Interactive Advertisement Dynamics_020310
Transcript of Interactive Advertisement Dynamics_020310
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Interactive Advertisement Dynamics An Overview
About the Author
Rani Bisal
Rani Bisal is a Domain expert and a member of the Presales
team for the Advertising & New Media sub-segment for theMedia & Information Services Business Unit at TCS. She has
over 5+ years of experience in domain consulting with wide
range of experience in the Advertising industry, specifically
the Online Media and the Ad Agencies. She has a bachelors
degree in Mechanical Engineering. She can be reached at
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Interactive Advertisement Dynamics An Overview
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 3
2 Ad Serving - Basics 4
3. The Evolution 5
4. Ad-Server How it works? 6
5. Key Players 9
6. Conclusion The Way Forward 10
7. References 10
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Introduction
Interactive mediums such as the internet and mobile are increasingly becoming the primary channel for content
consumption today. Christened as new media, this has opened up a unique experience for consumers, fueled by key
factors such as broadband penetration, on-demand information and entertainment, personalization, two-waycommunication channels and consumer affordability. The last factor mentioned, affordability, perhaps holds the key;
it was imperative for online businesses to keep the end user cost to a minimum and hence leverage online
advertisements as their primary revenue stream.
In the early days, advertisers were not too keen to have internet ads as a part of their media plan, since online
advertisements (Ad) were a bunch of pop-ups and banners, which were considered to be a perpetual source of
irritation to consumers. However, with the advent of web 2.0, social networking, online user profiling and identity
management, web analytics established the concept of targeting which in itself matured from demographics,
psychographics and behaviorgraphics. This led to the concept of delivering online advertisements based on theconsumer preferences. A well targeted online advertisement with a good context has been proved to have a much
higher recall and effectiveness as compared to traditional ones and it is offered at a competitive cost.
This relatively new business model as indicated above is being technically achieved through an strategic
implementation of ad-servers solutions, ad networks, digital content management systems, content delivery
networks, web analytics, business intelligence systems and interface to enterprise systems for invoicing and billing.
For effective delivery with the correct context, online advertisement needs a comprehensive technology driven
platform to uniquely identify the demography and user profile, accurately capture and derive the analytics and KPI.Intelligent ad-servers and ad management platforms comprehensively provide all the above mentioned features
and many other facilities.
This paper attempts to briefly outline the ad-server mechanism and how they serve the online advertisement
business.
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Ad Serving - Basics
Online Ad-management is realized through deployment and implementation of commercially available ad-server
solutions. These Ad-servers provide various features like Ad scheduling, delivery, placement and optimization,
tracking, reporting and so on. The business of interactive advertising is driven by IT maturity and sophistication. Withadoption of IT enabled services, the online Ad-servers are able to minimize operational costs and maximize revenues.
Ad-servers and their associated systems enable advertisers to optimize the marketing campaign spend by utilizing
their highly effective targeting and ad performance measurement capabilities. A typical Ad-server implements the
following features or variations of the same:
Ad Inventory Management Based on the media plan feed into the Ad-server, the Ad-server serves the right ad to
the user at the right time on the right space available on the websites zones.
Content Management Uploading the Ad content to a content management system for efficient packaging anddelivery across multiple content channels
Ad Targeting and Trafficking As per various guidelines, one advertisement is served to a specific web page every
time a page is requested by a web site visitor.
Key Statistical Reports The Ad-servers generate various statistics related to the campaign, such as the numbers
of impressions, number of clicks in a session, click streaming, as in post-click and post-impression activities, site
performance metrics and so on. A report on the number of impressions and clicks for each advertising format that
is served also can be shared with the advertisers.
Ad Calendar The interactive online calendars with password protection, accessible from any Web browser,
automate Ad placement for Publishers, eliminating manual error and reducing administration costs.
Ad Scheduling The scheduling system allows publishers to deliver guaranteed numbers of impressions to their
advertisers and increase sales by selling remnant impressions to additional advertisers.
Categorized Ad Groups The group categorization system simplifies and organizes the process of selling Ad
inventories to advertisers by grouping the Ad zones within a website, based on various criteria such as popularity
or subject matter
Some of the advanced Ad-Server features which are optionally implemented are as illustrated below:
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Interactive Advertisement Dynamics An Overview
Figure 1: Ad-server Advanced Functionality
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Interactive Advertisement Dynamics An Overview
The Evolution
In its very basic form, an Ad-server renders static advertisements on web pages. Once the Ad is served to the end user,
it further tracks the Ads performance through an analytics engine generating a preset collection of KPIs. In earlier
implementations, when a page was requested by a browser, an advertisement request was made through the webserver to the Ad-server of the publisher. The Ad-server would respond with the advertisement content back to the
browser and also internally log the request rendition for further tracking. Below is a pictorial representation of the
earlier ad serving scenario.
The advertiser billing was based on the delivery tracking, maintained at the publisher site. Effectively the advertisers
or agencies had no mechanism to validate the invoice raised by the publisher.
The next level of evolution introduced a tracking system at the advertiser end, which can be used to reconcile the
delivery information just prior to invoicing and payout. With this, the Ad delivery is split into two steps the
advertisement rendering instructions are delivered from the publisher Ad-server, while the actual Ad content is
being delivered from the advertisers (or designated third party) Ad-server. Apart from the provision for
reconciliation, this also provides advertisers flexibility and tighter control on the content being displayed to the end
user. The diagram below illustrates the evolved online delivery model.
Figure 2: Old Ad-Serving Model
Figure 3: Evolved Ad Serving Model
Database
Database
Database
Browser
Browser
Web Server
Web Server
PublisherAd Server
Publisher Ad Server
Advertiser Ad Server
1. Request
1. Request
2. Ad Request
2. Ad Request
5. Ad Request
5. Ad Delivered
4. Ad Instruction
8. Ad Delivered
4. Ad Content
4. Ad Content
3. Log Reporting
3. Log Reporting
3. Log Reporting
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Ad-server How it works?
The Ad-server facilitates the quick and easy delivery of advertisements to the publishers websites. Its interface will
perform the following basic functions to initiate an ad campaign:
1. Create an Advertiser2. Create a Campaign for the advertiser
3. Assign Banners to the campaign
4. Define a Publisher and its online sites
5. Define ad delivery zones (sections) on the publisher sites
6. Link banners to the ad zones on the web pages
To request an Ad from an Ad-server, the publisher has to place a script (XML / JS) on its page. Heres an example an ad
tag:
This snippet of HTML, when placed on a web page, informs the browser to open a small window (150X150 pixels), and
in that window place whatever content is returned from http://ad.samplemanager.com/imp?Z=46860&s=2948&.
When this is loaded in the browser, we will get the following response:
This essentially gives two instructions to the browser:
a) Load the ad display content from content.yieldmanager.com
b) Redirect to target site on clicking the ad displayed (advertiser site)
This is the most basic implementation of a web-page with an Ad-server. Now lets look at the various models in the
market.
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Interactive Advertisement Dynamics An Overview
Ad Serving Model: Publisher Side
This is the simplest scenario in which an advertiser gets the Ad inventory from a publisher and sends its content to the
publisher to be delivered onto its online properties.
The key steps illustrated in the diagram above are as follows:
1. Browser requests for an advertisement (embedded on a web page) to web server
2. Web server routes the advertisement request to an Ad-server
3. On successful processing, Ad-server logs the request
4. Ad-server responds back to the Web Server with Ad delivery instructions (XML)
5. Web server responds back to the browser with Ad delivery instructions
6. The browser requests for the display content to a Content Delivery Network (CDN) / 3rd party source
7. Ad content is delivered back to the browser
The entire process of delivering an online advertisement from request to the final response is completed within a few
milliseconds.
Probing a level deeper, the processing logic for an online advertisement at the Ad-server on receipt of a request is as
depicted in the figure below.
Figure 4 : Publisher Ad Serving Model
1. Request2. Ad Request
6. Ad Request
3. Log Reporting
4. Ad Instruction5. Ad Instructions
Delivered
7. Ad Delivered
Browser Web Server
Database
Publisher Ad Server
3rd Party Ad Server(CDNs)
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The key steps executed by the Ad-server are:
1. A unique code specific to a web page (or a group) is placed on the Ad-server.
2. It routes this unique code to the Ad picker module to choose an Ad for delivery.
3. Ad picker maps the browser request to targeting groups based on geography, demography, and so on.
4. The Ad-server verifies all business rules associated with each campaign assigned to the unique browser identifier.
5. Compare yield across the various options for each Ad that match the delivery criteria (which is the best possible
delivery, given the criteria set)
6. The selected Ad is delivered back to the browser through the web server
7. The delivery and performance metrics are transmitted to the reporting and billing systems.
The publisher Ad-server encompasses several other features such inventory prediction, yield optimization, sales
interfaces, order management, billing and reporting interfaces, and so on, that makes a campaign management
successful.
Ad Serving Model: Advertiser/Agency Side
The advertisers or the Ad agencies have similar Ad management system as the publishers. The features include Ad
rendition, tracking key metrics, campaign management, workflow automation, CRM and integrated reporting
systems. An integrated Ad management platform enables significant automation in terms of order management,
trafficking, media planning, reconciliation and others. Moreover, a centralized reporting with comparative analytics
and KPI data provides key insights into the Ad spend and campaign effectiveness.
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Interactive Advertisement Dynamics An Overview
Figure 5 : Ad-server Backend Functionality
1. Request 2. Ad Request 3. Log Reporting
4. Ad Instruction5. Ad InstructionDelivered
3rd Party Ad Server(CDNs)
Browser
WebServer
Publisher Ad Server
Database
6. Ad Request
8. Ad Delivered
Ad DeliveredEngine Ad Picker
BehavioralTargetingDatabase
Reporting&
Billing
CreativeAsset
Management
InventoryPrediction &
Management
CampaignBusiness
Rules
YieldOptimization
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Interactive Advertisement Dynamics An Overview
Figure 6 : Advertisers Ad Serving model
3rd Party Ad Server(CDNs)
1. Request 2. Ad Request
6. Ad Request
3. Log Reporting
Database
4. Ad Instruction5. Ad InstructionsDelivered
7. Ad InstructionsDelivered
Browser
Web Server Publisher Ad Server
Advertiser / Ad AgencyAd Server
(CDNs)
9. Ad Delivered
8. Ad Request
Key Players
Here are few of the key global players in the Ad serving technologies and services.
Atlas
Doubleclick
Right MediaYield Manager
OpenXHiroMedia
ADTECH
Bluestreak
Google Ad Manager
Smart Ad-server
Expo9
Solbright
Accipiter Ad Manager
24/7 RealMedia's Open Ad Stream (OAS)Mediaturf
MOJO Ad-server Platform
AdSapient
Interactive Avenue
DGM India
Eplanning
Pointroll
My Ad Market
CheckM8Eyebalster
Ad Jugler
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Interactive Advertisement Dynamics An Overview
Conclusion The Way Forward
References
With so many features in hand that offers pure technology products and services, its clear that the primary function
of the Ad-servers is no longer restricted to simply delivering and reporting about an Ad unit. Rather, it is in bridging
the gap between the advertisers and their targeted consumers more effectively and helping the publishers to bettermonetize their valuable inventory. Hence, the business model of purely paying for serving an Ad on websites is
rapidly fading into the past. The global digital media companies will view basic Ad serving as an enabler for their
higher value offerings and will begin to offer it at a little or no cost to the advertisers and publishers, with a self service
access.
The revolutionary changes like no-fee Ad serving are indicating a positive aspect for the future of technology
innovation in the Ad industry which signals, Ad serving is no more a commodity services rather, it is now a targeting
tool for advertisers, Ad optimizer for publishers, and an effective end to end Ad management platform for an Ad
campaign.
Finally, this transformation is going to lead to a better online experience for the whole advertisement ecosystem.
http://www.adoperationsonline.com/category/ad-serving/
AdRelevance, 2008. Impressions by Technology for Simple Flash, GIF/JPG and Rich Media only.
http://www.ignitee.com/newsletters/13/MTC_13.htm
IAB Measurement Guidelines
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/Web_beacon.html
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