Full Details on Twitter’s New Ad Model

With the inauguration of its ad model, Twitter has made its first direct overture to the thousands of companies – big and small – that use it to converse with customers and build awareness. The resulting ad product, “Promoted Tweets,” is both more and less than advertisers might have hoped. More, in that Twitter has promised targeted ads will eventually appear directly in users’ Twitter streams and on third party clients. And less, in that the program will begin modestly, showing up only in search results – where CEO Dick Costolo confessed Twitter’s volume of page impressions is tiny. “It’s a very small piece of the overall traffic,” COO Dick Costolo said yesterday at the AdAge Digital Conference. Additionally, Twitter is still vague on many of the platform’s crucial components – such as how pricing and targeting will work. But in his comments Costolo unleashed enough details to set agency execs’ mouths watering – and in some cases scratching their heads – as they dashed off point-of-view statements to clients. Below is a summary of what’s known, and what’s not, about Twitter’s new ad platform:

Read More: ClickZ

Calculating The True Cost Per Acquisition

I had a conversation with a travel CMO excited at finally having cracked the code on her Display retargeting campaigns (prior to Google offering its own version of this link). Her cost per acquisition/booking (CPA) from this campaign was, let’s say, $18. And, let’s say she makes an average of $36 on each booking. So, great — she’s got it figured out, with a 100% return on ad spend (ROAS). Well, not exactly. While retargeting is a great tactic to get lost leads back to your site, what the vendors won’t tell you is that it’s greatly biased to overemphasize conversions if evaluated on a post-impression (a/k/a view-through) attribution model. Don’t get me wrong — I, for one, am a believer in the post-impression conversion. While Display ads have suffered from declining click-through rates since they debuted in the 1990s, consumers are still measurably affected by them and clearly respond to them to some degree. They may see that great deal to Cancun and go to your site on their own, and a great many consumers do this (there is even evidence that good Display drives search). So, clearly, I believe there is some effect that isn’t related to clicks.

Read More: MediaPost

Rubicon Unveils ‘Permission’ System, Shifts Display Market Control Back To Publishers

In a bid to help publishers regain control over the sale of their inventory through third-party ad networks and exchanges, the Rubicon Project this morning unveiled a new platform that it claims will “balance the digital advertising ecosystem.” The new platform, dubbed “Permission Control 2.0,” is an apparent move to give publishers tools for dealing with the shift toward so-called “demand-side” players who have shifted some of the online display marketplace power to ad agencies and media buyers. Rubicon described the system as a new “infrastructure” that will give publishers “complete visibility and control over which demand partners can sell their inventory, at what level of transparency and at what price.” In a related move, Rubicon said it is simultaneously launching a “real-time bidding” (RTB) beta program with a limited number of undisclosed publishers it claims will enable them to “safely capture all potential ad revenue, from all buying methods.” Rubicon did not disclose details about how the permission control system or the real-time bidding beta work, but said that combined, they would give publishers the ability to see and control “money spent through all industry buying methods – including real-time bidding (RTB), cookies, audience segments, content/contextual segments and site buys – without putting their pricing and direct sales efforts at risk.”

Read More: MediaPost