WTF THE COMPLETE COLLECTION / WTF: The Complete Collection 2015 02 Table of contents 03 Introduction 91 WTF is ad blocking? 04 WTF is programmatic? 106 WTF is the digital marketing funnel? 37 WTF is native advertising? 62 WTF is the marketing cloud? / WTF: The Complete Collection 2015 03 Introduction In 2015 we set out with a singular goal: to demystify the murkiest concepts in the marketing and advertising industry. What followed was a year spent trawling through jargon-ridden thought pieces, not-quite-white papers, and more listicles than you could, well, list. The result? A series of guides written with insight from industry leaders and presented in an easily digestible, no-nonsense style. We started strong with what is arguably the single most puzzling phenomenon in the industry: programmatic. Next, we asked ourselves: WTF is native advertising? Shortly after hacking our way out of the native advertising weeds, we found ourselves with our heads in the clouds – the marketing cloud, specifically. After that marathon, we were ready for some quick sprints. In the second half of 2015 we decided to drill down into some more granular topics: ad blocking and the digital marketing funnel. For the ad blocking issue, we asked: who is to blame? Who is benefiting? And who, if anyone, has a solution? Finally, we plunged into the funnel. From the social platforms-du-jour to the perennial classics of coupon codes and thank you emails, we left no stone unturned. At the end of it all, we found ourselves rich with primary research, a diverse array of opinions and five very handy guides that explain just exactly WTF happened in marketing in 2015. Without further ado, we present WTF: The Complete Collection 2015. SPONSORED BY IS PROGRAMMATIC? Table of Contents 3 Introduction 9 The Programmatic Frontier 10 Premium Programmatic 4 Programmatic Advertising In 11 Programmatic Creative 6 Easy Steps 12 Native Programmatic 13 Programmatic TV 5 3 Big Programmatic Problems 14 A Message from Marin Software 6 Viewability Beyond RTB: A Programmatic 7 Fraud Primer 8 Transparency 17 Glossary 3 / WTF IS PROGRAMMATIC? Introduction Programmatic is no longer the new kid on the block. For more than five years, technology companies, brands and advertising agencies have been pulling digital ad buying into the automated era. Publishers were slow to get on board, but now they’re creating private marketplaces, doling out deal IDs and, in some cases, leading the charge on programmatic native. And yet the landscape continues to confuse newbies and vets alike. Winter may be coming for ad tech (aka, consolidation is on the horizon), but the operators proliferate and the jargon multiplies. Which is why we’re updating this dictionary. Herein you’ll find an overview of how programmatic advertising is moving forward, what’s holding it back and an expanded glossary of terms. DIGIDAY 4 / WTF IS PROGRAMMATIC? Programmatic advertising is a bit like an osmotic membrane: Inventory and audience Programmatic Advertising data, insertion orders and digital ads flow back and forth fluidly. In fact, the IAB says programmatic allows for digital ad inventory to in 6 Easy Steps be offered, bid on and fulfilled faster than you can blink your eyes. Here’s how it works. 6 Agency Trading Desk 5 Server Server Advertiser 2 3 Publisher DSP Ad Exchange SSP 1 4 DMP DMP 1. An advertiser creates 2. Then it uses that profile 3. The ad exchange 4. Once a match is found, 5. When a price is 6. Alternatively, both a profile based off to supply an inventory matches that request bidding begins. Using agreed on, the ads are parties can go through of demographic, request via a demand- to available ad space any of a variety of supplied through the an agency trading desk, contextual or behavioral side platform (DSP) to provided by publisher bidding mechanisms, above chain from the but the mechanisms are data via its data an ad exchange. supply-side platforms both parties arrive at advertiser’s server to the largely the same. management platform (SSP) and profiles crafted an agreed upon cost publisher’s server until (DMP). by publisher DMP using per thousand (CPM) for they ultimately appear its own first party data. those ad impressions. on the publisher’s site (hopefully) in front of the intended consumers. DIGIDAY 5 / WTF IS PROGRAMMATIC? 3 Big Programmatic Problems Like any disruptive phenomenon that drags an industry into the future by the scruff of its neck, programmatic brings some challenges with it. These are the Big Three: DIGIDAY 1 2 3 6 / WTF IS PROGRAMMATIC? 3 Big Programmatic Problems Viewability Talk about a mess: half of the online ads that sell programmatically are never seen by their intended audiences. Sometimes the problem is that an ad doesn’t load right or is badly situated on the browser screen. Other times ads run on sites where no one’s actually intended to see them in the first place. (File that one under “fraud” – which we’ll get to below.) This sort of thing makes steam blast out of advertisers’ ears. As an executive at a leading agency put it, “An ad that’s not seen is not worth less. It’s worth zero. Zero.” You can imagine how that went over with publishers. They counter that, given the technical realities, expecting 100 percent viewability is unreasonable. The president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) himself has declared that 70 percent viewability is what advertisers should expect. But as more than one wag has joked, what kind of auto industry group would proclaim that new cars should start only 70 percent of the time? The lack of clear standards in the industry doesn’t help. The Media Rating Council proclaims that an ad has to be 50 percent viewable for one second in order to count as viewable -- a mandate that does more to underline the viewability problem than to resolve it. Better standards would help. But the fear lingers that, if half of the industry’s ad inventory simply doesn’t work, FURTHER READING something in the industry’s business model just might have to give. • WTF is Viewability? • Havas Media: Viewability standards are ‘kind of a joke’ • Viewability has a vendor confusion problem DIGIDAY 7 / WTF IS PROGRAMMATIC? 3 Big Programmatic Problems Fraud Anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of online ad impressions are fake. Meanwhile, 36 percent of all web traffic is phony, generated by botnets rigged to sucker advertisers into buying shady inventory on phantom sites. The problem has to do with programmatic’s complexity. It’s an environment where middlemen proliferate like germs at your kid’s pre-school and plausible deniability is an operating principle. There’s also the basic fact that programmatic is, after all, programmatic. As one high-up media player has wearily pointed out, “Machines don’t know better.” Humans can potentially know better. But fraudsters have on their side the fact that penetrating the programmatic mysteries is a chore that can reduce even the relatively tech-savvy layman into a hyperventilating wreck. They also have on their side the depressing fact that online scamming is so easy. Any crook with a website can rig himself a botnet. The solution? There isn’t a complete one, ultimately. Crime will always be with us. But industry transparency could go a long way toward controlling it. FURTHER READING • Who’s really to blame for ad fraud? • Ad fraud has a chicken little problem DIGIDAY 8 / WTF IS PROGRAMMATIC? 3 Big Programmatic Problems Transparency The great god that will scourge the demons from the temple of programmatic. “Transparency” is the buzzword that digital marketing people answer with when you ask them how to solve the problems that plague the digital ad ecosystem. The benefits of transparency go beyond potentially eliminating the grosser instances of fraud. For example, advertisers these days more and more want to know how the trading desks at their agencies are making their money. They’re fed up with their agencies indulging in “ad arbitrage” and they’re sick of undisclosed fees. They want a clearer view of where their money is going and what’s being done with it. They’re asking uncomfortable questions about where their ads are being seen. At the same time, if you’ll forgive us, there’s a bit of disingenuousness in some of the industry’s calls for transparency. After all, lots of legitimate players benefit from the lack of it. More impressions mean more money, whether real people are seeing them or not. It’s all about scale and revenue in the super- competitive online and ad tech markets, and boosting transparency would hurt the revenues of a lot of players who claim to want it. The situation calls to mind that age-old sinner’s plea: “Make me honest, Lord. Just not today.” FURTHER READING • How to fix programmatic’s transparency problem • 5 things we learned about ad transparency DIGIDAY 9 / WTF IS PROGRAMMATIC? The Programmatic Frontier Programmatic’s worked revolutionary changes in how ads are bought and sold, but it’s not done with us yet. Here are four emerging programmatic phenomena that set the stet of industry types aflutter with excitement. DIGIDAY N E X T 10 / WTF IS PROGRAMMATIC? The Programmatic Frontier Premium Programmatic Simply, this is the use of programmatic to buy and sell “premium” high-prestige ads. (Think the home page of The New York Times, or if you’re a cruise line, the Travel section.) The catch is that programmatic was born precisely to sell, and is good at selling, publishers’ remnant junk inventory; in real time, on a huge scale, and often with a casual disregard for where (or even if ) the ads in question appear.