of your customer at the most granular element level through transparency and communication.  Then everyone wins!

James Moore is Simpli.fi’s CRO. Visit James on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter @SimplifiCRO