B2B Publishers: 3 Ways to Protect Your Digital Revenue from the Bots

As a B2B publisher, you recognize the revenue opportunities offered by growth in digital and programmatic advertising. However, with these opportunities come risks. Two articles highlight the carrot and stick that come with digital advertising.

In Advertising Age, George Slefo reports that spending on digital advertising in 2015 surged to an all-time high of $59.6 billion dollars. This represents a 20% increase over the record-setting numbers of 2015. Increases were driven by mobile advertising (up 66%) and social media (up 55%). Digital video also saw a substantial increase within display-related advertising, climbing 30% over the prior year. The Interactive Advertising Bureau presented this information in a report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Non human traffic is stealing your money.

However, in an earlier article in Advertising Age (by the same author), a 2015 study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau estimates that nearly 14% of that amount—or $8.2 billion dollars—may be fraudulent. The sources for these losses are varied—non-human traffic, malvertising-related activities, and infringed content are the major causes determined by the IAB. Further, companies spend approximately $169 million each year combating this invalid traffic. But what may be less understood is the role that online publishers and content providers play in allowing this fraud.

Protect Your Content

As a B2B publisher, my company has developed three techniques for others to use to protect their content:

• Stay human. Publishers must measure how much of their traffic is human. This is a constant need for vigilance, and it should be part of every measurement of usage on your site.
• Find a partner. Third-party ad verification vendors offer checks and re-checks of your data. Use them to measure the accuracy of your reporting.
• Assess and reassess. Review your campaigns in detail, especially for block traffic at suspicious times of the day or days of the week. If the traffic pattern looks suspicious, it probably is.

Fraudulent advertising results damage a B2B publisher's reputation and revenue stream. Be proactive in uncovering and eliminating fraudulent ad traffic--before your customers do it for you.


About the Author
Conor Lynch is an editor and publisher with Harborside Press. He is also in the Graduate Program on Information Design and Strategy at Northwestern University. He can be reached at @cplynch2310 or on LinkedIn.

CMO: Are you ready to embrace social media apps into your retail space?

Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest are no longer mere buzzwords; the customers make their purchase decisions through them. The retail landscape has dramatically changed with the advent of recent technologies and rampant usage of social media. After joining the Integrated Marketing Communications as a graduate student at Medill, Northwestern University, my interest turned towards the amazing impact of the influence of social media on the behavior of the retail consumer. This turned me into a marketing maniac. Here are 2 articles that caught my attention in this area.

A recent article published in Advertising Age by Justin Emig, Search Marketing Manager at Web Talent Marketing, talks about how Snapchat can help retailers kill showrooming. The app is unique because of its feature of instant disappearance after opening the message. When a customer is checking out at the store, they can receive a snap with 10% or 20% discount instead of a scratch and win coupon, or while they are nearing a particular aisle, they could be sent a snap that has a deal or coupon of the products displayed in the aisle. Likewise, to give the feel of a scavenger hunt, customers who are in the store can be sent a snap with a photo of the aisle or location of the limited edition products or new-in-store products. These are ways to increase customer-shopping experience in store by engaging with customers through mobile app.

Additionally, an article on Bloomberg by Kyle Stock titled talks about the importance of Instagram for Retail. Instagram is a way forward in the e-commerce space. Engagement on Instagram is 15-20 times more than that on other social media sites. The article gives an example of Michael Kors (MK) brand wherein they have created #InstaKors and will have customers sign up for this program. By doing so, when a customer likes a photo on MK’s Instagram page, they will be sent an email with a link to the product page on the website. This way the customer is redirected to the website and measurement of the social media presence can be tracked. This is advantageous for retail marketers because the likes on social media don’t mean anything to a brand but it is about whether the customer intends to buy it. Through using this feature on Instagram in the future, brands can better track whether customers that do follow them on social media are valuable customers who purchase or intend to purchase.

Based on these 2 articles and my graduate school learnings in Integrated Marketing Communications, here are 3 action items that I recommend you consider as a CMO in the retail industry.

• Deliver promotions through social media - Using social media apps that current generation of tech savvy customers’ regularly depend on, can help retailers catch their attention.

•  Use contests to increase engagement in stores - To give customers a better retail experience, it is necessary to engage them in store through contests as such treasure hunt or special coupons for the hour, which can be distributed electronically via social media apps.

• Use more visuals to capture attention - Visuals in the form of a video, photo or info graphic help in catching the attention of people.

When the world is reachable through your palm (using mobile), retailers need to make sure that they effectively reach the same world at a better speed over their competitors. Using the above suggestions, they can get into the palms of the customers and engage with them in store and online by combining the mobile technology and the social media apps for ultimate customer shopping experience.

Jyothsna Durgadoss is currently pursing her Master’s in Integrated Marketing Communications at Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University. She is presently part of the content marketing team at Spiegel Research Center, Northwestern University. Prior to this, she worked as an associate consultant in a multi-disciplinary management-consulting firm in Dubai, specializing in marketing based assignments. In addition to her work experience, out of her personal interest and passion towards marketing, she has spearheaded the multi media promotional campaign for the launch of few books. She was born in India and brought up in Dubai and went on to completing her Bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Warwick Business School, United Kingdom.

Contact Jyothsna through Twitter @JDurgadoss
Email  jyothsnadurgadoss2014@u.northwestern.edu