Inspired by a brief negative review on a blog about RMX Direct where the publisher didn’t really understand he could control what he was complaining about, we thought we’d continue to add guidance on how to get going quickly and easily.

OK, you just got your beta invite–you’re thinking, “I am going to make XXXX number of dollars! I can’t wait to get ads running through my site with this thing.” Here’s a few steps to get you going in the right direction With RMX Direct.

We’ll assume you’ve put your name and payment info in (who your checks will be made out to, your Tax ID number if you’re a US citizen, etc.)

So, these are the 4 big steps, folks:

a) If you have existing relationships with ad networks or advertisers on your sites, traffic ‘em in to see if RMX Direct networks will outbid them–that’s the real magic right there.

Google Adsense, for example can compete with our network–whoever wants the impressions will pay the most for it–so you get paid the most for it. You do all that under the ‘Manage’ tab. Just click ‘Add advertiser’, type in your info. Then, click on the ‘Add Placement’ button and add your placements. Follow the steps on the screen. Ok, great.

b) Choose what types of ads you want and don’t want. Hmmmmm–to punch-the-monkey or not, that is the question.  Distracting ads–many users dislike them also. Your choice to use them or not–we leave that up to you. And that’s the key: you have a choice to turn them on or off. Under the ‘Media Guard’ tab, you can go in and customize your creatives/ads that show on your site. And if you don’t want to customize, we have three easy default settings. Doesn’t it feel good to know how much control you have?

Great.

c) While you’re at it, go to the “Link” tab and link up with RMX Direct networks. They’ll check out your site, and once you’re linked, they’ll also be bidding for your site’s inventory as well.

d) Inhale, exhale. Sleep. Eat.

Ok– there are 4 fast ways to bliss out on RMX. Hope you feel enlightened as the Sadhu pictured above. Happy monetizing!

I was just reading Susan Kuchinskas’s 360 blog where she interviewed “IT management guru Mary Poppendieck” about Web 2.0 and ‘agile’/'lean’/ ’scrum-style’ development processes.Toyota’s ‘development’ approach was discussed as well.That industry works with steel and plastic, our industry works with bytes, but the basic objectives and practices are similar.

Back when I lived in Japan in the 90’s, everyday I saw that culture’s focus on the elimination of ‘muda’ or waste: how not to waste time, waste resources, or waste ‘talk’. OK, another quick Japanese lesson: SHIMA GUNI KONJO or ‘island country mentality’ is the preponderance in thought that can be summed up like this: “…oh no, all we have is this small island!”. One of the number of aspects, predicatably, is the following concern: “…resources are limited here on our island so we must be wise in our usage“. And Japan has known for +2000 years that they’re an island, so you can see how such a perspective could inform (or create) a culture. However, it wasn’t until I stumbled upon the book ‘Natural Capitalism‘ , in Chapter 7, that I saw that this wasn’t just a subconscious cultural aberration but that this ‘conservation of everything’ perspective had been codified in a Japanese company’s SOP’s!

And it was the precursor to ‘agile’.

First off, I like the idea of agile. But just because a company (or a team or group within the company) calls themselves ‘agile’ doesn’t mean they are. A company doesn’t just suddenly become agile because an outspoken someone in the company sends an email around to everyone with a link to the agile manifesto (this example is from direct experience, folks…). There’s got to be a camaraderie there within in that working group–it isn’t just a salary or fear of deadline (or worse, just plain fear!) that’s ‘fueling’ the employees. In addition, it takes an ‘executive branch’ that is fluid enough, funded enough, ‘friendly’ enough (READ: has enough faith in their employees) to believe in the approach and let go of ‘’some o’ the strings'’. I’ve seen the term agile bandied about in other offices, but the personnel and product that came out wasn’t really representative of, um…agility.

So, now, I thank my lucky stars because I see ‘agile’ here in my office: it is alive and well.

Team members come in daily and say: ‘ok, are we scrumming now’, ‘was the scrum meeting at 3 o’clock?’ , etc. They use that word, and they know what it means, but they mean it. The comaraderie is apparent. And we’re excited about talking to users to get their feedback, and pivoting towards the next iteration and future release. And the joy that people put into the RMX Direct product is obvious. It’s not the Seven Dwarves singing ‘whistle while you work’, but it is remarkably close. And it’s working.

And we’re also trying to not feature-bloat the product…

An excerpt from the aforementioned post:

The 360: Part of lean programming is delivering only features customers want right now. Do you see companies outsourcing this process with their partner programs and platform strategies? …

Poppendieck: The concept of creating an environment where customers are not depending totally on you but on a whole rash of partners is a very solid strategy, and one that’s been around for a long time. That’s what Microsoft used to get its stuff on the market. Apple and Microsoft used to compete exactly on that. The people who don’t do that, over time it doesn’t work.

Now, it’s a difficult trick, but the feedback is that RMX Direct is balanced between easy to use and powerful–that’s coming from our forum and emails. And our ‘rash of partners’–well they are you: the advertising networks looking for inventory in one place and you: web publishers looking for a better place to conduct your ad space trading.

Back in the 90’s, the agile approach may have been considered ‘radical’ or at least risky in US-style software production. Well, I’ll go out on a limb here and say that in 06′–and you want to be competitive–it’s mandatory.

Kudos to those entrepreneurs who have paused, taken a breath, then jumped in to a new way of running their business–they are now also reaping the benefits of being early adopters in this methodological paradigm shift.

And if you’re curious to see what quality can come from such a process, go and sign-up for a beta invite to RMX Direct…

(ok, cue sound of didj·er·i·doos…roll stock Kangaroo footage…)

Thank you to Mr. Long Zheng and the ‘Long Zheng blog’ from the great continent and web-wired country of Australia!

We are all honored here to have people talk about RMX Direct–and even give away beta invites for it as well!

You see, we’re opening up the throttle a little more on this beta release, so we are– for the moment –including 5 beta invites to RMX Direct for you to give away whenever we send you an invite email. Thus, as soon as you join our party, you can bring 5 friends along.

If you’ve got a website or a blog and you’re currently in RMX Direct, let us know about the 5 invites that you send out to friends. Share a little bit of your story (BTW, I will be posting this topic in the forums soon…)

Just like the old shampoo commercial from US tele in the 1970’s:

“She told two friends,

and they told two friends…

and so on and so on …”

Thank you, Long. We appreciate the post. And keep blogging.

Besides writing for the blog (and doing other things ‘community educational’ that TJ and I head-up), I am also handling a portion of the eLearning components that make up RMX Direct.

In other words, I’m doing the ‘home videos’ on how to use it.

Now, I don’t foresee any of these getting posted up to Google Video or YOUTube anytime in the near future–the content just isn’t edgy enough (for that, just keep reading the blog…)
Wait though! These are crucial for anybody who’s coming in to use RMX Direct for the first time–or the second time or…it’s about education.

I am infusing it with our best practices–and good habits–to help you more effectively use RMX Direct.

I am honored to be distilling all of our team’s collective knowledge into a kinetic, multi-media document that, ideally, will get everyone who uses RMX Direct off to a great start.

—–

Now, since we’re in Beta, this job of creating a demo is a little more challenging than you’d expect. It’s kind of like typing-up a midterm essay on a laptop.

…a laptop that is resting on the roof of a moving car.

I blame this man:

This is…Brad.

He’s the Project Manager here for RMX Direct. He’s my office mate (at least for the next 4 weeks). We both spent years in Japan, so we banter back and forth in KYUUSHUU-style Japanese all day long–composing HAIKU and other poetry on the fly as it regards the GENJI MONOGATARI by Ms. Murasaki Shikibu…

…or referencing AKI, MOMIJI, and Autumn in Japan–(#16 is quite nice).

—–

Here’s a timely example:

AKI NI NARU TO,

SORA GA TAKAKU NARU.

KAMOSHIRAN’…

(When Autumn arrives, the sky becomes tall. Maybe–sort of–kind of.)
—–

Then, sometimes, Brad just speaks in English…

I overhear him and the developers talking about user feedback…he says something like:

‘…they’re asking for that change, so we owe it to them! [Expletive deleted] they are our USERS! OKYAKUSAMA WA KAMISAMA DESU!!!!’.

(Oh, that last line means, ‘The customer is God.’)

Let’s review:

is God.

The User
is God.

Wow…what a refreshing idea!

Then, I hear those dreaded words from across the room: ‘layout changes’.
Finally, with an impish grin, he walks over to my desk and says to me:

‘TAIHEN MOUSHIWAKE GOZAEMASEN…’

That means:

“I’m terribly sorry. I can’t do anything about it–the layout changed. Redo the demo…dude.”

…did I tell you he is also an expert in JUDO?

—–

So, that’s my long-winded alibi. These demo’s will be getting out to you soon. They are great. And they should help you a ton if you’re new to the app. And they’re not out yet because of Brad and his almost maniacal dedication to the user…and, of course, to the ad management application you know as RMX Direct.

Thanks, Brad. (Yeah, DOMOU DOMOU…NANCHARYOU OMAE WA…$%^&!!!)

(Watch for them demos–they’ll be posted in the support sections in the coming weeks. Also, when you get a first-time ‘welcome’ email from us, there will be links there to them as well. Please use them–they should help. And, of course, you’re always welcome to give us feedback.)

IJYOUUUUUUU, DESU.

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!