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Online advertising<\/a> seems like the perfect mix of creativity and data. Marketers can test various styles of ads and get quick results. Almost every aspect of digital advertising is measurable. It\u2019s \u201cdata-driven marketing\u201d \u2014 unless the numbers are mostly B.S., which seems increasingly likely.\u00a0<\/p>\n I recently spoke with a professional colleague who worked in the ad space for years. He discovered discrepancies between reports from various sources, including Google and contacted Google to resolve the problem. They told him if the discrepancy wasn\u2019t more than 20%, it wasn\u2019t worth looking into. That\u2019s a pretty big error bar in your advertising data, but it turns out to be small potatoes compared to what other people are finding.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Only 36% of ad spending on demand-side platforms actually reached the advertiser\u2019s intended audience, according to the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). The ANA report<\/a> on the programmatic supply chain found that a high percentage was spent on ads that were nonviewable or displayed to bots.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bob Hoffman, author of \u201cAdscam<\/a>,<\/em>\u201d says the numbers are far worse than that. <\/em>He estimates that 3% of digital ad spend corresponds to actual ads seen by humans.\u00a0<\/p>\n Note that numbers are being reported each step of the way in the advertising process. It\u2019s all very \u201cdata-driven,\u201d but the data might be junk. What\u2019s going on?\u00a0<\/p>\n We all know the famous quote attributed to John Wanamaker: \u201cHalf the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don\u2019t know which half.\u201d\u00a0In Wanamaker\u2019s day, the ad exec could verify that his ad was actually on the billboard, in the magazine or announced on the radio. Since online advertising is customized to each user, you can\u2019t check to make sure your ad is displayed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Advertiser: \u201cHey, I\u2019m not seeing my ad on your site.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Ad salesman: \u201cThat\u2019s because you\u2019re not in the target audience.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n How is it possible for numbers to be as bad as the ANA suggests? Let\u2019s back up and ask what might be causing these radical differences in numbers, focusing on some key metrics.\u00a0<\/p>\n Advertisers want their ads to be seen by the correct audience in the correct context. Each of those elements can go wrong for many different reasons. Here are some of the top culprits.\u00a0<\/p>\n Non-viewable impressions<\/strong>. These occur when your prospect goes to the right page, and your ad is \u201cdisplayed\u201d on the page, but it\u2019s on a section the prospect never sees. While there are efforts to combat this, ads can still be counted as \u201cviewed\u201d when the ad was never displayed to the visitor.\u00a0<\/p>\n The ad is on the wrong site.<\/strong> You want your ad to display on a major media site, but it\u2019s actually displayed on affiliate sites that don\u2019t attract your core market. This could be caused by human error in the ad setup or confusion on the back end, but it does happen. The ad is displayed, but it\u2019s not in the right context and possibly not to the correct audience.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fraud<\/strong>. One of the most significant issues in online advertising is ad fraud, which includes:\u00a0<\/p>\n I know what you\u2019re thinking. \u201cMy rep is an honest guy and I\u2019ve known him for years.\u201d OK, but even if your rep is a saint, he\u2019s only one cog in a very complicated machine that no one really understands from end to end. This machine includes good and bad actors, like countries that get most of their foreign currency revenue from various kinds of online fraud.\u00a0<\/p>\n Repeat impressions<\/strong> for the same user can be counted, which skews reporting. Again, adtech can and should compensate for this, but there\u2019s no guarantee.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition to all this, there are problems related to geographic irrelevance, different criteria for counting impressions on different platforms and regular old human error or technical problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n What does this all add up to? Hoffman tries to lay it all out in his book, but I think the honest answer is only God knows.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dig deeper: Why we care about adtech: The complete guide<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Simply viewing an ad can have some effect on the web visitor and many advertisers promote the idea of \u201cview through conversions.\u201d Clicks are online gold because they send your prospect to your chosen page. Or so you hope. There are still problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n Click data can be corrupted by bot-enabled fraud, accidental clicks, redirect loops, traffic from proxy servers and plain old lying.\u00a0<\/p>\n The good thing about clicks is that clicking on an ad sends the visitor to your page, where you can parse the traffic yourself. If you have bot detection technology<\/a>, you can filter your traffic to better understand how many humans your ad attracted.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s still room for error. If the user leaves a page before the tracking code fires or if the tracking code malfunctions, there will be a disconnect between clicks and page views.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dig deeper: A statistical picture of the cost of digital advertising fraud<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The \u201crule of seven\u201d is a popular concept in marketing. The idea is that someone needs to hear or see a marketing message at least seven times before they take action on that message. <\/p>\n If that\u2019s true, which of those seven touchpoints should get credit for the sale?\u00a0It\u2019s a silly question, but it\u2019s fundamental to online marketing.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is partly why Tim Parkin calls marketing attribution \u201cthe fog of marketing\u201d in his article \u201cMeasuring the invisible: The truth about marketing attribution<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0Aside from these conceptual problems with attribution, technical issues can make attribution statistics misleading.\u00a0<\/p>\n Different advertising platforms use different methods of tracking conversions, which leads to discrepancies. One system might track a conversion within a specified window after an ad view or click. For example, any conversion within 30 days after viewing or clicking on an ad can be counted as a conversion. Other systems use last-click attribution or variations on that theme.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Optimizing ad spend means doing more of what works and less of what doesn\u2019t. If the prospect has to see seven ads before taking action, how do you know which ad is \u201cworking\u201d?\u00a0<\/p>\n If the data is mostly junk, which may very well be true and if attribution is a bit of a myth, which also seems true, does that mean we should abandon advertising?\u00a0<\/p>\n Certainly not. Wanamaker continued buying ads even when he didn\u2019t know which ads worked. Further, we all know from personal experience that ads influence our purchasing decisions. Advertising works.\u00a0<\/p>\n The question for the modern ad buyer should not be \u201cDo you believe in advertising?\u201d but \u201cDo you believe in adtech?\u201d <\/p>\n Adtech offers a lot of data, which goes nicely into spreadsheets and allows us to make predictions, charts, etc. But some of that data has a lot of smoke and fog, even downright deception.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maybe all the metrics are misleading us more than they\u2019re helping us, and perhaps it\u2019s time for modern ad buyers to read some old books on advertising and get back to basics.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dig deeper: 2024 Predictions: Advertising and digital media<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Get MarTech! Daily. Free. In your inbox.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nSome very sad figures<\/h2>\n
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Views and impressions\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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The problems with clicks\u00a0<\/h2>\n
The challenges of attribution\u00a0<\/h2>\n
Do you believe in advertising?\u00a0<\/h2>\n