'Net Features : Integrate

Q&A: How GAN's Retirement Impacts You

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:32:00 GMT

Marketers were shocked in mid-April with the news that Google planned to retire the Google Affiliate Network. As they say, however, when one door closes...

With that in mind, Integrate SVP of Advertiser Relations, Kyle Gale, offers an exclusive interview about what's to come with Google out of the affiliate arena.

Website Magazine: What impact will the GAN retirement have on the credibility of the affiliate marketing space? And what, if anything, should marketers know about others trying to fill GAN’s spot?

Kyle Gale: Rather than having any lasting effects on the credibility of affiliate marketing, GAN’s retirement points more to the difficulty of performance-based marketing. Google bowing out of the game highlights the biggest obstacle in the affiliate space—credibility is in short supply, causing many to shy away from what they view as “dirty” marketing.

GAN avoided this stigma due in part to Google’s brand recognition. Lesser known and newer networks won’t be able to get away with the issues that plagued GAN, because they can’t afford to lose affiliates. If you have no affiliates, you have no fulfillment; if you have no fulfillment, you have no advertisers, and you don’t get paid.

In their search for a replacement, marketers need to be aware of these lesser-known solutions and ask the right questions before getting involved. It’s not just the name of the network or the high payouts that matter. What they’re doing to ensure quality will prove to be more significant—and ultimately determine if the network thrives or ends in an early retirement.

WM: What factors do you believe led to the GAN retirement?

KG: GAN was a part of Google’s 2007 acquisition of DoubleClick. It was never a priority for Google to make GAN a flagship product, and as a result, Google didn’t give it the attention needed for growth and dominance. Affiliates continually found fault with the lack of tools and support offered, compared to other vendors in the industry, and advertisers were seeing their returns on ad spend decreasing at disproportionate rates. Google knows as well as any company that when things aren’t working out, it’s time to take a step back and evaluate.

WM: Why will the next fold be the blind affiliate and ad networks and what do advertisers need to know?

KG: Blind affiliate and ad networks offer nothing to advertisers with regard to vendor insights. Networks must maintain a certain level of anonymity to protect themselves from circumvention, but vendors that offer little to no historical data on individual publishers are sealing their own fates.

Advertisers should partner with the affiliates that make sense for their objectives—that means having access to company descriptions, performance statistics, verticals of expertise and references when available. Without these bare minimum offerings, it’s difficult for advertisers to buy media from a network standpoint.

WM: Anything else you’d like to add?

KG: The highest quality-producing vendors will offer tools and support to advertisers and publishers, helping both groups adapt to an ever-changing marketing landscape. By paying constant attention to industry trends—and providing features that ensure quality and limit fraud—leading affiliate management systems will redefine the industry’s standards for performance marketing. Along with blind affiliate and ad networks, channel-specific vendors will lose ground to omni-channel affiliate platforms that feature consolidated access to all of their affiliate spend from a single dashboard.

Edison Awards Honor Optify, Integrate & More

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 01 May 2013 17:50:00 GMT

The online industry was well represented at the 26th Annual Edison Awards held in Chicago, April 24-25.

Judged by a panel their peers, including business executives, past winners, academics and leaders in their respective fields, companies and products such as Optify Connect by Optify (Measurement/Management Tools), ClickShare by Barco (for Content Management), Square Register by Square (Innovative Services) and AdHQ by Integrate (Communication/Campaign) walked away with gold Edison Awards for their advances.

“It’s a huge accomplishment to be recognized with a gold Edison Award among some of the most innovative companies in the space,” said Rob Eleveld, CEO of Optify. “We’ve been fine-tuning our software suite to meet the ever-growing needs of digital marketing agencies, and Optify Connect is an integral part of that success.”

To see a full list of the winners, click here.

Media Management Moves to 2013

Amberly Dressler — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:30:00 GMT

If you are trapped in spreadsheet agony, you are not alone.

When analyzing cross-channel performance data, media buyers can spend hours, if not days, recording performance data from different channels and ad types (e.g. print ads, TV commercials, Internet display ads, mobile ads, etc.) in separate spreadsheets. Then, spend more time manually comparing spreadsheet data to determine which channels are delivering the highest response rates.

This is the problem Integrate specifically details and looks to alleviate with its newly launched AdHQ offering, which, according to the advertising technology partner, provides real-time tracking and cross-channel reporting tools that compare performance metrics across online, offline and mobile paid media campaigns. Additionally, the software automatically consolidates cross-channel metrics into a single report.

“Every day, media buyers waste valuable time and resources using processes from the 1990s,” said Jeremy Bloom, co-founder of Integrate. "Why should today's smartest and hardest-working people in the ad business have to rely on media management methods that came into use back when Jurassic Park was in the theater, Nirvana was on the radio, and I was in junior high?”

“We developed AdHQ to bring automation and simplification to marketing departments and agencies of all sizes," Bloom added. "The increase in operational efficiency gives agencies the ability to manage more clients with their existing staff, and gives marketing departments the ability to manage all of their customer acquisition efforts with their current resources, regardless of scale or spend."

The importance of brands and agencies having a unified advertising platform across channels is multipronged. According to Integrate it helps with:

Efficiency - When advertisers consolidate all of their media spending into a single platform, they yield significant results. Most marketers spend a tremendous amount of time completing tasks in various systems. By combining everything in one location, they instantly gain efficiency.

Quality - Additionally, when all traffic is funneled through a single system, it becomes significantly easier to monitor the quality of the traffic and results coming through.

Integrated Analytics - It’s great to have a system that tracks all your sales and KPIs on the backend, but until that system feeds directly into your Media Buying tool, to execute upon these analytics involves a long process of comparing systems and pouring through excel sheets. Once actions and insight become centralized, marketers can execute hundreds of changes within minutes, allowing for real-time, thorough and effective optimization.

Unified data - When all your media buying occurs in one system, the data collected from each effort feeds all others. Audience data developed from your affiliate marketing can feed your Display. SEM efforts can seamlessly feed your Retargeting efforts, etc. When each is managed as a separate system, benefits like these rarely make it into production. Marketing-centralization is essential to implementing a truly effective cross-channel marketing strategy.

To learn more about Integrate’s AdHQ launch, visit www.integrate.com.

Real-Time Bidding: Q&A with Integrate's Jeremy Bloom

Administrator — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:00:00 GMT

Real-time bidding is complex, but those in the digital advertising realm should understand its intricacies because industry experts predict a steady increase in RTB ad spend.

“The model is the new foundation for purchasing remnant display, and it’s likely to remain that way,” said Integrate Co-Founder Jeremy Boom. “As budget continues to shift to digital, I expect we’ll see growth in RTB accordingly.”

To help us understand this niche, Bloom answers a few RTB-focused questions.

What type of client do you suggest real-time bidding for?

The efficiency of RTB is effective for any brand client seeking the maximum GRP for their budget. Additionally, it’s essential for any advertiser utilizing any form of audience segment marketing, whether it’s retargeting, behavioral or demographic segments. There is no greater way to reach your audience in a finely moderated online environment.

What reporting tools are essential for companies using real-time bidding?

Reporting tools must be as close to live as possible and provide deep granularity. Delays in reporting can take several hours to bring campaign problems to light, causing advertisers to burn budget. Success with display advertising depends on the ability to constantly test and adjust campaigns. We need to see the publisher, URL, segment, placement, size, time of day, frequency, etc. to find which half of any campaign is missing the mark and optimize the half that is performing well.

Integrate’s new Real-Time Display reporting suite addresses both of these needs. The GUI is far more engaging than any other system that I’m aware of. The graphical representation of the data combined with the tabular data and the methods to manipulate it are all very user friendly and intuitive. As for granularity, A/B testers will definitely be pleased with our offerings in conjunction with the targeting available.

What type of real-type bidding services does Integrate provide?

Integrate is very close to launching our Real-Time Display product – the newest addition to our platform. The interface gives clients the ability to directly purchase display inventory from their existing Integrate accounts. The backbone of the system is a second-price auction Real-Time Bidder that supports a variety of pricing models that clients can use to fully capture the reach and efficiency available through RTB in the display space. As we continue development, we’ll extend to other areas of Real-Time Digital such as SEM, Social and Video.

Anything else you’d like to add?

We’re very excited about this space and look forward to becoming a larger part of it. I think we’ll see a lot of advancements this year, and we hope to spearhead several of them ourselves – particularly in the area of cleaning up non-human clicks/traffic and unseen impressions.

About Jeremy Bloom

Jeremy Bloom co-founded Integrate in 2010. Since then, he has helped grow the company from its roots in lead generation to a leader in advertising technology. As the market-facing co-founder of Integrate, oversees the sales and business development efforts at the company.