Programmatic Advertising Master Course - Digital Marketing

1. Programmatic Advertising Master Course: Do you want to become an expert in programmatic advertising? If so, then you are in the right place. This is the longest and most complete programmatic advertising course on the entire web. Programmatic advertising is a growing multibillion dollar market. About 70% of the total global digital media ad spend will be invested in programmatic advertising campaigns this year, whether you are a beginner or an experienced advertiser. And this course will help you gain 360-degree knowledge of this innovative technology. More specifically, you will discover all the major participants that are involved in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. You will learn what solutions they offer and how they can help you achieve outstanding campaign perform. You will also discover all the programmatic media buying methods. You will learn how all those methods work, their pros and cons, and why some methods are becoming more popular than others. Following those, I will explain the sixth programmatic advertising formats, namely the display, video, native TV, audio, and digital out-of-home format. After those, you will learn all the strategies and tactics used by programmatic advertisers, how to create a successful media plan, as well as go through the typical ad operations of advertisers. Next, you will discover how publishers manage their ad inventory and increase their ad revenues. I will also take you through the typical ad operations of publishers. Following those, you will learn more about the major challenges advertisers and publishers face and the programmatic advertising landscape, as well as discovered the new developments that have already started shaping the future of programmatic advertising. More specifically, you will learn why most of the advertisers media budget goes to ad tech vendors instead of publishers. How do you avoid getting your bid prices inflated? Why 47% of the internet users use an ad blocker, as well as how artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, and blockchain technologies can shape the future of programmatic advertising. In the last module, I will show you how the DSP of data shoe works, as well as how to create conversion goals, audience List, and programmatic advertising campaigns. If you want to see the complete list of lessons, feel free to take a look at the course description. The ideal students for this course are digital marketing professionals who have heard about programmatic advertising and wished to grow their skills further, online advertisers who currently run programmatic ads, but one who improve their campaign performance. Professionals with a traditional marketing background, as well as entrepreneurs and business owners who would like to take their business to the next level. My name is Alex, and I'm the author of the book programmatic advertising, the ultimate guide to programmatic media buying and selling. Over the last decade, I was trusted to manage millions of dollars per year in online advertising campaigns for multinational corporations, I have run campaigns in more than 20 different countries for companies across several industries such as the financial, technology, travel, retail, and many more. So what are you waiting for? Start this course right now? 2. The Evolution of Display Advertising: In this module, I will explain how display advertising evolved throughout the years. If you have just started your career as an online advertiser, you will find this information quite useful as you will understand better why so many digital marketers have shifted their efforts towards programmatic advertising. So before getting down to the nuts and bolts of programmatic advertising, we will see what approaches were followed in the past, what challenges emerged, and how technology has transformed the online advertising landscape. More specifically, I will start by explaining the oldest way of buying media, namely the manual direct media buying method. I will also show you how ads were being bought and sold through the use of that method, as well as why it started becoming so ineffective. Next, we will see how the manual direct media buying methods inefficiencies gave rise to ad networks. Following that, I will show you the main downsides of using ad networks, which gave rise to a brand new online advertising marketplace called the Ad Exchange. Lastly, we will see how the programmatic advertising ecosystem was built around ad exchanges, demand side platforms, and supply-side platforms. So let's get started. 3. The First Media Buying Method: Back in the nineties and increasing number of websites started popping up. In the beginning, publishers such as online newspapers and magazines began creating ad spaces around their webpage content in an effort to start generating revenue from banner adverts. That way, the more times people were reading of publishers news articles, the more times the adverts were appearing, and the more revenue that publisher was making. Back then, publishers were selling ad spaces directly to advertisers. So both parties had to engage in manual direct media buying deals. Since that process was direct, it involved a lot of manual work. More specifically, advertisers had to spend a lot of time preparing and sending requests for proposals to publishers. Those RFPs required publishers to provide information on anticipated campaign run dates, available, ad spaces, audience characteristics, and other details. Next, advertisers had to wait for a couple of days to receive the requested proposals. Once the deadline was met, advertisers could start reviewing the received proposals and potentially asked for some clarifications. After that, both parties had to negotiate and agree on campaign costs, ad placements, banner specifications, and a myriad of other details. Next, the advertiser had to pass the banners specifications to a designer. Once the banners were created, the advertiser had to pass them on to the selected publisher, who would then add them manually on their website. It's needless to say that once the campaign was over, the publisher would have to remove the banners from their website manually. As you have already understood, that was an extremely time-consuming, inefficient and costly process entailing a great deal of human interfacing. As publishers grew their websites by adding more new pages, they significantly increased their ad spaces. Because of that situation, the manual direct media buying method became even more ineffective. More specifically, it quickly became very difficult for both advertisers and publishers to engage manually in direct deals and trade the available ad inventory. Consequently, this situation led to thousands or millions of unsold at spaces. Because of that problem, publishers were losing many revenue opportunities while advertisers were getting less exposure. 4. The Rise of Ad Networks: As publishers grew their websites significantly, it quickly became extremely time consuming for both advertisers and publishers to engage manually and direct deals. That issue gave rise to ad networks. Think of ad networks as the middleman between publishers and advertisers. And ad network's key function is to aggregate the ad space supply from publishers and match it with advertiser demand. With this technology, advertisers do not have to prepare and circulate RFPs, review proposals, negotiate with publishers or agree on banner specifications anymore. What advertisers do instead is simply creating their campaigns on the ad network. So basically they upload their banners to the ad network, set their campaign targeting settings, and the ad network takes care of the rest. Ad networks also provide a way for advertisers to coordinate ad campaigns across hundreds or even thousands of websites and a very efficient manner by reducing the operational cost of constantly having to find publishers and directly negotiating with them. Therefore, they link advertisers and publishers that perhaps would never connect otherwise. Nowadays, there are hundreds of ad networks available in the online world. The biggest ad network is the Google display network. Most of the ads you see on the web and all the ads you see on YouTube are served through the Google Display Network. Some other popular networks are the exponential open x, the Facebook audience Network, Amazon publisher services, Verizon media, index exchange, and 33 across. Ad networks typically offered to different platforms to their clients. One that is designed for advertisers and another one design for publishers. For example, when it comes to Google's network, advertisers use the Google ads platform to build and manage advertising campaigns. In contrast, publishers use the Google AdSense platform to create and spaces on their websites and sell them. However, given that there are hundreds of ad networks available and that each network has a unique portfolio of publisher websites. This approach of buying media became very inefficient. More specifically, advertisers who want to show adverts to more publisher websites would have to create and manage campaigns on additional platforms. In other words, advertisers using the Google ads platform could only show adverts to publishers using the Google AdSense platform. If those advertisers wanted to show adverts to the Open ECS ad network. They would have to create new campaigns from scratch within the Open ECS platform. Obviously, this situation is not ideal. It creates duplicate work for advertisers just for the sake of showing ads on more networks. The last main inefficiency of using multiple ad networks is that an advertiser could reach the same audience more than once, being unable to control how many times the advert could appear to the same user. It goes without saying that showing more adverts to users than necessary could result in spending more money for no substantial benefit. 5. The Rise of Ad Exchanges: The inefficiencies of ad networks that are covered in the previous lesson gave rise to a brand new online advertising marketplace called the Ad Exchange. And Ad Exchange is a technology that facilitates both advertisers and publishers to buy and sell ad spaces programmatically from multiple ad networks. This technology allows advertisers to run campaigns and all ad networks through a single advertising platform. Similarly, publishers can sell their ad spaces in multiple ad networks through a single platform. Moreover, ad exchanges allow advertisers to control how often their adverts appear to the same users across all networks using frequency capping. In other words, if an advertiser wants a certain advert to appear a maximum of two times per user across all networks. This is now possible. In the programmatic advertising ecosystem, there are dozens of ad exchanges available. Here's a list of some ad exchanges. The most popular ad exchanges are the double-click at exchange by Google, Open ECS, Rubicon, pub magnetic, and Facebook ad exchange. 6. Participation in Ad Exchanges: If you wonder how advertisers and publishers trade ad spaces on so many ad exchanges? The answer is simple. And advertisers should use a demand-side platform, while a publisher should use a supply-side platform. A demand-side platform is a system that allows advertisers to set up and run campaigns on many ad exchanges through a single platform. A DSP provides advertisers with everything they need, from bid management capabilities to conversion, tracking and reporting. In addition to that, DSPs allow better optimization based on certain key performance indicators. Some popular DSPs are the Google display in video 360 media math, Xander, Roku, and add form. For your information. I will cover DSPs in greater detail later on in this course. When it comes to supply side platforms, those allow publishers to create, managed, and optimize their ad spaces on their websites. In addition to that, and SSP allows publishers to sell ad spaces through various ad exchanges simultaneously. Publishers can also receive revenue performance reports, as well as insights on which pieces of content perform better in terms of generating ad revenue. Some popular SSPs are the Google Ad Manager, Xander, open x, and Rubicon project. For your information, I will cover SSPs in greater detail later on in this course. 7. Introduction to Programmatic Advertising: As mentioned in the previous module, the programmatic advertising ecosystem is very complex, involving plenty of participants. Successful programmatic advertisers not only use a demand-side platform, but also the services of other solution providers. Knowing which are the main participants, how they work together, and what benefits they can bring to both publishers and advertisers will help you better understand why so many companies have been heavily investing in programmatic media buying. I have chosen to explain the main 20 programmatic advertising participants. Obviously, advertisers and publishers are the most significant participants. However, there is a wide range of other participants that help advertisers and publishers trade ad inventory and improve their media buying or selling performance. In each lesson, you will learn more about what each participant does, how their platform integrates with other programmatic platforms. The cost of using their services and which platform vendors or the most popular. By the end of this module, you will have adequate knowledge of all the participants shown here. So let's get started. 8. What Is Programmatic Advertising: So what is programmatic advertising? In its simplest form, programmatic advertising is the practice of automating the process of buying and selling media. In the previous module, I explained the manual direct media buying approach, which is an extremely time-consuming and inefficient process entailing a great deal of human interfacing. Think of programmatic advertising is the complete opposite of the manual media buying approach. Nowadays, the vast majority of ad spaces is traded programmatically through ad networks and ad exchanges, meaning there is no need to manually prepare and distribute RFPs, receive proposals by email or manually placed banners on publisher websites. As all those processes are now automated and handled by computers and algorithms. In addition to that, advertisers and publishers can utilize advanced technologies, methods, and tactics to achieve their objectives more effectively. So basically, programmatic advertising creates many efficiencies for both advertisers and publishers. Unfortunately, many advertisers mistakenly believed that creating and managing programmatic campaigns is a straightforward process. More specifically, they believe that all they need is just a standalone programmatic advertising platform where they can set up in launch their campaigns and just a few hours. In other words, they assume that programmatic advertising is similar to running campaigns on Google ads, Facebook ads, Twitter ads, or any other online advertising platform. However, programmatic advertising is about knowing how the programmatic ecosystem works, what innovative technologies exist, and how to combine different technologies to run highly sophisticated advertising campaigns. In the programmatic advertising ecosystem, there are many participants, each having a specific role. Successful programmatic advertisers not only use a demand-side platform, but also the services of other solution providers. It's needless to say that advertisers who only use a demand-side platform usually failed badly in their programmatic advertising efforts. They typically spend a lot of money to generate 0 conversions. Most times they convince themselves that programmatic advertising is the worst acquisition channel ever. But that's such a wrong assumption. The truth is that the programmatic advertising ecosystem is very complex and quite open to many risks, such as advertising fraud and unsafe publisher websites. Therefore, for your programmatic campaigns to be successful, expect to use more platforms than just a demand-side platform. But no worries for now, I will explain all those participants later on in this course. Moreover, many people mistakenly think that programmatic advertising involves a lot of computer programming. Just to make it clear, it's absolutely not required for publishers or advertisers to know any programming language. As I mentioned earlier, the programmatic term was given because the programmatic platforms automate the processes of buying and selling ad spaces online. Another common misconception is that all ad spaces are traded through real-time auctions. That's not true. Advertisers can also buy ad spaces directly from publishers in a programmatic way. But I will explain all media buying methods in a separate module later on in this course. As you can clearly see in this diagram, there has been a constant shift of ad spend towards this technology over the last years. In 2011, only 24% of the display ad spend in the United States was invested in programmatic advertising campaigns. While in 2019 it reached a stunning 84%. Even though programmatic advertising started as a way of selling easily remnant ad inventory through ad networks and ad exchanges become more sophisticated over the years. Nowadays, this technology is compatible with different forms of online advertising, such as display, banner, video, native audio, display, outdoor, and TV advertising. Indeed, programmatic TV advertising exists and it's actually on the Thrive. I will explain all those formats in a separate module later on in this course. 9. The Benefits for Advertisers: Programmatic advertising offers several benefits to advertisers. First of all, advertisers have the ability to reach almost every internet user through a single demand-side platform. As mentioned earlier in this course, DSPs allow advertisers to target audiences in dozens of ad exchanges, meaning hundreds of ad networks and millions of publisher websites worldwide. In other words, if you want to target a certain audience, that can definitely be reached somewhere on the web, whether it's on a premium publisher website or small unknown blog. Another great benefit is that it gives advertisers access to premium and space inventory. As you may know, premium publishers such as The Guardian, The New York Times, and CNN offer different ad inventory types for sale. Usually the ad spaces on pages that receive huge traffic volumes are sold as premium ad inventory. Such pages might be the homepage, travel, and sports pages of premium publishers. Premium ad inventory can only be accessed through programmatic advertising campaigns, meaning advertisers who run their campaigns through Google ads can not access that inventory. The way advertisers can access such inventory is through programmatic direct deals, which is a programmatic media buying method that I will explain later on in this course. Another great benefit is that with programmatic advertising, it's now possible to combine first, second, third party data to create custom target audience lists. For example, suppose your goal is to advertise a luxurious hotel in London. In that case, you can target people who are first or business class travelers who fly from JFK airport to Heathrow Airport with British Airways or Virgin Atlantic, who had visited the advertised website in the last 15 days and our over 35 years old, how is it possible to target audiences down to that level? Well, in the programmatic advertising ecosystem, some participants collect information from their customers and then sell them to advertisers for audience targeting purposes. Those participants are called data suppliers. For example, in the travel industry, many airlines sell such information to advertisers in the GDPR compliant manner. Moreover, advertisers can use several media buying methods. They could buy ad spaces with real-time bidding and open or private auctions or directly from publishers on a reserved or unreserved fixed CPM rate. But I will explain more about the buying methods later on in this course. Another significant benefit is the ability to collect performance data in real-time. Unlike traditional media buying methods, programmatic advertising allows advertisers to get important insights and shift the strategy before it's too late. Another benefit is that the programmatic ecosystem provides excellent platform integration capabilities. As mentioned earlier in this module, there are so many participants in this ecosystem, each offering services to both advertisers and publishers. Those services could range from ad fraud protection to dynamic banner creation and optimization. Moreover, most of the demand side platform's feature artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, which analyze historical data and automatically adjust campaign targeting settings to reach audiences that are most likely to convert. In other words, those technologies analyze the characteristics, behavior, and purchase intent of your recent converters to target lookalike audiences that haven't interacted with your website yet, but are likely to convert. The majority of programmatic advertisers take advantage of those technologies because they deliver excellent acquisition performance at a really low cost. What is more? This technology is so sophisticated that it analyzes data to enable better personalization and customization of advertising campaigns. Lastly, programmatic advertising platforms offer exhaustive optimization levers and advanced tracking capabilities. 10. The Benefits for Publishers: Programmatic advertising offers several benefits to publishers as well. The most important benefit is the ability to sell almost all of their ad space inventory and hence maximize their profits. Publishers who haven't managed to sell their inventory directly, who advertisers can do it through private and open auctions. Also, given that publishers can sell at inventory directly to advertisers, they can negotiate high prices. On top of that, if they count, managed to sell it directly to advertisers, that can make it available in auctions. Since the highest bid always wins, and auction publishers could still generate quite a good profit. There are two ways publishers can make profits through the programmatic advertising ecosystem. The first and most common is by selling ad spaces on their website. The other one is by selling their audience data to advertisers so that advertisers could target those audiences on other websites. For example, suppose users read travel guides about London on a publisher's website. In that case, that publisher could sell that information to advertisers who want to target users that intend to visit London. Advertisers can then reach such users with relevant promotional messages on web sites such as YouTube, Spotify, and small blogs. At this point, it's worthwhile to mention that it's usually big publisher or commercial websites that sell their audience data to advertisers. I will explain more about this technology later on in this course. Another great benefit for publishers is that it enables them to access more demand easily. As more and more advertisers run their campaigns through the programmatic advertising ecosystem, there is an increasingly high demand for ad spaces. So publishers that take the opportunity to meet such demand can easily be benefited and make more profits for themselves. Moreover, nowadays, premium ad inventory can be easily discovered by programmatic advertisers. The truth is that many demands side platform's feature, very User-friendly interfaces, which allow advertisers to easily discover available premium ad inventory that is for sale. Advertisers can search for premium inventory using a discovery tool. Last but not least, publishers can collect ad space performance data in real-time. Therefore, they can get insights into which pages with that inventory performed well or badly in terms of generating ad revenue. Those insights help them optimize their content and monetization strategies before it's too late. 11. The Marketing Objectives You Can Achieve: Programmatic advertising can help advertisers achieved their marketing objectives, whether those are to build brand or product awareness, increased the number of website visits, mobile app installs, sign-ups, sales, or generate online revenue. Starting with a build awareness marketing objective, the goal is to get a target audience to discover that a certain business, product or service exists. It can help create positive brand perceptions and get a particular brand recognized by potential customers. This marketing objective is ideal for new brands or newly launched products or services. Success is measured through the impressions, reach, and clicks metrics. Another marketing objective and advertiser can achieve is to increase website visits, which is all about getting users to visit a website to consume its content. Its usually affiliate companies and non-profit organizations that try to achieve this objective. Success is measured through the number of clicks as well as the click-through rate ratio. Did you know that 89% of mobile media time is spent inside of a mobile app. With programmatic app install ads, potential customers can install an Android or iOS app directly from the ad. The success of this objective is usually measured through the app installs and cost per app install metrics. Programmatic advertising can also help companies increase the number of sign-ups and sales. The goal is to compel customers to take a desired action on a website, such as submitting a form, subscribing, opening an account, or making a purchase. This objective is ideal for business to business and business to consumer companies, manufacturers, service providers, as well as non-profit organizations to name a few. Success is measured through the conversions and cost per acquisition metrics. Lastly, many companies marketing objective is to generate online revenue by getting people to purchase as many products or services as possible from their websites. It is the primary goal of any e-commerce or online retail company. Success is measured through the conversions, revenue, and return on advertising spend metrics. 12. Programmatic Advertising Ecosystem: As mentioned in the previous module, the programmatic advertising ecosystem is very complex, involving plenty of participants. Successful programmatic advertisers not only use a demand-side platform, but also the services of other solution providers. Knowing which are the main participants, how they work together, and what benefits they can bring to both publishers and advertisers will help you better understand why so many companies have been heavily investing in programmatic media buying. I have chosen to explain the main 20 programmatic advertising participants. Obviously, advertisers and publishers are the most significant participants. However, there is a wide range of other participants that help advertisers and publishers trade ad inventory and improve their media buying or selling performance. In each lesson, you will learn more about what each participant does, how their platform integrates with other programmatic platforms. The cost of using their services and which platform vendors or the most popular. By the end of this module, you will have adequate knowledge of all the participants shown here. So let's get started. 13. Participants: Advertiser, Agency, Publisher: The most significant participant in the programmatic advertising ecosystem is the advertiser who pays the money to promote a brand, products, service, event, or mobile application. That person is employed by the advertised brand and is given a certain budget to spend on media buying. An advertiser could run campaigns for a company that operates in both the business to business and business to consumer spaces. In this course, whenever I mentioned advertisers, I referred to the businesses being promoted online. To take an example, an airline company employing an advertiser to promote ID services will be considered a programmatic advertiser in this course. An agency is a business that employs a broad range of advertising strategies and tools to create campaigns tailored to their clients needs. Many companies that do not have in-house teams of online advertisers or the capacity to run programmatic ads. Normally higher agencies to setup, manage, and optimize advertising campaigns on their behalf. Agencies work closely with their clients. Both parties typically need to discuss marketing objectives and goals. Then the agency pitches, campaign ideas and tactics. Once both parties agree on the action plan, the agency teams sets up all programmatic advertising campaigns and optimizes them daily. Typically, at the end of each month, the agency team prepares a report that shows how the campaigns performed against the selected marketing objectives and goals. Lastly, both the advertiser and the agency meet to discuss performance as well as set the media buying plan for the coming month if necessary. In this course, whenever I mentioned agencies, I referred to the companies representing advertised brands. A publisher is a business or an individual who prepares and delivers content to an audience. Every publisher's ultimate objective is to create unique and valuable contents so that people will come back and consume more of it. Publishers create ad spaces around that content where adverts are placed programmatically. The more times people visit a publisher's website, the more ad revenue that publisher makes through sold ad spaces. Some examples of publishers are online newspapers such as CNN.com, bbc.com, and the guardian.com. Online magazines such as vogue.com and men's health.com, affiliate websites like tripadvisor.com, blogs, vlogs, mobile app creators, digital billboard owners, and any business creating content that has adverts around it. In this course, whenever I mentioned, publishers are referred to the company's selling ad spaces online. 14. Participants: Ad Network and Ad Exchange: As mentioned earlier in this course, and ad network is a technology that serves as a broker between advertisers and publishers. And ad network's primary function is to aggregate ad inventory from a range of publishers, mark it up and sell it to partner advertisers. In addition to that, ad networks may also buy and sell at inventory through ad exchanges. And hence, they participate in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. But let's see in greater detail how an ad network works and more specifically how it finds in cells Rehman, ad inventory. And ad network has an algorithm that looks for unsold at inventory across a large collection of publisher websites. By large collection, I mean thousands or even millions of publisher websites. Next, the ad network algorithms scans the content of publisher pages containing ad spaces and categorizes them. For example, if a certain publisher page as travel-related content, the ad network categorizes it as travel. To take another example, if the publisher page as tennis related content, the ad network categorizes it as tennis. Then it sells those ad spaces to advertisers that are interested in certain content or topics. But let's take an example. Suppose that the advertiser is an airline company looking to show adverts on publisher pages with content related to travel. By setting this targeting criterion, the ad network will then check which publishers within its network have such content and eventually serve ads to those pages only. Some popular ad networks or the Google Display Network, exponential hope annex, Facebook audience Network, and the Amazon publisher services. At this point, it's worthwhile to mention that ad networks differ among themselves as they might cater only to certain markets, serve certain types of ad spaces such as text, image, mobile video, and native ads, or offered different bidding methods such as CPM, CPC, CPV, AND CPA. Ad Exchange as a technology that facilitates advertisers, publishers, and ad networks to buy and sell ad space. Programatically, this happens by either acting as the middleman between an advertiser and a publisher, or the middleman between an advertiser in an ad network sells inventory on behalf of its partner. Publisher's. Ad exchanges are the backbone of programmatic media buying as they offer better price transparency than ad networks and excellent integration capabilities. Therefore, most of the programmatic technologies have been built around ad exchanges. There are dozens of ad exchanges available. The most popular ones are the double-click Ad Exchange, open x, Xander, romantic, and Facebook ad exchange. 15. Participants: Demand Side Platform: And the programmatic advertising ecosystem, advertisers and agencies use demand side platforms to set up and run programmatic campaigns across many ad exchanges, ad networks, and publishers through a single platform. Demand-side platforms allow direct access to real-time bidding auctions taking place in ad exchanges. In addition to that, many demands side platforms offer advertisers are quick way to discover premium publishers to engage in direct deals with. Advertisers could simply search for premium publishers by publisher name, advertising format, geography, vertical, and much more. Lastly, some DSPs can be linked directly with SSPs so that advertisers and publishers could trade it ad inventory without the need for ad exchanges or ad networks. Most DSP vendors offer two platforms, the self-service platform and the full-service platform. Starting with the self-service DSP. This is ideal for advertisers and agencies that know how the programmatic advertising ecosystem works. Meaning they have extensive knowledge of how to run media buying campaigns on their own without getting any significant support from the DSP vendor. The user interface of any self-service DSP provides advertisers with everything they need to effectively participate in real-time auctions or engage in programmatic direct deals. More specifically, they can upload banners, said targeting criteria, managed bids and advertising budgets, as well as track and report campaign performance. Given that self-service DSPs make it easier for smaller brands to run programmatic campaigns in house. It is estimated that about 45% of brands run programmatic campaigns in house in 2018, and this number is predicted to climb to 65% by 2022. However, note that advertisers are not advise to opt for this type of platform if they don't know what real-time bidding is, what programmatic direct is, how to target ads, what the methods of buying media are, which advertising formats or ideal, or how to set up an optimized campaigns through the selected DSP. Using a self-service DSP without having adequate knowledge of those could result in inefficient campaign targeting poor performance and of course, a big waste of marketing money. The cost of using a self-service DSP ranges from 10% to 20% of the media spend. The actual cost depends on the total amount of advertiser is willing to invest per month, that chosen DSP provider. And of course, the advertisers negotiation skills. Quite commonly, small advertisers start with a 20% rate and renegotiate with the DSP vendor once they increase their media buying budget. But let's see in greater detail how a self-service DSP charges this fee from an advertiser. Lets assume that an advertiser has a total budget of $1000 and has agreed with a particular DSP to pay a fee of 20% on the media spend. Suppose that advertiser creates one programmatic campaign with a total budget of $1000. In that case, the DSP will keep $200 for the provided service and actually spend $800 on buying media. However, those costs are not shown separately on the user interface of the DSP. In this case, the DSP will show that the campaign budget is $100 hiding the platform fee and the actual media buying spend. Because of this situation. The cost metrics reported within the platform such as CPC, CPM, and CPA will be inclusive of the platform fee. The full service DSP is mainly for those who do not have adequate knowledge or experience and running programmatic advertising campaigns, but still want to try this advertising forum. Sometimes advertisers or agencies up for this type of platform because they cannot run programmatic campaigns with the current in-house resources. In those cases, the DSP vendor becomes fully responsible for running programmatic campaigns on behalf of the advertiser with the agency. In this case, any task from account creation to campaign setup, optimization, and reporting will be carried out by the DSP vendor. When it comes to the cost of using a full service DSP, advertisers have to pay to fees, one for running campaigns through the DSP platform ranging from ten to 20% of the media spend and the other for the managed service they get ranging from ten to 15% of the media spend. Again, the actual cost of those fees depends on the total amount the advertiser is willing to invest per month, that chosen DSP provider. And of course, the advertisers negotiation skills. But let's see in greater detail how a full-service DSP charges those fees. Lets assume that an advertiser has agreed with a DSP vendor to pay a platform fee that has 20% of the media spend and a managed service fee that has 15% of the media spend. Suppose the advertiser wants to run a programmatic campaign with a total budget of $1000. In that case, the platform fee would be $200 and the managed service fee will be $150. So the remaining $650 will be used for media buying. Note that the monthly campaign performance report will show that the total spent was $100, not $650. Because of this situation, all the cost metrics will be inclusive of the platform fee and the managed service fee. I think it's worth mentioning that advertisers often start their journey to programmatic advertising with a full service DSP. Once they get the grips of it, they eventually shift to the self-service DSP offered by the same vendor. That way they take the managed fee out of the equation. There are hundreds of demand side platforms available online and new ones constantly emerge. Some popular DSPs are the Google display in video 360, media, math, Amazon advertising, Xander, Roku, and add form. Note that I will not cover each and every DSP in this course for many reasons. First of all, it would have been technically impossible to cover them. It would've taken me years to create this course, and it would have taken you a hundreds of hours to complete it. Secondly, DSP vendors constantly improve their platforms by introducing new features. So even if I could cover them, the course content would have become outdated and no time. Also, it wouldn't make sense to cover them because all of those vendors offer a free training course on their platform. Lastly, this course is designed to teach you programmatic advertising, which is an online advertising ecosystem that requires the use of different platforms and methods to automate the process of buying and selling ad inventory. If you want to get trained on the most popular DSPs, namely the Google display in video 360, media math, and Amazon advertising. I have attached there free training courses in the resources section of this lesson. Once you complete those courses, you will also be able to take their certification exam. However, I highly advise you to complete my course first because those DSPs mostly focus on explaining how their platforms work, meaning they do not cover the programmatic advertising ecosystem to that extent. Note that at the end of this course, I will show you how to create programmatic campaigns on the DSP of data shoe, which is an ideal platform for small advertisers. 16. Participants: Agency Trading Desk: An agency trading desk is a team of programmatic advertising experts within an advertising agency that executes programmatic campaigns on behalf of its clients. In simple terms, it is an agency that specializes in programmatic advertising. Besides having an internal team of programmatic advertising experts, agency trading desks typically use their proprietary technology as well as a set of programmatic platforms such as ad servers, data management platforms, and fraud protection, creative management, attribution, and many other platforms. I will cover all those platforms in the next lessons. In addition to those, they often leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to create prediction models and optimize campaigns more effectively against their client's specific marketing objectives and goals. Having a team of experts who use sophisticated technology allows agency trading desks to launch advanced programmatic campaigns faster, enabled better audience targeting, generate enhanced insights, and achieve better return on investment for their clients. If you wonder why agency trading desks exist when advertisers can simply use a full-service demand-side platform, then the answer is simple. A full-service DSP will only use it's proprietary DSP technology to run programmatic advertising campaigns. While an agency trading desk will use not only a DSP, but also a set of other programmatic platforms and sophisticated technologies such as good ad servers, data management platforms, and creative management platforms. Given that it's mainly large sized companies that choose to work with agency trading desks. You might think why they do not manage media in-house but decided to work with an agency instead. Well, there are several benefits of working with an agency trading desk. First of all, agency trading desks can buy media at a lower price than advertisers managing campaigns in house. More specifically, agency trading desks can purchase large volumes of premium ad inventory up front a discounted rates, and generally negotiate better deals with premium publishers. Thus, make an offer competitive media prices to their clients. Since agency trading desks typically offer their services to many clients, they can also negotiate down the prices of using several programmatic technology platforms such as demand-side platforms, ad servers, and at fraud protection tools. Moreover, they keep trading costs down since their teams are already experts in the field. And other significant benefit is that advertisers who work at agency trading desks are usually more knowledgeable and experienced in programmatic media buying them those who work in house at brands. That's because they constantly run programmatic campaigns for many large clients and deal with enormous amounts of media spend every month. Given that they run campaigns in many market segments, they also become experts at campaign management for specific industries and difficult niches. Another benefit is that agency trading desk collect enormous data from multiple sources such as historical, industry specific, behavioral acquisition and conversion data. Therefore, they can generate enhanced insights and benchmarks across many industries in niches. It goes without saying that all those insights can be used to improve their optimization algorithms and bidding models. At this point, I think it's worthwhile to mention that agency trading desks have more accurate optimization algorithms as opposed to in-house teams at brands, because they leverage enormous amounts of historical data across all industries. It's needless to say that having access to enhanced insights can definitely improve the efficiency of programmatic advertising campaigns. The last main benefit is that agency trading desks typically focus on increasing return on investment since their main goal is to help their clients improve their performance on each dollar spent. Even though there are many benefits of working with agency trading desks, it seems that they started fading away. As mentioned in the previous lesson, more and more brands began running programmatic campaigns in house. It is estimated that about 45% of brands run programmatic campaigns in house in 2018. This number is predicted to climb to 65% by 2022. Since agency trading desktop are fully managed programmatic advertising services to their clients, this comes at an extra cost which varies and should be negotiated in advance. Agency trading desks typically charge anywhere between ten to 20% of their clients ad revenue. Please note that the fee is not based on the advertisers media spent. It's typically based on their revenue instead, the actual cost depends on many factors, such as the advertisers, marketing objectives and goals, the allocated advertising budget, the preferred media buying methods, and the industry of the promoted brand. Lastly, there are several online advertising corporations worldwide that run their own trading desks. But the most popular ones are the harvest Media Group, z-axis, vivace, and Acumen. 17. Participants: Ad Server: And add servers is a technology that enables the management, serving, and tracking of ad creatives. There are two types of ad server. One for advertisers, also known as third party ad server, and one for publishers, also known as first party at server. Ad servers, as their name implies, are responsible for serving ad creatives to users. How do they work? Well, in simple terms, the advertiser uploads ad creatives on his ad server. Once his DSP winds and auction, the publisher's ad server fetches the ad creator from the advertiser's ad server. Finally, the publisher's ad server conserve the ad on his website, track impressions and other data, and report them back to the advertiser's ad server. The advertiser could then monitor the campaign performance. Advertisers can either upload ad creatives to a standalone ad server platform or upload them directly to their DSP. In this lesson, I will cover the standalone ad server platform, which is used by large sized advertisers and agencies to upload and store the ad creatives of all their online advertising campaigns in one platform. A standalone ad server is ideal for those who run campaigns across many channels and marketing platforms. More specifically, advertisers typically use a standalone ad server when they run programmatic campaigns through multiple DSPs, or when they run campaigns on other channels such as Google Search, facebook, and affiliate websites. A standalone ad server allows advertisers to aggregate all campaign data in a single dashboard. Therefore, they can view the campaign performance, carry out cross device analysis, and of course track a user's path to conversion through attribution reports. All in all, a standalone ad server simplifies campaign management, tracking and reporting. Note that small advertisers who do not invest a lot of money in online advertising campaigns are run campaigns only in one channel, do not typically use a standalone ad server platform. What they do instead is uploading their ad creatives directly to their demand-side platform. So basically use the proprietary and server technology of their DSP. There are two ways of adding ad creatives to an ad server. The first is by directly uploading creative assets in the form of gif, jpeg, or zip files. The second is by inserting third-party ad tags. Those are basically pieces of JavaScript code that fetch ad creatives that were created an external platforms such as the creative management platform and the dynamic creative platform. I will explain more about those platforms later on in this course. The cost of using an ad server might be based on the advertiser's monthly ad spend, the number of projected impressions per month, the form of advertising, and the number of users involved in the ad serving project. The cost of serving banner ads typically ranges from one sentence, $0.07 per CPM. As for serving video ads, this might get ten times more expensive. Some popular standalone servers for advertisers are the Google campaign manager, also known as double-click campaign manager and double-click for advertisers says mc by Amazon and uglier. Note that I will not cover any ad server for advertisers in this course for the same reasons, I didn't cover any DSP or SSP. But if you want to get trained and certified on the most popular ad server for advertisers, namely the Google campaign manager. I have attached there free training course in the resources section of this lesson. When it comes to publishers, they use an ad server to create cell and manage all their ad inventory more efficiently. And ad server for publishers is also responsible for fetching adverts from advertiser ad servers, serving them on the publisher's website or mobile app, as well as reporting impressions and other data back to advertiser's. Ad servers also allow publishers to set priorities on how their ad spaces are sold to advertisers. They can also generate reports with important insights on how to improve revenue performance. At this point, it's worthwhile to mention that publishers can either use a standalone ad server platform or the proprietary ad serving technology of their SSP. A standalone ad server platform is ideal for large publishers. It offers more advanced features like setting advanced ad inventory priorities, selling ad inventory outside ad exchanges, managing direct deals more efficiently and handling unsold inventory more effectively. When it comes to using the proprietary ad serving technology of an SSP, it's the ideal option for small or medium-sized publishers. It offers less ad serving features than a standalone ad server and also doesn't allow publishers to sell ad spaces outside ad exchanges. The cost of using a standalone ad server for publishers varies among technology vendors, as it may be based on the number of ad impressions served per month, the monthly traffic and gigabytes, the format of served ads and standard setup and monthly fees. The cost of serving banner ads typically ranges from one center, $0.02 per CPM. In contrast, the cost of serving video ads might get ten times higher than banner ads. Some popular ad servers for publishers, other Google Ad Manager, formerly known as double-click for publishers, careful EPA, mad server, Broad Street ad server, and open x. Note that I will not cover any ad server for publishers in this course for the same reasons, I didn't cover any DSP or SSP. If you want to get trained on the most popular ad servers for publishers, namely the Google Ad Manager happened in Broad Street, had server, I have attached there training courses in the resources section of this lesson. 18. Participants: Supply Side Platform: A supply-side platform, also known as a sell-side platform, is a technology platform created for publishers. It is an equivalent of the demand-side platform. The main difference is that supply side platforms are used by publishers, while demand side platforms are used by advertisers or advertising agencies, supply side platforms basically allow publishers to create, manage, cell, and optimize ad spaces on their websites and mobile applications in an automated and efficient way. In other words, SSPs can help publishers create ad spaces around published content, which were then filled with adverts programmatically. Supply side platforms allow publishers to sell ad spaces in real-time bidding auctions. They also allow publishers to sell premium add spaces directly to advertisers through programmatic direct deals. Lastly, some SSPs can be linked directly with DSP's, so that advertisers and publishers could trade ad inventory without the need for ad exchanges or ad networks. Now let's see what types of ad inventory publishers can create through their supply-side platform. The most popular platforms typically support six ad inventory types. The display, video, native TV, audio, and digital out-of-home. I will explain all those types later on in this course. All you need to know for now is that publishers can choose the type of ad inventory they would like to create through their supply-side platform. Most of the SSP vendors offer two types of platforms, the self-service platform and the full-service platform. The self-service SSP is ideal for publishers who know how the programmatic advertising ecosystem works. How to create, manage, and optimize ad inventory, as well as how to interact with the interface of their SSP. In addition to that, a self-service SSP provides publishers with everything they need to participate in real-time auctions and engage in programmatic direct deals with advertisers. From time to time, SSP vendors might help publishers maximize their ad sales. The full service SSP is mainly for those who do not have adequate knowledge or experience in creating and managing that inventory, or do not want to deal with a complicated and shifting landscape of programmatic advertising. In those cases, the SSP vendor becomes fully responsible for creating, managing, selling, and optimizing ad spaces on behalf of the publisher. The vendor also reports on revenue performance. But let's see what are the benefits of using an SSP. The most important benefit is that publishers can monetize their websites and apps more efficiently. Since their ad inventory becomes available in dozens of ad exchanges simultaneously, more advertisers can bid for their ad spaces, which results in greater ad revenue for publishers. In addition to that, publishers can make their ad inventory available in open and private auctions. I will cover those two media buying methods in the next module. All you need to know for now is that publishers typically set price floors to ensure that their premium ad inventory is not sold under a certain price. Another benefit is that publishers can collect data and create performance reports. They can basically see who bids for their ad spaces, how much their inventory is being bought for which ad spaces are the most profitable ones and generally get many other insights which can be used to adjust their trading strategy to achieve greater ad revenue. Another significant benefit is that SSPs offer better brand safety for publishers. More specifically, publishers can block certain types of unwanted ads from showing on their websites or mobile apps. This can be done by blocking certain advertiser domains, ads that are written in different languages, as well as categories of ads promoting black magic, astrology, consumer loans, cosmetic procedures, dating, get rich quick content, politics, religion, drugs, supplements, weight-loss products, casino and many more. When it comes to the cost of using a supply-side platform, it varies by different SSB vendors. In general, it depends on how much traffic per month the publisher gets and the publishers negotiation skills. The fee is typically calculated based on the publisher's ad revenue and ranges from 0 to 25%. Note that most of the SSPs tried to reduce their fees. As a matter of fact, Amazon publisher services, which is the supply side platform of Amazon, doesn't charge publishers any revenue share or monthly fees. But let's see in greater detail how an SSP charges the platform fee from a publisher. Let's assume that a publisher has a total revenue from soledad spaces of 1 $1000 and has agreed with a particular SSP to pay 15% on the generated ad revenue. In that case, the publisher will earn $800. There are hundreds of SSPs available online and new ones constantly emerge. Some popular ones are the Google Ad Manager, formerly known as double click for publishers, the Xander open x Rubicon project, PubMed, and Amazon publisher services. Note that I will not cover any SSP in this course for the same reasons I didn't cover any DSP. Ssps usually offer free training on their platform, as well as certificates of completion. If you want to get trained on the most popular SSP, namely the Google Ad Manager. I have attached there free training course in the resources section of this lesson. 19. Participants: Data Management Platform: Another participant in the programmatic advertising ecosystem is the data management platform. Advertisers and publishers use a DMP to collect, segment, enrich, analyze, and use data to improve their performance. Another thing to note is that a DMP can connect with DSPs and SSPs. But let's see in greater detail why so many programmatic advertisers use a DMP. First of all, they can connect their first party with third party data to generate unique insights about their converters. To take an example, a DMP can collect cookie data from the advertiser's Website and connect it with data provided by third party data vendors to generate enhanced insights about their audiences. Using those enhanced insights, advertisers could improve audience targeting in their current or upcoming campaigns. Besides understanding audience characteristics, advertisers can combine first, second, third party data to create custom audience segments for campaign targeting purposes. For example, if you want to advertise a luxurious hotel in London, you can target users who visited your website in the last 15 days who were also first-class travelers fly from JFK to Heathrow airport, fly with British Airways or Virgin Atlantic, prefer to stay at luxurious hotels and our 35 years old. This custom target audience can then be pushed from the DMP to a DSP to be used for campaign targeting purposes. And that way, the DSP will only bid for impressions when the targeting criteria are matched. Meanwhile, a growing number of publishers also use a DMP to better understand their audience characteristics and preferences. More specifically, they can collect, analyze, and enhance their data to create premium ad inventory packages. Next, they sell those packages to advertisers through programmatic direct deals. That way advertisers can target more relevant audiences while publishers can generate higher ad revenues. To take an example, a DMP can collect website visitor data and connected with data provided by third party data vendors to generate enhanced insights. Next, the publisher uses those insights to create premium ad inventory packages and sell them directly to programmatic advertisers. Moreover, a DMP allows publishers to improve user engagement with content personalization. More specifically, a publisher can analyze data to personalize the content to each user. When users see personalized content, they get more engaged with the publisher's website, consume more content and hence view more ads. It's needless to say that when users view more adverts, the publisher generates more ad revenue. Another thing to note is that many publishers use a DMP to sell their audience data to advertisers. This practice is called audience extension. Besides selling their ad spaces to advertisers, they can sell their audience data to. That way, advertisers could reach those audiences on other publisher websites. For example, TripAdvisor may create an audience segment of people looking to travel to London and sell that to advertisers. That way, programmatic advertisers could reach that audience segment on other publisher websites such as blogs, YouTube, CNN, and BBC. It goes without saying that the audience extension feature allows publishers to generate additional revenue. Dmps have access to such an enormous amount of data. Damps obtain those data from thousands of data suppliers and data aggregators. Data suppliers are publishers and commercial businesses that sell their audience or customer data. Data suppliers sell user demographics, interest, buying intention, transaction detail, and any data that is worthy to advertisers. Note that advertisers never get access to personally identifiable information such as email addresses, phone numbers, and full names. For example, in the travel industry, advertisers can target users who fly with United Airlines or American Airlines, Delta JetBlue, Eddie HOD, Lufthansa, Ryanair, and many other airlines. Advertisers can also obtain data from data suppliers such as Visa, MasterCard, Forbes, and Nielsen. Data aggregators collect data from millions of data suppliers. Such data are obtained from both online and offline sources. Once data are collected, aggregator segment them into thousands of categories. Next, those audience segments become available to advertisers who can target them with their demand-side platform. But let's take a look at the data directory of Oracle Data Cloud. Oracle data cloud is a quite popular DMP. This PDF file shows where Oracle gets its third party data from. In this table of contents, we see all data aggregators and some suppliers working with Oracle. For example, 33 across comScore, MasterCard and Visa. But let me click on MasterCard. Here we see a description of how MasterCard collects and categorizes data. We can also see some data categories such as automotive, hotel, travel, and retail. Under each category, there are subcategories. If we take travel, for example, we see business, air crews and car rental. However, we cannot see any audience segments under those subcategories in this PDF file. That's why we move on to this Excel file, where I have put together some audience segments related to travel. In the first column, you see the audience segment. In the second one, you see the CPM Cost for using a segment in a display advertising campaign. In the third one, you see the CPM Cost for using a segment and a video advertising campaign. And in the last two columns, you see how many users are included in each segment. In the US and Canada. There are two main ways of targeting third-party audience segments with a DSP. The first one is to find predefined audience segments on your DSP. Dsps usually enable advertisers to search for relevant third-party audience segments. In this example, we see how the audience segments provided by Oracle appear on a DSP. The second option is to get a DMP onboard, create custom segments there, and inject them into your DSP. That is the ideal approach for large corporations which want to combine first, second, third party data. Programmatic advertisers who want to target third-party audience segments with their campaigns have to pay to prices. One for using a third party audience segment and another one for buying media. For example, if the CPM of buying a third party audience segment is $3 and the cost of buying media is $2 than the actual SPM will be $5. There are dozens of DMPs and the market, but the most popular ones are the Oracle Data Cloud, Adobe audience manager, Salesforce, DMP on audience and Nielsen. Note that I will not cover any DMP in this course for the same reasons, I didn't cover any DSP or SSP. However, if you want to get trained on the most popular DMPs, I have attached there training courses in the resources section of this lesson. 20. Participants: Ad Fraud Detection and Protection Platform: Another significant participant in the programmatic advertising ecosystem is the ad fraud detection and protection platform. Such platforms use machine learning and advanced bought fingerprinting technologies to identify and fraud taking place in the online advertising world. And ad fraud protection platform can also block the buying process when fraudulent impressions are detected. Therefore, programmatic advertisers could save a lot of marketing money from not bidding for such impressions. But before getting down to how such platforms can dramatically improve programmatic advertising performance, I think it's best to give you an overview of what an fraud is, why it exists, how big it is, and how it takes place. Once those are covered, I will explain how ad fraud is detected and prevented, which are the most popular providers, and how to deploy such a solution. So what is ad fraud? Advertising fraud is the practice of fraudulent Lee representing online advertising impressions, clicks, and conversions to fool advertisers for financial gain. Fraudsters use sophisticated technologies such as networks of bots and several other methods to generate fake impressions which are not seen by humans or target audiences. When that happens, advertisers end up paying for something totally worthless to them. Remember that in the programmatic advertising ecosystem, advertisers typically pay for delivered impressions. So when those impressions are seen by bots instead of humans, advertisers end up wasting a lot of marketing money for absolutely no gain. The phenomenon of ad fraud existed from the beginning of online advertising with the increasing adoption of programmatic media buying, advertising fraud has gained traction since there has been a constant shift of ad spend towards programmatic advertising. This created the ideal environment for fraudsters to join the party and make enormous amounts of illegitimate profits. Let's not forget that online advertising is growing multibillion dollar market. It is estimated that the global digital ad expenditure is $225 billion. The enormous size of this market tempts criminals into creating technology and techniques to steal money from advertisers. But how big is add fraud? According to some programmatic solution vendors and fraudsters, steel almost half of every dollar spent on online advertising. Unfortunately, nobody can calculate the exact cost of ad fraud. That's because fraudsters use sophisticated technologies so that ad fraud protection platforms could not detect them. Indeed, some ad fraud types are very hard to detect. And therefore, even if you use an ad fraud detection and protection tool, some ads might still be served to bots. Ad fraud is the number one cybercrime in terms of revenue and the second most profitable organized crime globally after drug trafficking. It can happen in well-known publisher sites such as the New York Times or BBC, and in any ad formats such as banner, video, and native adds. Another interesting fact is that about 50% of the internet users are bots, which generate about 60% of all internet traffic. That's really surprising, isn't it? There are several types of ad fraud in the online world, but in this lesson, I will cover the 16 most popular ones are really popular ad fraud technique is the use of botnet traffic. Bots are small malware programs installed on consumers computers. They can perform various Internet activities, such as viewing adds, clicking on links, and visiting websites. Groups of bots hosted on many computers are called botnets. Publishers can use botnet traffic on their websites to sell their ad spaces and generate higher revenues. This video will show you how computers get infected with bots and how those generate fake impressions. The team at forensic, isolated to particularly malicious bought, infected a virtual computer. And here's what we discovered. Typically this kind of malware is launched on your computer by clicking on a link, downloading a file, or visiting an unsafe compromised website. In some cases, the user doesn't have to do anything at all as botnets comb through the Internet looking for outdated browsers and security vulnerabilities. What you are seeing on the right is a program that shows an in-depth view of your computer's activity. On the left, we have revealed the windows hidden from the user that have been generated by the malicious bought. Once launched, the bot begins connecting with lots of websites, opening windows and viewing ads. These ad views are fraudulent because no human ever sees them. No company is immune from these fraudulent tactics. For example, here are ads for Procter and Gamble. Verizon at General Motors. Advertisers pay for the total number of ad views. All these views are fake and thus worthless. These ads are invisible and are never seen by real consumers. Every five minutes, the malware refreshes and begins again simulating a new user viewing more ads and committing more ad fraud. Here the button at visits pages containing hundreds of ads. This is a common tactic fraudulent publishers use to inflate impression counts per visit. This page is only visible to the botnet. Advertisers and ad exchanges have no way of seeing this activity due to the limitations posed by cross domain I frames. The bot is relentlessly working as long as the machine is on. This bot is not alone. It's part of a massive botnet with thousands or even hundreds of thousands of machines working to commit ad fraud on a global scale over 24 hours, the machine has generated 10 thousand false impressions. If it's part of a 100 thousand machine botnet, that means 1 billion fraudulent depression's a day. That's billions of dollars in wasted advertising, spend a year having the right ad fraud protection in place can make all the difference. Remarketing fraud is the practice of using botnets that visit many websites, especially those of large commercial companies, to enter their remarketing fools. Next, those bots visit certain publisher websites so that advertisers would bid for those impressions. Therefore, dishonest publishers can generate high CPMs and make a great deal of ad revenue. Commonly, many publishers by traffic to boost page views. It is usually sold by companies promising legitimate web traffic. If you are an online advertiser or digital marketer, that chances are that someone has already approached you to sell vast amounts of traffic at a really low cost. It goes without saying that almost all of that traffic is generated by bots are botnets. Pixel stuffing occurs when a one by one pixel containing an advert is placed on a publisher's webpage. Even though that ad space is invisible to the human eye, it can contain an entire advert, and therefore, it can generate a fake ad impression. Since that impression is considered valid, the advertiser has to pay for it. This method is used by dishonest publishers who actually generate more impressions from invisible adds to increase their revenues. Add stacking occurs when multiple ads are stacked on top of one another, with only the top ad being visible to the viewer. Even though the rest of the ads are invisible to humans, their impressions are still considered valid. Advertisers have to pay for such impressions. Again, this method is used by dishonest publishers to increase their ad revenues. The Mobile SDK overlap technique is quite popular in the mobile space. In a given mobile app, there might be adverts running from different ad exchanges and network simultaneously and all in the background. It works like add stacking I described earlier, where many adverts load but only one is visible to the human eye. Now, let's see how this works. So forensic has detected high levels of non-human ADD traffic on thousands of mobile apps. To investigate, we selected a variety of these suspicious abs and downloaded them from a trusted amp store. We installed the apps on various mobile platforms, monitored their traffic, and here's what we found. What appear to be legitimate mobile apps were in fact committing ad fraud. These amps begin on startup without being opened and continue to run in the background, serving ads impossible to see and simulating real user activity. Over 700 maliciously hit an ad served per hour, defrauding advertisers every second, even when minimized, the amp continues to serve ads that will never be seen. What's more just a single app consumes two gigabytes of data per day. This quickly drains a user's battery all while eating away at that data plan. These apps are defrauding companies like Microsoft, Unilever. 21. Participants: Ad Viewability Solution: Addview ability is a measure of whether an advert had a chance to be seen by a consumer. According to comScore, it is estimated that about 54% of all online adverts never had a chance to be seen by targeted consumers. Obviously, if an ad is not seen, it can't build brand awareness, changed perception, or influence customer acquisition. In addition to that, advertisers pay for delivered impressions, whether they had been actually seeing are not. Solo view ability rates can result in poor campaign performance and an enormous waste of marketing money. Because of that huge problem, programmatic advertisers are highly advised to use the services of view ability verification providers. Those vendors help online advertisers allocate funds to the most valuable media. Adverts are not considered viewable when bonds view them or when they are invisible to the human eye. This includes all add fraud techniques I covered in the previous lesson, plus one adverts appear and minimize browsers, unused browser tabs, or when adverts load at the bottom of a page, but users don't scroll down to view them. Given that programmatic advertisers don't like to pay for non viewable impressions. The Interactive Advertising Bureau and the media rating Council develop collective industry standards. According to those standards of video, ad is considered viewable when 50% of the ad is visible on the screen for at least two continuous seconds. I display at is considered viewable when 50% of the ad is visible on the screen for at least one continuous second. When it comes to large display banners, at least 30% of the ads should be visible on the screen for at least one continuous second. Those standards apply to all devices such as desktops, tablets, and mobiles. It is worth mentioning that some large publishers, such as Facebook and YouTube, currently guaranteed 195% view ability respectively. That way, advertisers mostly pay for viewable impressions. However, when it comes to the programmatic advertising ecosystem, you ability rates are much lower, averaging and about 54%. On the bright side, there are many view ability verification vendors in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Those identify viewable ad spaces and allow advertisers to only bid for viewable impressions. More specifically, those vendors can track every publisher domain ad placement and ad unit to verify whether impressions are viewable. A view ability verification tool uses artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to verify whether a potential ad placement is viewable before the advertiser enters an auction. If the probability of you ability is low, the tool blocks the participation in the auction. At this point, I think it's worthwhile to also mentioned that most View ability verification providers optimize their algorithms beyond the guidelines and standards provided by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the media rating council. Nowadays, most DSP's have a partnership with at least one view ability verification vendor. Therefore, online advertisers can simply select within their DSP the view ability level for their adverts. When advertisers use a view ability verification service through their DSP, they have to pay an extra CPM on top of their media buying cost. That extra cost usually depends on the total number of impressions you would like to deliver per month. In general, it's a few cents per 1000 delivered impressions. In terms of which are the most popular view ability verification providers. Those are an era that will verify integral add science, White Ops, fraud logics, pixelate and confined. 22. Participants: Brand Safety Solution: Another significant participant in the programmatic advertising ecosystem is the brand safety verification provider. But what is brand safety? According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, brand safety is the practice of keeping a brand's reputation safe when it has advertised online. In other words, it is a set of measures that aim to protect the image of advertised brands from negative or inappropriate publisher content that exists in the online world. Given that the programmatic advertising ecosystem is quite open and automated, adverts have greater chances of appearing alongside risky content that doesn't align with the image values and messaging of the advertised brand. This situation can easily lead to negative brand perception and hence less converted customers. According to a recent study, about 70% of the people asked would not recommend or purchase a brand if it's advertised around controversial content. With the increasing adoption of programmatic advertising, brand safety has become a growing concern for advertisers and its importance has increased. It estimated that about 10% of programmatic adverts appear next to high or very high risk content that's willing and ten adds. But let's take some examples. Suppose that a programmatic advertiser has created a campaign to target previous website visitors that haven't converted yet. This tactic is known as remarketing. Now, imagine one of those targeted users visits a porn website. The chances are that the brands advert will appear alongside porn content. To take another example, suppose that a targeted user lands on an article featuring hate speech. Would it be ideal for the advertisers promotional banner to appear alongside that content. I guess now, because he could easily damage the reputation of the advertised brand, users might think that the advertiser supports and funds those viewpoints. There are many cases where the adverts of large corporations unintentionally appeared next to controversial content, leading consumers to boycott those corporations. There are many types of unsafe environments in the online world. Most of the advertisers do not show adverts and publish your pages with content that falls under the categories of military conflict, obscenity, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, adult arms, facilitation of illegal activities, crime, death or injury, online piracy, hate speech, terrorism, spam sites, fake news, and controversial subjects. Luckily, advertisers can use a brand safety solution to identify unsafe environments and exclude them from campaign targeting. In other words, a brand safety solution helps advertisers bid only for impressions on safe environments. Brand safety solution providers use sophisticated technology who identify on safe environments and they normally provide additional brand risk categories than those I mentioned earlier to meet any advertisers needs. Its needless to say that if you run programmatic advertising campaigns, I highly recommend that you use this solution. Nowadays, most DSP's have a partnership with at least one brand safety vendor. Therefore, online advertisers can simply select within their DSP the brand safety level for their campaigns. More specifically, advertisers can choose the risk categories they don't want to target. That way when an impression is considered unsafe, this tool blocks the participation in the auction. When advertisers use a brand safety service through their DSP, they have to pay an extra CPM on top of their media buying cost. That extra cost usually depends on the total number of impressions you would like to deliver per month. In general, it's a few cents per 1000 delivered impressions. At this point, I think it's worthwhile to mention that the cost of using this solution is so small and definitely worth the investment. Remember that accompanies brand image is priceless and can be damaged quite easily in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. In terms of which are the most popular brand safety verification providers. Those are double verify, integral add science, White Ops, fraud logs, pixelate and confine. 23. Participants: Creative Management Platform: As explained earlier in this course, advertisers use DSPs and DMPs to ensure that their ads are getting in front of the right people. But is this enough? I guess no, because to achieve better campaign performance, the right people should also see the right promotional message. The challenge here would be how to create so many tailored ads for different audience segments in the most efficient and less costly way. Knowing that there are so many available ad formats, ad sizes, marketing channels, and audience segments. This is where the creative management platform comes in. A platform that allows advertisers to create more relevant ads effortlessly while keeping production costs really low. Now, let's see in greater detail, what are the benefits of using a Creative Management Platform? Advertisers know well how time-consuming and building can be. The great thing about creative management platforms is that they offer designed tools which help advertisers effortlessly create static HTML5 video and dynamic ads through a single platform and without the need of having any coding or design skills. In addition to this, creative management platforms can automatically optimize ad creatives. For example, they can resize images, control file sizes, and minimize animation code to create lighter ads that offer a better user experience and drive better campaign performance. Another benefit is that advertisers can scale up creative production in no time. All an advertiser has to do with creating a single creative. Next, the creative management platform automatically generates more creatives of different sizes. The advertiser can then preview all creatives in one place and make the necessary adjustments involved. Moreover, creative management platforms are typically packed with hundreds of creative templates. Depending on the campaign purpose and audience segment, those templates can be easily modified to create variations. Marketers can also get experienced designers to build creative templates for them from scratch. Given that advertisers can easily amend any template or variation of it in no time. It could save them a lot of money and time, as well as speedup, creative production and campaign launch. Moreover, advertisers with no coding skills can quickly produce HTML5 rich media creatives by dragging and dropping text, images, buttons, videos, audio, clip art, animations, widgets, and other rich media elements. How does it work? Advertisers can access a library of hundreds of widgets. They simply drag and drop them into their creatives. It goes without saying that the creative management platform handles all the formatting, encoding, creating programmatic advertising campaigns as a collaborative process, it can involve multiple team members, such as advertisers to designers, copywriters and managers. Those individuals might work in-house at external agencies or even subsidiary companies based in other countries are creative management platform allows marketers to streamline their creative workflow and make it more efficient. How does it work? All members get access to a single cloud-based platform, which is accessible from anywhere. Designers can create templates, copywriters can make changes directly in the ads. Advertisers can leave comments and managers can approve creatives. In addition to that, all creatives are stored in one library. Any team member can simply copy old banners, edit them, and save them as new templates. This is a quite efficient approach as opposed to traditional workflows of sending campaign files via emails that many times go missing, overlooked or approval can take too long. In a nutshell, all stake holders can do their work in one place most productively and efficiently. Moreover, creative management platforms provide an efficient way of adding creative to DSPs and ad servers. More specifically, they allow advertisers to ad creatives directly to their campaigns through the creative management platform. Obviously, this can significantly speed up campaign launch. Another significant benefit is the ability to make changes to the creatives directly in the creative management platform and witness those changes across all your live programmatic advertising campaigns. So basically, there is no need to push the edited creatives to your DSP. Again. In addition to that, creative management platforms allow advertisers to change the landing page URLs of their live ads as well. Many creative management platforms allow advertisers to also generate creatives for non programmatic media such as affiliate sites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram pop-ups on websites and blogs give creatives for email campaigns and many more. Having all digital creatives in one place, whether they are programmatic or non programmatic, allows a better organization and increases efficiency. Having all creatives in one place could result in improved brand consistency. Brand consistency is the practice of delivering messages aligned with the core brand values, repeating the same colors throughout visual brand elements and presenting the brand logo in a certain way. Brand consistency also ensures that a brand is easily recognizable across marketing channels and touch points. There are two ways programmatic advertisers could add ad creatives to their DSP or ad server. The first and most efficient way is through direct publishing. For this to happen, advertisers need to establish a direct connection between their creative management platform and they're demand-side platform. Once those two platforms are connected, advertisers could then publish creatives directly to their DSP through the user interface of their CMP. For this to work, you should first check if your CMP can connect directly with your current DSP. If you're chosen, CMP cannot connect directly with your DSP. You will have to copy the creative add tags from the CMP and paste them into relevant campaigns on your DSP or ad server. And add tag is simply a code that retrieves the ad created from the CMP. The cost of using a CMP depends on many factors. For example, the number of creatives you want to build, the number of monthly delivered impressions than number of team members involved in this project, that type of customer support you would like to receive the custom integration capabilities you want to have and of course, your negotiation skills. Typically, CMP is charge a monthly subscription fee plus a cost per thousand delivered impressions. A medium-sized brand delivering millions of impressions per month could be paying around $3 thousand per month. Some popular creative management platforms are the banner flow, manner wise, thunder, rhythm One, Ultra, and banners neck. Now, if you want to get trained on the most popular see IMPs, I have attached some useful links in the resources section of this lesson. 24. Participants: Dynamic Creative Optimization Platform: Another significant participant in the programmatic advertising ecosystem is the dynamic creative optimization platform. Big e-commerce websites typically use this platform to generate thousands or even millions of unique, relevant ad creatives and no time. Dynamic creatives are adverts that automatically changed to adapt their contents specifically to each user, ensuring that each user is exposed to the most effective creative for them. For many advertisers, Running dynamic advertising campaigns is the only way to personalize messaging at scale. Even though most of the creative management platforms allow the production of dynamic creatives, there are also several standalone dynamic creative optimization platforms available in the market. In this lesson, I will cover dynamic creative optimization in greater detail, whether this feature is offered by a creative management platform or standalone platform. Dynamic ads are used by e-commerce businesses that have a very large inventory of products or services. To take an example, an online betting company allows betting on more than 40 thousand monthly sporting events. In this case, a dynamic advertising campaign can efficiently served personalized adverts to people who were looking to bet on specific sporting events. Dynamic creatives can be optimized for remarketing and prospecting purposes. Remarketing is the practice of showing ads to people who have previously interacted with a certain website, mobile app, or brand, but didn't complete a desired actions such as buying a product or service. When the goal is to run dynamic remarketing adds advertisers must work on three main components that feed creative design and tracking. A feed is pretty much a database of products or services and advertiser plans to promote with dynamic adds. The feed contains details about each product or service like price, imageURL, and landing page URL. Once the feed is uploaded to the platform, the advertiser could then pull product or service details from the feed into the dynamic add. Lastly, for the creative to be relevant to each user, advertisers should edit a tracking code on their website that tracks the products user's interacted or engaged with. Based on this data, the dynamic creative optimization platform will show the most relevant ad content to people who previously visited that website. Prospecting is the practice of showing ads to audiences that haven't interacted with the advertised brand yet, but are likely to convert. Some dynamic creative optimization platforms can connect with DMPs that advertisers could use third party data to bid on relevant audience segments. In those cases, the dynamic creative optimization platform typically uses machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to identify the most optimal users and then deliver personalized ads to them. Now let's see in greater detail what are the benefits of Running dynamic ad campaigns? The most significant benefit for advertisers is that dynamic ads use sophisticated technology that requires minimal manual input to develop thousands or millions of unique and nicely designed creatives, which are also relevant to each user. Those creatives can be generated automatically for multiple devices, ad formats, and sizes. Also, dynamic creative optimisation eliminates the risk of generating creative that look spammy or offer 0 value to target audiences. One might think that creating dynamic ads can take a tremendous amount of effort and time. The truth is that dynamic creative optimization platforms make the process extremely easy. Preparing the ground for launching dynamic ads might take just a few days for some advertisers, mostly to prepare a feed with the products or services they would like to advertise dynamically. Once a dynamic ad campaign is launched, thousands or millions of products or services could be promoted without the need for manually building a new campaign for each product. Therefore, dynamic Ads Decrease creative production costs and time. Dynamic ads can also be optimized through AB and multivariate testing. More specifically, dynamic creative optimization platforms allow advertisers to create different versions of their creative sets to see which ones generate a better return on investment. Lastly, since dynamic ads deliver a personalized experience at scale, they are proven to increase engagement levels, conversion rates, loyalty, and of course, return on investment. There are two ways programmatic advertisers could add dynamic ad creatives to their DSP. The first and most efficient way is through direct publishing. For this to happen, advertisers need to establish a direct connection between their dynamic creative optimization platform in their demand-side platform. Once those two platforms are connected, advertisers could then publish creatives directly to their DSP through the user interface of their TCO. For this to work, you should first check if your TCO can connect directly with your current DSP. If you're chosen, TCO cannot connect directly with your DSP. You will have to copy the creative add tags from the TCO and paste them into relevant campaigns on your DSP. And add tag is simply a code that retrieves the ad created from the TCO. The cost of using a dynamic creative optimization platform may depend on many factors, such as the number of team members involved in this project, the number of ad creatives than number of delivered impressions per month, that type of customer support you'd like to receive the custom integrations you may need. And of course, your negotiation skills. Typically, dynamic creative optimization venders charge a monthly subscription fee plus a CPM for delivered impressions. A medium-sized brand delivering millions of impressions per month could be paying around $3 thousand per month. Some popular DC Oh, vendors are the banner flow since met by Amazon, avocado, curtail, grooving ads, ads I, mic and thunder. Now, if you want to get trained on the most popular DPOs, I have attached some useful links in the resources section of this lesson. 25. Participants: Web Analytics Platform: Another notable participant in the programmatic advertising landscape is the web analytics platform, which collects, analyses and reports Audience Acquisition, website and conversion data. Web analytics platforms basically allow marketers to carry out marketing analysis, which is the most critical component of a successful marketing strategy. All advertisers and publishers use at least one web analytics platform. That's because a web analytics platform can tell which marketing efforts are working and which are not. In other words, it provides meaningful and actionable insights that could help maximize revenue opportunities while decreasing marketing expenditure. More specifically, advertisers use web analytics platforms to analyze the characteristics, behavior, and journey of their website users and existing customers. Generated insights help advertisers understand which audience segments mattered the most to them, improve campaign targeting, and of course, generate a higher return on investment. Publishers also use web analytics platforms to analyze the characteristics, behavior, and preferences of their website users. By getting a complete picture of their audience, publishers can produce more relevant content and increase user engagement. Remember, every publisher's ultimate objective is to create valuable content so that people will come back and consume more of it. The more times people visit a publisher's website, the more revenue that publisher will make through sold ad spaces. The two most popular web analytics platforms are the Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics. Google Analytics is provided for free to small and medium-sized companies. However, large companies pay $150 thousand per annum. If you wonder why Google offers such a sophisticated web analytics platform for free to small and medium-sized companies? Then the answer is simple. It's goal is to entice advertisers into using the Google advertising products for a more extended period. That way, Google can capture a greater share of the online advertising market. Another important thing to note is that Google Analytics offers a direct connection with Google's ad server called campaign manager. Google's DSP called display in video 360, and Google's SSP called Google Ad Manager. I Adobe Analytics is the second biggest player in the web analytics market. Its price typically starts at $100 thousand per annum and can get higher for websites receiving a lot of traffic. Adobe analytics is more suitable for large sized companies. It also offers a direct connection with Adobe's DSP called Adobe advertising cloud, and Adobe's DMP called Adobe audience manager. Now, if you wanna get trained and certified on those platforms, I have attached some useful links in the resources section of this lesson. 26. Participants: Marketing Attribution Platform: The majority of programmatic advertiser's also use a marketing attribution platform. This platform tracks and evaluates all the marketing touch points are customer encounters on their path to conversion. In other words, they've determines which marketing channels, campaigns, and tactics had contributed to conversions and to what extent those insights help marketing teams efficiently alter and customize their acquisition strategies to generate a high return on investment. But let's see in greater detail which problem and marketing attribution platform solves. People may visit the website of a brand several times before making an online purchase. Those visits can occur on different days and through various marketing channels. For you to understand better. Let's see the customer journey of a user named David. For this example, let's also assume that David had recently booked flight tickets for his trip to London and now is actively looking to book accommodation at a luxurious hotel. On the first day, David saw prospecting advert promoting a luxurious hotel in London. So he clicked that advert. As he was going through the landing page, he got a phone call and close the browser. On the third day, he suddenly saw a remarketing advert promoting the very same hotel. He immediately recalled that he hadn't got the time to check room rates. So he clicked that advert. After checking rates and availability, He thought it's best to discuss the total reservation price with his travel partner first. So he left the hotel website again. On the fourth day. He got the go ahead from his travel partner and immediately searched on Google for the name of that hotel. He then saw a paid search advert of that hotel, which he clicked and eventually book that room. So in this specific customer journey, David visited the hotel website three times in the course of four days through two different marketing channels, the programmatic and paid search. Now, the advertisers web analytics platform would give all the credit for that conversion to the last click channel, in this case being the paid search advertising campaign. However, the programmatic campaigns have significantly contributed to that conversion because without those campaigns, David wouldn't have visited the hotel website at all, let alone convert. This is where the marketing attribution platform comes in. More specifically, this platform first evaluates all the marketing touch points customers encountered on their path to conversion. Next, it breaks up and assigns conversion credit to each marketing activity that contributed to convergence. So in David's case, the marketing attribution platform would give more credit for that conversion to the programmatic campaigns rather than the paid search campaign. Given that every business follows different marketing approaches and uses different tactics, most programmatic advertisers use the data-driven attribution model for their analysis. The data-driven attribution model, also known as algorithmic attribution model, uses machine learning technology to generate a model that is specific to each business. That model automatically determines how much credit to assigned to each marketing touch point. It goes without saying that the more marketing data and advertiser has, the more accurate this model becomes because it constantly gets optimized by data. It's needless to say that an increasing number of advertisers use this type of attribution modelling. Now, I think it's best to explain the benefits of using a marketing attribution platform. Having a clear view of the entire buying process helps marketers better understand which marketing touch points contributed the most to conversions. Those valuable insights could assist marketers to formulate successful marketing strategies. Many marketing attribution platforms allow marketers to analyze the customer journey of big spenders only. This type of data segmentation could reveal which marketing channels, campaigns, and tactics succeeded in acquiring high-value customers. By shifting the digital marketing strategy based on those insights, marketers could attract more customers with high lifetime value. Those platforms provide marketers with insights into how marketing money as best spent on different channels, campaigns, and tactics. Those insights allow strategists to make smarter marketing spend decisions. But let's take an example. This table shows the cost per acquisition for marketing channel. As you can see, the web analytics platform reports different values than the marketing attribution platform. More specifically, the web analytics platform shows that programmatic campaigns have a very high cost per acquisition. In comparison, that data-driven attribution model shows that programmatic campaigns are very cost-effective by seeing the real value of each marketing channel, any digital marketing strategists could make smarter marketing spend decisions. Some popular marketing attribution platforms are the Google Attribution 360 Nielsen marketing effectiveness, formerly known as visual IQ, impact, nu star, ruler analytics and coach Java. 27. Participants: Digital Asset Management Platform: Digital asset management platform, also known as media management system, is a system that stores, organizes, retrieves, and shares digital assets. Digital assets are files like videos, photos, music, animations, podcasts, and other types of multimedia content. Large advertisers typically use digital asset management platforms to store all companies digital assets in one place. Note that large sized companies may have thousands or even millions of digital assets. Therefore, by deploying such a solution, creative development and marketing teams can easily find the digital assets they need. In the programmatic advertising ecosystem, advertisers can use the search functionality of a digital asset management platform to identify, locate, and retrieve the digital assets they need for their ad creatives. Even though it's mostly large sized brands using this technology, more and more medium-sized brands have started adopting it as well. If you wondered, what is the difference between a digital asset management platform? In a creative management platform? The answer is very simple. A digital asset management platform is basically a place where all the multimedia content of a company is stored. Content can be Company images, logos, product photos, and videos. All those assets could be stored in different file types and sizes. Programmatic advertisers could retrieve and download those assets to build ad creatives within their creative management platform. So basically, the creative management platform can store all the ad creatives of accompany, not its digital assets. Now, let's see in greater detail the benefits of using a digital asset management platform. The most important benefit is that it increases in house efficiency. Having all assets in one place simplifies everyday processes such as searching for files, understanding asset usage rights, and sharing large files. Employees can save a lot of time and hassle for making file requests, and therefore they can focus on other aspects of their job. All digital asset management platforms are nowadays cloud-based. Therefore, its users can access digital assets from anywhere globally, whether they use desktop, mobile, or tablet devices. Because of this feature, The risk of sending or receiving incorrect assets is significantly reduced. Companies can share their branded assets with programmatic advertising agencies. This important feature improves brand consistency. Digital asset management platforms can play a significant role in brand management by ensuring that all stakeholders have access to correct brand materials. The last main benefit is the ability to manage workflows efficiently. Users can get their assets to market sooner by creating workflows for planning, designing, reviewing, approving, and publishing. They can also manage exploration details to mitigate the risk of legal penalties from expired assets. The cost of using a digital asset management platform may depend on many factors, such as the number of team members involved, the number of work rooms required, and the storage space needed in gigabytes or terabytes. In general, small brands are expected to pay around $80 per month. Medium-sized brands up to $100, and large brands from $1000 and up per month. There are dozens of digital asset management platforms available around the world. However, the most popular ones are the binder, Adobe Experience Manager, canto, coelom media, and North lanes. 28. Participants: Ad Order Management System: Add order management system, also known as media Sale system, is a platform that helps publishers and media companies to become more efficient in terms of selling ad spaces directly to advertisers or advertising agencies. Large publishers typically offer different inventory types to advertisers like print, digital, billboard, TV, radio, and podcast adds. This situation could easily create silos between different channels. This is where the ad order management system comes in. It breaks all silos by allowing publishers to manage their entire online and offline ad inventory through a single platform. So the main difference between an ad server for publishers and an add order management system is that the first can only manage digital ad inventory, such as banner and video ad spaces. While the second can handle all types of ad inventory, whether they are online or offline. There are several benefits of using an ad order management system. Here's a list of the most important ones. Publishers shouldn't have to manage sales in every system they use. But they should be able to control and track all their ad sales channels in a single place. Having a holistic picture of how all channels perform could help publishers improve their monetization strategies and accelerate their revenue growth. Another important benefit is that add order management systems automated and optimize the sales delivery process for quicker approvals. Publishers can finally put an end to countless email approvals, which may result in errors and delays. Faster and more efficient publisher operations definitely satisfy advertisers. Channel by channel manual invoicing is a thing of the past and order management system to simplify and streamline the billing process. In addition to that, they integrate easily with ERP and invoicing platforms. And add order management system can be connected with ad servers and supply side platforms. Any changes to add orders and campaigns are pushed to those platforms in real time. Add order management systems also allow publishers to pull in data from all media departments and third-party tools to generate advanced yield reports. Based on those data, some systems can produce predictive insights such as sales and revenue forecasts. Some popular add order management systems are the advent DO add point, cloud sense placements dot IO, wide orbit and, and add book. If you wanna see in greater detail how an ad order management system works, I have attached some webinars in the resources section of this lesson. 29. Participants: Tag Management System: In the programmatic advertising ecosystem, both advertisers and publishers need to collect and analyze various data types, such as conversion, Audience Acquisition, and behavioral data. To collect data, marketers need to add some JavaScript codes into their websites and mobile apps. Those tracking codes are provided by the programmatic platforms that advertisers are publishers use, and hence no code writing is required. And Tag Management System allows marketers to place those Javascript tracking codes to their websites or mobile apps through a single user-friendly interface without the need for modifying the current website code or involving any Developer. Since a tag management system makes it simple for both advertisers and publishers to add and maintain several tracking codes and their websites or apps, marketers can quickly get the data they need without any significant delay. Now let's see how programmatic advertisers and publishers can use a Tag Management System, meaning what kind of data they can collect and center there programmatic platforms and for what reasons? When it comes to programmatic advertisers, the majority of them uses a Tag Management System to add tracking codes provided by programmatic platforms such as the demand-side platform, agency trading desk at server, data management platform and fraud protection platform, web analytics platform, creative management platform, dynamic creative optimization platform and marketing attribution platform. Demand-side platforms, agency trading desks, and at servers collect conversion data such as sign-ups, form submissions, and transactions. Conversion data are collected for three purposes. Firstly, to report campaign performance within the demand-side platform like conversions, conversion rate, cost per conversion, ad revenue, return on advertising spend, and other conversion metrics. The second purpose is to allow advertisers to exclude existing customers from campaign targeting if necessary. For example, if someone has already bought a service or product from you, you can create a list of converters to exclude them from current or future campaign targeting. The third purpose is to allow advertisers to create lists of high-value existing customers to target with their current or future campaigns. Besides collecting conversion data, those three platforms can also collect audience and behavior data such as website page visits, user preferences, demographics, and any other type of data the advertiser things could be beneficial for campaign targeting. Those data could help advertisers excludes certain audiences from campaign targeting and retargeted users who visited their website but didn't convert. When it comes to data management platforms, they typically collect audience behavior and conversion data such as visited pages at a card, actions, transactions, and other types of data. The purpose is to enhance audience insights so that advertisers can understand better the audience segments that matter the most to them. Advertisers can also combine first, second, third party data to create custom audience lists for campaign targeting. Ad fraud detection and protection platforms collect audience and behavior data to report the good and bad traffic within their platforms. Web analytics platforms track audience. Behavior, acquisition, conversion and even offline data. Web analytics data can help advertisers analyze the characteristics and behavior of high-value audience segments, as well as the performance of acquisition channels. They also allow advertisers to carry out cross device and conversion funnel analysis. As for the marketing attribution platforms, they collect audience behavior, acquisition, conversion and offline data to attribute conversion credit to the marketing channels that contributed to conversions. They also provide insights on how to allocate budgets among marketing channels more efficiently. Lastly, creative management and dynamic optimization platforms collect audience behavior, acquisition, conversion data to report ad creative performance within those platforms, and adapt the creative contents specifically to each user. When it comes to publishers, the majority of them use a Tag Management System to add tracking codes to their websites or mobile apps. Those are provided by programmatic platforms such as supply-side platform and server data management platform at verification platform, web analytics platform and add order management system. More specifically, SSPs, ad servers, and add order management systems collect user activity data such as pageviews, daily visits, and other types of data. Publishers use those data to optimize yield performance. As for DAMPs, they collect audience and behavior data such as web page visits, demographics, and interests to generate enriched insights on audiences that matter the most to publishers. Add verification platforms, collect audience and behavior data to report good and bad traffic within the ad verification platform. Lastly, web analytics platforms track audience behavior and acquisition data. Web analytics data can help publishers analyzed the characteristics and behavior of high-value audience segments and the performance of acquisition channels and tactics. There are several benefits of using a Tag Management System. Here's a list of the three most important ones. The most important benefit is that advertisers and publishers can launch new marketing campaigns without delays. As you may know, before launching any campaign, digital marketers have to make sure that the website conversion tracking works well so the campaign performance can be accurately measured. The tag management systems allow the fast deployment and testing of conversion tracking codes through a user-friendly platform interface. A tag can be added and tested within an hour by a digital marketer who doesn't have web development skills. It's that simple. No more excuses for missing out on revenue opportunities due to slow tracking code deployments. Moreover, tag management systems allow advertisers to create dynamic remarketing lists in no time. Those lists can then be used to show people adverts with a specific products or services they have viewed on advertisers website. Last but not least, tag management systems enhance the data collection process which allows the creation of Advanced Custom Reports. Different digital marketing stake holders could use those insights to improve their campaigns and other marketing efforts. Anything can be tracked on a website from the number of conversions to cart abandonment and form validation errors. Also, it's possible to transfer data from one place to another and store them in cookies so that they could trigger or block the firing of other tracking tags. The most popular Tag Management Systems are the Google Tag Manager, helium IQ Tag Management, insight and Tag Management, and Adobe dynamic tag management. Now, if you want to get trained on any of those tag management platforms, you can find the links to their courses in the resources section of this lesson. When it comes to the cost of using a tag management solution, some vendors might offer it for free while others at a monthly fee. More specifically, Google Tag Manager is provided for free, but it doesn't offer any direct support. In that case, the digital marketer would have to hire a google certified partner to do the job. The other system vendors typically charge a fee ranging from $150 to $500 per month. That feed depends on the level of support offered, the website traffic volume, and the number of Website domains the advertiser or publisher has. 30. Programmatic Media Buying Methods: In this module, I will take you through the major challenges advertisers and publishers face in the programmatic advertising landscape. I will also cover some new developments that will definitely shape the future of programmatic advertising. More specifically, I will start by covering challenges such as the ad tech tax, which refers to the fact that most media spend goes to ad tech vendors instead of publishers. I will explain the risks of using multiple DSPs when targeting the same audience and how this setup can lead to price inflations and real-time bidding auctions. Then I will explain what ad blockers are, how they have impacted advertisers and especially publishers, and why 47% of internet users use them. After that, I will explain why about 50% of programmatic advertisers don't think they understand programmatic advertising, as well as what media buyers and sellers should do to succeed in their marketing efforts. Next, I will take you through the artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. I will explain how those technologies can help marketers accomplish their objectives faster and at a low cost. I will also explain what augmented and virtual realities are. I will discuss the potential of those two technologies in the programmatic advertising field and show you some examples of innovative advertising formats that might dominate digital advertising landscape in the future. Lastly, I will take you through the blockchain technology and explain how it can help advertisers and publishers deal with major challenges faced in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. So let's get started. 31. Real Time Bidding: As mentioned earlier, real-time bidding is a subcategory of programmatic media buying. It refers to the practice of buying and selling ad spaces through real-time auctions. More specifically, publishers make their ad spaces available for sale in ad exchanges so that many advertisers can bid on them. The advertiser with the highest bid wins the auction and his or her advert is instantly displayed on the publisher's website or mobile app. But let's see why publishers and advertisers participate in real-time bidding options. When it comes to publishers, they do so because they couldn't manage to sell their ad inventory directly to advertisers. That way, they can increase ad space fill rates and hence generates some ad revenue. As for advertisers, they can take advantage of this situation to show ads to relevant audiences at a low cost. There are two types of real-time bidding auctions, the open auction and the private auction, which I will cover in greater detail in the next two lessons. Now let's see in greater detail how real-time bidding works. The entire process begins when an Internet user visits of publishers webpage that contains an ad space. Before the page loads, the publisher's site or app sends a message to the supply side platform saying that there's an available impression for sale. So it basically triggers an ad request. Next, the supply-side platform collects information about the user, such as location, web history, and demographics. The SSP also collects information about the ad space, such as ad format dimension and ad space position within the page. All those pieces of information are then passed on to the Ad Exchange, which relays the information to anyone seeking to buy ad spaces through real-time auctions such as DSPs and ad networks. Once the information is sent to those participants, the auction begins. In the meantime, demand side platforms analyze the received information and check whether they match the campaign targeting criteria set by the advertiser. If not, the demand-side platform of that advertiser will step out of the real-time bidding auction. If yes, the demand-side platform will bid on that impression. It's worth mentioning that during the auction, hundreds of DSPs and ad networks may bid for that single impression. What happens next is that the supply-side platform receives all bids and picks the winner based on the highest bid. Next, the SSP requests the ad created from the advertiser. Finally, he advertisers DSP passes the ad creative to the publishers SSP, which then serves it to the user. The fascinating thing about the real-time bidding process I have just explained is that it takes about 100 milliseconds to complete. That is a tenth of a second. By the time the publisher page loads, the auction is over, and the winning ad has already been served to the user. Another interesting fact is that the entire process is repeated every time the publisher's page loads. So if the same internet user refreshes the page, a brand new auction will take place. Its needless to say that ad exchanges run billions or trillions of auctions every day. Obviously, that was an example of how real-time bidding works in a marketplace with just a few participants so that you can quickly get the grips of it. However, there are usually more participants involved in the process. Now let's take an example of a real-time bidding process that involves an ad server, a creative management platform, and add fraud detection platform, and a data management platform. More specifically, let's assume that the publisher uses an ad server that sells all premium and inventory directly to advertisers and the remnant inventory through real-time bidding auctions. Let's also assume that the advertiser had created banner ads within his creative management platform, had published the add tags of the creatives to his ad server and demand-side platform had wrapped the add tags with additional code for ad fraud protection, and also uses a data management platform to target third-party audience segments. The process begins when a user visits a publisher's webpage that contains an ad space, the publisher's ad server checks whether that webpage contains premium ad inventory or not. After finding that it doesn't contain premium ad inventory, it sends a message to the supply side platform saying that there is an available impression for sale. Next, the supply-side platform passes information about the user in the ad space to the Ad Exchange, which relates the information to demand side platforms and begins the auction. Once the Ad Exchange as pass the information to the advertiser, his demand-side platform. Well, firstly, check on the data management platform whether that user is in the third party audience segment. Yes, it will give the demand-side platform the instruction to proceed. Next. The demand-side platform will check whether that impression is fraudulent through the ad protection solution. If everything is okay, the demand-side platform will place a bid and the real-time auction. If it wins the auction, the publisher's ad server will request the advertiser's ad creative. Next, the advertiser's ad server will get the ad created from his creative management platform and pass it to the publisher's ad server, which will then show it on the publisher page. Even though more participants were involved in this example, the entire process still takes 100 milliseconds to complete. 32. Open Auctions: Open auction, also known as Open Exchange, open marketplace and open our TV is a marketplace where any advertiser can participate as there are no restrictions to enter such options. Open auctions exist because publishers make their remnant inventory available in ad exchanges without setting any minimum bid price. Therefore, ad inventory prices are decided in real-time auctions. In general, if there is low competition and a certain auction, the price of the option to add space will be low and vice versa. Now let's see how ad inventory can be traded in an open auction. For this example, let's assume that a publisher offers an ad space for sale in an ad exchange through his supply-side platform. Many advertisers can bid through their demand side platforms for that ad space. The first advertiser places a bit of $1. The second advertiser places a bid of $2 and the third of $1.50. In this case, the auction winner will be the second advertiser who placed a bit of $2. So the actual price of that ad space was determined in the open auction. As mentioned earlier in this course, publishers use ad servers to prioritize the selling of their ad spaces. In general, most of them tried to sell premium ad inventory directly to advertisers at higher prices. If there is Rehman ad inventory, they make it available in private auctions. And if they don't manage to sell it there, they make it available in open auctions as a solution of last resort. Therefore, add servers for publishers typically give open auctions the lowest ad serving priority. Obviously, there are many pros and cons of trading at inventory through open exchanges. But let's have a closer look at those. When it comes to advantages, both advertisers and publishers can easily participate in open auctions without engaging in any direct deal. Therefore, it's less hassle to participate in open auctions. New publishers with a small number of ad spaces and low website traffic can easily sell their ad inventory and open auctions. That way, publishers can get found by advertisers, monetize their website and why not engage in direct deals with them in the future. Moreover, publishers who participate in open auctions can still control their ad inventory, meaning they choose what types of ad creatives can be placed on their websites. They can also blacklist particular unwanted advertiser's. Also, even though ad spaces are usually sold at lower prices and open auctions, there is always demand on open exchanges as opposed to the other programmatic media buying methods. When it comes to the downsides, publishers end up selling their ad inventory at very low prices, which results in low ad revenues. The thing with open exchanges is that they have a much larger supply of impressions. This oversupply suppresses ad space prices. Moreover, advertisers participating in open exchanges are highly exposed to add fraud. Therefore, participation in open auction should always be done using an ad fraud detection and protection platform. Also, given that any publisher can participate in open auctions, adverts have higher chances of appearing alongside risky content, which doesn't align with the image value and messaging and the advertised brand. This situation can easily lead to negative brand perception and hence less converted customers. Another downside of participating in open auctions is that some publisher and user_data can easily get leaked. As mentioned in the previous lesson, when someone visits a web page that contains an ad space, the publisher supply-side platform sends an ad request with publisher and user information to add exchanges, which are then passed on to DSPs. Those ad requests store a lot of data like publisher details in user demographics. 33. Private Auctions: Private auction, also known as private marketplace and invitation only auction, is a real-time bidding auction similar to an open auction, except publishers restrict participation to a selected group of advertisers only. But how can advertisers participate in private auctions? Well, a publisher must first invite advertisers through his supply-side platform. Ideal is traditionally made directly between a publisher and the participating advertisers. Each invite becomes a private auction deal with a single advertiser. In addition to that, publishers have the freedom to set the minimum CPM price floor. Invited advertisers must exceed the price floor with their bid to be eligible to participate in the private auction. However, when it comes to private auctions, the advertiser with the highest bid always wins the auction. But let's take an example. Suppose that a publisher has set up a private marketplace with a price floor of $8 per 1000 impressions for all participants and has invited three advertisers. Only. The three advertisers can bid through their DSP for that ad space. Suppose that the first advertiser placed a bid of $8.20. The second advertiser placed a bit of $9 and the third place to bid of $8.50. In this case, the auction winner will be the second advertiser who plays the highest bid. As mentioned earlier in this course, publishers use ad servers to prioritize the selling of their ad spaces. In general, most of them try to sell premium ad inventory directly to advertisers at higher prices. If there is Rehman ad inventory, they make it available in private auctions. And if they don't manage to sell it there, they make it available in open auctions as a solution of last resort. Therefore, add servers for publishers typically give private auctions higher ad serving priority than open auctions. Knowing that millions of advertisers and publishers worldwide seat to trade at inventory. You may wonder how those parties can find each other. Well, almost always the process is initiated by advertisers. Many DSPs allow advertisers to search for publishers participating in private auctions through a discovery tool. The discovery tool enables them to search based on several criteria like publisher name, country, content category, ad space format, or size, audience, gender, or age. In addition to that, advertisers can also access publisher profile data deriving from the Ad Exchange. Those data might reveal the publisher's audience characteristics such as age, gender, NGOs, and how certain ad spaces generally perform in terms of impressions, unique impressions, view ability, and other metrics. If the DSP doesn't offer this feature, the advertiser can simply ask his account manager to provide a list of suggested private marketplaces. In this table, you see some suggested private marketplaces for an advertiser in the travel industry. In that spreadsheet, you can see the package name and the first column, the publisher name and the second, the content category in the third, the ad space format in the fourth and the last two columns show the minimum CPM Cost for participating in auctions and the daily number of impressions at spaces typically get. In this list, you see maybe premium publishers such as BBC, Expedia, HomeAway. Note that regardless of whether advertisers can search for publishers within their DSP or not, they still need to request participation in private auctions. The chances are that publishers will eventually invite them. The process of setting up a private marketplace always begins with the publisher who has to follow some steps. The publishers should first create a new deal in which a lot of details are inserted, such as deal name, price, floor, deal, expiration date, inventory platform, ad unit type, number of seats in the auction GOs, device types and other details. That New Deal should then be assigned to certain ad spaces. Once the New Deal has created, a deal ID is generated and shown to the publisher. The publisher should then send it to the advertiser. Finally, the advertiser has to insert that deal id into his demand-side platform and targeted with a programmatic advertising campaign. If that process has been done correctly, the advertiser will be able to participate in the upcoming private auctions. Now let's see in greater detail how private auctions work in a marketplace with several participants. For this example, let's assume that the publisher uses an ad server that sells all premium ad inventory directly to advertisers and the remnant inventory through private auctions. The invited advertisers will have to bid $8 or more to participate in private auctions. Let's also assume that the advertiser had created banner ads within his creative management platform, had published the add tags of the creatives to his ad server and demand-side platform. Wrap the add tags with additional code for ad fraud protection, and also uses a data management platform to target third-party audience segments. The entire process begins when an Internet user visits of publishers webpage containing an ad space. The publisher's ad server checks if that page contains premium ad inventory. If yes, it sends a message to the supply side platform saying that there is a premium ad impression for sale. So it basically triggers an ad request containing the deal id that is related to that ad space. Next, the supply-side platform passes the information about the user in the ad space to the Ad Exchange, relays it to the demand side platforms of the invited advertisers only and begins the auction. Once those advertisers have received the user information from the Ad Exchange there, DSP will firstly check if the ad request contains the deal id. If so, the DSP will check on the DMP to see whether the user is in the third party audience segment. Next, the demand-side platform will check whether that impression is fraudulent through the ad protection solution. If everything is okay, the demand-side platform will have to place a bid of $8 or higher to participate in the private auction. Next, the SSP picks the winner and the publisher's ad server requests the ad creator from the advertiser. Then the advertiser's ad server will get the ad created from his creative management platform and pass it to the publisher's ad server, which will then show it on the webpage. Even though more participants were involved in this example, the entire process still takes 100 milliseconds to complete. According to a recent study, private auction deals accounted for the majority of programmatic ad spend in 2020. By the end of 2021, US advertisers are expected to spend about $16 billion in private auctions and $14 billion in open auctions. Now let's see in greater detail what are the main benefits of participating in private auctions? First of all, private auctions offer better ad fraud protection as opposed to open auctions. Another significant benefit is that both advertisers and publishers can protect their brand image. Publishers can control who bids on their ad inventory. Thus, they can make sure it is always filled with high-quality advertisements from reputable brands. Private marketplaces provide better price transparency for both publishers and advertisers since the entire auction process is transparent to both parties. As I said earlier, publisher set the price floors and advertisers bid for ad inventory they already know. Another benefit is that advertisers can access high-quality at inventory before it hits open auctions. Therefore, this ad serving priority allows them to gain additional reach. Publishers can charge higher CPMs for offering this type of priority. As mentioned in the previous lesson, a downside of participating in open auctions is that some publisher and userData can easily get leaked by participating in private auctions, fewer participants get to access those data. The last main benefit is the ability for both advertisers and publishers to build stronger partnerships. In a private marketplace, both parties have to interact with each other to make deals. By keeping the communication open and building strong partnerships, advertisers could negotiate better direct media buying deals in the future. 34. Programmatic Direct: Programmatic Direct, also known as programmatic direct buying, is a subcategory of programmatic media buying. It refers to the practice of trading ad inventory without participating in any real-time bidding auction. In other words, programmatic direct is a one-to-one media buying process in which a publisher and an advertiser agree to trade it ad inventory directly between themselves. As part of the process, both parties have to negotiate and agree on a fixed CPM price. Unlike the manual direct media buying approach that I explained at the beginning of this course. Programmatic direct offers a more efficient and automated workflow that can save advertisers and publishers a lot of time and effort when executing campaigns. More specifically, it simplifies sales, reduces discrepancies, and minimizes human errors because everything takes place within a single platform. However, programmatic direct require some human interaction, meaning publishers need to employ sales representatives who will be negotiating deals directly with advertisers. Another thing to note is that it's mostly medium-sized enlarge publishers and advertisers who participate in programmatic direct deals. There are two types of programmatic direct deals, the preferred deal and the guaranteed deal, which I will explain in greater detail in the next two lessons. 35. Preferred Deal: A preferred deal, also known as unreserved fixed rate deal, ensures that the advertiser has priority and exclusive access to the publishers premium ad inventory before it becomes available in a private auction. In other words, both parties negotiate and agree on a fixed CPM rate for which the preferential access will be provided. Note that the fixed CPM of preferred deals is higher than the price floor set and private auctions, even though the advertiser will be given the first opportunity to buy the premium ad inventory. It is not guaranteed that they will always be ready to buy it. If the advertiser doesn't want to buy, ad inventory will become available in a private auction. And if the ad inventory couldn't be sold there, it will then become available in an open auction. In this scenario, the advertiser will lose their right to participate in those options. At this point, it's worthwhile to mention that ad servers for publishers put preferred deals higher in priority than private auctions. When it comes to how publishers and advertisers find one another to engage in preferred deals. The process can be initiated by either of them, and it's almost the same with the private marketplace one. Almost always the processes initiated by advertisers. Many DSPs allow advertisers to search for Publishers offering preferred deals through a discovery tool. The discovery tool enables advertisers to search based on several criteria. Advertisers can also review publisher profile data deriving from the Ad Exchange. After finding the ideal website to market their brand, advertisers can request the purchase of a preferred deal package. A publisher can also initiate the process by running a report on his or her ad server to see which advertisers are the best performing ones. After identifying the best-performing advertisers, the publisher could reach out to those to discuss the possibility of agreeing on accustomed preferred deal. But let's see in greater detail how preferred deals are created. After an advertiser in a publisher have found each other, disgust campaign requirements negotiated and agreed on a fixed CPM rate. The advertiser places the order and the publisher proceeds with the setup of the preferred deal. When the publisher creates the preferred deal, he or she has to insert a lot of details such as the preferred deal name, fixed CPM rate, deal expiration date, inventory platform at typed GEOs and device types. That New Deal is then assigned a certain ad spaces. Once the New Deal is created, a deal ID is generated and shown to the publisher for then sends it to the advertiser. After that, the advertiser has to insert that deal id into his demand-side platform and targeted with a programmatic advertising campaign. The publisher then checks and verifies the campaign. And if everything is fine, he executes the order by running the campaign on his site. Now let's see how ad inventory can be traded through a preferred deal. For this example, let's assume that a publisher had made a preferred deal with an advertiser to sell a certain premium ad space at a CPM of $15. Let's also assume that the advertiser had created banner ads within his creative management platform, publish them to his ad server and wrap them for ad fraud protection purposes. The advertiser also uses a data management platform to target third-party audience segments. The entire process begins when an Internet user visits the publishers webpage that contains the agreed premium ad space. Before the page loads, the publisher's ad server triggers an ad request containing the preferred deal id. Next, the SSP collects user and ad space data and passes them to ad exchanges. The Ad Exchange relays information to the DSP of the advertiser. Next, the advertisers demand-side platform recognizes the preferred deal based on the provided deal id. Then it checks whether that user is in the third party audience segment. If so, it will also check whether that impression is fraudulent through the ad fraud protection solution. If everything is okay, the demand-side platform buys that impression at the agreed CPM rate. Next, the publisher's ad server requests the ad creator from the advertiser. The advertiser's ad server gets the creative from the creative management platform and passes it to the publisher's ad server, which eventually serves it to the website user. Again, the entire process I have just explained will take about 100 milliseconds to complete. Now, let's see in greater detail all the key benefits of striking preferred deals. The main benefit is that publishers can have more control over the price of their ad inventory, and hence, they can charge premium rates for it. Preferred deals give advertisers flexibility in terms of buying media. If an impression is not compelling enough, the advertiser has the option to pass off the opportunity. Since both the publisher and the advertiser agreed to display the ads in specific placements. Advertisers can be 100% sure that all ads are being delivered in a brand safe environment. Moreover, preferred deals are less prone to add fraud because there are just a few participants involved in the process. In addition to that, preferred deals are more transparent because both parties negotiate and agree on a fixed rate. The last main benefit is that advertisers can access high-quality at inventory before it hits any auction. Therefore, this ad serving priority allows them to gain additional reach. 36. Guaranteed Deals: A guaranteed deal, also known as Programmatic Guaranteed and automated guaranteed, is another programmatic direct media buying method. In this deal, a publisher and an advertiser agree to trade a certain volume of impressions at a fixed negotiated price. In other words, the advertiser agrees to buy a fixed number of impressions and the publisher agrees to deliver the exact number of impressions for a guaranteed price. According to a recent study, Programmatic Guaranteed accounts for 58% of all display advertising purchase programmatically. And it is one of the fastest growing media buying methods around the globe. At this point, it's worth mentioning that ad servers for publishers put guaranteed deals in higher priority than preferred deals. When it comes to how publishers and advertisers find one another, do engage in a guaranteed deal? Well, the process can be initiated by either of them, and it's the same with the private marketplace and preferred deal ones. Almost always the processes initiated by advertisers. Many DSPs allow advertisers to search for Publishers offering guaranteed deals through a discovery tool. The discovery tool enables advertisers to search based on several criteria. Advertisers can also review publisher profile data deriving from the Ad Exchange. After finding the ideal website to market their brand, advertisers can request the purchase of a guaranteed deal package. A publisher can also initiate the process by running a report on his or her ad server to see which advertisers are the best performing ones. After identifying the best performing advertisers, the publisher could reach out to those to discuss the possibility of agreeing on a custom guaranteed deal. But let's see in greater detail how guaranteed deals are created. After an advertiser has found a publisher, he firstly requests a proposal. The publisher then creates a proposal with details such as the number of guaranteed impressions, fixed costs per 1000 impressions or cost per day rate, campaign start and end dates had types offered, premium add spaces and other details. Once the proposal is ready, it is sent to the advertiser for review. The advertiser could accept it straight away or make changes to it. For example, the advertiser can ask for a lower CPM price for the same number of impressions or requested different ad space. Once both parties agree on the terms and strike the deal, the guaranteed deal is created. Next, the publisher sends the deal id to the advertiser, who inserts it into his demand-side platform and targets it with a programmatic advertising campaign. The publisher then checks and verifies the campaign. And if everything is fine, he executes the order by running the campaign on his site. Now let's see how ad inventory can be traded through a guaranteed deal. For this example, let's assume that a publisher strikes a direct deal with an advertiser to sell 20 thousand impressions at the rate of $20 per 1000 impressions. In other words, the advertiser agrees to pay $400 for 20 thousand guaranteed impressions. Let's also assume that the advertiser uses a data management platform to target third-party audience segments. The entire process begins when an Internet user visits the publishers webpage that contains the agreed premium ad space. Before the page loads, the publisher's ad server triggers an ad request containing the guaranteed deal id. Next, the advertisers demand-side platform recognizes the deal based on the provided deal id and checks whether that user is in the third party audience segment. If know, the DSP may not buy that impression. If yes, it will buy it at the agreed rate. Next, the publisher's ad server requests the ad creator from the advertiser. The advertiser's ad server gets the creative from the creative management platform and passes it to the publisher's ad server, which eventually serves it to the website user. Again, the entire process I have just explained will take about 100 milliseconds to complete. By the end of the campaign, the advertiser might get up to 20 thousand impressions. The actual number of delivered impressions will depend on his pacing, strategy and campaign targeting. In other words, if campaign targeting is extremely narrow, his DSP will probably by a smaller number of impressions, regardless of how many impressions the advertiser ends up buying, he or she will have to pay $400 to the publisher. Now, let's see in greater detail all the key benefits of striking guaranteed deals. The main benefit for publishers is that they can attract big spenders who are looking to buy high volumes of premium ad inventory and are willing to pay high CPMs with some additional add operation resources, publishers can get a reasonable profit for their effort. Advertisers could run highly targeted campaigns. More specifically, they can target custom audience segments created on their DMPs and only bid on them whenever there's a match. By showing the right creatives to the right audiences at the right places, they can achieve a better return on investment. Another benefit is that direct buys are handled in a more efficient and automated way. Both parties no longer have to negotiate over the phone, send creatives via emails, exchanged tracking codes, and generally engage and other time-consuming manual processes. Advertisers can also access high-quality at inventory before it becomes available for preferred deal or hits any auction. Therefore, this ad serving priority allows them to gain additional reach. Another benefit is that guaranteed deals offer better price transparency because both parties negotiate and agree on a fixed cost. Since publishers in the advertisers agree to display the ads in specific ad spaces. Both parties can be 100% sure that all ads are being delivered in a brand safe environment. Last but not least, guaranteed deals are less prone to add fraud because there are just a few participants involved in the process. 37. Programmatic Advertising Formats : In this module, I will take you through the major challenges advertisers and publishers face in the programmatic advertising landscape. I will also cover some new developments that will definitely shape the future of programmatic advertising. More specifically, I will start by covering challenges such as the ad tech tax, which refers to the fact that most media spend goes to ad tech vendors instead of publishers. I will explain the risks of using multiple DSPs when targeting the same audience and how this setup can lead to price inflations and real-time bidding auctions. Then I will explain what ad blockers are, how they have impacted advertisers and especially publishers, and why 47% of internet users use them. After that, I will explain why about 50% of programmatic advertisers don't think they understand programmatic advertising, as well as what media buyers and sellers should do to succeed in their marketing efforts. Next, I will take you through the artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. I will explain how those technologies can help marketers accomplish their objectives faster and at a low cost. I will also explain what augmented and virtual realities are. I will discuss the potential of those two technologies in the programmatic advertising field and show you some examples of innovative advertising formats that might dominate digital advertising landscape in the future. Lastly, I will take you through the blockchain technology and explain how it can help advertisers and publishers deal with major challenges faced in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. So let's get started. 38. Programmatic Display Ads: Display advertising, also known as banner advertising, is a form of online advertising that visually conveys a commercial message using logos, images, text, videos, animations, or other graphics. Display ads are placed in front of potential customers while they are browsing publisher websites or mobile apps. Normally, those ad stand out from the rest of the website content and look distinctly like adds. A rich media ad is an HTML5 display that contains many elements such as video, audio, games, animations, and even custom widgets related to the advertised product or a service. Programmatic advertisers prefer to use rich media adverts because they can keep their banner file size low. Since rich media ads encourage users to interact with the ad content, they generate high view ability rates and drive more clicks and conversions. In addition to those, rich media ads offer better browser compatibility. Publishers also prefer to serve HTML5 or rich media ads because they are light in size and improved page load time. Without a doubt, reach media adverts are the future of display advertising. Creating rich media ads might sound like a daunting process, but advertisers with no coding skills can quickly produce rich media creatives through their creative management platform. But let's see some examples of rich media ads. In this example, you see a half page ad with the dimensions of 300 by 600 pixels. This banner advert promote Snickers. As you can see, the add features, text and image and video. If I want, I can interact with the video. I can also unmute it. Etas. You always lose is_a edge when you're home. The second example is from Disney. This leaderboard advert shows a video in the beginning. After that, I can choose to watch another video through this gallery. I can also interact with this video. As you can see, this advert entices me to buy tickets or learn more about the jungle. When it comes to the types of display ads, I will explain the foremost used ones. Each type has to do with how a banner appears to users on publisher websites or mobile apps. The first and most common type is the classic banner ad. A classic banner ad is built based on the fixed dimensions, meaning it cannot expand beyond its initial dimensions. Also, its position within a publisher's page is fixed. In this example, we see a medium rectangle banner with the dimensions of 300 by 250 pixels. When I interact with this banner, it doesn't expand beyond its initial dimensions or moves within the page. Therefore, its position is fixed. Here's another example. We now see a billboard ad unit of Samsung with the dimensions of 970 by 250 pixels. When I interact with this better, we see that it doesn't expand beyond its initial dimensions. It also stays at the same position. And expanding banner ad, also known as an expandable ad, lightbox add, push-down add-in slider add is a creative that expands beyond its initial dimensions over the top of the publisher's page or mobile application. The expansion typically occurs after a user has interacted with it, either by clicking or hovering over the banner. This type of Banner can expand in any direction and shape. It also collapses on user interaction are based on a timer. In this example, we see a medium rectangle banner with the dimensions of 300 by 250 pixels. When I click the banner advert, we see that it expands to the right over the publisher's page. It also collapses when I click the Close icon. Here's another example. As you have seen, I didn't click on the banner advert, but just hovered my mouse over it. In this example, we see a push-down expandable Banner. When I interact with it. It expands by pushing down the content of the publisher page so that the full Ad Creative could be displayed. Interstitial ads or full-screen ads that cover the interface of their host mobile app. They're typically displayed at natural transition points in an app's flow. For example, when opening the app between activities or between levels in a game. This type of adverb disappears once the user taps on the Close button. In this example, we see that the interstitial ad has covered the entire mobile screen. To close the ad, I simply have to click the Close icon. And overlay add, also known as a floating ADD, is a banner creative that appears on a publisher's page as a pop up, a user can close this type of ad by clicking the close icon. Even though this type of ad delivers high view ability rates, it is generally very obstructive, and hence it causes a bad user experience. In this example, you see an overlay ambit appears on a publisher's page as a pop-up. The user can close the add by clicking the close icon. Now let's see in greater detail the benefits of running display ads and especially rich media ads. First and foremost, they are visually appealing and convey promotional messages better than static image adverts. As mentioned earlier, rich media ads may include video, audio, games, animations, and widgets. All those can capture an audience's attention easily. Moreover, rich media ads have a higher interaction rate than static ads. That's because they are more fun, informative, and conveyed the promotional message better. Advertisers can also enrich their ads with custom widgets, which allow users to preview many products or services through the ads before even visiting the advertisers website. Without a doubt, interactivity can deliver significant uplifts and brand awareness and purchase intent. Rich media adverts can dramatically boost brand recall and conversion rates. Recent research has shown that rich media ads at five times higher click-through rates than non rich media ads. Because of that, users are more likely to convert after viewing a rich media ad. Also, rich media ads do not force users to leave the publisher's website or mobile app. On the contrary, a user can preview many products and services within a single rich media ad. In addition to that, a rich media advert can link to more than one landing page. And advertiser can use a different link per featured product or service to create a more personalized experience. Another benefit is that an advertiser can be as traditional or as out of the boxes they wish reach media advertisements can provide a larger space to display many photos, offers, and call-to-action buttons. Last but not least, traditional banner ads allow advertisers to measure only impressions and clicks. However, when it comes to rich media ads, advertisers contract several other metrics, such as how many people viewed an embedded video, how many clicks certain buttons got, and many more. The success of a display advertising campaign can be measured through several metrics. But let's have a look at the most common ones. The first metric is reached, which refers to the total number of unique people who got exposed to the display advertising campaign. Impressions is the number of times banner adverts were displayed, regardless of whether they had been actually seen by users are not. Engagement rate is a ratio showing how many people interacted with a display ads. Cost per mile, also called cost per thousand impressions, is the constant advertiser pays for 1000 times his or her advert appears to users. Clicks is the number of times of display advert was clicked sending traffic to a landing page. Click-through rate is a ratio showing how often people who see a display advert end up clicking it. Cost-per-click is the cost and advertiser pays every time his or her advert gets clicked. An app install occurs when a user clicks on a banner advert and then it stalls the advertised mobile app. Cost per app install is the cost of getting a user to install the advertised app. I'll post view conversion occurs when a user views a display advert but visits the website through another marketing channel to convert. I'll post click conversion happens when a user clicks on a display ad and immediately after that converts On the website. Cost per acquisition is the overall campaign spend divided by the total number of conversions, which basically tells you how much is the cost of acquiring a customer through display ads. The return on advertising spend metric tells you how much profit you've made from your ads compared to how much you spent on those ads. Depending on the objective of the display advertising campaign, Only a few metrics should be picked and analyzed. Otherwise, the analysis process will become very inefficient. So if the marketing objective is to build brand awareness, the ideal metrics would be reached, impressions and SPM. If the objective is to increase the number of website visits, I would pick the click-through rate and CPC metrics for driving app installs. The ideal metrics would be app installs and cost per app install. If the objective is to generate conversions than the post view conversions, post-classic conversions and the cost per acquisition metrics would be the ideal ones. Lastly, if the goal is to generate revenue, I would pick the post view conversions, post click conversions, and return on advertising spend metrics. 39. Programmatic Video Ads: Programmatic video advertising is a form of online advertising that conveys a commercial message through a video creative. It refers to the practice of buying and selling video ad spaces through the programmatic advertising ecosystem. It also requires the same set of technologies and infrastructure as the programmatic display advertising that I covered in the previous lesson, meeting video ad spaces can be traded through ad networks and exchanges, SSPs in DSPs. Programmatic video advertising is steadily becoming more and more popular. According to a recent study, 49% of the media bought programmatically in the United States in 2019 displayed programmatic video ads. It's also predicted that the programmatic video ad spend in the United States will reach $40 billion by the end of 2021. Programmatic video ads are split into two categories based on how they are served two users, the stream video ads and out stream video ads. Starting with the stream video ads, those play before, during, or after the streaming video content a user has requested. For example, an in stream ad as an advert that plays before you start watching a YouTube video. In stream ads are either skippable or non-scalable. A non skippable ad must be watched in full before the requested video can be viewed. Adverts that last 15 seconds or less typically become non skippable ads. When it comes to skippable video ads, they allow viewers to skip the ads after the first five seconds. Adverts that lasts more than 15 seconds are typically treated as skippable ones. Moreover, in stream ads can be pre-roll, mid role or post role. To delve into details, pre-roll ads are the ads that are shown before a video starts. Mid role ads are the ones that appear in the middle of the video content. Post roll ads are the ones showing at the end of the video content. It's quite common for YouTube users to C2 pre-roll adverts, a skippable and a non skippable advert playing back-to-back before the video starts. In the middle of the video, they see to mid role adverts as skippable and anon skippable. And at the end of the video, they seek to post roll advert a skippable and anon skippable. The unbeatable advantage of in-stream video ads is that they play along with the requested video content, thus making it completely adaptable to the environment. In addition to that, in stream ads and especially the non skippable pre-roll ones generate high view ability rates. Thus, they generate really high CPMs for publishers. When it comes to out stream video ads, those appear outside of video streaming content. In other words, they appear in standard display ad spaces placed in between paragraphs of text or other types of publisher content. These are the video ads you normally see in news articles. But let's take an example. As I scroll down this publisher website, a video ad starts playing in a standard display ad space. This is an outlet stream video advert. Out stream ads are typically non skippable and play automatically without sound when the view ability rate is over 50%, users can either choose to view the video or scroll away to skip it. This ad format as suitable for publishers with a huge chunk of editorial content and little to no video content. Another thing to note is that OUT stream ads tend to be very lucrative for publishers as the formats HIV you ability can command high CPMs. There are four types of stream video ads. The inventor in Article, native and interstitial video ad, starting with the in Banner video add. This type leverages the banner space to deliver a video experience. The an article video ad appears between paragraphs of editorial content when a user scrolls through the page playing the video ad, when the ad unit is in view, native video ads feature of video, headline, description text and a call to action button. Native video ads typically appear in news articles, news feeds, and social media feeds. Interstitial video ads or full-screen ads that cover the interface of their host mobile app. They're usually displayed at natural transition points in an app's flow, such as when opening the app between activities or between levels in a game. This type of ad disappears once the user taps on the close button. Advertisers must follow the best practices to ensure that their video ad creatives are highly engaging. Unfortunately, I have seen so many companies using their exact TV spot creatives in programmatic video advertising campaigns. The thing is that the internet doesn't really work the same way. Programmatic video ads should engage users in the first few seconds, otherwise, they get skipped straight away. Video ads with low view rates can get easily throttled. Video ad throttling is the practice of prohibiting adverts with low view rate from competing at auctions. How does it work? Well, ad exchanges define a throttling threshold value based on two metrics, the view rate and the error rate of the video advert. When a video ad does not exceed the predefined threshold value, it gets throttled. It's needless to say that not being able to participate in auctions can negatively impact a campaign's performance. Now let's see in greater detail the main benefits of using in stream and output stream video ads. Starting within stream video ads, they allow marketers to grab user attention quickly. When a video Creative is highly engaging, users can easily absorbed the promotional message. Another benefit of stream video ads is that they can drive excellent acquisition performance at a low cost. Another benefit is that non skippable ads are typically played before viewers can watch the desired content. Since they are interested in the video that follows, they have no choice but to watch the ad. Therefore, advertisers can ensure guaranteed video views. A viewer might have the option to skip an in stream ad after watching the first five seconds. However, advertisers typically pay when a whole clip or thirty-seconds of the clip is viewed or one of you or interacts with a video. When it comes to out stream video ads, they are ideal for publishers with a considerable chunk of editorial content and little to no video content. As mentioned earlier, out stream ads appear in standard display ad spaces placed on publisher websites. Publishers can now monetize their ad inventory even if they don't host video content on their websites. Another benefit is that advertisers can expand their reach beyond video players, meaning they can reach their target audiences and even more publisher websites and mobile apps. Moreover, out stream video ads are set to play only when they are fully in view. Many times, when users scroll away, video ads can continue to play at the bottom left or right corner of the window, ensuring high view ability rates. Last but not least, advertisers only pay when their video ads have been viewed for a certain period of time. A video campaign success can be measured through several metrics such as reach, impressions, clicks, views, you re to video viewership, cost per view, cost-per-click app installs, cost per app install, post view conversions, post click conversion cost per acquisition, and return on advertising spent. Depending on the objective of the video advertising campaign, Only a few metrics should be picked and analyzed. Otherwise, the analysis process will become very inefficient. I would personally pick those shown in this table. 40. Programmatic Native Ads: Programmatic native advertising is the practice of serving ads that match the look, feel, and function of the webpage on which they appear. In other words, branded marketing messages blend with page content, and hence, they don't really look like adverts. Since native ads removed the feeling of intrusiveness that most of the other ad formats cause they tend to engage users rather than disrupting them. Indeed, given that native ads appear as part of regular content, people are more likely to click on them as opposed to traditional banner or video ads. Therefore, native ads typically generate high click-through rates at low costs across all devices. Making this form of advertising suitable for any business. Publishers can create and sell native ad spaces through their supply-side platform. Advertisers can buy ad spaces through their demand-side platform. These two platforms are then matched up through real-time bidding auctions. Therefore, the programmatic ecosystem allows advertisers to reach target audiences through hundreds of native ad networks and thousands of publisher websites. Interestingly enough, native advertising has become more and more popular over the last few years. According to a recent study, 62% of the online media bought in the United States in 2019 displayed native ads. It was also predicted that the native ad spend will be $53 billion in the United States alone by the end of 2021. In addition to those, business insider has predicted that native advertising will be driving 74% of all that revenue by 2021. Advertisers have been shifting their marketing efforts towards native advertising because of several reasons. One of the main reasons is adversity. Internet users have been bombarded with Banner and video ads over the last years, which typically interrupts them from consuming the content they are interested in. The truth is that the average consumer is exposed to thousands of brand messages a day through both online and offline channels. People are bombarded with advertisements on their way to work. They hear ads on the radio, see ads on TVs. And the situation gets even worse when it comes to online media as online adverts feel even more intrusive given that native ads blend really well with the content of the websites in which they appear. They do not cause add fatigue, and hence, they tend to be more engaging than traditional banner in video ads. And other important reason behind this massive adoption is the fact that there is an increasing number of people who got fed up with seeing so many online ads and decided to use an ad blocker on their browser that prevents ads from showing on publisher websites. And ad blocker is basically a browser add on. It can be installed in browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer. In this image, we see some ad blocker add-ons available for Chrome. At this point, it's worthwhile to mention that many ad blockers allow users to add and customize blocking rules. That means users can whitelist or block ads from certain websites or select specific ad formats to block. Note that ad blockers do not differentiate between high or low quality ads. Once enabled, both types of ads get blocked. According to research conducted by the global web index, 47% of internet users globally we're using an ad blocker in 2018. Another interesting fact is that most people who use ad blockers are millennials and generation Z, meaning people between 1634 years old. Many internet users who find online ads very intrusive or annoying, but don't know that ad blockers exist. And even getting to the point where they ignore the adverts entirely and no longer notice them. They know that adverts are there, but they simply don't acknowledge them, even if the advertised products or services would interest them. Nowadays, even a two-year-old toddler knows how to skip a video advert on YouTube to watch a cartoon video faster. This phenomenon is called ad blindness or banner blindness. The good news for online advertisers is that native adverts don't typically get ignored because they don't look like adverts. All an advertiser has to do is ensuring that the ad content is interesting, engaging, and delivers on the promise it makes. Some other reasons for this huge adoption or that native ads tend to generate better results than traditional display ads. More specifically, they can generate up to 74% more ad revenue, up to 40 times higher click-through rate receive 53% more views and generate 18% lift for purchase intent and display ads. Moreover, millennials and generation Z, consumers prefer to see native ads than display ads. In addition to that, native ads can appear on premium publisher websites such as CNN, the New York Times, Amazon, the Guardian, eBay, Mashable, con dei nest, and Bloomberg. That gives advertisers the ability to promote their brands, products, or services and articles that are read by thousands of people every day. Another great reason is that consumers can also be reached at every stage of their buying journey. So whether an advertiser's marketing objective is to build awareness, influence people, drive conversions, or maximize sales. Native advertising offers an abundance of targeting options that suit any business type. Also, native ads are generally more cost-effective than display ads, which means advertisers spend less money to achieve better acquisition performance than display ads. With native advertising, it's also possible to target very relevant audiences through the use of first, second, third party audience data. Because of those sophisticated targeting methods, native advertisers can easily achieve outstanding campaign performance. Moreover, unlike display and video ads that have fixed dimensions, native ads or device responsive, they're placements are flexible and fit well in any device. Last but not least, native advertising campaigns can be used to boost the PR strategy of any brand. Whether a public relations crisis strikes are not. Therefore, it's a great marketing channel for brands that want to control their story by promoting positive earned media stories. The native advertising formats have to do with where native advertising content appears on publisher websites. For example, native advertising content that appear within content or product feeds in between paragraphs of articles or outside feeds and articles. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, there are three programmatic native advertising formats. The in feed native ads, the in content native ads and the content recommendation adds, starting with the in feed ads, this is the most dominant native ad format. In feed ads typically appear in content feeds which feature articles, images, or videos. For example, publisher content websites, news websites, and news aggregators such as Yahoo, BBC, and CNN. In feed ads also appear in product feeds of e-commerce websites that feature products, services, or app install content. For example, eBay, Amazon, and Etsy. They also appear on social media feeds that contains social content, articles, stories, videos, or images. For example, social media feeds on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. But let's take an example. Here. I am visiting buzzfeed.com, which is an editorial site. Once it loads and click on the shopping section of this website. Here, we clearly see a feed with suggested articles. If I scroll down a bit, this placement here is in in feed native add. Its look and feel definitely matches the design and styling of this website. If I click on this ad, I will be redirected to the advertisers website, in this case being the website of Sleep Number.com. Now let's take another example. This time I am visiting Yahoo news. Here we see a feed with suggested articles. Again, if I scroll down a bit, we see this native advert here. Obviously it matches the style of the feed because it has the image on the left side, while on the right side it has the title and description, the font, type and size of which maps the CSS styles of this website. In content native ads are similar to in feed native ads. The only difference is that they are placed on article pages in between paragraphs have content rather than in feeds. In content native ads typically appear on publisher content sites and news aggregators such as CNN, BBC, and Yahoo. They also match the look and feel of the surrounding editorial content. In this example, we see an in content native ad in between the paragraphs of an article. As you can clearly see, this image doesn't really look like an advert. The content recommendation ads, also known as content discovery ads, sponsored content ads and content recommendation widgets appear alongside or below editorial content, banner ads or other types of paid content. They are not found inside feeds or inbetween article paragraphs, but look like separate widgets above a content recommendation add, there is usually a disclosure term mentioning we recommend, don't miss this recommended content, paid content or something else that sets the ad apart from the rest of the content. In this example, I have visited an article on CNN.com. At the bottom of this article, there's a content recommendation advert. If we look closer in this widget, we can see that all four placements are sponsored links powered by Outbrain.com, which is a very popular native advertising network. So all those sponsored links are basically native ads. As you can clearly see, those native ads blend really well with the look and feel of this website. And hence, they don't really look like adverts. If I click on the fourth placement, will be redirected to the advertisers website, in this case, being the website of grammar Lee. The success of a native advertising campaign can be measured through several metrics. For example, reach impressions, video viewership, video rate, app installs, post view and post click conversions, CPM, CPC, CPA, and Rohe's. Depending on the objective of the native advertising campaign, Only a few metrics should be picked and analyzed. Otherwise, the analysis process will become very inefficient. I would personally pick those shown in this table. 41. Programmatic TV Ads: Programmatic TV advertising is the practice of trading TV ad inventory through the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Therefore, it's a form of advertising that leverages automated technology to buy and deliver ads against TV content. Advertisers can now run programmatic ad campaigns on broadcasting TV at a more efficient and less time consuming way. The truth is that even though the traditional TV buying and selling model has worked for decades, it comes with a lot of inefficiencies. More specifically, it relies on many manual processes such as preparing and sending many RFPs, dealing with insertion orders and trafficking, sending and receiving emails, and maintaining spreadsheets. Besides automating many processes, programmatic TV advertising allows advertisers to leverage data and serve the right ad creatives to the right people. Tv ad spaces could also be bought through auctions and programmatic direct deals. Even though programmatic TV advertising is a relatively new form of advertising, there is a constant increase in advertisers and publishers who are familiarizing themselves with it. Consequently, programmatic TV ad buying is steadily increasing. Many believed that all TV ads will be purchased programmatically in the future. But let's see in greater detail how programmatic TV advertising works. First of all, programmatic ads appear mainly on connected TVs. Connected TV refers to any TV that connects to the Internet, as well as any device that connects to a TV and has access to the Internet. Some examples are smart TVs, gaming console such as PlayStation and Xbox. Streaming boxes such as Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV, and other over-the-top devices. Programmatic TV adverts appear when users watch live TV programs or on-demand video content through any of the devices I mentioned earlier. Those devices can collect viewer data and transmit them do advertisers through the internet. This enables advertisers to target highly relevant audience segments, serve personalized TV ads to viewers and successfully measure campaign performance. So if a group of people is watching the same show, the viewers will be shown different advertisements that correspond to their interests, behavior, demographics, and purchase intent. Now let's see in greater detail the main benefits of using programmatic TV ads. The most important benefit is that advertisers can show adverts to highly relevant audience segments. More specifically, they can create custom audience segments through their DMP using first, second, third party data and serve personalized ads to the audiences that matter the most to them. For example, an advertiser could create a remarketing audience and targeted with programmatic TV advertising campaigns. And other significant benefit is that it automates and speeds up the media buying process. Traditionally, the workflow for TV ad buying has gone something like this advertiser's plan in a siloed system dedicated to TV advertising, insertion orders are shuttled back and forth manually between a buyer and a seller. And reports are generated upon completion of a campaign when it's too late to do any optimization. However, programmatic advertising cuts down on many manual processes. Moreover, since TV devices are connected through the internet, campaign performance data are collected in real time, allowing advertisers to optimize campaign performance before it's too late. Also, advertisers can manage all their programmatic campaigns in one place, whether they are display video, native, or TV. Using a single platform to plan by measure, and manage all advertising campaigns allows them to be more productive, flexible, and scalable. Last but not least, marketers can successfully carry out cross channel and attribution analysis, which allows them to make smarter marketing spend decisions. The success of a TV advertising campaign can be measured through several metrics. For example, views, cost per view, brand lift, post view conversions, post view CPA, and post view rows. Depending on the objective of the TV advertising campaign, Only a few metrics should be picked and analyzed. Otherwise, the analysis process will become very inefficient. I would personally pick those shown in this table. 42. Programmatic Audio Ads: Programmatic audio advertising is the practice of using technology to automate the buying and selling of audio ad inventory through the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Therefore, it leverages algorithmic buying technology and data-driven methods to deliver audio ad creatives to highly relevant audiences. Audio adverbs can be placed into online audio broadcasting content like podcasts, music streaming services, digital radios, and mobile apps. This form of advertising is in its infancy as there is no much supply and demand at the moment. Another fact is that most of the programmatic platforms do not support Audio Ads yet. However, the popularity of traditional radio is steadily declining since many people prefer to listen to digital audio content. As you can see in this diagram, as of 2020, adults in the United States will be spending more time listening to digital audio content than analogue radio. Net will definitely incentivize more programmatic advertising participants to focus more on this form of advertising. Considering the success the other programmatic advertising forms that over the years, there is no doubt that programmatic audio will increasingly become more popular. But let's see in greater detail where audio adverts are served. They can be served in music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, SoundCloud, and Google Play Music. And increasing number of people switch from physical formats and music downloads to streaming platforms because they can access tens of millions of tracks through a single place. Music streaming platforms typically earn money from two sources, paid subscriptions and audio advertising. More specifically, people who didn't pay a subscription can still use the service for free. In that case, they have to listen to audio ads played between songs. Therefore, programmatic advertisers can leverage this opportunity to deliver audio ads to highly relevant audiences. Programmatic audio ads could also be served in podcasts. Podcasting is a free service that allows users to listen to more download on-demand internet radio talks. A podcast is typically wrapped around a particular topic such as food, technology, politics, sports, fashion, and lifestyle. Programmatic audio ads can be placed dynamically at the beginning, middle, and end of podcasts. These ad slots are referred to as pre-roll, mineral and post roll. If a user wants to download a podcast, the adverts are also placed in the downloaded file. According to a study carried out by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, dynamically inserted adds accounted for 49% of the total podcast revenue. Amazon has also launched its music streaming service that supports interactive audio ads. Listeners can speak to the ads and even tell Alexa to add products to their shopping cart. For those who don't know, Amazon Alexa is a virtual assistant that uses artificial intelligence technology. Programmatic audio ads can also be delivered through some internet radios. Unfortunately, the ad supply from this medium is not that high as opposed to music streaming platforms, but it's still a place worth advertising. Programmatic advertisers can also deliver audio ads through mobile apps that feature a rewards program. A rewards program entitled as a user to listen to an audio ad. After doing so, the user receives the promised in-game reward. To take an example, a mobile game app may offer rewards such as extra lives and coins. Another example is that a dating app may offer rewards such as unlocking filters and on sending messages. Interestingly enough, this ad format is not restricted by ad blockers and many users get satisfied by its outcome. Now let's go through the main benefits of using programmatic audio ads. One of the most significant benefits is that advertisers can now reach millions of users worldwide who listened to podcasts and use music streaming services. Moreover, podcast listeners are statistically more likely to have a college or higher education. This makes them a very valuable audience from a targeting point of view. Another benefit is that audio ads do not appear next to other advertising formats like display or video ads. In addition to that, if a user is not looking at the screen, the audio ad will still catch their attention. Another important benefit is that ad blockers do not restrict programmatic audio ads. This presents an undeniable advantage to advertisers as they can reach out to Banner resistant audiences. Since most audio streaming is happening via mobile devices, programmatic audio ads can be ideal for building brand awareness. Audio messages can also deliver impressions without a screen. When consumers drive, go for a walk or do anything else, their ears become the only touch point between them and the advertiser. The last main benefit is that since audio ads are mostly placed in podcasts and music streaming services, advertisers are more assured that their ads are being delivered and brand safe environments. The success of an audio advertising campaign can be measured through several metrics. For example, reach, impressions, clicks, CPC, CPA, and Rohe's. Depending on the objective of the native advertising campaign, Only a few metrics should be picked and analyzed. Otherwise, the analysis process will become very inefficient. I would personally pick those shown in this table. 43. Programmatic DOOH Ads: Digital out-of-home advertising is the practice of displaying promotional media dynamically and outdoor public spaces such as billboards, bus stop shelters, airport advertising screens, ads on cars, and other types of outdoor media inventory. In other words, digital out-of-home advertising is about messaging to consumers when they are in public spaces, density areas, shopping malls, commercial locations, bus stops and stations, and airports. Media buyers and sellers can now trade display out-of-home ad inventory more efficiently. More specifically, advertisers can buy ad inventory through either real-time bidding auctions or programmatic direct deals using their demand-side platform. They can also leverage geofencing and other targeting techniques, as well as serve ad creatives programmatically. However, due to the nature of this medium, it's very hard to measure the variability of out-of-home ads. Because of this downside, those add inventories may not be priced by the number of impressions that get, but different pricing models may be used instead. Digital out-of-home advertising is one of the fastest growing forms of advertising today. As you can see in this diagram, the digital out-of-home ad spend in the United Kingdom increased by 10% in 2019. About 516 million pounds were invested in do ads in the UK by the end of 2019. When it comes to the United States, there were about 1,000,400 thousand digital out-of-home displays around the country. In 2018, it estimated that advertisers in the US spent about $4 billion on digital out-of-home ads that year. Another factor that contributes to this massive adoption is the fact that digital ad creatives can be in many ways more attractive compared to traditionally printed out of home posters. Marketers who run programmatic out-of-home adds, try to reach a high level of creativity to grab their prospects attention. Even though digital out-of-home ads have existed for years, it's only recently that the major DSP and SSP providers have started incorporating this programmatic media buying format into their platforms. Before that, advertisers and sellers were using DSPs and SSP supporting this type of ad inventory only. Those platforms were also trading ad spaces through ad exchanges for digital out-of-home ad inventory only. The major technology providers were a bit late in adopting this format because they were mostly focusing on building their products around the programmatic video, TV and audio advertising formats. Consequently, some major technology providers out there haven't launched this product yet, but they have been working on it. It goes without saying that the picture may be completely different in a few years time. Now, it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty of how digital out-of-home ads are traded. Currently, both advertisers and publishers can trade spaces in real-time open and private auctions, as well as engage in Programmatic Guaranteed deals. Starting with open auctions, publishers rarely make their digital out-of-home ad inventory available there. The reason is that the supply of this type of media is still much bigger than its demand. Therefore, selling it in open auctions would lead to undervaluation of the ad inventory and basically get it sold for peanuts. Many publishers make their digital out-of-home ad inventory available in private auctions. They do so because they can set a price floor, which doesn't lead to undervaluation of their ad inventory. However, the most common approach is when an advertiser and a publisher strike a Programmatic Guaranteed deal. Programmatic Guaranteed is a one-to-one media buying process where both parties agree on campaign terms and negotiate on prices. Digital out-of-home ads can be found in nearly every shape and size. However, the industry lack standardized guidelines and technical specifications. Those would vary by screen size and the digital out-of-home network in which a publisher participates. Hopefully, the Interactive Advertising Bureau might come with more standards and guidelines soon. That being said, there are four categories of digital out-of-home ad formats. The large, spectacular venue based in public and custom formats. When it comes to the large formats, those are designed for clear viewing. Display supporting large format adverts are placed more than 50 feet or 15 meters higher than street level. Those are typically found on highways. Traffic, commercial areas, as well as major metropolitan areas. Large formats usually deliver high exposure and are available in a wide range of markets. In this example, you see a huge digital billboard that was placed next to a highway. Spectacular as are considered high-impact ad units with full motion, often targeting pedestrians who walk in dense foot traffic areas such as Piccadilly Circus in London, Times Square in New York City, and downtown Los Angeles. In this example, you see spectacular ad units placed in Time Square in New York. Venue based in public ad spaces typically focus on targeting pedestrian traffic and are commonly found at street level or within a venue. Examples include displays found in health clubs, airports, municipal properties, office buildings, and taxis. Custom formats are custom ad inventory units. For example, they allow viewers to interact with the advert or play a video clip when motion is detected. These formats can range from large digital projections to digital mobile billboards, which are customized to create interactive digital experiences using touchscreen and gesture technologies. Now let's see which are the available targeting methods for display out of home advertising campaigns. Given that out-of-home ads appear in physical media, there is no way for advertisers to collect cookies or device IDs. Not being able to collect first party data, advertisers can not precisely target individuals or conduct advanced marketing attribution as opposed to the other programmatic advertising formats. Having said that, there are five available targeting methods for the time being, such as location, weather, day, part, behavioral, and limited remarketing targeting. Starting with location targeting, advertisers can see where out-of-home screens are located within a country, city, neighborhood, and specific areas. Therefore, they can buy ad spaces and deliver ads programmatically to screens in the locations they wish. Usually they choose to show more specific promotional messages to certain areas like specific venues and more generic messages to wider geographic regions. Digital out-of-home creatives can also be served based on weather events. No matter where the target audiences, that whether constantly determines their daily activities and purchasing needs. Advertisers can leverage this targeting method to deliver relevant messages. To take an example, a big retail store could show ad creatives promoting ACs on very warm days, raincoats and boots on rainy days, and sunglasses on sunny days. Advertisers can also serve specific ads to certain days and departs. This method allows them to target people based on the time of day they are most likely to engage or convert. To take some examples, a restaurant could promote its lunch offered during lunchtime, and a theater could promote it shows in the evenings. Some demand side platforms also allow behavioral targeting based on third party audience signals. More specifically, third party providers collect audience behavior and location data and pass them to DSPs to inform buying decisions. For example, an audience of regular coffee computers might be based on individuals who visit a specific beverage retail store three or more days per week. Advertisers can use such signals to show relevant ads on specific digital screens. Lastly, while conducting remarketing based on cookies and device IDs is not possible, advertisers can still carry out some remarketing through signals received from third party mobile data aggregators. How does this work? Well, those aggregators can receive audience location data in real-time through GPS, Wi-Fi and other signals. Those signals become available to the advertisers, DSP to be used for campaign targeting purposes. For example, when a targeted user is near and out-of-home display device, the aggregator can inform the DSP to serve a relevant advert to that screen in real-time. Now let's see in greater detail the main benefits of using programmatic digital out-of-home ads. One of the most significant benefits is that display out-of-home advertisements are placed strategically at places where hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people pass. Therefore, advertisers can reach millions of people who spend time away from home while commuting or hanging out in public places. Unlike traditional out-of-home adds, the digital ones can be targeted to reach specific audiences. Since ad targeting can be based on location, depart, demographics, and behaviors. Another significant benefit is the ability to buy media and optimize them in real-time. Programmatic digital out-of-home offers the same flexibility to change targeting and creatives in real-time as digital advertising does. Digital out-of-home advertising screens allow advertisers to present dynamic and creative content. Advertisers can convey their promotional messages using videos, animations, and other types of high-quality content. Ad creatives that are carefully crafted definitely catch the eyeball and lead to higher audience engagement. Moreover, buyers and sellers can now trade display out-of-home ad inventory more efficiently because it eliminates human involvement, automates many processes and results in fast campaign launches. The last main benefit is that advertisers can manage all their digital out-of-home campaigns in one place, regardless of whether the media were bought from different sellers in different sizes or formats. Using a single platform to plan, buy, and manage all advertising campaigns allows them to be more productive, flexible, and scalable. When it comes to measuring the success of digital out-of-home ads. That's a bit tricky. As mentioned earlier in this lesson, it's hard to measure View ability and other metrics. In digital out-of-home, each impression can be seen by many people, but we never know the exact number. Luckily enough, there are a few ways to estimate the number of impressions and hence measure the success of such campaigns. The data may derive from digital out-of-home devices as well as third-party providers. Starting with a digital out-of-home device data, it can measure the number of impressions served, which is the number of times and add creative was served on the screen. Given that a digital out-of-home screen may serve ads from different advertisers throughout the day. This metric shows how many times an advertiser's unique creative was played. Additional metrics can be measured if the digital out-of-home device features a camera or sensor that is integrated with third-party analytics platforms like quality or Lincoln. Those platforms detect faces and motions and convert the data to standard impressions, reach and dwell time. Viewable impressions is the number of actual impressions and add creative God. Audience reach refers to the total number of people who get exposed to the advertising campaign. And dwell time is the length of time a person spends looking at an ad creative. While the camera and sensor data could technically be collected from small or medium-sized out of home screens. What about larger screens like spectacularly or billboards placed next to highways? In this case, there are some third-party providers like Tamika and GIA path, which collect user location data from several data points and then match them with digital out-of-home campaigns. After carrying out statistical analysis, they provide an estimated number of user campaign generated. 44. Strategies & Tactics For Advertisers: In this module, I will take you through the major challenges advertisers and publishers face in the programmatic advertising landscape. I will also cover some new developments that will definitely shape the future of programmatic advertising. More specifically, I will start by covering challenges such as the ad tech tax, which refers to the fact that most media spend goes to ad tech vendors instead of publishers. I will explain the risks of using multiple DSPs when targeting the same audience and how this setup can lead to price inflations and real-time bidding auctions. Then I will explain what ad blockers are, how they have impacted advertisers and especially publishers, and why 47% of internet users use them. After that, I will explain why about 50% of programmatic advertisers don't think they understand programmatic advertising, as well as what media buyers and sellers should do to succeed in their marketing efforts. Next, I will take you through the artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. I will explain how those technologies can help marketers accomplish their objectives faster and at a low cost. I will also explain what augmented and virtual realities are. I will discuss the potential of those two technologies in the programmatic advertising field and show you some examples of innovative advertising formats that might dominate digital advertising landscape in the future. Lastly, I will take you through the blockchain technology and explain how it can help advertisers and publishers deal with major challenges faced in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. So let's get started. 45. Prospecting Tactics: Prospecting is the practice of targeting audiences that haven't interacted with the advertised website or brand yet. That means it is the first step in a full funnel digital marketing strategy in which advertisers try to attract new audiences who are likely to convert and become customers. The goal is to target users having similar characteristics and purchasing needs to those of existing customers. Before launching any prospect in campaign, advertisers typically analyzed their existing customers data to create target group profiles. Having those profiles in mind allows them to easily pick the ideal prospecting techniques for their campaigns. The seven most common prospecting tactics are the look-alike audience, third-party audience segment, contextual placement, demographics, geo-targeting, and layered targeting. But let's go through each one of them. Look-alike targeting, also known as artificial intelligence targeting, is a method of targeting new audiences that have similar characteristics and purchase needs to existing customers. How does it work? Well and algorithm within the demand-side platform first analyses the data of converters and then tries to find similar audiences across ad exchanges. This is a quite effective prospecting tactic that can deliver excellent acquisition performance. Another way of reaching prospects is through the use of third-party audience segments. More specifically, advertisers can bid on third-party audience segments that are most likely to convert. As mentioned earlier in this course, advertisers can buy audience data for millions of data suppliers. There are thousands of audience segments available in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. For example, an advertiser that wants to promote a luxurious hotel in London can target specific third party audience segments like first or business class travelers who fly to Heathrow airport and prefer to stay at luxurious hotels. Contextual targeting shows ads on publisher pages that feature content and specific topics typically relevant to the advertised product or service. Advertisers can simply select which topics they want to target from a predefined topic list found on their demand-side platform. To take an example and advertiser promoting a hotel can target his campaigns to publish her pages with travel and holiday related content only. Placement targeting is the practice of manually whitelisting specific websites in which you would like to show your ads. This tactic is quite useful for advertisers who want to buy ad inventory from certain publishers without participating in any private auction or striking any direct deal. To take an example and advertiser promoting a hotel can target the travel websites section of BBC. If due to low demand, premium ad inventory becomes available in the open auction, that advertiser will have a chance to bid on it. When it comes to demographics targeting, I think this one is obvious. Advertisers can reach a specific set of potential customers based on their age range, gender, and sometimes parental status and household income. To take a very simple example, advertiser promoting razor blades can only target men. Geotargeting is another tactic used to limit targeting to specific countries, cities, and even areas. A user's location is primarily determined by his or her IP address. Therefore, since demand side platforms access user location data, they can bid based on the predefined geotargeting criteria set by an advertiser. For example, a retailer can target customers within a specific geographic radius around his or her business. Lastly, all those targeting methods can be layered on top of one another to create more focused target audiences. For example, an advertiser can combine demographic, GEO, and look-alike targeting criteria within a single campaign. All the prospecting tactics I've just mentioned can be used when buying media and open and private auctions were when buying media directly from publishers through preferred and guaranteed deals. In addition to that, advertisers can run prospecting campaigns in any programmatic advertising formats such as display, video, native, TV, and audio. As mentioned earlier, prospecting is used to target audiences that hadn't interacted with the advertiser's brand in the past. Because of this, it is less likely that they will convert straight away after clicking or even viewing a programmatic ad. Therefore, programmatic advertisers mostly run prospecting campaigns with the ultimate goal of building brand awareness, increasing website visits or generating leads. 46. Remarketing Tactics: Remarketing is the practice of targeting audiences that have interacted with the advertised website but didn't take a desired action, such as opening an account or making a purchase. As mentioned in the previous lesson, prospecting campaigns can attract new relevant audiences, but those may not convert on their first website visit with a re-marketing campaign and advertiser has the opportunity to reach them again with more personalized promotional messages featuring the products or services, the audience's demonstrated interest in. A re-marketing campaign would basically follow those audiences around the internet by serving ads on the websites and mobile apps they use the most. Remarketing is a practice followed by hundreds of thousands of companies. That's because it's less expensive to re-engage visitors who are really close to converting rather than audiences who haven't interacted with the advertised website yet. Because of that, remarketing campaigns generate a higher return on advertising spend as opposed to prospect in campaigns. To be able to run remarketing campaigns, you will first have to collect website visitor data. To do so, you will have to download the JavaScript tracking code from your DSP and send it to your Tag Manager or website developer to add it to your website. That tracking code should be added to all the pages of your website. Next, you should create remarketing audience lists in your DSP and target them with programmatic advertising campaigns. There are three main remarketing tactics, the standard dynamic and custom remarketing. But let's go through each one of them. Standard remarketing is the practice of creating one audience list, say, of website visitors who didn't open an account and then targeted with a generic creative message. In other words, the ad creative doesn't change to adapt its contents specifically to each user. When it comes to dynamic retargeting, It is definitely more effective because ad creatives changed to adapt their contents specifically to each user, ensuring that each user is exposed to the most relevant promotional message. This remarketing tactic is typically used by e-commerce businesses having a very large inventory of products or services that would otherwise be impossible to promote with personalized ads. Advertisers can also create custom remarketing lists. More specifically, they can use standard or dynamic lists with additional targeting criteria such as demographics, GO language, and third-party audience segment targeting. Given that remarketing ads follow the target audiences around the internet, advertisers need to limit how many times a unique user sees a particular ad in a given timeframe. Not doing so may annoy your target audience, which can result in creating a bad user experience, something that can negatively impact your conversion numbers. Luckily, all demand side platforms allow advertisers to limit the number of impressions per user through the frequency capping setting. For example, when an advertiser sets or frequency capping of two impressions per unique user per day. The campaign will deliver up to two impressions per unique user per day. In general, programmatic advertisers must find the optimal ad frequency for their business by carrying out AB tests and analyzing click-through rates. All the remarketing tactics I have just mentioned can be used when buying media in open and private auctions, or when buying media directly from publishers through preferred and guaranteed deals. In addition to that, advertisers can run remarketing campaigns in any programmatic advertising formats such as display video, native TV, audio, and digital out-of-home ad format. Last but not least, since remarketing is all about reaching people to remind them to convert, the objective of running remarketing campaigns is usually to Drive app installs, increased conversions, or generate revenue. 47. Media Planning: Media planning is the practice of formulating a very detailed media buying strategy with the ultimate goal to achieve the advertisers marketing objectives. In other words, it is the practice of strategically selecting a mix of media buying methods, formats, and tactics to be used over a certain period of time. Before creating a plan, media planners typically identify marketing problems, set marketing objectives, and select the correct media mix combination. But let's see in greater detail what is the process of creating a successful media plan? Every media plan starts with one or many identified marketing problems. The truth is that every business has marketing inefficiencies. By identifying them, advertisers can be more strategic with their marketing efforts to generate more online sales and revenues. For you to understand better what I mean, let's take two examples. Suppose that a business offers a unique product. When people learned about that product, they normally get fascinated and buy it straight away. However, even though that business has great conversion rates, only a few people know about that product's existence. Therefore, the marketing problem here is that there is no much product awareness. If more people were to discover that product, that business could have generated even more conversions. In this example, let's assume that a business gets huge volumes of website traffic. However, only a small number of users make a purchase and the rest are not revisit the website even though they had demonstrated interest in making a purchase. The marketing problem here is that the business doesn't generate a lot of conversions. But if more people were reminded of the product, they demonstrated interest in, that business could have generated even more conversions. Moving on to the marketing objectives, those go hand in hand with the identified marketing problems. For example, if there is no much product awareness, the marketing objective should be to build awareness through advertising campaigns. With programmatic advertising campaigns, advertisers can achieve many marketing objectives. As mentioned earlier in this course, they can build brand awareness, increased website visits, Drive app installs, and increased signups, sales and revenue. The next step is to select the ideal marketing tactics for accomplishing the chosen marketing objectives. Media planners typically used several tactics for objective. For example, the objective is to build brand awareness. Some tactics may be to set up one campaign targeting lookalike audiences, and another one targeting relevant third-party audience segments. Once the tactics are chosen, the next step is to create a media plan which covers how the marketing objectives will be achieved in a detailed and organized manner. As successful media plan should contain information such as marketing objectives allocated budget by marketing objective marketing tactics, by marketing objective media buying methods by marketing tactic, the ideal advertising formats by media buying method, the creative types by ad format, the KPIs by marketing objectives, as well as other details such as KPI targets in campaign timings. But let's take an example. Suppose that immediate planner wants to achieve two objectives to build brand awareness and increase conversions. When it comes to the brand awareness objective, he allocates $10 thousand on a prospecting campaign that will be buying media through private auctions. He also chose to run video out stream ads. In order to measure the success of this campaign, he chose the views metric as his KPI. He also set a target of 0.5 million views. Lastly, he decided to start his campaign on the first of January and ended on the 30th of January. When it comes to the second objective, which is to increase conversions, he allocated $2 thousand on a re-marketing campaign. He also chose to buy media through open auctions with the use of display ads. The selected KPI was cost per conversion, and his target was to pay $120 per conversion. Lastly, he decided to start his campaign on the first of January and ended on the 30th of January. 48. Ad Operations: And operations is a team of people responsible for formulating and executing a media plan. Depending on the size of the team, their responsibilities may be divided between different stakeholders. Typically, medium and large sized advertisers have teams consisting of media planners, Media buyers, creative designers, and add traffickers. While smaller advertisers who don't invest a lot of money and programmatic advertising may have one or two programmatic advertising specialists who take care of everything. As mentioned in the previous lesson, media planners formulate media buying strategies and are responsible for analyzing audience characteristics, analyzing the performance of previous campaigns, following up with developments in the programmatic advertising field, selecting a mix of media buying methods, formats, and tactics, allocating budget between those, setting KPIs, targets and campaign timings. Media buyers are the ones who buy ad spaces in coordination with the agreed upon media plans. Media buyers typically form and maintain relationships with publishers, request proposals, negotiate campaign terms and prices, compare delivery data and reconcile discrepancies with publishers. They also create monitor and optimize campaigns. Lastly, they worked closely with media planners when amending strategies. Creative designers are responsible for producing the creative assets needed for the execution of the media plan. Creative assets should follow the technical specifications of the selected advertising formats and types, brand guidelines, and of course convey the promotional message and the most engaging way. Add traffickers worked closely with ALL programmatic advertising stakeholders and have technical skills. They are responsible for coordinating creative asset production, collaborating with creative designers, uploading creative assets and tags to the ad server, testing creative assets, ensuring campaign tracking is fine, dealing with ad serving issues, generating reports on the chosen KPIs, and troubleshooting other technical issues. 49. Strategies & Tactics For Publishers: In this module, I will take you through the major challenges advertisers and publishers face in the programmatic advertising landscape. I will also cover some new developments that will definitely shape the future of programmatic advertising. More specifically, I will start by covering challenges such as the ad tech tax, which refers to the fact that most media spend goes to ad tech vendors instead of publishers. I will explain the risks of using multiple DSPs when targeting the same audience and how this setup can lead to price inflations and real-time bidding auctions. Then I will explain what ad blockers are, how they have impacted advertisers and especially publishers, and why 47% of internet users use them. After that, I will explain why about 50% of programmatic advertisers don't think they understand programmatic advertising, as well as what media buyers and sellers should do to succeed in their marketing efforts. Next, I will take you through the artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. I will explain how those technologies can help marketers accomplish their objectives faster and at a low cost. I will also explain what augmented and virtual realities are. I will discuss the potential of those two technologies in the programmatic advertising field and show you some examples of innovative advertising formats that might dominate digital advertising landscape in the future. Lastly, I will take you through the blockchain technology and explain how it can help advertisers and publishers deal with major challenges faced in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. So let's get started. 50. Implementation of Ads txt: As mentioned earlier in this course, many had fraudsters commit impression laundering, which is the practice of concealing the website where the actual ads are displayed. Domains buffers Mass themselves as large, legitimate publishers to monetize and impressions that advertisers wouldn't buy. Fraudsters may identify themselves as bbc.com, CNN.com, or any other large publisher. And hence, advertisers are tricked into bidding for such ad placements. To combat this type of ad fraud, publishers are urged to create ads dot txt file in which they can list partners who are authorized to sell and resell their ad inventory. Once that file is created, they have to make it publicly available at their root domain. Advertisers can then crawl the web for those files to check the validity of the ad inventory there about the purchase. Obviously, if the offered at inventory is sold through an unauthorized partner, it's probably not legitimate. Hence, the advertiser can step out of the bidding process without becoming a victim of ad fraud. Publishers can create an Ads dot txt file through their supply-side platform, following a step-by-step guide. Once the file is created, they have to upload it to the root domain. In this screenshot, we see how the ads dot txt file of BBC looks like. Publishers who implement the ads dot txt file on their websites are considered more trustworthy and hence serve way more ad impressions than those who haven't. It's needless to say that with more served impressions, they generate greater ad revenues. 51. Dealing With Privacy Laws: Over the past few years, that concern for online privacy has been increasing worldwide and many government bodies have enforced a few privacy laws, such as the GDPR, cookie consent, CCP, AAA, and the LGBT law. Those privacy laws directly affect publisher since they collect user data through cookies and pass them to advertisers. As per the GDPR guidelines, publishers must obtain the specific, explicit and actively given consent from their users before any activation of cookies. What that means for publishers is that they have to first create and maintain a privacy and a cookie policy on their website. And secondly, they have to obtain cookie consent from their website visitors through a popup window, which urges them to accept the visited websites cookie policy. 52. Universal ID: Besides obtaining cookie consent from website visitors, publishers have to deal with a bigger problem. Recently, all the major browsers have either started blocking third-party cookies by default or give users the ability to block all third party cookies. This situation has created a big problem in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. The truth is that all programmatic platforms rely on cookies sinking to track and target users across the web, as well as serve relevant ads to them. However, as it becomes harder to collect third-party cookies, the industry came up with a solution that doesn't rely on cookies called Universal ID. Universal ID is a unique user identifier. Publisher can create and assign a Universal ID to each website visitor. That ID is then sent to the Universal ID solution provider, which decrypts it and shares it with other programmatic platforms. That way, user information can be passed between programmatic platforms, even if cookies were blocked or deleted. Besides offering immunity against cookie blocking, the implementation of universal ideas could definitely generate higher ad revenues for publishers. Since advertisers can easily identify target audiences they would like to bet on. 53. Header Bidding: Another essential tactic for publishers nowadays is the implementation of header bidding. Before header bidding was introduced, publishers had to rely on the traditional waterfall method. We're all demand partners, such as DSPs and ad networks had to bid in sequential order. That order was also determined based on historical data. To take an example, let's assume that there is one impression for sale and three ad networks in two DSPs are interested in bidding for that impression with a waterfall method, the impression first becomes available to the first network. After receiving the bid. It then becomes available to the second network. Following that, it becomes available to the third ad network. However, due to the lack of time, the option has to finish after evaluating the bid offers from those three ad networks, the second ad network wins the auction because it had the highest bid. The problem here is the two DSPs never got the chance to bid for that impression. If they could do so, the winner of this auction would have been the second DSP because it would have placed a bid of $3.20. This is where Header bidding comes in. Header bidding as an advanced programmatic tactic of making a publisher's at inventory available to all demand partner simultaneously. And hence, publishers can receive bids from all participants. Obviously, the highest bid of them all wins the auction. Another benefit is that advertisers have equal opportunities to participate in auctions. At the same time, publishers can get more participants to bid for their ad inventory, which can increase their ad revenues by up to 60%. Nowadays, almost all supply-side platforms allow publishers to leverage the header bidding technology, which requires some technical implementation, such as adding a JavaScript tag to the publisher's website through a Tag Management System. 54. Price Floor Optimization: As mentioned earlier in this course, a publisher making his or her ad inventory available in private auctions must set a price floor. Advertisers must exceed that price with their bid to be eligible to participate. Setting up a price floor is a bit tricky because a very high price may result in losing many bids and hence decrease fill rates. While a low price may undervalue the ad inventory and decrease ad revenues. There are three types of price floors publishers can choose from the soft heart and dynamic price floor. With a soft price floor, a bid slightly lesser than the price floor can win the auction. Soft price floors help publishers achieve higher fill rates and decent yield. With a hard price floor, a bid must exceed the price, Florida win the auction. Otherwise, the ad inventory remains unsold. This approach may result in lower fill rates. The last and most efficient approach is the dynamic price floor, which automatically adjust the price floor value based on the advertiser's historical performance. This approach helps publishers get the maximum fill rate without compromising ad revenue. 55. Ad Inventory Tactics: Publishers follow several ad inventory tactics to make their ad spaces more viewable and generate more ad revenue. In this lesson, you will learn the most common ones. When creating ad inventory, publishers must choose the right ad space formats, sizes, and positions. Decide how many ad spaces will be within a page and leverage other techniques to increase vulnerability rates. But let's see them in greater detail. Publisher ad spaces can be in different formats such as display, native, and video. The ad spaces can also be indifferent types like in stream video ads, out stream video ads, classic banner ads in feed native ads, you name it. However, not all ad formats and types are the same, meaning there might be more demand for classic banner ad spaces than overlay banner ad spaces. Given that advertisers choose to spend more money in certain ad formats than others. Publishers typically experiment with those to find which ones can generate more ad revenue for them. Most of the times, they use a combination of ad formats and types to find the sweet spot. Similarly, not all ad unit sizes can earn the best CPM. Banner ads can come in various dimensions. However, advertisers do not typically create banner ads and all sizes. They typically create them in the most popular ones instead. As a matter of fact, Google suggests publishers to use wider ad units to generate higher CPMs and better ad revenues. Also, vertical ad unit sizes tend to be more viewable as their length keeps them in the viewport area, even as users scroll down the page. Ad units such as the leaderboard, medium rectangle, and the wide skyscraper, are proven to yield better results for publishers. After selecting the right ad format, type, and size for a newly created ad space, publishers should determine its position within the website or mobile app. The position of ad space within a page affects its few ability rate. Given that ad spaces with high view ability rates generate higher CPMs and revenue for the publisher, it's important to be placed at the right positions. Generally add spaces placed in the above the fold area of a webpage have a much higher view ability rate than those placed in the below the fold area. Publishers aiming at generating high view ability rates and revenue may use some innovative ad space formats like the sticky and the oviduct adds. Those remain in constant view even if users scroll up or down the page. Sticky ends are anchored at fixed locations on the webpage, which may be the top, bottom, right, or left side of the page. In other words, they stick and remain in a specific area of the screen, even if the user scrolls through the content. Sticky ad spaces can also appear on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Dr. ads are very similar to sticky ads, but instead of being fixed in a certain location, they change location as the user scrolls down or up the webpage to be in constant view. But let's see how sticky and Dr. ads appear to users. In this example, I have visited the entertainment section of the Huffpost website. On the right side, you see a display banner ad. When I scroll down or up, we see that this ad space remains at the same location. Obviously, this is a sticky ad space that generates a high view ability rate and hence higher revenue for the publisher. Now let's see how a doc that appears to users. For this example, I have visited an article on the website of Yahoo money. As you can see, there is an in stream video ad here. When I scroll down, we see that the average changes position. And more specifically, it moves to the bottom right of the screen. When I scroll up, the advert goes back to its previous position. Docking also helps publishers increase ad space view ability rates. Publishers should also consider how many ad spaces to create in place within their webpages. Having too many ad spaces may result in higher ad revenues in the short run, but surely create a bad user experience and impact revenue performance in the long run. The truth is that people visit a publisher's website for its content, not to see a page filled with ads. Therefore, publishers are generally advised to start with a few ad spaces that are spread across the page. Larger publishers may also run AB testing experiments to find what is the right number of ad spaces per page for their business. Many supply-side platforms and add servers allow publishers to create responsive and spaces that adapt to the user's browsers and devices. For example, they can specify that if the browser window is larger than one hundred, nine hundred and twenty by 180 pixels, the ad space to take the size of 970 by 90 pixels. Whereas for smaller browser windows, the ad space size to become 468 by 60 pixels. Since publishers can specify different size setups for any device and browser, they can improve usability rates and provide a better user experience. Had refreshes another tactic that allows publishers to increase the number of impressions served for user session. How does it work? Well, a publisher can replace the served ads with new ones while the user is on the same page based on predefined triggers. The most common triggers publishers can use to request new ads are the user event and time triggers. User triggers are based on how a user behaves on a publisher's page. More specifically, ads can be refreshed when a user clicks on elements found within a page. For example, when a user interacts with a slider or video. Event triggers are based on events triggered by the publisher. For example, when a new video loads in an auto playing video lists, or when the publisher refreshes the page dynamically to include updated information. Time triggers are based on how much time a user stays on a page. Publishers can refresh adds after a certain time interval, such as 3060 or 90 seconds. At this point, I think it's worth mentioning that the ad refresh is one of the most popular tactics used by publishers to increase the earnings procession. However, note that the Google display network does not support this trigger. Another tactic of publisher may use to increase vulnerability is by making their videos play automatically. By having auto playing videos. That chances are that in stream ads will start playing automatically on top of them as well. Auto playing videos are typically set to run as soon as the page gets loaded. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Standards of video can start playing automatically, but the sound should require user interaction. In other words, the video should be muted while it plays. Users should unmute it manually if they want to listen to it. But let's see an example of an auto playing video. For this example, I have visited an article on the website of Yahoo money. As you can see, this article features of video, which starts playing automatically. On top of the publishers video though, there is an in stream ad that started playing automatically as well. As you can see, the video ad is muted. There is no doubt that more and more advertisers seek to serve video adds to their target audiences. However, there is a lack of supply. Because of that OUT stream ads tend to be very lucrative for publishers as the formats HIV you ability can command high CPMs. 56. Ad Operations: And operations as a team within a publisher company responsible for creating an inventory and selling it in the most profitable way. Normally, medium and large sized publishers have teams consisting of inventory managers, ad sellers, and traffickers, add OPS coordinators and yield managers. Smaller publishers may employ one or two programmatic selling specialists who take care of everything or simply outsource, add operations to agencies. And inventory manager is a person that creates and manages the supply of ad inventory. Inventory managers typically have several responsibilities such as creating ad spaces in the most profitable ad formats, sizes and types, deciding how many ad spaces to place within a page, determining the position of ad spaces within website pages, ensuring view ability is high, monitoring and fraught activity. Ensuring brand safety by blocking certain types of unwanted adds, keeping abreast with new developments in the field, and recommending new types of ad inventory for all devices. Large publishers usually have a team of ad sellers who are responsible for selling premium ad inventory directly to media buyers. And sellers typically have several responsibilities. More specifically, they should know well the publisher's ad inventory, align it to client objectives, create and sell deal packages, respond to RFPs, negotiate with Media buyers, make intelligent media recommendations, build and maintain long-lasting relationships with existing and potential Media buyers. Review and approve new insertion orders and keep track of how the direct campaigns perform. While ad sellers make deals with media buyers and traffickers and add OPS coordinators take care of the campaign implementation and launch. Add traffickers generally worked closely with different stakeholders and have quite good technical skills. They are typically responsible for coordinating the implementation of ad space placements within the publisher's website. They also check ad creatives to see if they are inline with campaign terms, deal with ad serving issues. Implement the ads dot txt file, Universal ID header bidding and other advanced technologies, generate reports and make sure that campaigns are traffic without any problem. A yield manager is a person that looks for ways to generate more ad revenue. Yield managers typically have several responsibilities. More specifically, they analyze sales and revenue data across all programmatic media buying channels. They evaluate the efficiency of media buying methods and formats, manage all pricing strategies for preferred and guaranteed deals, determine the price floors for private auctions, decide which ad inventory should be treated as premium suggests AB test to find new ways for generating higher revenue and many more. 57. Challenges & Future of Programmatic Advertising: In this module, I will take you through the major challenges advertisers and publishers face in the programmatic advertising landscape. I will also cover some new developments that will definitely shape the future of programmatic advertising. More specifically, I will start by covering challenges such as the ad tech tax, which refers to the fact that most media spend goes to ad tech vendors instead of publishers. I will explain the risks of using multiple DSPs when targeting the same audience and how this setup can lead to price inflations and real-time bidding auctions. Then I will explain what ad blockers are, how they have impacted advertisers and especially publishers, and why 47% of internet users use them. After that, I will explain why about 50% of programmatic advertisers don't think they understand programmatic advertising, as well as what media buyers and sellers should do to succeed in their marketing efforts. Next, I will take you through the artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. I will explain how those technologies can help marketers accomplish their objectives faster and at a low cost. I will also explain what augmented and virtual realities are. I will discuss the potential of those two technologies in the programmatic advertising field and show you some examples of innovative advertising formats that might dominate digital advertising landscape in the future. Lastly, I will take you through the blockchain technology and explain how it can help advertisers and publishers deal with major challenges faced in the programmatic advertising ecosystem. So let's get started. 58. Ad Tech Tax: The biggest challenge in this ecosystem is that most of the media spend goes to technology providers instead of publishers. Indeed, ad tech vendors such as DSPs, ad servers, ad exchanges, DMPs, and SSPs all take a cut from the advertisers media buying budget. Because of this situation, publishers end up receiving somewhere between 20%, 40 of the original media spend. Over the last years, advertisers and publishers have been complaining about this ad tech tax. The truth is that publishers could have generated more revenue and advertisers could have spent less money on buying media. However, since ad tech vendors provide the necessary infrastructure and technology, they have to get somehow paid. But let's see in greater detail how ad tech vendors eat intermediate budgets. For this example, let's assume that an advertiser's media budget is $1000 per month. The advertiser has agreed to pay a 15% fee of his media span to their DSP. That situation leaves them with $850 for media buying. His ad server also gets a cut of 1%, leaving $840 for media buying. In addition to that, if the advertiser wants to target third-party audience segments, there will be an additional cost of 35% for doing that, which leaves $546 for media buying. On top of that, if the advertiser uses an ad verification solution to protect campaigns against add fraud, that vendor could charge 2% of the media budget, leaving $535 for media spend. Next, the Ad Exchange charges 10%, leaving $482 for media buying. After that, the SSP charges of 15% fee and the ad server of the publisher another 1% fee, leaving $405 for the publisher. In this example, we have seen that 60% of the media budget went to ad tech vendors, while only 40% reached the publisher. Obviously, ad tech vendors may charge different fees as those generally depend on how much the advertiser has committed to spend, as well as his negotiation skills. In addition to that, there might be more vendors involved in the media buying and selling process, such as the creative management platform and the ADD order management system, each charging additional fees. Advertisers and publishers who want to have a more granular view of the fees they pay to their ad tech partners can use the fee transparency calculator provided by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Now, let's see how that calculator works. Firstly, you can find this calculator by searching for IM free transparency calculator on any search engine. Let's assume that as an advertiser, I want to run a display campaign. My target CPM is $6 and my budget is $100 thousand. By scrolling down, I can now select the ad tech vendors I am using. As you can see, the first option is ad blocking, which refers to a technology that blocks add delivery when there are ad fraud, brand safety, or view ability issues. I am selecting display as a channel and CPM is a cost model. Let's assume that I have agreed to pay $0.25 per CPM to that vendor. Next, I am selecting ad serving because I am using an ad server where I store in track my creative assets. Let's say the cost of that services $0.05 per CPM. After that, I select the data slash targeting option because I want to use third party audience segments. Let's say that the cost of this services $3 per CPM. Then I am selecting DSP technology. Since my agreement with the DSP vendor is to pay a fee of 18% of my media spend. I select percentage of media as the cost model and insert the 18% fee here. Now, let's assume that the publisher uses an ad server and pays $0.05 per CPM. Also, suppose that the publisher uses a supply-side platform with which he agreed to pay 10% on this old media. Now we can see the results of that calculation. Wow, it seems that 84% of the media budget went to the ad tech vendors, while only 16% went to the publisher. In other words, the publisher got only 16 thousand out of $100 thousand. To combat this huge issue, some startups have started creating decentralized peer-to-peer advertising systems using the block chain technology. Those systems will be designed to allow advertisers and publishers to trade at inventory programmatically while getting rid of all middlemen. I will explain more about this block chain technology later on in this course. 59. Multiple DSPs and Price Inflation: Another significant challenge many advertisers faces the fact that auction prices may get inflated when they use multiple DSPs at the same time. The truth is that the average number of DSPs used by medium and large sized advertisers is three. When doing so, the chances are that each DSP may be bidding against each other for reaching the same target audience. In other words, it's highly likely that the advertiser will be bidding against themselves, thus inflating their bids and increasing media costs. But let's take an example to see how prices can get inflated in an open auction through the use of multiple DSPs. For this example, let's assume that an advertiser uses three different DSPs to run remarketing campaigns. When a user visits the publisher's website, the SSP passes this information to the Ad Exchange, which relays it to all those three DSP's. The first DSP places a bit of $1, the second places a bid of $3, and the third place is a bit of $5. The SSP then decides that the third DSP wins the auction because it had the highest bid. Another reason as to why prices may get inflated as the fact that frequency capping is typically set on a DSP level. Therefore, if an advertiser uses three DSPs and his goal is to show five impressions maximum per user per day. All DSPs may deliver up to 15 impressions in total per user per day. That would technically triple the cost of advertising for no substantial game. But let's take the previous example and assume that the advertiser has said a frequency capping of five impressions per user per day in each of those three DSP's, the weight will work is that the third DSP will win the first five auctions because it has the highest bids. Thus, it will serve five impressions in total to that unique user. After that, it won't bid again for that user throughout the day because it reached the impressions capital in it. Next, the second DSP will win another five auctions due to its higher bids. Thus, it will serve five impressions in total to that unique user. Next, it will stop bidding for that user throughout the day. Lastly, the first DSP will bid and when five auctions and serve five impressions maximum to that user. All in all, even though the frequency capping was five impressions per user per day, the 3D ASP served 15 impressions in total for that user. This situation results in additional costs for the advertiser and also may annoy the target audience. Something that can negatively impact conversion rates. 60. Ad Blocking: Another challenge both advertisers and publishers face is the fact that there is an increasing number of people using an ad blocker on their browsers. An ad blocker is basically a browser add on that prevents ads from being shown on websites. It can be installed in browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. According to research conducted by the global web index, 47% of internet users globally we're using an ad blocker in 2018. Another interesting fact is that most people who use ad blockers are millennials and generation Z, meaning from 16 to 34 years old. As you have understood, this massive adoption of ad blockers has a huge impact on online advertising. That's because millions of publishers depend on online advertising revenues in order to operate. When it comes to advertisers, they don't lose money because they only pay for served impressions. However, this situation makes it harder and more costly for them to reach relevant users. But why so many people choose to use an ad blocker? Well, many reasons motivates such an action. Adverts might have been very annoying or irrelevant to Internet users. Sometimes adverts are too intrusive, contained viruses or bugs take too much space on their screen, decreased page load time, consume a lot of mobile data, drain mobile batteries, and they are even to personalized. Lastly, a lot of people feel that their privacy has been compromised. 61. Too Complex Landscape: Another significant challenges that the programmatic advertising ecosystem is too complex. There are hundreds of ad tech platforms, plenty of media buying methods, ad formats had types, marketing tactics, techniques, and opinions that often confuse advertisers and publishers. Because of this situation, about 50% of the people trading ad spaces don't think they understand programmatic advertising, which is normal given the complexity of this landscape. But what makes it so complex? First of all, there are so many different platforms available, each offering certain features and capabilities that often overlap with other platforms features. For example, a publisher can create an inventory through an SSP and ad server and even an ad network. In other cases, certain tech vendors might have more developed platforms than their direct competitors. For instance, one DSP may allow advertisers to run campaigns and any advertising format. While another DSP may only allow the use of display and video ad formats. Given that there are so many ad tech platforms available, both advertisers and publishers typically approach each platform like learning a new language. For the time being. They have to spend a lot of time to learn how ad tech platforms work, how each platform can help them achieve their objectives, how platforms connect with each other, and in general, how the programmatic advertising ecosystem works. It goes without saying that the more knowledge they have, the more successful they can become in this field, and the greater campaign performance they can achieve. 62. Artificial Intelligence: As mentioned earlier in this course, many ad tech vendors have already worked on artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. They did so to help advertisers achieved better campaign performance at a lower cost per acquisition. Both artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies analyze huge volumes of data in real-time. They are capable of discovering patterns, predict outcomes, suggest, and implement optimization actions. Those technologies helped marketers accomplish their marketing objectives faster and most importantly, at a low cost. The truth is that without those technologies, it would have been practically impossible for humans to carry out those tasks at that scale. Because those technologies have been proven to be successful so far, more and more ad tech companies have started or will continue investing in this. Therefore, we expect to see even more innovative solutions in the future. Those will help advertisers make better budget management and bidding decisions. Improve audience targeting, improved the contextual relevance of their ads, optimize ad creatives further eliminated fraud, further, increase brand safety, generate better insights and predict outcomes with better accuracy. 63. Augmented Reality Ads: Augmented reality is a technology that allows us to view the real physical world with a digital augmentation on it. It basically adds and blends digital elements into a real-world environment, allowing users to interact with those digital elements. But lets see an example of how augmented reality can be used. Show me skirts. So there are also possible, as you saw in that video, augmented reality places virtual things over the actual world. It can be truly interactive and engage people. Augmented reality is gaining more and more popularity. But if you have been wondering how this technology can be used in advertising, well, imagine that you are at a bus stop shelter that has a digital out-of-home screen, which serves an augmented reality app that allows you to try different clothes and buy them, like in the video I showed you earlier, some ad tech companies have already started building the necessary infrastructure to support augmented reality native ads. Now, let's see an example of that ad format. In this video, I'm going to show you how to launch an augmented reality app through DSP or any ad server from your existing digital ad slots, you can serve 3D and augmented reality experiences. Here you can see a 3D add powered by Ami vert. Simply swipe or move your phone to explore the object in all dimensions, the IDE will trigger a native AR experience within one tap. In this AR experience, we can put your brand or product experienced in the user's environment launched right from the app. Everything you see here is a customizable. Put your own branding, call to action, or integrate third-party pixels for tracking. No longer do you need to build a standalone AR app. We have everything ready to go today. So contact us in contact with on a verb.com. You can even click through and visit the Google Store. To now, what you have just seen wasn't in content native ad that serve an augmented reality experience. As more and more companies have started experimenting with this technology, we expect to see greater adoption of augmented reality ads. So don't be surprised in the future if programmatic advertisers will be able to reach relevant audiences with highly engaging augmented reality ads. 64. Virtual Reality Ads: Virtual reality is a technology that lets us experience an environment that can be similar to or completely different from the real-world. The difference between augmented and virtual reality is that the first adds digital elements to a real-world environment, and the latter creates a completely artificial environment. To experience a virtual reality environment, a user has to use a head-mounted display device and other equipment like sensors and headphones. That way, he or she will be able to look around, listen to sounds, and interact with elements found in the virtual environment. Some companies that provide virtual reality headsets are Oculus, HTC, PlayStation, Samsung, and valve. This technology is mostly used for entertainment. For example, users can play VR games, watch VR films, or virtually attend concerts. Since virtual reality is gaining more popularity, some ad tech companies like adversity, virtual sky, and unafraid have introduced a few types of virtual reality adds. Those may also be delivered programmatically. At the moment, there are three available types of virtual reality adds in the market, the native sponsored and experience ads. Native ads appear as in-game adverts and are typically placed realistically on billboards inside the gaming worlds. This type of advertising is offered by adversity, which allows advertisers and publishers to trade ad inventory programmatically. That means it follows the standards and specifications issued by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. But lets see an example. As you saw the billboards in that game, we're showing adverts of Coca-Cola. Since those billboards are quite large, they ensure 100% view ability as the user plays the game. Sponsored ads are five to 10 second ads offering virtual 360-degree experiences. Those ads appear when consumers launch virtual reality content. Virtual sky offers this type of advertising. And to my knowledge, such ads cannot be traded programmatically yet. In this example, we see that a user has launched a virtual reality content before starting playing, three options appear to him. On the top left side, there is a sponsored ad below that is the introduction of the game. And on the right side is the actual game. If that user clicks on the sponsored ad, he will watch a five to 10 second to add offering a 360-degree experience. Lastly, experience ads or tend to 30-second ads offering 360-degree experiences that launch it natural breaks in virtual reality content like inbetween game levels. Virtual sky offers this type of advertising. And to my knowledge, such ads cannot be traded programmatically yet. In this example, we see that a user has completed level one, but before moving to level two and experience out of BMW is displayed to him. All in all, even though virtual reality advertising is still in its infancy, we expect to see new developments in the coming years, which will enable better integrations with the current programmatic advertising ecosystem. 65. Blockchain Technology: As mentioned in previous lessons, the programmatic advertising ecosystem currently faces many challenges. More specifically, it lacks price and placement transparency. There are too many participants each taking a cut from the original media spend. There is too much ad fraud and generally the landscape is too complex. However, many believed that blockchain technology may help overcome those challenges. But what is block chain technology? In the simplest of terms, it is a technology that allows individuals to make instantaneous and peer to peer transactions on a decentralized network. Those transactions are also stored in a database that is incorruptible, meaning the order and details of those transactions cannot be modified or deleted once the transactions have been completed. I am sure that most of you have heard of Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies such as a theorem, SRP, tether and light coin. All those use block chain technology. Although the blockchain technology was initially devised for the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The ad tech community has found other potential uses of that technology. More specifically, it can be used in the programmatic advertising landscape to remove all middlemen, save on hefty EdTech fees, combatted fraud, ensure 100% price and placement transparency, and generate more revenue for publishers. While some industry organizations have been exploring the possibilities of blockchain for advertisers and publishers. Some companies have already worked on developing some programmatic advertising solutions. But before revealing which those companies are, I would like to show you a video from add bank that explains quite well how blockchain technology can help advertisers and publishers overcome those major challenges. Hi, I'm Karen, which in Greek mythology means y center. But that doesn't matter right now. What does matters? I'm CTO of add bank. What's that big? Let me show you. Right now if you're a digital advertiser, you give your money to a middleman. He takes a huge chunk of it and gives the rest to a publisher. Ad bank is the new platform that gets rid of this guy. I want guys take it, it's yours. Don't be shy. How did we do it? A peer to peer advertising platform built on the block chain. I don't know what the blockchain is. Asked your nerdiest friend. The blockchain is a decentralized hanging out with horsemen. So how does this work without the middleman? You know how Uber doesn't own any cars. They built a platform that connects people together directly. Well, it would be so cliche if I were to say we were the Uber of digital advertising. So I won't say it, but I'll say, I'll give you just hate it when people say that. So why does that matter? Well, we're 100% transparent, open source, and fully auditable. Had bank do we say how much recharge? Yep. It's on the blockchain. What about you, middleman? I won't tell you. Why does transparency matter? Fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud. 56% of all Website traffic is bought, 56%. That's over half. That means right now you're paying for pants, but you're getting can stop getting pant 3-OPT, get both pant legs now. And we're gonna do it. How artificial intelligence plus the block chain allows us to differentiate between bots and genuine people. Cool, right? That means with add bank, you can stop paying to show your ads to these guys and start showing them to these bats. Heidi, you except lots of cash. Plus we're Canadian. So we're stopping fraudsters without ever raising our voice. Yeah, I caught you. Sorry. Sorry. So if you like having more cash and you don't like being defrauded and you want to exactly where your money is going then voila, add bank and you trust me because my name means y center. Okay, now that matters. Now, let's see some companies that leverage block chain technology for building programmatic advertising solutions. Please note that no company offers the same services. Some may offer smart contracts, others offer ad fraud solutions or blockchain, DSPs and SSPs. 66. How To Practice Your Knowledge: As mentioned earlier in this course, programmatic advertising is not about learning a particular platform. Yet, many people believe that it's similar to learning the Google ads or Facebook ads platform. Programmatic advertising is an ecosystem which encompasses hundreds of participants, each having a specific role. While it's technically impossible to show you the user interface and specific features of all those platforms. You might wonder how you could practice your gain knowledge. To practice what you have learned in this course, you would ideally need to access some DSPs, SSPs, DMPs, see MPs and other programmatic platforms to create some dummy campaigns, had spaces, audience segments, and use some other platform features. However, note that none of those vendors will give you free access to their platform. Remember, this is not like Google ads or Facebook ads, where people can create an account for free within minutes. If you are wondering why is this happening? Well, ad tech vendors typically charged fees on media spend or ad revenue. Therefore, advertisers and publishers have to negotiate with those vendors first and then sign an agreement with them. Once that's done, the ad tech vendor proceeds with the account setup. In the meantime, the advertiser or publisher gets access to that platforms training course, which typically lasts from 30 to 60 minutes. Now, if you want to test the waters with a small budget, for example, $5 thousand per month expect to be rejected by many ad tech vendors. As a matter of fact, large DSP vendors will not even reply to your emails. On the bright side, some small DSPs might accept you as a client, but in that case, expect to pay a higher platform fee. As mentioned earlier in this course, programmatic advertising is used by advanced advertisers and companies that are committed to spending huge amounts of money. If you don't have enough budget, but still want to see how the most popular ad tech platforms work. I have attached there training courses in previous lessons. In the next lesson, I will show you how the DSP of data shoe works. More specifically, you will learn how to create conversion goals, remarketing and third-party audience lists, how to upload ad creatives and how to create programmatic advertising campaigns. For your information, data shoe is a smaller DSP meeting. It's ideal for advertisers who can commit to spending around $5 thousand per month. So let's get started. 67. Bonus: User Interface of a DSP: This is the main page of an advertising account on the DSP of data Shou. As you can see, this features of search engine, which allows me to search for campaigns, creatives, and flights. For your information, flights are basically ad groups within campaigns. Below that search engine, there are some hyperlinks that can take me to my campaigns, reports, creatives, audiences and activities. For your information, activities are basically conversion goals in the tracking codes I should add to the advertised website. The first thing any programmatic advertiser does before creating their first campaigns and setting up the conversion tracking and goal. Those can be done on the activity's page. To create an activity, I first have to click the create Activity button. Then I am asked to insert the details of that activity. Let's assume that I want to track conversions which are triggered when users land on a thank you page immediately after completing their transaction. I can give it a name here. Select the activity type, and also create an audience List of converters so that I can targeted or excluded from campaign targeting. When I click this button, it takes me to the activities overview page. Now, if I click on the activity I just created, I will be able to see the tracking code that I have to add to the Thank you page of the advertised website. This tracking code can be deployed in tested through a Tag Management System, I explained earlier in this course. And that's pretty much how a programmatic advertiser can set up their conversion goal and tracking. Now let's go ahead and create a remarketing list. For this example, let's assume that I want to create a list with users who visited the homepage of an advertised website. To do so, I have to create a new activity first. That can be done on the activity's page. After giving it a name and selecting the activity type, I should create an audience segment and give it a name. So let's name it homepage visitors. If I click this button, it will take me back to the activities overview page. On the audience's page, I will be able to see all the audiences I have created so far. If I want to create a new audience, I should click the Create New Audience button. Here, I will be able to see some audience segments I created as well as access third party audience segments. Those appear in the audience marketplace section. For example, if I want to see the audience segments provided by Oracle, I can do that here. Here we can see the additional costs of using those audience segments and their size in terms of unique users. Another thing I can do is using the search engine to search for relevant third-party audience segments. Now, let's assume that I want to target people who are looking to travelled in New York City, fly to JFK Airport and our business travelers. So I can search for New York City and select those two lists. Then I can search for JFK and select the first list. Next, I can search for business class and select the first list. Once I have selected the segments I would like to target, I can combine them into one and give that custom audience a name. And that's how you can create a third-party audience on a DSP. The next step would be to upload my ad creatives. That can be done on the creatives page. On this page, I should first click the new assets button. On the left side of this page. It shows what the accepted file formats are. Once the ad creatives are uploaded, I will be taken back to the creatives page. Here. We'll be able to see all the uploaded ad creatives, as well as their registration status, meeting, whether they got approved or disapproved by the ad exchanges. And that's pretty much how you can upload ad creatives. To create a campaign. I should first get to the campaigns page and then hit the new campaign button. Next, I am asked to insert the name of the advertised company, currency, campaign name, start and end dates, campaign budget, and target CPN. Once those details are inserted, it takes me to the campaign details page. Here. I can edit the start and end dates. I could amend the campaign budget and CPM and set the campaign frequency capping. For example, I can set the campaign to deliver 25 impressions per unique users per day. When I click the objectives icon on the vertical menu, I am asked to select the campaign objective for your information, the distribution option is for those who want to build brand awareness. The performance option is for those who want to increase conversions. The click-through rate is for increasing website visits and the completed ad views for generating video views. For this example, I will select performance. Here I'm asked to insert my conversion goal so that the platform could optimize the Campaign for conversions. I can also set my target CPA if I wish. On the right side of this page, I can also view the campaign forecast. More specifically, it shows how many impressions are available in the market, how many impressions I can buy with my budget and other data. The fees tab in the vertical menu shows the fees I will be paying to the DSP vendor. Here you see that I will be paying 18% of my media budget. In the View ability tab, I can select a view ability solution provider. There are two options here, the double verify, an integral add science. That's because those two vendors have a direct connection with this DSP. Next, I am asked to select the level of view ability I would like for my campaign. Brand safety tab. I can select the level of brand safety for my campaign and exclude certain content categories if I wish. In the domains tab, I can blacklist or whitelist certain publisher domains. For example, if I don't want my adverts to appear on a certain website, I can exclude the domain of that website here. Also, if I want my adverts to appear on a particular website only I can target the domain of that website here. In the View tab, I can enable a platform feature that provides enhanced data about my target audience. As you can see, there is an extra cost per 1000 impressions for using that service. In the Device Types tab, I can choose which devices I would like to target or exclude from campaign targeting. In the geo tab, I can choose which countries, cities, and areas I would like to target, as well as exclude the ones I don't want to target. In the language tab, I can select the languages I want to target. Once I am done with the campaign settings, the next step is to create flights. As mentioned earlier in this lesson, flights are ad groups within campaigns. A flight can have its own budget, start and end date and targeting. Now, let's assume that I want to create a flight for prospecting targeting. I can give it a name. Select the media type, insert, start and end dates, set the bid and budget and hit the save button. After that, it takes me to the flight overview page. When I click on the flight I've just created, it takes me to add Settings page. Note that most of the settings you see here were inherited from the campaign. On this page, it's possible to change the start and end dates, changed the objective of the flight, set frequency capping changed the Flight budget and ad creatives to that flight. It's also possible to select which ad exchanges and private marketplaces I want to target. Here we see a list of all the 54 AD exchanges. Next, I can amend the view ability level of this flight if I wish. I can target certain content categories. Blacklist or whitelist. Certain publisher domains. Use the one view Platform feature. Target or excludes certain device types. Target or exclude certain audience segments. For example, I can target remarketing audiences or third-party audience segments here. I can also exclude convertors from targeting. Lastly, I can change the GEO and language targeting if I wish. Once the flight is set up, it takes me to the campaign overview page. Here I can see how much budget was allocated to that campaign, what my target CPA is and the campaign dates on this page. I can also edit, pause, or archive my campaigns. And that's pretty much how you can set up and manage campaigns on this DSP.