Stop Skimping on Storytelling in Your Digital Ads

The rumors of the death of storytelling within the digital advertising world are exaggerated. Not only is storytelling not dead, it’s more important than ever, despite the exhortations of a few contrarians. Broader saturation of ads across the web and a continuous increase in ad blindness (not to mention consumer antagonism to those ads) mean that digital advertisers must look for effective ways to bridge the increasing divide between their ads and their prospective customers.

Spotlight

BFO

BFO believes in empowering each other to do great things. We are an international team of digital marketing experts helping each other, our clients, and our communities grow. Founded in 2009 as a search agency, we've since grown tremendously with our offices expanding from Chicago to London and Singapore. Our clients rely on us to consistently drive results through Paid Media, Organic Search, Analytics and Inbound marketing.

OTHER ARTICLES
Ad Networks

We use a data-driven blend of media, experience and content to drive performance

Article | September 1, 2023

eCommerce requires a balance of media, branding, supply chain, and retail excellence. Reprise has a specialist unit, Reprise Commerce, that delivers all of these to grow sales online and offline. Reprise Commerce is built and led by Amazon alumni and organized around Reprise’s proprietary process for accelerating your Customer Flow. Our team of 250 eCommerce specialists globally drives revenue by building brand experiences and operations.

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Retargeting

How Campaign Health Metrics Can Help You Streamline Ad Campaigns

Article | July 20, 2022

Advertising metrics provide clear information on the success and failures of an ad campaign. They are a practical tool to track all aspects of your marketing activities as well as how your campaign compares to designated metrics. Take a look at your campaign health metrics to understand your campaign’s performance. These metrics aren’t exactly KPIs (key performance indicators) because they are not tightly connected to your marketing goals. However, they do support the important ad metrics. They can give you insights into how to improve an ad campaign on your level. Check out this list of valuable metrics to add to your armory if you really want to find the value of your content, the value of your audience, and the success of the advertising you're hosting. Cost Efficiency Metrics (CPCs, CPMs, CPVs) Understand what your initial interaction with your audience is costing you. Metrics like cost per click, cost per mille and cost per view are foundational to determining where you need to focus to optimize your campaign while ensuring you have an eye on the changing trends. Click-Through Rate To understand how relevant your ads are to your audience, you need to look at your click-through rate. A low click-through rate means your ads have a huge scope of improvement and that you might not be targeting the right audience to meet your marketing goals. To avoid losing your ad spend, quickly identify drops in performance and alter your ads to make them relevant to your target audience. Conversion Rate The conversion rate of your ad indicates the relevance of your landing pages and how well they are optimized for conversion. If the conversion rate is low, it means that your site’s content is not resonating with your audience or that the audience you are targeting isn’t right for your product or service. It could also mean that your audience isn’t at the right stage of the funnel to take an action. You can make changes based on how this metric looks. Impression Share This metric helps you understand how much you can scale your campaign through aggressive bidding. It can also highlight underperforming keywords and how you can enhance your campaign by adjusting the budget. Adjusting geo-targeting settings and improving ad quality are some of the ways to increase the impression share. On-Site Engagement To gauge the interest of the audience in your ad campaign, keep an eye on on-site engagement metrics like bounce rate, average number of pages visited, and average session duration. These are the real measures of the interest your prospects show in your ads. Quality Score A quality score helps you identify ways to improve your campaign. This score gives you a comprehensive look at all the individual scores that affect your campaign. The historical data that evaluates the changes in your campaign over time is visible here. You can pinpoint which changes led to a positive impact and which didn’t. Bottomline Campaign health metrics are your answer to improving your ad campaigns. Taking note of what is working and what isn’t is the right way to constantly enhance the performanc

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Social Media Advertising

Ghost Ads and Bidding to Measure Incrementality

Article | July 14, 2022

Marketers and agencies must investigate the relevant counterfactual to advertising exposure to assess advertising effectiveness. Ghost ads can compare exposed and non-exposed consumers to measure ad-related behavior changes. What are Ghost Ads? Ghost ads are a great way to measure ad effectiveness or incrementality (the lift or increase in desired outcome through marketing) because they allow brands to see how their ad is received by two distinct consumer groups: those targeted and those who would have seen it organically. Leveraging Ghost Ads for Causal Ad Measurement: Here is why leveraging ghost ads to measure ad-related behavioral changes is a great idea: You don’t need to invest additional funds to create a control group You can have extensive reach within the DSP (demand-side platform) You can measure behavior for all formats such as mobile, audio and CTV Ghost Bidding: Mapping Consumer Behavior: In ghost bidding, a DSP platform accepts auctions for ad placements on publisher websites/apps/connected devices and bids on them. It records whether the auction was won (and the ad displayed). Before bidding, the platform assigns the user ID to a control or exposed group. For control group users, the bid is withdrawn so that no ad was shown during the study. This creates two identical groups, one that saw the ad and one that didn’t. You can then compare the test and control groups' website purchases, landing page visits, etc. Over a period of time, it is possible to record large effect sizes across several behaviors. A Large U.S-based Apparel Company Measured Their Ad Incrementality Using Ghost Ads: Using ghost ads and ghost bidding, a U.S based apparel company measured its ad incrementality. Over 21 million unique individuals saw the company’s ads over a 15 month period, for an average of around 35.4 ads per individual. The exposed group had a 1.42% greater chance of visiting the site, for a topline lift of 54.9%, compared to the ghost ad viewers. With this information, the company was able to optimize its advertising campaigns on the flu to have a bigger impact on its audience. Last Word: Cost-per-click, cost-per-site-visit, and other metrics used by marketers don't show any change in advertising behavior. Ghost Ads are the most cost-effective way to analyze digital marketing campaigns' causality.

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Advertiser Campaign Management

How to Advertise Your Etsy Shop: Free & Low-Cost Methods

Article | December 11, 2021

Just like with any small business, advertising an Etsy shop can seem like an overwhelming task. There are so many options, learning marketing strategies on your own is time-consuming, and many advertising methods can get expensive fast. But don’t worry! This article is a complete guide that will break down all of the different ways you can start advertising or promoting your Etsy Shop cheaply or for free. How Does Etsy Marketing Work? Advertising an Etsy shop can be very different from advertising other online businesses. For example, you don’t need to have your own website to run an Etsy shop. This is convenient in many ways, but it also limits your ability to use traditional advertising methods. Ad platforms like Facebook Ads Manager are a great way to get exposure, but without a custom domain, you’re advertising Etsy instead of your shop.

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Spotlight

BFO

BFO believes in empowering each other to do great things. We are an international team of digital marketing experts helping each other, our clients, and our communities grow. Founded in 2009 as a search agency, we've since grown tremendously with our offices expanding from Chicago to London and Singapore. Our clients rely on us to consistently drive results through Paid Media, Organic Search, Analytics and Inbound marketing.

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Advertiser Platforms

AlgoriX & LiveRamp Partner to Accelerate Addressability for the Mobile Advertising Ecosystem

ExchangeWire | October 25, 2023

AlgoriX and LiveRamp have announced a multifaceted partnership to accelerate the cookieless transition for the digital advertising ecosystem. AlgoriX will enable global customers of its demand-side platform (DSP) and supply-side platform (SSP) to transact on LiveRamp’s RampID, as well as incorporate LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution SDK into the AlgoriX SDK to accelerate the mobile app ecosystem’s deployment of Authenticated Traffic Solution. More than 450 of the world’s leading advertisers activate campaigns on RampID through LiveRamp’s data collaboration platform. AlgoriX joins more than 165 DSPs and SSPs that have integrated with LiveRamp’s solutions globally, enabling reaching high-value audiences at scale and delivering personalized experiences across browsers, mobile devices, and CTV. As advertisers look to address signal loss on mobile, authenticated inventory offers a powerful solution that can deliver results for publishers and marketers that often surpass what they were generating with cookies and mobile device IDs, said Frederic Liow, AlgoriX SVP for revenue growth & strategy. LiveRamp has helped lead the market in advancing authenticated identity as a viable alternative to help the ecosystem prepare for a post-signal loss future, and integrating our solutions will provide a powerful boost to our customers and developers. Additionally, AlgoriX will incorporate LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution SDK into the AlgoriX SDK, enhancing the offering for developers looking to accelerate their success in the mobile and in-app advertising space. Leveraging AlgoriX’s SDK, these developers can now quickly leverage and deploy LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution, increasing the addressability of their opted-in app users, and improving monetization of their inventory. “Consumers in APAC are mobile-first, which made it a natural fit to partner with AlgoriX given their history as a leader in the region and in the mobile app space,” said Travis Clinger, SVP, activations and addressability, LiveRamp. “LiveRamp has proven it can drive results for mobile developers, and as the market experiences more signal loss, with these new partnerships there’s no excuse for stakeholders to delay benefitting from the superior results authenticated identity can drive.” About AlgoriX AlgoriX is an independent global media and technology company. Backed by investments from top international venture capitalists, its core team is equipped with years of experience from global leading internet and ad tech companies. Through our team’s expertise, AlgoriX is able to bring to our partner's best-in-class technology solutions and know-how to effectively scale their revenue and deliver results.

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Ad Tech and Martech

OpenX Teams up with Cedara to Become the First Adtech Platform to Deliver a Complete Programmatic Campaign Emissions Solution

Business Wire | October 05, 2023

OpenX Technologies, Inc., one of the world’s leading omnichannel supply-side platforms, today announced a milestone partnership with Cedara, the Carbon Intelligence Platform. With this integration, OpenX becomes the first digital advertising company to offer automated emissions measurement on campaigns, reduced campaign emissions, and a custom carbon offset portfolio solution for remaining campaign emissions via Cedara’s platform. By pairing Cedara’s media emissions reduction and offset capabilities with OpenX’s status as the first Net-Zero adtech company, this partnership leads the industry’s sustainability initiative with best-in-class solutions for measuring and reducing emissions both at a corporate level and in media distribution. This fully integrated solution will enable buyers to: sync organizational emissions data with media buys access highly curated and third-party certified projects achieve transparency and customization into how and what offsets are leveraged through the creation of custom offset portfolios seamlessly onboard and measure emissions from OpenX’s campaigns Cedara provides automated omnichannel emissions measurement and deep business intelligence across both organizational and campaign-level emissions for advertisers and the media supply chain. Paired with OpenX’s comprehensive media activity data, this partnership enables transparent and accurate emissions measurement to deliver a truly sustainable supply path for buyers. We are thrilled to partner with OpenX, as they have a long-term commitment to sustainability and are consistent innovators. Our partnership gives buyers an end-to-end, sustainable programmatic product that they simply can’t get anywhere else, said Eric Shih, COO at Cedara. “With Cedara, we are able to offer an end-to-end solution that enables brands to measure the impact of their digital activity and provides control over and transparency into how and where quality offsets are used while delivering performance across our publisher portfolio,” said Joseph Worswick, VP EMEA and Head of Global Sustainability at OpenX. “In keeping with OpenX’s commitment to our own emissions reduction, we’re excited to see more businesses successfully build sustainability solutions as it shows the demand from digital advertising is growing.” About Cedara Cedara, founded in 2021, is on a mission to help businesses decarbonize and to build a more sustainable future for society. With its end-to-end climate management software platform, Cedara enables organizations of any size, along with their employees, to measure, reduce, offset and report on all carbon emissions. Cedara adopts a high-impact, data-driven approach to develop transformative solutions for enterprises and their partners to accelerate the shift to a climate-friendly economy. To learn more, please visit cedara.io. About OpenX OpenX is a supply-side platform that is a leader in advertising technology, and is helping to create a world where the open web thrives. The company powers advertising on web, mobile, and connected TV formats, enabling marketers to reach their target audience across OpenX’s global network of publishers. OpenX works with more than 130,000 premium publisher domains and receives more than 300 billion ad requests every day. OpenX is a certified CarbonNeutral® company and is verified for having fulfilled their SBTi Net-Zero targets. Visit the company’s website at www.openx.com.

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Ad Networks

Industry Leader Kenny Lau joins Perion as Chief Product Officer of its Advanced Advertiser Solutions

Business Wire | September 25, 2023

Perion Network Ltd. (NASDAQ and TASE: PERI), a global technology company whose synergistic solutions serve all major digital advertising channels - including search, social, display, and video/CTV – announced today the appointment of Kenny Lau as Chief Product Officer of Perion’s Advertiser Solutions. Through his experience in multiple domains of AdTech and large-scale platform development, Lau will expand Perion’s technology moat and ability to drive high-growth, high-margin, high-ROI solutions. Lau has held key roles at many of the industry's most prominent companies, including PubMatic, Criteo, and AdTheorent. In his most recent role as Vice President of Product of Advertiser Solutions at PubMatic, he led a global product development team of over 100 engineers and product managers. Tal Jacobson, Perion’s CEO,said Perion has demonstrated its ability to develop and successfully introduce innovative solutions that consistently outperform the industry. With Kenny’s extensive industry knowledge and experience, we are set to maintain this trend of excellence. He will be instrumental in amplifying our technological innovation and enriching our offerings in categories such as retail media, CTV, and video. “I have been following Perion for a while, and I couldn’t be more excited to join this great team that has proven its ability to deliver innovative solutions to a constantly evolving dynamic industry,” said Kenny Lau. “While the industry grapples with tightened spending and consolidation, Perion continues to outperform. I look forward to driving the expansion of the company’s portfolio of industry-changing products and services, further strengthening Perion’s leadership position across the AdTech ecosystem.” About Perion Network Ltd. Perion is a global multi-channel advertising technology company that delivers synergistic solutions across all major channels of digital advertising – including search advertising, social media, display, video and CTV advertising. These channels converge at Perion’s intelligent HUB (iHUB), which connects the company’s demand and supply assets, providing significant benefits to brands and publishers. For more information, visit our website at www.perion.com.

Read More

Advertiser Platforms

AlgoriX & LiveRamp Partner to Accelerate Addressability for the Mobile Advertising Ecosystem

ExchangeWire | October 25, 2023

AlgoriX and LiveRamp have announced a multifaceted partnership to accelerate the cookieless transition for the digital advertising ecosystem. AlgoriX will enable global customers of its demand-side platform (DSP) and supply-side platform (SSP) to transact on LiveRamp’s RampID, as well as incorporate LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution SDK into the AlgoriX SDK to accelerate the mobile app ecosystem’s deployment of Authenticated Traffic Solution. More than 450 of the world’s leading advertisers activate campaigns on RampID through LiveRamp’s data collaboration platform. AlgoriX joins more than 165 DSPs and SSPs that have integrated with LiveRamp’s solutions globally, enabling reaching high-value audiences at scale and delivering personalized experiences across browsers, mobile devices, and CTV. As advertisers look to address signal loss on mobile, authenticated inventory offers a powerful solution that can deliver results for publishers and marketers that often surpass what they were generating with cookies and mobile device IDs, said Frederic Liow, AlgoriX SVP for revenue growth & strategy. LiveRamp has helped lead the market in advancing authenticated identity as a viable alternative to help the ecosystem prepare for a post-signal loss future, and integrating our solutions will provide a powerful boost to our customers and developers. Additionally, AlgoriX will incorporate LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution SDK into the AlgoriX SDK, enhancing the offering for developers looking to accelerate their success in the mobile and in-app advertising space. Leveraging AlgoriX’s SDK, these developers can now quickly leverage and deploy LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution, increasing the addressability of their opted-in app users, and improving monetization of their inventory. “Consumers in APAC are mobile-first, which made it a natural fit to partner with AlgoriX given their history as a leader in the region and in the mobile app space,” said Travis Clinger, SVP, activations and addressability, LiveRamp. “LiveRamp has proven it can drive results for mobile developers, and as the market experiences more signal loss, with these new partnerships there’s no excuse for stakeholders to delay benefitting from the superior results authenticated identity can drive.” About AlgoriX AlgoriX is an independent global media and technology company. Backed by investments from top international venture capitalists, its core team is equipped with years of experience from global leading internet and ad tech companies. Through our team’s expertise, AlgoriX is able to bring to our partner's best-in-class technology solutions and know-how to effectively scale their revenue and deliver results.

Read More

Ad Tech and Martech

OpenX Teams up with Cedara to Become the First Adtech Platform to Deliver a Complete Programmatic Campaign Emissions Solution

Business Wire | October 05, 2023

OpenX Technologies, Inc., one of the world’s leading omnichannel supply-side platforms, today announced a milestone partnership with Cedara, the Carbon Intelligence Platform. With this integration, OpenX becomes the first digital advertising company to offer automated emissions measurement on campaigns, reduced campaign emissions, and a custom carbon offset portfolio solution for remaining campaign emissions via Cedara’s platform. By pairing Cedara’s media emissions reduction and offset capabilities with OpenX’s status as the first Net-Zero adtech company, this partnership leads the industry’s sustainability initiative with best-in-class solutions for measuring and reducing emissions both at a corporate level and in media distribution. This fully integrated solution will enable buyers to: sync organizational emissions data with media buys access highly curated and third-party certified projects achieve transparency and customization into how and what offsets are leveraged through the creation of custom offset portfolios seamlessly onboard and measure emissions from OpenX’s campaigns Cedara provides automated omnichannel emissions measurement and deep business intelligence across both organizational and campaign-level emissions for advertisers and the media supply chain. Paired with OpenX’s comprehensive media activity data, this partnership enables transparent and accurate emissions measurement to deliver a truly sustainable supply path for buyers. We are thrilled to partner with OpenX, as they have a long-term commitment to sustainability and are consistent innovators. Our partnership gives buyers an end-to-end, sustainable programmatic product that they simply can’t get anywhere else, said Eric Shih, COO at Cedara. “With Cedara, we are able to offer an end-to-end solution that enables brands to measure the impact of their digital activity and provides control over and transparency into how and where quality offsets are used while delivering performance across our publisher portfolio,” said Joseph Worswick, VP EMEA and Head of Global Sustainability at OpenX. “In keeping with OpenX’s commitment to our own emissions reduction, we’re excited to see more businesses successfully build sustainability solutions as it shows the demand from digital advertising is growing.” About Cedara Cedara, founded in 2021, is on a mission to help businesses decarbonize and to build a more sustainable future for society. With its end-to-end climate management software platform, Cedara enables organizations of any size, along with their employees, to measure, reduce, offset and report on all carbon emissions. Cedara adopts a high-impact, data-driven approach to develop transformative solutions for enterprises and their partners to accelerate the shift to a climate-friendly economy. To learn more, please visit cedara.io. About OpenX OpenX is a supply-side platform that is a leader in advertising technology, and is helping to create a world where the open web thrives. The company powers advertising on web, mobile, and connected TV formats, enabling marketers to reach their target audience across OpenX’s global network of publishers. OpenX works with more than 130,000 premium publisher domains and receives more than 300 billion ad requests every day. OpenX is a certified CarbonNeutral® company and is verified for having fulfilled their SBTi Net-Zero targets. Visit the company’s website at www.openx.com.

Read More

Ad Networks

Industry Leader Kenny Lau joins Perion as Chief Product Officer of its Advanced Advertiser Solutions

Business Wire | September 25, 2023

Perion Network Ltd. (NASDAQ and TASE: PERI), a global technology company whose synergistic solutions serve all major digital advertising channels - including search, social, display, and video/CTV – announced today the appointment of Kenny Lau as Chief Product Officer of Perion’s Advertiser Solutions. Through his experience in multiple domains of AdTech and large-scale platform development, Lau will expand Perion’s technology moat and ability to drive high-growth, high-margin, high-ROI solutions. Lau has held key roles at many of the industry's most prominent companies, including PubMatic, Criteo, and AdTheorent. In his most recent role as Vice President of Product of Advertiser Solutions at PubMatic, he led a global product development team of over 100 engineers and product managers. Tal Jacobson, Perion’s CEO,said Perion has demonstrated its ability to develop and successfully introduce innovative solutions that consistently outperform the industry. With Kenny’s extensive industry knowledge and experience, we are set to maintain this trend of excellence. He will be instrumental in amplifying our technological innovation and enriching our offerings in categories such as retail media, CTV, and video. “I have been following Perion for a while, and I couldn’t be more excited to join this great team that has proven its ability to deliver innovative solutions to a constantly evolving dynamic industry,” said Kenny Lau. “While the industry grapples with tightened spending and consolidation, Perion continues to outperform. I look forward to driving the expansion of the company’s portfolio of industry-changing products and services, further strengthening Perion’s leadership position across the AdTech ecosystem.” About Perion Network Ltd. Perion is a global multi-channel advertising technology company that delivers synergistic solutions across all major channels of digital advertising – including search advertising, social media, display, video and CTV advertising. These channels converge at Perion’s intelligent HUB (iHUB), which connects the company’s demand and supply assets, providing significant benefits to brands and publishers. For more information, visit our website at www.perion.com.

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