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I A N H E W E T S O N

The truthabout clicks

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Really??

We’re talking

about clicks?

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Clients are still focused on

clicks after all these years!

In 2014, 74% of campaigns that

included our DSP, Eyedemand

were client directed to deliver either

the highest CTR or lowest CPC

In 2015 YTD we’re at 79%. So it’s

actually trending up.

These clients included the largest

holding companies, direct brands,

small agencies, everyone. But does

anyone really think about the bigger

picture?

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More clicks on an ad = more clicks to my site

More clicks to my site = more sales / newsletter signups etc

…and there isn’t actually anything wrong with clicks.

It’s only problematic when they’re used as the primary KPI.

So what’s wrong with clicks?

Or when

it’s just

habit….

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We’ve been in the 3rd party adserving business since 2000.

When we first started serving ads, they were gifs, and they had to

work on Netscape 4.

We’re an Adserver, DSP, DMP, and have the in-house data

scientists who optimize campaigns, look for fraud, and do studies

like this.

Eyereturn’s part in the history of the click

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Those CTRs aren’t

from unique clicks.

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The same users click on ads again and again

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Optimizing to another KPI reduces serial clickers

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Click Fraud is still a thing

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The lowest hanging fruit of fraud

Despite all the talk, all of the verification vendors and whitelists – click fraud is still out there.

Optimizing to a very easily gamed KPI like clicks will attract fraud.

Fraud is decreasing faster for clients who don’t optimize to click.

A lot of clicks are unintentionalIn September 2015, Youtube changed their click policy – you used to be able to

click on the whole video. After the change, to click through on the video you had to

click on the tiny link at the bottom.

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But what does this actually mean?

Small call to action = fewer clicks (7,700 fewer clicks on 1 million impressions)

What happened to all those clicks?

If users were really looking to click wouldn’t they have found the new link?

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Some sites / ads are designed to generate clicks

Do you actively buy on this kind of inventory?

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Like nature – the beast evolves to attract prey

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The web has adapted to feed

clicks to advertisers, whether

those clicks are real or not

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Clicks don’t equal brand-site engagement60.66% of ad clicks that make it to a landing page don’t make it any further than the landing page.

And…average number of page views is far less for users who clicked on an ad.

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Optimizing to click drives fewer

actual quality brand site visits

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How optimization to click skews inventory choices

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.If you’re optimizing towards click, you’re going to see more of these sites.

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The Relationship

between Click

Optimization and

Mobile

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Most campaigns that are optimized to click end up on a lot of mobile devices

Why? Fat Fingers.

Mobile devices generate a far higher CTR

Click Distribution on campaign optimized to click

Chrome

IE

Firefox

Safari

Others

37.7%47.6%

10.2%

12.5%

55%

25.1%

All Impression Distribution by Browser

Clickers come from certain browsers

Safari increases

362%

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The App Effect

More mobile = more app content

Apps are harder to track, harder to measure

App inventory is not fraud free

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A lot of mobile clicks don’t make it

Users change their minds after accidental clicks

Mobile Network Latency, landing page weight drops redirects before the landing page loads

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What happens when you optimize to CTR

ClicksDropped Redirects

“Actual” Performance

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Side-effects of skewing mobile

If your creative is not mobile optimized but ends up on mobile inventory – not good

If brand site is not mobile optimized but ends up on the screens of mobile users – not good

If conversions are a secondary metric, more mobile, more Safari = more difficult to measure

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Click optimized campaigns are

likely on mobile – make sure

they’re mobile friendly!

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To Recap:

• Most clicks are generated by a small number of users

• Fraud actively targets click optimized campaigns

• Clicks do not equal conversions

• A lot of clicks are unintentional

• Inventory can be designed to trick users into clicking

• Clickers visit fewer pages on brand sites

• Mobile devices deliver high CTR but low conversions

• More mobile = more discrepancies between clicks and site visits

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High CTRs and low CPCs generated by poor quality clicks

become benchmarks that are hard to back off from.

If a campaign is evaluated purely on CPC or CTR, vendors

who deliver those KPIs are rewarded with more business,

perpetuating the cycle.

Who wants to tell a client that their past successes have been built on a shaky

foundation?

The hamster wheel of clicks

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Strategies for getting away from CTR and CPC

1) Take stock:

Are any of the issues described earlier affecting your campaigns?

Take inventory of the kind of data you have.

Determine the real KPIs that will drive the advertiser’s business.

How can you measure those KPIs?

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What are your alternatives?

- What levers do you have available to pull?

- Is there data you can collect during a CTR/CPC campaign to support trying a different

strategy?

- For example – compare CTRs to CPA – does pulling the optimization lever on one affect the

other?

Provincial Travel Campaign

Phase 1 Results:

Directed to optimize to conversion, eyeDemand achieved a 12% conversion rate. (All other vendors between 6-8%)

Phase 2 Results:

Client changed optimization to $1.25 CPC.Behavioural segments and conversion lookalike targeting removed to reduce CPMs.Conversions dropped by 50%

Provincial Travel Campaign

Phase 3 Results: Reverting to original CPA tactic increased CPM and CPC but outperformed phase 1 on CPA

Moral of the story:Disciplined testing against real KPIs is the best way to improve results

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Another Experiment

Retail client concerned that retargeting was hitting users who were purchasing anyway, and that their budget

was being wasted.

- Using the same targeting parameters, impressions were split 50/50 between brand ads and PSAs.

- CPA for the brand ads was $14.28

- CPA for the PSAs: $157.67

Moral of the story:Assumptions can be flawed –only disciplined experimentation can show the true relationship between campaign variables.

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The marketer must become the master of data

There’s never been a better time to use data science to crunch the numbers.

Think about what’s causation, vs what’s correlation.

Experiment. Test and test again.

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I A N H E W E T S O N

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