Disqus - Latest Comments for vstesin

Re: We’re Giving Away a $1,500 Gift Card to B&H

Vlad Stesin — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 12:12:06 -0000

Fuji x-t10!

Re: The 87.5% Category According to Luma – Lots of Acquisitions

Vlad Stesin — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:16:47 -0000

That's a vision we completely subscribe to. We've started rewriting our entire ad serving stack a few years ago, without knowing too much where RTB would lead.

Today we have traditional publisher and advertiser ad serving stack, and both can be extended to use RTB -- to allocate inventory and send off bid requests on the publisher end, or retarget and extend traditional campaigns on the advertiser end. RTB can and should work in support of traditional campaigns for both sides of the ecosystem.

Re: Quirky and The Cone Of Silence

Vlad Stesin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:47:48 -0000

Interesting idea - it made me think of "sound cones" used in advertising, where by stepping into a zone you only hear the ad/music playing. And apparently there are such things for silence as well, check out this one for instance: http://www.interface.com/?P...

This is not portable though, and is meant to be installed by the establishment since they're quite large.

Re: a day's ideas, comments and fun

Vlad Stesin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:26:22 -0000

hahah je reconnais bien la place!

NST & echo?

Re: Media Optimization

Vlad Stesin — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:54:36 -0000

It all kind of comes back to Albert Wenger's post and our comments there. I'll chime in if you don't mind.

A few points to consider:

- Multivariate testing and optimization are relatively easy to do based on clicks, where such procedure would follow the same type of methodology as used in Search campaigns. But since the effects of display advertising are much harder to quantify, chances are direct click-based optimization would yield odd results ("natural born clickers" etc).

- From my experience, large campaigns from large advertisers on large networks/sites are difficult to turn around in terms of contractual obligations, paperwork, billing, etc. This is often what puts a break on optimization, not necessarily the technology as such.

- Agree with Jonathat that If, by definition, you can "pull out" a placement easily, sites/networks would need a way to replace it back as easily. Hence the whole thing needs to be integrated for publishers to be on board.

Let's also keep in mind that no matter how much intelligence you put into optimization of creative and placement, there are many factors that make it completely irrelevant. For one, we routinely see campaigns not being properly geo targeted, served to "external" markets. Many impressions are never seen at all, served below the fold or otherwise out of viewport. Banner blindness also affects at least some percentage of online population.

Auditing and universal tech allowing to keep a close eye on who the campaign is being served to and where is first step in this direction -- and really, this can be considered as being the first stage of optimization.

Good post.

Re: It Is Too Complicated (Pub/Ad Tech)

Vlad Stesin — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:58:36 -0000

Let's not forget that in this industry, even the impression tracking standards took the IAB *years* to develop. And that wasn't even in the 90's. As far as I'm concerned, all ad serving infrastructure must be driven completely by APIs. This will at least enable them to work together, even without standards. Right now it's not the case at all.

As for publishers using exclusively DART and Atlas, there are some emerging alternatives but of course every company that ever succeeded in this space has been bought out by a larger one. Falk AG, 24/7 RealMedia, Smart, ad.com, aQuantive/Atlas and DoubleClick themselves, etc.

@dherman76 It's true that when agencies setup tags on clients' sites it's pretty much for life. But then again, I don't know many agencies that routinely do the kind of tracking that this setup really enables. I'm talking about viewthrough (with click or latent) conversions and repeat visits, measuring weight of display campaigns on search and ultimately conversions, etc. In fact, clients' Omniture setup, another staple, is more than enough to provide agencies and clients with what they need, no?

Re: It Is Too Complicated (Pub/Ad Tech)

Vlad Stesin — Thu, 21 May 2009 11:05:15 -0000

Recently we've spent some time with a large publisher in Canada that has exactly that problem. They wanted to have an integrated solution instead of using a collection of loosely coupled ad mgmt and CRM tools that need to be constantly tweaked.

I'd say that the problem is that everyone uses DART and despite its huge flaws, generally speaking, no one really wants to try anything else. So all innovation happens on the edges, where third parties are being scheduled in remnant inventory to automate and do some magic. And that's pretty limited, and ultimately this is just a hack. Inventory has to be managed and optimized in its entirety.

Also agree with Darren, of course.

Re: My Typical Daily Mood

Vlad Stesin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:04:22 -0000

Confirming that this is, indeed, true.