Power to the Publisher: Data Theft – Attribution as Well as Retargeting

A brilliant article in the blog Exchange Wire entitled “Cookie Directive: How To Kill Off European Publishers While Giving a Monster Monopoly a Competitive Advantage” recently made me think about a publisher’s data strategy having to plan not just for collection and targeting, but measurement and attribution.  A lot of conversations in the industry now are giving attention to the idea of data theft from publishers – at eXelate we’ve built a tool called DataShield to help publishers see what third-party tags are loading on their site.  DataShield keeps a log of these alerts – not just spot-checking for theft with tools like Fiddler or Firebug – and allows publishers to audit what partners are firing through their ad units, social media widgets, etc.

But potential collection of data for re-targeting is only one threat to the publisher’s business; another threat might be more alarming: in some cases, marketers are attributing results of their campaigns based on post-view conversion tracking.  During my time at Advertising.com, we saw a cannibalization of some CPA campaigns when publishers had hard-coded textlinks or 120×60 buttons that cookie those consumers with the same advertiser.  The consumer may have clicked on the 300×250 Vonage ad we served, but they may not have converted immediately…if they returned to Vonage later and signed up, the most recent pixel might have been the textlink in their web email service, even though the user didn’t look at or click on that placement.

Now that Google and Facebook tags are increasing on publisher pages, publishers are no longer asking visitors to login – “I don’t want to know anything about my visitors, but I want Facebook to know everything about them” – and the way that marketers are attributing results to a campaign are going to be skewed to the pixel rather than the environments that offered the best placements, ad formats and creative that drove meaningful interactions.

Publishers need to compete in the attribution battle, and ask the advertiser if they’re going to be evaluated on metrics like post-view conversions.  Publishers are spending a tremendous amount of time producing valuable content to draw visitors, offering high engagement ad units and highly targeted audience segments – in short, creating premium ad placements that should be measured with effectiveness studies like Nielsen NetEffect that dig deeper into online media consumption and offline purchases.  Are publishers asking themselves how their advertisers are measuring campaign effectiveness?

How To Succeed in Tag Management without Really Trying

“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings — and put compensation as a carrier behind it — you almost don’t have to manage them.”

Jack Welch said this about managing people, but we would say almost the same thing about managing Web site tags. Choose the right partners, implement the best processes and make sure the incentives are correct and you almost don’t need to manage your tags.

We kept these ideas in mind when we designed Tag Manager, a new way to track and control all of the tags a publisher runs.

Since 2008, we’ve helped Web publishers optimize both tag performance and data marketing revenue. Tag Manager brings together eXelate’s performance monitoring, data marketing and audience measurement capabilities so that publishers can spend less time managing their tags and more time creating great content and building their businesses.

We’re also sure that Welch would agree that visibility and measurement are both key in any management process. That’s why Tag Manager includes a tag activity dashboard, so that you can better understand tag types, volume and performance.

Moreover, Tag Manager is integrated into DataLinX, the only DMP in the marketplace dedicated to helping data owners maximize their return on data. That means Tag Manager sits side-by-side with both DataShield, which prevents publishers from data theft, and all of our marketplace integrations, which ensure that you get the maximum revenue from your audience data.

We know that tag management can be a painful distraction not only for your organization but for your site visitors as well. Let us show you how Tag Manager can help you get your tags under control – so that soon, you won’t even have to manage them.

Insights from the Digital Publishing Summit (DPS) in Utah

eXelate and Autobytel at the Digital Publishing Summit 2011

The eXelate team attended the 2^nd Digital Publisher Summit this week in Park City, Utah and despite rumors to the contrary, there was actual work that was performed in the shadow of the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains. Most notably, we launched our DMP partnership with Autobytel and shared some of their exceptional success with the Summit attendees. eXelate’s Damian Garbaccio and Kyle Pratt, Senior Director of Corporate Development for Autobytel, hit a home run with their breakfast presentation on “Auto-nomous Data Management” (despite the bad pun). The duo shared how despite being sold out of media inventory, Autobytel was able to leverage eXelate’s DataLinX platform to generate incremental revenue from its audience offsite and how the company is leveraging the platform’s DataShield function to protect it’s highly valuable audience.

Also at the event, I sat on a mid-day (i.e. keeping people from skiing) panel about digital branding dollars and how different players in the system (data guys, publishers, exchanges) can play the brand game. Martini Media’s Skip Brand did a great job keeping the crowd engaged and despite trying to foster some conflict, the panelists from Turner, Adap.tv and MSNBC all seemed to agree that measurement and analytics that were consistent with offline branding data would be the key to attracting and keeping real branding dollars.

It wasn’t all work and no play – though. We did join the Liberty (IAC) Advertising and Open X folks for a few, brew-fueled rounds of shuffleboard at the No Name Saloon in Park City, had a good time at the AdMeld sponsored Casino night (where losing funny money was pretty painless) and were even skewered by Comedy Central Comedian  Cash Levy at the Pubmatic Dinner, where he took us to task for our “creative” company name. In classic CEO fashion, I blamed the previous administration and quickly diverted attention to other more easily laughed at subjects like the Perky Jerky suit that appeared at the conference.

All in all a great few days of networking, pitching and learning. Thanks to the DPS staff for a great event!

DataLinX and DataShield- Lunch and Learn at OMMA Behavioral

Learn more about our publisher tools for data management, including DataLinX.