Have you ever seen the '70s shock flick "When a Stranger Calls?" The one where the babysitter gets a call asking, "Have you checked the children?" Of course, she hasn't. Even more amazing is that after repeatedly receiving calls asking the same question, she still fails to check on the kids.
As it turns out, the calls came from inside the house (this is before mobile phones, so we're supposed to overlook that) as traced by the police in real time (can they do that today?). When the police do finally show up, they find the kids murdered.
This reminds me of the online ad business. As a marketer, do you really know where your ads are? Who is watching them? Are you listening to the warning signs? Have you checked the children?
Let me explain.
If you are like most marketers today, you are trying to find ways to cut costs and extend your budget. It's all about making every dollar count, right?
You have a campaign, schedule flight dates, send out an RFP, and finally enlist a media agency to choose the right publishers and ad networks. That agency, in turn, uses the best targeting technologies to make sure your brand's advertisements are seen only by the consumers you want to reach and not by those that have no use for your product or service.
Or at least that's the way it's supposed to work.
Well, I'll let you in on the online ad industry's "dirty little secret" -- current industry practices lead to millions of ad dollars being wasted on unwanted eyeballs.
How? Online publishers commonly sell run-of-site (ROS) ads to advertisers without disclosing how many of those ads are actually being seen by people outside the U.S. If your campaign is targeting U.S. consumers, as the vast majority of campaigns that are sold in this country are, then every impression served to an international viewer is a waste.
So how can brand marketers reduce that waste? Specify "U.S. eyeballs only" on your insertion orders. If you do not, at least part your campaign will likely be served to international audiences.
Not convinced? Yahoo, Facebook, and CNET have around three-quarters of their traffic coming from outside the U.S., according to comScore. Properties such iVillage, NYTimes Digital, CBS, and ESPN have around 40 percent of their traffic emanating from abroad. The networks are not immune either: Half the traffic of Glam Media and more than 60 percent of Gorilla Nation's traffic is international.
The percentage of international visitors to U.S. websites has been steadily growing and is now so large that publishers could see disastrous drops in their ad sales revenues if they opt for full disclosure and only serve ads to U.S. audiences. It's deceptive at best.
In our business we see it every day. Just recently, Verizon and Sprint ads on a major newspaper site were seen by Russian readers (when was the last time U.S. telephone companies sold phones in Russia?), and U.K.-based visitors to U.S.-based sites were shown Wal-Mart ads on a women's network, Best Buy ads on a major sports website, and Infiniti ads on a consumer technology site. In each case, these ads click through to U.S. sites, meant for U.S. consumers, yet are still being served to people halfway around the world!
As a brand advertiser, you want to have as much impact on a consumer as possible. A multi-national brand ad clicking through to a U.S. site is a bad experience for potential consumers in Europe or Asia. You are charged with finding U.S. consumers; let your European marketing counterparts spend their budgets on finding their local consumers.
Do you know the percentage of your campaigns that are being served to audiences outside the U.S.? How much of your (now reduced) campaign budgets are being thrown away? Let's be conservative and say just 10 percent of a campaign is being served to international audiences; that's a 10 percent waste. If that number aligns more closely with the audience of publisher sites, you could be wasting 20 to 30 percent of your budget, maybe more.
Facing a prolonged recession and continued cost cutting, how many of us can afford to continue wasting real dollars on the wrong audiences?
It's time to demand greater accountability from media buyers, publishers, and ad networks. These are the babysitters of your ad campaigns. The media landscape has changed, consumer habits have changed, and now the industry must come together to make sure our buying and selling practices change.
Here are a few tips to get started and save money on your campaigns:
- Insist your agency write "U.S. eyeballs only" into all future insertion orders. You'd be shocked how many times they "forget" to do this.
- If you're a multi-national brand, make sure you're buying the right traffic to reach your target audiences with messages relevant to where they live. The shotgun approach will only kill your campaign's effectiveness.
- Spot check your campaigns: Have someone in another country go to the sites you are advertising on and ask them if they can see your ad. You'll be surprised how many times the answer is yes.
Now -- more than ever -- it's important to make sure you "check the children." Help the industry move forward by taking a step back and asking yourself, "Do I really know where my ads are?"
Cameron Yuill is founder and CEO of AdGent 007, a global digital advertising services company based in San Francisco.
