LUMA Display Ad Tech Landscape

A slideshare presentation of Terence Kawaja's famous tech landscape chart.

LUMA Display Ad Tech Landscape 2011-03-07

Being new to the online marketing game, this slide and it's categories didn't mean that much to me. So I went to the trouble of trying to define some of the categories used, a sort of glossary for the landscape. Hope it helps you! (apologies for anything incorrect and improvements are welcome)

advertising agency
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client's products or services. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its clients

ad server
Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on web sites. Ad serving technology companies provide software to web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads that will make the website or advertiser most money, and monitor progress of different advertising campaigns.

retargeting
Behavioral retargeting (also known as behavioral remarketing, or simply, retargeting) is a form of online targeted advertising by which online advertising is delivered to consumers based on previous Internet actions that did not in the past result in a conversion (in other words, the actions intended by the site owner, which typically include subscribing to an email list, registering for membership with a website, and/or making a purchase).

DEMAND SIDE PLATFORMS (DSP)
A demand side platform (DSP) is a system that allows digital advertisers to manage multiple ad exchange and data exchange accounts through one interface. Real time bidding for display online ads takes place within the ad exchanges, and by utilizing a DSP, marketers can manage their bids for the banners and the pricing for the data that they are layering on to target their audiences.
These are tools for media buyers: planning agencies, trading desks, creative optimization, data optimization, analytics and ad serving
Sometimes a DSP platform is white label and resold to others, for example Media buying desks.

creative optimization
dynamic creative production to enable real-time 1:1 personalized marketing. Automatically change background color, headline, steep discount, call-to-action, etc… for each targeted segment.

verification
A system that ensures every ad impression is a quality impression, every impression is compliant, and every ad was served and displayed exactly as intended.

media planning and (conversion) attribution
Media planning is generally the task of a media agency and entails finding the most appropriate media products for a client's brand or product. The job of media planning involves several areas of expertise that the media planner uses to determine what the best combination of media is to achieve the given marketing campaign objectives.

conversion attribution tracks all marketing interactions with users. To understand how users are engaging your company via advertising channels and how those channels work together to further your goals. In essence, you can begin to discover the proper Digital Media Mix that is required to make the most of your campaign budgets

measurement and analytics
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage
Off-site web analytics refers to web measurement and analysis regardless of whether you own or maintain a website. It includes the measurement of a website's potential audience (opportunity), share of voice (visibility), and buzz (comments) that is happening on the Internet as a whole.
On-site web analytics measure a visitor's journey once on your website. This includes its drivers and conversions; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase. On-site web analytics measures the performance of your website in a commercial context. This data is typically compared against key performance indicators for performance, and used to improve a web site or marketing campaign's audience response.

ad exchanges
Ad exchanges are technology platforms that facilitate the bidded buying and selling of online media advertising inventory from multiple ad networks

DATA MANAGEMENT PLATFORM (DMP) and data aggregators
These tools apply to both publishers and buyers — data suppliers, data exchanges, data aggregators and tools to manage data
Segments help marketers reach highly qualified consumers based on specific interests and intent. Collecting targeting data (behaviors, demographic, psychographic, etc.), qualifying that data, and aggregating into actionable segments to bring audience targeting to a new level.

Data suppliers
Tools to manage data, analyze it, enrich it, build up customer profiles. Also providers that collect and resell customer data

Media buying desks
Company that help advertisers buy the right media for the right price to maximize conversion. More and more these are moving towards DSPs, or going out of business.

Ad networks
An online advertising network or ad network is a company that connects advertisers to web sites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is aggregation of ad space supply from publishers and matching it with advertiser demand
1.Vertical Networks: They represent the publications in their portfolio, with full transparency for the advertiser about where their ads will run. They typically promote high quality traffic at market prices and are heavily used by brand marketers. The economic model is generally revenue share. Vertical Networks offer ROS (Run-Of-Site) advertising across specific Channels (example: Auto or Travel) or they offer site-wise advertising options, in which case they operate in a similar fashion to Publisher Representation firms.
2.Blind Networks (Horizontal): These companies offer good pricing to direct marketers in exchange for those marketers relinquishing control over where their ads will run, though some networks offer a "site opt out" method. The network usually runs campaigns as RON or Run-Of-Network. Blind networks achieve their low pricing through large bulk buys of typically remnant inventory combined with conversion optimization and ad targeting technology.

Advertising Management Platform (AMP) / Targeted Networks
Sometimes called “next generation” or “2.0” ad networks, these focus on specific targeting technologies such as behavioral or contextual. Targeted networks specialize in using consumer clickstream data to enhance the value of the inventory they purchase.[1] further specialized targeted networks include social graph technologies which attempt to enhance the value of inventory using connections in social networks.
Advertising management and delivery software that allows publishers to sell, deliver, report on and bill advertising inventory.

Performance (based)
No cure no pay. Affiliate marketing.

Mobile
Platforms for mobile advertisements.

Ad ops / Infrastructure
Ad Operations (aka "online ad operations", "online advertising operations", "online ad ops", "ad ops", and "ops" in the trade) refers to processes and systems that support the sale and delivery of online advertising. More specifically this is the workflow processes and software systems that are used to sell, input, serve, target and report on the performance of online ads.

Yield optimization
Yield management is the process of understanding, anticipating and influencing consumer behavior in order to maximize yield or profits from publishers ad inventory.

SUPPLY SIDE PLATFORMS(SSP) (not mentioned in slide)
These are tools for publishers: ad servers and optimization tools as well as inventory tools for both yield optimization and ad networks;

Book review: Switch, a great book about change.

Change is hard. Why? Because people resist change. Well this book is the answer. It provides a simple framework for achieving change, a recipe for change if you will.

There are basically three main parts the book focuses on: the rational mind, the emotional side, and the environment around us. For each part, three key criteria are defined that need to be dealt with to achieve change successfully.

Luckily, it's not all theory or psycho babble. The book is filled with great motivational examples of real life change, each illustrating one or more key criteria at work. This makes teh book a joy to read.

All in all, it's a must read for anybody interested in change, for example anybody in a leadership or management role within an organization.

Secrets of online marketing: cookie syncing, the real world

This is a continuation of my previous blog post on cookie syncing, this time a real world example of cookie syncing as promised.

The actors:

Bluekai is a real world data collector. Very basically stated, MediaMath collects "users" who are planning to travel soon.

Mediamath is a (real time) trading platform, which allows advertisers to bid and buy advertisement space (banners) in real time.

Kayak is a travel site, where you can for example search for a flight from Amsterdam to London.

Now Bluekai and Mediamath have partnered to enable advertisers to target people about to travel. So, for example, if I were an advertiser for car rentals in Berlin, then I could use the services of MediaMath to show a banner to anybody that was interested in flying to Berlinin the coming two weeks.

And of course, Kayak.com has partnered with Bluekai to allow Bluekai to collect users who are about to travel and sell them off to advertisers.

And so the scene is set.

Under the hood:

Let's take a look at Kayak.com and what happens when you search for a flight from Londong to Berlin in the coming week. The goings on are a bit murky and mixed up but basically, a cookie sync is occuring. By the way, you can check all of what I list below for yourself using only your browser (for example Firefox with the firebug extension).

First of all when viewing the page with results for flights to Berlin, underwater the following pixel is making a call (unbeknownst to you):

http://pixel.mathtag.com/event/js?mt_id=10355&v1=28501&v2=9109&v3=&s1=XtDALg-AAABLlPip5c-45-fR5SVw&s2=6-Z3qLeFEKCCRzisN3PWrE&s3=London,%20United%20Kingdom&s4=Berlin,%20Germany&s5=20110309&s6=20110312&s7=,United%20Kingdom&s8=,Germany&s9=LON&s10=BER

Mathtag.com belongs to MediaMath and this pixel is actually a pixel "container" in that this one call triggers a whole lot of otheer pixels to be dynamically loaded onto the page:

http://ad.yieldmanager.com/pixel?id=729659&id=729660&
id=729661&id=268681&id=86164&t=&id=791551&id=791552&
id=791555&id=791556&id=791557&id=791558&id=791559&
id=1072039&id=1072040&t=2

http://pixel.mathtag.com/event/img?mt_id=101067&mt_adid=100224&v1=28501&v2=9109=&v3=&s1=XtDALg-AAABLlPip5c-45-fR5SVw&s2=6-Z3qLeFEKCCRzisN3PWrE&s3=London,%20United%20Kingdom&s4=Berlin,%20Germany&s5=20110309&s6=20110312&s7=,United%20Kingdom&s8=,Germany&s9=LON&s10=BER

http://designbloxlive.com/retargetTracking2.php?cid=125_378&passcode=LON::BER

http://pixel.mathtag.com/event/img?mt_id=101261&mt_adid=100224&v1=28501&v2=9109=&v3=&s1=XtDALg-AAABLlPip5c-45-fR5SVw&s2=6-Z3qLeFEKCCRzisN3PWrE&s3=London,%20United%20Kingdom&s4=Berlin,%20Germany&s5=20110309&s6=20110312&s7=,United%20Kingdom&s8=,Germany&s9=LON&s10=BER

http://action.mathtag.com/mm//KAYA//mrt?nm=FliSerR&v1=28501&v2=9109=&v3=&s1=XtDALg-AAABLlPip5c-45-fR5SVw&s2=6-Z3qLeFEKCCRzisN3PWrE&s3=London,%20United%20Kingdom&s4=Berlin,%20Germany&s5=20110309&s6=20110312&s7=,United%20Kingdom&s8=,Germany&s9=LON

http://bs.serving-sys.com/BurstingPipe/ActivityServer.bs?cn=as&ActivityID=90459&Value=&OrderID=&ProductID=6-Z3qLeFEKCCRzisN3PWrE&ProductInfo=XtDALg-AAABLlPip5c-45-fR5SVw&ns=1

http://px.admonkey.dapper.net/PixelMonkey?adId=kayakhotels&format=image&useReferrer=1&origin_city=London,%20United%20Kingdom&origin_state=,United%20Kingdom&dest_city=Berlin,%20Germany&dest_state=,Germany

http://tags.bluekai.com/site/1675

Ok, so one pixel triggers an avalanche of other pixels! But for the course of this blog, we'll focus on only the last pixel namely:

http://tags.bluekai.com/site/1675

This is a cookie sync call! Here we have MediaMath passing along the id it has stored in a cookie on your pc (1675) along to Bluekai so that Bluekai can now store the MediaMath id alongs with it's own id. This allows BlueKai to sell all of it's profile data (you are planning to fly to Berlin) to any advertiser (in this case via MediaMath).

Note that BlueKai has it's own pixel call (multiple actually) to place cookies on your browser with Bluekai ids. This allows BlueKai to sell your profile data to other parties besides only MediaMath of course. An example of such a pixel call is:

http://tags.bluekai.com/site/83?ret=html&phint=Product%3Dflight&phint=Class%3De&phint=DepartDate%3DMon%20Mar%2021%2000%3A00%3A00%20EDT%202011&phint=DepartureCity%3DLHR&phint=Destination%3DBER&phint=__bk_t%3DKAYAK%20Search%20Results&limit=10&r=301914

It should also be noted that although these parties are building up a profile about "you", they are not storing any information of direct personal information. Basically they are lumping you together into a category (with an id) that indicates you are interested in flying to Berlin. So in a sense it is "anonymous" although the cookie with the id is still on your pc (not so anonymous).

Secrets of online marketing: cookie syncing

This blog takes a peak into the world of cookie syncing, sometimes also referred to as cookie matching. For those of you who think I'm referring to chocolate chip cookies here, I'm not. Cookies are small bits of information that your browser stores on your computer at the request of the sites that you visit. This allows these sites to recognise you when you come back a second time, allowing them to auto log you in for example. But that's not all cookies are used for. Cookies are what make the online marketing world go round. Cookies are the cash cow for internet banners. Without cookies, the "free" internet would probably rapidly become a lot less "free".

Why? Well cookies allow sites to keep track of you and your interests, and to remember what you have or have not done/seen. This allows sites to show you advertisements (banners) that are (hopefully) of more interest to you than a randomly select ad, thereby increasing the chances that you will click on the advertisement and end up actually buying something (and that's what it's all about after all).

You can check which cookies are being placed by which site using your browser setting/options/tools/etc and you can actually block cookies, thereby disabling your behaviour to be tracked and your ads to be more targeted. If you make the effort to see what cookies are being placed by whom you might be surprised/shocked. It's not uncommon for a highly visited commercial site to place over 30+ cookies for one page visit.

Why so many? Well, the site is not the only one placing cookies, there are plenty of online marketing companies hitch hiking along for the ride. These are cookies for "sites" you are not even visiting, and it is happening without you knowing about it (unless you have configured your cookies settings). Underwater this is achieved by what are called pixels, small pieces of html code that you do not visibly see on the site, but which underwater cause web requests to be made to servers of other companies, thereby allowing them to place cookies on your pc.

Why are these other companies hitching along? Well some (ad servers) are keeping track of the advertisements shown and/or clicked (see my earlier blogs on ad impressions and banner clicks). But others, let's call them data collectors, are tracking you to build up a profile of which sites you visit. So for example, if you visit a Toyota forum on a car site, and then visit a travel site to check out flight prices from Amsterdam to Rome, then a data collecting company will store that 1) you are interested in cars, 2) probably own a toyota, 3) are interested in flying, 4) probably want to fly from Amsterdam to London soon (and probably even more info).

How can they do this? Well they have deals with the car site and the travel site, ensuring that these sites will place data collection cookies on your pc, allowing the data collector to recognise you across different sites and link your interests together into a profile of "you". So these data collectors are like spiders that have spun a web across multiple sites in the internet, and any time you visit on of "their" sites you send a tiny trembling down the web. What's in it for the sites? Well they get money for allowing the data collector to collect this information.

But how do the data collectors make money to pay for all this? Well, this kind of information about you is worth it's (virtual) weight in gold. To whom? The companies advertising on the internet of course. For someone who has a car rental company in Rome offering Toyotas, you are now a prime target. After all, if you are indeed flying to Rome and drive a Toyota, chances are that you might want to rent a Toyota in Rome again. Or maybe you hadn't thought about it much, but if you sudddenly saw a banner pop up on a site offering you a great rental rate on a Toyota in Rome, it might not seem such a bad idea. Bingo!

Ok, so what's this cookie syncing? Well, there are some technical hurdles to be leapt when it comes to "sharing" or selling the profile data stored in the cookies on your pc. Cookies are set up that only the "owner" of the cookie can actually read the information stored in them. This (believe it or not) was thought up to protect your privacy. This means, for example that a data collector can place a cookie on your pc, but that the advertiser cannot read it.

So how does an advertiser know what your profile is if he cannot read the data collector cookie containing it? The answer is he can't. But what he can do is cookie sync. The concept is quite simple, here's how it works.

The goal of cookie syncing is that a common "id" describing you is shared between the data collector and the advertiser. This allows both parties to talk about you using this common id and thus for the data collector to sell your profile information to the advertiser.

One way this common id is achieved is for example as follows. The advertiser has a pixel on a site which you visit. The pixel places an underwater request to the server of the advertiser (ad server) allowing him to place a cookie with id1 on your pc. The ad server now redirects this request (302) to the data collector server (data server), passing along id1 as a value in the url. The data server now places a cookie on your pc with it's own id2, and also stores the mapping (id1, id2).

Voila! At this point, the data collector now knows both ids and id1 can be used as the shared id to communicate with the advertiser about your interests. The data collector can sell all the profile information it has for you (id2) to the adverstiser as belonging to id1.

Another alternative is the other way round, that the ad server learns both ids instead of the data server. But a symetrical option is also possible, in which both servers learn the mapping of the ids involved. In this case, after the first redirect with the first id, a second redirect follows with the second id being passed along. Anyway, which ever variant is used, the end game is that there is one id known by all that can be used to exchange the profile information and target you with more relevant ads.

A bit confused? In a subsequent blog entry, I will try to work out a real life example of the above to illustrate.

Secrets of online marketing: ad click

If you click refresh a couple of times on http://auto.nl.msn.com/ you are bound to see the Ditzo car insurance ad. This blog entry attempts to detail what happens when you click on this advertisement banner.

The short answer is, of course, you land on the Ditzo site, on the car insurance request page. The long answer is a bit more detailled because under the hood alot is going on, and all of it in the blink of an eye. This blog entry will try to give some insight into all of the stuff that is happening, and can be seen as an continuation of a previous blog entry on ad impressions.

First off, the Ditzo ad banner is made in flash and is not a static image. In essence, a flash banner is just like a mini software program and thus when you click on the banner "anything" could happen. However, there are online marketing industry standards for flash banners so the "anything" is somewhat limited. Why these standards? Well the reason is that multiple parties and software solutions need to work together in order to show the flash banner, and the only way to achieve this is to standardize (see previous entry on ad impressions). This allows Ditzo to make just one banner and still have it display on any number of different sites, each site potentially using diffferent software to display banners with.

If you look at the source code of the banner ad page in your browser you should be able to find the flash banner which looks like:


<embed wmode="transparent" flashvars="id_part=3525&amp;sitedom=bluemango.solution.weborama.fr&amp;lien=47031&amp;site=297163&amp;id_unique=1297970156_1297970157873&amp;target=_blank&amp;crea=4332&amp;
clicktag=http%3A//clk.atdmt.com/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1/01/%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A//bluemango.solution.weborama.fr/fcgi-bin/performance.fcgi%3FID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&amp;clicktag1=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag1%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&amp;clicktag2=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag2%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&amp;clicktag3=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag3%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&amp;clicktag4=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag4%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&amp;clicktag5=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag5%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif" src="http://elstatic.weborama.fr/adperf/297163/3132/201101/19151118_300-250resdi110118form9v101.swf" swliveconnect="TRUE" width="300" height="250" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" quality="high" allowscriptaccess="always">


Ok, so this is alot of code, but most of it is the standard way to show flash in a web browser. The interesting part for our purposes is the clicktag parameter (I used url decode here to show it in more readable form):


clicktag=http://clk.atdmt.com/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;wi.300;hi.250;ai.36901670.186089969;ct.1/01/?href=http://bluemango.solution.weborama.fr/fcgi-bin/performance.fcgi?ID=297163&amp;A=1&amp;L=47031&amp;C=3132&amp;P=3525&amp;CREA=4332&amp;T=E&amp;URL=https://www.ditzo.nl/nl/Auto/Premie/BrowseCar.htm?utm_source=3525&amp;utm_campaign=3525&amp;utm_medium=BAC&amp;utm_content=_backupgif


All flash banners have a clicktag parameter. It is a standardized parameter that determines the site url to which your browser will be redirected if you click on the banner. Why is this "click url" set via a parameter and not directly in the flash itself? Well the reason is that other parties can tweak the click url to suit their own purposes. To see why this is important let's break down the large clicktag above.

When you click the banner you initially go to the url (first part of the cliktag):


http://clk.atdmt.com/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;wi.300;hi.250;ai.36901670.186089969;ct.1/01/


This an url of Atlas, the Microsoft ad server which msn.com uses. However, you will never see this page. Why? Because this url will simply reply with a redirect (302) telling your browser to go to the following url instead:


http://bluemango.solution.weborama.fr/fcgi-bin/performance.fcgi


Note that this is the href parameter (?href=) of the clicktag above. Now this url belongs to Weborama, the add server that Ditzo uses for it's banners. But again, you will never see this page because your browser is immediately redirected (302) to the following url:


https://www.ditzo.nl/nl/Auto/Premie/BrowseCar.htm


And this is the Ditzo page, finally!

Note that this is the URL parameter contained in the href parameter of the original clicktag.

So basically an url within a url within a url. This raises two questions: 1) why? and 2) how do the different parties achieve this redirecting?

Well to answer the second question first: this is the reason that the clicktag is standardized for flash banners. All the parties know that the clicktag contains the url for when the banner is clicked and this allows them to add their own url to the front of the clicktag, thus placing themselves in the click path.

So that leaves question 1) Why? Doesn't this all seem a tad complex just to show a banner? Well it's all about the ad servers and how they make money. Alot of advertisement is based on cpc or cost per click, which means that Ditzo pays msn.com not for displaying the ad banner, but only for each time the banner is clicked. This means that msn.com, or actually Atlas, needs to keep track of how many times the ad is clicked and it does this by making sure that when you click, you pay their site a quick, underwater visit.

So that explains the first wrapper url, now for the second one. Well msn.com may claim that the ad has been clicked, but are they saying the truth? Besides, Ditzo is paying Weborama to serve the ads, not Atlas (msn.com). So in order for Weborama to also track the click, you pay them a quick, underwater visit as well. Now both ad servers have measured the click, and thus Ditzo can pay Weborama, and Weborama can pay Atlas, and Atlas can pay msn.com, and everybody is happy.

But wait, there is more

But that's not all that's going on. Each ad server is also placing a cookie on your pc (browser). This cookie stores the fact that you clicked the ad. Why is this important? Well, it's all about retargeting and profiling. Storing the fact that you clicked the Ditzo ad on the msn.com site can be used by the ad servers to show you other car ads or insurances next time you visit msn.com, or a totally different site for which they happen to serve ads. The cookie can thus be used to (re)target the ads you are being shown, thus increasing the likelihood that you might click on them and thus make money for everybody involved.

The secrets of online marketing: Ad Impressions

So go to http://auto.nl.msn.com/ and refresh a couple of times, you're bound to see the Ditzo auto insurance banner (or ad) at least once. This, in online marketing terms, is called an impression (ie you have been shown the ad). No big deal you might say, there are plenty of sites with banners, I see them all the time, so what?

Well the interesting stuff is what happens under the hood so to speak, cause there's alot going on, and all of it in the blink of an eye. In this blog entry I'll try to give you a peek at all of the stuff that's going on to show you the ad. Note: all of this stuff you can check for yourself just by poking around a bit in the html source of the web page, your browser, and with the help of some feeware tools.

First of all, the banner is shown in an iframe, or in other words, the banner is a "seperate" page loaded from a different server than msn.com but shown as part of the page you are viewing. The relevant html code (see the page source in your browser) is:

<iframe src="http://view.atdmt.com/NL1/iview/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;;wi.300;hi.250/01?click=" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" allowtransparency="true" width="300" height="250">
&lt;script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"&gt;
document.write('&lt;a href="http://clk.atdmt.com/NL1/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;;wi.300;hi.250/01/" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img src="http://view.atdmt.com/NL1/view/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;;wi.300;hi.250/01/"/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;');
&lt;/script&gt;</iframe>

Don't be confused, this is simply an iframe which loads it's content from the following source (see the "src" parameter in the code above):

http://view.atdmt.com/NL1/iview/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;;wi.300;hi.250/01?click=

Now the site msn.com belongs to Microsoft and uses Microsoft Advertising to show it's banners. Microsoft advertising use Atlas as it's server to load banners from (a so called ad server). Just typing in http://admt.com will take you the site of Atlas Solutions. So the iframe is simply loading it's content from the Microsoft ad server.

So far so good. Now you might think that the banner (which is flash incidentally, not a static image) would simply be loaded directly from the Microsoft ad server. However, this is not the case. In fact the content that is loaded into the iframe is the following javascript:


<iframe width="300" height="250" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" SRC="http://bluemango.solution.weborama.fr/fcgi-bin/adserv.fcgi?tag=47031&f=9&h=I&ef=1&clicktag=http://clk.atdmt.com/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;wi.300;hi.250;ai.36901670.186089969;ct.1/01/?href=&rnd=853776281"></iframe>


So a second iframe is loaded into the first iframe! And this time content of the second iframe is loaded from the source (again the src parameter):


http://bluemango.solution.weborama.fr/fcgi-bin/adserv.fcgi?tag=47031&f=9&h=I&ef=1&clicktag=http://clk.atdmt.com/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct;wi.300;hi.250;ai.36901670.186089969;ct.1/01/?href=&rnd=853776281


Now Weborama is another ad server (a competitor of Atlas if you will). So why is there another ad server involved? Well the reasons are quite simple. Msn.com chooses to work with Atlas, but the company advertising (Ditzo car insurance in this case) chooses to work with a different ad server, Weborama. Why? Well one reason is that for msn.com it is easy to have to work with only one ad server instead of many, and the same holds for Ditzo. It is easier for Ditzo to upload and manage all of it's banners on one server as opposed to many. Of course this does require both ad severs to work together, and that is exactly what they do with this double iframe construction. But that's not the only reason, money is involved here. Ads are often shown on a cpm or cost per mille basis. This means that Ditzo pays money to show the ad one thousand times (whether the banner is clicked or not). This means that all ad servers involved need to be able to track and verify that the ad has indeed been shown. Having all the ad servers involved in showing the banner ensures they all know it was shown and can thus keep track of the cpm costs.

To continue with the second iframe (of Weborama): the content loaded into this iframe is a lot of javascript which I'm not going to bother you with but the upshot of the script once run is that the following flash banner is loaded into the second iframe:


<embed wmode="transparent" flashvars="id_part=3525&amp;sitedom=bluemango.solution.weborama.fr&amp;lien=47031&amp;site=297163&amp;id_unique=1297970156_1297970157873&amp;target=_blank&amp;crea=4332&amp;clicktag=http%3A//clk.atdmt.com/go/msnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1/direct%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1/01/%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A//bluemango.solution.weborama.fr/fcgi-bin/performance.fcgi%3FID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&amp;clicktag1=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag1%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&amp;clicktag2=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag2%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&amp;clicktag3=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag3%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&amp;clicktag4=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag4%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif&amp;clicktag5=http%3A%2F%2Fclk.atdmt.com%2Fgo%2Fmsnnkmnl001300x250Xnldhpr0000018nl1%2Fdirect%3Bwi.300%3Bhi.250%3Bai.36901670.186089969%3Bct.1%2F01%2F%3Fhref%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fbluemango.solution.weborama.fr%2Ffcgi-bin%2Fperformance.fcgi%3FZ%3Dclicktag5%26ID%3D297163%26A%3D1%26L%3D47031%26C%3D3132%26P%3D3525%26CREA%3D4332%26T%3DE%26URL%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ditzo.nl%252Fnl%252FAuto%252FPremie%252FBrowseCar.htm%253Futm_source%253D3525%2526utm_campaign%253D3525%2526utm_medium%253DBAC%2526utm_content%253D_backupgif" src="http://elstatic.weborama.fr/adperf/297163/3132/201101/19151118_300-250resdi110118form9v101.swf" swliveconnect="TRUE" width="300" height="250" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" quality="high" allowscriptaccess="always">


Ok, this is alot of code, most of it standard html for embedding flash on a page, but the important part is:


http://elstatic.weborama.fr/adperf/297163/3132/201101/19151118_300-250resdi110118form9v101.swf


This, finally, is the Ditzo flash banner! Just copy and paste this into a new browser window directly and you will see the banner directly.

But, wait, there's more!

Now this is not the only thing going on. Not only do both ad serving parties work together to show you the banner, they are also keeping track that you have viewed it. This happens using cookies. You can check out the cookies using your browser settings or for example firefox (and the fircookie extension). This will show you that there are many, many cookies being stored while you watch the web page and the banner (38 cookies while I wast checking). Of these 3 cookies belonged to admt (Atlas) and 6 to weborama.

Why are these parties placing cookies on your pc? Well, if you browse to other sites that Atlas or Weborama serve ads to, then they will be able to recognize you as someone they showed a banner to on the http://auto.nl.msn.com/ site. This allows them for example retarget you and show you another car ad, even if the site you are on has nothing to do with cars. The reason? Well since you were on the http://auto.nl.msn.com/ site, you seem interested in cars, so showing you more car ads would seem more relevant (with a larger chance of you clicking on the banner and making a purchase and that is after all what ads are all about). Of course, there are more things they can do with the cookies, like avoid showing you the same ad again (or too often) when you return to a site, or building up a profile about you (ie you visited a car site, then went to airline site, so possibly you are in the market for a car rental, etc). But complete blogs can be filled with the world of cookies and this kind of profile building, so I won't go into any more detail here now.

So far this entry on impressions. In a later entry I'm going to try and give the details of what happens when you actually click on the banner!

Small barriers

I'm a tall guy, so when I shower I move the shower head all the way up along the adjustable rail just so I can stand under it without stooping. Of course, not handy for the rest of the family who can't even reach the shower head to lower it when they want to shower. So my wife was constantly reminding me to lower the shower head back when I'm done, and I of course was constantly forgetting. But then I figured it out. My wife was always reminding me after I had left the shower and already dried off, so adjusting the shower head then would mean getting wet again (from the shower head dripping), and it was this small, teeny "barrier" that was blocking me from actually learning/remembering to do it myself. On the boundary line between concious/subconcious I was making a decision that I just didn't want to do it.

Once I became concious of the barrier blocking me, it was easy to fix. Now I lower the shower head before I leave the shower and dry off, so the dripping is not a problem as I'm already wet anyway. Now I always never forget.

Trivial? Maybe. But I happened upon more examples once I realized how such small barriers can control your behaviour. Another personale example is the garbage container. I have to roll it out on monday evening for it to be emptied by the truck on tuesday morning. Meaning that tuesday evening I have to go back outside to roll the now empty container back. Something I never relished doing, especially in the winter, when it's cold, and you're nice and cozy inside.

In this case the barrier is more obvious, the cold outside. But the solution less so. Funnily enough, I just started jogging again (yes, not easy to keep up either) and when heading back it suddenly dawned on me that since I was outside anyway, I might as well drag the container back in. Trivial? Duh! But still it was now almost a pleasure to do the task, whereas before it was always a chore I "forgot" every now and then.

Small problems, and even smaller solutions, but the impact can be big. I've seen that with agile as well. Using a kanban board to make the work and flow (or lack thereof) visible is a great information radiator which encourages lively discussions right infront of the board. Nothing like a bunch of blocked tasks (impeditments or barriers) to start a discussion how we can improve the process. And the solutions are often small, trivial steps that in themselves cannot be the complete solution, or so it seems. But quite often, just making one tiny step is all it takes. All the subsequent improvement steps you thought were goign to be needed fall by the wayside because the problem is gone, the flow is back, and the process is working acceptably again. Too often people think up elaborate plans to tackle a semmingly big problem and then get stranded. Kanban I find encourages you to identify the first small step and then do it, and then see what next. Works much better.