So, the other day, I tried to explain just how important frequency capping and geotargeting 3rd Party network placements is to RMXD.

Well, today, the issue was brought up again in a forum discussion started by Tim Dickinson of audiomelody.com; Brad Nelson, RMXD’s Product Manager, provided a solid all-encompassing response that I believe just about everyone should bookmark for future reference.

The following dialogue explains very clearly how publishers need to view both frequency capping and geotargeting as well as why it is critically important to maximizing RMXD’s effectiveness.

Tim Dickinson

Hi all,

I’ve been wondering about this for a while. If I have 2 default networks set up, one with a $0.20 eCPM set, and the other with a $0.10 eCPM set, how does RMX-D decide which ad to show. In theory if the ads are bid based then I would imagine that the $0.10 default wouldn’t get any impressions. But surely this can’t be true otherwise there is little point adding more than one default.

So my question is, without the ability to weight defaults how does the system determine which default to display?

Thanks

Tim

Posted: 8/17/2006 2:20 pm EST

Brad Nelson

Hey Tim,

Try not to think of your networks in Manage as defaults. Typically a network defaults when it doesn’t want to serve the impression based off either frequency (how many ads has a user seen) or the geo of the impression. Any network you put in Manage is competing with RMXD networks for rights to the impression based on price. So the Manage tab isn’t really a default system but an inventory management tool that allocates delivery based on who pays the most.

You do bring up an excellent point though. If you traffic more than one network into your Manage tab you need to utilize either frequency capping or geo targeting to ensure delivery to the lower priced network. If you don’t either frequency cap or geo target your highest priced placement, the lower priced placements will not receive traffic. That being said, if you geo target and frequency cap properly you will ensure optimization of your inventory. Frequency capping of course will be different for each publisher and each network you are working with most likely.

Let’s say you frequency cap your top placement at 3 per 24 hours (per user). Your top placement would compete against all the RMXD networks until it takes 3 impressions from a user. For the 4th view by a user, your top placement would be excluded from the auction. The auction would then be between your 2nd highest placement and all RMXD networks, until that network hit its frequency cap. And so on and so on.

Does that make sense?

The reason for using frequency capping is to help prevent defaults served by your 3rd party networks and ensure that each impression gets the highest offer available.

Let’s say you weighted delivery of your inventory to ad networks (as opposed to frequency capping) so that 50% of your inventory went to Network 1. In that 50% of your inventory there could be impressions with a high frequency that the network will choose to default on. What happens to that defaulted impression? It gets passed on to ONE network to fill or not get filled at all and there is no auctioning.

If you frequency cap, you can decrease the number of ads that get defaulted and increase the number of ads that get auctioned off for the highest price, increasing revenue.

Let me know if this makes sense Tim. I would be happy to further the discussion if you would like more explanation or if you want to discuss how to utilize frequency capping and geo targeting for your specific account.

Brad

Posted: 8/17/2006 3:15 pm EST

If you have to, read and re-read what Brad has said - those publishers that take the time to really grasp this concept will find it easier to become successful.

Brad really does know best!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 17th, 2006 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Direct Media Exchange. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.