five pro tips for optimizing programmatic campaigns

Five Pro Tips for Optimizing Programmatic Campaigns

July 2016Augustine Fou, PhD.acfou @ mktsci.com 212.. 203 ..7239

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

July 2016 / marketing.scienceconsulting group, inc.

linkedin.com/in/augustinefou

Minimize ad spend between 1am - 5amHumans visit websites mostly during waking hours

1a – 5a

Stacked percentBlue (human)Red (bots)



Focus ad spend on weekdays, lower on weekendsHumans visit websites mostly on weekdays, lower on weekends

5 weekdays

2 weekend 2 weekend

5 weekdays 5 weekdays



Blacklist (exclude) referral sources w/ 100% bounceVisitors arriving from these sources won’t do any good for you anyway



Exclude sites and apps with >20% click-through rateCTRs for display are around 0.1%; around 1% for search; >20% is absurd

.xyz domains that very humans would ever find

bad-acting mobile apps that have absurd CTRs and are not on-brand anyway



Block IP address ranges from data centersHumans don’t access the internet through data centers – like AWS

“Visitors from data centers are? You guessed it – bots!”

If we don’t do these….



Fraud continues upward as digital ad spend goes up

Digital ad fraud

Digital ad spendSource: IAB 2015 FY Report

$ billions

E

High / Low Estimates



Any device with internet can be used as a bot

Traffic cameras turned into botnet (Engadget, Oct 2015) mobile devices

webcams

connected traffic lights

connected cars

thermostat

connected fridge

Security cams used as 400 Gbps DDoS botnet (Engadget, Jun 2016)



Ad fraud is a “double-whammy” for advertisers

Messed Up AnalyticsWasted Ad Dollars

Ad shown to bots are wasted

Fake traffic, impressions, clicks are all recorded by

analytics



Ad fraud is a “QUAD-whammy” for good publishers

2. “Bottom line” profitability squeezed

1. “Top line” ad revenue stolen

4. Reputations ruined by bad guys covering tracks

3. Ad blockers further reduce ad revenue



Huge difference in quality (bots vs humans)

Ad Networks

Publishers



End of month traffic and impressions fulfillment

Traffic surge

Impressions surge

volume bars (green)


red vs blue trendlines



What real traffic surges look like (humans)

Traffic surgesvolume bars (green)


red v blue trendlines



About the Author



Dr. Augustine Fou – Recognized Expert on Ad Fraud

2013

2014

2015SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS / PANELS4A’s Webinar on Ad Fraud AdCouncil Webinar on Ad Fraud TelX Marketplace LiveARF Audience Measurement / ReThinkIAB Webinar on Ad Fraud / Botnets AdMonsters Publishers Forum / OPS



Harvard Business Review – October 2015

Excerpt:

Hunting the Bots

Fou, a prodigy who earned a Ph.D. from MIT at 23, belongs to the generation that witnessed the rise of digital marketers, having crafted his trade at American Express, one of the most successful American consumer brands, and at Omnicom, one of the largest global advertising agencies. Eventually stepping away from corporate life, Fou started his own practice, focusing on digital marketing fraud investigation.

Fou’s experiment proved that fake traffic is unproductive traffic. The fake visitors inflated the traffic statistics but contributed nothing to conversions, which stayed steady even after the traffic plummeted (bottom chart). Fake traffic is generated by “bad-guy bots.” A bot is computer code that runs automated tasks.

five pro tips for optimizing programmatic campaigns

Data & Analytics