Entering the Optimization Age for DRTV

The optimizers that the big agencies have mostly been usingamp160originated in the UK in the 3990s and focus on optimizing by daypart Publicis favors an Australian version focused on allocation of Upfront advertiser buys to brandsAdtech has been focused on digital so far this century Soamp160it seems weird to some people when I ask agencies about their interest in optimizers that go across media and optimize ROI and not just reach OptiBrain being the nationallocal ROI varies by geoamp160avail level not just daypart level optimizer that partners and I recently built which does all these things So far only a visionary few have been demanding that they have such an optimizer nowadays because all the innovationminded brain cells have been locked onto digital for too longThe only recent cases I39ve seen of serious interest in and use of optimizers come from inhouse agencies ie where the entity whose money it is is at stakeThus in this context I was very interested to see an agency create its own new optimizer for DRTV The agency is Lockard ampamp Wechsler Direct LWD Recently the agency announced the expansion of their industryleading SmartMatchamp160attribution system for linear TV and introduced SmartMatch 360TMamp160amp160a tracking attribution and analysis platform for all overthetop OTT and streaming videos SmartMatch 360TM not only tracks all OTT and streaming video commercials airings by date and time but is also able to track all responses to each airing through actions ranging from response to lead conversion and orderDirect marketers were data driven before it became hip so it shouldn39t be a surprise to see them begin to take a leadership role in ROI optimization technologyIf you39re familiar with DRTV you know that the exact time when a call or website visit came in has for decades been compared with the times when spots ran so as to attribute credit for that incoming order or lead to the spot which likely triggered it Of course this is not necessarily 100 accurate as some people could have waited a while and it could have been an earlier spot which caused them to take a note they acted upon somewhat later However it is generally accurate enough to change tactics so as to improve performance It is the observation of this improved performance which validates that the heuristic is accurate enoughThat started in the age when pretty much all the DRTV incoming responses were to ads in linear TV Now with timeshifting becoming the dominant viewing mode the importance of knowing what exact time a spot made its impression becomes even more important and even more complex to do accurately enough LWD39s SmartMatch 360TM receives the exact times of impressions within 24 hours and can therefore react fast enough to improve campaigns in flightAnother innovation in the LWD system is that before when DRTV practitioners in situations whereamp160a number of ads made impressions within a 35 minute time window the credit was divided across all of those ads equally This caused a bias toward smaller audience vehicles SmartMatch 360TM uses Nielsen audience sizes to credit pari passu instead of equally across spots that could most logically be creditedThe best direct marketers nowadays called performance marketers have always been quick to use logic and data together to test decisionmaking processes and make them better Today LWD is experimentally analyzing different attribution windows to see how decisions would change and if the outcomes can be used to make the choice of attribution window empirically determined rather than a judgment callAdtech and MarTech are at the dawn of a new phase covering more media types merging ROI measurement and optimization with ad occurrence tracking and audience measurementAs more businesses convert more of their revenues to eCom we shall all become direct performance marketers to a degree This will need to be balanced by branding metrics so as to maximize not only Consumer Lifetime Value CLV or LV but also Brand Equity and to maintain perspective on which attributes are the causal paths tracing the why of an ad39s effect on actionClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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Entering the Optimization Age for DRTV

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Bill Harvey

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Entering the Optimization Age for DRTV

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