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`Chapter 3 - Section 8
`Affiliates and Affiliate Networks
`
`• Affiliate Sites and Networks
`• How the Affiliate Earns
`• Auditing the quality of the Long Tail
`• Figure 3.8.1
`• Tracking Affiliate Activity in third party ad serving
`• Figure 3.8.2
`• The absence of impression tracking
`• Affiliates that grow
`
`This section will look at Affiliate advertising as a channel and put it
`into the context of third party ad serving. Like Search, ad servers
`have a greater role to play in tracking rather than serving the
`physical ads and so the benefits of a marketer, Advertiser and
`Agency using a third party ad server in this space are the same as
`apply to the world of paid and natural search. We will begin by
`describing what Affiliate advertising is before diving into the
`complexity behind the tracking methodologies required and the
`reporting capabilities that this provides. Being a performance
`marketing channel, Advertisers which are considered to be Direct
`response Advertisers are more common users of the Affiliate
`Channel than those seeking to do big branding exercises. This is
`because Affiliate activity at scale can be a cost effective method
`to drive sales and other conversion activities (see Chapter 4).
`
`Affiliate Sites and Networks
`The landscape of Affiliate advertising as a digital marketing
`channel is made up of two core entities: the Affiliates websites
`and the Affiliate networks which house them. Typically speaking
`the Affiliate network supplies the digital creative (core images and
`* .swf files) and click trackers to a mass of Affiliate websites.
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`Large Advertisers, particularly in the gambling and online
`retail verticals, have their own Affiliate programs so do not
`always utilize Affiliate networks. Instead act as the network
`themselves by storing the creative and distributing the click
`trackers. In doing so, the Advertiser takes on the
`responsibility to provide the Affiliate websites with their
`reporting data.
`
`Affiliate sites go on to earn a commission when users click the
`affiliate links and purchase on the Advertiser site right away or
`within a given time frame. It is in the best interest of the network
`to drive traffic that will end with a purchase, so often the Network
`will encourage affiliates to use the context of their digital
`publications to incentivize the user to click on the ad. Typically
`speaking eighty per cent of all traffic is generated by Affiliates that
`offer an incentive scheme. That is that they offer a discount, a
`general offer with money off, or some other type of monetary
`incentive such as virtual points. The remaining twenty per cent of
`Affiliates tend to keep themselves content focused such that the
`already niche nature of their websites utilizes the SEO framework
`of the site design, and this in itself attracts users. The user
`searches a relevant term in the search engine, finds the Affiliate
`site perhaps halfway down the page of the search results and
`clicks to the Affiliate site. Here they find content of interest and a
`contextually relevant ad, which drives a click and potentially a
`sale.
`
`How the Affiliate Earns
`Networks such as Trade Doubler and Commission Junction have
`gradually attracted the attention of smaller Publisher sites that
`sign up to the network to become Affiliates. Within the interface
`supplied by the network, the website manager (for the now
`Affiliate website) browses the ads available to the Affiliates on the
`network and enrolls in the campaign. Enrollment releases the
`ability for the Affiliate to implant the ad on the site. Clicks on the
`ad are usually counted by the Affiliate network and are displayed
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`in that interface alongside attributed conversions (see Chapter 4)
`so that Affiliates can determine their daily revenues. This method
`does not work for all small Publishers, since the Publisher is
`essentially displaying the ads for free and only getting paid when
`the user clicks or performs a conversion activity after clicking. This
`can result in the Publisher giving away millions of impressions for
`free with no return for the use of the ad space.
`
`Auditing the quality of the Long Tail
`It can be very hard for a Network and Advertiser to audit these
`small Publisher sites on a continual basis, which can result in some
`negative consequences for brand image. Generally speaking an
`Affiliate site will be tailored towards the purchase activity and
`therefore will tend to abide by an Advertiser's branding
`regulations which should be supplied by the Network in the
`enrollment phase. This lack of control has put some Advertisers
`off of using affiliates but new developments in verification
`reporting in the third party ad server are likely to remedy this over
`the next few years (see Chapter 5 - Ad Verification).
`
`Without using technology solutions there are checks that can be
`done on the Affiliate sites simply using the operational headcount
`available either at the Media Agency, the Affiliate network or on
`the Advertiser's marketing team. There are two processes for
`policing: "Affiliate Auditing" & "Affiliate Screening"- both of which
`would be outlined to the Affiliate in the enrollment phase.
`
`Auditing is usually a quarterly process that involves looking over
`every individual ad that is being shown across all sites and
`checking copy and ad position to see that it aligns to the
`Advertiser's branding regulations.
`
`Screening is a process of accepting or declining affiliates who
`apply to join the program. The advertiser or affiliate network can
`decide which affiliate is good enough to join the campaign and
`thus can stop low quality sites from enrolling.
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`to ensure that a conversion tag is generated and is implemented
`on the Advertiser site in the right place (more on this in Chapter
`4).
`
`The absence of impression tracking
`Advertisers do not use the impression portion of the ad tag in
`their Affiliate activity because the affiliate program is usually
`opened up to an unknown number of Affiliates, who will deliver
`an unknown quantity of impressions of the ad in order to get
`clicks or conversion events. Affiliates are commonly asked to
`house the creative or images on their own servers so that even
`the Affiliate network is not burdened with serving the actual
`creative. If the impression portion was used or the ad served, the
`ad serving costs to the Advertiser could be astronomical since it is
`a very broad base of long tail Publishers driving the traffic to the
`Advertiser site. It would also be very difficult to contact all the
`Affiliate sites to ask them to take down their impression pixels to
`cease ad serving entirely. For this reason is not effective for brand
`advertiser to use the Affiliate channel for brand activrty since
`clicks and conversions alone are not a good representation of true
`reach and frequency (see Chapter 5 - Reporting).
`
`Affiliates that grow
`Affiliate activity does not just consist of small Publisher sites.
`Affiliation is a very clever and complex dynamic of shrewd
`Publishers that use very innovative site designs in order to drive
`user traffic to Advertiser sites for the purpose of purchase. All
`such Affiliates start out small but their content is arranged in a
`method that attracts high volumes of traffic. These affiliates are
`sometimes referred to as "Aggregator's" and often break away
`from Affiliate Networks to become large Publishers in their own
`right, attracting Advertisers and Agencies to spend with them
`directly.
`
`Just as with Search activity, the Advertiser or Agency will just end
`up paying the ad serving provider based on the click activity. To
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`conclude this chapter we will turn now to the outlying channels of
`Digital Advertising. From an ad serving perspective there are a
`number of restrictions placed on these channels which severely
`limit the existing tracking and serving capabilities of ad serving
`technology. Such restrictions exist not because the Advertisers do
`not want to track their activity but that Publisher-side
`technologies place restrictions on the ability for a true
`independent audit to occur. These channels will continue to suffer
`from funding problems unless the Publishers open the doors, and
`offer greater transparency and a hand of integrity to those with
`the marketing budget to spend across a wide reach of channels.
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`Chapter 3 - Section 9
`Email, in-game and Social
`
`• Permission Marketing
`• Figure 3.9.1
`• Sending Emails on Mass
`• Email Marketing advertising metrics
`• Third party ad server tracking for Email
`In-game and digital outdoor tracking
`•
`• Social Media tracking
`• Figure 3.9.2
`• The versatility of tracking pixels
`
`This section rounds up the email, in-game and social channels for
`digital advertising. These channels are not small channels by any
`stretch of the imagination, they get a lot of user attention and
`vast volumes of internet traffic through them every waking
`moment of the day. However when trying to use third party ad
`serving as eyes across all media buys, these channels are outliers
`and for one reason or another limit the amount of tracking and
`serving that can be done. Thankfully the meagre technology of
`tracking pixels and click trackers allows a very independent eye on
`delivery and click activity, but beyond this Advertisers are
`essentially blind and must submit to Publisher reporting at the
`very best.
`
`Email advertising is an old channel in the world of digital
`advertising. Few Advertisers extend their budget to cover it
`beyond their own existing user base but if it is a traffic driver to an
`Advertiser site, users need to at least be tracked for the email
`channel to appear in the ad server reporting. In-game is classed as
`standalone software either on a PC or secondary device including
`console. Along with Email, In-game as a channel suffers the same
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`setbacks as trying to track activities with applications for Mobile
`advertising. Lastly we will look at social: a dominator in the world
`of content production but very slow to monetize their properties.
`Social networks continue to keep their networks locked down to
`third party ad serving which seems daft, given that it shuts off
`potential revenue in favour of less transparency for the Advertiser
`only adding to the speculation that social may not be as effective
`for Advertisers as initially thought.
`
`Permission Marketing
`Email advertising gets a bad rap because Advertisers believe that
`email advertising is synonymous to Spam. Strictly speaking the
`difference between email marketing and spam is that the user has
`provided consent to be sent emails from a third party versus
`being delivered unsolicited mail. The difficulty with presenting
`email marketing as a fruitful channel for Advertisers is that the
`methods to obtain consent for email marketing are lumped into
`small illegible boxes as a condition to access a service. With such
`methods the consent is provided but the user never really wanted
`to receive advertising from a third party.
`
`Email advertising falls into two broad categories: emails that are
`single page adverts, and monthly subscribed emails from a
`Publisher directly with ad space around the sides or embedded
`among the content. To receive either of these two forms of email
`advertising, a user must sign up to the service and opt in to
`receive messages from third parties. The strict opt in
`requirements demanded by regulators such as the OMA (Direct
`Marketing Association) in the UK mean that the email advertising
`channel is sometimes known as "Permission Marketing" a phrase
`also coined by the author Seth Godin.
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`better results than standard display - See Chapter 4). In order for
`a Publisher to send thousands of emails they either use their own
`list or buy one in from a data provider such as Axiom. As such the
`list of emails becomes the property of the Publisher for a given
`period of time and it is their responsibility to act in accordance to
`the wishes of the Advertiser, the user and the original list owner.
`
`Email list quality is a huge factor determining the success of a
`campaign and it essential that addresses are cleaned regularly by
`the database owner to ensure that any addresses requesting an
`unsubscribe or where a "bounce back" is occurring, are removed.
`To send thousands of emails, a Publisher needs to use a mass
`email delivery system such as Email Vision. The list is simply
`uploaded to the delivery platform, the HTML email compiled, and
`then sent as an email over a given period of delivery. To be
`certain the emails are not blocked, the Publisher needs to be sure
`they are sending from a whitelisted IP address. They can work
`with the email delivery platform and major Publishers like MSN or
`Yahoo! to check that the IP is not on a blacklist where other spam
`email sender addresses are blocked. Here, the email provider is
`acting as the gate-keeper for what can and cannot be loaded into
`emails. If an IP address is deemed dangerous, links or images can
`be blocked and in some instances emails can end up in junk mail
`folders.
`
`Email Marketing advertising metrics
`An email delivery platform can measure four core metrics.
`
`1. Open rate, detecting how many of the emails sent were
`viewed in the main reading pane of the email program or
`web-based application.
`
`2. Click through rate (CTR) for the subsequent clickable areas
`or URLs embedded in the email.
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`3. Bounce rate (i.e. the number of emails that were never
`delivered to inboxes because they received a bounce(cid:173)
`back). These email i:3ddresses are sent back to the list
`owner after the campaign ends to investigate to see if they
`are now wholly inactive.
`
`4. Unsubscribe rate; needless to say a high unsubscribe rate
`following the launch of an email campaign, is a storm
`cloud that neither Advertiser no Publisher wishes for. The
`user that clicks the unsubscribe button, which should
`appear at the bottom of every Publisher-owned email, will
`be removed from the original list (which will either be
`Publisher owned or hired).
`
`Third Party ad server tracking for Email
`Connecting the third party ad server to the email marketing
`channel is important to ensure that this channel is independently
`tracked and that the email channel is considered as an influence
`in the user's pathway to conversion (see Chapter 4).
`
`The trafficker in the third party ad serving interface would look on
`the media plan and might see a Publishers name followed by a
`mention of the name of a newsletter. This same reference would
`need to be included in the third party ad serving site list. The
`traffickers selects this as a site and generates a lxlpixels and click
`trackers and sends these on to the Publisher ad operations team
`to ensure they embed them into the email creative. True third
`party ad serving (even of images inside emails) is never
`undertaken. More often than not, the impression tracker is also
`wholly abandoned and only the click tracker is implemented.
`Here, the email provider is considering the third party ad servers
`IP address to belong to a blacklist because there is such a wide
`usage of the IP across millions of other emails at some point in the
`past. This means that pixel never loads and therefore never
`records an impression.
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`In addition not all email provider interfaces are setup to receive
`emails that can render images properly. Those that are not 'HTML
`friendly' will render a text-only version of the email. In such a
`delivery the image pixel would never load but the user may
`choose to click through via the supplied link, which would route
`through the third party ad server before landing the user on the
`landing page.
`
`Due to the simple nature of email and email delivery there is no
`possibility of recording dwell rates or interaction rates, but
`conversion tracking is possible so long as the click trackers are in
`place on the email creative (more in Chapter 4).
`
`I
`
`Email lists have evolved significantly in recent years.
`Formerly they were large databases of Publisher owned data
`about users where users were recognised by an email
`address collected with their permission. Now list owners and
`Publishers have gone a step further and logged the cookielD
`of the users using first party cookie information and have
`also labelled up the users into audience types by logging
`their interests based on what they are being exposed to and
`what they are clicking on. Rather than sell these databases
`to Advertiser's as email lists, they are now being sold as
`sources of data to be inserted into DSP's and DMP's to
`improve programmatic buying and trading (see Chapter 8).
`
`In-game and digital outdoor tracking
`Despite the promise of mass in-game advertising, high reach
`games remain a premium offering to players and therefore
`advertising rarely has much impact in this space. In game ads
`would deliver creative to an online game via a feed (such as an
`XML feed). The same is true of digital outdoor advertising as well
`(content can be kept regularly up to date via an XML feed) but the
`nature of the games console and standalone gaming applications
`outside of the browser, mean that the third party ad serving
`cookies cannot be dropped. This hinders the ability for Advertisers
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`to establish how much value the game environment really
`provides to the overall cross-channel ad campaign. Until such time
`as in-game cookies are dropped and can easily be matched with
`those of the ad server; there is less strength in running such
`campaigns as the impact of the creative itself in the context of a
`multi-channel campaign is lost. There may be some hope in
`second screen audio watermarking technologies but at time of
`writing, nothing scalable has come onto the market.
`
`Social Media tracking
`Digital advertising through social channels is still in its infancy and
`as yet the link between third party ad serving and these
`environments is rather tentative. Social media in the context of
`Digital Advertising can be divided up into three parts:
`
`1. The mass advertising that appears on the right side of the
`page for Facebook. This is managed by an advertising
`exchange program called FBX (see Chapter 8). This scaled
`technology is much more closely aligned to the world of Paid
`Search than that of display advertising.
`
`2. Ads that appear in the user feed. These ad spots are
`technically unlimited and depend on the user engagement
`with the private feed. Ads are purposed from content on fan
`pages or elsewhere on the web but have limited engagement
`capabilities.
`
`3. The home of the Advertiser on the social network. In the case
`of Facebook, this is the fan page, where is has been
`notoriously challenging to embed tracking and tagging
`technologies such as conversion tags (see Chapter 4).
`Meanwhile 'tweets' and 'likes'; the measures of user
`engagement endorsed by the social networks Twitter and
`Facebook, do not pass this information back to the third party
`ad server using any reserved method (so officially the metrics
`are not supported by third party ad servers).
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`The versatility of tracking pixels
`It is clear that tracking pixels and click trackers are very versatile
`technologies and allow for tracking in a variety of channels
`including a majority of the newest channels available to
`Advertisers. The concern with pawning out a vast quality of
`trackers and not conducting full ad serving is that there is only the
`confirmation that a pixel was ever delivered on a site and that a
`click was instigated. There is no proof as such that the true ad was
`delivered or who saw it. Publishers that today only accept tracking
`pixels will need to go a step further and provide greater
`transparency to third party ad servers and technology providers if
`they are to attract full investment from Advertisers with big
`budgets.
`
`This concludes the Channel by Channel campaign setup chapter of
`this book. We have gone meticulously through the work of the
`trafficker in the setup of ad campaigns via the third party ad
`serving interface, from Display, Rich Media, DCO, lnstream Video
`and Mobile, to Paid Search, Natural Search, Affiliates, Email and
`the Social channel. But the campaign setup for all channels by the
`trafficker is only complete when the trafficker generates not just
`the ad tags but also the conversion tags. The next Chapter looks in
`depth at the importance of Conversion Tags and how the
`trafficker uses the concept of conversion attribution to discern
`the optimum targeting and audience settings available in the
`campaign setup.
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`Chapter 4
`
`Attribution and Audiences
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`Chapter 4 - Section 1
`Conversion tags and Attribution
`
`• What are conversions?
`o Figure 4.1
`• Where to place the conversion tag?
`o Figure 4.1.1
`• Where to have conversion tags (table)
`• CPA
`• Conversion tag types - Sales Vs. Counter Tags
`o Figure 4.1.2
`• Extended data/Extended Parameters
`• Figure 4.1.3
`• Figure 4.1.4
`• How do you test conversions?
`• Conversion Tag Functionality - Piggybacking
`o Container Tags
`o Certified container tag providers
`o Which conversion tag fires first?
`o Selective Pinging
`o Figure 4.1.5
`o Piggybacking with Extended data
`o Figure 4.1.6
`• Conversion Tag Functionality - Conversion Windows
`o Window Settings
`o Post-impression and Post-click windows
`o Long and short conversion windows
`o Shadow Tagging
`o Reporting on Conversions
`o Repeat Conversion Windows
`• Conversion Tag Functionality - Attribution Modelling
`• Figure 4.1.7
`• Attribution Settings
`• Engagement Mapping
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`• Figure 4.1.8
`• Custom Attribution Modelling
`• Challenges in implementing conversion tags
`• Tag Management Solutions
`• Figure 4.1.9
`• Universal Tagging Security
`
`In Chapter 3 we explored the campaign setup channel but all the
`efforts of the trafficker come down to one question for the
`marketer: What is the goal of the advertising campaign? What
`does success look like? For big brand clients the goal is usually to a
`get message out to a target audience, to build awareness and
`brand affinity but the ultimate goal (as is the goal with more
`direct response style Advertisers) is to drive sales. This section will
`go into technical detail about "conversion tags"; a technology that
`can be used not just for measuring sales but also events that
`might be deemed a goal for the marketing team. Beyond this it is
`important to establish exactly what activity drove the use to a
`conversion; untangling all of their marketing engagements with an
`Advertiser to establish how to attribute the conversion to a paid(cid:173)
`for activity.
`
`What are conversions?
`It's all very well measuring the delivery of ads and collecting
`information about how many unique users saw and clicked ads
`but the vast majority of Advertisers want to know how many
`users then landed on their website and how many went on to buy
`a good or service. This can be ascertained by monitoring the
`traffic driven directly to the purchase pages of the Advertiser
`website.
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`Conversions by definition vary by vertical. Here are some
`examples of uses for the conversion tag:
`
`• Automotive - Tracking Brochure requests or test drive
`sign-ups
`• CPG/FMCG - Tracking sample requests or coupon
`downloads
`• Retail - Tracking sales through the site or clicks to the
`sales phone line
`• Entertainment - Sales through to ticket purchase or local
`cinema listings
`• Finance - Leads generated through Insurance quotes
`• Telco - Form completion for a free SIM card
`
`A conversion tag is a piece of JavaScript code; generated inside
`the third party ad server interface by the trafficker which is sent
`to the site management team of the Advertiser website to upload
`into the source code of the page. The trafficker can output the
`conversion tag in various formats (such as iframe Vs. JavaScript)
`depending on what is easiest for the Advertiser's website
`management team to implement.
`
`Once implemented on the page, the conversion tag will allow the
`Advertiser to watch for incoming traffic and recognise it as
`originating from a third party served or tracked ad. The tag, once
`present on the webpage can recognise the difference between
`ad-driven traffic to itself which is called is a "Conversion", and
`non-ad driven traffic (which carries various names depending on
`which technology is being used; the Atlas third party ad server
`calls this an "Action").
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`Figure 4.1 Conversions detect for the oresence of an existing third
`purty ad serving cookie on a user's brow5er. This will have been
`dropped onto the user's browser by the delivery of an ad that the
`user would have encountered previously. The conversion tag then
`passes the cookie!D to ad server reporting when it loads on the
`Advertiser site to allow ad server reporting to place the conversion
`event, marked with a timestamp to the cookie!D in cookie fevd
`data. In aggregated reporting the Publisher which featured the ad
`would show a singie conversion. In comparison if a user visits the
`Advertiser site directly, having not previously encountered an ad
`or having deleted their cookies, v-.1ill still tngger the conversion tag
`on the page. This conversion tag will update the ad ser✓er
`reporting with on action instead of a conversion. This will add a
`record to the conversions and actions database in the ad server
`and not be marked or any cookie level data against any existing
`cookie!D.
`
`Once the "conversion tag" (also called a "Spotlight tag" in
`DoubleC/ick or an "Action tag" in Atlas) is generated and placed on
`a page it begins to work, feeding conversion and action
`information back to the third party ad server. It does this by
`looking to the users browser when they arrive on the page and
`once the tag code renders, seeks a cookie belonging to the third
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`party ad server; a cookie which would have been dropped by a
`third party ad server via an ad in the past.
`
`If the conversion tag finds a cookie; the ad server matches the
`cookie ID to the action of the conversion tag firing and in the ad
`server database adds a new row to a master table, to represent
`that the conversion occurred, when it occurred and which cookie
`it occurred on. If no cookie is found, the ad server still makes a log
`that the conversion tag was triggered and at what time, labelling
`it as an Action.
`
`Where to place the conversion tag?
`The Advertiser is advised to place a conversion tag on whatever
`pages relevant to measure the success of the campaign. Put a
`conversion tag on a landing page and the ad server can measure
`the number of users that got through to the Advertiser site. Place
`one deeper on the pathway to an actual purchase, such as the
`basket page, and more information is gleaned such as "drop-off
`rate" which indicates how many users are not making the journey
`all the way through to a purchase.
`
`The most useful position for a conversion tag is on the
`"confirmation" or "thank you" page of an e-commerce site. When
`a user triggers the conversion tag on the confirmation page; the
`Advertiser knows that the user has purchased; a purchase which
`can be attributed back to the ad which drove the user to the site
`in the first place. It is imperative therefore that each conversion
`tag is unique to its page 'type'; placing a conversion tag on a
`landing page and then duplicating the code to use on a
`confirmation page will skew results. This is because the arrival on
`the two different page types could be counted as marketing
`success goals but they need to be segregated since an arrival is a
`less valuable "conversion event" than a purchase.
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`The pages on the Advertiser site soon become markers in the
`marketing funnel for the ad campaign as users arrive to the site.
`Those that drop off at product pages are conducting research.
`Those that drop off at the basket page are closer to the buying
`decision. This progress should be reflected in the naming
`convention adopted by the trafficker when the conversion tags
`are created so that it is much clearer in reporting how valuable
`certain conversion events are.
`
`Conversion tags are also useful in other locations:
`
`I Where to ! Why it is useful
`
`have 1
`conversion I
`
`tags
`
`I
`Within ads
`
`Why it may not be
`possible
`
`Conversion tags can be used
`If the landing page
`to carry retargeting tags
`is not accessible,
`and if these are fired in
`the click within the
`locations on Publisher
`ad can be used to
`trigger a conversion pages then there is the
`opportunity for an
`tag.
`Advertiser to build a cookie
`pool from the Publisher's
`If the conversion
`audience (see Chapter 7 -
`event is to fill in a
`form: the form can Retargeting) . This is a
`exist in the ad itself I condemned practice called
`and the submission Publisher Data Leakage and
`: of the form can
`should be avoided to
`! trigger a conversion maintain good relationships
`; tag.
`with the Publishers.
`T Bran~ ~dv~~is~~~ I Facebook and- Youtube (at I
`I in particular drive
`
`time of publication) do not
`allow third party conversion
`tags on th. eir prop~rties.
`
`t traffic to Facebook
`fan pages or
`Youtube pages.
`
`340
`
`I
`i (On Adve_rt_is_e_r _______ _1. Advertiser,:.. wi ~ have to
`
`Facebook Fan
`Page or
`Youtube
`Channel page
`
`341
`
`

`

`Ad Serving Technology
`
`I
`A conversion tag
`'properties'
`I here would show
`outside of the
`Advertiser site) 1 the value of the
`I
`Publishers and ads
`I
`driving the traffic.
`Amazon or E(cid:173)
`Retailer or
`Supermarket
`sites
`
`7
`FMCG, CPG,
`Electronics and
`supermarket sites (at time
`Telco Advertisers in of publication) do not allow
`third party conversion tags
`particular allow
`
`work hard to demonstrate
`the importance of these
`technologies to these big
`Publishers in order to have
`conversion tags placed.
`
`I Amazon and large
`I users to purchase I on their properties.
`
`Advertisers will have to
`work hard to demonstrate
`the importance of these
`technologies to these big
`Publishers in order to have
`I show how many
`' which ads are
`conversion tags placed in
`I basket and thank you
`: pages.
`I driving those sales. I
`··• __ L_
`_ _ _ .J. ___ _______ ·- -
`
`their products via
`other on line sites.
`
`Conversion tags on
`these sites will
`
`sales are being
`; generated and
`
`.
`
`(On alternative
`purchase
`locations)
`
`I
`
`L
`
`CPA
`The success of a campaign can be measured by the number of
`completed conversions but in addition the actual sales can act as
`a trigger to paying the Publishers. A CPA is a cost model that
`agrees that the Advertiser pay outs a percentage of the value of
`the final sale to the Publisher that drove the user to the
`confirmation page. In return the Publisher delivers however many
`impressions, and thus provides however much inventory will be
`required to meet the income goal returned through the
`conversions.
`
`As an example: an Advertiser might need to sell ten thousand
`suits and have an Advertising budget of £100,000 to do this, but
`approaching a Publisher site, finds that the CPM is £1. This would
`mean that every tenth user that sees the suit ad would need to
`buy the suit through the website. The Advertiser might know that
`
`341
`
`342
`
`

`

`Gregory Cristal
`
`the likelihood of this happening is very small; a conversion is more
`likely to work for one user in a hundred than one in ten. The
`advertiser could negotiate with the Publisher to agree instead to
`pay on a CPA of £1. This way the budget is used to sell all ten
`thousand suits and the cost is lower for the Advertiser.
`
`Clearly CPA does not work for every Publisher. but will work for
`Publishers displaying ads to niche audiences for high cost
`purchases. In such an example the CPA can return more revenue
`than a CPM.
`
`If an Advertiser site contains more than one product for sale, the
`conversion tag can be used to work out which product was
`actually purchased and how much it cost:
`
`Conversion