1. The Great Online Display
Advertising Guide
Or, How Did That Ad Get There?
Paul Mosenson, NuSpark Marketing
August 2014

2. About Paul Mosenson
Digital Media Strategist and Planner/Buyer
30-year advertising experience; last corporate position as
Media Director at renowned Delaware ad agency
Currently is President of NuSpark Marketing; a digital lead
generation firm since 2008 servicing clients around the world.
Paul has been managing digital campaigns for 15 years
successfully, covering a mix of B2B and B2C clients
Paul is fluent in paid search, display, social media, conversion
rate, SEO, and content marketing
Previous eBooks cover SEO, paid search, content strategy,
lead generation optimization, marketing automation, and
more.

3. What I Cover
Stating the case for display advertising
The display landscape; how ads are served
Those abbreviations; DSP, DMP, SSP, RTB, and
Programmatic buying
Campaign planning and KPIs to measure
Targeting strategies and retargeting
Pricing, ad units, and buying display
After the buy; tags, cookies, and pixels
Mobile web and Mobile app campaigns
Campaign optimization
Google Display Network Tour
B2B Display topics; Lead nurturing, Native, LinkedIn
Measuring Display; View-Through, Attribution, Multi-channel
funnels

4. Why Display Advertising
STATING THE CASE

5. Display is Media
It’s not about clicks
◦ It’s about delivering a large number of
impressions to the right audience so that
the audience becomes familiar with a
brand that could lead to conversions.
(Display is “media”)
Display boosts other online campaigns
◦ Display creates awareness and interest;
other mediums such as organic and paid
search may drive more “last click”
conversions, but those conversions can
be influenced by the power of display

6. Media Strategy 101
Any comprehensive media strategy
works best when targeted channels
work together rather than used
independently. Combining display with
search is no exception
Recent display usage studies and effect on other
channels

7. More Supportive Display
Research
A 2013 Harvard Business School study found that display advertising significantly
increases search conversions. According to HBS, “Both search and display
ads…exhibit significant dynamics that improve their effectiveness and ROI over
time.” In addition, “…we find that each $1 invested in display and search leads to
a return of $1.24 for display and $1.75 for search ads…”
A study by comScore showed that the combination of search and online ads
results in a sales lift of 119%.
An iProspect study revealed that people initially respond to online display ads as
follows:
◦ 31% respond by directly clicking on an ad
◦ 27% respond by searching for the product, brand, or company by launching a search on a
search engine
◦ 21% respond by typing the company Web address into their browser and directly
navigating to the website, and
◦ 9% respond by investigating the product, brand, or company through social media venues
◦ Overall, 52% of Internet users actively respond IN SOME WAY to online display advertising
The study also found that one third of users who respond to online display
advertising eventually purchase from the company, and that thirty-eight percent of
users who respond to online display advertising learn about a brand for the first
time as a result of their exposure to such an ad.

8. The Lift Effect of Display Advertising
The research by comScore also indicates that display advertising has an effect on user
behavior even at low CTR. In the research, which included 139 display campaigns from
seven verticals, comScore recorded substantial effects on traffic, sales and branding
despite low CTR. The campaigns yielded a 46 percent lift in advertiser website visits over
a four week period. During the same period, exposed users were 38 percent more likely
to conduct an advertiser-related branded-keyword search, and 27 percent more likely to
make a purchase online.

9. Additional Benefits of Display; Direct
Response and Branding Studies

10. CONVINCED?

11. Marketers are Listening
63% of marketers will increase their budget for online
branding, with one in five saying the jump will be 20% or
more
48% will be shifting dollars from TV to online ads
61% will be shifting from online direct response to online
branding
70% will be increasing spending for social media and mobile
60% of ad sellers say more of their revenue this year will
come from online branding
89% of sellers predict an increase in online branding
spending, with almost a third saying the increase will be more
than 30%
2013 Online Advertising Report: CMO Council and Vizu
Study

12. All Digital Tactics Will Increase Spend,
Including Display

13. How Ads Are Served To Your Browser
A TOUR OF THE ONLINE
DISPLAY ECOSYSTEM

14. Welcome to the tour. Here I explain
how the ads you see on websites are
served to you, and at the same time
explain the role of those acronyms you
may have read about, like DSPs and
DMPs. Let’s get started!

15. It starts with you: the website
you’re on via your browser
Your browser points to a Web publisher and communicates via a publisher Web
server. The publisher Web server responds back to the browser with an HTML file.
In the HTML file is a pointer back to the publisher ad server. The browser calls the
ad server looking for an ad. The ad server responds with the ad's file location. In this
case, the file is sitting on a content delivery network (CDN).
The browser calls out to the CDN requesting the specific file containing the ad's
creative content (JPG, GIF, Flash, etc.). The CDN sends the file back to the browser.

16. If the ads aren’t in the publisher ad server (meaning ad
are bought from the publisher directly), they may be
stored within an ad agency server or an ad network
server
Instead of the publisher ad server pointing toward its own CDN, the ad
server delivers a secondary ad tag, a simple piece of HTML that points
toward the agency ad server.
The browser calls the agency ad server, which returns the final location of
the creative in its own CDN.
The browser calls to the agency ad server CDN requesting the specific file
with the ad's creative content (JPG, GIF, Flash, etc.). The CDN sends the
file back to the browser.

17. Definition:
Ad Networks
Ad networks connect advertisers to
publishers. They aggregate ad inventory
and offer it to advertisers.
Networks provide a way for media buyers
to coordinate ad campaigns across
multiple sites (ranging from dozens to
thousands) efficiently. Ad networks vary in
size and focus: large ad networks may
require premium brands and millions of
impressions per month, while small ad
networks may accept unbranded sites with
thousands of impressions per month.

18. Now it gets interesting; the tag the browser
gets from the publisher server may also
include an SSP tag- now the concept of real
time bidding (RTB) begins, featuring DSPs,
DMPs, and Ad Exchanges. Definitions to
follow!

19. SSP: Supply Side Platform
(For Publishers)
SSPs allow publishers to jump into ad exchanges via DSPs to
make their inventory available and optimize selling of their
online media space. Through SSPs, publishers can gain the
highest eCPM for their inventory rather than selling remnant
space at lower costs.

20. Ad Exchanges
Display space that’s unsold by either sites or networks is usually collected by an
ad exchange, where it is auctioned off to the highest bidder among advertisers,
networks and agencies. It’s a very simple way to buy ad space, and for publishers
to squeeze value from their unused inventory. Exchanges let buyers purchase
very specific audiences, especially when using real-time bidding technology.
Advertisers and agencies typically use DSPs to buy display

21. DSP: Demand Side Platform
A demand side platform (DSP) is a system that allows digital
advertisers to manage multiple ad exchange and data exchange
accounts through one interface. Real time bidding for display
online ads takes place within the ad exchanges, and by utilizing
a DSP, marketers can manage their bids for the banners and the
pricing for the data that they are layering on to target their
audiences.

22. DSPs, Exchanges and SSPs Together
DSPs are used by marketers to buy ad impressions from
exchanges as cheaply and as efficiently as possible, SSPs
are designed by publishers to do the opposite: to maximize
the prices their impressions sell at.
SSPs allow publishers to connect their inventory to multiple
ad exchanges, DSPs, and networks at once. This in turn
allows a huge range of potential buyers to purchase ad space
and for publishers to get the highest possible rates.
When an SSP throws impressions into ad exchanges, DSPs
analyze and purchase them on behalf of marketers
depending on certain attributes such as where they’re served,
and which specific users they’re being served to. By opening
up impressions to as many potential buyers as possible via
real-time auctions, publishers can maximize the revenues
they receive for their inventory.
This process takes place in milliseconds!, as a user’s
computer loads a webpage.

23. DMP: Data Management Platform- 3rd
Party Data Overlay for More-Precise
Targeting
A data management platform (DMP) is a centralized data management platform
that allows advertisers to create target audiences based on a combination of in-depth
first-party and third-party audience data. DMPs enable advertisers to
consolidate online and offline customer data from various sources into a single
location, then use it to create demographic and behavioral segments that can be
used to target online advertising. Performance data from each campaign is then
fed back into the DMP, creating a feedback loop that improves optimization efforts
and can be used for related reporting and analysis
Companies use DMPs to collect and analyze huge amounts of data from many
different sources. DMPs are now so powerful that companies can track users and
customers who visit from banners, Facebook pages, Tweets, mobile, video and
even offline applications. They collect and analyze data from cookies, small files
that keep website settings and also record user behavior. For example, DMPs can
allow e-commerce sites, publishers and advertisers to find out how many users
who bought a big screen TV online also searched for high-end digital cameras in
the past week.

24. DSPs and DMPs
Together
DMPs can be used to store and manage any
form of information, but for marketers, they’re
most often used to manage cookie IDs and to
generate audience segments, which are
subsequently used to target specific users with
online ads.
Advertisers buy media across a huge range of
differ