Performance Marketing Guide 2015: Display Marketing

Performance Marketing
Guide 2015

Welcome to PerformanceIN’s
flagship educational resource; the
Performance Marketing Guide 2015.
Collating the guidance of industry-leading authorities, the following 150
pages promise a series of masterclasses covering all sectors in the rapidly
evolving performance marketing industry. Yet again, this is an area of
marketing that thrives on a culture of exchanged knowledge, ideas and
skillsets.
This guide will serve as a resource not only for those looking to brush up on
existing knowledge, but as a starting point for newcomers in the industry,
and those looking to advance into other fields in the coming year.
Finally, I’d like to extend a big thank you to all those who contributed making
this fourth annual guide more detailed and insightful than ever.
Chris Johnson, Head of Publishing, PerformanceIN
chris@performancein.com | +44(0)117 203 3012
Contact & Advertising
Content Enquiries: content@performancein.com
Advertising Enquiries: advertising@performancein.com
Postal Address: PerformanceIN, 7.17 7.18 Deco Building,
Paintworks, Bath Road, Bristol, UK BS4 3EA
Presented by
Contents
003 Display Marketing
031 Search Marketing
045 Content Marketing
056 Mobile Marketing
067 Social Advertising
076 Agile Commerce
080 Affiliate Marketing
102 Email Marketing
109 Industry Best Practice
124 Technology
143 Data Analytics
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Display Marketing
Contributed by
The PPC People

Presented by © Copyright PerformanceIN 2015 – All rights reserved. PerformanceIN grants you permission to store
and print from this material for your own personal and commercial use. No part of this publication may
be reproduced without prior permission from the publisher.
4
Display
Overview
Digital advertising has become a core part of the marketing channel mix for many
advertisers. Consumers are spending an increasing amount of time online across a plethora
of connected devices, providing ample opportunities for engagement with advertisers. It is
forecasted that over 50% of the £15.7 billion spent on advertising in the UK this year will be
allocated to digital, outspending all other traditional marketing channels combined.
Out of all the digital advertising channels, online display has seen the fastest growth over the
past two years, with mobile contributing considerably to its success. Within the UK alone,
online display advertising is forecasted to grow by 20% in 2015, to approximately £2.7 billion
- 39% of which will be allocated to mobile display advertising.
Display has come a long way since the 1990s when it first became prominent in the
advertising world. Today, online display spans across desktop and mobile websites, mobile
apps, and video platforms. Online display ad technologies and techniques are far more
sophisticated than anything we’ve seen in the past two decades, offering more effective
advertising opportunities than ever before.
In its ability to build brand awareness and gain direct response results, online display
advertising has become an integral part of online marketing as a whole. It offers advertisers
a unique full-funnel view of the consumer that no other form of advertising can boast on its
own. But as display advertising expands further, so too does its complexity. The following
entry will explain how advertisers go about cutting through the confusion to maximise the
opportunities on offer.
What is display advertising?
Display advertising, at its core, is the purchasing of inventory from publishers to deliver an
impression of the advertisers’ creative banner to the user.
Inventory is the advertising space available for purchase by the advertiser.

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Publishers are the website or mobile application owners who offer the advertising space.
Impression is a single appearance of the advertisers’ creative banner on a website. Display
ads are usually purchased in a bundle of a thousand, also known as cost per mille (CPM).
Creative banners, also known as ‘creatives’, are the advertiser’s graphic advertisements.
The IAB sets the standard for universal advertisement sizes, which has the multiple purpose
unit at 300x250 pixels, the leaderboard at 728x90 pixels and the skyscraper at 160x600
pixels. These three sizes are the most popular across the internet, but there are also a range
of engaging rich media ads that incorporate video, audio, animation and interactivity.
Methods to purchase inventory
There are four different purchasing methods for display inventory. There are two buying
techniques, traditional or programmatic, and each method can be used to purchase
inventory through direct or indirect channels. The chart below explains how these techniques
and channels are paired together to purchase inventory.

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Where to purchase
Unless purchasing inventory directly from a publisher, the display advertising ecosystem
involves numerous business types in the supply and subsequent purchase of advertising
inventory.
Agency – Agencies offer a full campaign management service to brands including, planning,
creation, buying and tracking.
Trading desk – These are service-based organisations that manage an advertiser’s
programmatic, bid-based media and audience buying. These will often integrate with
demand-side platforms (DSPs) and work as the agency’s centre of intelligence.
Ad network – These companies represent multiple publishers’ inventory and forge
relationships with advertisers and agencies to sell media on those websites. They act as
sales rep between both parties and sell aggregated inventory at fixed prices.
Ad exchanges – Like ad networks, ad exchanges allow multiple publishers to sell media on
their websites. However, the difference is that ad exchanges auction off their inventory on an
impression-by-impression basis.
Supply-side platform (SSP) – These are advertising technology platforms representing
publishers and their inventory. SSPs allow publishers to optimise and automate their
inventory to be sold to advertisers. They have three primary functions for publishers: (1)
unsold inventory can be made available to multiple ad exchanges and ad networks at once;
(2) they can easily manage the complex relationships between multiple buyers; (3) they
provide tools and reports for use by the publisher.
Demand-side platform (DSP) – These are advertising technology platforms representing
the advertisers and their purchasing needs. DSPs use real-time bidding to purchase
audiences as well as specific website inventory. DSPs offer the ability to purchase
advertisements on multiple ad exchanges and everything becomes centralised including
targeting, data, optimisation, reporting and bidding.

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Data-management platform (DMP) – These provide marketers and agencies with a
centralised view of all their audience data, while helping them manage and analyse data to
create a target audience.
Targeting methods
Knowing your audience is a fundamental principle of marketing. That knowledge can then be
used to deliver a relevant marketing message to the right person, at the right place, and at
the right time. Online display advertising is supported by sophisticated user data and
targeting technologies. By pairing multiple targeting methods together, an advertiser can
create a granular targeting approach that improves the efficiency and effectiveness of their
advertising spend.
Audience targeting can be refined through the following methods:
Demographic targeting - Based on user data such as gender, age, and browser language.
Geographic targeting - Using the computer’s IP address to determine a user’s location, an
advertiser can target by country, city and even postcode.
Keyword and content - Targeting focuses on web pages and applications that contain
chosen keywords or content types such as sports, games or travel.
Time targeting - Allows advertisers to show ads at selected dates and times.
Frequency Capping - Dictates how many times a day your ad is seen by an individual user.
As well as the above, behavioural targeting tracks previous user behaviour data including
searches made, website pages viewed and advertisements clicked. Using this information,
advertisers can then deliver relevant ads to users who have recently shown an interest in
products similar to the ones they are selling. Behavioural data can come from first-party or
third-party sources. First-party data is information that is owned by the brand. This can be
gathered through multiple methods but a primary source is retargeting lists. Third-party data
is attached to companies such as eXelate and Bluekai, who gather and sell data insights.
Measuring success
The first step to planning a successful display campaign is to determine clear objectives. An
advertiser must then determine which key performance indicators (KPIs) will help them to

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measure the success of the campaign. When tracking KPIs, advertisers usually focus on the
average cost of achieving an outcome.
The most popular metrics for measuring success include cost per click (CPC), cost per
action (CPC) cost per conversion (CPA), cost per view (CPV), cost per download (CPD) and
cost per lead (CPL). With clearly measured KPIs and well-defined objectives in place,
advertisers can better optimise their online display advertising campaigns more effectively to
achieve maximum performance.
Conclusion
For many of us, it appears the more sophisticated display advertising becomes, the more
confusing its landscape is. Over the next few years online display advertising is going to
continue to grow, but with its growth will duly come a demand for a simplification in the
exchange process.

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Behavioural Retargeting
Competition in online display advertising is at an all-time high. As online display advertising
spend continues to increase, programmatic real-time bidding allows marketers to reach
consumers more easily than ever before. The saturation of the online display advertising
market means that advertisers need to stay ahead of the competition by creating relevant
adverts with personalised messaging. The more targeted and relevant the adverts are to the
consumer, the higher the engagement rate and ROI will be.
In the past few years, marketers have watched as digital targeting capabilities have become
so sophisticated and granular that adverts can be delivered to relevant target audiences with
pinpoint accuracy. With the help of first-party and third-party data, we can now reach the
right consumers at the right time, the right place, and with the right messaging.
Upon visiting a website for the first time, it is rare for a consumer to convert to sale
immediately. In fact, it is only a modicum who will convert during the first visit. Granular
targeting techniques are used by many marketers to increase brand awareness and garner
higher engagement from relevant audiences, whereas behavioural retargeting is the most
effective way of turning window-shoppers into buyers. Behavioural retargeting works to
recapture those who have left a website without converting, increasing advertiser ROI and
customer satisfaction.
What is behavioural retargeting?
Behavioural retargeting creates a more personalised approach than traditional retargeting
methods. In traditional remarketing, when a consumer abandons a website, they can be
identified across the internet and shown adverts that encourage them to return. While this is
an effective way to increase conversion rates, behavioural retargeting takes it up a notch by
creating a personalised user experience.
First-party data collection is an integral part of behavioural retargeting and can easily be
collected with the use of a Java Script code added to the website. The data collected
represents the consumer’s behaviour whilst on the website, capturing the items they have
viewed, products placed inside the shopping cart and, of course, whether they completed

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that purchase. Subsequently advertisements can then be tailored specifically to the items or
pages they have shown the most interest in.
With today’s technology, advertisers no longer have to build individual creatives for each
product or page they wish to retarget to consumers. Dynamic creatives use product data
feeds to update ad creatives in real time according to the first-party data associated with a
user. Not only does this save time and money but it also delivers highly targeted and
relevant ads. In fact, dynamic creatives are so smart that they can retarget a consumer, for
example, with accessories to a smartphone that they just purchased, or suggest similar
products to a dress that they were just viewing.
Due to its positive impact on conversion rate, behavioural retargeting is often a key
component to any successful display campaign. This is why it is a primary strategy for
performance display campaigns which focus on reaching specific advertiser objectives -
usually cost per acquisition goals. The most common use of behavioural retargeting in
performance display campaigns is to show consumers items that they have viewed the most
or items that have been abandoned in the basket. This ensures increased click-through rates
and conversions as the consumer has indicated a higher propensity to purchase.
Why it’s important
Highly relevant and personal targeting – By being relevant and targeted, advertisers are
able to reach the right consumer at the right place and at the right time. This ultimately
lowers acquisition costs, reduces traffic wastage and increases ROI.
Convert lost sales – No advertiser wants to lose a sale. With first-party data tracking, an
advertiser is aware of which user has abandoned items in their basket or dropped out part
way through the purchasing process. When paired with behavioural retargeting, this data
helps to deliver personalised messaging to those consumers that will entice them to come
back and finish their purchase.
Cross-selling and up-selling – Probably one of the most beneficial uses for behavioural
retargeting, cross-selling and up-selling techniques target users who have already
purchased from the website with products that are similar or relevant to previous purchases.

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Maintain consumer relationships – Behavioural retargeting allows advertisers to stay front
of mind with consumers who have visited their website, even after they have left.
Best practices and strategies
Segment your visitors – Create highly personal adverts by segmenting website visitors into
groups with similar attributes. A fashion retailer may want to create a group for users who
had shown an interest in women’s fashion in order to retarget them during sales and
promotions.
Call to action – For higher performance, include a call-to-action and consider adding a
promotion. This prompts the consumer to return for an item they are already interested in,
while the promotion entices them to purchase it with more urgency.
Consider time to conversion – Depending on the product or service, the time to
conversion will differ greatly. By knowing how typical consumers research throughout their
conversion path, advertisers can retarget them more effectively.
Don’t forget to target – Granular targeting solutions such as contextual and demographic
can be layered on top of behavioural retargeting and are worth serious consideration. For
instance, keyword and content targeting will help prevent an advertiser from appearing on a
website that may harm their brand. There will be some websites that users visit that an
advertiser does not want to be associated with.
Don’t be afraid to retarget converters – For retailers who offer products that are
purchased frequently, retargeting converters is a great way to stay top of mind next time they
are looking to purchase. When retargeting converters, understanding the frequency in which
items are purchased is crucial to reducing ad spend wastage. For example, a user who has
purchased perfume is likely to be in the market again within the next 4-6 months, which
would be the prime time to start pushing them behavioural retargeting ads.
Future

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The next step for behavioural retargeting is extending its capabilities across multi-device and
in-store interactions. Currently, the technology for tracking online marketing campaigns
across devices is in its infancy, reliant upon multiple tracking technologies, and shaky at
best. In-store tracking is even less reliable.
This year will see a demand for improving this technology and opening up new opportunities
for retargeting campaigns. Facebook’s DSP, called Atlas, has taken the first steps to making
this a reality. Atlas works by attaching a user ID to Facebook users who are logged into the
social media platform. If a user viewed a pair of shoes on a retailer’s website as they were
logged into Facebook on their desktop, that item can be retargeted to them on their mobile
across the Atlas network and vice versa, but only if logged into Facebook on their mobile
device as well. While Facebook is an extraordinarily large community, it still creates
challenges and limitations for advertisers.
As we begin to see the technology behind retargeting across devices become more
sophisticated, in-store tracking capabilities will also grow more efficient and accurate.
However, advertisers should expect to see in-store to online retargeting in the future. For
example, the ability for advertisers to track what a user has viewed in-store and retarget
them with that item online if they have left without purchasing.
It is a growing trend for many people to be watching two screens at the same time and
advertisers are looking to take advantage of this. Expect behavioural retargeting to not just
be limited to your online devices. Technology is being developed that can allow the device to
listen to what is going on around it. If your mobile device hears a Mazda commercial on the
TV it can then subsequently deliver those Mazda commercials to your phone.
As online display advertising spend increases, technology solutions will become available at
an ever increasing rate. This growth is pushing innovation in the industry and things that we
never thought were possible two years ago are becoming a part of our everyday digital
marketing campaigns.

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Programmatic Real-Time Bidding
Delivering the right ad to the right consumer at the right time is what advertisers strive to
achieve. Programmatic real-time bidding (RTB) has made that concept a reality for brands
by utilising granular data to make faster and smarter decisions.
Over the past few years, programmatic display has continued to increase its share of
advertisers’ digital spend. In fact, global spend on programmatic display advertising was
expected to reach 42% of total display-related advertising spend last year, compared to 33%
in 2013. According to Magna Global, in 2015, money pledged to programmatic advertising
will reach 48% of total display-related advertising spend on a global basis.
However, even with its rapid success and growth, IAB research suggests that 25% of
European marketers are still not aware of programmatic advertising. This is partly owed to
programmatic RTB technology still being in its infancy. As programmatic advertising
continues to grow in popularity, so too will the technology advance and new innovations
occur.
What is programmatic RTB?
While targeting and campaign management technologies have advanced, the principles of
programmatic RTB have stayed fundamentally the same at its core. Advertisers are able to
target individual consumers on an impression-by-impression basis in real time, utilising
relevant consumer data. Each individual display advertising impression is offered, evaluated,
bid for, and purchased in a fraction of a second.
Impressions are purchased by advertisers bidding in a real-time auction. Whether or not an
advertiser bids, and how much they bid for each individual impression is dependent upon an
automated evaluation of the impression’s value to the advertiser based on pre-set targeting
parameters.
In most cases an impression is evaluated by whether or not the audience viewing that
impression matches the parameters the advertiser has set for their target audience. Users
can be identified by overlaying first and third-party data, all in real time. For advertisers, this

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means bidding only on the impressions that are relevant to them at no more than what they
deem an acceptable price.
As a result, programmatic display has revolutionised the way display advertising inventory
can be purchased and increased the performance that advertisers can achieve through
online display advertising.
The importance of programmatic
Scale of the opportunity - With 37 billion impressions available to bid on each day,
advertisers have the opportunity to acquire audiences at scale on a global, national, or local
basis.
Flexibility and measurability - Advertisers can dissect and analyse each display advert
right down to where it was displayed, for how long, and to whom. This means that
campaigns can be quickly reviewed and optimised.
High relevance - Programmatic display delivers advertising in real time, on a one-to-one
basis. This enables advertisers to serve highly specific ad messages which are based on the
individual consumer’s behaviour or profile. This builds a truly customer-centric experience
with a focus on building engagement.
Cost efficiencies - By reaching more qualified consumers with highly targeted messaging,
advertisers can drive higher levels of new customer acquisition and bring back ‘lost’
customers.
Strategies and the purchasing funnel
Programmatic display advertising can be used to promote consumers through the full path to
conversion. The diagram below illustrates the full-funnel approach.

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Advertisers can employ specific marketing strategies and tactics depending on which stage
the consumer is at in the conversion funnel.
Becoming aware
Advertisers use prospecting to create awareness and drive new customer acquisitions by
serving display banners to consumers who have never been to their website before.
The most common prospecting tactic is ‘lookalike’ targeting, where an advertiser targets new
customers who match an existing customer profile.
Third-party customer data can be used by advertisers looking to target specific types of
consumers. For instance, consumers who are interested in buying shoes.
Researching
In the researching or consideration phase, advertisers aim to engage and influence their
target audience. Advertisers will use a number of tactics including contextual and placement
targeting during this process.
Contextual targeting pinpoints audiences who are browsing content on the internet that is
relevant to an advertiser’s brand or product. This enables advertisers to decide what content
they want their ads to appear against. Advertisers can target specific keywords such as
‘outdoor clothing’.

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Placement targeting enables advertisers to choose the individual websites, or specific sub
sections that that they would like their ads to appear on. This enables advertisers to ensure
that their ads appear in places where they know their target audience is most likely to
engage with the creative.
In market
Also known as the ‘purchase’ phase, consumers are now considered eligible to be effectively
sold to. The goal is primarily achieved through remarketing to users who have visited the
advertiser’s website before.
Remarketing enables advertisers to target consumers based on their recent on-site
engagement. Based on historic engagement, advertisers can then remarket to these
consumers with highly specific messages.
For advanced remarketing, advertisers can overlay additional analytics data, such as bounce
rates and number of visits to a website, as well as custom data such as device and location
to better assess the quality of the consumer and thus improve targeting effectiveness.
Steps to setting up a programmatic display campaign
The hardest part of all advertising campaigns is simply getting started. To give your
campaigns the best chance to succeed, here are some of our top tips:
Set clear objectives - Have a clear picture of what you want to achieve from your
programmatic display campaign. Define what key metrics to measure and put in place KPIs.
Research your audience - Develop a customer framework to define your target audience
and consider the types of consumers who may be interested in your product. Use third-party
data sources to understand the internet browsing behaviour of your audience.
Allocate sufficient budget - Ensure you allocate budget to allow the campaigns time to
mature through optimisation.
Optimise campaign performance - Have structured testing in place for audience targeting,
ad placement, ad creative, budget allocation, amongst other core factors to maximise the
budget, reach and ongoing performance across all audience segments.

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Attribution - Use multi-touch weighted attribution modelling to improve your decision-
making on target audience, budget allocation, and campaign optimisation factors. There are
a number of attribution models available, choose the one that best fits your needs.
What the future holds
With programmatic RTB predicted to continue its rapid growth this year, what can we expect
going forward into 2015?
Advertisers and brands will turn big data into smart data as they begin to focus more on
combining first-party and third-party information to reach consumers with relevant needs and
desires. With the wealth of first-party data available to brands, they are looking to have more
ownership and control over their data. This will increase the popularity of data-management
platforms (DMPs).
With an increase in devices and digital marketing channels, attribution has never been so
important to marketers who want to know where their conversions have come from.
Technology will continue to advance to help advertisers see and understand the consumer’s
full path to purchase through integrated paid search and display campaigns. It will be a year
of investment by brands who wish to benefit from gaining a better understanding of
consumer behaviour. There will be great advancements in reporting technology and
advertisers will need to take advantage of this.
It is time for advertisers to update their creatives because the future is all about rich new
formats. Dynamic creatives are a relatively new technology, bringing together the best in
personalisation and audience segmentation. Not only do dynamic creatives allow advertisers
to quickly change messaging which saves time and money, but they are also incredibly
effective in turning window shoppers into purchasers. This creative format will alleviate much
of the hassle that getting banners designed can cause, and will offer advertisers an easier
way to manage retargeting campaigns, causing it to be an extremely valuable asset in the
upcoming year.
Another new format to consider is native advertising. While native advertising has been
around for years, expect to see it more within the programmatic space. It is a format that
pushes content into high relevance and will bring programmatic advertising to the next level.

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No marketer enjoys paying for an ad that hasn’t been seen. This is why viewability has
become a huge issue over the past year. Viewability is a metric that determines the
likelihood that an ad will be seen by user. For instance, the lower below the fold the
advertisement is placed, the less likely it is to be viewed and the cheaper the ad placement
will cost. Recently the IAB even created the first guidelines on display advert viewability.
Although as yet they have not had widespread integration, expect to see this become a key
metric for many DSPs in 2015.

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Mobile Display
Mobile advertising is one of the driving forces behind the rapid growth of online display
advertising. Advertisers are beginning to invest a significant amount of their digital
advertising spend into mobile because of two main factors.
The first factor is simply the sheer number of smartphone users and the fast rate at which
smartphone penetration is growing. According to eMarketer, at the end of 2014 there will be
more than 1.64 billion mobile smartphones across the globe, with expectations of surpassing
the 2 billion mark in 2016. To put that into perspective, by 2016 there will be more
smartphones than PCs in the world.
The second factor is changing consumer behaviour and their increasing engagement with
smartphones. During IAB’s 2014 conference, Zac Pinkman, managing director (EMEA) at
Millennial Media, discussed the ways in which UK smartphone owners use their mobile
devices. He highlighted that:
 69% of UK digital consumers engage on both computers and mobile devices
 55% of UK smartphone and tablet owners say they use mobile for location-based
services
 Four in five smartphone users in the UK use the internet on their mobile phones
every day
 On average, people check their mobile phones 150 times a day. That breaks down to
once every 6 ½ minutes.
 Average time spent per month online is 29 hours and 14 minutes for desktop and 41
hours and 42 minutes for mobile
 When you combine these two factors together, it is clear why so many marketers are
investing in mobile campaigns.
What is programmatic mobile display advertising?
The process of programmatically buying mobile display inventory is very similar to
purchasing desktop inventory. Like on desktop, mobile inventory can be purchased through
an automated system either directly through private marketplaces, or indirectly through open
real-time bidding exchanges. However, that is about where the similarities end. Advertisers

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need to take into consideration that consumers use mobile devices differently, at different
times and for different reasons. Furthermore, mobile advertising doesn’t allow for flash-
based creatives and has its own ad formats to suit smartphone and tablet screens across in-
web and in-app inventory.
Trying to make sense out of all of mobile’s nuances on an impression basis and in real time
can be a daunting task for even the most senior of advertisers. To create a successful
mobile campaign, advertisers should consider these steps:
1. Advanced objective planning
Have clear objectives of what the campaign should achieve. Design goals to be both
measurable and realistic. For instance, traditional tracking methods don’t translate
into mobile and may require different solutions.
2. Know your audience
As with any programmatic effort, advertisers need to develop a framework of their
ideal customer. Consider who the target audience is and how they interact with their
mobile devices throughout the phases of buying.
3. Think about the device
Smartphones allow advertisers to engage with consumers like no other medium can,
but added complexity comes in the large number of different device formats to work
with. Advertisers should plan how to work effectively across a range of device types.
For instance, smartphones offer great immediacy and quick responses, along with
opportunities for branding in the right location, at the right time, and to the right
audience. Tablets devices conversely are used more for the slower consumption of
content, and are more likely to be used as a second screen in the home, when a TV
is concurrently being watched.
Also consider the size of the screen. With smaller smartphones, and smaller screens,
what is the best way to get your advertisement viewed? Perhaps consider using
video to create an engaging message that takes advantage of the screen size.
Tablets offer a larger screen and can be more compatible with standard desktop
banners.

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Before investing in mobile, advertisers should have a mobile-optimised and
responsive website. The responsive website should consider how the audience uses
their devices. For instance, if it is probable that they will purchase from a mobile
device, a lead form would be the best option to serve.
4. Reliable and scalable tech partners
Spend time researching your tech partners. It is important to find credible partners
who have the capacity and scalability to manage your needs. Do they offer an easy-
to-use interface with data integration capabilities? Such items are important to
consider as they will affect the success of your campaign.
5. Conversion tracking and optimisation
Tracking, reporting and ongoing optimisation are important for any display campaign,
but for mobile the process of tracking and optimising in-app campaigns versus in-web
campaigns is completely different.
As discussed in the planning stage, traditional tracking solutions are not effective on
mobile devices. In-app and in-web advertising does not support cookie tracking. In
these instances, third-party tracking solutions may be required to report and optimise
campaigns towards their performance goals if an advertiser does not have a built-in
solution.
The importance of programmatic mobile advertising
 Multiple data points - There are far more data points than would be available on
desktop, giving advertisers even more data to help them understand consumer
behaviour. This also hands the advertisers more granular targeting capabilities.
 It’s omnipresent - Mobile devices have become part of our everyday lives. For many
people, their smartphone is the first thing they look at in the morning; the one thing
they carry around with them all day and the last thing they look at before they go to
bed. This gives advertisers the unique opportunity to reach consumers on a one-to-
one basis in a highly engaging way.
 Immersive – Programmatic mobile advertising offers new and engaging formats that
get the consumer involved. This is especially true with mobile applications which offer
banner and video-based adverts.

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What the future holds
While mobile advertising offers marketers so much potential, there is still a long way to go.
Marketers are playing catch-up with mobile display as the pace of mobile advertising
innovation and adoption has not been able to keep up with the proliferation of devices and
users globally.
Programmatic technology has both simplified and complicated this problem. Whilst the
programmatic process offers an easy platform to purchase mobile inventory, there are now
numerous mobile-specific advertising platforms and a disconnect in tracking users across
multiple devices. Simplification may be on the horizon as advertisers push towards
achieving single view of the consumer across all devices.
The future of mobile advertising is the ability to deliver a consistent message across mobile
web and mobile apps, as well as through all other devices. In order to accomplish this, we
first need to unify the view of consumer engagement within the single mobile device. Mobile
web browsers and mobile apps still use different user identification and tracking methods.
Once a single view of the consumer exists on an individual mobile device, the next step will
be to track cross-device interactions. Companies such as Facebook and Google have an
advantage in this area as they are able to track users who are logged into their services via
a user ID. They still have a long way to go before these technologies are robust and adopted
globally.
It is not just enough to be able to track users across devices and deliver consistent
messaging, but the advertiser also has to consider the ad format they will use. Expect to see
new mobile ad formats that are rich in design to engage users beyond the current banner
options.

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Video Marketing
Overview
Mobile advertising may be growing faster than all display formats at the moment, but video is
not far behind and, according to PwC, will outpace the expansion of mobile app advertising
within the next few years. Recognised as one of the most promising digital advertising
formats available, spend pledged to online video advertising is expected to grow by more
than 25% every year for the next five years.
Currently, video is the most consumed form of content on the Internet. According to Vital
Media, online videos now account for 50% of all mobile traffic. Furthermore, consumers are
viewing approximately two billion videos per week on YouTube, making it the second-largest
search engine in the world. Interestingly, TV viewership declined 4% in 2014 as consumers
flocked to watch television digitally.
The vast amount of consumers viewing online videos is only part of the reason online video
advertising has exploded, and we must also recognise the impact this medium has on the
consumer. According to eMarketer, 52% of marketing professionals across the globe believe
that video is the most influential advertising format in which to achieve the best ROI. Owing
to its engaging and informative nature, 96% of consumers find video helpful in making
purchasing decisions, according to ReelSEO.
At The Consumer Electronics Show this year, Neal Mohan, Google’s head of display and
video ad products, spoke about the influential power of online video advertising. He stated
that the best way to reach and influence the consumer is through video. According to Neal, it
has the power to stir their imaginations and inspire them in ways that no other format can
match.
Advertisers may be excited to hear that, for most consumers, whether they are watching
organic content or promoted video adverts doesn’t actually matter, as long as it is high
quality and relevant to them, says Mohan. With the help of performance marketing and
programmatic trading, it has never been easier to deliver relevant online video content to the
right user, at the right time and in the right place.

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Video and performance marketing
For advertisers looking to take advantage of online video advertising, there are two routes
that can be taken: (1) Organic video content; and (2) Programmatic paid advertising. Each of
these approaches offers its own benefits, but with a coherent integrated marketing strategy,
the two can work together in synergy.
Organic video content
Organic online video content can be used across a brand’s owned media channels including,
websites, blogs and social media, and can even create uplift in search engine optimisation
(SEO). The benefit of organic content is that it is free to upload and distribute online.
However, without promotion it has limited reach, unless the brand’s publisher network is
extensive. While it may propel a brand’s reach further by increasing their SEO effectiveness,
it is still dependent upon the users who seek out the content and those who share it.
When planning an online video strategy, consider the following items to increase the
likelihood of success:
 Make it relevant and make it high quality. According to Comscore, professionally
produced video which has been optimised for e-commerce outperforms user-
generated video by 30%.
 When adding video to a website, consider placing one on the homepage as
well as other popular landing pages. Forrester Research states that by using
video, a brand is 53 times more likely to get on page one of Google’s search results.
When adding it to all landing pages, the success rate increases by 80%.
 Put product videos on each product page. This increases the conversion rate as
consumers find videos useful in making purchasing decisions.
 Add embedded links to appropriate landing pages. This can also increase the
conversion rate.
 Don’t overlook using videos throughout blog posts. According to Moz, this will
attract three times more in-linking domains than plain-text posts, increasing the
number of people likely to visit the blog and ultimately benefiting SEO.

25
 Use social media to promote videos. This is an effective way to increase the reach
through user sharing. In fact, out of the top 50 most-shared pieces of content last
year, 48% were video (Moz).
Programmatic paid video advertising
Whilst all forms of online video advertising require a budget that in many cases is bigger
than a budget for standard online display banner ads, they also allow advertisers to extend
their reach to those who might not naturally find their content.
Traditional advertising on TV can cost advertisers large sums. Originally, the same process
of direct TV advert sales was used when selling online video advertising inventory. Now,
programmatic is gaining in popularity and many publishers are using it to sell their available
inventory to maximise yield through not just programmatic RTB, but direct and private
marketplace sales as well.
Video, like mobile, is seeing extensive growth and success resulting from the industry
leaning towards programmatic trading. Programmatic video advertising is similar to any other
form of programmatic advertising. Through an automated process, inventory is exchanged
according to algorithms that incorporate advertising decisions and audience data. However,
there are several things that set video apart.
Firstly, there are several different ad unit formats in which video advertisements can be
displayed. The most common formats are pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll ad spots. These
online video ads appear before, during, and after a video stream. Another method
includes embedding an online video ad into a standard or rich media banner creative.
Online video advertising has many benefits over traditional television advertising. As Mohan
points out, “The beauty of the internet is that advertisers are no longer constrained by the 30-
second video format”, or traditional television advertising. Advertisers can also engage with users
as they move between devices. Many advertisers are now allocating more budget to online video
advertising as it offers greater reach and visibility of performance.

26
Why is video important?
What makes video so effective is its ability to appeal to emotions and engage viewers. It is
capable of bridging the gap between the medium and the message that no other online
advertising format has been able to do before.
These factors contribute to online video advertisements achieving much higher click-
through-rates (CTRs). According to DoubleClick, video ads see a CTR of approximately
1.8% —compared to only 0.6% for mobile ads, 0.2% for display ads, and 0.1% for flash ads.
Online video advertisements are also an effective form of brand awareness.
As humans, the combined visual and audio stimuli causes our brain to respond more
effectively, ultimately improving message and brand recall. Users also have a tendency to
turn their attention to mobile devices during television adverts. This offers advertisers the
opportunity to engage with consumers. Audio targeting technology exists that allows
advertisers to target consumers on mobile devices based on what can be heard in the
background.
For many advertisers, getting an online display advertisement noticed can be difficult. Video
ads, unlike any other format, have a viral reach. With the explosive nature of social media, it
only takes a few people to start sharing an ad for it to replicate over and over again across
the internet.
What does the future hold?
The scarcity of ‘premium’ video inventory has in the past hindered online video advertising.
However, as the programmatic trend continues to spread, expect to see more online
premium video inventory becoming available. It is going to be easier to access premium
online video inventory as the way users have taken to video tells us there will be an increase
of inventory available.
Mohan states that we are moving towards an abundance of premium online video inventory
as the previously minimal, concentrated purchasing channels are beginning to fragment
across channels and devices. Recently, YouTube launched Google Preferred, which
reserves the top 5% of “premium” video inventory (based on views and engagement) for a
selection of preferred advertiser and agency partners.

27
This year we will see an active effort in confronting measurement challenges including
viewability. Similar to standard programmatic RTB, online video advertising faces
discrepancies about how to measure if an ad has been viewed and how that benefits the
conversion rate.
According to Mohan, Google found that a full 56% of video ads are never seen by human
beings. In order to combat this statistic, the group announced at the beginning of January
that ActiveView metrics wouldn’t be available for all video campaigns. Already available on
Google’s Display Network, ActiveView allows marketers to see how many of their ads have
actually been viewed.

28
Case Study
Autodesk and Net Media Planet
Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software for the
architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, and entertainment industries.
Currently, over ten million professionals in 185 countries are using Autodesk products to
save time and money, gain a competitive advantage, and change the way ideas are brought
to life.
The challenge
Autodesk’s main objective was to drive online growth through an increase in traffic and
online sales.
The solution
Net Media Planet approached the challenge with the use of paid search and display
advertising. The group created and leveraged the synergy between Autodesk’s ongoing pay-
per-click campaign (PPC) and newly added display campaign.
The process
Net Media Planet’s main aim was to use PPC to drive traffic, and utilise remarketing lists for
a number of different products. Variations were tested across international markets,
including Scandinavia, the Czech Republic and Italy. In September 2013, this approach was
fine-tuned by using retargeting lists to deploy highly relevant and specific ad copy, as
opposed to generic ad copy. What this meant was that someone searching on a branded
term that previously visited the Maya product page of Autodesk would be shown Maya
product copy instead of generic ad copy.
In January 2014, a display campaign was added to the ongoing PPC campaign. PPC
campaign insights were added to the display campaign set-up structure including
remarketing lists, day-parting analysis and buying cycles. These initial attributes helped to
accelerate ROI from display advertising, as initial testing was expedited. For example, by

29
looking at the buying times for a visitor to click on a PPC ad (conversion lag) Net Media
Planet could then apply this weighting to the display campaign.
Another example where the application of PPC insights to the display campaign added value
was in understanding the number of times a person had clicked onto a PPC ad (touch
points). This helped develop an understanding of the time it took for visitors to convert to
buyers, in this instance highlighting the fact that visitors clicked on ads several times,
indicating a longer buying cycle.
The results
From January 2014 - August 2014, traffic driven from search remarketing campaigns
increased by 400%. Display remarketing activity brought lost customers back into the market
through search, indicating that when correctly paired with display ads, PPC is more effective.
Autodesk saw an increase in overall traffic by 141% and a 300% uplift in sales between
January 2014 (when display activity first started) and August 2014.
You can see more results from the campaign in the PerformanceIN case study section.

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Case Study
Cotswold Outdoor and Net Media Planet – Driving Brand
Awareness, Profitably
Cotswold Outdoor is an award-winning, multi-channel retailer with stores throughout the UK.
The group has over four decades of experience in outdoor retail, which includes clothing,
products and equipment. Following a highly successful paid search campaign, Cotswold
Outdoor asked Net Media Planet to extend the brand’s online reach and increase sales,
cost-effectively, through online display advertising.
The challenge
To drive brand awareness whilst maintaining positive ROI.
The solution
The approach was to use online display advertising to target consumers with a known
interest in purchasing outdoor products.
Strategy
Net Media Planet used its proprietary technology, Mercury, and third-party data to identify
niche sites with an audience that matched Cotswold Outdoor’s target demographic. This,
together with rich demographic data, helped the group inform the media planning and buying
strategy.
With a range of dynamic and creative ad formats, it was able to build brand awareness and
drive revenues during peak sales periods.
Results
The campaign achieved over 14.9 million impressions and contributed to 12% of all sales
revenue in the first three months of launch. This was achieved at very positive ROI, where
the return was eight times higher than the investment

Contact us
To be a part of next year's Performance
Marketing Guide please get in touch.
Mark Atherton
E: mark.atherton@performancein.com
T: +44 117 203 3113
Drew Cameron
E: drew.cameron@performancein.com
T: +44 117 203 3013

Performance Marketing Guide 2015: Display Marketing

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