>$5 CPM for This? YouTube Head-Scratcher

Posted on Monday, 1 January 2018 11:06 am by markpilip

I’ve got a YouTube channel for experimentation purposes and “monetize” (I hate that MBA non-word) the videos to see what happens. Looking at it this morning, I noticed that  a fairly recent video of a guitar I purchased generated $6.19 over 1,234 monetized playbacks for a playback based CPM of $5.01.

I’m clearly no PewDiePie and will need to work for a living as, unlike Mr. Pie, I’m not willing to film anti-Semitic “jokes” and put them in front of your 13-year-old.

Here’s the stats from my most lucrative videos:

Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, digital marketing, Guitar, Marketing, Media, Strategy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on >$5 CPM for This? YouTube Head-Scratcher

Let’s Market to Humans in 2018

Posted on Friday, 29 December 2017 9:36 am by markpilip

img-thingMarket only to humans.

If you only change one thing about how you undertake your marketing in 2018, let it be this one.

According to the U.S. Census bureau, there were about 252.8 million adult (18+) humans in the U.S. as of June 2017. As of June 2018, there will be about 255.3 million humans, an increase of about one percent.

These are actual living people, with names and addresses, who live in a particular location and who purchase actual goods and services. It doesn’t matter how big the “audience” is at the DMP. It doesn’t matter how big the cookie pool is. It doesn’t matter what the match rate is.

There are about 253 million adults in the U.S. that you can market to. Period.

And unless you’re P&G or another FMCG company, you’re marketing to a smaller group of category buyers. Say it’s 35 million or so, which around the number of people that golf or take cruises.

If you are not starting with an actual list of names and addresses of those 35 million and instead are starting with “signal data” or “audiences” at a publisher, ad network, DMP, DSP, DWTF or whatever, you are getting ripped off. Continue reading →

Posted in Behavioral economics, Data, digital marketing, Direct Response, fraud, Leadership, Media, Philosophy, Predictions, Privacy, Strategy | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Let’s Market to Humans in 2018

As long as we’re going to malls ourselves and not sending non-human traffic–like drones or social media strategists–there to get our stuff, programmatic OOH makes sense.

See, I’m not totally against buying media programmatically!

Posted on Wednesday, 27 December 2017 8:42 am by markpilip | Comments Off on Humans Still Go To Malls

Zipf: A Counter to Programmatic Nonsense

Posted on Tuesday, 26 December 2017 9:07 am by markpilip

One of the arguments in favor of using programmatic buying is “variety.” As in, there’s so many websites available that there’s no efficient way to purchase on that number of sites. Because you can’t do that many direct deals, you have to buy programmatically.

The argument ignores Zipf’s law.

Most humans watch <20 TV channels, even though we have hundreds available. If you look at time spent, the vast majority of the attention is spent on just a couple of those channels.

Humans listen to one or two radio stations. We take one route to work. We eat the same few things, whether at home or in restaurants.

Yet in the digital world the fantasy persists that it’s more efficient to buy crappy inventory out on the long tail for $0.50 CPM. Nonsense. Once you get past the few sites at the head of a powerlaw distribution, the amount of reach and frequency you get with humans falls off exponentially.

Takeaway: In 2018, say “no” to programmatic-first tactics. Buy sites that humans visit. Pay the going rate. Don’t be fooled by cheap. And win.

Posted in digital marketing, Media, Strategy | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Zipf: A Counter to Programmatic Nonsense

Justifying the Weird

Posted on Thursday, 7 December 2017 8:30 am by markpilip

What’s the success rate for people trying to evade marketing surveillance on the web?

I think it’s zero. Check out the story of Ross William Ulbricht AKA “Dread Pirate Roberts” of Silk Road infamy. He was alleged to be responsible for the sales of over $1 billion in heroin on the dark web. He had very good reason to cover his tracks–a long stint in Federal Maximum Sercurity–and was, by all accounts, very computer and security literate. Yet he couldn’t do it. There’s other stories of sophisticated cyber-criminals getting tripped up by basic OpSec lapses.

So what’s the chance that a normal person like you or me is going to perfectly:

  • Always use their VPN?
  • Have a  perfectly-configured ad blocker and always use it?
  • Keep Google’s mitts off our location?
  • Never log in to a site that shares anonymous login data?

It’s zero. It’s much safer to assume that some of our digital ephemera, whether it’s some login or log of an IP address, or device ID, is available to match or “onboard.” That means that it’s likely that we can be matched anonymously to some data that can, at the very least, say “hey, there’s a real human here.” Continue reading →

Posted in Data, digital marketing, fraud, Marketing, Media, Security | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Justifying the Weird

I love the holidays, but as a buyer, I hate this time of year. Media sales people and vendors are calling constantly looking for that use it or lose it “dump money.”

If you have dump money, only two things are true:

  • Your money will be wasted.
  • Your budgeting process is nonsensical.

Somehow inventory will be found and contracts will be amended. But the marginal ROI on inventory will suck and, come January 2nd, you’ll wonder whether you bought technology X after a particularly liquid holiday party.

I don’t have dump money (although I’ve spent it for others, with predictable results) because I practice proper, zero-based budgeting. If you budget correctly, when the vendors call this month you can confidently say “no, I’m good.”

Posted on Friday, 1 December 2017 9:16 am by markpilip | Comments Off on Dealing With Dump Money

Déjà Vu: The Partner Curse

Posted on Thursday, 30 November 2017 9:13 am by markpilip

Screen Shot 2017-11-30 at 8.32.17 AMI’m sure you’ve read about Hyphbot, but if you haven’t, here’s a good piece at The Drum which you should read. In the article, this line from Jay Stevens, the Adform CRO, hit me:

“Premium publishers, like the FT are hyper-sensitive to this and they only have two trusted exchanges they allow [to resell their inventory],” he says.

“But then you go to other premium publishers [look through their ads.txt file] and it’s like a whole laundry list of every SSP and their brother, and their dog, that’s allowed to sell their inventory.”

It’s the “partner” curse, which marketers seem to constantly fall for. The pitch is that with more partners (heaven forbid, not “vendors”), you’ll collaboratively and more easily get more coverage of the market and sell more stuff. Continue reading →

Posted in Branding, digital marketing, fraud, Marketing, Media, Sales, Tactics | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Déjà Vu: The Partner Curse

Your Holiday Season Mission: Customer Acquisition

Posted on Wednesday, 29 November 2017 10:17 am by markpilip

Screen Shot 2017-11-29 at 8.44.18 AMWe’re in peak marketing season, with under 30 days to go. Digital CPMs are rising, clearing spots at acceptable CPA is getting harder, email in-boxes are more cluttered than ever, and sales promotion is off the hook.

Nothing we haven’t seen before. But what should you–a multi-product retailer–be focused on? The answer is the same as it’s always been.

Customer acquisition. Not increasing repeat purchase rates, although that’s important. Not in increasing average order size, although that’s important. Customer acquisition is king if you want to grow. You’ve read–and have mastered–Byron Sharp’s “How Brand Grow,” right?

If not, stop right now, buy yourself an early holiday gift and read it tonight. At a bare minimum, read Dr. Sharp on the fallacy of the leaky bucket theory or this quick overview of some of the criticisms of his and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s works.

The Double Jeopardy law says that you’ll build loyalty (repeat purchase) as you grow and get more of the category buyers. Pour your money into customer acquisition*, spread across as many channels as possible. But do the math first.

I stumbled upon a great presentation by Kevin Hillstrom, president of MineThatData, which shows you the kind of analysis you need to do. It makes clear why customer acquisition is so important. Read his presentation, available at SlideShare. You might want to hire him to look at your performance and assess your strategies and tactics.

Takeaways: Don’t get caught up in loyalty, NPS, and other things until you’ve got your customer acquisition strategy and tactics running full-speed, on many channels. Acquire customers to grow. Acquire customers to increase loyalty. And win.

*Decide where you want to cutoff acquisition at a source level. It could be break-even, at some minimally-acceptable ROI above your hurdle rate, or whatever. But make sure you understand and agree to those metrics with your executives, your marketing team, and your agencies.

Posted in Analysis, Marketing, Media, planning, Sales, Strategy, Tactics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Your Holiday Season Mission: Customer Acquisition

When somebody claims they’re a data-driven marketer, generally that means their actions are driven by cursory analysis of biased data sets, and that they lack a coherent strategy.

Posted on Tuesday, 28 November 2017 7:54 am by markpilip | Comments Off on Data-driven?

Another Day, More Digital Fraud

Posted on Wednesday, 22 November 2017 9:20 am by markpilip

Screen Shot 2017-11-22 at 8.46.37 AMHow many of your ad tech and mar tech technology providers called you in September and October and said “Hey, we’re seeing some odd things happening and we think maybe there’s some new fraud taking place. Maybe you should cut back your buys at X, Y, Z.”

Yeah, I thought it would rhyme with “hero.”

Turns out that yet another scheme to defraud advertisers, HyphBot, was spun up in August and which was stealing maybe $500K per day. You have to ask yourself–why didn’t any of your technology providers alert you? Either they’re complicit or they’re stupid.

My money’s on both. Your technology “partners” don’t want to tell you about the fraud, because that means you’d spend less on digital advertising and that’s less fees. Less fees means less avocado toast, and that’s a bad thing. That makes them complicit.

A digression: If your technology provider only provides technology for a fee, and always gets the upside (the fee) while not participating in the downside, they’re a vendor. Never let them use the word “partner.” When you hear the word “partner” in that case, grab your wallet.

What makes them stupid is that they’re protecting the upside (the fee) and not willing to have skin in the game on the downside. In other words, all the risk for fraud and waste is on the client. And that’s just dumb, long-term. Why? Because somebody else is going to look out for the best interest of the client. As much as I hate to say this, ultimately it’ll be the big consulting firms that look out for the client. Your CEO will ask his buddy– a partner at Deloitte, Accenture, or PwC– if there’s a problem he should be thinking about.

The sound you just heard was that of ad tech and mar tech hucksters getting double-tapped by an engagement manager who won’t hesitate to tell your CEO that the “..aaS” API-based, transactional service offers no value, and it easy to game.

So the technology geniuses on the west coast are complicit in stealing your money, and too stupid to look out for you. What should you do about it, as you enter peak season? A few tips:

  • Read and understand Adform’s paper on HyphBot
  • Ask your digital marketers and ad agencies to prove how they did/did not get caught by this (plan 3 hours for the meeting and demand details)
  • Hire Shailin Dhar or Augustine Fou (two bright and ethical guys) to look at what you’re doing and then implement what they say
  • If you’re mucking in the programmatic cesspool (and you probably have to), hire Wayne Blodwell (a bright and ethical guy) to set up your programmatic strategy and process correctly
  • Don’t trust anybody in ad tech or mar tech until proven otherwise

Takeaway: Your ad tech and mar tech vendors, who insist on calling themselves “partners” aren’t on your side. Hire your own independent auditors. Demand accountability. Assume fraud in digital.

By the way, Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted in digital marketing, fraud, Media, Security, Tactics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Another Day, More Digital Fraud