For Advertisers- Bid Shading and Move from 2nd Price to 1st Price Auction- Should Advertisers be concerned?By Sarang Kinjavdekar

The industry is moving from the 2nd price bidding to 1st price bidding. Many of the advertisers are really not happy with the 1st Price bidding. To get them pacified, this new Ad tech term Bid shading was introduced. Please note that , Bid shading will only determine the price of your impression, it does not necessarily means that the impressions purchased is what you intended. Bid shading is looking to find the right price for an impression, not the right impression. 

This concept is basically a supply side concept , however, it is now slowly moving to the Demand side. So, you as an Advertiser or a Marketer, if not aware of this, keep on reading!!! 

Before moving forward, just a recap of what 1st Price and 2nd Price auctions are. Note- Below is the most simplistic explanation, I am just trying to keep it simple so people who are not directly from Media buying/Ad tech background can also understand


2nd Price Auction

A,B and C below are 3 different Advertisers (Bidders) who are bidding in an Auction

Logic- Here, lets say A , B and C are bidding $1, $2 and 4 respectively , the second price logic says, the winner will pay the price which will be the 2nd Highest Price +$0.01 (Correction- So here , winner C will pay $2.01)

1st Price Auction

Logic- Same as the normal auctions as you see, the highest bidder wins

As mentioned earlier, the industry is now moving to the 1st Price bidding, even Google. So,as an Advertiser you should now be ready. However, this is not a good news to many of us advertisers as our whole Industry since the inception of programmatic (or even before) is based on 2nd Price auction. Sometimes, the 1st price auction looks like a trap or we do feel cheated. To pacify us, the term Bid shading is introduced.

So what exactly Bid Shading does?

Bid shading has cropped up as a compromise between the 1st Price and 2nd Price Auctions. So the buyer will pay something in between what the 2nd Price  and the 1st Price value

How can it help me as an Advertiser/ Where can it (and not) help?

It does not increase the likelihood of converting a customer. At most, it might help you save money on advertising costs. It is expected to help with the solution implemented by DSP providers that prevents unnecessarily paying too much – especially in a 1st  auction environment.

So, whats the logic and how is it done?

The  algorithm collects historical data about all transactions and uses this data to build a purchase model. It may include many variables, such as cost data, ad-size information, win rate, exchange from which the ad impression originates, URL of the ad impression, page or application from where the ad impression comes, accepted page category, adopted line-item tactics, etc.- Source- Yieldbird

Got it,  but how does it work -in simple language

For example, a buyer decides to buy CPM 10 $. However, based on its data, the technology decides that the stake should not be 10 $ but 5 $. It allows the buyer to win an ad impression and thus he saves 5 $.

Any Downsides/Comments?

• Still nascent process- not very transparent
• Expertise needed before one deep dives and start buying using deep shading
• Bid shading makes the most sense for branding or prospecting campaigns
• It is a sweetener for buyers who were content with 2nd price and are not happy with the way the industry buying standards suddenly moved from 2nd Price to 1st Price
• We cannot still prove whether it is actually saving money or not.

Thanks for reading!!

Sarang Kinjavdekar

Facebook Search Ads- Detailed guide and Easy explanation- By Sarang Kinjavdekar

Facebook has recently rolled out the Facebook Search Ads for almost all the advertisers globally. Below are some of the top level and easy to understand pointers in Q&A format- 

Before we begin, please note that search ads on Facebook were already launched in 2012 , but for some reasons Facebook quickly removed it. They started testing it again in December 2018 and then slowly started rolling out to the Advertisers. 

I will keep on updating this as and when I get the latest information. Meanwhile, you can read the basics of Facebook Search ads below.

 How does a Facebook Search Ads look like?

Below is how it will look like. Please note that, you cannot run search ads without also running news feed ads.

Where do I select the Search Ads option/ How do I activate or deactivate it?

For all the new ad campaigns, Search ads is automatically selected in the placements. If you do not want Search ads, just deselect it


Click image to enlarge

Where will the ads be displayed?

The ads will be eligible to appear on search result pages which includes general search and Marketplace search

Can I target Specific keywords?

Unfortunately not, unlike Google you cannot do it here.

So how will the keywords be selected?


When a business places an ad in Facebook search, it will show up for search terms related to the business’s offerings. 

How will I ensure my keywords targeting in this scenario?

So if you want to target some specific keywords, make sure they appear somewhere on your Business page

Will it adhere to my specified Audience targeting?

Yes, it will respect the audience targeting of the campaign and be contextually relevant to a limited set of English and Spanish search term (at the moment, I can see 2 language options)

Will it appear in News feed, what else do I need to know

Yes, it will.  The ads are designed to fit the experience on the given search results surface. They will appear in Marketplace search or general search. They look similar to News Feed ads . They will include a “Sponsored” label so it’s clearly marked as paid placement.

What about the layout?

Ads included in search results have the same layout as News Feed ads — same headline, image, copy text — and can be single image, carousel, video or a collection ad format.

What campaign objectives are supported

At the time of writing this, following objectives are supported- Product Sales, Conversions and Traffic Objectives.

Will it be helpful to my business/Why should I care?

This new Ads format  will give you the direct access to users who are actively searching for your product or service on the platform. Also, as the current inventory and formats gets saturated, this will give you an upperhand to try and test the options and convert users based on their intent.

Programmatic Advertising (Supply Side) - Move from Watefalling (Daisy chaining ) to Header Bidding - Simple explanation -Sarang Kinjavdekar

If you are into Programmatic buying or if you are interested to learn more about the Supply side jargons , you might have heard about the buzzwords like Header bidding and Waterfalling (aka Daisy chaining). There is lot of content available , much of it is difficult to understand.So, I will try to explain it in simple terms here.


Lets start with Waterfalling (aka Daisy chaining) .What is it exactly. Lets say , you are a Publisher, your main goal is to sell all your Inventory and make revenue. You are keen to sold the unsold Inventory and still looking to make up for the cost. You will work with the networks that offered the highest rates first, before working with those that offered lower rates until they monetized every impression. Hence, the term “waterfalling.” evolved.

Waterfalling is a technique publishers use to maximize both the pricing and sell-through rate of their inventory. It lets publishers move their inventory from one market to the next to optimize for revenue. 

So how does it looks like?

In the above figure, you can see how Publishers move from one SSP to another in order to maximize selling of the unsold inventory. This is why it is termed as waterfall.

The overall process is complex and if wrongly implemented, it cost a loads of money to the Publishers.


To overcome the problems of Watefalling , Header Bidding was introduced. What is Header bidding,  " Header bidding is an advanced programmatic advertising technique that serves as an alternative to the Google “waterfall” method. Header bidding is also sometimes referred to as advance bidding or pre-bidding, and offers publishers a way to simultaneously offer ad space out to numerous SSPs or Ad Exchanges at once."   as per Lotame

Header Bidding gives the Publisher the power to avoid the sequential strategy that Google DFP uses and allows the Publisher to have a simultaneous auction from all the bidders.

Publishers need to put some Javascripts (yes the page load definately increases in this case) and when the full page loads, all the SSPs and Ad exchanges will be informed to bid before any other outside bidding.

It has some advantages like- Increased revenue, increased control,Increase fill rate etc. However as the javascripts are implemented, it also increase latency and increases the work for the publisher and obviously increased infrastructure cost.

To understand the difference in  one image, please see below

Thanks for reading!
Sarang

RTB Breakout- Improving your RTB Advertising efforts by using this simple feature - Step by Step guide(Level- Advanced)- -Sarang Kinjavdekar

Are you using RTB and facing the problems of scaling or lesser impressions than you originally predicted? This article is focused on how to quickly understand what is wrong and how to quickly scale it up. 

We are talking of RTB Breakout- How does it look like, how can you use it and what options are available, you will have a detailed look about it below in this article


So, how does it looks like?

Click image to enlarge

How can you access it?

1. Login to your Authorized buyer's account

2. Select the Troubleshooting tab

3. Click RTB Breakout from the menu

4. If needed- Filter to select your criteria- filter by creative ID, account, publisher, or a particular preferred deal or private auction; or by format, including display and video; or platform, including desktop, mobile web, mobile app, tablet web, and tablet app.

What is available to me in RTB Breakout feature?

Below is a comprehensive list

1. Available impressions- Total number of impressions available during the chosen time period.
2. Filtered impressions- These impressions were filtered because of your pretargeting configuration. Ad Exchange will only send requests for impressions that match your pretargeting criteria.
3. Inventory matches- The total number of potential queries based on your pretargeting settings.
4. Bid requests not sent
5. Bid response errors
6. Successful responses- The total number of properly formed bid responses received by our servers within 120ms (80ms for Programmatic Guaranteed requests). 
7. Responses without bids
8. Responses without bids for this deal
9. Bids- The total number of bids received from the bidder. 
10. Filtered bids- The total number of bids filtered by Google policies, publisher exclusions, and bids excluded from the deal or private auction.
11. Bids in auction- The total number of bids that passed through all filters and competed in the auction.
12. Lost in auction- These bids lost in the auction. You may want to ensure your bid meets the required CPM and/or adjust your bidding strategy to win more of these impressions.
13. Auctions won
14. Not billed- These are impressions that were won at auction, but didn't serve (and also weren't billed) because the publisher didn't display them, or the impressions were determined to be invalid because of traffic quality filtering.
15. Ads not rendered

Once you have a detailed look by using RTB Breakout feature, you are in a position and calibrate your efforts and thus it will help you to scale up the campaigns and optimize it further.

Thanks for reading!

Sarang 

Get your Programmatic Advertising correct - 50 questions that you should ask your next Programmatic agency/Partner- -Sarang Kinjavdekar

Are you looking to work with a new Programmatic agency? Or do you think you want to go ahead with a self-serve model? Or are you looking for a mix between self-serve and managed model. Below are some of the questions that you should ask to your next Programmatic provider. The list is not comprehensive and is not in any particular order. I just created this list based on my learning and experiences

1.    Ask this question first to your Programmatic agency- What do you classify yourself as? A trading desk? A DSP? Something else? –This will help you to you understand whether you are dealing with a Middle Man or with a DSP directly or a mix.

2.    Which Demand side platform (DSP) do you use? Is it owned by you or is it a 3^rd party?

3.    How do you source Inventory across different device- Mobile, desktop, video, tablet etc.?

4.    Do you have Direct PMP deals or do you trade on the open exchanges?

5.    What is split of retargeting vs. prospecting?

6.    Technology agnostic?

7.    How do you detect fraud and what measures do you have in place? Ask them to share the fraud detection policy and measures.

8.    What are the skills of the team, how deep they are?- Do they have special people/positions for -Audience Segmentation Experts, Data Engineers, Business Intelligence, Media Strategists, traffickers, Bidding experts etc.

9.    Transparency in billing- they should be able to explain everything in the invoice

10.  How are the fees calculated?

11.  What models do buy- CPC, CPM, CPA, CPL etc.

12.  What post view and post-click conversion window d =o they apply to their client? Is it adjustable and possibility for adjusting to your own attribution modeling and attribution window

13.  Creative services offerings? If yes, how does the commercial goes?

14.  DE duplication process- ask them to explain in depth how are they going to tackle de-duplication  issues

15.  Which Data management platforms do they use or already integrated with/intend to use in future (if not using now)?

16.  Can they onboard your 1^st party data and make it actionable and start running 1^st Party Data campaigns?

17.  What is the report transparency- for instance- Can you get the domain level data or is it masked/truncated?

18.  Brand safety- How do they handle this critical issue?

19.  If they are DSP- do they provide self-serve model?

20.  Optimization Process in detail- What level of Automation does they offer?

21.  How many different kinds of targeting tactics can I run within a single campaign?

22.  Level of support and turnaround time- also ask for the downtime if any?

23.  Possibilities of training and learning Programmatic – for team members

24.  Product scalability

25.  Remnant vs Premium inventory split?

26.  Retargeting vs prospecting split?

27.  Do they offer Non incent traffic? If not what is the split of Non incent vs Incent traffic?

28.  Ad viewability- Is the ad viewable and are they bidding on Viewable impressions?

29.  Is my programmatic advertising optimized for all channels?

30.  Possibility of Campaign Integration with top ad exchanges and inventory sources?

31.  How are they tracking conversions?

32.  Which ad exchanges are partners?

33.  Does they support private marketplaces and/or publisher direct inventory sources?

34.  Run on Network vs Run on site split.

35.  Similarly – IATF (impressions above the fold) vs IMBF (impressions below the fold) – this also gets covered in Viewability

36.  Are there are minimum spend requirements? Monthly, Quarterly, Annual

37.  How do you manage privacy? –Especially for the Advertisers in Europe, GDPR is a very important issue that need to be tackled with carefully

38.  How fresh are your datasets?

39.  Which Stages Of Campaign Management Can You Manage? For instance-  pre-campaign learning, planning, data-driven creative design, real-time creative customization, media-buying execution, campaign optimization, and audience analysis services.

40.  Which Impression Attributes Can Your Technology Assess?- Time of day, Day of week, Geo-location, Culture (urban vs. suburban, etc.), Weather, Demographics, Interests, Prior engagement with the brand etc.

41.  What Media Sources Are Available With Your Platform?

42.  Can they Begin A New Campaign With 1^st Party or Pre-Existing Data?

43.  Ability to handle and integrate -1^st , 2^nd and 3^rd party data

44.  Which publishers are marketplace partners

45.  What is the content make-up of websites?

46.  Can you adapt the content to external triggers? Ex:  A chocolate brand does want want to appear next to a content , which says- dangers of eating sugar

47.  Optimization process and frequency

48.  What metrics are being tracked and how will you measure results?

49.  Do you outsource the work or have a trading desk in house?

50.  Integrations possibilities and capabilities- for instance- integration of your BI dashboard with the reporting system through APIs?

Facebook 3 New Ad formats- Video poll ads, AR ads and playable ads +How to create Video polls- Step by step--Sarang Kinjavdekar

Lot of you might have seen the 3 new Ad formats launched by Facebook recently. The format is playable, people today want something which is interactive and ads that are not just spam but interactive too. Keeping this in mind, Facebook has launched 3 new formats.These new playable formats are helping brands further embrace this trend -it encourage a playful experience between people and businesses, and deliver results(well, I have not tried this, but will try it soon).

Format 1- Poll Only

Format 2- Watch and Browse

Format 3- Poll + Watch & Install- Left image -frame 1 and Right image - Frame 2

Format 4- AR Ads

As per Facebook -For WeMakeUp, AR Ads on Facebook enabled customers to try on its latest shade of lipstick, and as a result the brand drove a 27.6 point lift in purchases with the average person spending 38 seconds interacting with the ad unit. Now we’re          expanding the AR opportunity to more advertisers, entering open beta for AR Ads globally this fall.

How to create a Video poll?

1. Go to your Facebook Page
2. In the Create Post box, click Photo/Video
3. Click Upload Photos/Video
4. Select the video you want to upload
5. In the upload screen, click Polls
6. Click Create Poll
7. Enter your poll question
8. Set the time your poll will start and end within your video
9. Click to decide if viewers can see the results of your poll
10. Click Save Poll

Format 5- Playable expansions

Thanks for reading.