By Laura O’Shaughnessy
In the age of digital media, the temptation to pay low advertising rates often leads to wasted money. Why? Because chief marketing officers can argue that they paid low cost-per-thousand (CPM) rates on their ad buy.
But trafficking in low CPMs has become dangerous. Too many times, those low rates derive from bots (ad impressions created by automated scripts, not humans). Our research suggests that up to half of paid media impressions fail to reach a marketer’s target audience.
In a waste model we built to measure the quality of impressions in common programmatic channels, we found many contributors to waste, all of which drive up the real cost of what initially appears to be inexpensive. Some of these contributors are:
- Ads seen by bots, not humans
- Ads, including video ads, that aren’t viewable
- Ads that don’t fully load
- Ads that miss the target audience
- Ads that miss frequency windows
The Association of National Advertisers is championing a standard whereby marketers enter publisher agreements only when impressions are “measurably viewable.”
We recommend investing more in known, verified audiences with logged-in users, like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube. The same goes for addressable television (where a specific commercial is sent to an individual household). Such networks nearly eliminate fraud and waste. You know you’re dealing with real humans—not bots or theoretical audiences built with unreliable cookies or audience panels.
Furthermore, when users log on to Facebook or Twitter on their computer, tablet or smartphone, these networks recognize that they are the same person, regardless of the device. By contrast, if you’re using cookies to reach prospects, you as a brand don’t necessarily know that the 36-year-old man you identify on a smartphone is the same person who logged on earlier that day to his iPad and MacBook Air.
These audience-first platforms ensure highly engaged audiences in Web and mobile-app environments that are the least vulnerable to ad blocking. But decisions about these channels must be driven by cost per performance. Therefore:
- Don’t work with partners who aren’t committed to being transparent about every shred of data and every penny of cost.
- Always ask for CPMs with performance results right next to them.
Your impressions are getting cheaper? Who cares? The real question is whether they’re becoming more effective.
Laura O’Shaughnessy is the CEO of SocialCode.