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Pacing Algorithm for Advertising Campaigns and Inventory Allocations

I was trying to figure out what to do with my Sunday. My options were: build a little header bidding ad server plugin for WordPress; run, sleep and eat; or write up some blog post on a pacing algorithm, because people still seem to be producing crappy ones. Since you’re reading this, you can probably guess which choice I made. I mean, it’s not the first post I’ve written on the subject.

It showed up again last week. I didn’t expect it, but I guess I never do. A saw-tooth pattern on a chart, indicative of a capping of sorts. A chart that says, “I want a thing to happen, but only so much.” In this case it was a traffic allocation. This was a surprise.

A little (bad pacing algorithm) history

Most of the time when I run into a bad pacing algorithm it’s in the form of a campaign trying to limit itself. It only needs to acquire a few thousand impressions every five minutes, for example. So the hastily written algorithm might divvy up the impression allocation into five minutes buckets. Effectively that’s 12 buckets every hour. So it takes an hour’s worth of impression needs and divides it by twelve. One twelfth of the impressions are purchased every five minutes. Unfortunately at that point it switches to a simple counter that says, “for the next five minutes buy impressions until the number purchased reaches 1/12th of what I need in this hour.”

You end up with a purchase graph that looks like this.
Sawtooth Pattern exposes a bad pacing algorithm

See that blue spiky thing? That’s the one that’ll get ya. Read on to find out how this impacts the industry and how to fix it

Tokyo Tourist

Having just returned from my fifth trip to Tokyo, I think I’m finally comfortable offering some tips, tricks and a short-list of fun sights to see. This is by no means a comprehensive list. It’s just enough to facilitate your basic mobility needs and your curiosity. I’ll start with the airport.

Narita

Tokyo Travel StickerTerminal One at Narita International Airport is part airport, part train station, and part shopping mall. Your other international hubs have cute stores and all, but how many choices of kitch and foodstuffs and ramen shops can you find? Chances are you won’t find half as many as you do at Narita. The trick is that you have to hit both sides of T1 if you want to catch ‘em all. Unfortunately you’ll be locked into one or the other, depending on your airline. Worry not, wayward traveler, you win on either side.

Downtown

I’m still searching for the best way to get to downtown Tokyo from the airport. Right now I’m getting a full-fare ticket on the Narita Express (NEX) on the JR East railway. Unfortunately you have to pay cash, about 3,000 yen, if you want to use the automated machines. Your western credit cards won’t work in them. If all you’ve got is your Visa, you’ll have to wait in line and get it from an agent. If it’s your first time in JP, you might want to do that anyway. Some of the machine jibber jabber can be a bit confusing for a non-native, even when you set the language to English. Read on to find out the easy math of the Japanese Yen and how you might encounter more than a few smokers indoors

Switzerland

Stepping off the plane, I couldn’t help but notice that Basel airport bears a striking similarity to many rural, American airports. There are few gates, limited services, and only the essential airport staff. This might not be your point of entry, but if it is know that you’re not actually in Switzerland just yet. You’re in France.

Basel airport, if you didn’t guess by the name, services the Swiss city of Basel primarily, but at some point the lords of the air decided that it should be located outside the bounds of Europe’s favorite neutral country.

Catching a cab might be difficult here, and there’s no train to the city to speak of. I found a taxi sign sitting atop a weathered Tesla S-series sedan. Sadly, no driver was in sight. That was okay, I had my Lyft app – but they don’t. It was another dead end. Thankfully Uber had penetrated the market, and while I’d prefer not to use their service due to the reported corporate culture, I was out of alternatives.

Switzerland and the EU

Switzerland flag flanked by bicyclesSwitzerland is the first European country I’ve visited that went mostly untouched by the second world war. I say mostly because there several Allied bombings of Switzerland. One notable incident hit Schaffhausen. Stories are mixed. At the time the Allies cited bad weather that threw the bombers off course and confused the navigators. Others say it became a target when it started producing arms for the Axis. It almost makes me want to put “neutral” in quotes, and there I just did.

In any case, those days are long in the past and we’re all good friends now. Existing treaties do not make the country part of the EU, but they do keep up with most of the laws. Read on to find out the language and understand a how there’s more cheese than you can poke a hole in

Header Bidding: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Header Bidding: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Whether you think it’s a fad, a “hack,” the new standard, or the latest shiny object, header bidding has had a significant and disruptive impact on the advertising technology ecosystem. It may only be a matter of time before Luma Partners adds header bidding wrappers as a new box to their (in)famous landscapes.

The promise of header bidding with multiple exchanges has yielded positive results for advertisers and publishers but it has come with a cost that, over time, might be too much to bear. Whether it survives the fray, or evolves into something new, header bidding has changed the game forever.

Header Bidding: The Good

The movie stars Clint Eastwood. As The Good guy, he is not necessarily altruistic in nature, but he’s really good at capitalizing on opportunities.

Header Bidding brings those opportunities by providing premium inventory into the programmatic marketplace. No longer  are the best impressions locked away in the tower of publisher ad servers. They are now accessible via  the myriad of sophisticated Seller-Side Platform (SSP), Exchange and Demand-Side Platform (DSP) technologies. This gives sellers more articulate controls over the rules of engagement for every transaction.

Retargeting, made easier by RTB, can now be applied at all inventory priority levels, improving yield for commerce sites. Elusive audiences could be more readily captured by private marketplaces and the open auction, inviting new advertisers to test, refine, and commit to new deals with new partners.

Meanwhile, demand side systems are given the opportunity to bring more premium buying contracts to their platforms. This could be why some publishers started seeing higher revenue with header bidding in play. During Advertising Week in New York, one publisher cited header bidding as being responsible for 50% lift in CPMs. These types of statistics have been echoed by several others in the industry. While this might not be the panacea that saves the online newspaper, it certainly helps keep a few more lights on.

Next: The Bad

The promise of header bidding: Opening up premium inventory to programmatic channels

This article was originally published in Venture Beat on November 29th, 2016. I have written previously about the conundrum of header bidding. While my thoughts back then are still valid, the technology has progressed and the market is following. Following this, I’ve posted the good, bad and ugly of header bidding.

header bidding

Everyone is talking about the promise of header bidding, but what does it really mean to the future of publishing and mobile monetization? Header bidding is leveling the playing field by allowing sellers to make more intelligent inventory allocation decisions between traditional and programmatic demand. For advertisers, it allows for better campaign delivery and optimization by providing more access to audiences at scale.

By implementing header bidding, publishers and app developers are able to expose every single impression to a programmatic marketplace. Many sellers are already reporting 40-50-percent increases in CPMs, and buyers have a new ability to bring their data to bear across multiple inventory sources.

Next: The evolution, yield opportunities and scale