Blog

On Thursday, September 17th Mpire Corporation, with the help of its AdXpose technology, released a study that found nearly half of all ad impressions and 95% of clicks were ‘fraudulent’. A shocking revelation, yes, but we at Sitelab take several steps to drastically reduce the impact click fraud has on our online media campaigns. Below are a few best practices we adhere to prior to and during a campaign launch.

• Avoid Run-of-Network (RON) or Run-of-Site (ROS) Buys – Always apply targeting to your buy. Always. Target audiences should be researched and defined prior to campaign launch. You can easily find site profile information by using tools such as Google’s Ad Planner or Quantcast. By targeting your buy and avoiding blanket RON, you reduce the number of sites ad networks can place your ad and you eliminate most sites that provide no demographicor site profile information.
• Don’t Rely on Publisher Data – If you purchase your media through a publisher directly or though an ad network, insist on using 3rd party tracking solutions. The 2 big ones are Atlas and Doubleclick. Check the discrepancy between publisher data and your analytics provider data daily to make sure numbers match. There is an industry acceptance of 20% variance but push hard to make sure the publishers are reporting accurate data.
• Monitor Performance – If you’ve noticed strange spikes in impressions, bring it to your publisher’s attention. Be inquisitive and ask for screenshots of your ads. If you see your ad on a site that you feel isn’t consistent with the brand image, request to have your ads blocked from that site. You’d be surprised what you’ll get from publishers and networks if you just ask.
• Be Careful with Niche Sites – Although niche sites are a great way of reaching your target audience, they may fly under the radar when it comes to industry compliance. Check conversion rates to make sure your clicks are converting to sales (extremely low CVR rates could be an indicator of click fraud). If you see they’re not converting, bring it to the site’s attention and request daily reports. Keeping on top of them will ensure they’re running the best campaign possible because only then will you continue to give them your business

If you do your pre campaign homework, follow up on any red flags in reporting and implement back up analytics tracking, your should be able to all but eliminate impression and click fraud within your online media campaigns.

Posted in Industry News, Media | No Comments »

Through our partnership with Source Communications, we recently completed a project for Amtrak and Subway that showcases just how far we can take our new media development. For the first time ever we had to develop banners that spanned an entire baseball stadium.

During Gameplay

In Between Innings

These LED stadium banners ran during last week’s grand opening of the new Yankees stadium and the Mets brand new Citi Field. One of the major challenges we had to meet was creating a banner that covered 14,000+ pixels. In dealing with most interactive projects the resolution rarely goes beyond the industry norm of 1,024 pixels wide, so we saw this as an opportunity to shine.

Another challenge was testing the videos we had created once they were finished. Without control of the venue, it gets a little difficult to make sure everything looks exactly right. With that, we compiled the videos into pieces using Adobe Flash and then composited them together in Adobe After Effects. After a few quick test renders to make sure the process was running smoothly, we finished it up and delivered the uncompressed video files to the client without issue.

In total, we completed the banners in about a week while under tight time constraints.  When the client ran the banners on location they were said to have been some of the best motion graphics banners the stadium operators had seen in a long time. Mission accomplished.

Posted in Cool Banners, Media, SiteLab Clients, SiteLab Creative, SiteLab News & Events | No Comments »

These days, agencies and advertisers are faced with the challenge of having to continue to improve their paid search campaigns. It is inevitable that if you aren’t moving forward these days, your competitors are. When your weekly trend reports are looking the same as they did 6 months ago, you know its time for a change. So how do you give your campaign a kick start and start moving it in the right direction? Run display advertising.

Over the past few years, several studies have indicated there is a synergy between search and display advertising. The Atlas Institute, for one, published numerous insight papers outlining how the presence of display advertising influences user search activity. The key takeaway here is the 22% lift in conversion rate when a user is exposed to both a display ad and a search ad by the same advertiser. Another study published by comScore illustrated the fact that running search and display simultaneously will increase search activity by an average of 155% (comScore Brand Metrix, Norms Database, November 2008). comScore also writes that search and display together provide the greatest boost to offline sales (+119%) when compared to either tactic alone (+82% search only, +16% display only). Now these are pretty staggering numbers if you think about it, but why do some advertisers insist on dumping all marketing dollars in search and leave out display when it comes to planning a campaign? Easy – search is generally more profitable from an ROI standpoint. It’s also generally easier to trace performance. But to truly maximize the chances of a successful search campaign, you need to run both search and display in conjunction.

Think about it this way. How many times have you seen something either on TV or on the internet and subsequently performed a search? Now imagine if you never saw that ad on TV or anywhere on the internet. Would you still be curious or want to know more about that particular brand, advertisement or company? You can see why it makes sense to keep those display spots. It increases awareness, peaks curiosity, and motivates users to search.

So next time you are faced with the challenge of how to boost your search campaign’s performance and spend your marketing budget profitably, look beyond the bottom line numbers to make sure your campaign is well rounded.

Posted in Industry News, Media, Search Marketing Today | No Comments »

Ok, so you have all been on Facebook and have been asked to be a ninja, a zombie, have had a mojito passed to you, have been stalked and have gawked at many of your ‘”friends” status updates.  Those same people have also been on Myspace and have been asked “Why am I not in your Top 8?”

Buying ads on these two social sites seemed to be the end all in reaching coveted demographics, (see 18-30) but, advertisers are realizing that the ROI is just not worth the investment.  To put it more bluntly, “Marketers don’t care about teenagers sharing photographs with one another,” Cone tells Marketing Daily. And while companies can post their own products or marketing-oriented profiles on these sites, site users “are likely to turn off” if they see too much marketing on these kinds of channels, which they consider vehicles for personal communications, he adds.

“The same applies to text messaging,” Cone notes. “The channel can be used for marketing, but it’s not advisable.”

(more…)

Posted in Industry News, Media | No Comments »

Every month this column will be dedicated to Media.  Essentially we will cover interesting banners, websites, new media and generally all things SITELAB media related.

So with out further ado here is the SITELAB banner of the month (BOM) created here at the ‘LAB, for our wonderful clients over at Hot Spring Spas.  This banner totally outperformed expectations and really opened up a a whole new demographic for Hot Spring.  Very exciting stuff indeed!

You’re probably wondering what is Dia de los Muertos, well if you really want to know more click here, I am not a history teacher.  We have got too stay on track here people!  Overall it’s been a good week for media for all of our clients.  If you have any questions media related then leave a reply below and I’ll get back to you.

Thanks for stopping by, till next time I’ll leave you with this, enjoy.

Posted in Cool Banners, Media, SiteLab Creative | No Comments »