User Identification in Programmatic Advertising and Other Challenges
Without a ‘proxy’ to accurately identify individuals, programmatic marketing is simply unmanageable. While cookies have been the proxy for identification, it’s time to ask about the future. Programmatic experts are yet to figure out a way, but if cookies are dying out, programmatic will surely face a threat. The cookie seems to have been doing a great job. Reports from Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) found total digital revenue reaching $12.4 billion in the last quarter of 2014. Programmatic is basically a combination of different kinds of technologies that buy, place, and optimize advertising automatically, and hence enables highly profitable ad campaigns. As the job of programmatic is to identify the right viewer and make that viewer see the ad, the first thing required is a real viewer. Unfortunately, some rogues in the web world are capable of misleading even the smartest software programs. Challenges like viewability and fraud are constantly troubling the world of programmatic. Most advertisers shy away from programmatic buying because of the looming presence of reputation concerns and fraud. As of May 2015, the leading hurdles in using programmatic ad buying in UK and USA were statistically evaluated from a survey: Leading Challenges in Programmatic Buying, 2015 (UK and USA) – % of survey participants More than half the traffic on websites is essentially bot traffic. It has been estimated that more than $6.3 billion damage will be experienced because of bots. Hence, out of an estimated $43.8 billion, if more than $6 billion is fraudulent activity (fake clicks through a set of automated software programs), it is a huge loss for advertisers. Huge organizations with complete set ups operate with botnet malwares to extract millions of dollars. For folks in programmatic, ad impression viewability continues to remain a huge challenge around online display ads. In order for an ad to qualify as viewable, a minimum 50% of its pixels should appear on desktop screens for at least one second. For video ads, 50% pixels should be viewable for at least 2 seconds. These challenges may be confronted by micromanaging customized platforms. Advertisers need to use technology that maximizes outcomes. It’s not enough to seek impressions or aim at a single behavior pattern for producing the desired results. It is necessary to depend on technology that executes the numerous conditions correctly for ad-space selection. By using such a platform, advertisers with different needs can improve their ROIs in clear-cut ways.
Maximizing Benefit from Programmatic Creative
Programmatic advertising is based on artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms. Hence, hindrance to creativity is a matter of concern. Having said that programmatic advertising presents an opportunity to effectively utilize creatives by structuring the creative as a template. It means one can configure the different sections of an asset based on different audience segments. However, to develop creatives, brands must keep them compatible with their ad-tech platforms. Coordinated effort from both media and creative agencies, can help maximize the profits programmatic offers. Fig: Primary goals for optimizing programmatic creative (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/celtra/the-rise-of-creative-in-a-programmatic-world) It is not just direct response First thing that comes to mind when thinking about programmatic is direct response. But, programmatic is no longer limited to that. Initially, inventories were restricted to indicating how many prospect-to-consumer conversions happened. However, that is hardly close to the potential of programmatic. It can develop a brand’s relationship with customers over a certain length of time. In a way, programmatic influences the kind of creatives brands must develop going by the response trends. Publishers may demand a new product demonstration or a descriptive video, something absolutely different from what worked previously. Digital media has made interaction highly personalized across various devices. You need to be extremely careful about how you move your consumers into the buying process, but brainstorming for an ad when you are close to selling is unlikely to work. Create assets that are flexible to work with in automated platforms With programmatic, your scope to decide which ad to show your prospect stretches till the nick of time. However, you need a flexible and agile inventory for that. For creative agencies, the turnaround time (TAT) is very stringent and they have to be extremely agile. If your TAT says 72 hours, it should be exactly that. Lack of advance planning makes the entire journey bumpy. As an agency, you can settle with your clients on different creative options like format, copy, color, etc. Your programmatic creative team can then change the combinations regularly. Programmatic creative is trying to monitor every second of customer response when publishers show an ad. It gives a clearer picture of brand engagement for a product. This helps in transforming the ads into more effective assets, based on detailed study.
Visual Workflow: Record Create
Application development no longer means learning to write code. Application development has reached new standards as there is a growing demand for business administrators to play the IT administrators role. Salesforce.com has also acknowledged this change and shows with a lot of development methods without coding. There is a new feature called visual workflow that provides point a click configuration for multi-step business rules. Visual Workflow, built using Force.com’s Cloud Flow Designer, allows a user to create a flow for the complete business process without writing code. It can be a series of screens to enter the values for the process or an auto-launched one which runs or performs the functionality automatically. Salesforce has various options to create or update records –in both standard and customized way. We will see how to create a record using flow: When a Cloud Flow Designer is opened, we can find different tabs available. The Canvas and Explorer tab display the elements that exist in the flow. The Palette tab displays the available element types that you can add to the flow by dragging them onto the canvas. Every flow element has three settings in common: name, unique name, and description. These elements help in various functionalities From that we will understand the elements used to create a record in Salesforce. For every single piece of data captured or displayed, need a variable to be set up in the flow, and set the Input/Output type of the variable as “Input only” or “Input/Output” or private. This defines the accessibility of the values. It is always recommended to follow a naming convention to identify easily which is meant for what. Let’s say I have to create a case from account object. For this, we have to create a flow to perform the create functionality, then call the flow from the page and then finally a button to initiate the process. Below are the elements used in our case: Screen: This element is used as the UI element to show the fields and enter values for the same. Record Create: This element is used to create Salesforce record(s) using the field values that is individually set. For more details on rest of the elements click here Steps: Create >> Setup >> Create >> Workflow & Approvals >> Flows >> New Flow Add screen element for input values for the case record to be created, in this scenario I have added two text fields to input the values for status and origin. 2. Next step is to create the case record by assigning the values from the screen elements and the input variable and map against the standard fields of the case in the ‘Records Create’ element. 3. Make the screen as the start element and connect the two elements. 4. Activate the flow Now the flow is ready for the record creation. All we want is a triggering point to invoke the record creation from the standard page of the account record. A custom page with standard controller as Account will be created with the below tag to connect the flow that we just created <flow: interview name=”FlowName”> Pass the current account ID to the flow to connect the case to be created with the current account. <apex:param name=”varAccountId” value=”{!Account.Id}“/> Now the page is ready to launch the flow. Let’s create a custom button for calling the page just created and place the button on the page layout of the account object.