Types of Targeting in Advertising

What are the different types of Targeting in advertising?

Behavior- If we segment customers basis their behavior on the website like previous purchases, pages visited, searches done, etc. We then group of customers who have similar behavior and then show them targeted messages/ads.

Context- Targeting users based on the page content or site category. So showing ads basis the content on the website as well depending on the category the website belongs to. IAB has a list of categories for websites. Native is a form of contextual advertising.

Time & Event-based- Ads run at certain time and occurrence of a specific event. Gold jewelry ads around Diwali in India.

Demographic- Basis a person Age, Sex, Income, Ethnicity users can be targeted. When behavior segments are layered on top of demographic the targeting can be more valuable.

Geolocation- Targeting basis a person's location or hyper location (geofencing) which is more precise. So if a person is near a certain store h/she can be shown ads or given vouchers for the same retailer.

Device- More relevant to Mobile ads and serving local ads or coupons. This is again similar to contextual targeting in certain ways. Also, affect the type of creative is served. iPhone users with a 5G connection might see very different ads for someone having a 3G connection.

Site Retargeting- Also known as Retargeting, serving ads to users who came to your website and didn't convert. So these users know about your brand hence higher is the probability for them to convert. 

Search Retargeting- Ads served to users basis their search behavior or keyword data. It is intent-based and exchanges help do this kind of targeting.

Predictive Targeting- Using data from different targeting methods predictive targeting comes up with a probability of purchase for users.

First party data acquisitions by holding companies in advertising

Why are holding companies buying Data companies?

• Internal data offerings have become a must-have in major brand media account pitches 

• Holding companies are investing heavily in those businesses because they expect them to become more powerful tools to win creative reviews

• Use case - Media-mix modelling, multitouch attribution, online marketplaces or first-party data services

If we talk about Epsilon- It gives Publicis access to first-party data and core expertise in managing client's first-party data through CRM databases & loyalty programs. Epsilon does not generate that data but gets it when people give their data to public records etc. They have been aggregating this data for years in the US.  

In-fact this is not something exclusive that they have as these datasets are available everywhere. However, the people working with these datasets can be a USP. How to apply to media for clients can be powerful.  

So agencies are trying to change their capabilities to meet client's needs. Basically, making sense of the client's data. 

As a downside, these acquisitions put them at risk of regulatory issues. Plus applying these segments globally is not that easy as the datasets are mostly from US data. 

Also, in the case of Publicis their history of acquisitions has been questioned. Even Sapient was an overpay and integrations are a challenge. But if it works the price tag of $4.4b will be justified. 

Breaking DMP & CDP

What is the difference between a DMP & a CDP?

• They are different by design.

• CDP: Mainly developed with the goal to achieve a 360-degree view of the customer, where multiple first-party data sources are combined to match IDs for segmentation purposes.

• DMP: Usually work with Third parties with profiles based on cookies activated in DSP or Ad-networks. Many vendors have started blending first-party data into these DMPs as well.

DMPs are more anonymous in nature as they work with cookies, which makes them more reliant on probabilistic identifiers. Also data needs to be matched before coming into a DMP in the case of Offline and Online data.

CDPs are more specific in nature as they work with first-party data. No form of matching is required to ingest data into a CDP.

Use cases for CDP: Newsletters, Email-automation, AdWords / Criteo custom audiences, Facebook custom audiences, Personalization onsite, Vouchers etc.

Use cases for DMP: Targeted Advertising, Lookalike modelling. 

Breaking - Discrepancies in Impression Tracking

How does impression tracking work?


If you want to understand the Ad-tech ecosystem first, you can read about it here.

There is the advertiser side of things and the Publisher side of things.

Advertiser Side

The advertiser runs the Ads through a demand-side platform or DSP. However, the Tag is created using an Ad-server and then served using a DSP.

DFA and Sizmek are advertiser end tools that are used to generate a tag out of a creative. These tags will be sent to the DSP for trafficking.

The impression is tracked in DSP, as the ad is called from DSP. DSP will count the impressions and DFA will also count the impressions.

Publisher side

The publishers take Ads from the advertisers to run ads on their website. They will be using DFP's services to do this.

Both DFA & DFP do the same thing but one is an advertiser end tool and another is a publisher end tool.

Since there are multiple players involved there is bound to be a discrepancy in the way they count impressions. Main reasons why a discrepancy occurs:

1. Third parties like DFA count an impression when a page fully loads. Whereas the ad-serving platforms count clicks when the user clicks a banner.

2. Vendors might give reports in different time zones which causes a lot of reporting discrepancies.

3. Sometimes the page might not load due to network issues hence causing the discrepancy.

There can be many other reasons for such discrepancies as standards for measuring impressions, caches, etc.

Handy Terms

DCM - Formerly known as DFA
DBM - Google's DSP
DFP- Double click for Publishers
DFA - Double click for Advertisers

Tracking cookies and the likes

What are the different tracking methods in advertising? 

While reading about ad-tech you cannot miss hearing about terms like cookie, first-party, third-party and the likes. I have tried to explain them below:

Cookie - I store information on you in your own browser.

First-party cookie - You visited my website so I know about you.

Third-party cookie - You visited a website where I placed my ad so I know about you.

Persistent cookie: As the name suggests i store information about your preferences and make your access convenient for future visits. They can stay for a long as two years hence can give information on the user path as well.

Retargeting - You came to my website. Left before completing an action (Purchase, form fill, etc.) so I follow you wherever you go on the web.

Link decoration - Adding extra information to the URL in a link that a person clicks on. (Piggybacking)

Fingerprinting - I know about your device (or browser) based on its specific or unique config. I don't store this info on your browser but on a server in a database.

Cookie respawning: Cookie respawning is the process of recreating browser cookies from information that has been deleted. With cookie respawning, companies take information stored in flash cookies and use it to recreate a cookie in the browser.

Flash cookie: A Flash cookie, is a text file that is sent by a server to the client when the user's browser requests content supported by Adobe Flash, a popular plug-in. They are not stored in the browser and have to be separately deleted through Adobe flash player settings.

Cookie poisoning: It is a method adopted by an unauthorized person to access and control the data in a cookie, to steal someone’s identity or financial information

Third Party Ad Tags in Ad Serving

What are Third-Party Ad Tags?

An advertiser places their creatives (Or Tags) in a third party server like Sizmek, Double click, Flashtalking to serve ads to users instead of serving it directly from their server. 

These third parties have better tracking, reporting, re-targeting and optimization capabilities. Also have reports like, path to conversion, reach & frequency reports. 

The same ad tag can be placed on multiple ad inventory space on different websites and apps. Hence easy to make creative changes in one place, do A/B tests, track Viewability and engagement. 

Header Bidding for publishers

What is Header Bidding?

It allows publishers to offer inventory to multiple ad-exchanges simultaneously before an ad-call is made.

Why do we need Header bidding?

Created to increase the yield for publishers. In the Waterfall method inventory was left unsold.

The Long Story

Originally programmatic was taken as a way to monetize remnant inventory in a pyramid inventory structure (waterfall method), with premium inventory reserved for direct-sold campaigns. Once the Premium inventory got exhausted and the visitor has not completed the frequency cap is when RTB kicks-in.

It is like selling the same thing to multiple people and lowering the price every time.

P R E M I U M    I N V E N T O R Y 

P R I V A T E    M A R K E T P L A C E 

O P E N  (R T B) 

Initially, less time was spent on revenue related tasks and most on admin related work. Google’s DFP  came to the rescue by introducing Header bidding which replaced Google’s “waterfall” method of connected demand sources.

Header bidding is also known as pre-bidding, where multiple exchanges can now bid for publishers' inventory. More bidders mean more demand for inventory and better prices. Publishers can control which sources can participate in the process.  

Header bidding is a resource-intensive option and also increases latency for the end-user and prone to malvertising attacks. But the opportunity was so great that it was accepted.