Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Buying Efficiencies : Cont ... topic one CPM(Cost per thousand impressions)

CPM (Cost per thousand impressions): The easiest of inventories to buy and sell.

Continuing from where I left last time. 

In this DnA of Internet, "CPM" is what everyone says .... walk in the park. Every one can do it, but most don't understand that this walk in the park can be made more interesting. I will try and give some insight to this. 

Cost per thousand(mille) or impression served of a particular banner on the page the user was viewing is a complete no brainer... although some things to take into considerations are the following aspects.

"OTS : or Opportunity To See". Split the page in to four zones (top left, top right,bottom left, bottom right). Unlike the traditional newspaper print add where the whole page is visible to the reader in on go it is important to note that on internet the user will have to scroll down to view the complete page. So it become imperative that a media planner calculates the OTS precisely and takes pricing accordingly. 

Eg. A home page banner top left / top right will have far more OTS % than a Home page banner on bottom right / bottom left.  Again a Section page top left banner might have a higher OTS% than a home home page bottom left / bottom right banner placement.

If we add another set(s) of data to this : "Reach of the website" along with UU (unique users) and not to forget "Relevancy" then this calculation becomes even more precise science.

The information above might sound rudimentary but I personally feel that most media planners miss this out in the high stress media planning stage, where budget takes precedence over all sanity, if not then the client's likes and dislike will come into play. :)

So next time pls show an OTS graph to the client and explain why a particular inventory has been taken in the media mix.

Pls Note : this kind of approach can work well for branding campaigns and not for performance campaigns.Performance campaigns will be explained in upcoming posts.

Unique users : Instead of buying impression's, try to buy users... Unique users if possible. When planning a large branding campaigns it is imperative that the media planner explains to the advertisers this concept and also use technology to back up their research data. Also it is important to know that top 5 website of the same genre in a media plan would result in a duplicity of users(between 30-40 percent), so repeat media burn needs to be minimized. 

CTR% (Click Thru Rate) : One of the most crucial matrices to watch otu for on a real time basis as this parameter defines a lot of things. 
  1. Creative Troughput : How effective is your creative . A higher creative throughput would result to higher visitors on site resulting into higher users interaction.
  2. Brand Recall : not one of the most measurable parameters on the internet, But I am sure that a good CTR% would help the brands accumulate quick brand recall brownie points. 
  3. eCPC (Effective cost per click) : A good media plan delivers maximum number of users within the media budget while keeping the effective eCPC as low as possible.
Some importants thing to keep in mind from an operations perspective :
  1. Always keep a second set of creatives ready before making the campaign live. 
  2. Always use third party adserving tools for a centralized reporting & billing perspective.
  3. Keep a close watch on the referring url's, as to where the impression is being served. 
  4. Keep geography targeting always on so as to improve relevant user reach.
Some good adserving tools : Zedo,Dart,Helios,OpenX(free user setup) 


Let me know your thoughts on the same. I will be doing the next post on CPC inventory buying.