How to Optimize Digital Campaigns using simple Statistics

Posted on April 23, 2010 | Leave a comment

Yes, that is right. You don’t need to have a PhD to use a little bit of statistics to optimize your digital campaigns. As an online media analyst, I have found that there are a few simple advertising data analysis tricks you can do to predict online conversions, measure mobile publishers, and compile all of your media reports into one simple Dashboard. Sure you need a little bit of Excel skills, but not to worry, if you can follow simple tutorials, then you can use these data analysis tricks to make smarter media planning decisions.

To measure the performance of mobile publishers across multiple metrics, I found that a z-score is most helpful. You can even apply this standard of measurement to your other digital campaigns besides mobile. Free tutorial on how to use the z-score is downloadable at SmartDigitalSpending.com.

Want to forecast digital conversions? A little regression model will do the trick. Download free tutorial here. Want to see how you can put together a Media Dashboard that shows all of your media activity (online display, search, TV, website activity, social media activity, qr code scans, media spend) here.

Thanks!

Eric Melchor, founder – SmartDigitalSpending

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Posted in 1 Simple to follow Advertising Data Analysis Tutorials

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How to see Media Spend, Site Traffic, and Social Media Activity in One Report

Posted on April 22, 2010 | Leave a comment

How you can see all of your marketing efforts in one media dashboard

As a Marketing Manager, CMO, or Account Director, it would be convenient to see all of your media activity in one report right? That probably sounds impossible given that there is so much information coming from so many different sources. For instance, your Search team might send you a weekly search report, your website analyst probably sends you a site traffic report, your traditional media buying team might send you a monthly report, and so on and so on….

Who has time to look at and review all these reports? If only you could see things from a top-level view and see how much you are spending, what media channels are in the mix, the volume of visitors that are going to your website, social media results and QR Code downloads all in one report. Is it possible? Yes!

The best part of this is that everyone working on your account can get a holistic view of the campaign. It can be distributed to every department, agency (creative and media), and anyone else who has a hand in promoting your brand. You can download such a Dashboard here.

The most important thing is to not track and include everything in this report – that is a waste of time. Rather, you should just focus on the essentials. Eight basic charts that show:

Website Activity:

  • Visitors
  • Unique Visitors
  • Average Time on Site
  • Page Views
  • Pages per visit

Website Referrals:

  • Direct Traffic
  • Referring Sites
  • Search Engine
  • Other

Offline Activity:

  • Monthly volume of TV GRPs including Competition

Media Spend

  • Monthly spend for TV, Print, Online Display, Paid Search, In-game advertising, Social Media

Monthly Media Mix

  • Percentage of spend allocated to each Media Channel

Digital Activity:

  • Display Impressions
  • Display Clicks
  • Search Impressions
  • Search Clicks

QR Code Activity

  • Total Scans
  • Unique Scans
  • New Scans

Social Media Activity

  • Facebook Fans
  • Twitter Followers
  • YouTube Video views

How do you show that in 8 simple charts? Well the Dashboard is interactive! Anyone who has basic Excel skills can setup a Dashboard that includes all of this information. To make things simple, you can download an Excel version of this Dashboad at SmartDigitalSpending.com.

As you can see, this is not only a great report that can be passed along to everyone, it is a great business tool that provides great insight. Immediately, you can get a general idea on what’s going on with your campaign and what kind of results are being generated. Why keep wasting time looking at 5, 10, 15 different reports when all you need is one?

Download the sample Media Dashboard that incorporates social media and QR Code activity along with other advertising data analysis tutorials (How to forecast online orders, how to measure ad copy, how to rank mobile ad networks, how to calculate TRPs for digital media, and more) at SmartDigitalSpending.com!

Thank you,

Eric Melchor, Founder of Smart Digital Spending

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What kind of lift do video ads drive?

Posted on April 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

Based on a study by ComScore in the UK and across 4 industry sectors, over a span of  four weeks, the average uplift across the campaigns saw site visitation increase by more than a factor of seven following exposure to an ad. Consumers, meanwhile, were three times more likely to conduct search queries using brand or relevant generic terms in the same time period.

What’s more, when evaluating video and display side by side, consumers exposed to video advertising were 28% more likely to visit the brand site, and nearly twice as likely to conduct a trademark search.

“Confirming expectations and previous industry understanding, video was able to generate a more immediate impact in the first five exposures than display ads in terms of increases in site visitation and search queries,” report the study’s authors.

read full story here.

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How Effective are Social Media Ads?

Posted on April 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

Which ads to you think work best on Facebook and other social media sites? Gavin O’Malley from MediaPost provides a list of ads that are most engaging to consumers. “Well, among the seven most common formats, sponsored content ads — in which consumers viewed a page that was “brought to you by” a leading brand — were the most engaging, yet produced the least purchase intent, according to a new study conducted by research firm Psychster, and commissioned by cooking/recipe hub Allrecipes.com.”

Corporate profiles on social-networking sites produced greater purchase intent and more recommendations when users could become a “fan,” and add the logo to their own profiles, than when they could not.

read full story here.

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Facebook’s Analytics Platform, Clickable

Posted on April 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

Laurie Sullivan from MediaPost, talks a bit about Facebook Ads API which allows platform companies to integrate Facebook Ads with third-party tools. “Connecting search and social campaigns to provide advertisers with the supporting data has become the next challenge that marketing platform and analytics companies have begun to tackle. It gives advertisers the insight and support to drive return on investments (ROIs).”

On Thursday, its analytic platform partners — Clickable, Kenshoo and Marin Software — came out of hiding.

Clickable, Kenshoo and Marin Software will respectively deliver Web-based platforms that let companies compare the performance of search and social ad campaigns side by side. The trio follows Omniture, which released news last month to build a platform that integrates the social data.

Kenshoo, Marin Software and Omniture have made their respective platforms available to a handful of partners, with plans to release full-working products at various times throughout the year. Clickable becomes the first to make available a full-working product April 12

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How to verify display ad traffic

Posted on February 26, 2010 | Leave a comment

via: Mediapost

Click Forensics will open a program Friday to audit impressions in display ads. The program tests the ability to filter ads and identify invalid traffic in real-time.

Taking a cue from its existing platform to monitor and score billions of clicks, now the company will use the technology to score impressions, as well as determine fraud and validity. The effort to ease the ad industry’s growing pains and increase transparency into ad-buying and conversions could prevent marketers from wasting ad dollars and gain better return on investments.

“We’re looking at all the data being purchased through media sold or purchased,” says Paul Pellman, chief executive officer, Click Forensics, Austin, Texas. “We do machine learning and predictive modeling against that data to identify anomalous patterns and traffic sources that we have proven invalid in the past.”

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What is DoubleClick for publishers?

Posted on February 24, 2010 | Leave a comment

via: MediaPost

Google Moves DoubleClick Into Next Generation Of Display Ad-Serving

The advertising display industry continues to go through massive change in terms of targeting and how ads are bought and sold. Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, pointed to changes in business models and technology during the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif.

Google launched the next generation of ad-serving technology Monday in an effort to continually improve ad-serving. DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) will come in two versions: a pay version for larger publishers that require more options, and a free version for smaller publishers with simple needs that replaces Google Ad Manager.

Written on Google technology, the upgraded version of DFP offers publishers a new way to serve ads. The completely redesigned interface aims to save time and reduce errors. Detailed reporting and forecasting data give publishers tools to help them understand where revenue originates and what ads are most valuable with more than 4,000 data points in reports. And sophisticated algorithms should improve ad performance and delivery.

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Roamware will allow money transfer through mobile phones

Posted on February 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

via: MobileMarketingWatch

Roamware, although making no formal announcements at MWC thus far, divulged its plans in regards to mobile payments and mobile finance in general in an interview with GoMo News today.

Roamware built its business by partnering with operators — 418 total in over 150 countries to be exact — to provide roaming solutions, but has plans to parlay its reach and knowledge into the realm of mobile payments.  The largest problem facing mobile finance today is the interoperability issues between carriers, making mobile payments, for example, hard to accomplish on large scale.

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day

With its knowledge in working with carriers around the world, Roamware has plans to introduce technology that carriers can utilize to “be able to do the job themselves, and do it well.”  In other words, Roamware doesn’t have plans to introduce its own solution, but will aim to provide the necessary technology to help bring everything together from an operator’s point of view.

read full story here.

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What are custom variables in Google Analytics?

Posted on February 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

via: ROIRevolution

Last fall Google announced the release of the much anticipated Custom Variables in Google Analytics. Previously the only out of the box way to segment visitors on your site using custom metrics was to use the User Defined variable. While the User Defined method was useful for segmenting traffic into members vs non members, and for things like Michael’s Exact Keyword Tracking script, Analytics users requested more options, customizations, and more control. Well, Google listened.

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day

Unlike the User Defined variable, the Custom Variables allow you to determine the scope of the visitor engagement. Basically that means in addition to setting just a visitor level segment, you can also set session level segments, which will persist while the visitor is active on the site, and page level segments, which correspond to pageviews and events on the site. This allows you to get much more detailed with the information you’re gathering and storing in the custom variable. For example, you could separate different sections of the site by using the page level scope, or you could track if a visitor has completed a particular action during their session with the session level scope.

read full article here.

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Who is HipLogic?

Posted on January 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

via: MobileMarketingWatch

HipLogic Brings Smartphone-Interface & Real-Time Data To Mass-Market Feature Phones

Mobile startup HipLogic, who has the simple intention of bringing smartphone-like features to simple mass-market “feature phones,” recently debuted a new downloadable app that brings a smartphone-oriented interface combined with real-time information to Windows Mobile or Symbian-based devices, for free.

HipLogic “Live,” as it’s being called, brings an iphone-like interface and content from real-time sources like Facebook and  Twitter, wrapped up in a simple user-friendly, truly smartphone-like package.  The interface itself creates a BlackBerry-type environment, including a variety of apps, widgets, real-time notifications and integrated search bar.

read full story here.

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