Professional Documents
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Ecosystem: A Data-
Centric Perspective
By Jay Kulkarni and David Simpson
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
As marketers seek greater understanding of their
Jay Kulkarni founded Theorem in 2002 customers and campaigns, their task has become
and has managed it from a four person
increasingly complex, in no small part by the sheer
startup to a company with over 250
volume of data created by online marketing
global employees and dozens of clients
sustaining hyper growth year over year. technologies. The highly fluid nature of consumer
Jay is a veteran in the online advertising markets coupled with aggressive corporate goals to
space having launched products that are grow market share and revenue have created the need
leaders in the industry today. As one of for increased frequency of analysis and ongoing custom
the earliest employees at DoubleClick, analysis on a brand and campaign basis. Digital
Jay headed up product management for marketers need a holistic approach to analysis that is
their advertiser solutions, taking the supported by a team of skilled strategists and tacticians
DART for Advertisers product from white which leverages a flexible media analysis platform.
board concept to over $25 million in
revenue within two years. Later, he was
Online Marketing: A Growing Challenge &
responsible for the DARTmail platform
managing both organic product Opportunity
development, technology integration The amount of innovation we’ve experienced since the
through two mergers and managing introduction and proliferation of the web browser is
teams across North America. staggering and certainly worthy of volumes, which will not be
covered here. But, with the frenzied growth of the Internet
David Simpson is a senior member of
has come an opportunity and a burden for marketers in
Theorem’s business development team
and brings extensive background in
every corner of the environment – from search engines to
online media and technology. Before online publishers to advertisers and agencies – to be more
joining Theorem, he co-founded effective through better use of the torrent of data that each
PeerFinder, a business-to-business click creates in aggregate.
social networking service and led
wireless and telematic strategy and The Growth of Online Marketing
business development at Audible. At
Though not currently a large portion of ad spending for the
Verizon, Simpson was instrumental in
creating the enterprise business top US brands (about $10B out of a total $150B), Internet
e-commerce strategy, launching Internet advertising is growing at the fastest rate (up 17.3%) while ad
services and developing interactive spending in other forms of media is shrinking1. The July 25,
media applications for enterprise 2007 issue of Advertising Age™ magazine reported that,
business customers.
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ROLE FUNCTION PLAYERS
Ad serving describes the technology and service that places ads DoubleClick (DART),
on web sites. Ad serving technology companies provide software Atlas DMT,
Ad Servers to sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads Mediaplex,
that will make the site or advertiser the most money, and monitor RealMedia
progress of different advertising campaigns.
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic Epsilon Interactive,
Email mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising CheetahMail,
Marketers messages to an audience. SilverPOP
Rich Media Rich Media technology utilizes a combination of text, audio, still
Motiff/Klipmart,
Technology images, animation, and video to provide the user with a more
Pointroll, Eyeblaster
Providers dynamic and interactive advertising experience.
eCommerce eCommerce monitoring providers offer web analytics solutions for Omniture/Visual
Monitoring internet channel monitoring. Sciences,
Providers Coremetrics
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Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
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Data may be available through solutions provided by companies such as Web Side
Story, Web Trends, Omniture and Coremetrics.
Buyer/Customer 6 Rich media measurement tools are provided by companies such as Klipmart,
TangoZebra, PointRoll and DART Motif.
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Examples include data from YouTube, SecondLife, blog sites and podcasting sites.
Along with the various online data sources that have been described so far, marketers may be
required to compare and manipulate the following:
What follows is a representative sampling of the data available to the marketer from both online and
traditional sources:
AD SERVER DATA
Dimensions of Interest Measures of Interest
Site Placement Impressions Ad Interaction Rate
Creative Ad Description Clicks Interaction Time
Creative Size Advertiser Conversions Ad Component Interactions
Creative Type Activity Type Revenue Video Play Rate
Date Activity Sub Type Unique Impressions Average Video View Time
Week End Date Postclick Tag Unique Clicks Video Completions
Month Postclick Tag 2 Unique Conversions Replay Rate
Quarter Pricing Model Click through rate Reach
Day of Week Geography Click to conversion rate Frequency
Frequency by day Time Spent Impression to conversion rate Frequency vs. Response
Campaign Postclick Tag Revenue per Sale Frequency vs. Conversion
Campaign Begin Date Postclick Tag 2 Revenue per User Time Lag to Conversion
Campaign End Date Revenue per Impression Ad Delivery Rate
Status Revenue per Click Attrition Rate
Category Revenue per Visit ROI
Sub Category Ad Exposure Time
“We know that half of our advertising works. We just don't know which half.”
It’s a quaint old expression. Traditional media – print, radio, television, direct mail and outdoor – offers
virtually no linkage between the exposure and the purchasing behavior. Online media not only offers a
record of events that have occurred, it also offers a “bread crumb trail” of behaviors that allows
marketers to precisely quantify cause and effect - what’s working and what’s not – and the opportunity
to optimize in real or near-real-time - “The Holy Grail of online marketing.”
Business Requirements
Ease of use
- Easy to-use, flexible, web-based interface
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Refer to chart, “Online and Traditional Data Available to the Marketer”, for more detail on
the types of marketing metrics you will encounter.
Cost of ownership
- Reasonable total cost of ownership with minimal
maintenance by the IT organization
- Offered as Software as a Service (SAAS), which provides a
zero footprint, web access to data and reports
ABOUT THEOREM
Robustness
Theorem is a pioneer and leader in
offering specialized technical and - Statistical analysis and algorithms that can easily be reused
analytical services to the digital across campaigns, products, brands and so on
marketer. Unlike many generic
outsourced service providers, Theorem Disaster Recovery
was founded in 2002 with the vision of
being a domain expert in the online - Redundancy provided in the event of loss of primary
marketing space and delivering world access or facilities
class service. Theorem powers ad
operations, search operations and
analytics for some of the most A Moving Target
sophisticated marketers in the world.
As we stated at the beginning of this article, change is the
Driven by the mantra of delivering only constant in the disciplines of advertising and marketing
outstanding value for our customers and and, with the growth of Internet marketing, the drive to make
creating an enriching workplace for our
better marketing and advertising decisions with the torrent of
global employee base, Theorem is
positioned for another 5 years of rapid data available is creating both overwhelming pressures and
fire growth in this new marketing unprecedented opportunities. A media analysis platform that
medium. is holistic in its view of marketing, non-invasive in terms of its
operational requirements, cost effective to acquire and easy
Theorem Inc., is a privately held to use by individuals and teams will form the foundation of an
company with offices in New Jersey,
enterprise-grade tool. The organizations that create, sell and
India, and London. Using multiple
operational centers in India, Theorem provide services for the users of these platforms must be also
supports customers in Europe and embody the traits of the technology itself and serve as a
America on a 24/7 basis. beacon, anticipating and adapting their solutions to the
needs, challenges and opportunities offered by the
To Contact Theorem: marketplace.
Theorem Headquarters
383 Main Street, Suite 202
Chatham, NJ 07928
Main: 973-665-1700
Fax: 973-665-0370
email: info@theoreminc.net