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Struq’s Andrew Morsy On The Company’s Place In The Eco-System, Its Relationship With Agencies, & Staying Ahead Of Retargeting Commoditisation

Friday, February 24th, 2012

Andrew Morsy is Sales Director at Struq. Here he discusses the Struq personalised targeting solution, the company’s relationship with agencies and how Struq is staying ahead of the comoditisation of the retargeting market.

Agencies are beginning to adopt retargeting now as part of their model. What is Struq’s view on this adopted agency business model?

Retargeting is critical for advertisers as it converts browsers into paying customers, lengthens customer lifetime value and increases revenue per user. Agency adoption helps educate clients about the power of ad personalisation – that in order to persuade users to buy your product or service, it is imperative you deliver a personalised relevant ad to persuade that user. That has fuelled the adoption of Personalized Video and Personalized Pretargeting (advertisers acquiring new users) by advertisers and agencies.

Can companies like Struq really work with agencies? You clearly have client direct relationships in the ecom space? Aren’t you competition for the agencies?

Agencies are experts at what they do – they are aligned to plan and buy media as effectively as possible for advertisers.

Struq’s technology enables advertisers to acquire users at half the cost of any other retargeting provider.

As a result, the majority of Struq’s business is through media agencies as they seek to provide the most efficient means to spend money that results in post-click revenue for their clients.

Does Struq really need to work with agencies? Clearly the client direct relationship has paid serious dividends? Why would Struq need to work with agencies?

Struq powers post-click performance across the marketing funnel for Marketing Directors and Media Buyers alike. Both the Media Buyer and the Marketing Director have the same objective, to persuade users to buy products at the lowest possible cost.

Struq enables media agencies and clients direct to buy Personalized Video and Personalized Display advertising that delivers lucrative post-click revenue.

Retargeting is becoming an increasingly commoditised product – how is Struq differentiating itself from the competition?

Struq works solely with the largest brands in the verticals of ecommerce, retail, finance and travel across 19 markets. All of these brands have tried multiple vendors and continue to work with Struq solely because Struq automates the delivery of a post-click CPA because we understand the value of a user and what makes a user click and buy.

Struq ascertains which users are valuable to an advertiser. We then target the right users to hit an advertiser’s post-click CPA/COS/ROI target with fully personalised creative. Struq then provides unique insight to clients, enabling advertisers to understand which products, creative elements, publishers, etc. drove post-click performance for them (which they then frequently leverage across their other marketing activity).

Struq has applied our core targeting technology across display and video to deliver lucrative post-click performance across the marketing funnel for advertisers.

Is Struq’s technology proprietary and how do you compete against the growing number of DSPs offering dynamic creative solutions – particularly Invite which, according to rumours, will have a dynamic creative component (Teracent) built into its new iteration?

Unlike the majority of the RTB market, Struq has built its own DSP, Bid Optimisation Engine, Recommendation Engine and Dynamic Creative Optimisation Engine. These needed to be proprietary to enable the data to be extensible so that we could extract the value out of data to make user level decisions. Struq determines the display ad content, media placement, targeting criteria and bid price in real time based on data intelligence. The result is that Struq acquires a user at half the cost of any other video, display or retargeting provider.

Struq is looking to position itself as the leading Ad Personalization Company in the market. Can you talk to us in more detail what ad Personalization really is?

Advertising is a communication to persuade users to buy a product or service. Struq is transforming that communication from a generic push communication to a relevant personalised communication.

Personalised Retargeting by Struq showed that by delivering relevant ads to consumers, they were 12 times more likely to click and buy a product or service. Ad personalization breaks the one-size-fits-all paradigm, it is about making each ad both personal and relevant to each user. Ultimately, it leads to greater post-click revenue for advertisers, higher quality of ads for publishers and a much better experience for end users.

Struq is now bringing that level of performance to advertisers across a user’s entire decision making process.

You are rolling new products around video. Can you tell us a more about these new products? Are you simply launching these products in response to what Brainient has starting offering in the market?

Struq’s core purpose is serving personalized, relevant, performance-driven ads to users.

Struq is a single point for advertisers to persuade users at every stage of the buying process across any channel. Struq is able to both identify new prospective customers and convert prospective customers at scale through personalised display and video. Advertisers need to use an integrated offering across channels to gain understanding and insight into what drives customers to buy their products.

We have applied our core targeting technology across these mediums to deliver lucrative post-click performance across the marketing funnel for advertisers.

How have you seen the market evolve over the past 12 months and where do you see it heading in 2012?

The economic climate is bleak for 2012. Advertisers need people to click and buy products through their advertising to justify spending money on marketing in a tough economic climate. Struq’s Personalised Video and Display ads make ads relevant to consumers, which enables advertisers to make on average £20 in post click revenue for every pound spent. Struq’s Personalized products seek to meet the needs of advertisers in a tough economic climate.

Posted in Ad Network, Ad Trading, Agency, Agency Trading Desk, Behavioral Targeting, Demand Side Platform, Marketer, Online Advertising | No Comments »

Euro Round-Up: Publicis And Dentsu Split With Buyback; Google Safari Tracking Muddying The Privacy Debate; And Skype Inventory In The Microsoft Ad Exchange

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

Publicis Buyback Ends Dentsu Partnership

French advertising group Publicis has bought back 18 million of its own shares from Japan’s Dentsu for €644.4m, bringing an end to their nine-year partnership that analysts say has yielded little value.

The companies had been partners since the Japanese agency – the country’s largest marketing services group by revenues – teamed up with Elisabeth Badinter, a member of the founding family and the biggest shareholder in Publicis, to act in concert.

The buy-back strengthens Ms Badinter’s hold over Publicis, the world’s third-largest marketing services group. The daughter of the founder now owns 11 per cent of the shares and 20 per cent of the voting rights.

She will play a key role in appointing a successor to Maurice Lévy, the Publicis chief executive who was due to retire last year but was asked to stay on to see the company through the global economic downturn.

Mr Lévy said the relationship with Dentsu had been “amicable and exemplary” and that he would carry on with the two Tokyo-based joint ventures with the Japanese firm, Beacon Communications and Dentsu Razorfish – in which Publicis owns 66 per cent and 19.35 per cent respectively.

Dentsu said it would book an extraordinary gain of Y2.1bn ($27m) in its consolidated accounts in the financial year to March as a result of the share sale. Its president and chairman will resign from Publicis’ supervisory board.

The ending of the Publicis partnership had been predicted for more than a year after Dentsu sold down a portion of its stake in 2010. Mr Lévy has also stated previously that he needed to preserve funds in case Dentsu decided to sell its stake in Publicis.

Google+ On A Tracking Safari

Google and other advertising companies have been following iPhone and Apple users as they browse the Web, even though Apple’s Safari Web browser is set to block such tracking by default. How have they been able to do it?

By default, Apple’s Safari browser accepts cookies only from sites that a user visits and generally blocks cookies that come from elsewhere. However there are exceptions to this rule, including if you interact with an advertisement or form in certain ways, it’s allowed to set a cookie even if you aren’t technically visiting the site.

Google’s code, which was placed on certain ads that used the company’s DoubleClick ad server, was uncovered by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer, took advantage of this loophole.

The code was part of a Google feature that allows its “+1” button to be embedded in advertisements which users would click to indicate that they liked the ad. However, Google faced a problem: Apple’s Web browser Safari blocks most tracking by default and is the most popular browser on mobile devices.

To put cookies onto Safari, Google’s ads used an “iframe,” an invisible container that allows content from one website to be embedded within another site, such as an ad on a blog. Through this iframe window, Google received data from the user’s browser and was able to tell whether the person was using Safari. If s/he were, Google then inserted an invisible form into the container. The user didn’t see or fill out the form – in fact, there was nothing to fill out. But the Google code submitted it automatically.

The cookies were temporary; the blank one was set to expire in 12 hours, and the cookie for logged-in users was set to expire in 24. Google said the company tried to design the +1 ad system to protect people’s privacy and did not anticipate that it would enable tracking cookies to be placed on user’s computers.

Google’s Rachel Whetstone said the temporary cookie served to create a “temporary communication link between Safari browsers and Google’s servers”. She said the goal was to ensure that information passing between the user’s Safari browser and Google’s servers was anonymous – effectively creating a barrier between a user’s personal information and the web content they browse.

But even the blank cookie could then result in extensive tracking of Safari users. This is because of a technical quirk in Safari that allows websites to easily add more cookies to a user’s computer once the site has installed at least one cookie. Safari allows this so that sites such as the Facebook and Google+ social networks can install cookies in widgets they place around the Web, as long as the user has visited the original site.

An update to the software that underlies Safari has closed the loophole that allows cookies to be set after the automatic submission of invisible forms. Future public versions of Safari could incorporate that update. Paradoxically, the people who handled the proposed change, according to software documents, were two engineers at Google.

Does anyone really care? The WSJ tried to blow the story up but so far the mainstream media hasn’t really piled in. Maybe privacy fatigue has set in or the realisation that privacy is effectively dead anyway. Maybe. On the consumer front there seems to be little damage, but the fall out with regulators could be disastrous. We as an industry are already up-to-our necks in draconian legislation around privacy. This certainly hasn’t helped the cause for self-regulation.

Are Skype Ads Heading For The Microsoft Ad Exchange?

Microsoft Advertising will begin selling Skype advertising on PCs and mobile devices in international markets, including France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, the UK and on PCs in Russia. Advertisements in Skype will first appear in the U.S., the UK and Germany next month, with initial advertisers including Groupon, Universal Pictures and Visa.

Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5bn deal that closed in October 2011. Microsoft Advertising is still working to determine what kind of advertising works best within Skype. It is now testing in-call advertising with several advertisers and getting feedback on user experience.

In a blog post, Skype assured users its plan was to only show ads from just one brand per day in each market where advertising was sold. It also said the ads would not disrupt users’ Skype experience with pop-ups or banners in the middle of calls.

The announcement will also see the roll out of mobile advertising, with sponsored ads appearing at the top of Skype’s home and message screens. Audio-in-call advertising is a new format being tested for roll out in new markets – ads will appear on Skype’s home and message screens during a one-to-one Skype-to-Skype audio call.

Andy Hart, general manager, advertising and online at Microsoft UK, said, “Skype is an exciting addition to the Microsoft Advertising portfolio. From today, our customers will be able to target more people in new ways, delivering innovative digital storytelling at a vast scale. Skype’s platform supports rich, interactive brand ads at the same time as giving advertisers a broad reach: combined with MSN homepage advertising, brands can now reach 18.4m or 43 per cent of the total UK online audience.”

The real question though is whether or not Microsoft will make these Skype ad impressions available through its ad exchange. That’s a lot of inventory for the European market, and would solidify Microsoft’s position as number one brand inventory source in the automated channel across Europe.

Posted in Ad Exchange, Ad Server, Ad Trading, Agency, Behavioral Targeting, CEE, France, Germany, Marketer, Online Advertising, RTB, Scandinavia | No Comments »

Simplifying Display Buying: Why Ad Tech Should Be Listening More To People Like Richard Dance

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

We are publishing another panel excerpt from the recent ATS London event. The panel in question focused on bringing brand budget into the automated channel. The panel was moderated by ExchangeWire editor, Ciaran O’Kane, and speakers included: Nathan Woodman, COO, Adnetik; Richard Dance, Director of Digital Innovation, Blue Hive; Alex Rahaman, CEO at StrikeAd; Andy Ellenthal, CEO, Peer39; and Bruce Journey, DataXu CRO.

It gave Richard Dance the opportunity to challenge some of the widely held views of our – sometimes – “navel-gazing” ad tech community. He provides some interesting commentary from the brand’s perspective, particularly around the complexities of the current display eco-system. He notes that Facebook has made it easy for marketers, and as such continues to suck up a lot of brand budget. Dance works closely with Ford on their digital strategy. He’s exactly the kind of person that should be canvassed by ad tech companies on where display is falling down. If you can’t sit through the entire panel session, you should skip to 11:25 on the video clip – where Dance suggests the simplicity of the Facebook proposition is one of the key reasons why it is attracting brand spend.

Posted in Ad Exchange, Ad Network, Ad Server, Ad Trading, Agency, Agency Trading Desk, Demand Side Platform, Facebook Display, Marketer, Online Advertising, RTB | No Comments »

The PostView: Is Cutting Supply Really The Answer To The Current Malaise In Display Advertising?

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

The PostView is a new column written by senior execs working in the European online advertising industry.

There have been a lot of pieces recently putting forward the argument that reducing the volume of ads on a page could help salvage/preserve the growth of the online display advertising industry. While it would seem the most logical strategy, the issue might actually be more deep-rooted than that.

We exist in a digital world now where the overwhelming volume of ads are directly proportional to the overwhelming volume of content being created. In 2010, Eric Schmidt stated that we create as much information in two days as we have done since the dawn of man through to 2003. Schmidt might have been throwing another baseless fact out to the digieratti, but he was making an interesting point about the current content overload.

We Are Becoming Overwhelmed By Content, Not Ads

The stats coming from the web’s biggest publisher are pointing to a serious content glut. Huffington Post is now publishing over 1,000 stories per day, and Tumblr creates 15 billion impressions per month (source: gigaom).

Not all of these impression-generating machines are monetised with standard advertising, but that’s not the point. They are creating an incredible amount of content that users feel compelled to consume. Like most ExchangeWire readers, I would not consider myself the average consumer or user of the internet. My line of work means I have to be immersed in every new piece of information that is produced from the Ad Tech information channel.

Due to the amount of information we are trying to consume on a daily basis, we are now getting into a habit of just scanning content. And not even scanning pages anymore but literally squarely focused on scanning the actual content. Consumption habits have changed to the extent that we now need sophisticated news aggregators and algo-powered content curation. Feed readers apps, like Pulse, now enable us to literally get snippets of information all day every day.

Advertising Created This Problem

The ad-funded model has meant that publishers were remunerated on the basis of how many impressions and eyeballs they could sell. More eyeballs meant more cash. More content meant more eyeballs and so it continued. All the while, across certain content owners, eCPMs are falling. So we feel inclined to create even more content in the hope it will create another page view, perhaps even adding another ad format for good measure.

As consumers, the problem we have now is an addiction to digital news and information presented by the web (across different devices and screens). This proliferation of content means advertising becomes less effective. We become less receptive to it – to the point where our engagement with individual pieces of content is declining.

Kill The CPM

What would happen if we killed the CPM model and didn’t trade impressions anymore – but traded user sessions?

What if we start placing more emphasis on creating deeper user engagement? Publishers would then focus less on the volume of eyeballs being created or the link-bait worthy content headlines that seems to infect the social media channels. Creating deeper user engagement would place more strategic focus on user understanding and user acquisition – and ultimately place less importance on the one hit wonders from social referrals.

The cost of a user sessions would depend on session length, but would enable marketers to start telling stories, using creative sequencing more intelligently. We might even get advertising back to what it should be about.

This doesn’t mean we have to take a departure from leveraging the innovations within data and technology that are available to all of us. We can still ensure we are engaging with our desired audience. Content overload is not healthy and perhaps even damaging to display advertising’s long-term future.

So to answer the recent question posed by senior industry observers: will cutting supply solve the inherent problems with display? The answer is no. We need to cut content, and look at the fundamentals of how we price display. Only then will publishers and advertisers be able to reap the true benefits.

Posted in Ad Exchange, Ad Network, Ad Trading, Agency, Marketer, Online Advertising, Publisher, RTB, The PostView | No Comments »

Euro Round-Up: The French Get “Serieux” About RTB; mediascale Reports Strong 2011 Growth; Jemm Goes All-In With AppNexus

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Le Trading Media

In an epic twenty-seven pages on the potential of RTB in the French market, IAB France has outlined an impressive overview of the entire market. The report goes into great detail on the emerging data-driven advertising market in France, with explainations of key constituents in the exchange eco-system. It even includes some Q&As with leading ad execs in France, including recent ATS Paris speaker, Arthur Millet, Directeur Commercial at Amaury Medias Digital. Further insight on the growth of automated buying and RTB is provided by industry heavyweights like Sébastien Robin, Directeur Des OpérationS, at AFFIPERF. You can download the IAB report on the growth of RTB in France here.

mediascale Reports Strong 2011 Growth

mediascale, one of Germany’s leading independent digital agencies, reported a gross income of €5.6m last year – an increase of 17 per cent compared to 2010. The billings for the same period rose 22 per cent from €59m to €72m.

mediascale uses its own cross-platform targeting tool NE.R.O, together with Plan.Net, to develop solutions for clients and agency partners. Julian Simon, managing director of mediascale, is bullish on future growth for mediascale:

Right now we are running about 35 per cent of all campaigns on NE.R.O. By the end of 2012, we want to increase that by 40 per cent or more. This targeting will aid not only in direct sales support but also image and brand communications. It’s more about planning for consumer-relevant criteria such as purchase decision stages, interests and attitudes of the user. There is great potential in targeting, especially for content and creative solutions. The system combines information from the user profile with the matching design, text, product or price for the dynamic creation of promotional materials. Thus, advertising effectiveness and efficiency of the campaigns increase significantly.

The company also opened a new office in Vienna last year to service the fast-growing Austrian market.

Jemm Goes All-In With AppNexus

Jemm Group has chosen AppNexus as its exclusive ad technology platform, the company publicly announced this week.

Julia Smith, Global Communications Director at Jemm, is looking ahead:

By leveraging AppNexus’ technology platform, Jemm is able to deliver a strong proposition to buyers and sellers. We have moved away from a traditional ad network model and are now focused on working with other like-minded players in order to deliver a compelling offer for the publisher market.

Since migrating to the AppNexus platform, Jemm has seen click-through rates dramatically increase. In the first month alone, CTR tripled across campaigns delivered via the AppNexus platform. According to AppNexus’ proprietary reporting, the European market for RTB is growing rapidly, with an average of 25 billion advertising impressions served each month during Q4 2011 via the AppNexus platform. Over the last year the number of global impressions served via the AppNexus platform has increased by 859 per cent.

Posted in Ad Exchange, Ad Network, Ad Server, Ad Trading, Ad Verification, Ad Visibility, Agency, Agency Trading Desk, Analytics, Attribution, Behavioral Targeting, Data Exchange, Data Strategy, Demand Side Network, Demand Side Platform, France, Germany, Marketer, Online Advertising, RTB | No Comments »

The PostView: The Last Hurrah For The Horizontal DR Ad Network

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

The PostView is a new coulmn written by senior execs working in the European online advertising industry.

They used to be the kings and queens of media arbitrage. The ad tech watering holes of Goodge street and Dusseldorf would only mention their names in hushed tones. Nobody could beat them on margins. Nobody. Not even Google. But times have changed. The business model of the typical horizontal DR ad network is in real trouble – and it is going to have to battle hard for survival in a landscape that’s been radically altered by the emergence of automated ad trading and the arrival of buy-side/sell-side technology.

About twelve months ago, ExchangeWire published a piece on the future of the ad net model, entitled “The Life And Death Of The Ad Network”. It still remains to this day one of the more controversial posts on ExchangeWire. The post detailed why existing ad net models were doomed, and why they would have to pivot in order to survive. It would seem much of what was predicated has already come to pass. But how did we get here, and what now for the DR ad net market?

Those Pesky DSPs/ATDs Stole My Business

It was inevitable that some bright spark in New York would come up with a way of disintermediating the ad networks. For years the ad nets acted as the go-to aggregation and optimisation layer for all of the top agencies. They delivered on that CPA target but made sure it was optimised at the lowest CPM possible. The ad network became very big. Large amounts of VC money was thrown at the new ad “middle man”. Some were acquired. Some IPO’d. And most built very healthy businesses. ExchangeWire estimated that around £260 million of display spend in the UK was going through the ad net channel. There was a slight flaw in their lucrative model though: it was almost totally reliant on the agencies. Getting on the agency media plan was the nexus of their business. So when the agencies starting using DSPs to aggregate and optimise, it was always going to be difficult for ad nets to hold on to that kind of margin in the market.

No… The Automated Channel Is Killing My Business

For DSPs to work they needed dynamic supply. The Yield Optimizers (later to pivot to SSPs) – who were essentially managing the yield of unsold inventory on behalf of publishers – were about to offer the agencies the supply they needed to compete with the ad networks. It was at the time that the concept of RTB appeared. Buying at the impression-level, offered the agencies the type of transparency their clients craved – kicking traditional media-buying on its proverbial arse. While RTB has had its teething problems, its growth in the market has been phenomenal.

Despite the obvious protestations form current incumbents, it’s hard to deny we are now in the automated age. Automated trading – whether at the impression level or at a pre-agreed price with agency trading desk/ marketers – is the way publishers are going to trade their unsold – and possibly premium – inventory. That is a fact. Where this leaves the traditional DR ad net is open to debate. But anybody can see that its traditional brokering role in the market is no longer required by publisher or agency. Ad nets have been forced to buy inventory from same dynamic sources. All well and good. But where’s the differentiator from the agency trading desks.

The Inevitable Ad Tech Pivot

Ad nets are not clueless. They saw this coming and the pivots have been coming thick and fast. The most notable has been Specific Media. Cursed by countless agency execs over the years for the eye-watering margins they were making in the European display market, Specific was clearly going to be the biggest casualty of the move to automated buying – especially when you consider they have no prop inventory and data as well as an ageing ad server stack.

While Specific has been ridiculed for its celebrity hookup with Justin Timberlake on the MySpace acquisition, I think it could end up being quite an astute move. MySpace has 30-40 million uniques globally. If Specific succeeds in turning this into a a proper distribution channel, and can execute on its plan to produce ad-funded video content, it could move the company away from DR and into the lucrative brand budget. I have to admit I like it. It doesn’t seem as flimsy as its under-threat DR model. With brands looking to produce their own content and requiring go-to distribution platforms, Specific could easily leapfrog agencies to service advertisers direct.

The same logic could be applied to the thinking behind AOL’s recent GoViral acquisition, and why its abandoning Ad.com. Is abandoning a tad extreme in the case of AOL? Arguably. But then if you let all your talented people move to competitors then I think you are entitled to be accused of neglect.

Pivot Number Two… Moving Closer To Publisher And Agency

It’s interesting to see how many middle men DR networks have moved either closer to the agency or publisher. On the publisher side you now have some ad nets claiming to have SSP capabilities. While white-labelling the AppNexus platform for the purpose of managing publisher inventory in the real-time channel would seem like a smart move, it is a tough market. Lots of well-funded players play in the space and given the small margins you have to have serious scale to make this work. And on the demand-side you have ad nets working closer with just the advertiser. Smart. Until you realise you are competing directly with the agency trading desk. Incidentally, whatever happened to going direct to the client? The agency relationship could work of course if all re-targeting was in-housed and the ad nets on the plan were left to prospect…

Enter The Direct Response Prospectors (DRP)

While it’s probably the last bloody thing we need in this industry, this TLA will be popping up with some regularity over the coming twelve months. It is fact that re-targeting will be internalised by the agency. Anybody moaning about the situation needs to go and get their own clients. If you don’t like it, then you need to go client direct. If you don’t want play the agency’s game, go client direct. It’s that simple. As long as the agency controls the relationship you must play by their rules. And most DR networks will be forced into a new prospecting rule. Now it will be interesting to see how these ad nets survive without the re-targeting pixel. Is prospecting really for them? I can only count two or three pure prospecting networks doing this at the minute, MediaIQ and CPX spring to mind. But then bigger players, like Tribal and Unanimis, could also pivot. There might even be a big opportunity for some pure play CPA affiliates to capture DR budget too.

Whatever happens next, the DR landscape in Europe has utterly changed. Things will never be the same. So lets bid a last hurrah to the traditional DR network. Long live the arb!

Posted in Ad Exchange, Ad Network, Ad Server, Ad Trading, Demand Side Platform, Marketer, Online Advertising, Publisher, RTB, The PostView, Yield Optimisation | No Comments »