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They found you: ad firm uses 2 billion data points to track consumers across devices

Jeff John Roberts — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:36:44 +0000

While it’s easy for advertisers to track people across different websites, the trail goes cold when a person turns off the computer and resumes surfing on a phone or tablet instead. That’s starting to change, however, as brands deploy technology that matches identities across devices.

One example is New York ad company Tapad, which claims its “Device Graph” uses 2 billion data points to find people on whatever screen they’re using. This means, for example, that a shoe company can identify a potential customer and hit them with a succession of ads — one on their work computer, another on their phone as they walk home and yet another as they look at a tablet on their couch.

In a recent interview, CEO Are Traasdahl said about 100 clients are using Tapad’s technology, including Dell and major electronics and finance firms. The appeal, he says, is that ad campaigns are more efficient if marketers know that an ad viewer on a computer and a smartphone is the same person.

Tapad’s technology may provide a boon to marketers but it also raises some obvious questions. First, how do we know it works? Mobile marketing is tricky in the first place because smartphones and tablets generate fewer cookies (the bits of computer code that indicate you’ve visited a given website); for example, Apple limits cookie collection by its Safari iPhone browser and by third party apps. This makes it difficult for brands to use so-called “retargeting” (showing an ad to someone based on what they done in the past) on a mobile device; identifying that same person across multiple devices would seem even more difficult.

According to Traasdahl, Tapad uses a sliding scale to guess whether a computer and phone user is the same person. Like all advertising, he says, there is an inherent degree of uncertainty. But he adds that, for brands, the proof is the pudding — they can look at whether multidevice targeting produced a lift in response or sales.

There is also the question of just how Tapad is tracking people. Like other companies in the mobile marketing space, such as Google Ventures-backed Adelphic, Tapad is tight-lipped about its techniques. Traasdahl did, however, say the company uses data sources like publishers’ log-in information, Wi-Fi locations and zip codes as some of the sources for its billions of data points. This is an example of what a recent MIT Technology Review article described as “reverse-engineering” our online identities.

Finally, in addition to the technology dimensions, there is the creepy factor. While companies like Tapad may provide more efficient advertising, some are going to bristle at its efforts to track them wherever they go. Tapad, like others in the advertising industry, protects “PII” — personally identifiable information — which means the “identity” that marketers see is just a random number, not your name or address. Still, there is growing concern in the media about tracking (see this week’s “Technology Turns to Tracking People Offline” in the New York Times) and in Congress where there are regular mutterings about Do Not Track legislation.

For now, the likes of Tapad and its investors (who include FirstMark Capital and Avalon) are counting on a light regulatory hand as they fine tune the online marketing machine.

(Image by Alexey Fursov via Shutterstock)

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Facebook ad partner AdRoll boasts 700 clients on FB exchange, says revenue tripled

Jeff John Roberts — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:30:57 +0000

AdRoll, a firm that serves ads based on websites you’ve visited in the past, says it’s poised to pull in more than $50 million revenue for 2012 and that ads it places on Facebook perform two to three times better than regular ads on the social network. The numbers, if accurate, may provide more grist to the chatter over what Facebook’s ad income will look like when earnings are announced on January 30.

AdRoll has been flagged as the fastest growing ad company in America and is also one of eight companies that Facebook tapped this summer to sell ads on the site based on users’ web surfing habits — before then, Facebook sold ads based only on user demographics and on social activities such as “Likes.”

In a phone interview, AdRoll CEO Aaron Bell said the company has run more than 1000 Facebook ad campaigns with more than 700 clients such as American Apparel, Skull Candy and custom suit maker, Indochino. Bell said AdRoll’s ability to “retarget” Facebook users means the ads it serves are far more likely than regular ads to lead the viewer to click on them or, eventually, to make a purchase.

That’s all very weel but does it help answer the $3.5 billion question? That number, if you’re wondering, is what Google earned in Q4 of 2012 — almost all of it through advertising — and is a figure Facebook investors hope the social network may one day replicate. Facebook, with its huge user base and deep pools of data, is poised to be an ad behemoth too but faces obstacles Google does not. The biggest of these is that, unlike people using a search engine, users on the social network want to chat with their friends and may be reluctant to break off the banter to go and buy something.

Retargeting firms like AdRoll claim that Facebook ads based on browsing history do indeed lead to purchases, either right away or else days or even weeks later.

The proof will be in the pudding next week when Facebook announces its results. In the meantime, notwithstanding AdRoll’s efforts, many of
Facebook’s ad attempts still seem baffling. Look at the screenshot at right, for instance, which is taken from my own most recent visit to the social network: shiny disco pants (never worn them), toner (I don’t own a printer) and something to do with films and a goat (no idea…). Investors better hope CEO Mark Zuckerberg has figured out the ad strategy here even if I can’t.

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Ad tech startup Triggit raises $7.4M on heels of Facebook-powered growth

Ki Mae Heussner — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:00:49 +0000

It’s been a good few months for San Francisco-based ad tech startup Triggit. Since June, the company said, revenue has climbed 300 percent thanks largely to its participation in Facebook’s ad exchange. It’s also grown its team by 50 percent and opened three new sales offices in New York, Boston and Los Angeles.

On Thursday, the demand-side platform (DSP) announced that it has raised $7.4 million in Series B funding in a round led by Spark Capital and Foundry Group and including its earlier investors. The new round brings its total amount raised to more than $12.4 million.

As one of the companies that provides retargeting tools to help advertisers reach Facebook users through the social network’s Facebook Exchange (FBX), CEO and co-founder Zach Coelius said Triggit has received plenty of new business from around the country and around the world.

“Our core reason for existence is to help advertisers leverage customer relationships and help them communicate across different sources of content in really relevant ways,” said Coelius. “Facebook and what they’re doing is perfect for what we do. … This is just the beginning.”

Through the Facebook Exchange, advertisers can target ads to users based on their general web browsing history. In addition to Triggit, the Facebook Exchange partners include Appnexus, Adroll, DataXu and Criteo. But Coelius said Triggit was one of the few early DSP partners able to serve international advertisers interested in marketing through FBX. About 90 percent of the company’s growth has come from new business, he added, and about half of that has been international.

To continue to meet that demand, Coelius said, the company plans to focus on international expansion, with hires in Asia, Europe and South America in the first quarter of next year or even sooner.

He also said that the company is nearing profitability and could reach it in the next month if they held back on hiring, but he emphasized that the current focus for the company is growth not profitability.

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Despite Facebook’s ‘bum rap,’ partners give new ad exchange positive reviews

Ki Mae Heussner — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 13:00:36 +0000

Three months after Facebook revealed plans to bring real-time bidding to advertisers on its site, the Facebook Exchange is officially open for business. And, early reports from ad partners look positive.

In a blog post today, the social network is set to announce that its new exchange – which allows advertisers to target ads to Facebook users based on their general web browsing history – is opening out of a beta test period involving more than a dozen demand-side platforms (DSPs) and a limited number of brand advertisers.

Through the new exchange, Facebook and its partners use cookies to track user web browsing behavior and then serve up related ads on Facebook. For example, if you go to a travel site to search for a flight but then don’t complete the booking, the Facebook Exchange makes it possible for the travel site to bid in real-time for the opportunity to show you a relevant ad when you return to Facebook.

Partners report increased ROI for Facebook Exchange advertisers

Zach Coelius, CEO and co-founder of Triggit, one of the partners, said that although Facebook has come under recent scrutiny as an effective ad platform, from his observation, Facebook’s ads are well-placed and attract a strong level of engagement from users.

“Facebook as a platform has gotten a bum rap,” said. “But we’ve never seen anything as good as this.”

In the three-month test period, Triggit found that ads served through the Facebook Exchange generated an average of four times the return on ad spending compared to traditional display retargeting and resulted in a click-through conversion rate that was 2.2 times higher. The cost per click-through order for Facebook Exchange ads was also 6.5 times lower, the company said.

While ads served through traditional RTB display are typically just seen by consumers when they return from work, during their leisure hours, Triggit found that Facebook Exchange ads are more consistently seen throughout the day. Their data also show that conversions on the Facebook exchange are twice as likely to happen in the first two days than they are on traditional display.

While the volume of ads served at the beginning was small, Coelius said, Facebook rolled out a full-scale RTB (real-time bidding) exchange faster than anyone else Triggit has worked with.

Other partners also report strong results. New York-based AppNexus said advertisers who worked with its client Accordant Media, a digital media buying and optimization firm, were able to increase their reach through the Facebook Exchange while reducing their cost per action by as much as 25 percent. Advertisers with business marketing firm Bizo were able to increase audience reach by 30 percent while maintaining impression and conversion rates, AppNexus said.

Still early days

Retargeting platform AdRoll said that, on average, Facebook Exchange advertisers saw an average Return on Investment of 16X, which is on par with standard display advertising channels.

Adam Berke, AdRoll’s president, said that while his clients had positive experiences with the new exchange it’s still too early to make conclusive generalizations given how different Facebook’s inventory is and how differently advertisers bid on its platform.

“It’s so early in the roll-out of the exchange,” he said. “Anyone who feels like they have a fully-baked Facebook Exchange product and knows exactly how it performs is probably coming to conclusions a little too soon.”

For Facebook, which has seen its stock price lose nearly half its value since going public in May (the stock got a bump this week after CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s first public interview), the new exchange could be a critical way for the company to show its value as an ad platform and earn revenue.

Last month, amid reports of underperformance through the first half of 2012 and questions about the effectiveness of some of its ad products, eMarketer, cut its 2012 revenue projections for Facebook from $5 billion to just over $4 billion.

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With new funding, AdRoll eyes Hollywood

Ki Mae Heussner — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 23:09:03 +0000

Chances are, you’ve had an experience like this: you check out a product on a retailer’s site and then an ad for it follows you around the Web for what feels like the next few months. But, with $15 million in new funding announced Wednesday, San Francisco-based Adroll wants to make a bigger push in entertainment and events.

Aaron Bell, the company’s CEO, said the new financing is meant to help Adroll “step on the gas pedal,” by expanding and opening new offices in the U.S. and overseas.

While the industry has traditionally focused on retail, he said, they see big opportunities in expanding retargeting for movies, gaming, sporting events and business-to-business marketing.

In entertainment, he said, gaming companies are leading the pack by targeting ads for new titles to people who have purchased other games. But he said he expects activity to pick up among other traditional entertainment verticals, like movie studios. Right now, he said, less than half of the company’s roughly 5,000 customers are not retail companies.

If a person watches a trailer of movie at one point in time, the studio could target them again later when the movie has hit the theaters to prompt them to buy tickets.

“These companies have the opportunity to make the promotion of new releases much more targeted, and also sustain a more engaging conversation with die-hard fans of a specific movie franchise,” he said.

As of now, the studios are just scratching the surface of what’s possible, the company said, but it’s a major growth area for the industry and one AdRoll is zeroing in on.

Another vertical the company is eyeing is business-to-business marketing, Bell said.

For businesses trying to reach decision makers who could purchase their services, retargeted ads can make a company look even bigger in the eyes of a potential client, he said.

The company, which said it’s adding 500 new customers a month and growing revenue by double digits every month, is one of Facebook’s partners in its recently-announced real-time bidding exchange. With the new exchange, Facebook will be able to help advertisers target ads to users based on their behavior elsewhere on the Web.

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