CHALLENGE
Client is a publicly-traded global asset manager with over $500 billion in assets under management. The firm’s strategic challenge is to grow brand awareness on premium financial websites in a crowded market and drive quality traffic to its site for lead creation. To meet this challenge, The Gate Worldwide, the client’s media planning agency, recognized digital transformation focused on operational excellence and automation are imperative.
SOLUTION
The Gate Worldwide implemented the AdNode Platform for the Client’s 2020 media plans. Nine premium publishers, representing the world’s leading investing and financial news websites, joined AdNode to participate.
RESULTS
AdNode verified every billable ad impression achieved KPIs including viewability, brand safety, and IVT based on “smart contract” insertion orders.
Automation enabled the media agency to realize inventory opportunities in-flight and shift dollars (vs. waiting to post campaign evaluation) and reduced agency hours on extensive reconciliation.
Publisher partners received near real-time access to data on what is billable or not; supporting rapid optimizations, improved inventory yields and eCPMs.
"AdNode enabled our agency to actively manage impression quality with our publisher partners in near real-time, driving more value for our client as well as reducing agency hours on impression optimization and reconciliation, resulting in a win-win-win for client, agency and publishers."
SUCCESS BY THE NUMBERS
99.9%
increase in
Media Value¹
70%
decrease in
Hours on
Reconciliation²
31%
increase in
Publisher
Efficiency³
THE CASE STUDY
AGENCY
The Gate Worldwide
CLIENT
Financial Services Brand (Confidential)
RECONCILIATION PLATFORM
AdNode
PUBLISHERS
9 premium partners (top brands) with over 300 million monthly unique users in financial news and investing
MEASUREMENT VENDOR
AdLoox
CAMPAIGN PERIOD
May 1, 2020 – Dec 31, 2020
CASE STUDY PERIOD
September 2020 Preliminary Results for May 1 – Aug 31, 2020 (Annual Campaign 1st Half)
CAMPAIGNS
ETF and CEF Products
BUDGET
$250,000 – $750,000 (exact amount is confidential)
BILLABLE KPIs
Viewability, Brand Safety, Invalid Traffic, and Geographic Targeting
USE CASES DURING PILOT
BRAND SAFETY REDUCED UP TO 20X
For one publisher on the plan, 5% of ad impressions were not brand safe due to “Fake News” in the first week. The publisher used AdNode’s platform to determine the issues were associated with 4 of its domains. The publisher reallocated to reduce brand safety issues to 0.22% of its ad impressions. The advertiser reduced its overall brand safety issues from 1.55% to 0.07% of total impressions.
INVALID TRAFFIC REDUCED UP TO 50%
For another publisher, in its first month, invalid traffic represented over 17% of ad impressions. The publisher used AdNode to view the agency’s measurement data to understand much of this was due to Known Data Centers and Adware. The publisher blocked certain public IP addresses associated with fake traffic and reduced its frequency cap. This resulted in the publisher reducing IVT issues by more than 50%. The advertiser reduced its overall IVT issues from 7.64% to 4.65% of total impressions.
WRONG GEOGRAPHY ISSUES REDUCED 10X
One publisher unintentionally did not include a geographic filter limited to U.S. traffic. In the first 3 days of the campaign, its wrong-geo traffic represented 55.3% of impressions. The publisher reduced its out-of-geo traffic to 1.15% of total. The advertiser reduced its overall wrong-geo traffic from 3.6% to 0.34% of total impressions.
VIEWABILITY INCREASED UP TO 100%
At the start of the campaign, one publisher learned their mobile ad units had 33% viewability while their desktop ad units had 69% viewability. Two publishers had higher viewability on their 300×600 ad units than their 300×250 units. By re-allocating to the more viewable placements, these and other publishers on the campaign increased overall viewability.
AdNode automates the buying and reconciliation process for digital advertising with blockchain technology. Automation eliminates the back-office manual reconciliation process, increases the operational efficiency of agencies and publishers, and grows media value allowing advertisers to only pay for ads meeting KPIs.
FOOTNOTES
- Media value increase is the cost of the ad impressions determined to be not billable by the AdNode platform relative to the ad spend on billable ad impressions during the campaign’s first month. Prior to automating with AdNode, the client was billed for all ad impressions.
- Estimate from media agency partner based on hours spent on similar prior year campaigns without AdNode.
- Publisher efficiency is measured as the improvement in the average publisher’s effective CPM (average earnings across all delivered impressions) during the 4-month campaign period compared to its average in the first week of the campaign.
