The CLICKTRUST monthly pick – October 2019
News and articles that allow us to stay on top of our game. You might want to read them too.
Data & Privacy
Four strong indicators that your marketing analytics programme will fail
– Econsultancy
“According to Gartner, so far marketers have leveraged only 61% of the functions available in their martech portfolio. The reason? Most organisations lack people, skills and a proper vision for their marketing analytics programme.
Ascend2 research further mirrors that sentiment indicating that 61% of companies originally invested in martech solutions to improve marketing efficiency and marketing ROI. Yet, post-adoption, 47% of respondents still struggle to capture that elusive ROI figure and 40% are far from being as productive as they’d like to be.”
Marketers Are Going Straight To Exchanges For Ultimate Data Transparency
– Adexchanger
“As marketers seek more transparency into their programmatic buys, they’re bypassing their demand-side platforms and going straight to exchanges and publishers to ask for log-level data about the bids they’ve won and lost. Advertisers are planning to use this data to power their buying strategies. Buyers could find pockets of undervalued inventory though log-level analysis and make more intelligent decisions than competitors who don’t have access to this data. Granular pricing information could inform negotiations in direct deals with publishers.
Data Platforms Enable First-Party Data Strategies – But Aren’t A Substitute For One
– Adexchanger
“The framework should provide for adding and removing online and offline data sources, easily integrating into multiple channels well beyond programmatic and setting up data partnerships to fill the data gaps and improve revenue, including the collection of additional data that the user may be willing to provide. It should be independent and not tightly tied to any specific technology partner or platform.”
Some Unsolicited Advice For Surviving The ‘Cookiepocolypse’
– Adexchanger
“The “death of cookies” may be second only to “year of mobile” as ad industry prediction fails. Both forecasts felt tired after too many false starts. The third-party cookie may not be dead just yet, but the increasingly scrutinized piece of code – one which for decades fueled audience buying across the digital landscape – is arguably now on life support.
If you were renting third-party data, you will likely need to build partnerships or some other means of working around the reduced efficacy of the third-party cookie. If you have strong customer (first-party) data, you will need to find partnerships that enable that data to work on third-party sites.”
Google: Organic, Ads & Analytics
Is Google’s new BERT technology another nail in traditional SEO’s coffin?
– Econsultancy
“As for optimizing content for BERT, Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz suggests that little can and should be done. He pointed to a tweet posted by Google’s Gary Illyes when RankBrain was launched, which stated “you optimize your content for users and thus for rankbrain. that hasn’t changed.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean that there is nothing for search marketers to do. For one, some companies might soon find that as Google’s ability to better understand natural language grows, they have reason to update content that was originally developed for traditional SEO so that it’s better-suited for human consumption.”
Google Ads Rolls Out 2 New Tools for Responsive Search Ads
– Search Engine Journal
“The two new tools include:
- Performance column: Identify the exact creative assets that are driving results in high volume ad groups. Improve “Low” rated assets, keep “Good” performing assets, and emulate the “Best” performing assets.
- Ad variations: Google Ads’ ad variations now supports responsive search ads, which lets advertisers run their own ad copy tests.”
Google Ads is Testing New Lead Form Extensions
– Search Engine Journal
“Advertisers can customize lead forms with their own title and description, and indicate which pieces of information they want to ask customers for. ”
Google Ads now showing cart metrics for Shopping campaigns
– Search Engine Land
“Merchants capturing cart data with Google Ads conversion tracking will be able to see additional revenue and profitability data attributed down to the product level. The new metrics, currently in beta, take cross-device conversions into account.”
Google Chrome Will Block Mixed Content
– Search Engine Journal
“Google announced that Chrome browser will begin blocking web pages with mixed content beginning December 2019. Publishers are urged to check their websites to make sure there are no resources that are being loaded using the insecure HTTP protocol.
Mixed content is when a secure web page (loaded through HTTPS) also contains scripts, styles, images or other linked content that is served through the insecure HTTP protocol. This is called mixed content.”
Facebook & Instagram
Facebook is Changing How it Calculates Organic Impressions
– Search Engine Journal
“Facebook pages are likely to see organic impressions go down as a result of changes being made to how impressions are calculated. Facebook is specifically changing how repeat organic page impressions are calculated. Changes will affect the time frame in which organic impressions from the same person are calculated.”
2 weeks ago
Jochen Fostie
HeroConf London 2019 – Key takeaways
…Why PPC marketers are pretty clueless about the future of digital marketing.
Data-driven, AI, automation, store-visits, privacy and user experience were the very topics on everyone’s mind and the same questions remain after these 2 very interesting days. Marketers have no clear idea on what to do or how to position themselves about the future of digital marketing. Let’s navigate the main takeaways:
Is AI/Automation going to push marketers out of their jobs?
Artificial intelligence and machine learning were obviously amongst the most followed topics during these 2 days and conferences about these subjects easily filled up the conference room. Let’s temper the expectations right away, there is no groundbreaking AI that’ll replace marketing teams nor awesome hacks to crack the code and master algorithms.
Like Frederick Valleys from Optimyzr had explained very well, AI is a tool and we need experts to add the final touch. This final touch is « context » that any algorithm will never be able to fully understand.
These automation solutions allow us the work « smarter » and more efficiently and we should totally look into it to streamline our processes, but we need experts to master them. Machine to machine marketing is not likely to be the answer. As mentioned by several speakers, algorithms have increased in quality and capabilities exponentially for the past 10 years, but this curve is plateauing and computers won’t get any much better.
The conclusion would be to find a soft spot between man and machine, keeping the final user in mind.
You can have the smartest bidding algorithm and the better attribution algorithm, if you provide bad user experience, you’ll fail.
Fun fact, a speaker asked, « Do you think chatbots are interesting and would you add it to your marketing mix ». 98% of the audience hands up. This was followed by a second question « As a customer, do you like and use chatbots? ».
2 hands up. It summarizes quite well the situation, technical tools are available but we need marketers to create a great experience.
Data and audiences in a cookie-free world and why Data-driven models suck.
« You have to leverage your 1st and 3rd party data to the moon. »
« You have to make the best out of audiences and uber complex customer journey. »
You could hear that in a lot of talks and see nice examples of how the data was mastered showing awesome results.
But very few dare to speak openly about the core issue and dodge the main question in the Q&A’s.
How to tackle GDPR, ITP, e-privacy, walled gardens challenges and overcome hurdles in an ecosystem where cookies are dying?
We know it’s happening, we know we should think about it, we know it’s not going any better anytime soon but no one is really taking the bull by the horns.
Blindly trusting data and data-driven model’s in a world where that very data is not going to get any better is not « smart ». Thinking that we can map complex customer journeys and provide a tailor-made solution at every touch-point based on biased data to skyrocket performances is a fantasy.
These questions remains big question marks and marketeers are clueless.
Few solutions were discussed, but are either very complicated/costly or not applicable in most cases. Also, everyone agreed these workarounds won’t probably work anymore in a few times. It’s a cat and mouse game.
UX Designers should be the best-paid guys in the building.
The opening talk featured Rory Sutherland, and we can say it, he rocked the party!
He gave a very smart (and fun) talk on why we should focus on user experience « in a world where we have to pretend that everything makes sense ».
He showed that video where they put Ed Sheran in a 2$ peep show with a creepy sales-guy on the driveway trying to get people in. Even though these people would very likely pay 100$ tickets to live the experience of an Ed Sheran’s show, they won’t enter for 2$ dollars private show since the user experience was terrible.
This analogy was very easy to understand in our digital marketing jobs. We have to make « people marketing » not « spreadsheet marketing ». We usually spend more time analyzing data and tweaking algorithm/automation rather than write new ad copies or create new banners right?
Very often, the most effective way to increase conversions is to increase conversion rates by providing a better user experience, not just throwing more budget in the machine.
Forget shiny objects. A « store-visit » story.
Agencies used to jump on last marketing shiny objects but tend to forget the incremental value. Don’t get us wrong, research and testing is a very important part of the process. As Rory Sutherland mentioned in his presentation, luck and irrationality matter too.
Store-visit is one of these stories. After a speech about bridging the gap between online marketing and offline behavior, the Q&A has been very interesting but the conclusions stayed the same :
• Revenue could be bad on a PPC or shopping campaign be could have a positive impact on store visits
• A very good ROI campaign won’t necessarily impact in-store traffic.
• In-store results are extrapolation.
• We can’t split organic and paid “go-to store”.
• Incrementality is very hard to measure.
« Trust the tech and let it be » was the final word.
We can’t really agree with that….
Conclusion: Where are PPC managers going in 2020?
As Fred Valleys mentioned, as digital marketers today, we are PPC doctors. Taking context into consideration to provide the best treatment. We are also PPC pilots, managing auto-pilot for 95% of the flight and putting hands on the bar for the most important moments or if something is going wrong.
The PPC manager role is evolving. We used to crunch numbers in spreadsheets and make manual changes in slow tools. The role is evolving towards settings goals/KPI’s, picking automation and monitor them, teaching the machines and troubleshooting as well as leveraging insights across platforms.
• We have to challenge tech and ad tech. Not blindly follow it to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies.
• We have to challenge ourselves as marketers. Cut the bullshit, place user experience in a central position, look at the big picture and think “incrementality”.
• We have to challenge our organizations. Stop working in silo’s, think about integrated marketing and open communication and reporting.
But most importantly, we have to use our common sense more than ever. As things are evolving so fast, there is no time for the status quo.
Thanks again to all the speakers and special shout out the staff for making this event possible. The app to interact with the speaker was great. Following these events allow us at Clicktrust to be on top of what’s going on and try to find answers to help our clients and partners to overcome the hurdles about their digital marketing journey in a world in constant evolution.
3 weeks ago
Julien Delbauve
The CLICKTRUST monthly pick – September 2019
News and articles that allow us to stay on top of our game. You might want to read them too.
Data & Privacy
It’s Time For Consumer Choice In The Value Exchange For Content
– Adexchanger
“After 25 years of the commercial internet, two things are clear: People understand the internet, and publishers must be paid for the services they provide. The best path forward isn’t to infantilize the consumer by deciding for them in the name of protection. It’s to let consumers choose the value exchange that they prefer.”
The Demise Of Third-Party Cookies Means Brands And Publishers Must Get Closer To Consumers
– Adexchanger
“While the ramifications are quite serious for many stakeholders, these browser changes will hardly limit the practice of targeted advertising. They simply provide compelling new incentives for both publishers and marketers to move toward a targeting infrastructure built on first-party data acquired through a clear and transparent value exchange.
This is not a problem that can be solved by adding new layers of ad tech. The current landscape of identity solutions is fragmented and labyrinthine. If you name a supply-side platform or DSP, they’ve partnered with a different source to help fuel their ID business. While this new technological layer may seem to solve a short-term problem, it’s only creating a larger gap between the walled gardens and everyone else.”
Publishers Are Abandoning First-Gen DMPs
– Adexchanger
“The reasons are manifold: First-generation DMPs use cookies as their foundation, meaning publishers are seeing huge deteriorations in scale as more cookies are blocked or require consent. DMPs also failed to deliver on the promise to lure in data-hungry buyers, who weren’t interested or weren’t ready to incorporate publisher data. And the tech created more work than publishers were prepared for, meaning expensive DMP investments didn’t generate the promised ROI.”
There’s An Upside To Sharing Our Data
– Adexchanger
“Marketers want to stitch together a narrative about their brand’s performance using impression data from owned, earned and paid media. We desire access to common metrics across all data platforms. We want access to data – which resides within platforms and walled gardens, publishers and media companies and advertiser-owned digital properties – because this information will help reduce media waste and lead to better-informed business decisions.
What if there was a way to share standardized data – in a privacy-compliant way that protects valued customers and respects emerging regulations – while opening up a wealth of valuable data insights?”
Google: Organic, Ads & Analytics
Google’s Ad Business Undergoes Massive Reorganization
– Adexchanger
“As part of the reorg, he’s re-visualizing the company as four “concentric circles.” The innermost circle is Google’s owned-and-operated properties, including search and YouTube. The next circle outside of that is Google’s buy-side and sell-side businesses. The two outermost circles span the organization: measurement and privacy.
Google’s network business is in the strange position of being powerful externally but disempowered internally. Externally, it faces complaints from competitors who see it dominating the market – which Hsiao recently denied in a blog post. But internally, its overall revenue importance has slowly diminished. Back in 2010, the network business comprised 30% of Google’s revenue. In the latest earnings, it was just 14% of its revenue – and that’s before it paid out 70% of that revenue to its partners.“
Soapbox: ‘Intent’ should be every marketer’s #1 obsession
– Search Engine Land
“Google’s ranking algorithm might remain a mystery, but it’s always surprising to me that all marketers don’t rally around the same important concept as the most crucial of all: intent. By “intent,” I mean both user intent and what I call “creation intent.” That is, we should always be focused on what people are looking for and why we’re creating something because where those two elements meet is where the most successful content lies. Don’t get me wrong: There are other important elements, of course, like quality backlinks and keyword optimization, which can greatly boost your chance of ranking highly.”
Search query reports show a huge increase in Google close variant traffic
– Search Engine Land
“Close variant performance can vary by advertiser, campaign, keyword and specific close variant match. While most advertisers see these matches convert at meaningfully lower rates than true exact matches for non-brand keywords, some actually see higher conversion rate from close variants looking at this comparison account-wide. However, there’s likely no account where close variants are so relevant and tightly related to all the keywords being triggered that advertisers should simply allow them to take their course.”
September Updates to Paid Advertising Platforms
-PPC Hero
“Accelerated delivery to be removed in favor of Standard Delivery
Add store visit to Smart Bidding
Instagram testing Shopping Posts as Ads
Search Ads 360 introduces auction-time bidding for Google Search Campaigns”
Facebook & Instagram
The Rise of Social Commerce – and What it Means for Your Brand
– Social Media Today
“With more social platforms looking to integrate direct, on-platform selling tools, social commerce looks to be the next major retail shift.”
#SMTLive Recap: Facebook’s Recent Updates
– Social Media Today
“Even people outside the social media marketing sphere have heard about all the changes coming to Facebook over the past few weeks. From the Facebook news tab, to Instagram and Facebook removing total like counts, to the Instagram scheduling option on Creator Studio, to ad targeting restrictions, these massive updates have been kind of hard to miss.”
1 month ago
Jochen Fostie
The CLICKTRUST monthly pick – August 2019
News and articles that allow us to stay on top of our game. You might want to read them too.
Data & Privacy
RTB RIP? The Writing Could Be On The Wall For Real-Time Bidding In Europe
– Adexchanger
“There is a latent question in the air,” said Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe. “Is it possible to do programmatic in a way that complies with the GDPR?”
Performance Marketing And Measurement: A New Beginning Amid Ever-Evolving Privacy Restrictions
– Adexchanger
It’s high time that marketing analytics teams perform a thorough audit of their measurement stacks, rules and approaches. For example, it’s worthwhile to understand how much of the business is driven by Apple’s Safari and how the attribution by channel is impacted since the new tracking restrictions went live this year.
The best digital marketing stats we’ve seen this week
– Econsultancy
1) Influencer fraud predicted to cost brands $1.3 billion in 2019
2) Correlation found between GDPR and online visits and revenue
3) Ecommerce ad spend rises and CPCs fall
4) Mobile ad fraud costs marketers $2.3 billion in H1 2019
Is Conversion Lift the Future of Attribution?
– Searchenginejournal
If we will be able to conduct a controlled experiment for any campaign, keyword, or audience, there will be less guesswork in estimating the actual incremental value of advertising.
Apple Clarifies Its Anti-Tracking Policy For Safari – And Possible Exceptions
– Adexchanger
“You can maybe look at what Apple is doing on Safari as a precursor to what could happen in mobile,” Eliashiv said. “Are mobile and web on the same path in terms of privacy?”
The Grim Future Of An Open Web Devoid Of User Tracking
-Adexchanger
While the regulations and browser changes that are coming into place are primarily being directed at user privacy, they will have the perverse effect of pushing even more personal data and revenue toward some companies that are arguably the greatest violators of user privacy. Certainly they’ll be slapped with fines and will clean up their acts, but they will end up even more dominant in the industry than before.
Is It Time To Reward Users For Sharing Their Identity?
– Adexchanger
A new idea: a reward program that grants “brite points” to people who agree to have their identities tracked across a federation of websites. These points can be exchanged for free gas or other benefits.
How to measure marketing in a world without cookie-tracking
– Econsultancy
There are a number of testing strategies you need to be familiar with in this new age of measurement. Here are the main ones, arranged from the broadest scope to the narrowest.
Ignoring The Clash Between RTB And Privacy Regulations Doesn’t Remove The Threat
– Adexchanger
There are two outcomes, in my opinion. The first (and only one, if you asked me) is for quality media owners to break away from the programmatic marketplace and create their own walled garden, RTB-free.
The second outcome is crueler but sadly the most likely, the longer media brands’ tinker: Only those that can afford to switch RTB off and diversify – by offering capabilities like sophisticated contextual targeting and non-RTB behavioral targeting – will survive.
Google Ads & Google Analytics
How to Handle Google Ads Average Position Sunsetting
– Clix Marketing
If you are still using average position to evaluate performance, it’s time to start getting familiar with the metrics that can be used to improve ad placement: Search top impression rate and Search absolute top impression rate.
Step by Step: Setting up an App + Web Property
– Krista Seiden
In this Step by Step guide, I’ll take you through the three steps you’ll need to go through to set up a new App + Web Property in Google Analytics.
Google extends same-meaning close variants to phrase match, broad match modifiers
– Searchengineland
As expected, Google is further loosening the reins on close variants, this time extending same-meaning close variants to phrase match and broad match modifier. With the changes, Google is also changing its keyword selection preferences to prevent keywords from competing against each other.
This change will rollout in English in the coming weeks, with more languages to follow through 2020.
A new way to unify app and website measurement in Google Analytics
Currently, many businesses measure app engagement with Google Analytics for Firebase and website engagement with Google Analytics. While each of these products separately offer powerful insights, getting a more unified picture of engagement across your app and website can be a manual and painstaking process.
To make this simpler, we’re announcing a new way to measure apps and websites together for the first time in Google Analytics.
Facebook & Instagram
Facebook Adds Instagram Scheduling to Creator Studio
– Social Media Today
Yes, that’s right – native Instagram scheduling, via an official app.
Changes to text and aspect ratios on Mobile News Feed
Updates for mobile News Feed: Fewer lines of primary text will show on mobile News Feed. Now only 3 lines of primary text will show on Facebook mobile News Feed, after which people will be prompted to click to view additional text.
Maximum media height for photos and videos will reduce to 4:5 on mobile News Feed. The tallest supported aspect ratio for images without links and for videos is now vertical (4:5). Media taller than 4:5 will be masked on Facebook mobile News Feed.
2 months ago
Jochen Fostie
The CLICKTRUST monthly pick – July 2019
News and articles that allow us to stay on top of our game. You might want to read them too.
Analytics & Data
IAB Tech Lab Releases Data Transparency Standard, With Audits To Give It ‘Teeth’
“The IAB Tech Lab on Thursday released a new standardization system for third-party audience data and an auditing and credentialing program for data sellers.”
Could A Consumer Taxonomy Fill The Identity Void In A Cookie-less World?
– Adexchanger.com
“Instead of approaching the problem from a universal cookie angle, an independent trade group like the IAB should step in and create a standardized consumer taxonomy that will allow for identity- and interest-based targeting while still maintaining user privacy.”
The Tyranny of a Single KPI
– Avinash Kaushik
“Of all the harmful business decisions you can make analytically speaking, the worst is picking a single KPI for success. … There is an enormous amount we can get wrong when it comes to Analytics. Please get this basic bit about KPIs right. Not doing so has a profoundly corrosive impact, one that permeates across the organization in harmful ways. Don’t let your KPIs be lonely.”
Trade Desk Clashes With Google Over Transparency Initiative
– Adexchanger.com
According to sources involved in the discussions, Google worries that if exchange bidding is categorized as an intermediary who takes an extra financial cut out of transactions, some buyers will stop using it. Instead, they may route more spend to competitor Prebid, the open source wrapper which will be classified as “direct.
The ultimate fear is that Trade Desk and others would stop buying through exchange bidding completely.”
Brand Safety Is Not Synonymous With Quality
– Adexchanger.com
“The result is ads from some of the top advertisers often being displayed, by exclusion, on “safe content” like silly polls, competitions or otherwise bland content of little quality and engagement. At the same time, quality media owners complain that a good amount of premium content is automatically filtered out by brand safety algorithms, affecting their revenue.”
How to Use Google Data Studio for Client Reporting
– Conversion XL
While we think the title of this article can be misleading, the content is really interesting and basically explains what should (or shouldn’t) be in a client reporting.
“In data-driven industries, it’s easy to imagine that we can “let the data decide,” but that’s actually not the function of data. It’s our job to help our clients interpret the data so they can approve recommendations and take action.”
How to get the best out of Google and Facebook’s free attribution services
– Econsultancy.com
“The reason I’m excited is because an attribution competition between the two biggest advertising platforms creates opportunities for advertisers. Limitations in one can be offset by capabilities in other, and biases can be identified and mitigated through cross-referencing.”
#GTMTips: Introducing The GTM Templates Library
– Simo Ahava
“When Custom Templates were released in Google Tag Manager, many of us active in the GTM communities started doing two things: 1) creating our own custom templates, and 2) waiting patiently for Google to release a “gallery” or “library” for distributing these community contributions.
While I have full faith in the latter happening some time in the future, I thought it would be fun to create something similar to a library, and then open-sourcing it for the community to help out with or to download locally for their own purposes.”
The Case For First-Party, Community-Driven Identity
– Adexchanger.com
“It’s hardly revolutionary to predict the end of the third-party cookie. Digital advertising’s fundamental currency for the last ten years is under increasing strain….With publisher revenues and marketer outcomes on the line, there is still no industry-wide consensus as to what will replace them.”
Facebook & Instagram
A Short Reference of Facebook One-Sheeter Guides
“This short article will help provide an easy resource to bring some of these Facebook one-sheeter resources together. While this list is by no means exhaustive, it captures some of the main topics.”
How Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) is Performing Around The World
“Here’s the bottom line: no one has CBO completely figured out just yet. Regardless of your country, the vertical you sell in, or your Facebook campaign objective, there just doesn’t seem to be one, consistent formula that everyone can use for success.”
Google Ads
Google Gallery Ads – Another Day, Another New Ad Format
– PPC Hero
“All in all, it is an exciting time for search. The possibilities are endless for advertisers. From displaying multiple aspects of a retail product to highlighting popular dishes on a restaurant’s menu, digital search strategies will be evolving to fit an image focused agenda as Google Gallery Ads enter the game.”
Automation layering: How PPC pros retain control when automation takes over
– Search Engine Land
“The engines are automating many things we used to have lots of control over because we used to do them manually: from finding new keywords, to setting better bids, to writing ads. But when the people behind the businesses that advertise on Google get a say, results can be better than if the engine’s automation runs entirely on its own.”
RSAs vs. ETAs: Stop Comparing CTR
– PPC Hero
“We will not be comparing CTR between ETAs and RSAs. Why? For one, RSAs will show up for different queries, devices, etc., so it’s not an apples to apples test. And two, per a current Google Agency rep, Google created RSAs to be complementary to ETAs: they will win some auctions ETAs wouldn’t have and vice versa. “
4 months ago
Jochen Fostie
A look back on Q1 – New office, Malaga, a MASSIVE pitch and our goals.
The first quarter of 2019 was amazing. Lots of things happened! Here is a quick overview:
Move into our new office
We spent the major portion of last years’ profit into a new workplace on Avenue Tervuren 36. We renovated from scratch, designs done by the team. We’re very happy to be here!
CLICKTRUST & Mountainview celebration event
February was also the month in which we celebrated the minority stake Mountainview has bought in CLICKTRUST. We celebrated in style, with a conference we organised for our clients, inviting several high profile speakers. The event was a blast!
Teambuilding in Malaga
To finish off the hectic month of february, we went for a two day teambuilding in sunny Malaga. With both relaxing activities and teambuilding work, the trip was a success. Profit sharing among employees was announced. Yearly getaways are now a thing.
Winning a MASSIVE pitch
To finish off these amazing first three months of the year, we ended up winning a huge pitch in March. Details will follow later, once we have succesfully onboarded the client and all their massive brands…
The road ahead
We will now work on further improving employee onboarding and internal operational efficiency. Client acquisition will be done very selectively. Our focus goes to quality, not quantity.
8 months ago
Fabian Van De Wiele
Mountainview & CLICKTRUST : specialized, together.
It is no secret that CLICKTRUST and the digital strategy agency Mountainview get on well. We crossed paths two years back on a mutual client – and chemistry happened!
Today, Mountainview & CLICKTRUST work together on many clients. We share the same views on service, transparency and the role of an agency in the ever-increasing complex digital eco-system.
Concretely, Mountainview has taken a significant financial interest in CLICKTRUST as minority shareholder. This officializes our collaboration.
We have often discovered our extreme specialisation in analytics and biddable media has to be introduced when clients are ready for it. They need a certain level of digital maturity for us to be able to deliver good work. This is where Mountainview has proven very valuable to us. Their transparent, didactical approach prepares clients and helps them grasp digital as a whole, and allows them to understand where an expert agency like ourselves fits in.
We are extremely excited about this partnership – as we believe models like this are the working model for agencies of the future. Individual agencies that each have their own resources, expertise & clients – but that are able to join forces on common projects. This gives clients the best of both worlds : the ease of working with one entity for several services, and the expertise of working with an expert agency.
All this in full transparency.
Would you like to learn more about our working model? Contact us!
10 months ago
Fabian Van De Wiele
Data-driven + lots of brand keywords? Start thinking like a marketeer…
[activecampaign form=3]PPC & attribution experts only. This requires a deep understanding of search and an obsessive passion for paid digital media. I expect some negative feedback on this. Allow me to indulge 😉
Context:
- Client is ROI and Cost/sale sensitive (duh) and is currently facing very high cost per sale numbers on generic search terms in a market with CPC’s averaging 9 EUR .
- They desperately want to expand generic volume, and have gone through several agencies who each have failed to deliver this.
- The account contains both generic and branded keywords on both exact and broad match.
- The average time between first click and conversion is more than 3 days.
Studying the path length reports in the search attribution tool showed us that generic queries almost always convert combined with branded queries. We can hence assume that the data driven algorithm that is looking at numbers would consider branded keywords pretty important.
Comparing data driven to first click attribution
Upon comparing data driven attribution to first click attribution through the attribution tool, the following happened:
- very strong decrease in sales from generic keywords and huge increase in cost per sale both in percentage and absolute numbers.
- massive increase in sales from branded keywords, and limited decrease in cost per sale in absolute numbers.
When showing this to the client, they were schocked. Nobody cared about the cost/sale of the branded keywords decreasing from 4 eur to 2 eur. The cost per sale of generic keywords that increased from 100 eur to 300 eur in the data driven model was however enough to leave them gobsmacked.
When data driven becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
Statistically speaking, I’m sure the data driven model is correct. If it is providing weight to the number of times a specific query appears in the customer journey, than obviously branded queries will get a lot of weight. As data driven attribution will then decrease conversions on generic keywords, ROI sensitive clients will decrease bids. Branded queries will then become even more prominent, and the whole thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Think revenue across channels – not within silo’s
From an outcome-driven marketing & “lets grow revenue” point of view, this makes no sense. Cost per sale on branded search moved from cheap to too cheap to care, while generic cost per sale increased by 3 compared to a first click attribution model. Meanwhile, the site is ranking very well organically on all branded search queries and has limited competitors bidding on their brand.
As a result, the actual value of generic queries is massively undervalued due to the presence of the branded queries in the account. Is is highly likely that the client would have gotten the sales that happened on the branded query through organic search anyway.
So if datadriven is not taking the less important role of branded search queries into account on sites that are ok SEO wise, and uses frequency of search queries in the customer journey as a factor in the algorithm, we can expect ROI sensitive PPC managers to decrease overal media spend in the long run, as they decrease investment on generic terms. That can’t be the goal.
I’ve seen this happen several times now on pure ecommerce players. They fail to scale the accounts, especially in smaller markets with products/services that have decision cycles beyond several days.
Possible solutions:
- Split branded queries and generic queries into seperate accounts so that data driven attribution can be used on generic queries only
- Create a test to remove branded queries alltogether. Incremental impact on sales volume from branded paid search queries together with organic queries should of course be assessed.
In both scenarios’s, by taking branded queries out of the account, conversion attribution will shift back to generic keywords and data driven will do its work on generic queries alone.
Sales and media spend on generic search queries will go up while overall sales from organic and paid search combined should increase.
In any case: before using data driven, check the importance of branded search queries in the account. If your sales are primarily coming from branded queries, and you wish to keep them in the account – you’re probably better off with first click attribution…(the horror!)
Of course, savvy digital marketeers should be going beyond that and look for attribution tools that take the incremental value of branded search queries and all forms of remarketing into account across the entire media mix…
If you’re interested by this post, this is the stuff the CLICKTRUST team thinks about daily while optimizing your accounts. We’d be happy to exchange ideas.
1 year ago
Fabian Van De Wiele
The last year and the road ahead.
Where we came from
CLICKTRUST grew from 4 people to 9 people over the course of one year. We weren’t doing too bad before, at least that is what we thought. We had clients staying with us for years, and had the occasional win of a new client. We didn’t do any marketing. We got business through referrals. All in all, that didn’t sound too bad.
After sitting down and carefully analyzing the market, we discovered where we can truly make a difference. Providing clients with a transparant service for digital media at a flat fee. No crazy media fees, no longwinded slide-decks, and no teams full of juniors.
New account wins
By pure word of mouth, we managed to win a lot of business this year. BNP Paribas Fortis, Hello Bank, Birdee, ALD Automotive, Printdeal, Ladbrokes, Collishop , Centerparcs… The list is long. Why did these companies chose us? We stuck to our principles and committed to deliver only that what we know we do best. Combine this with a flat fee and we were a welcome change from other players that were either missing expertise or transparancy.
The recruitment of new people while keeping existing staff
Our progress allowed us to recruit senior, highly talented staff relatively easily. The existing team members from before all stayed – allowing us to go passed a crucial point where the team today mainly consists of people with solid experience. This has now put us in a position where we can attract even more talented staff, as this industry is driven by people that want to learn from each other. The best place to do that is in a place where experienced, like-minded are sat in one place.
So what is next?
We are now looking for 3 more people in different roles. We will grow the team to invest more time in training and development. If you would like to join us in this adventure, check out our careers page!
1 year ago
Fabian Van De Wiele