Digital Hasn’t Made Things Easier
| Digital Media Isn’t the Advertising Solution You Thought It Was |
This week the Wall Street Journal reported that social media creators are suing over browser extensions (e.g. PayPal Honey) that are designed to discover discounts for online shoppers. Why is this a problem? Because, the creators claim, those extensions cannibalize the creators’ affiliate commissions. “If the customer clicks on…the Plaintiff’s affiliate link and then at checkout clicks on the Honey pop-up, then the business tracks the sale as originated from Defendant, and Plaintiff will receive no credit for the purchase. Honey erases Plaintiffs’ affiliate links and replaces it,” WSJ reports. As background, the WSJ reports that digital media has made it easier for marketers to attribute consumer behavior and reward what works. But has it? Just as PayPal Honey steals credit from creators, creators steal credit from other marketing exposures that also generated product interest, e.g. earned media or online video. This disproportionate credit has been an issue in digital media for a looonnngg time. And this is why MTA, based on cookies or audience identifiers, is dead. Probabilistic models – using large, historic data sets of impressions and sales – provide more actionable insights than deterministic (MTA) models. Probabilistic (Media Mix) models will quantify the degree to which both creators and browser extensions deserve fractional credit. Because everything deserves some credit, just not all of it. |
Brands Caught In Programmatic Issue
Last week Adalytics released an extremely disturbing report about brands unintentionally buying ads on sites flagged by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
By no means do brands want this to happen. By no means do programmatic platforms want this to happen.
But it does happen because the industry just doesn’t work that hard to eliminate bots, made-for-advertising sites and, unfortunately, nefarious and illegal content.
Curating and monitoring sites leads to higher CPMs. But higher CPMs, due to curated sites, typically perform better.
#RightSideofRelevance