Media plan optimization is critical to achieving the best results from your advertising campaigns, and it helps you make the most of your media investments.
27 Tips to Build a Healthy Programmatic Direct Advertising API Ecosystem
To unlock the potential of Programmatic Direct, we need to fix the problems of the business arrangements and the design of the API protocols. Here are 27 tips to build a healthy Programmatic Direct advertising API ecosystem.
4 Essential Questions to Ask When Choosing Your Media Buying Platform
Choosing your media buying platform is a critical decision that will make or break your media planning and buying operation. It’s a decision on a tool that you’ll be using for your daily work for years to come. It will give you a distinct competitive advantage if you make the right choice. Or it can bankrupt you if you make the wrong choice. Using Microsoft Excel for media planning and media buying drains your energy and prevents you from reaching your full potential. Excel’s inefficiency is infamous in professional media circles. But finding a media buying platform to replace Excel can be an extremely confusing and frustrating experience. It seems that everyone is offering a media buying platform these days. When you Google “media buying platform” (with the quotes to limit the search results), you get more than 20,000 results. This creates a long, confusing list of options. In reality, only a small fraction of those options actually provide a [...]
Bionic Enables Next Generation Audience Targeting
With the latest release of Bionic Media Planning Software, you can now deliver next generation audience targeting in your RFPs, proposals, media plans, and insertion orders.
Create Persuasive Media Plan PowerPoints with Bionic Planner
When asking your advertiser to approve your media plan, you need a persuasive PowerPoint presentation. Here's how to make your best deck the easy way.
Monitor campaign delivery and pacing with Bionic Pacing Dashboard
Keeping your advertising campaigns on pace has never been easier. With Bionic Media Planner, you now get daily pacing reports that guarantee your campaigns are on track and avoid embarrassing discrepancies. Have you ever been stung by a media placement that started late or didn’t deliver the results you expected? Regrettably, under- and over-delivery is a chronic problem in the media business. In some campaigns, the discrepancy rate is virtually 100%. Publishers tend to over-promise in their quest to win your business (and to make their quarterly sales quota). When you learn they’ve under-delivered, it’s often too late to get your campaign back on track. As a steward of the media budget, it’s your responsibility to ensure that every publisher on the media plan is delivering what they promised. It’s critical to stay on top of all your campaigns while they are in flight to catch discrepancies early and to make the necessary optimizations that ensure that every campaign comes [...]
I See Dead People… Responding to my Marketing!
In today’s digital marketing, we seem increasingly dependent on algorithms and attribution models for targeting and measurement.
Do Digital Media Agencies Have a Plan?
Digital agencies used to get paid for unpacking an incredibly complicated digital landscape for marketers. Faced with all kinds of new marketing opportunities, advertisers turned to savvy digital agencies to figure out where to spend their money, and how much of it to dedicate to display, mobile and social channels. The dingy little secret was that the agencies didn’t really plan much of anything. The way it worked was that agency planners would make an Excel template, create an RFP document, instruct the media owners to send back all kinds of creative ideas and fill out the media plan template. RFPs sent publisher teams spinning into action, churning out exciting-looking PowerPoints with screenshots and suggested spending levels. Not much of this was scientific. Publishers often promised more inventory than could be delivered, knowing they would never get the full budget allocation. Agencies asked for various “budget levels,” knowing they would allocate only $50,000 per publisher – but asking to see [...]
The Transactional RFP Business is Dying
“80 percent of the publishers getting an RFP don’t even stand a chance.” – Doug Weaver, Upstream Group Direct mail is an amazing thing. It costs something like $750 CPM to put a glossy catalogue in the mail, but somehow direct marketers make those numbers work. Mailing lists are constantly optimized to make sure they hit the right houses, fresh lists acquired to create new demand, and non-performing lists ruthlessly culled if they don’t meet certain KPIs. Direct marketers actually can tell just how much money a mailing will produce in sales. Contrast that with a banner campaign, in which “good” performance means a 0.05% click-through rate, 40% non-viewable inventory, and fairly dim transparency. Some of the greatest companies in the space, newly public and boasting hundreds of millions in run rates, are still challenged to justify spending to their marketing clients. Thankfully, last click attribution hasn’t gone anywhere. I recently overheard a marketer at a conference saying that 70% [...]
Why Publishers Hate the Transactional RFP Business
More than 22 hours – half a business week – spent creating a single proposal and starting a campaign, which, has a less than 35% chance of getting bought.
The Hourglass Funnel Changes Everything
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the hourglass funnel. Most funnels stop at the thin bottom, when a customer “drops” out, having made the journey through awareness, interest, desire and action. After the “action,” or purchase, the customer gets put into a CRM to be included in more traditional marketing outreach efforts, such as calls, e-mails, and catalogue mailings. In the past, marketers often thought about how to turn customers into advocates, but couldn’t figure out how to do it at scale. Companies that were really good at multi-level marketing, like Amway, didn’t have easy-to-replicate business models. Today, the situation has changed. Social-media platforms give marketers tools to engage customers in their CRMs and bring them back through the bottom of the funnel, turning them into brand advocates — and maybe even salespeople. This is why Salesforce has been snatching up social-media companies like Radian6 and Buddy Media, while Oracle bought Vitrue and Involver. These platforms can help get people talking about your [...]