Jessica Mitidiero adds more heaft to AdAge’s- Making Online Ads Suck Less May 3, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Staff posts, industry news , add a commentMy name is Jessica Mitidiero and I am Senior Account Manager for Dynamic Logic in the Chicago office. An article in AdAge recently caught my attention titled, “Making Online Ads Suck Less in 8 Easy Steps”. In short, the author John Young explains that marketers should focus on strategy, creative, analytics and the long-view in their digital advertising efforts along with 8 steps to follow. While I do agree with John’s points and the benefits of testing from a creative perspective, I think his 8 steps are missing a few points commonly overlooked by advertisers, particularly those focused on branding.
Ensuring more effective ad campaigns starts prior to the development of the banner ads. When advertisers’ and agencies are developing their core objectives and strategies, measurement plans should be developed in tandem. This is one way to ensure ad campaigns are more effective and efficient at accomplishing objectives. (More holistic branding research such as CrossMedia measurement should be considered at an early stage but I’ll be limiting my focus to online alone for the purpose of this blog.)
In terms of brand awareness campaigns in particular, some important steps that I feel are commonly overlooked to the detriment of campaigns are as follows (but not limited to):
- Research. Prior to any creative production work, marketers need to educate themselves on creative and media components that have been historically successful or unsuccessful. Initial creative executions should be established upon relevant best practices. Dynamic Logic has an extremely robust and extensive MarketNorms database full of normative information for clients to utilize including: industry insights by category and product level, creative performance by format and size, site category insights, and frequency of exposure data.
- Pre-Market Test. Testing creatives prior to running them in-market will help you to maximize their impact against objectives. Dynamic Logic’s LinkSelect for Digital will allow you to see the performance of each ad with regards to engagement, motivation and brand association. This solution will also help highlight successes and areas for improvement; tweaking poor performing ads, cutting those that are the weakest, or place heavier impression weight across the highest performers. Having this insight prior to the campaign launch is crucial to the success of the overall campaign and is a relatively inexpensive way to boost your campaign effectiveness.
- Test In-Market. Utilizing in-market testing will further provide context into the campaigns brand impact. Dynamic Logic’s AdIndex solution will help you to understand the true impact of your campaign against key brand metrics. In addition to supplying insight into the most and least effective components of the campaign, this solution will also allow you to see how different media components (sites, frequency, targeting) played a role in affecting performance. Most recently, I’ve seen that AdIndex results have helped guide agencies on their use of new targeting tactics. Because we can provide insight into the branding impact that different targeting tactics have on campaigns, we’ve been able to highlight those that are or are not working the hardest for the brand. Reaching key audience and consumer segments within your campaign is key for driving the lower funnel branding metrics.
- Use What You’ve Learned. After testing is complete and (with our help) you’re grasping what works, what doesn’t, and why it does/doesn’t within the online space, use this data and insight when planning future initiatives. It will help to make your upcoming campaigns more successful.
Scott Gendelman writes about Online Video April 30, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , 2commentss society has dictated since the introduction of broadcast TV in 1946, us Americans love TV. We love our sports, soaps, dramas, cops/detectives, celebrity cooks, history, weather, news, movies, and reality shows so much, we actually found other media vehicles to watch them in instances when we’re apart from our beloved TV sets.
In fact, we often kid around and say “What would we do without TV?” Interestingly, there are countless answers to this question (input your other favorite things to do here).
Today, we (consumers) love watching our favorite content on the web, and our mobile devices. The convenience (despite the teeny tiny screens) cannot be ignored and is simply a huge part of our everyday lives nowadays. It’s completely normal to now see a train full of commuters heads-down with their mobile device browsing, watching, reading, listening, laughing and steering (insert your favorite racing game here) to pass time on their way home to their next favorite screen (and to their friends & family of course).
As this trend/way-of-life swells (see the below eMarketer stat), so too will the advertising opportunities. To allow our favorite content providers to scale their businesses and continue to provide us with mindless entertainment on-the-go, they need money! Enter the dragon….or the advertisers ! We’ll continue to see more and more advertisements embedded within our favorite content. Great for some, and annoying for others. Nonetheless, it’s what will fuel the content we love so much.
As an advertiser, the online video landscape provides a unique, well-targeted, scalable, and measurable media format to deliver an ad/message with much greater consumer engagement (vs other online ad formats). At Dynamic Logic, we’ve seen a surge of video ad units as part of our clients’ media strategy. With that comes the want and need to understand how exposure and interaction with online video ad units (vs other online ad formats) impact brand measures (and other online behaviors thru our partnership with Compete).
If you’re planning to include online video ad units to your campaigns, feel free to connect with me anytime to discuss. We have some interesting norms to share, and I’d be happy to learn more about your objectives and ultimately help develop a measurement strategy that will specifically address the objectives and challenges faced.
Scott Gendelman
Dynamic Logic
312.577.4066
Scott Gendelman and his wife Lauren
Spring is in the air! Alissa Coronna’s clients are warming up to digital. April 20, 2010
Posted by dynamiclogicbeaty in : Staff posts, Uncategorized , add a commentThere’s a buzz in the air lately here in the Chicago office. As a freeze baby I’d like to attribute it to the abnormally warm spring temperatures and the start of baseball season, but more accurately our offices are buzzing with the influx of business this year. Like all companies last year, we felt the effects of the economy’s downward spiral and as a result, the effects of our clients tightening their advertising budgets.
Now that budgets have opened up a bit in 2010, repeat clients are finding value in adding on solutions from our DLConnects™ suite and smaller advertisers and agencies are learning that they too can budget for online advertising effectiveness testing. The economy last year forced many companies to reevaluate how they allocated their advertising dollars and many looked to the affordable nature of digital advertising. This year, those companies are looking to find ways to test their digital efforts.
While business here in the United States continues to grow, I won’t be surprised if our offices around the world also start buzzing with demand. Globally, the utilization of the online space is becoming more popular. A quick search in Google Insights demonstrates the diverse global interest of digital advertising as South Africa, India, Malaysia and Singapore show the most searches for “online advertising”. In January 2010, all four of these growing countries exhibited an increase (some quite drastic) in their interest in the online space. DL offices abroad, get ready!
Alissa Coronna is an Account Manager at Dynamic Logic. In her spare time she likes to travel, read, watch movies and seek out the latest restaurants in Chicago.
Danny Wysocki talks about coming to terms with not being a psychic in evaluating creative effectiveness April 5, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Staff posts , add a commentMy name is Danny Wysocki and I am a researcher in the Chicago office of Dynamic Logic. I have been working here for the past two years. It’s a great experience and I’ve learned a lot of innovative ways to measure advertising effectives both on and offline but more importantly, I’ve learned something about myself… I’m psychic.
Not Danny Wysocki
Or so I thought. After looking at hundreds of ads and evaluating them, I was convinced that I could take one look at an ad and immediately determine its success or failure based on what I saw. I considered applying my gift to other things, perhaps moonlighting as a palm reader, but unfortunately most of my “premonitions” were usually the exact opposite of what actually occurred.
Is Danny Wysocki
The point is that this happens with ads all the time. They are designed trying to achieve a certain goal and then never tested to see whether they are likely to achieve it. This is where copy testing comes in. Copy testing can help determine which of the campaign ads are most likely to breakthrough in the online environment, which are the best in terms of branding, what messages are being communicated by each ad and much more. Armed with this information it makes it much easier to make last minute changes to the creative to help improve or even save what would be an under-performing online campaign. Surprisingly enough Dynamic Logic offers a copy testing solution… LinkSelect for Digital. I highly recommend it. It is a lot better than my pseudo psychic ability for determining ad effectiveness.
When I’m not in the office or trying my hand at palm reading (pun intended) I am usually either playing soccer, watching movies, or reading.
A Research Ode to Jerry Maguire: Help Me Help You By Jayne Hickey March 29, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Staff posts , add a commentThe industry has challenged us (research folks) to help connect the dots, to become story tellers, to use our experience and expertise to provide insights instead of hiding behind numbers. And pardon the slight undertone of the “double-dog dare” here but I re-challenge the industry to embrace our response. I’d hate to use this platform to push more of our products, so I apologize if it sounds that way, as this isn’t my (full) intention.
DL has recently launched the Connects™ suite of solutions which is meant to connect (yes, not so subtle, I know) our beloved attitudinal metrics with other metrics that are needed to fully comprehend the impact of a brand’s marketing effort. We have partnered with one of the best in behavioral measurement, Compete, to bridge the gap between the attitudinal and behavioral impact of a campaign. We have partnered with IRI to link campaign performance to offline sales data and most recently we have partnered with Cymfony to broaden our social media capabilities.
AdIndex and CrossMedia allow us to tell our clients how their planned media campaign performed, but what about their earned media? The ways in which people are talking about your campaign to peers and their social graph has just as large of an implication and is just as important to understand, if not more. As consumers shift their trust further and further away from advertising and closer and closer toward peer recommendations your brand’s social clout is central. Our partnership with Cymfony allows us to tell a more enriched story of the “well, what else happened and why?”
Some of the hesitation that I have seen from clients in regards to our partnership with Cymfony is the fact that we don’t use a control/exposed methodology. Social media measurement is an art of listening. We can’t, at this point, technically determine campaign exposure among the speakers because we can’t check the cookies of someone who posts a comment, no one can. As a matter of fact, I’m not even convinced that we should be allowed to do so. But what we can do with AdIndex Connects: Cymfony is integrate analysis of the millions of discussions occurring everyday on social media sites, blogs and message forums with our data to both quantify the effect of a digital campaign on brand perceptions as well as understand what consumers are saying about the campaign. As Ann Green, SVP of Marketing Solutions at Millward Brown said, “Our partnership with Cymfony will allow us to leverage social media measurement to arrive at holistic insights that can truly drive our clients’ businesses forward.”
So to quote another very wise, yet fictional, individual by the name of Jerry Maguire, “Help me help you.” Be open to our approaches that don’t use control/exposed. I know it can be scary and while we all love cookies, there are other methods (don’t tell anyone I said that). And finally, “you complete me” much like AdIndex Connects: Cymfony will complete your research story.
Jayne Hickey
Client Services Research Supervisor
Jayne Hickey Dynamic Logic Client Services Research Supervisor
David O’Brien talks about SafeCount. March 22, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Safecount, Staff posts, industry news , 1 comment so far
Hello, my name is David O’Brien, and I have been a project manager with www.Safecount.net for almost two years now. Being a project manager at SafeCount probably doesn’t mean much to you (especially if you’re on here expecting to learn more about the people behind Dynamic Logic, on a Dynamic Logic blog). Often there is a misconception that SafeCount and Dynamic Logic are the same company. What you should know is that if you are planning on doing research with Dynamic Logic using AdIndex or AdIndex Mobile (which you should), you will find that a SafeCount project manager will play a vital role in gathering the results you need to present to your clients.
Before I go into my background and what I do at SafeCount, let me give you a little bit of info about myself. When it comes to online media and all things digital I have over ten years experience on the publisher side, and now two years on the research side. I have worked my way through the dot com bubble, interactive content, and now social media. As my career evolved, I have watched how online media has evolved. Since I have kept my finger on the pulse in this medium I am constantly finding myself on various social networks exploring what new and exciting things are out there, and what could be possibly “next”. So, yes, I am on most social networks, blogging, and twitter. I recently stumbled upon this social networking site called Vark.com. Vark.com (Aardvark) describes their platform as being, “conceived as the first Social Search engine: a way to find people, not web pages that have specific information.” So, basically, you and many other people sit on Vark.com and show each other how smart you are by recommending Hungarian restaurants in the west side of Greenwich Village of New York City or where in Paris you can get your iPhone replaced. However, I have found that most of the answers come from people who have searched on Google, so you end up with the answers you could have found on Google anyway.
Out of curiosity I asked the Vark.com users (I like to call them Varkers) the question, “Does anyone know anything about SafeCount surveys?”
To which a random Varker replied, “Its main purpose is to collect addresses for Dynamic Logic.”
Are you kidding me?! If a SafeCount project manager’s main purpose were to collect email addresses, we would be the best paid employees on the planet! Alas, Dynamic Logic doesn’t collect email addresses unless you enter into a sweepstakes associated with one of their surveys. Those email addresses are for winner notification only, and are then disposed of.
SafeCount has been growing a very powerful panel of people who have opted into receiving request to participate in surveys and who span a wide range of demographics that aren’t always easy to find, and that can be used on their own or to supplement web based intercept recruitment on traditionally difficult targets. So, SafeCount collects email addresses, we just don’t collect them for Dynamic Logic, but rather we collect them for any of our clients who might need a panel or a panel to supplement a web based recruitment project.
SafeCount is a digital data collection company. We do live intercept recruitment for research purposes. We are a Dynamic Logic spin-off backed by WPP and Kantar. If you are with another research company, ad agency, or brand, reading this blog, we could collect data for you.
We are separate profit center and a company that specializes in collecting data for all various research companies, including Dynamic Logic, but not solely to Dynamic Logic or other WPP companies. If you have spent enough time on any of the predominant search portals or leading sports websites, you have probably seen our “Your Opinion Matters, Take a SafeCount Survey!” invite spawn leading you to a survey. That’s us!
We develop the technology to help research companies find ways to measure campaign effectiveness; be it web, mobile, video games, blogs, podcast, just about everything digital. Depending on the agency, publisher, and their media plan, a SafeCount project manager can be in contact with approximately 20 – 30 internal and external clients ranging from account managers, traffickers, ad ops managers, and policy developers so we are in constant contact with today’s leading digital pioneers. Of all the portals and publishers we work with, not all are in agreement on which recruitment method is the best way is to collect this information on their sites. Therefore, we often find ourselves negotiating with many of our clients and contacts on how to best achieve this. After which we spend countless hours coordinating, monitoring the implementation of our technology, and making sure we are meeting all parties’ expectations. Overall maintaining the integrity of our data is our number one priority because its accuracy dramatically effects how our clients invest online and helps keeps many of us employed.
So my point is that we do a little more than collect emails for research companies.
In the interest of fairness with the Vark.com user, if you wan to learn a little more about Safecount I encourage you to visit us at www.Safecount.net or Safecount’s Viewpoint Community http://safecountcommunity.com where online users willingly have come together to help us with our efforts.
In conclusion, when I am not collecting data for Dynamic logic (or searching myself on Google) or I like to see live music, make up smarmy voices for my cats, and take every possible moment to enjoy New York City; my new home.
A younger David O'Brien does some early consumer testing
David O'Brien jaded and older. Faced with a childhood that is defined by his repeated defeats at the hands of Milton Bradley's Simon , now spends his nights roaming the web in search of the killer social networking application and taking pictures of himself leaning to the right.
Madeline Mulero- Keywords that translated to actions will help you build client and team relationships to bring results March 22, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Safecount, Staff posts , add a commentHi my name is Madeline Mulero and I’m a privileged project manager for Safecount’s Puerto Rico office. As a SC project manager I’ve had the opportunity to understand the real deal behind publisher relations, advertising, data collection, optimization, but most of all how to keep up with all the work. It’s been well known that measuring online advertising represents one of the biggest challenges of all times; mostly because it depends on technological advances and in finding creative ways to be innovative on a regular basis. Why is this necessary? It is important to understand that part of being able to demonstrate transparency is to bring a formal data collection process and ensure that the data gathered is both defined and accurate and that further decisions based on the arguments in the findings are valid (which also helps on acquiring more and new business).
Organizations are well known as machines because of their structure and behavior that tends to be predictable but having to deal with demanding clients is like a roller-coaster, most of all if the team you are working with at the corresponding client is new or adventurous enough. This doesn’t mean that it has to be a total headache or that you have to sacrifice your sleep, it will just require extra-time to organize yourself. There are always new ways and options that will lead you to a reasonable solution for a certain issue and that is the fun part, but what about how to do it?
Easy! It is extremely necessary to have always in mind what do you want, need and how to accomplish certain task in a timely manner without losing perspective (or mind). This how to can be easily answered by defining: what (is needed), who (is responsible) and why (reasoning behind it) in a certain project or task. Once you have all that broken out then communicate with your team your thoughts and recommendations. You should feel that you can rely and trust in your team-mates, everything else will solve almost by itself.
So let’s: Plan ahead, Organize, Prioritize and Communicate what your client needs and how to make it work. Because at the end of the day is not about gathering enough control, building robust sample, follow your methodology and making things happen by all means; but about gathering more experience, building better client/team relationships, following your principles and making a client happy by solving an issue with the help and support of your WHOLE team. This is what makes a huge difference to the project management work from being hectic to entertaining. These simple words become key factors when dealing with last minute request for important clients and of course to keep your sanity.
At the moment I’m studying, working and planning a wedding all at the same time, whatever spare time is left is spent enjoying the movies or spending some time at the beach and I’m known for my penchant for re-organize things (yeah I know).
When I’m not doing that I like to read every single non-work related article or magazine I can find and of course there is always shopping.
Ogi Radić asks- Can finding out what drives online ad awareness help create better ads? March 3, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Staff posts , add a comment
The advent of online advertising more than a decade ago yielded a “new” metric – online ad awareness – a measure of online ad memorability. Dynamic Logic at this point stored at least 4500 campaigns that measured this concept in MarketNorms. It’s high time we’d started thinking if this measure of online campaign noticeability gives us any further insight into its connection with, say, brand favorability or purchase intent. If we can predict what drives ad awareness, then we may be able to gauge the ad’s effect on persuasion.
The first thing the client always asks about is industry benchmarks. Looking at several different categories in the last 3 years, we do notice some differences in terms of category. Entertainment campaigns are on average more noticeable than, for example, automotive ones. This means that category inherently affects the ads noticeability.
In turn, how about investigating ad awareness by looking at performance per online ad awareness? How are other campaign metrics in campaigns faring in the context of their memorability? Are more memorable campaigns more likely to have increases in persuasion? What about those campaigns where online ad awareness decreases? What does this decrease even mean in practical terms?
Using MarketNorms I aggregated 26 banner campaigns with best increases in memorability, and 26 with highest decreases. Interesting things emerged as findings there. Those campaigns where online ad awareness decreases also had accompanying decreases in brand favorability and purchase intent.
The best performing campaigns had increases in favorability and purchase intent.
This means that if we figure out what a decrease in online ad awareness means, then we can potentially prevent it as it’s detrimental for the brand.
In conclusion, if the message causes people to remember the campaign less after being exposed to it, that’s not good for the brand and ought to be avoided. In creating ads, the client needs to appropriate the ads for the industry, and more technically, to avoid having the ads cause a decrease in brand awareness. Our task here at Dynamic Logic is to figure out what the decrease means, and we’re presently working on it.
Ogi spends his free time reading everything he can get his hands on, going to the gym, and discovering good restaurants around NYC.
Lauren Rodas Discusses Recruitment On Video Ad Networks And Caribbean Office Envy March 2, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Staff posts , add a commentHi Everyone—
My name is Lauren Rodas and I am one of the first Project Managers hired here for the Safecount Puerto Rico team. So far it’s been a little over a year already since our office here in Puerto Rico was created and it’s been great. There are so many interesting events that happen on a day to day basis with being a Project Manager here in Safecount Puerto Rico. It is exciting as a Project Manager to never know what to expect. New things are always happening such as crazy requests from publishers and the different reactions when they see ‘Puerto Rico’ in my signature. A lot of envy and countless “how’s the weather?”. Learning new stuff is a constant thing especially when you’ve been here for only a year. I think the best thing about working in Safecount is the way new improvements come out and change frequently. I’ve been a part of testing with Peanut Labs which will help supplement recruitment with social networks and it’s helped me achieve success in my studies.
Recently, I’ve worked a lot with Video Ad Networks and I have to admit it’s a challenge and I have heard that there are many ways that we are trying to better recruitment on those networks. The in-layer banner survey is one thing I can’t wait to see come out. We also found it very successful to recruit off of an in-video overlay but it’s only an option when the Network has already sold the ad slot. Hopefully with growing new technology, we can move into the direction to be able to recruit well over all Video Ad Networks.
Online advertisement is growing fast and we are all learning how to adapt our current technology to keep Dynamic Logic/Safecount as one of the top names in Marketing Research/Data collection companies.
Michelle Eule discusses the relationship between click though rates and branding metrics March 2, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Staff posts , add a commentMore than ever before, agencies are feeling pressure from advertisers to leverage the “real-time” metrics available in the digital environment to optimize their media plans on the fly. Certainly, one of the many benefits the medium offers is the myriad of metrics, many of which are available in real-time, and the ability to make quick changes to media delivery.
Typically, the metrics used for optimization online are behavioral in nature, such as click-through or interaction rates. While such metrics give an appropriate indication of performance for campaigns with direct response goals, they are not a good fit for campaigns that have longer-term branding goals. A study conducted by Dynamic Logic and DoubleClick in 2009 showed only a very weak positive relationship between click though rate and branding metrics. People may interact with ads for reasons unrelated to the brand message, such as interesting games. With such a weak correlation between the metrics, using behavioral data to optimize a branding campaign gives, at best, an incomplete picture of campaign performance and, at worst, a deceptive picture that can lead to bad decisions.
While branding metrics are certainly the ideal criteria to use for optimizing a branding campaign, there’s also a danger in making changes to the media delivery too early in a campaign. Branding metrics that are more attitudinal in nature, like Favorability and Purchase Intent, generally take time to develop. Our normative data show that multiple exposures to a campaign, which help reinforce a brand’s message, ultimately help build lower funnel brand metrics. Often, the best creative or site placement in a campaign doesn’t show its full impact until consumers have seen it multiple times. If an agency makes changes to site placements or creative rotation too early in a campaign, they may be moving impressions away from a critical campaign asset before giving it a chance to make an impact.
A client interesting in using sophisticated models for planning and optimization could leverage Dynamic Logic/Millward Brown’s marketing sciences group to build tools that incorporate survey-based branding data with normative information and external data sources. For clients that are looking for a simple and inexpensive solution that provides a quick read on branding metrics to make optimization decisions early in a campaign, Dynamic Logic recently launched a new solution called Adometer. The metrics used in Adometer are recall-based, such as brand recall or message recall, which are the building blocks to generating an attitudinal shift in consumer opinion. These recall-based metrics, meanwhile, aren’t as influenced by frequency levels as lower-funnel attitudinal metrics like brand favorability, and therefore offer better guidance early in a campaign. They simply offer an early gut-check as to whether consumers even notice the ad at all, recognize what brand is being advertised, and understand the message or key benefit the brand is trying to communicate. Comparisons in performance can be made between creative themes and between site placements so that the agency can reallocate impressions towards the best performing ones. The Adometer solution uses short surveys, usually 4-5 questions long, so results can be collected quickly and delivered in real-time via an online interface. Because no control group is needed, there is also no need to worry about balanced audience profiles.
If a client is looking to understand their campaign’s performance across the full funnel of branding metrics, and needs deeper insights into why a campaign is performing well or poorly, then AdIndex is a better solution. However, for an early read into what’s working and what isn’t while it’s early enough to make changes, Adometer may be the right solution.
Michelle Eule is Managing Director, AdIndex Solutions at Dynamic Logic. In this role, Michelle is responsible for maintaining and enhancing Dynamic Logic’s suite of solutions for analyzing the in-market branding impact of digital advertising. She also acts as a consultant on strategic accounts and customized projects. Michelle joined Dynamic Logic in July 2002. Prior to joining Dynamic Logic, she managed a research laboratory for a professor at Columbia Business School, with whom she studied marketing and organizational behavior from a social psychological perspective. Michelle received an MBA at NYU’s Stern School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Barnard College. Michelle has been a speaker at many industry events including conferences hosted by The ARF, OMMA, AMA, Ad:Tech, and OPA, and has been a guest lecturer at Baruch College and NYU. Michelle was a judge for the 2008 IAB MIXX awards and is a member of the Research Committee for the Advertising Council.
