The president of DRIVEpm listens to his mom, and shares mom-isms on how to get the most from ad networks.

My mom is full of wisdom. And she's not afraid to share her advice!

Don't stick your hand in the electrical outlet! Dress for the weather. Wash your hands before eating and brush and floss after. Look both ways before you cross the street! Think before you speak. Don't play ball in the house.

In short, it seems my mom has advice for nearly every scenario I will ever encounter-- guidance that, from a very early age, programmed my navigation system and view of the world. Even today, years older, I still heed my mother's advice. Don't let the kids snack before bedtime. Mayonnaise removes water rings from wooden furniture. Take a multivitamin every day.

Mom doesn't know anything about online advertising. She thinks SPAM is a tasty breakfast treat, pop-ups are a toaster pastry and cookies are best when made from scratch (using the Toll House recipe). Mom likes food-- and she's pretty old school.

If Mom understood the online space, she probably would notice that reach statistics are often grossly inflated, particularly by ad networks. Reach and frequency measures are highly dependent on the definitions and methodology used to measure these statistics. A clever ad network, for instance, could publish reach stats that represent the consolidated reach of its contributing publishers-- rather than the actual unique reach served by the network itself. Likewise, lacking adjustments for cookie death, unique reach is vastly over-estimated and frequency under-estimated. Mom would likely tell media buyers to cast a skeptical eye at publisher reach numbers, and utilize their own third-party ad server reach reports to calculate the true audience messaged. 

Likewise, if my mother understood anything about online advertising, she would scoff at conversion attribution rules. After all, to someone who didn't grow up in online advertising, the premise that the last ad seen is given all the credit for any subsequent conversion is absurd. Search (particularly one's own company name) is given far too much credit, often at the expense of the hundreds of image ads that built brand recognition within the audience viewing the ads.

Rather than relying on an arcane rule, Mom (being somewhat egalitarian) would likely apportion some credit to every ad that was seen prior to a conversion. Custom attribution models in which different advertising mixes and sequences were tested on controlled customer segments would be the natural outcome. As a result, if she were to give us advice about network buys, Mom would counsel buyers to make generous use of "hybrid" pricing in which inventory is purchased on a combination of CPA and CPM pricing. The CPA component provides some reward for immediate direct response but it is complemented by the CPM component which encourages reach-- particularly if reach is tracked and optimized independently through third party software.

Mom would say that conversion duplication is essentially fraud. In a world in which ad networks routinely trade inventory to manage frequency, often reach the same users, and ask to keep score through their own proprietary tracking systems, Mom would be very concerned that she was being vastly overcharged. She would know that several networks would try to claim credit for every single conversion generated on her site-- and she wouldn't allow this misbehavior! She would counsel buyers to either third party serve and de-dupe their conversions across networks, or adjust their prices to reflect the level of assumed conversion duplication across un-duped networks.

My mother would probably call the police about click fraud. "Just because everybody accepts it," she would say, "doesn't make it right!" Mom would quickly learn that there are many complicated sources for the problem -- "incentivized" clicks, forced clicks and "bots" -- but also a pretty simple solution. She would tell buyers to eliminate CPC pricing altogether, and pay off cost per site visit (a measure which could be tracked through her ad serving software and would automatically eliminate much of the click fraud). Of course, Mom would also evaluate these deals on reach, visits and ultimate conversions; she would know that a single measure is short-sighted (aside: Mom suggests annual visits to the eye doctor).

Finally, my mother would deliver a long lecture about publisher quality. "Not all reach is created equal!" she would tell us. Impressions should only be counted when they actually load (no publisher counts), when they were seen (no refreshing of ads in the background to claim reach and view conversions), and when they were relevant (no international cookies, bad day parts or un-trackable cookies please). Of course, she would demand control over network content such that her ads didn’t run on a bunch of small, illegitimate sites. In short, Mom would tell online ad buyers to be aggressive in negotiating legal terms and ensuring their insertion order specifically governed delivery quality.

Unfortunately, my mom doesn't understand online advertising. But I'm going to tell her a few things so that she can pass on her wisdom. Any of you are free to give her a call. I'm sure by that time she'll have some really smart advice for you. She'll likely tell you to understand the complexity of the online space and how unscrupulous networks can game the system to separate you from your money. And she'll also tell you to wear sun screen, get a good night's sleep and not to sit too close to the television (or under a tree during an electrical storm). She's a smart one, my mom.

Scott Howe is president for DRIVE Performance Media (DRIVEpm), an operating unit of aQuantive, Inc. Howe's mom lives in Wisconsin and has strong opinions on a variety of topics.