New Direct Ads release: browser targeting and dayparting

Today we released a new version of Direct Ads, over 80 parts of the platform has been modified. We have added many new features, and made general optimizations to the system. Here are the most important changes:

• Browser targeting: we now support targeting specific web browsers (such us Chrome or Internet Explorer) on your campaigns - especially useful when running campaigns that promote specific toolbars or browser extensions. See the "Browser targeting" tab under "Settings" (demo).
• Dayparting support: is your campaign converting better during specific hours/days of the week? Now you can limit your campaign to run on these times only, check the new "Dayparting" tab under "Settings" (demo).
• Moving budget: is one of your campaigns paused indefinitely? You can now move the unused budget to on of your other campaigns. This feature can be found under the "Budget" tab.
• Editing click URLs: A very often requested feature is to change banner click URLs. This is now possible, simply click on a banner and you will see the option to change the click URL. Note that this is only possible for regular banners, not for pop/iFrame creatives.
• Quicker loading pages: we optimized the report pages to load much quicker, this is especially useful in campaigns that are running for a long time and have a large set of data.
• Layout changes: we cleaned up some settings pages to make them more readable.

We continously work to improve the Direct Ads platform. Please let us know if you have any comments or feature requests. If you haven't tried Direct Ads yet, give it a shot at www.adperium.com/advertise.

How to get more volume to your campaign

A question we often get is: "how do I get more volume to my campaign"? Your Direct Ads campaign is up and running, ROI-positive and conversions are coming in. So how do you get more traffic to it? There are several ways to get the most out of your campaign:

Check campaign settings
This seems obvious, but make sure to double-check your campaign settings first. Do you have a very strict frequency capping or a low budget capping in place? Consider loosening the cappings. Are you targeting all countries that your campaign accepts? You can always change the country targeting in your campaign settings. Make sure to also check the "Traffic sources" tab to see if you have blocked some sources that you could re-enable.

Experiment with the bid price
If your campaign is ROI-positive, we recommend to experiment with a higher bid price. It's very hard to forecast what impact a change in bid price will yield, so be careful with big changes. Simply increase the price with a few cents and let it run for a day so you can see the impact. If your campaign stays ROI-positive, you can keep increasing until you strike a balance between ROI and volume. Note that a higher bid price likely means you'll get more traffic, but this is not guaranteed.

Enable traffic from other networks
By default, your campaign runs on Adperium sites only. However, we are linked with over 40 external networks and exchanges which opens up a great amount of traffic. Simply go to the "Traffic sources" tab and enable some of the networks listed at the bottom of the page. It is recommended that you have a daily budget capping in place in order to prevent depleting your budget too quickly when you select these networks. Nowadays over 65% of all Direct Ads impressions are served on external networks, so if you aren't doing this yet: make sure you don't miss out on this opportunity.

Run on all available banner sizes
Are you running a great 300x250 or 728x90 campaign? Why don't duplicate it to 120x600, 160x600 and 468x60? We offer 5 banner sizes and pops, so make sure that your campaign runs on as many different sizes as possible to get the most traffic to your landing page. Do you have trouble getting one banner size ROI-positive, while your others are? Ask our team (using the "Support" tab) to assist you in this matter.

Do you have any other questions? Contact us for assistance!

New Direct Ads release

We're proud to announce the new release of Direct Ads today. This version adds and enhances over 50 parts of the system. Here is a list of the most important changes:

• Multi-banner upload support. You can now upload unlimited banners to a campaign with just one click. Simply select a .zip or .rar archive in the upload box, and you're ready to go. We skip banners with non-matching sizes and automatically crush banners that are too large (>40KB).
• Campaign dashboard. It's now possible to see how your campaigns are performing in one quick overview. Head over to https://www.adperium.com/campaigns?graphs to check the latest stats in an easy-to-spot overview.
• Credit card checkout. We have developed our own credit card processing flow. You can now fund your campaigns without leaving the Direct Ads interface to a payment processor. We also support more credit cards and do not limit the number of transactions per card.
• iFrame/3rd party tags support. For selected advertisers, we offer the option to run 3rd party iFrame tags instead of uploading their own banners. This is useful for specific advertisers that prefer to optimize banner on their end. Contact us for more info.
• CPA campaigns support. Again, this feature is available only to selected advertisers. If you have some campaigns that you want to test on CPA (e.g. email submit) basis, let us know and we'll consider your application for CPA campaigns.
• More networks. With the current release of Direct Ads, you can run your campaigns not just on Adperium, but on 20 networks connected and integrated in our system. You can increase your campaign reach significantly with just one click!
• General enhancements. Internet Explorer 7 support, quicker loading pages, more accurate graphs: just a small part of the enhancements we made.

At Adperium we continue to develop Direct Ads as a full-blown DSP solution. If you have any feature requests, send them to adperium@direct-ads.com. If you haven't tried Direct Ads yet, give it a shot at www.adperium.com/advertise

Running dynamic color-optimized banners on Adperium

The last couple of weeks we have been busy with implementing a new and unique feature: running custom-color banners on the Adperium network. These (Flash) banners dynamically change their color to match with the site they're shown on. The colors of the banner correspond with the site's main colors, so the banner blends perfectly in.

To see how it works, see the sample banner below:

As you can see, the colors of this banner match the design of this blog. The exact same banner is also embedded on this web page: http://www.snotr.com/adperium.php - as you can see, it perfectly matches the Snotr.com site design, without changing anything in the banner code or design. When this banner is shown on other sites running Adperium tags, it will adapt its colors to match each individual site's layout.

Initial tests have shown that the banner CTR will improve with up to 250%, depending on the original color scheme. In all cases, we saw an uplift of at least 20% in CTR. That's a lot of free extra clicks!

Sounds interesting? As of today everyone can run such color-optimized Flash banners on the Adperium network, you just need to add some Actionscript code to your Flash banner. Here's a short tutorial:

• Design a banner in Adobe Flash. Make sure the publish settings are set to Flash Player 9 using Actionscript 3.
• Make sure all objects you want to colorize are callable (they should have an Instance Name).
• Add the clickTAG code like you're used to do, for example:

• Add the following snippet to your code to enable dynamic changing colors:

  Make sure to edit the color changing calls above to match the objects you want to colorize.

• That's it! Upload the banner to our Direct Ads self-service system to get started.

Note that adding this snippet of code to the Flash banner doesn't affect other networks: you can run the exact same banner on non-Adperium networks and it'll show in the default colors.

Have any questions or comments? Let us know in the comments or use the contact form.

 

Retargeting traffic using Direct Ads

You have probably heard about retargeting (sometimes called "remarketing") and how it works, you may have even tried running a retargeting campaign. With a new feature of our self-service advertising system Direct Ads this is easier than ever: you can now set up a retargeting campaign with just one click.

For those who don't know how retargeting works, here's a short explanation. When you run a campaign, only a small percentage of users that click on your ad actually converts, e.g. by ordering a product. Conversion rates are usually in the 1%-10% area, depending on the type of campaign and traffic. Advertisers noticed that the other 90%-99% of users who clicked on your ad, are very likely to convert in a later stage if you repeatedly show them your campaign. In other words: a retargeting campaign targets specificly users that have showed interest in your product, but did not convert yet.

Below is a small tutorial how to get started with a retargeting campaign in Direct Ads:

• Go to https://www.adperium.com/start and start an advertising campaign.
• Once the campaign has been approved, navigate to the campaign page and select "Retargeting" under campaign settings.
• Click the button "Convert to retargeting campaign" (you can always go back and disable retargeting).
• Your campaign is now a retargeting campaign. Simply select the (regular) campaigns you want to re-target in the drop-down list. If you're not running campaigns yet, you can make use of the pixels:
  • Paste the "include" pixel on your landing page to target users that landed on your page
  • Paste the "exclude" pixel on your post-conversion page to exclude them from targeting

That's it! The campaign will now only serve to users that have been marked by the pixels or that have clicked on your marked campaigns. The regular targeting options (country/daily capping/etc) will still be enforced.

Some things to keep in mind when running a retargeting campaign:

• Click-through rates (CTR) are expectedly much higher than with a regular campaign, so are conversion rates. This doesn't mean you don't need to optimize the campaign though, so keep an eye on your banners and "Traffic sources" overview.
• In order to increase conversion rates even more, consider creating a special offer (e.g. "10% discount") for retargeted users.
• Traffic volume is obviously much lower than a regular campaign due to the strict targeting, it is therefore recommended to buy traffic from all possible sources (click all networks in the "Traffic sources" tab).
• Because performance is much higher than a regular campaign, it's recommended to set a high CPM bid rate in order to get premium exposure among the retargeted users.

Good luck running your retargeting campaigns on Adperium! Let us know if you have any questions: http://www.adperium.com/contact

Ad Blocker detection service

Did you ever want to know what percentage of your website visitors are using an ad blocker? You can view these statistics now with our easy three-step program:

1. Register at: http://www.adperium.com/abd/register
2. Place the tracking code in the footer of your website
3. Watch the statistics on your report page

After registering you should receive and email containing a link to your personal report page. On this page you will find for each day the number of website visitors and what percentage of them had an ad blocker installed.

Check out the example report for more details.

5 Optimization tips for a successful campaign

Introduction
Several times a week we receive requests from advertisers asking for assistance optimizing their campaign(s). We thought it would be a good idea to bundle our campaign optimization tips in a blog post for reference. These tips are written with Adperium's self-service advertising platform Direct Ads in mind, but they also apply to banner advertising campaigns in general. Without further ado, here are our five best tips:

 

Spend before you optimize
The single most important tip is: don't try to optimize campaigns that are too small in terms of budget, or campaign which just started. From time to time, we see advertisers trying to optimize a campaign after they spent a couple of thousand impressions. Unfortunately it's unfeasible to optimize campaigns based on such low traffic numbers. Your campaign needs to learn the traffic profile for at least a couple of days, before it can stabilize and optimize traffic. Even with a low daily budget capping, you still can't optimize the campaign because the numbers are simply not significant.

If you're serious about setting up a successful campaign, consider spending at least several million impressions before you start the optimization process. This way, you're sure that it's not the campaign learning process, but your actions that change the performance of your campaign.

 

Check campaign settings (sample)
You can optimize every bit out of your campaign, but if you fail to set the basic campaign settings, it won't have an effect. Most important is the frequency capping: depending on the numbers of banners you're running, 2/24 or 3/24 is recommended. The daily budget setting is also important: we usually advise to spend at most 15% of the campaign budget per day. That way, you get a stable traffic profile that is easier to optimize.

Another tip is to focus on one or two countries to start with. Starting a world-wide campaign is not very smart, as it makes optimizing your campaign very hard. If your campaign works well in your main markets, you can easily expand the campaign by cloning it and tailoring to other markets/countries.

 

Use conversion tracking (sample)
This might seem logical, but some advertisers still think it's too much hassle to implement a conversion pixel. The advantages are countless though: you get instant access to much more powerful metrics like the average cost per conversion/action (eCPA) for your banners and traffic sources (websites). In the end, the revenue you generate is the only matter that counts, right? What is the use of a banner with a very high click-through rate (CTR), but a low number of conversions-per-impression? Strange as it sounds, more often than you think banners with a low CTR perform better eCPA-wise than banners with a high CTR.

Another important point that is often unknown, is the fact that implementing a conversion pixel may increase the traffic volume your campaign receives. Because the ad serving system is able to better predict the probability of a conversion, it may choose to allocate more impressions to your campaign (within your targeting limitations, of course) than without conversion data.

 

A/B split-test your banners (sample)
This is one of the easiest ways to optimize your campaign, and can change an average campaign into a huge success. The idea is simple: upload at least three different banners (with the same dimensions) to your campaign. Preferably the banners are very different, e.g. one focussing on the advantages of your product, the other show-casing your product, and a third showing a customer testimonial. Run these banners for at least a couple of days, then disable all banners except the best performing one.

The next step in the iteration is to create at least two different versions of this best performing banner, and add them to your campaign. Run these three banners for a couple of days, choose the best performing banners and create new versions, etc. We have customers who saw their CTRs increase 200%+ by optimizing their banners. Make sure you also check the cost per conversion metric: as explained earlier, this is the most important metric to check.

 

Optimize traffic sources (sample)
Last but not least: make sure to regularly check the list of traffic sources (websites) your campaign runs on. We always advise to start your campaign run on network (RON) and after a few days start disabling bad-performing websites. Similar to banners, it takes just one click to disable under-performing traffic sources. Make sure to check not just the CTR, but also the cost per conversion value. Once your campaign has stabilized, you can consider adding additional traffic sources from linked networks like DSNR and Xtend.

Hopefully these tips helped you to get a better understanding on actions you can take to optimize your campaign and beat your ROI target. If you have any questions or remarks related to this subject, feel free to post a comment or contact us directly. We're here to help you and make your campaign a great success!

Dutch government wants to ban unsolicited cookies

In a recently suggested bill, the Dutch government wants to force websites to asks a user permission before placing a cookie on their computer. This new bill is designed to improve the privacy of internet users and is the Dutch implementation of new EU directives.

This looks like another case of bill makers trying to get involved in affairs they have no knowledge of. The internet is not limited by borders. Each day internet users visit websites from all over the world. Enforcing a bill like this will be impossible.

For website owners this will be nearly impossible to implement. Saving a user's choice will not be possible if the user chooses to block cookies. The only effective way to implement this would be by changing web browsers.

For internet users this bill will add a lot of confusion as well. The average user will have no idea which websites to give permission and which not. Users might end up blocking cookies that are vital for website functionalities, such as shopping carts. Loading an average website will try to place cookies for around 4 domains on your computer. Most users will probably end up giving permission to everything just to get rid of the questions and to keep everything working normally.

All in all this bill seems like a bad idea. Fortunately it is still in concept. Hopefully this part won't make it into the final version.

DirectAds on other advertising networks

Hi all,

We at Adperium have been working on a product called DirectAds (http://www.adperium.com/directads-overview) for a while now. DirectAds is basically an easy-to-use interface built on the RightMedia platform to assist advertisers that want to buy traffic. Check out the product in action: http://www.adperium.com/directads

Advertiser advantages:

• Start a campaign in minutes - upload the banner, set the URL and budget and go!
• Transparent process - CPM price is defined per country and per banner size
• Ability to manage the campaign completely, no manual work (emails/phone calls) required
• Detailed statistics, example: http://www.adperium.com/report/1/1b53fbf0a35fc2ef
• Supports PayPal, credit card and hundreds of local banks (incl. wire transfer)
• Rebuys, campaign management, invoicing, Excel export etc. all in one interface
• No signup needed

Network advantages:

• All campaigns get queued, approval process by network in just one click
• Automatic invoicing and payment processing
• Reduces workload significantly
• Drives up revenues - unique traffic selling tool!

We built DirectAds in such a way that it's easy to license this tool to other RightMedia-based networks. If you're interested, shoot us an email at info@adperium.com and we'll be happy to give a demo of the system.