2. Display Advertising
Introduction: Picture superiority Effect (PSE) is a
phenomenon which drives display advertising.
According the PSE, the human brain is more likely
to remember images and pictures than words. This
phenomenon is used in many aspects of everyday
life which involve communication, and display
advertising is one such key application. It is the art
of communicating your message using attractive
creative and images which help in better recall.
The emergence of internet as the zero moment of
truth has made it vital for companies to have a good
digital presence. Consumers search on the internet
before purchasing the product. Companies (Ford
NewZealand) noticed this trend in early 2014 and
decided to bolster its online customer experience to
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The company developed interactive display
banners and coupled them with tailor made
content aimed at engaging with customers across
different websites. It used Google Display
Networks (GDN) to channel all its online resources
towards driving prospective customers to
showrooms. Further, Ford also created a new
website with structured information and visually
appealing images about all its cars and marketed
it to its targeted audience. This entire exercise
yield great results for Ford.
2.1 Concept of Display Advertising
Display advertising refers to the act of
communicating the advertising message using
visually rich media. The main objective of display
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websites with huge traffic to reach maximum
users. The mode of communication may be
through traditional media or digital media.
Traditional media includes print (newspapers,
magazines, pamphlets, journals etc.) and
television.
Display ads can be either native or non-native. In
native advertising, the ad content and outlook is
native to the environment of the page on which it
is being displayed. Unlike banner ads which are
easily identifiable and differentiable, native ads are
not easily differentiable as they blend well with the
content of the page, its environment and context.
2.1.1 Display Advertising Media
Do you know that ads on TV and print are also a
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most important requirement is ‘Reach’. The
metrics for measuring the reach is different in
different mediums of display advertising. Each of
these modes has its own set of pro and cons.
1. Print Media: Print media is the most traditional
mode of communication and has been there for
several years. The metric for measuring the reach
in print media is the circulation or number of
readers.
2. Television: Television advertising has video
content and has better engagement rate than the
print media. The metric for measuring the reach in
TV is the number of viewers.
3. Digital: Display advertisement include ads served
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digital is unique user and page views.
4. Unique Users: Unique users are distinct
individual users who have visited a particular site.
This number is tracked based on either the cookie
ID of the browser or the IP address of the device
from which a user browses the website. Whenever
someone opens a website for the first time, a
cookie stored in the browser of the device they are
using. From then on, no matter how many ever
time they open the website during a period from
the same browser and device, they will not be
counted as a new unique user.
However, if they use a different browser on the
same device or if they use a different device
altogether, again a cookie will be stored in the new
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5. Page Views v/s Unique Visitors: Page views
and unique visitors both are equally important for
the long term growth of any website. If asked to
choose one, you should choose based on the type
of website you are running, your digital marketing
goals for the moment and the phase in which your
company is. If you are a publisher or a blog and in
the phase of increasing your revenue, then page
views are more important as they contribute
towards more ads being displayed to the audience
and in turn generate revenue. On the other hand,
if you are a product company and looking for
brand building, and then Unique Visitors are
important for you because, no matter which page
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The sources of such data are third party companies
such as ComScore which have a panel of more than
two million users in India who agree to get their online
behavior tracked in exchange for some freebies. This
data is then extrapolated for different customer
segments.
This data is used to identify the passion points or
genres that the target audience is interested in and the
website frequently visited by the target audience. The
data can also indicate how much duplication is there
and how much will be the unique reach. Based on this
data, marketer can choose the websites where they
want to run display ads and prepare a display media
plan.
2.1.2 Digital Metrics
1. Ad Impression: An ad impression is recorded
whenever an ads is displayed on the user’s screen
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times an ads is displayed.
Let us understand this better with the help of an
example. If you visit a website and an ad load, it is
considered one ad impression for the website.
Now suppose that on this website, four ads are
shown of different companies then this will lead to
four ad impressions for the publisher’s website
and one ad impression for each advertiser. From
table we can see that Facebook displays
maximum ad impressions in India followed by
Google sites which would include Gmail and
YouTube besides others and then Yahoo.
Display ads are run on many digital media
platform such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and
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Table: Top 10 Publisher in India rank by
Desktop Display Ad Impression (In Millions)
Publisher Desktop Display Ad Impression
%of Total
1. Facebook 5,337
26.7
2. Google Site 2,403
12.0
3. Yahoo Site 2,373
11.9
4. Rediff.com 696
3.5
5. Microsoft site 688
3.4
6. Time Internet 633
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2. Clicks: A click is counted whenever a user click
on an ad. upon clicking, it redirects the user to the
landing page.
3. Click Through Rate (CTR): Click through rate
(CTR) is the total number of clicks divided by the
total number of impressions. CTR is often
expressed as a percentage. Mathematically;
Click
Click Through Rate (CTR) = × 100
Impression
CTR is an important metric in deciding the
effectiveness of an ad. Ads with low CTRs should
be modified to improve. Low CTRs imply that
most of the users are ignoring the ad after seeing
it. In such cases, three factors are to be checked
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a. Category: The product category for which the ad is
being displayed is an important factor to decide the
optimal CTR. Product categories such as
automobiles, mobile phones, etc. generally tend to
have higher Click Through Rates when compared to
categories such as grocery, cosmetics, B2B
products/services etc. It is because these categories
are high-involvement, requiring users to do more
research before buying and even if the user is not in
the market to buy the product or service, the interest
in these categories is high and hence the chances of
users clicking on ads is higher.
b. Creative: Eye catching creative banners are the
heart and soul of display advertising. Creativity in
design may include using rich audio visual media,
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c. Placement: A beautifully designed ad placed at the
wrong place might not yield results as expected.
Placement is as important as creativity. For example,
the ad about weight loss, if placed on a car review
portal will not deliver results. Selecting the right
category of websites to advertise is critical to success.
While selecting the category, you should make sure
most of your target audience are available on these
websites. More about the various targeting strategies
has been covered later.
2.2 Types of Display Ads
Display ads can be classified into different types
based on two factors, namely size and format.
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1. Image Ads: Image ads contain static images
related to your product or service. They have no
effects and are the most standard format of
advertising.
2. Rich Media Ads: Rich media ads include other
interactive media elements such as animations,
GIFs or other dynamic aspects which change upon
user interaction. For example, ads which you can
interact with as you hover on them or scroll down.
A classical example of a rich media ad is a page
peel ad, where in, when you click on the slightly
peeled off part on the top right, the ad appears as
the page peels off completely.
3. Video Ads: Video ads are those in which a video is
embedded in the ad. This format of advertising is
extensively used in YouTub. It is highly effective and
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2.2.2 Display Ads Size
Display ads are put up in various sizes based on
the availability of space on the website. The most
popular, top performing and standardized ad sizes
are described in this section.
1. Medium Rectangle: Available both in the
desktop and mobile platform, the medium
rectangle ad is the most popular display ad. The
content could include text, images or other
animation. The ad size is 300 (width)×250
(height) pixels.
2. Large Rectangle: Large rectangle has more ad
space when compared to the medium rectangle
and thus can be used to communicate better.
This ad is only available in the desktop mode.
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3. Leader-board: This ad is generally placed above the
main content at the top of the page. It is available only
on the desktop mode and is generally found in
portals, news sites, forums. The standard size for this
ad is 728×90 pixels.
4. Half Page: This is the biggest of all and covers most
part of the webpage. It provides ample space to the
desktop mode, the half-page ad is increasingly
gaining traction and has a size of 300×600 pixels.
5. Large Mobile Banner: As the name suggests, this
ad is only available on mobile, and is larger than the
standard mobile ad which is 320×50 pixels. The
standard size for this ad is 320×100 pixels.
6. Large Format Ads: These ads cover a large part of
the screen. They may expand on hovering. They are
also called ‘expandable’.
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ad spaces on a page. It is also called Roadblock
which is popular in newspaper advertising too. The
objective is to ensure that users do not miss the
ad and get exposed to the brand.
2.3 Buying Models
There are mainly four different pricing models for
display ads. The user has to carefully decide
which model is most appropriate for him/her based
on the campaign goals.
1. Cost Per Click (CPC): Cost Per Click (CPC) is
the amount the users are willing to pay for a click
on their ads. CPC is used solely to drive traffic to
the advertiser’s website. They are comparatively
less risky because, as an advertiser you only must
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2. Cost Per Milli (CPM): Cost Per Milli, also known as the
cost per thousand impressions, is the amount the
advertiser must pay for every thousand impression
served. The CPM model is mainly used for brand
building purposes. It ensures your ad reaches a wide
range of audience but does not necessarily drive
traffic to your website. This model is preferred by
publishers as they get paid irrespective of clicks and
enables better cash flow projections for them.
CPC v/s CPM
CTR is an important factor to be considered in order to
determine the better of the two; CPC and CPM. If you
have a high CTR, simply displaying your ads on a
website might suffice for you because the audiences
are clicking on ads. On the contrary, if people are not
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after continuous efforts, then you may consider
the CPC model.
You can also calculate effective CPC even if you
are bidding on CPM model and then compare. Let
us take an example here. Let us assume that for a
publisher the CPM rates are Rs. 80 and CPC is
Rs. 8. The average CTR of display ads is 0.2
percent. Considering the average CTR, the
number of clicks from 1000 impressions will be 2
(1000×0.2 percent). If you buy on CPM then for
1000 impressions you get two clicks. Hence
effective CPC (eCPC) is Rs. 40 which is much
higher than the CPC of Rs. 8. Hence, the marketer
will be better off buying on CPC in this case than
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3. Cost Per Lead (CPL): CPL is the amount you
pay as an advertiser for acquiring a lead. Lead is
an intermediate action before final purchase. It is a
micro conversion. It could be a sign up, download
of a brochure, subscription, etc. The objective of
the marketer is to acquire leads and nurture them
through continuous engagement for conversions
later.
4. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Cost Per
Acquisition (CPA) is the amount you pay, as an
advertiser for acquiring a customer who buys your
product or service. It typically means the cost of
customer acquisition. This model is mainly used to
drive online transaction and is risk free as you only
pay when the user buys. The bid price is
comparatively higher when compared to the other
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eCPA may be calculated when bidding on CPC and
that can be used to arrive at target CPA. Let us take
an example here, assume 100 people click on your ad
and land on your website. Assume that out of 100
people, 10 people fill a lead form and out of them 1
user buys. Assume that CPC is Rs. 20. What will be
the target CPL and target CPA? The total cost in this
case is Rs. 2000 ( 100×Rs. 20) and eCPL is Rs. 200
and eCPA is Rs. 2000. Thus marketer can now have a
target CPL of less than Rs. 200 and it will be a more
cost efficient model than the current CPC of Rs, 20.
Similarly marketer can have a target CPA of less than
Rs. 2000 and it will be more cost efficient than the
current CPC of Rs. 20.
5. Fixed Cost/Sponsorship: In this model, you pay the
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cost model.
A related model is sponsorship. You can sponsor a
website or a property, wherein your you have logo
presence and some ad inventory as a part of the
package deal. Figure 1 in next slide captures the
essence of different models.
As a marketer you have to strike a balance
between impact, reach and cost effectiveness.
Your plan must have a good mix of sites which will
break the clutter and make an impact, sites that
will give you reach and sites that will be cost
effective. Figure 2 explains the execution and
outcomes for different buying models.
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Figure 1
Buying Models
CPM CPC CPL/CPA Sponsorships
•Allows planner to
select best
performing sites
and placement
•Measured in
terms of Clicks,
CTR
•Cannot or section
or placement.
•Auto-runs based
on inventory
availability
•Measured in
terms of actual
deliveries and cost
efficiency.
•Situated for
sales/leads base
campaign.
•Measure in terms
of signups
achieved, cost
efficiency
•Long term
branding initiatives
•Still measured in
terms of clicks,
CTR
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Figure 2
Trade offs in Buying Models
Impact
Buys (Fixed)
Impression
Buys (Fixed)
Click
Buys (Fixed)
Fixed presence
on high traffic
destination
Dilivers
visibility
generating
awareness
High cost
property both in
terms of
percentage
allocation of total
budget and the
Impression buys
on premium
destinations
Ensure reach to
the relevant
audience on
premium
inventory
Percentage
allocation of total
budget lower than
impact buys and
the eCPC
achieved is also
low
Response based
buys for small
publisher, enable
long tail reach
No contribution to
the impact and
runs on residual
inventory
eCPC is the
lowest
delivering
highest ROI
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2.4 Display Plan
Marketers need to prepare a display media plan which
must include the following aspects;
• Site
• Section
• Ad size
• Impression
• Rate
• Cost
The question that arises is how to prepare a digital
marketing plan? Firstly, the marketer must identify
the objectives and target audience for the
campaign. Then, the marketer must calculate how
much is the penetration of internet among the
target audience? Further, what are the passion
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The duplication in reach is then calculated to arrive at
budget allocation to sites. Figure 3 reflect the process.
Figure-3 Display Plan Process
1.
Objective
and TG
as
defined
by client
2.
Calculating
the TG
reach in
Internet
Universe
3.
Identifying
the
passion
points and
digital
hangout of
the TG
4. List the
genres
relevant to
reach the
TG and top
websites
5.Duplication
and reach
calculation
for budget
allocation to
sites
6.Finalise
plan as per
reach,
engageme
nt and
passion
point
This will
define the
media mix
and the
recommen
ded reach
What is
the base
of relevant
audience
available
on Internet
ComScore
shows the
genre where
TG spends
their online
time based
on age and
Gender
targeting
ComScor
e shows
the top
websites
visited by
the TG
Duplicatio
n
calculatio
n
identifies
effective
reach of
each site
The final
plan aims
to reach
the
relevant
TG at
relevant
touch
points
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2.5 Targeting
Sophisticated targeting methods are available in
display advertising. Reaching to the right audience
is extremely important for the success of the
display advertising campaign. This can be done
efficiently by following various targeting methods
as explained next.
2.5.1 Contextual Targeting: Contextual targeting
delivers ads to the audience based on the content
they consume. It uses ‘keywords’ or ‘tags’ added to
the ads to match them to relevant websites.
As a marketer, you choose the keywords and
topics most relevant to your ads. Keywords are
individual terms which are relevant to your
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define the central them of the webpage on which you
would like to place your ad.
Keywords: Using keywords planner tool in Google
AdWords, relevant keywords can be generated by
simply entering your website URL. From AdWords too
you can generate ideas. For example, if you must
generate relevant keywords for Amazon India, you
could simply enter the URL and fetch relevant
keywords.
Topics: Topic refers to the overall theme of a certain
webpage. Targeting based on topic allows your ads to
show up on web pages even though your keywords do
not necessarily match. Thus, targeting relevant topics
helps to have a wide coverage and reach broad
audience quickly. Like keywords, you can select topics
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based on four factors: (i) text, (ii) language, (iii) link
structure, and (iv) page structure.
Based on these factors, Google determines the central
theme of each webpage in the Google Display
Network.
2.5.2 Placement Targeting: Placement targeting can be
used when you have a clear idea about your audience
activity on the web. You can directly choose to display
your ads on websites, few web pages, videos, RSS
feeds, mobile sites, etc. Further, you can also choose
specific positions for your ads on the websites. This is
called ‘managed placement’.
You can also use a combination of contextual and
placement targeting for better results. For example, if
you are selling cars, as part of the placement targeting,
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you could use contextual targeting (use of
keywords) to determine the exact pages in the
website which are more relevant and advertise in
those pages only.
2.5.3 Remarketing: One a visitor visits your website
and view a product, the visitor is tracked. Later, if
the visitors leave your site and visit any other site
in the network they are tracked and shown a
relevant ad about your product on the other site. It
is similar to Face book Dynamics Advert.
For example, consider your visit Flipkart and
browse through a particular model of a T.V. Later,
you exit Flipkart and visit some other website.
Now, you are shown ads on the new website you
visit, about the TV you browse through in Flipkart.
This entire process is called remarketing i.e.
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customers about your brand and the product and
tries to convert them into sale. One is simple
remarketing in which the creative shown is
prepared beforehand and is static.
In this case, you must copy paste the remarketing
code on the source code of your website so that
the cookie IDs of visitors to the website can be
tracked. Then, you must create list for specific
pages of the website such as those who
abandoned the cart or those who visited specific
pages of the site and then ads will be shown to
them. You can also do dynamic remarketing in
which different code must be pasted in source code
of website so that it appears on all pages of
website. This code has an additional variable
known as ‘Product ID’. Additionally, you upload
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catalogue is pulled to create a customized ad
showing the same product that the user visited.
The process of remarketing is shown in the figure
4.
Figure-4
Prospect Returns to Your
Site
Prospect Your Site
Prospect
is
Tracked
Prospect
Leaves
Your Ad
on other
Sites
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user can reach out to audience based on their specific
interests. We must note the fine line of difference
between interest categories and topic based contextual
targeting mentioned above. While interest categories
are based on audience, topic targeting is based on
websites. There are three targeting methods which fall
under interest categories. They are briefly explained in
here;
(a) Affinity Audience: Affinity audience is a set of
audiences who are suggested based on their long-term
interest types. These interests are long lasting and do
not change frequently. For instance, a movie buff or a
golf enthusiast or a fusionist will have relatively stable
and enduring interests. They indicate the passion of
the target group. The interest categories are inferred
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once you inter your website URL, Google
determines the relevant affinity audience.
On the other hand, if you are a comparatively new
startup and expect that lot of your prospective
customers are available on an e-commerce portal,
and then you can still choose the affinity audience
of that portal to market your product. Further, you
can even get insights about the demographics of
the audience in the interest category you select.
(b) Custom Affinity Audience: One can choose to
build his/her own category of audience, called the
custom affinity audience. Here, a combination of
keywords and website URLs can be used to
describe the category requirement. Based on
1
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powerful method of targeting as it is completely
customized and one can target users interested in
competition.
(c) In-Market Audience: In-market audience are
those who are presently engaged in the market
i.e., they are actively researching a product or a
service in the market and are most likely to buy it
soon. Google displays these audiences, sorted
according to various categories of products and
services to which they belong. This targeting
method is for those advertisers who advertise for
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on their geographic location. Google allows you to
target users based on countries, areas within a
country, radius around a location, group of
locations, etc. You can also target location by
places of interest or a postal code. Further, Google
allows you to target bulk locations (up to 1000
locations) at once, instead of selecting locations
one by one. Some of these are not available for
India yet. Language targeting is the act of targeting
people based on the language they speak.
2.5.6 Demographics: Demographic targeting can
be used to target people based on demographic
factors such as age, gender, parental status,
household income etc. This type of targeting helps
you narrow your targeting and prevent your ads
from reaching inappropriate audience.
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If you wish to show more ads on mobile then you
can increase the bid for mobile by a certain
percent. Alternatively, if you do not wish to show
your ad on desktop then you can decrease the
bids for desktop.
2.5.8 Other Targeting Methods
Ad Scheduling: Ad scheduling allows you to run
ads during a specific time of the day or during
specific days of the week. For example, order for
online grocery is placed more on weekends and in
evenings hence you might want to run your ads
only from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and
Sunday, if you have limited budget.
Frequency Capping: Frequency capping sets an
upper limit on the number of times a person sees
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audience instead of showing your ad to the same
person again and again. It is a good practice to use
frequency capping, as a person who is not
engaging with the ad even after seeing it for three
time is unlikely to engage on subsequent exposure.
Typically, 3-5 is a good frequency as some
repeated exposures are needed for the message to
be comprehended by the target audience.
2.6 What Makes a Good Ad?
As we discussed before, good creative is very
important in display campaigns. CTR is higher for
highly creative ads. One should keep the following
points in mind to make a good creative ad:
(a) Strong CTA: Ad should have a strong call to
action. It could be buy, purchase, order, browse and
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and what to expect.
(b) Include Price: If price is your advantage, you
may wish to include price in the ad. Another benefit
is that you will get only relevant clicks. If your
buying model is CPC and if users find your price
high then they will not click on your ad and you do
not have to pay for their clicks.
(c) Aesthetics: Experiment with fonts, images,
colors. It is more important to match the sites that
you’re targeting in color schemes, than to match
your landing page. It is a good idea to include text
in your image ad as it induces people to click. Use
attractive images.
(d) Unique Selling Proposition: Communicate one
unique benefit strongly. Keep it simple and do not
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(e) Show Two Ads With Two Offers to the Target
Audience: For example, one ad with free e-book
and another for price off. If you do not have two
offers then make two ads of the same offer.
2.7 Programmatic Digital Advertising
Programmatic advertising is automated ad buying.
The buying takes place in real time and follows a
bidding model. Hence, it is called Real Time
Bidding (RTB) model. Bidding here takes place for
ad spaces in the publisher’s web pages.
Programmatic advertising is the most recent
development related to automation in the field of
display advertising. Programmatic buying signifies
the shift from contextual targeting to audience
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you are a car brand. Contextual advertising mean
advertising on car portals such as Team-BHP,
Autocar India, etc. Instead, advertiser can target
audiences who may be defined as those who have
visited car portal at least once in the last one
month, visited finance site at least once in the last
one month and booked a travel ticket online at
least once in the last one month. This user is more
likely to buy a car. It does not matter on which site
the user sees the ad. This is called audience
targeting which is based on online behavior. It
infers intent of the user and target based on intent
buying. Programmatic buying reaches the right
audience at the right time and place at the right
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2.7.1 Process of Programmatic Advertising: The
user requests for a webpage, which means there is
a potential to show ad impressions to the user.
Every time a user requests for a page, ad
exchange holds a live auction. On behalf of the
publisher, Supply Side Platforms (SSP) send a bid
request to the Demand Side Platform (DSP). DSP
examines the potential impression in terms of
target audience and context match and returns a
bid amount based on its value to the advertiser.
Winning bid is chosen by the ad exchange and that
ad is shown on the publisher’s website.
2.7.2 Player in Programmatic Advertising
Ecosystem: The ecosystem consists of demand
side and supply side which buy and sell ad
inventory, respectively, through an ad exchange as
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Figure-5
Players in Programmatic Advertising
Ecosystem 11. Third Party
12. Consumer
1.Advertis
er
2.Agenc
y
3.DS
P
7.Publish
er
6.
Networ
kk
5.SS
P
4.
Exchang
e
10. Data Aggregators
8. Data 9. Data
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(a) Publishers: Publishers have ad impressions
through which they monetize the site and it is a
major source of revenue for them as most of the
content websites in India are free and hence do
not have subscription revenues. Big publishers
have their own sales team which sells ad
inventory to the advertisers. Typically, they are
able to sell some inventory, largely premium
inventory such as above the fold, home page
through direct sales. Since web has millions of
sites and unlimited ad space, so there is infinite
supply but demand is limited as there are only
few advertisers who are willing to pay for the
ads. Hence, the demand-supply equation is titled
in favor of advertisers specially in India where ad
rates are low as compared to the world.
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directly, also called ‘remnant’ inventory is sold through
‘network’. Long tail websites each having small number
of unique users and page views cannot afford to have
their own sales force and hence rely on networks to
monetize their website. Network are aggregators of
publishers. Some example are Google ad network,
Yahoo! Ad network, Bing ad network, Tribal
Fusion,Vadopia and Inmobi. Networks also specialize
in the type of inventory they hold. This specialization
could be based on types of ads or buying models.
Network were more important few years back but over
time their importance has decreased as other players
such as Supply-Side Platform (SSPs) have entered the
ecosystem adding more value to the publishers.
On the demand side, there is an advertiser who takes
the help of agencies which are represented by trading
desk that help advertiser in planning, preparing strategy
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audience and goals. For example, whether bidding
should be on CPM or CPC or CPA model; or whether
the goal should be to maximize reach or impressions
or clicks; and what should be the target audience.
(b) Supply-Side Platform (SSP): A supply-Side
Platform or Sell-Side Platform (SSP) is a technology
platform which enables the publishers to manage their
ad impression inventory and maximize from digital
media.
SSP is a yield manager of the publisher. It maximizes
the yield for publishers by selling impressions for as
much CPM as possible. It integrates multiple network
together. It share the context of the webpage, such as
topic, keywords, page URL and the profile of the user
such as demography, location, device and browser
behavior with the DSP and requests the DSP to bid for
ad impression. Some of the SSPs are LiveRail,
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for publishers, PubNative and AdJuggler.
It also share the cookie ID with the DSP. When a user
visits the webpage, the publisher drops a cookie in the
browser of the user. A cookie is a small text file which
store information such as time, date stamp, page URL,
browser and device information. It enhances user
experience as when the user visits the webpage again
cookie will be retrieved by the webpage and it will know
whether the user is a first time visitor or a repeat visitor,
what items were placed in the shopping cart, etc.
These cookies are persistent and are valid for a certain
time. These are encrypted and can be read only by the
domain which dropped them.
(c) Demand Side Platform (DSP): A Demand-Side
Platform (DSP) allows the advertiser to buy the
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RTB. The DSP present the interest of the
advertiser and attempt to find the most efficient
impressions given the constraints imposed by the
advertiser. They optimize the campaign for a pre
defined strategy which includes goals, whether
maximize clicks or impressions, return on ad
spend, budget, target audience and bid strategy.
Most of the DSPs work on CPM model but in future
we will see other buying models too through DSPs.
Some of the DSP companies are Double click, and
Audience science.
DSP get the request for bid from SSP which
include the cookie ID of the user who is requesting
the webpage. DSPs have audiences which are
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of consumer behavior, they categories these audiences
into buckets such as fashionists, golf enthusiasts, avid
investors based on their online behavior etc. If
someone visits more of finance sits, mutual funds sites,
business sites and stock exchange sites then the user
may be categorized as an avid investor. You may be
wondering how DSPs have cookie IDs. DSPs place ads
on behalf of advertiser on publishers’ sites. When a
user visits the webpage which has the ad impression
served by the DSP, DSP drops third party cookie to the
user’s browser. These are known as third party cookies
as they are not dropped by the domain the user is
visiting. Later when user visits another site which has
an ad by the same DSP/advertiser, the cookie calls to
the DSP/advertiser who now knows the website visited
by the user. DSP/advertiser cannot read the cookie
dropped by the website but it gets to know the domain
visited by user. This way DSPs collect huge number of
cookie IDs with details about their browsing behavior
which they categories into profile.
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SSP. DSP check its cookie database for users who
are visiting the publisher’s website. It may realize
that both DSP cookie ID 10 and SSP cookie ID 20
belong to the same user 123. In that case match
has been found between cookies IDs of SSP and
DSP and hence DSP will bid. If it is winning bid
then ad will be pushed from the third party ad
server to the publisher site. If cookie syncing
happens then bid rate will be high but if cookie
does not match then bid rates may fall as DSP may
bid based on contextual factors and not audience
factors or DSP may decide not to bid. Hence, there
is flurry of activity for each impression.
Benefits of DSP
DSPs bring lot of benefits to the advertiser. Some
key benefits are as under:
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1. Cost Efficiency: They enable buying at lower CPM as
they can participate in actions when competition is less.
2. Buying Efficiency: They eliminate need for human
interface and relationship and hence bring efficiency in
buying. Sellers do not need to hire sales force and
advertisers need not negotiate with different publishers as
the entire exchange is automated.
3. Real Time Optimization: Since its highly automated
metrics data comes in real time with no time lag enabling
optimization of campaigns.
4. Granular Targeting: Sophisticated targeting options are
available in DSP including cookie matching which ensure
higher ROI.
5. Scale: For remarketing, wherein advertisers target users
who visited their sites, DSPs provide reach and scale as
they work with SSPs that have large number of sites.
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contextual targeting. Wherein advertisers target context
or sites belonging to a particular topic or keyword. Each
DSP interacts with more than 15 SSPs and can serve
more than 15 billion impression per day.
(d) Data Management Platform (DMP): A Data
Management Platform (DMP) is used by publishers and
buyers to store and manage audience data from
multiple sources. These sources include publisher’s
websites, videos etc.
There are three sources of data. First party data is
from sites such as Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo!
which create data as users create profiles on these
platforms. Second party data is customer data which is
owned by big e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com
and telecom service providers such as AT&T. Third
party data is from data providers such as DMPs which
collect cookie based audience dat. See figure 6 in next
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Figure-6: Types of Data Suppliers
1St Party Data
Data creation
2nd Party
Data
Customer Data
3rd Party Data
Data Provider
A company will have its own CRM or transactional data. It
can make this data richer by adding a layer of public data.
This can be done by checking email IDs, public profiles on
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, classified such as Justdial, and
LinkedIn
Faceboo
k Google
Yahoo!
Datalogic,
Exelate
LOTAME
Bluekai
Audience
create
Amazon
.com
City
Bank
AT&T
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from there, filling profile information such as age,
gender, job title, seniority, occupation, address, URL,
contact detail etc. There are data providers who can add
the social media profile to your CRM data. From DMP, you
can have cookie based browsing behavior data of your
CRM customers. If you integrate all these different data
sources, your customer data becomes very rich and you
can target them for higher ROI. DMP brings all the data
sets together. For example, let us assume you sell car
insurance and your CRM data shows that one of your
customers is in the market to buy a home and demo data
shows his high-income level, so now you can show ads for
cross selling premium home insurance. To further expand
your audiences, you can target ‘Lookalike Audiences’ of
your best and rich customer dataset.
(e) Ad Server: There are ad server technology companies
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analytics given by the publisher and you know for sure
how many ad impressions were served. Apart from ad
verification and analytics, these ad servers have good
technological integration capabilities and hence integrate
well with DSPs and publisher sites for display of ads. They
also enable dynamic creative optimization which enables
customization of ads for different target groups and
placements. For example, the ad can show bright sunny
image when ad is shown in the morning and light dull
image in the evening. The creative can be updated
dynamically by the creative designer from his laptop,
without having to upload multiple version through, email or
other manual coordination. The creative must be prepared
in two file formats: .swf file for parent file and .xml format
for child file. The parent file is the template that identifies
where heading, call to action button or image and
description will come. The child file is the data that gets
pulled dynamically in the parent file format. Hence, the
creative designer can update the data in the child file
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is done by ad servers. Ad servers charge a small
percent of media spend for the fees. Unfortunately only
40 percent advertisers in India use third party ad
servers as they consider it as cost.
(f) Ad Exchange: Ad exchange brings together buyers
and sellers to buy and sell online ad inventory in an
automated manner. Like a stock exchange, real time
auctioning for ad space on publishers’ website
happens in an ad exchange. Further, ad exchanges
are of two types. They are describe in this section.
Open Exchanges: Open exchanges, as the name
suggests, are ad exchanges open for everybody on the
web. There is no restriction on the purchase of
inventory available in these exchanges. They are run
by tech giants such as Google, OpenX, Yahoo! etc.
Over 70 billion ad impressions flow through these
exchanges daily. These volumes have made policing
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impressions. Open exchanges allow buyers to
purchase media on an audience basis through
cookie-based targeting; achieving scale is usually
a higher priority than running campaigns with
specific publishers.
Private Exchanges: The problem mentioned
above led to the creation of private exchanges
wherein a group of publishers pooled up to sell
their advertising inventory only through select
agencies or to reputed companies. This type of
selective selling has helped prevent fraudulent
activities as seen in open exchanges. Also, these
exchanges are considered to be premium
exchanges as advertisers get better ad
placements, insights etc., as compared to open
exchanges.
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which pricing is determined in real time. It works in
open auctions as well as private auctions.
2.8 Analytics Tools
There are some challenges plaguing the display
advertising industry. Fortunately some companies have
devised tools to overcome those challenges. Let us look at
some of these issues and futuristic solutions.
2.8.1 View ability: Per Integral Ad Science & Media Rating
Council Data in 2015, 57 percent of display ads were not
viewable. Ad may not be visible due to disruptive human
behaviour, such as action taken before ad loads and
renders, multitasking or because of low quality or
compromised pages. It could be because ad loads in area
out of the user’s browser, or frequent page refresh prevents
ads load, or web load gives errors.
It should be noted that 50 percent of ads pixel should be
displayed for a minimum of one second in image ads and
two seconds for video ads for an ad to be considered
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Media Rating Council in May, 2015. Both the pixel and
time component must be measured and must satisfy
the above minimum requirements for an ad to be
counted as a viewable impression.
If both the pixel and time component associated with
an ad are greater than zero, but one or both do not
meet or exceed the above minimum requirements, the
ad may be referred to as a ‘loaded ad’. It should not be
associated with the term ‘impression’.
To overcome this view ability issue, tools such as
Integral Ad Science and MOTA provide metrics such as
in-view impressions, out-of-view impressions, viewable
rate.
2.8.2 On Target Reach: The current cookie based
methods of targeting overestimate reach and
underestimate frequency by a huge margin. The
demographic accuracy is also low. Some tools such as
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another tool. They do cross device measurement and
provide reach overlap reports. These tools determine
accuracy based on real people logins across mobile
and desktop. They enable people-based marketing and
understanding of the consumer journey.
2.8.3 Ad Fraud: Ad fraud is the deliberate practice of
serving ads that have no potential to be viewed by a
human. Perpetrators of ad fraud are criminal gangs and
the problem is costing the ad industry a lot of money.
Publishers with higher cost-per-thousand (CPM) rates
are more susceptible to bots, which generally create
millions upon millions of ad impressions that are seen
by no one but often get charged to marketers as a
viewed promotion.
1. Domain Identity Theft: This is a form of fraud where
fraudsters add a fake URL into the ad unit, fooling the
auction into believing that an ad will appear on an
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2. Click/Impression/Conversion Fraud: This is when
fraudsters mechanize clicking, viewing or converting
on ads. Click farms exist where people are paid to sit
and click, view, or convert on ads through desktop and
mobile devices.
3.Bot Activity: This is when robots carry out similar
actions by masking IP addresses through advanced
algorithms. Malware can be installed on computers,
giving fraudsters the power to control what domains a
computer visits and the ads it views.
4. Ad-stacking: This is when multiple ads are served
within the same placement. This method tricks ad
servers, as each of the ads is served; however, they
are stacked beneath each other so the advertiser’s
message is often not viewable.
5. Pixel Stuffing: When an ad of say 300×250 pixels is
crammed into 1×1 pixel size which makes it appear on
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2.8.4 Brand Health: The process and controls
implemented to protect advertisers from having their
ads appear alongside content that could damage their
brand or reputation. Example of brand safety issues
are:
1. Ads appearing on sites publishing illegal content. For
example, adult, illegal downloads.
2. Ads appearing alongside user generated content. For
example, controversial opinion.
3. Ads presented in a negative context due to content on
the site. For example, flights alongside an air disaster.
Brand safety is ensured by blacklisting websites
having controversial content; using keywords to not
show ads in that by labeling content for adult use, etc.
Integral Ad Science tool assign brand risk scores to
prevent brand health from getting compromised.
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2.9 YouTube Advertising
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world behind
Google search. According to the official statistics by YouTube, it
has over one billion users- almost one third of all people on the
internet. With such immense audience presence, it is a great
platform to promote your company. Marketers on YouTube have
two broad areas of participation: (i) YouTube channels, and (ii)
YouTube ads.
2.9.1 YouTube Channels: Companies can promote their brands
and products by creating quality video content and curetting it into
a YouTube channel or profile. This will aid discovery and
engagement whenever someone searches for relevant content on
YouTube.
2.9.2 YouTube Ads: YouTube allows you to capitalize on the
millions of partner videos already present on YouTube, by
targeting your display ads to relevant videos. These ads are
available in two different formats. The most widely used formats
are as follows.
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(b) Overlay Ads: An overlay ad appears in a rectangular
format in the bottom 20 percent of the video. It is available
only on a laptop or a desktop and not on a mobile devices,
TVs, game consoles etc. Viewers can dismiss the ad
anytime and can be purchased only in the CPC model.
(c) Skippable Video Ads: Skippable video ad is the most
popular advertising format on YouTube. Viewers can skip
the ad after watching it for five seconds. It can be inserted
before, during or after the video and is available on desktop,
TVs, gaming consoles and mobile devices. It has a very
unique buying model wherein the publisher is paid only
when a user watches 30 seconds of the video or till the end
of the video-whichever comes first.
(d) Non Skippable Video Ads: Non skippable video ads are
15-20 second long video ads which can be inserted before,
during or after the YouTube video. For these ads, the
publisher gets paid only when a user fully watches the ad.
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(e) Mid-roll Ads: Available only for video over 15
minutes, mid-roll ads are spaced between the video
similar to TV commercials. For better viewing
experience, publisher can choose to place their ads at
natural pauses between the scenes. They are available
only on desktop and mobile versions and not on game
consoles, TVs, etc. Further, these mid-roll ads could be
skippable or non-skippable ads and the pricing model is
as per the chosen format.
(f) Bumper Ads: Bumper ads are lightweight, non-
skippable video ads up to 6 second long. They are
especially optimized for mobile services. Similar to non
skippable ads, the publisher is paid only when the user
fully watches the ad.
(g) Native Mobile Ads: Native mobile ads are display
ads that appear in the same context as organic content.
As the name suggests, these ads are only available on
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(h) Discovery Ads: The billing pattern in case True View
Discovery ad is relatively simple. You are charged
whenever a user clicks on a video ad thumbnail or title and
begins watching your ad video.
YouTube skippable ads and discovery ads that come in the
search results are called true view ads as users choose to
see the ad by their own volition.
2.9.3 Type of Videos: Your ads can appear in any video
which has claimed copyright. It could be a user-generated
video or broad-cast channel videos or YouTube partner
videos. On YouTube, users do not prefer to click and leave
the site. Hence, you should create videos which are stand
alone and are effective without requiring the user to go to
the landing page.
Since popular YouTube ad formats are true view formats
which require users to choose to view the ad, hence you
must make your first five seconds, when the user can skip,
very compelling. Infact, you must try to communicate the
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Hard sell commercial style ads are more likely to be
skipped. Hence, you must create content specially
for YouTube instead of using your TV commercials.
Some popular types of videos for YouTube are
‘HowTo’, testimonials, emotional story, behind the
scenes, provocative content. It is also a good idea
to keep the videos short, say of about 30 seconds.
2.9.4 Buying Models: The buying model on
YouTube can broadly be divided into two major
categories discussed in this section.
(a) Bidding Model: The YouTube bidding model is a
standard action based model. Most aspect of the
model are similar to display advertising buying
models discussed in the previous sections of the
presentation. Apart from those, video content has a
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(i) Cost Per View (CPV): CPV is the amount you pay for
your true video ads. With CPV bidding, you will pay for
video views or instructions. A view is counted when
someone watches 30 seconds of video ad or interacts
with the ad, whichever comes first. Let us further
understand with an example, how CPV works for a true
view in stream video as and True View Discount Ad.
Consider you set up an upper limit of Rs. 40 as you CPV
i.e. your max. CPV is Rs. 40. Let us see how you charge
in both the cases;
True View In-stream Video: In case of true view in-
stream video, there are two possibilities;
• The viewer watches your ad completely (if ad length is
less than 30 seconds) or watches at least 30 seconds of
your ad (if ad length is more than 30 seconds).
• The viewer performs a desire action on the ad i.e., click
on the ad.
You are billed a maximum of Rs. 40 for either of the two
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Actual CPV: As an advertiser, you always do not pay
the max. CPV amount. As it is a competitive bidding
model, you might often strike deals at a lower price
relative to your max. CPV. This price at which you
strike a deal (the actual amount you are charged) is
called the actual CPV. The actual CPV you pay
depends on two factors. They are;
Quality Score and Ad Rank: Quality score is a
measure of how relevant your ad is to a customer and
includes multiple performance factors such as view
rates or click rates. This quality score is further used to
determine the ad rank.
Ad Rank is the product of your quality score and max.
CPV. Based on this ad rank, all the bidders are ranked
sequentially and the top ranker wins the bid. Your
actual CPV is determined based on the ad rank of the
bidder below you and your quality score. Also, your
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of the bidder below you as second price auction method is
followed. The concept of max. CPC and actual CPC and
the concept of quality score and ad rank is same in display
advertising too. The formula is:
Ad Rank= Max. CPC × Quality Score
Since they are in multiplicative relationship, if your quality
score is low you have to bid high. Hence, advertiser should
try to have high quality score by ensuing high CTR or view
rates or interaction rates so that CPC remain low.
(b) Reserved Media Placement: The reserve media
placements model follows a fixed pricing model wherein
you buy placements on a reservation basis instead of an
auction basis. These campaigns are highly beneficial if you
want to build instant brand awareness. For example, if you
are launching a new product or entering a new market.
Moreover, you have a clear picture about your spending
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The reserved media placements can be bought mainly in
two modes;
Cost Per Milli (CPM): In a CPM campaign you are billed for
every 1000 impressions. It has to be booked six business
days in advance and the creative's have to be delivered at
least four business days in advance. The ad formats which
fall under this mode are discussed ahead.
• Standard In-stream: These are non-skippable video ads
that play before the user streams the actual video. They are
optimal if you want to communicate a simple yet powerful
message and can be of 15 or 30 seconds.
• In-stream Select: In-stream select are skippable ads which
appear before the actual video. The ad can be up to 60
seconds long and the user is allowed to skip the video after
5 seconds and an impression is recorded, irrespective of the
user skipping the video.
Cost Per Day (CPD): As the name suggests, the cost per
day campaign is the amount charged to publish your ad for
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have to be delivered nine business days in advance. The ad
formats that fall under CPD are as follow:
• Desktop Custom Masthead: It is a 970×250 pixel ad unit
that spans the entire breadth of the YouTube homepage
below the navigation bar. The ad unit can also include a
video and can greatly drive brand relevant activity.
• Desktop Universal Video Masthead: The desktop
universal video masthead includes a flash information panel
on one side and a video panel on the other side. The flash
panel can open/close whenever someone clicks on it. The
standard size of this ad unit is 780×195 pixel.
• Mobile Video Masthead: A mobile video masthead, as the
name suggests, a mobile/tablet only ad unit. It consists of a
video headline, description, channel name, call to action and
thumbnail.
2.9.5 Targeting and Optimization: YouTube ad can be
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optimized like other display ads. The various targeting
options available are based on topics, interests, affinity
audience, demographics, etc.
Search Engine Advertising
Introduction
Internet is the zero moment of truth. Consumers first
search for products or services online before visiting
the store. Hence, it is imperative for marketers to be
present on search engines. Search Engine Marketing
has two part-(i) Search Engine Optimization (SEO),
and (ii) Search Advertising. While SEO is organic,
Search Advertising is paid. The results of SEO may
come only after few months of following the best
practices of SEO. But, the marketer still must have a
presence on search engines when the user is
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advertisements are shown if they match user query
and are shown at the top or bottom of the results page
and are labeled as ‘ad’. Search engine try to ensure
that advertisements are highly relevant to the user’s
query.
Google has the dominant share of the search engine
traffic worldwide. User experience is of paramount
importance to search engines especially Google. This
is also evident when one looks at the homepage of
Google, one of the most visited websites in the world.
Google does not show any ads on its homepage, even
though it would have led to huge revenues, as it wants
to keep the focus on the search query, and hence
keeps its page uncluttered. It is interesting to contrast it
with Yahoo! Why do the two search engines have
completely different look? The difference is quite stark
and is perhaps based on the different business models
of the two search engines. Whereas Google’s primary
business is search, Yahoo!’s focus is on content and
hence it display advertising. Therefore, while
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Google believes in the uncluttered search page,
Yahoo! Introduces the user to content while they
search so that they can engage with it.
3.1 Why Pay for Search Advertising?
A question you may ask is if organic results are free
then why should a marketer spend money on paid
results? A marketer could build an excellent website
and invest in SEO techniques to get the highest rank
for the website in organic results; however, despite
the best efforts, the website may not come on top.
The algorithm for organic results is complex and not
under the control of the marketer. It is dynamic and
a small change in it can dramatically change the
ranking of page competitors’ websites may be more
relevant for certain search queries. In comparison,
marketers could secure a higher position on paid
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results by paying for the ads. Few reasons why
companies should consider paid search advertisements
are- (i) intent (ii) ease of action, (iii) controlled costs, (iv)
analytics, and (v) competition, which are discussed in
greater detail in this section.
3.1.1 Capture Intent: The advertisement is shown to
people who are searching for terms that are relevant to
your business. These people are actively searching
because they are interested in either finding out more
information about product or service or are buying it.
Hence they have both interest and intent; the user is in
the market for the product or service. These users are
more likely to click on the ad and buy the products or
services. This is what makes search advertising so
powerful. It taps into the intent of the user. It is called a
pull medium as the user seeks the advertisement. This
is the primary reason why click through rate are the
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ads, social media and email. Contrast this with
traditional media advertising where one does not
know whether the consumer is interested in the
product or service when they view the
advertisements. It is more of a spray-and-pray
approach wherein the marketer gives
advertisements in the hope that some people will
be in the market to buy those products or services.
3.1.2 Ease of Action: Search engine ads are meant
to be clickable. Once a person clicks on the ad, the
search engine directs the user to the brand’s web
page, custom designed for the ad. The web page
has easy navigation links to various parts of the
website, phone call options, integration with maps
to locate the business easily, and hence enables
the user to find relevant content.
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3.1.3 Controlled Cost: Search engine charge a
marketer only if a person click on the ad. The
advertisers are not charged for the impressions i.e.
the number of times the ad is shown in search
results. One can control how much they are willing
to pay for each click. There is no base charge for
creating the ads. Additionally, advertiser can also
control how much they wish to spend each day. An
account can be charged on a prepaid model where
the advertisers transfer money to Google, and
subsequent costs are deducted from this amount.
In this way, total expenditure is always within one’s
control. Once the money is deposited in the
AdWords account of Google, one can generate
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3.1.4 Analytics: Search engine help in creating and
downloading reports about the performance of ads.
One can view statistics such as- average cost per
click, the number of clicks for each ad, the total
amount spend, the click through rate, and the
number of impressions to analyze the effectiveness
of their campaigns.
3.1.5 Competition: In a scenario where the brand’s
web page is of a higher quality as compared to
their competitors’ and is most relevant to the search
query entered by the user, there is a high likelihood
that the advertiser’s website will be listed as the
first result. Why is there then the need to place the
ads? It can be seen many times that while
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in the organic results. Is the company then wasting
money on advertisement? The answer is no-simply
because, even though one company may earn the
first rank in organic results, they are leaving the ad
space open for attack by competition. If the
company does not bid for the ad, then the
competition will bid and win it. The result would be
that even if that respective company has won the
top place through SEO, their competition will be
listed higher than them on the results page through
paid ad. So, one must bid for top ad slots not for
visibility alone but to prevent competition.
For example, when Flipkart ran the campaign-Big
Billion Day- during Diwali, Amazon showed ads
against the keyword and purchased the ‘Big Billion
Day’ domain name. When users clicked on big
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Amazon site. Amazon also showed ads on web
pages which had the keywords-Big Billion Day. This
is an example of online ambush marketing.
3.2 Understanding Ad Placement
Search engine show advertisements in predefined
areas on the result page. Google shows ads in two
areas- top and bottom. Maximum four ads can
appear on the top and three at the bottom. It is not
necessary though that search engines will display
all potential ads on the result page. Why do search
engines lose out on potential revenue then? The
reason is that there is the huge cost of serving ads.
The entire algorithm is optimized for the probability
of click as the advertisers pay only when they
receive a click. Hence, search engines show ads
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Search engines show ads in less than 350
milliseconds. Completing the entire process of running
a live action in real time every time a user types a
query entails a huge cost of servers and technology.
Hence, when the cost of serving ads is high and the
probability of clicking is low, search engines may not
show ads. This is called coverage which may increase
during festivals and occasions such as Thanksgiving,
Diwali and Christmas when the intent to buy high, and
hence search engines show more ads.
3.2.1 Top: The top position is considered as the prime
location in Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Users
usually click on results on the first page and that too
which are above the scroll. How many times do we to
the second or the third page of the results? It is
therefore clear the competition is for the top four
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for below the scroll and subsequent pages.
3.2.2 Side: Google showed the ads side too.
Importantly, the side had only ads and no organic
results, so users naturally paid more attention to the
results of the main section (left) and less to results
on the side (right). Left side ads are called native
ads as they come in the same place where organic
results come. Sometimes a map would come on the
right side above the ad. Now the right-side ads have
been discontinued to align the user experience on
the desktop with mobile since on mobile there is no
right side. Also, the click rates of right side were
very low as they were not native.
3.2.3 Bottom: If the AdRank for an ad is lower than
the threshold for the top position, in that case even
if the top position does not show any ads, this ad is
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3.3 Understanding AdRanks
AdRank is the position at which the ad appears in
the search engine results. A study by Chitika (2013)
has shown that results that appear in the top three
positions combined attract more than 60 percent of
traffic compared to all other results.
3.3.1 Basic Ad Auction Model: Do you know that
Google is not the first search advertising platform?
Overture was one of the early player in the market;
it launched paid search advertising service in 1998.
Google launched its paid advertising do-it-yourself
platform-AdWord- in the year 2000. In 2003, Yahoo!
Acquired Overture. The initial auction model ranked
ads per bid amount placed by an advertiser for the
keywords. This auction system was simple to
implement. However, it was not successful. This is
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model leads to bidding wars. Suppose one bids
Rs. 2 for the keyword ‘grocery shopping’. To
outrank this bid, their competitors raises the bid by
Rs. 1. This leaves the first bidder with no option but
to increase the bid to exceed that of the
competition. This will continue until it because
unaffordable for one of them to bid for that
keyword. This practice is especially unfair to small
businesses that would not be able to compete
against large corporations. The second problem
with this model is that the quality of ads is not
considered. A user might see ads that are not
relevant to the current search just because the
advertiser has bid high. This would ultimately result
in a bad user experience. Google launched Quality
Score measurement system in 2005, which
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Do you know that until 2005 all the ads on MSN
search were served by Yahoo!? In 2006, Microsoft
served ties with Yahoo! And created its ad-serving
platform. In 2009, the MSN search evolved into the
Bing search engine.
3.3.2 The Ad Auction Model: Over the years,
search engines have refined their auction process
to reward advertiser that show quality ads that are
relevant to the user query. The algorithm of Google
search ads is as follows;
AdRank = Maximum Bid × Quality Score
Although Google does not provide weights of the
components of Quality Score, but some analytics
companies have analysed the Quality Score of
large scale number of keywords and drawn some
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Quality Score
Relevance is 22%
CTR is 39%
Landing Page is 39%
Let us understand the
algorithm in detail.
1. Setting the Right Bids: A search engine gives the
option to set the maximum amount that will be
spent on each ad. Advertisers must explore options
to set their ad bid amounts manually. It is important
to remember that bids are set for keywords and
would apply to all the ads that are configures for
that keyword. The buying model in search
advertising is CPC.
Relevance
CTR
Land Page
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It means that advertiser pay only when the user clicks
on the ad. This model has revolutionized search
advertising as advertiser pay only when they get traffic
on their website from the search engine. Table show
the CTR in selected countries by device. It is evident
that in India more clicks happen on desktop than on
mobile as compared to other countries. Internet and
smart-phone penetration in India is less and user are
not doing as much search on mobile as on desktop.
CTR is highest for search ads as they capture the
intent of users and are a pull medium.
Search engines gives an estimated bid amount for
each keywords. One may start bidding at 70 percent
of the suggested bid and gradually raise it if the ad is
either not showing or showing at lower positions than
desired. Search engines also send an alert
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to show their ad or not. If the bid amount falls
under the first-page bid threshold then the
advertisers should consider increasing the bid
amount.
Table: Average Paid Search CTR in Selected
Countries
Understanding how the bid amount is calculated is
Countries Tablet (%) Smart-phone
(%)
Computer
(%)
Australia 3.06 2.93 2.92
Brazil 2.08 2.04 2.23
Canada 1.74 1.73 1.59
China 4.00 3.66 3.17
India 2.63 1.93 3.27
Japan 1.70 2.20 1.42
Mexico 1.75 2.33 1.75
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advertisements. Google uses the second price auction
method. It means that the winner of the bid does not
pay the amount they have bid upon but rather the
amount bid by the second highest bidder. Each
advertiser must pay the minimum amount required to
outrank the next advertiser. This amount is called the
actual cost per click. However, one is never be required
to pay more than the maximum cost per click set by
them.
The quality score consists of three components- (i)
Landing Page, (ii) CTR, and (iii) relevance. Let us
understand them in detail.
(i) Landing Page: Each ad has a target URL configured
for it which upon clicking takes the customer to the
landing page. The content of the landing page must
match the ad. In addition to the content match, search
engines would also look at the quality of the landing
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the landing page quality are pop-ups, too little content,
many links, non-readable content (like images, PDFs,
flash content), dynamic or pass code protected content
that cannot be ready by the search engine, etc. Also,
any black hat techniques might cause the website’s
quality score to drop and may cause a ban on the ad.
(ii) Expected Click Through Rate: Once the ad starts
showing, click through rate (CTR) is the feedback that
the user is giving to the search engine. If more people
find the ad relevant and interesting, they will click on
the ad, and the CTR will go up. In contrast, if very few
people find the ad to be relevant or interesting, they will
not click on it, and CTR will go down. CTR is the most
important factor having highest weight. A poor ad might
be shown initially because either very few advertiser
are bidding for the keyword or the bid amount is set
high. However, if people do not click, then the CTR will
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the competition is low. The bid amount can be
increased further, but search engine will not show
ads that have quality score below the threshold. A
high CTR can lead to a high quality score. Since
the bid amount and the quality score are the two
factors determining AdRank, a high CTR can result
in showing the ad even at lower bid amount. Thus,
a high CTR can help in saving money on the
bidding amount.
CTR is high for ads in top positions. Hence, if the
advertiser want to increase traffic to their landing
page, they must get their ad in top positions. A new
advertiser, however, will not have CTR. In that
case, initially the advertiser may bid high to
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that while Click Through Rate decreases with
decrease in AdRank, conversion rate increases
with decrease in AdRank. The net effect according
to the research is that contrary to the conventional
wisdom in the industry, the topmost position is not
necessary the profit maximizing position.
(iii) Relevance: Search engines give importance to
relevance since high relevance indicates better
user experience. What is meant by relevance? It
has two fold meaning, firstly, whether the search
query of the user matches with the keywords that
the brands are bidding for, and secondly, whether
the keywords are appearing in the ad headlines
and description. Out of all the components of
quality score, relevance is the easiest to change
and control. Hence, a new advertiser must strive to
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3.3.3 Why is AdRank Important?: So far, we have seen
that the marketers desire users to click on their ads. Let
us now also understand in the following section what
psychological factors influence consumers to click on
ads.
(i) Primacy Effects: Serial position effects have been
described as the effect of the position of the items on a
list on the chances of an individual recalling them. The
primacy effect is one such cognitive bias based on the
relative position of an item on a list. Here, the
individuals tend to recall the information presented to
them first, better than the information they are made
privy to later. This tend to make the user think that the
information presented first is more significant than that
presented later. Research by Solomon Asch (1946)
illustrate this effect very well. He asked people to rate a
person described as ‘envious, stubborn, critical,
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described as ‘intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical,
stubborn and envious’. The second group rated the
person more highly then the first group.
(ii) Competition for Attention Theory: The competition
for attention theory explain biases in information
processing. Desimone (1995) argues that it is important
for an individual to priorities which of the many items
presented is to be processed. Djamasbi et al. (2010)
find that the position of a particular item has an
influence on the individual’s choice to process it. As
Faraday (2000) suggests, individual tend to consider
items higher up on the list as more important.
Considering viewing each link as a sequential cognitive
activity, competition for attention theory suggest that
individuals can only process one of these visual stimuli
at a time. This means that each of these cues is
competing for a user’s attention. Ad in higher position
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has a better chance of being processed than an ad in
lower position.
(iii) Information Overload: Information overload is the
phenomena of what happens when one ‘receives too
much information’. Academic literature states that
when individuals are exposed to higher levels of
information than can be easily processed, they tend to
make poorer decisions. Information processing can
become challenging either because of the difficulty
level of the content or because of the sheer amount of
information. Studies show that the selection,
evaluation, as well as integration of information are
affected by the available number of options. As the
complexity of making choice rises, people tend to
simplify their decision-making processes by relying on
simple heuristics and using fewer numbers of options.
This should mean that, since individuals find items
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of the list while making their decisions. This again
makes a case for why a higher AdRank is important
for a marketer.
3.4 Creating the First Ad Campaign
The better understand the following section, we
will take the case of Ram’s online grocery store in
Bengaluru. To get more control on the position
where his website appears on search engine result
page, he decides to go with Google search
advertising. We will start by creating a basic
advertising campaign for his business. The concept
in the following section apply to all the main search
engines; however, for specific examples, we will
consider Google search engine.
3.4.1 Architecture of Search Advertising Account:
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account to use AdWords, which is organized like a tree
structure. One should try to mimic their website
structure in the account structure- create separate
campaigns for different product lines or services. For
example, an online grocery store can have separate
campaigns for different product categories like ‘home
care product’, ‘personal care items’. This would allow
the advertiser to allocate independent budgets for each
product category. A campaign can contain multiple ad
groups. Within the product category of home care, each
sub-category such as detergents, cleansers could be
different ad groups. Each ad group should have related
items since the set of keywords is defined at ad group
level. For each ad group, depending on the number of
products and benefits offered by the online store, one
could have one or more ads,
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campaign for each location. For example, if a store has two
branches, one in US and one in India, the advertiser has to
set up two separate campaigns, each targeting one of the
locations as budget and bids will vary accordingly. Similarly,
if one is running discounts on certain products and wants to
allocate greater budget to advertise that product, then they
should run it as a separate campaign as the budget setting
can be done only at the campaign level. The account
structure should be created thoughtfully as reorganizing the
account will delete accumulated data and effect the
performance of ads. Let us look at each of these in detail.
1. Google AdWords Account: In case the advertiser has an
existing account with Google, they can use the same
details to log in to AdWords.
2. Campaign: An important setting at campaign level is the
daily budget which allow to set a maximum daily
expenditure possible for the campaign. One can have
multiple campaigns region-wise to save cost. If the target
audience is more in Mumbai, then they must keep the
budget higher in Mumbai, and lesser for the other regions.
Also, the bidding rate
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for keywords will be different in different market.
For instance, rates are likely to be higher in metro
cities such as Mumbai as compared to tier-2 cities.
Putting them together in the same campaign would
mean that the advertiser will have to pay higher
rates even for a tier-2 city. One company targeted
the US, Australia, as well as the UK in campaign.
Agency suggested separate campaigns for
separate countries and it reduced the cost by 40
percent. Similarly, advertiser should also choose
respective currencies for different countries. One
can choose to show ads only on Google or on all
search partners, Many search engines partner with
Google to show ads on their search result page.
The default setting is all search partners. If one
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An important setting is bidding model where the
advertiser can choose among cost per click (CPC), cost
per acquisition (CPA), or cost per lead (CPL). Most
advertiser go for CPC model, but they independently
track conversions as well. Another important setting is
location. It can be of two types- (i) geographical location,
and (ii) location of interest. Geographical location refers
to the physical location of the user, whereas location of
interest means that the geographically not in the location
as the phrase. Search engines determine geographical
location with the help of IP addresses and domain.
Google allows a user to search for region-specific
domains such as ‘google.co.in’ instead of the universal
‘google.com’, In the first case, they would attribute the
user to be form India and in the second case from the
US. In case users in England search for restaurants on
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Indian domain, they will be shown ads targeted for
India and not for England. In one instance, a
company operated only in Bengaluru, but on
analysis of AdWords reports it was found that the
ad was seen in the US, Australia, etc. Further
investigation revealed that it happened because the
targeting chosen was location of interest and not
geographical location; hence if possible in the US
searched for ‘online grocery Bangalore’, the ad
would be shown to them. After the targeting was
changed from the location of interest to
geographical location, ads stopped showing to
people outside Bangaluru. A hotel in Paris may
show ads to people outside Paris, but who are
interested in the place.
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target customers. For example, an Indian cuisine
restaurant located in Switzerland may want to target
Indian travelers in Switzerland, and hence might want
to create ads in Hindi or English rather than in French
or German.
3. Ad Groups: Each campaign is made up of one or
more ad groups. An ad group is a bundle of keywords
and ads. The best practice is to have 10-15 tightly
themed keywords in an ad group. Advertiser can make
multiple ads in an ad group. When a user searches for
a keywords, the ads are shown in rotation. In AdWords,
an important setting done at the end group level is
default bid. This bid is then applied to all keywords.
One can also set bids for individual keywords. In such a
case, keyword bid will override the ad group bid. But, if
the company is a larger corporation with global
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keywords can run into millions. In such a situation,
setting bids for individual keywords may not be
possible.
We will create a search campaign for our exercise. For
understanding, let us create two ad groups, one for
groceries and other for fresh fruits and vegetables.
4. Ads: Google provides a preview tool for ads within
AdWords where one can view the ad that are running
based on device and location settings. It is strongly
recommended that the advertisers use the preview tool
to know if their ads are showing or not for certain
keywords. One may be thinking why it is not good to
check if ad is showing or not in search engine result
page. If one checks and do not click, their CTR will
drop!
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three main components- (i) headline, (ii) description, and (iii)
URL.
A search engine allows to specify a different display URL
and different destination URL. The domain name, however,
should be the same in both. The benefit of having two URL
is that users typically see domain name with keywords-
www.example.com/vegitables-in ad content so that they
know what content to expect and once they click on the ad
they are directly taken to the vegetable page.
Due to limitation of the space available for an ad, there is a
maximum limit for characters for each of the fields. It is 30
characters for the headline and 80 characters for description
line. Two headlines of 30 characters, each can be given and
they are joined by a hyphen. In mobile, the description can
come in two lines depending on the screen size.
5. Keywords: Keywords are the single most important
component of the search advertisement. Keywords
determine the search terms for which the ad will be shown.
Appropriateness of keywords would determine if the ads are
reaching the target audience or not. Poor choice of
keywords
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their target audience. Keywords should be
relevant to the search term as well as the ad.
Keywords can be short tail and long tail. Short tail
keywords are few keywords with high search
volume. Long tail keywords are phrases each of
which has small search volume but together they
add up to a significant percent of all searches.
An interesting research by Skiera, Eckert and Hinz
(2010) show that the top 20 percent of all
keywords attract on average 98.16 percentage of
all searches, and generate 97.21 percent of all
clicks. The use of the top 100 keywords in each
campaign attracts on average 88.57 percent of all
searches, and 81.40 percent of all clicks. These
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drive the success of search engine marketing.
However, they also show that the set of the top 100
keywords changes over time.
Another classification of keywords is category,
brand, and competition. Category keywords are
generic keywords, which have high search volume.
But many players would be interested in them, and
hence the prices are higher. Brand keywords will
trigger ads only when users search for the specific
brand. Since search volume as well as competition
will be low for such keywords, the CPC is lower.
Brands can take a decision whether they want to
bid on competition keyword or not. In the case of
the automobile industry, generic keywords would
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that if the advertiser is a small company, then they
must start with category and competition keywords.
Because they have limited budget, they can avoid
bidding on their brand as anyway it will show up in
organic search results. Also, because they are
small, bigger players will not bid on their brand.
Since they are a small company, bidding on bigger
competitors can drive traffic to their website. But
the bid will have to be very high on competition
keywords to make up for the low quality score as
all the three components-ad relevance, CTR, and
landing page quality-will be low.
Ideally, one would want keywords that have high
traffic, low bid amount, low competition and are
relevant to their business. This might not always be
possible since keywords with high traffic attract
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As with any business decision, one must decide on
a trade-off that suits them. So, in the case
mentioned earlier, for Ram’s website, the advertiser
will have to study the keywords that are most
appropriate for a grocery store. They must use a
keywords planner tool within AdWords to choose
the right keywords. They can get a list of suggested
keywords with the monthly search volume for a
defined geographical location, the intensity of
competition, and suggested bid. One can also get
ad group suggestions. It is the best to download the
report in a spreadsheet.
The advertiser can start with70 percent of the
suggested bid and if the ad does not show or
shows in lower positions, increase the bid
gradually. Try to limit the number of keywords to 10
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try to change the keyword combinations, and make them
more focused or long tail.
Google also gives quality score for each keyword based on
all the three dimensions discussed previously. It ranges from
1-10 where 4,5,6 is not good; 7,8 is good; 9 is very good;
and 10 is rare. If the quality score is 6 or less, one should try
to improve it by improving the relevance of ad and of
landing page.
One can also map keywords to the consumer buying funnel.
The user query can help in determining at what stage of the
buying cycle the user is in.
The user query is more general which indicates that the
user has not made up his mind about which brand to buy,
and hence is in awareness stage.
3.4.2 Best Practices for Creating Effective Ads: Some ads
are more clickable i.e. the content of the ad lends itself
easily to clicks from users. These ads attract the attention of
viewers and thus give better CTR to the advertiser.
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Some basic things that you should keep in mind
while creating the text ads are as follows:
• Highlight the USP of the business.
• Include time specific elements that benefit user
such as discount, promotions, offers, etc.
• Include a call-to-action or active verbs like
‘purchase’, ‘avail discount’. ‘order now’, and so on.
• Include keywords in the ad content. This will
increase the relevance of the ad to keywords.
• Create multiple ads for different benefits and rotate
them for keywords, instead of trying to fit all content
in one ad.
• Match ad text to landing page content to get a
higher quality score.
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• Monitor ads closely to see which ads perform better.
The ads that do not have acceptable performance
should be modified or removed.
The ads need to run for few days before one can
analyze the performance and take corrective action.
Search advertising need a lot of optimization. One
must review the performance of keywords, ad groups,
ads, and campaigns, and optimize them periodically.
The objective should be to bring down the CPC and
increase the CTR over a period. One may be
wondering how frequently they should optimize the
campaign. The answer depends on what is the
duration of the campaign. If the campaign is for a
week or two weeks, they will need to optimize daily. If
it is for eight weeks, one can optimize twice in a week.
The more they optimize, the higher would be the
performance, and lower would be the cost.
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3.5 Enhance Your Ad Campaign
In the following sections, we will look at some
advanced topics and enhance the campaign created in
earlier section.
3.5.1 Keyword Targeting: Suppose you are a retailer of
fresh fruits in Bengaluru city area. Obviously, you
would want your advertisements to reach only people
who are searching for fresh fruits and not, say shoes.
Targeting is used to limit the audience for your ads.
In Keyword targeting, you define a set of keywords for
which your ads must be shown. A keywords is a single
word or a phrase. Best keywords are 2-3 words
phrases. Single word keywords can lead to ads
showing for irrelevant queries. For example, if your
keywords is ‘bags’ it could be luggage bags, ladies
bag, vacuum cleaner bags, tea bags, and office bags.
Hence it is best to have 2-3 word keywords. The
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match, broad match modifier, exact match, and phrase
match.
A broad match is just a list of words. The order or form of
words does not matter. Broad match is used to target a wide
range of audience. With broad match, your ad may show if a
search term contains your keyword terms in any order, and
possibly along with other terms.
A broad match modifier is a set of keywords with ‘+’ or ‘-’
symbol. If a keyword is specified with a ‘+’ prefix, then that
keyword must mandatorily occur in the search term; and the
‘-’ prefix is used to exclude the keyword explicitly.
With phrase match, your ad can show when someone
searches for your exact keywords or your exact keyword
with additional words before or after it. Phrase match is done
by placing the keywords within the quotation marks.
An exact match needs the keywords text to match exactly
with the user search term. Unlike other match types, if user’s
search terms have additional keywords then the ads are not
shown. Exact match is done by placing the keywords within
square brackets.
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Close variation include misspellings, singular and
plural forms, acronyms, stemming (such as ‘floor’
and ‘flooring’), and abbreviations. They are
automatically taken care of, so we do not need to
add them.
It is a good idea to follow a broad-to-narrow
strategy, meaning start with broad keywords and
then add modifier and phrase match and exact
keywords. Google gives greater preference and
Quality Score to exact and phrase match as they
exactly match the user query. You should check for
yourself what the CPC differential between different
match types is and optimize the campaigns based
on performance. While the broad match will drive
more traffic as add impressions will be more,
phrase and exact match types will drive more
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Negative Keyword: Negative keywords are used for
exclusion. While creating ads, you would have an
audience that you do not wish to target, say, you are
creating advertisements for a store that sells only
women’s clothing. So, it would be futile to show your
ads to someone who is searching for men’s clothing. If
the search term does not include men, then specifying
men as a negative keywords will not show your ad. You
must consider adding negative keywords to your
campaigns to prevent your ads from showing against
irrelevant search queries, and thus optimize your
budget.
3.5.2 Creating Advanced Ad Formats: Ad extension
are used to provide additional information along with
the ad content. Some ad extensions are available only
to ads that appear in the top four spots on the Google
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thus getting more space on the page and
improving the chances of users clicking on the ad.
Users can take action directly from the ad
extensions such as make a phone call, download
the app, etc.
1. Call Extension: Call extension is used to provide
a phone number with the ad and a callback facility
for the target customers. Customers can directly
call instead of having to open the website and then
place the call. Call extensions can be configured to
show only to call during certain business hours.
When a user makes a call using the call extension,
it is counted as a click. On desktop searches, call
extensions are usually shown with a call button,
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2. Site Links: Site links are additional direct links;
each site link can also have a description of its
own. The benefits is that user can be directed to
the desired landing page such as specific products,
store locator, contact us, etc.
3. App Extension: A site that provides a
downloadable app can add an app extension.
Clicking on the app extension directs the user to
download the app. This is available only for mobile
devices.
4. Location Extension: Location extensions are
used to show local address of the business. This
information is integrated with Google maps and
users can use this location to find the business on
maps or get directions. The extensions are shown if
the user is close to the place of business or
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5. Review Extension: Advertiser can include positive
reviews, ratings, and awards from credible third party
sources as an extra line below the search ad. Google
does not charge for clicks on links to third party
reviews, but the reviews must be approved by Google.
This extension is very useful for businesses in
experience or credence categories as reviews will add
to the credibility of the business. If the business is a
start-up, one must consider review extensions to win
the trust of the customers
6. Structured Snippets: Structured snippets provide a
preview of valuable information to users before they
click on an ad. Advertisers must choose a predefined
product category and then add specific details.
7. Price Extension: The advertiser can also display
prices for specific products just below the text ad. This
feature is available only for mobile ads. It increases the
ROI and conversion rates as only interested users will
click on the ad and they have higher profitability of