“Engagement” seems to be the latest buzzword falling from everyone’s lips, but what does it mean to Microsoft? With few concrete details on their new “Engagement Mapping” campaign, it will be interesting to see how Microsoft goes about tracking what ads have been viewed, and what conclusions they try to draw from their data. Right now it just sounds like a fancy way of tracking data to deduce consumer motivation. An easier way of “engaging” with the consumer might just be to have a conversation with them.
Would love, love, love to see some tangible means of measuring "engagement" but so far there is still the almighty click-through. In one business I'm involved in, we paid to have ad placed on a relatively high-traffic site, got a lot of face time for the brand, an awful click-through percentage but still managed to get a few thousand new visitors. Completely sold out of the product we were selling this year. Was the Internet ad a success and worth the price paid for it? Did the people come back "three weeks later" because of the ad? It's quite possible that they did but we don't know for sure.
Would also love to see Microsoft release an Adsense competitor that all publishers can try. You know they want to.
I think this is great. When I worked at an online agency we would analyze raw Atlas data to allow our advertising clients to see the 'optimal' path to a conversion, and it gave publishers (such as WhitePages.com, where I'm now the Director, Advertising Strategy) long over-due, legitimate credit for the ads they ran, even if the conversion ultimately happened on a Google ad click. The "Last Action" credit system that we have today is broken, and "Engagement Mapping" is a terrific first step to understanding the true value of an online ad campaign.
Internet ads have so much more potential than TV, which is why it finds itself under such scrutiny. Frankly click-thru advertising in its current newborn state is much more advanced than anything TV could provide. When it comes to internet advertising I'm not so sure that MS is any more cutting edge than CBS and frankly both MS and CBS should refrain from forcing themselves into new business areas and better their existing products, it's kind of like GM spending millions in the Oscar's last night when it lost $4B in the 4Q alone.
Why don't they release an Adsense competitor and prove it. Until then I don't buy it. I said competitor! Show me the $$$$$.
Will someone please implement a genetic algorithm to display advertising.
here's the pseudo code:
0) have a set of ad campaigns for a particular product.
1) you fit into a statistical demographic profile (there's enough info about you on the web that you likely fit into a lifestyle category, and someone somwhere has access to this info, and likley to a very refine degree).
2) if someone else fitting your demographic profile clicks or 'engages' an ad, go to (3), else go to (4)
3) next time this ad is displayed to you, and you are liikey to engage it, since your locality of concern is statistically congruent with this anonymous internet brethren.
4) If the engagement level for your particular demographic group is low, the genetic algorithm will mutate properties for a subset of ads {colour, image, sound, text.. basically the message or narrative of the ad}
5)Display these new ads to candidate groups. go to (3).
In theory the genetic algorithm will 'evolve' the ad campaign --in real time--to maximize the ad format and message, consequently evoking some response from the end user.
All the hype about Microsoft and Engagement ads is justs Microsoft trying position itself at the cutting edge of Online Advertising, when really their product is going to be one the worst to hit the market.
James
from
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Before the internet, how come nobody ever asked how many people who view a TV or magazine ad were "engaging" by taking action?
Nobody asked that because it wasn't a convenient question. Measuring it was retrospective, fuzzy, and imprecise. Simply tallying the number of "impressions" served as an accepted stand-in for actual engagement.
What drove measuring "clicks" for internet ads was not the actual value of clicks, but the fact that the technology now existed to measure public attention to an ad in real time.
But the value of clicks has largely been discredited, for all kinds of reasons - click fraud, and the simple fact that clicking an ad obviously doesn't mean I'll necessarily buy the product.
But this "interacive" factor let the genie out of the bottle, and now, even though it's been proven clicks don't mean much, advertisers still expect more than the hope of mere impressions from online ads.
The problem is that the commercial internet has allowed itself to be painted into a corner by advertisers who expect too much from online ads.
So Microsoft backs off from "clicks", but still talks about "engamement" -- a form of interactivity which is much harder to measure, and whose value is even more nebulous.
The internet industry needs to go on the offensive and repudiate the notion that some form of engagement has to be measured for an ad to have value.
Internet ads should be treated EXACTLY like TV or magazine ads. They should be
visually inescpable
visually compelling
relevant
And their value should be measured by impressions (unique monthky visitors or whatever), NOT be clicks, engagement, or any kind of interactivity.
When did MS become the Madison Avenue gurus? All of the sudden they're calling shots on what brands want. They are a software company first and foremost, but the greed unfortunately leads them down roads they should stay off of.
I disagree with the statement "Advertisers won’t care how it does it." Knowing how someone gets from point A to point B is huge when optimizing the process. It is also important when attempting to recreate the behavior in a different advertising platform -- since Microsoft has limited scale.
I believe the level of transparency will be key for the success of this initiative.
How is it tracking? With cookies? I don't understand how it is tracking through the course of time when people often clear cookies and sometimes do not allow them. How will they can make it accurate enough for people to spend thousands of dollars in adspace?
well, actually its right, may be this pressure from google will force microsoft to come up with much better advertisement solution to the industry.
This definitely seems primarily focused on CPA type campaigns, although I believe they are trying to reach out to brand advertisers at the same time. Somewhat of a mixed message I feel like on this. They're talking about lots of open brand exposure, but all leading up to the specific action.
Still, specific audience aside this is a good move to prove out the value of complex online campaigns.
I do disagree with this being "behavioral 2.0" or anything. This seems to be primarily a reporting/payment system, not so much a specific targeting. Ad Networks have been able to target based on having seen ads before and such for a long time. Targeting tied to all these approaches is nothing new, but providing meaningful reporting of how each individual part works, is something new.
What ever happened to Google's "Pay Per Action" Beta test last year? Did they find that they would make less money if they actually didn't charge advertisers for phony clicks?
As the web has gone free the only thing of value thats left is reputation and attention. How much one interacts with your product/site as well as what they tell others about it and the frequency of that. This is going to be more important for advertisers moving forward to have something that falls in line with that. This seems to come close in a way.
"In practice, measuring “engagement” may be nothing more than a way to justify the value of under-performing ads. “See, that Facebook ad actually worked—three weeks later.”"
You missed the point. By tracking all the exposure that leads up to a purchase, you can precisely compare how many sales were generated by those individuals that saw the Facebook ad plus 3 more, versus those that only saw the other 3. Then you can tack an exact dollar amount on the value of that Facebook ad and know if you generated positive ROI on it (3 weeks later or not) or if you would've made more increasing exposure of the other ads instead.
Without tracking the data, you just wouldn't know.
i have a hunch that Netflix was on to the secret of "recency, frequency, size and ad format" ... hooked me a long time ago. ;) Honestly though... there is value to this research, for ad revenue to mature online these types of initiatives will need to be embraced and at least given a chance to be heard.
p.s. @6 .... sure enough... you can put lipstick on a dog if that's your thing... but i thought this piece was about MS... ?
Seems more like pay-per-action. Lets see how microsoft comes up.
Good to see M$ is doing some innovation in ad space. I think it's time
for google to open their Google PPA plan to public Beta.
I have yet to be impressed by anything Microsoft has rolled out on the advertising front. Sounds like some gussied up behavioral - the last sentence of Schonfeld's post says it all.
put as much lipstick on this dog as you want, no matter how you spin it, Facebook is still an awful marketing platform.
Microsoft has just introduced the idea and it will get refined over time. It will surely be good to see different business models in this area.
This entire idea is based upon the model of behavioral targeting - it seems like behavioral targeting 2.0. I wonder when all of these pieces will be put together. As for Microsoft, I think they are just trying far too hard to compete with Google while in reality, Google will always beat them down, regardless of the revenue of both companies yearly. This will be fun to watch and excellent for all ad execs out there.
The target audience for engagement mapping is madison avenue, not adwords advertisers. The goals of Clorox, P&G, Unilever and other blue chip companies are rarely as easily measured in terms of clicks, cost per click and website conversions. Influence, awareness, brand perception, etc are important parts of the overall mix that "last ad clicked" and online conversions fail to measure effectively. I do not know how the engagement mapping works, but it is safe to say that innovating new ideas are always a good thing and are what has made the web such a successful ad medium.
Would like to see an API for this to allow sites to add post-click behaviors to the engagement model.
sounds good.