Tracking Software For MediaBuying - Recommendations?

vladb2 said:
I am building my own custom ad server script. Media buy networks are affiliate handicapped. Their system were designed for large brand name exposure and not CPA setups.
Click to expand...

You will never be able to bill off your numbers with that. Trust me, that's something you want to be able to do.

The good Ad Servers: Zedo, DART, Mediaplex, Atlas all work perfectly for CPA marketing. You just need to tweak your thinking slightly.

At the end of the day eCPM is all you care about with CPM buys.

If you have an eCPM of $2.00 and you're paying $1.00 CPM, you're gold. I've seen eCPM as high as $12 on $1.00 CPM buys.
 


It all depends on how much traffic your sending, what type, etc. I've personally never used prosper202 or tracking202 on anything - I just don't trust it.

Besides the fact that I don't trust it, it can't handle the levels of traffic that I want to send. I can deliver several million hits to my pages a day - last week I crashed a larger advertisers server. I use custom barebone software mixed with my networks software.
 
^^^

Prosper202 can handle several million hits a day. You just need a good dedicated server. The code is open source, what is there not to trust.
 
dickarmy said:
You will never be able to bill off your numbers with that. Trust me, that's something you want to be able to do.

The good Ad Servers: Zedo, DART, Mediaplex, Atlas all work perfectly for CPA marketing. You just need to tweak your thinking slightly.

At the end of the day eCPM is all you care about with CPM buys.

If you have an eCPM of $2.00 and you're paying $1.00 CPM, you're gold. I've seen eCPM as high as $12 on $1.00 CPM buys.
Click to expand...

The biggest problem isn't even in the tracking. The systems are not made for tweaking and setting up a lot of campaigns all the time.
 
vladb2 said:
^^^

Prosper202 can handle several million hits a day. You just need a good dedicated server. The code is open source, what is there not to trust.
Click to expand...

at the Orange County AM meetup yesterday, Smaxor said specifically not to use prosper202 for media buys as it can't handle the traffic levels and properly store all of the data...
 
so you guys are telling me that a server with two quad core cpu's and 16 gigs of ram can't power through a few million hits because its a mysql/php setup on 202
 
vladb2 said:
so you guys are telling me that a server with two quad core cpu's and 16 gigs of ram can't power through a few million hits because its a mysql/php setup on 202
Click to expand...

personally i have no idea as i'm not a server/tech guy.

vladb2 - have you tried a media buy with prosper202 tracking?
 
^^^

yes and it was fine. But my media buy was not several million hits a day though.
 
vladb2 said:
^^^

yes and it was fine. But my media buy was not several million hits a day though.
Click to expand...

i think some of these guys are doing 30 million hits a day or more. and if they said don't do it, i'd take their word for it....maybe Smaxor can chime in here with the exact reason he gave again as to what would happen as i can't remember the exact technical issue that would happen... i think as the posted above said it would be all of the DB writing...but i could be wrong on that.

he gave an example of someone who did a media buy and lost around $30K in around 30 minutes due to a server that was overwhelmed (not a prosper202 issue). lesson being you gotta make sure everything on your server has to be optimized when doing big media buys. there were other tips he gave too - great talk he gave at the meetup about doings media buys.
 
Cool1g said:
he gave an example of someone who did a media buy and lost around $30K in around 30 minutes due to a server that was overwhelmed.
Click to expand...

Anyone who lost $30k in 30 mins has no business doing media buys since they obviously have no idea what they're doing. Specifying even delivery in your IO prevents this type of thing.

This is also why you need an Enterprise Ad Server. Those platforms are in Datacenters and have a ton of redundancy/scalability. On a top tier Ad Server you can go from 1 million to 1 billion impressions a day easily with zero issues.
 
dickarmy said:
Anyone who lost $30k in 30 mins has no business doing media buys since they obviously have no idea what they're doing. Specifying even delivery in your IO prevents this type of thing.

This is also why you need an Enterprise Ad Server. Those platforms are in Datacenters and have a ton of redundancy/scalability. On a top tier Ad Server you can go from 1 million to 1 billion impressions a day easily with zero issues.
Click to expand...

per my recollection, the problem was the person's server was set up only to handle 150 open connections and the media company was sending 500+...so the traffic was being bounced i guess yet you really couldn't tell there was a problem by looking at the server stats...

regarding even delivery....that was discusssed and it sounds like some companies promise that but in reality it can fluctuate a lot more than it should...
 
@dickarmy -
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most enterprise ad servers charge you based on CPM (a flat rate for every thousand impressions they serve for you)? I remember a friend wanted to migrate from OpenX to DART on the publisher side and they were quoting him at around $1.50 per CPM for a hosted solution. Are these numbers that are just factored into your bottom line because it seems that this can kill margins completely?
 
Cool1g said:
regarding even delivery....that was discusssed and it sounds like some companies promise that but in reality it can fluctuate a lot more than it should...
Click to expand...

Then you don't pay. That's why you negotiate these clauses in advance and make sure they're in your IO and have YOUR OWN AD SERVER to track it all and bill off of. This is so crucial. If you run into bullshit like that, you can say "hey, my contract says even delivery which should be xxx impressions per day and I'm not paying for anything over that number. Here are my numbers that you agreed to go off of....."

People interested in doing this type of advertising should understand that it's full of BS like this. Just keep in mind that up to 80% of all inventory for display ads goes unsold as guaranteed inventory at the Networks each month. It takes solid negotiating skills and a good 3rd party ad server to make maximum returns.
 
illeat said:
@dickarmy -
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most enterprise ad servers charge you based on CPM (a flat rate for every thousand impressions they serve for you)? I remember a friend wanted to migrate from OpenX to DART on the publisher side and they were quoting him at around $1.50 per CPM for a hosted solution. Are these numbers that are just factored into your bottom line because it seems that this can kill margins completely?
Click to expand...

Yeah, you will pay a CPM for serving ads. That's how those companies bill. There will be a monthly minimum ($500-3000) and built into that minimum will be x number of impressions.

DART - you don't need them. First of all, if you're not doing 250 million + impressions per month, they could give two shits about you. Their CPM rates are about $.15 not $1.50. If they were quoting $1.50, that was a "fuck off" rate.

You can get an IAB Certified Ad Server with MUCH lower CPM that you can bill off of.

As you do more volume, that rate goes down. I've seen 1/2 of 1cent ($.005) rates for 1 Billion impressions per month or more.

At the end of the day, your Ad Server should be about 5% of your advertising costs or less.

All Tier 1 Ad Servers are hosted. You want it that way. Their datacenters are optimized for high volume ad serving.
 
  • Like
Reactions: threehundred
dickarmy said:
Yeah, you will pay a CPM for serving ads. That's how those companies bill. There will be a monthly minimum ($500-3000) and built into that minimum will be x number of impressions.

DART - you don't need them. First of all, if you're not doing 250 million + impressions per month, they could give two shits about you. Their CPM rates are about $.15 not $1.50. If they were quoting $1.50, that was a "fuck off" rate.

You can get an IAB Certified Ad Server with MUCH lower CPM that you can bill off of.

As you do more volume, that rate goes down. I've seen 1/2 of 1cent ($.005) rates for 1 Billion impressions per month or more.

At the end of the day, your Ad Server should be about 5% of your advertising costs or less.

All Tier 1 Ad Servers are hosted. You want it that way. Their datacenters are optimized for high volume ad serving.
Click to expand...




Any recommendations for nicely priced adservers?
 
These are the top Ad Servers IMO

DART
Atlas
Mediaplex (Mojo)
Bluestreak
BridgeTrack
AdVantage
Helios IQ (Adtech - AOL)
Open AdStream (24/7 Real Media)
ValueAd
Zedo

Like anything in Agency style Advertising, you have to negotiate your terms. Talk to all of em' if you're looking to get into this game and see what they have to say. They all require contracts and monthly minimums. They all have setup fees. Some have much more powerful features than others.

Don't expect them to understand our business model though. Those platforms were not designed to do CPA marketing via 3rd party networks.

Try to negotiate a ramp in period for the first 60-90 days where your monthly costs are lower and you're able to cancel your contract during that time if it's not for you. The big 3 (DART, Atlas, Mediaplex) are probably not going to give you this.

Also, there are ways to use other people's Ad Servers and do self serve media buys. Places like:

AdReady
Traffiq
ADSDAQ
ADBuyer
Tatto Media

All have a similar business model going where they give you self service access to their (or Right Media Exchange's) Ad Server and you can buy impressions/clicks on a real time auction basis. It can be hard to get a lot of traffic with these though unless you have high performing ads and you pay up. Your order gets filled in real time and competes against all other ads. This is where eCPM becomes really important because if it is high enough, you can out bid everyone and you'll get all the traffic.

If you use the $15,000 AdReady Premium account you can get some pretty good assistance with your campaigns, targeting and optimization and much lower CPMs.

Those services are just another form of broker though and they run off of rev share.

I think Traffiq is the only one that lets you use a 3rd Party Ad Server to access their publishers.

Tatto Media has a really cool feature (I think) that the Mediaplex Mojo Ad Server offers and that's multi-variate testing of the ad itself inside of a flash file. You can basically load up 10 bg colors, 10 headlines, 10 CTA's, 10 images, etc into a single flash banner and it will serve a different version everytime to find the best eCPM.

Nothing beats direct buys and a good relationships with kick ass reps though IMO.

Another thing to remember also though is that most networks will not run fake blogs, Acai, rebills, Payday and other offers that are on the douchebag borderline. If they do, you often have to have full disclosures on the bottom of the page that explain all rebills for any product being advertised. Some networks do run them though. You just have to check and it depends on the nature of the site.
 
  • Like
Reactions: kidChaos and zany zoroaster
Dickarmy, good post. One thing i have noticed is that these big media buy companies are not very efficient in running CPA affiliate campaigns. They are not good at squeezing every last bit of conversion out of every publisher. And the CPM prices are all over the place big time.

Did any of you notice that giving the media buy company pixel tracking makes them charge you more for CPM if its a dynamic CPM model.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom