ZEDO Advertising Technology Updates – August 2010

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Welcome to the new monthly ZEDO Technology Updates blog post!  Each month we will share what new features and technology advancements our expert engineers and product teams have come up with to help publishers advance in the online advertising world.

Summer 2010 was exciting and busy for our innovation teams.  We were able to build and update a lot of advanced technology options for publishers. Check them out!

  • Self Service Advertising System for FREE

Now small publishers can make more revenue with Self Service Advertising! ZEDO will work on a Revenue sharing basis and offer a basic Self Service platform to small Publishers. Learn more at: http://www.zedo.com/product/selfServiceAdSystemFree.html

  • Upgraded Flash validation for ‘Upload Flash template’

We’ve surpassed Flash 8!! ZEDO can now rectify incorrect Flash ClickTAG implementations and notify users about missing Flash ClickTAG functions up to Flash version 10!

  • Set dates at Ad level

Customers often ask us – “Can I set run dates for a creative?” Previously, you had to set one date range for all ads in a Campaign. Soon, you’ll be able to set flight dates at the ad level.

Date targeting
If you’d like to learn more about anything on this list, go to http://www.zedo.com/publisher-products/.

If you’re interested in talking to someone about ZEDO, you can call our Sales team at 415-348-4076 or email salesinfo@zedo.com.

We forecast that you’ll love this

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It’s about time sales reps had reliable inventory forecasts.   Leaving money on the table simply because your inventory forecast isn’t accurate is simply not acceptable.  Underdelivering an order, on the other hand, can jeopardize advertiser relationships.

Inventory forecasting is a complex science. Decision-making servers decide which ad to serve to a user only when an ad request comes in from that user. Those decision-making servers execute highly complex algorithms at the very moment of the ad request. They take into account what has already served from each campaign, frequency capping and geo targeting requirements, and much more.

An inventory forecasting system has to predict what these complex decision-making servers will decide. And it has to predict this far in the future. The best it can do is to make a good guess.  How can an inventory forecast keep up with the complexity of thousands of combinations that a decision-making server can handle?

ZEDO has elegantly solved this problem. For each forecast, ZEDO runs the decision-making servers hundreds of times. We run the decision-making server for tomorrow based on predictions of tomorrow’s traffic and store the results of what will serve. We then use these results and a prediction of traffic patterns for the next day, and make another run of the decision server.  We use the results of the second day to generate the third day, and so on.

Why is this better?  Simple. Rather than guessing what the decision server will do, we are executing all decisions: actually running them hundreds of times for every forecast. It is a huge undertaking that is both CPU and data intensive. Since the same engine that determines ad-delivery does predictions as well any improvements to the decision engine are also immediately reflected in the forecasts. Further, this is uniquely possible because ZEDO built a predictive delivery system 10+ years ago – some of you may remember why.

What it does  provide are beautifully accurate forecasts. And the premium ad sales rep can even see day-by-day illustrations of how each advertiser’s impressions will be served. This is a remarkable leap forward, for direct sales forces across the country. ZEDO inventory forecasts are a tool that every sales rep must have in their arsenal.

Change campaign revenue calculations

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Have you tried creating a campaign to track conversions but would still like to optimize the ads based on the advertiser’s rates?

If so, then this would not have been possible initially as a campaign rate would either be based on the actions rate or the campaign rates.

But now, this can be done!

The new feature “Change Revenue calculations” on the campaigns page makes it possible.
Changing the revenue calculations type

What’s new?

  • With this new option you can choose right at the campaign level if the campaign would be optimized on the campaign rates of advertiser rates.
  • More flexibility and control in your hands.

You can change many different things now, including campaign type (Normal to Exclusive), Revenue Type (CPM/C/A), Inventory Type (Premium to Excess), and advanced tracking options.

Stay tuned for more changes to the campaigns page.

AdNetRevMax got even better!

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Are you wondering what CPMs are in different geographic locations? Wondering which ad units you should be running? Or which ad network should get GOOD and more impressions? Well, just ask our all NEW AdNetRevMax and you’ll get all the information you need to make the MOST from all your ad networks.

What has changed?

1. New Ad Tag Performance page shows the following:

a.  eCPM by country/ ad dimension combination.
b.  eCPM trend graph for 8 days and eCPM comparison with same day last week.
c.  Rank and frequency for each Ad
d.  Impressions served yesterday
e.  Sorting on eCPM, Rank and Impressions
f.   Ability to change Rank and frequency

2. Improved Ad Network dashboard

Now watch your eCPM trend for the month and compare it with last month.
AdNetRevMax is built to help publishers make more money from ad networks. Publishers use many ad networks, sometimes in different geographic locations. If a publisher has to make more money, then it’s very important to know which ad network is paying what CPM and in which country. Not only that, one should be able to compare the CPM of  “ad network A” with the CPM of “ad network B”. AdNetRevMax has all the data you need to MAXIMIZE your revenue.

Use it now and start making more money! Email salesinfo@zedo.com for more details.

ZEDO’s Popular Slider Ads

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ZEDO’s new Incremental Ad Formats are extremely popular with existing and new clients. For customers using ZEDO to serve 100% of their impressions, these new ads actually INCREASE IMPRESSIONS and overall inventory.

  • Easy to implement
  • Increase overall impressions and inventory of your site / network
  • Multiple sizes can rotate in the placement
  • No blanks / defaults
  • Serves images, flash, 3rd party code
  • Not as invasive as pop up and floating ads

These ads are eye-catching and have proven to have a stronger click-through-rate than standard in-page banners.

Contact your Account Manager to learn more about ZEDO’s slider ads!

Got Quantcast? Third party research vendors in ZEDO.

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Now you can automatically insert tags for Quantcast and other third party research vendors when you create ads in ZEDO.

For Quantcast, it’s as simple as filling in your Quantcast ID and choosing the type of tag:

  • HTTPS for secure pages or
  • Advertiser to track just an ad, not the whole page

You can even use both, for a secure Advertiser tracking tag.

Quantcast tag

For other vendors, you can enter the vendor’s 1×1 tracking pixel code, which we will append to the ad.

Other Third Party Vendor tag

Stay tuned for even more improvements: Support for more vendors, and the ability to add third party research vendor tags in the ad tag generator.

See your business grow every hour…

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Our customer interaction sessions led us to believe that most of our customers want to see how their network is doing every hour. Moreover, they wanted stats to be supported by clear and concise graphs. The enthusiasm customers showed by pouring us with valuable ideas and information, obviously tempted us to deliver what was being asked.

And so we build the “Hourly Impressions (HI)” graph and added it to Home Dashboard as well as Advertiser Dashboard.

This Line graph shows you the number of impressions recorded by your account until the last hour and it keeps updating every hour. It also plots the hourly impressions served yesterday and its corresponding day in the previous week. This will help you to monitor your today’s curve in comparison with yesterday’s and same day last week’s data.

The HI graph on the Home Dashboard displays account level data and includes everything that your account serves.

Home dashboard

The HI graph on the Advertiser Dashboard is displayed when yesterday’s option is selected.

Advertiser

On the Advertiser Dashboard the graph will give the hourly impressions for each of your top 5 Advertisers and will compare today’s data with that of yesterdays and same day last week.

We hope that you will find the new HI graph quite useful. Please write to us and share your thoughts.

Cloning got a little easier today.

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Many of our customers want to use the Cloning feature when adding multiple creatives to the same campaign.  Until today, this was impossible since you can’t edit the ad dimension while cloning.

Today’s release lets you change Ad Dimension when cloning an ad. Simply choose the appropriate dimension, then set all the rest of your ad setup details.

Setting a new ad dimension for a cloned ad.

A word of warning, though: Please, please don’t forget to use the right ad tag / image dimensions or your ad will be distorted when loaded onto a webpage!

Want more from cloning? Don’t worry – it’s coming!  We’re currently working on how to clone all ads within a campaign, to save you even more time when setting up ads in the system.

Want to participate? We’d love to  hear from you and hear more about how you use ZEDO to manage your business.  Please send a note to support@zedo.com and your input and ideas will be sent directly to the product management team.

Hungry for Data? Have a snack.

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Publishers will practically kill for more and more data about their site and campaign performance. We recently released a new level of data granularity – performance data at the hourly level.

Hourly data is retained for the last seven days. This means you can pull any report for the last seven days, and get an Hourly Breakdown of performance.

But wait, there’s more! This release has also let us give you Today’s Data in ZEDO Reports. Earlier, Today’s Data was only available in Dashboards. Now, you can get Hourly Data for Today, pulled in along with your historical data.

I hope you enjoy this new level of data granularity. We’re doing a lot this year, and this blog is our new way to let you know all about it. I apologize for not writing sooner – but expect this blog’s activity to increase!