Ad Operations
1. What are the
various modes in online advertising?
Advertising using
internet technology (WWW)
Display advertising –Static,
RICHMEDIA & Mobile/PDA
Email advertising refers to
advertising displayed in an email environment. It includes: Display, text,
opt-in Search/Keyword marketing
2. Define Advertising
and List Benefits of advertising?
Advertising is a paid form
of communication delivered to persuade or influence an audience about a product
or service.
Increase the brand awareness
and Direct response (direct behavior or interaction which is specific and
quantifiable. )
Increase Sales and ROI
Awareness of products
To promote product/service
Build a good Rapport with consumer
4. What is IAB - Internet Advertising bureau? Explain the core
functionality of IAB
The IAB educates marketers,
agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of
interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates
and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on
interactive advertising.
Ad Standards, Creative
Standards, Contracts, Privacy Measurement guide etc
5. What is Display
Advertising?
Display advertising refers to web
advertising displaying the message using graphical information beyond text. Includes image, rich media, floating,
transitional, etc.
6. Various creative formats?
Static Image – Gif, Jpeg
Rich – Flash – swf
RichMedia – Floating, Expandable, transitional, video, Motif
7. What is an online
campaign? Types of campaigns?
Online
campaign is advertising program published using internet
a.
Branding (awareness and message reinforcement)
b.
Direct response (ROI/acquisition-focused)
9. What are the
various types are targeting in online adverting?
Content – Various sections on the website pages
Geographical – Country, State, city, pin code, zip code etc
Demographic
Time and Date
psychographic/behavioral
Computer System
Internet Related
10. What is RFI>RFP>IO
(request for info/proposal, insertion order)? Explain
Request for proposal. Advertiser sends
RFP to Publisher by requesting to run an ad
11. What is
forecasting?
A process of investigating how many
impressions are available for a future date on a specific targeting area of a
website.
12. Define Impression
and click ?
Impression: one exposure to one
user of a display or text ad
Click: One mouse click on the ad displayed.
13. Types of cost
structure and explain
CPM (cost per thousand
impressions)
CPC/CPA (cost per click of
acquisition/conversion)
Flat rate (special sponsorships
such as fixed placements)
14. Sony has booked an ad
slot of 728x90 @ 4 CPM and 300x250 @ 2CPC on Yahoo. If in 1 month yahoo records
400,000 impressions on 728x90 and 2000 clicks, then what is the total cost? Who
should pay?
Cost 728x90 = 400000x4/1000 = 1600
Cost 300x250 = 2000x2 = 4000
Total cost = 5600
15.
Explain the following
terminologies used in online advertising industry
a)
BUYERS -
Buyers are companies that buy ad space to advertise on it. Direct advertisers,
Agencies and small business.
b)
Agency -
Agencies are companies that handle the advertising process on behalf of the
advertiser.
c)
CTR: The click rate is the percentage of
ad views that resulted in clickthroughs
CTR – Click Through Rate = (Click/impression)
100
d)
Sellers -
Sellers are companies that Sell ad space to advertise on it. Portals, Ad
Networks, Content sites and Social networks
e)
Publisher
- Web-publishers will monetize their web content via advertisements by
creating ad spaces.
f)
Ad
Network - An ad network acts as an agency for the publisher. Ad networks do not own the content, and they
are responsible only for selling ad inventory on behalf of the publishers.
g)
Remnant - Selling ad space that a publisher cannot sell. They try to buy ad space
at low prices and sell it at a higher price by packaging it through targeting
capabilities and reach
h)
AD
Exchange - Virtual marketplaces bring together online advertising buyers
and sellers. Mainly focused on: remnant (unsold) inventory and inventory from
publishers with no sales structure (long tail)
i)
Media Planning: Managing the process of researching media and planning the
campaign.
j)
Media Buying: Managing the process of buying the media and price negotiation.
Usually buyers use an RFP process to request proposals from the publishers that
satisfy the goal of the buyer.
16. What is an
Insertion order?
An
insertion order is a formal, printed order to run an ad campaign. Typically,
the insertion order identifies the campaign name, the Web site receiving the
order and the planner or buyer giving the order, the individual ads to be run
(or who will provide them), the ad sizes, the campaign beginning and end dates,
the CPM, the total cost, discounts to be applied, and reporting requirements
and possible penalties or stipulations relative to the failure to deliver the
impressions.
17. Who is a BUYER and
explain?
Buyers are companies that buy ad space to
advertise on it.
They might buy ad space to advertise their
own product/services or those of others.
The buyers can be categorized in the
following groups:
Direct marketers – Medium to large company
Agencies
- Companies that handle the advertising process on behalf of the
advertiser. Function: planning, buying, creative design, PR, branding, etc.
Specialty: direct marketing, search,
branding, etc.
18. Who is a SELLER and
explain?
Sellers are companies that Sell ad space to
advertise on it.
Web-publishers will monetize their web
content via advertisements by creating ad spaces
Managing the ad inventory available for
sale and
forecasting.
Portals, Ad Networks, Content sites and
Social networks
19. What is an
ADNETWORK?
An ad network acts as an agency for the
publisher
Ad
networks do not own the content, and they are responsible only for selling ad
inventory on behalf of the publishers.
The
key benefit of ad networks is the ability to aggregate supply and therefore
lower buying cost.
Remnant/arbitrage networks focus on selling ad space that a publisher
cannot sell.
They try to buy ad space at low prices and sell it at a higher price by
packaging it through targeting capabilities and reach. They usually purchase in
CPM
20. Explain the
complete steps involved in Buyer/Advertise side online ad serving process
Media Planning >Buying ad space on
Publisher>Creative Generation > Trafficking >Reporting>Optimization
>Invoicing
Media Planning: Managing the process of researching media and
planning the campaign.
Media Buying: Managing the process of buying the media and price
negotiation. Usually buyers use an RFP process to request proposals from the
publishers that satisfy the goal of the buyer.
Creative Management: Managing the design process from the
storyboards to the actual creative. Most of the time the design process is
outsourced to creative agencies or freelancers.
Centralized Tracking: The buyer needs to have a centralized view
of campaign data to see how the campaign is performing across the media they
bought. One key requirement online (especially for direct marketers) is the
ability to track the leads/sales and what activities led to it.
Media/Creative Optimization: The buyer needs to optimize the
creatives to the right audience and make sure they stay “fresh” to avoid
burnout effect (displaying the same creative over and over). They also need to
make sure the media purchased delivers the expected results.
Accounting: The buyer needs to be able to pay the publisher based
on the pricing models set forth in the purchase order and the delivered
results.
21. Explain the
complete steps involved in Seller/Publisher side online ad serving process.
Proposal
generation/IO >Inventory Management > Trafficking >
Reporting>Optimization >Invoicing
Account
management: Managing the relationship with the buyers
Proposal
management: Managing RFPs and proposals during the sales process
Inventory
management: Managing the ad inventory available for sale
Order/placement
management: Managing the proper delivery of the orders/placements that are sold
Yield
management: Maximizing ad revenue
Accounting:
Managing invoices and payments
22. What is Media
Research and explain?
This
is a part of Media Planning process where an agency will refer to the various
research data to select the appropriate audience for adverting campaign.
Geographic reports, Demographic data, Survery, research done by comsocre and
other agency on the user data, Internet usage etc can be used .
23. What is rate card?
An
electronic document which highlights the information regarding the publisher
site such as – cost structure, ad slot size available, creative specification
to be used , contact info, policy etc. This will be sent along with Insertion
order. This will be sent to agency/advertiser who are interested to run a
campaign on the website.
24. What are the
various cost structure used in online industry and explain
CPM : CPM is "cost per
thousand" ad impressions, an industry standard measure for selling ads on
Web sites. This measure is taken from print advertising. The "M" has
nothing to do with "mega" or million. It's taken from the Roman
numeral for "thousand."CPC = Cost Per Click
CPC – Cost Per Click
CPD = Cost per Day
CPL = Cost per Lead
Flat Rate – Total cost is
fixed.
Sponsorships/Bonus
25. What is browser/proxy server caching? What is caching?
A: Information, such as web pages, images, etc.,
are saved on a user’s computer or proxy server so that the information can be
accessed more quickly. The information is accessed more quickly because the
browser and/or proxy server need not re-contact the original source. This is a
natural occurrence in the web and is responsible for making sure that web pages
load as quickly as they do.
In an attempt to speed up
user experience around the web, most browsers implement a technology called
cache. This mechanism allows information, such as web pages, images, etc., to
be saved on a user’s computer. Therefore, if the user calls for a previously
requested web page, the browser will recall the information from the cache and
not make another request from the site itself. Once the browser receives a
DoubleClick ad image, it will store the image in the cache. Further calls for
the ad image will be drawn from the cache – not from DoubleClick -- and an
impression will not be counted. In order to defect the browser cache mechanism,
Cache busting (aka Random Number Generation (RNG)) is implemented.
26. What is Random Number Generation (RNG)?
A: RNG is the process of inserting a random
number in HTML tags to defeat browser/proxy caching. Random numbers change
every time the tags are requested and sent. To be sure, cache busting can be
achieved via the inclusion of any random string; however, this string is most
commonly a number.
Browser caching can be
defeated by dynamically creating unique tags for each ad image served. This
ensures that when a user navigates from page to page the ad image is not
delivered from the browser’s cache, but rather a new image is delivered from
the DoubleClick servers for each request. To accomplish this unique tagging, a
different random number is added to the image tags that reference the ad image.
Typically, when a browser sees another image call with the same name, it pulls
the ad from cache. To defeat this, an ord= attribute is added to the HTML tag,
and when implemented correctly, prevents the images from being pulled from the
cache. Tags with different “ord=” values prevent this caching problem because
the different value forces the browser to retrieve a new banner from the ad
server. If not implemented correctly, though, browser caching will not be
defeated.
27. What will happen if I do not use RNG to defeat caching?
A: Web pages, images, etc. will be served from
the user’s computer or proxy server rather than from DoubleClick’s servers.
This will result in the undercounting of impressions and will cause counting
discrepancies. This is an issue that can negatively affect both the
Advertiser/Client and the Publisher website.
28.
Conversion tracking and how do you track the
same?
What happens after
a viewer sees a banner and doesn’t click ? Are they coming back? Converting?
Process of tracking the information beyond
click and impression like post click and post impression. This will be tracked
on the landing page. We need to use 1x1 pixel calls on the each page of the
landing URL (Advertiser website) where you want to track the conversion
activities.
When a browser hits
a page on the advertiser’s site that contains a conversion/spotlight tag, the
browser initiates an “HTTP get request” for a 1x1 pixel to the ad serving tool. In the process of making this request to DoubleClick, a user’s browser
passes back information in the tag including IP address, operating system,
browser type, cookie ID and the URL of the tag itself.
29.
Postclick/post impression
post-click activity
:An action performed by a user in a web page that contains Spotlight tags,
where the visit is a result of having clicked on an ad.
post-impression
activity
An action performed
by a user in an advertiser’s web page that contains Spotlight tags, after
having seen an ad for the advertiser
30.
Why do we use clickTag in flash creative?
We
use clickTag because it allows us to add our click tracking string to the final
click through destination. Typically, clickTag is implemented in a button
action like so
on
(release) {
getURL (_level0.clickTag,
"_blank");
}
31.
Explain the following reporting metrics
Field
|
Description
|
Click Rate
|
The percentage of impressions that resulted in users
clicking an ad.
Calculated as:
Click Rate =
(Impressions/Clicks Recorded) * 100
|
Clicks Recorded
|
The number of times users have clicked ads in a campaign to
date.
|
Effective CPM
|
The cost per thousand impressions.
Calculated as:
Total Cost [$] /
(Delivered Impressions / 1000)
|
Impressions Delivered
|
The number of impressions that have been delivered to date.
|
Media Cost
|
The cost of all delivered impressions and clicks. The cost
type and the cost entered against the placement are also factored in the
calculation. This information is determined by the advertiser when pricing
information is entered in the Trafficking module.
The media cost does not take into account run dates, but
does take into account hybrid pricing.
|
32.
What is an invalid
click?
Invalid
click is any click that is not
generated by an actual human user. Causes of invalid clicks: - Spiders, robots,
crawlers, and other automated agents: - Programs that download entire websites
for offline use: Link analyzers and code
validators: This is a click fraud technique.
33. Why do we have to
send screen shot?? Explain
Once the ad is serving live on the website
for a new campaign, we need to provide a proof of the same to advertiser. So
agency will take a screenshot on website once the ad is showing and this will
be shared with Advertiser as a proof
4. What a sales person in publisher end do?
Selling the ad inventory, checking
the availability and booking the ad slot and preparing Insertion order.
35.
What are the basic element needed to traffic an
ad
Trafficking instruction/IO,
creative assets and Landing page URL
36.
What are various types of creative rotations?
Random, sequential, weighted, best
performing etc
37.
Explain what is CPM and CPC and how it differs
in terms of cost calculations?
CPM and CPC are units or pricing models in an ad serving
system.
CPM:- Cost per thousand impressions.
CPC:- Cost per Click
38.
Explain below the creative rotation?
Random: All
of the creative in the ad are served in random order. This is the default
value.
Sequential: All
of the creative in the ad are served to a user in the order of the assignments.
Example (1,2,3…etc)
Weighted: You
apply a percentage to each creative (for a total of 100 percent).Each creative
is served the specified percentage of the time.
Best
performing: Images are set to deliver in random order
until DFP can bias deliver to the best performing creative with the highest
click rate. The best performing creative is served 75 percent of the time, the
other creative share the remaining 25 percent of the time.
39.
What is Click Command?
Click ads are used to track text links, emails or other
elements hard coded on a website. Site traffickers may want to insert a
click command in their site if they do not want to deliver creatives from a 3rd
party ad server.
40.
What is caching ?
Caching: Caching is a technique used to increase
performance on
the Internet. Web browsers and proxy servers save copies of web
page elements (page source code, images, and so on) to local
memory caches so that they do not have to retrieve the same
material on subsequent requests.
the Internet. Web browsers and proxy servers save copies of web
page elements (page source code, images, and so on) to local
memory caches so that they do not have to retrieve the same
material on subsequent requests.
41.
What is under delivery?
Under Delivery: Delivery of less impressions,
visitors, or conversions than contracted for a specified period of time.
42.
What are Discrepancies?
Difference in counts
(impression, click, Click to Landing) across two different ad servers
(Publisher and Advertiser)
Cause a great amount
of pain for our customers – they have to be resolved, campaign by campaign, for
billing
43.
What causes discrepancies?
Difference of
counting methodologies and filtration procedures
Trafficking Errors
Number of redirects
User hits back
button, closes window, etc
Popup blocking, ad
blocking
44.
What are troubleshooting steps for discrepancy
identification?
Get all the reports
Review the
trafficking
Understand the
counting method used
Testing with sample
Communicate
There will be no
exact solution
45.
What is optimization?
Optimization techniques are used to Meet and
exceed established goals for all CPA, CPM and CPC campaigns.
Under delivery and over delivery reports will used
along with other guidelines, we can suggest the optimization required to meet
the goal.
46.
What is targeting?
The process of
delivering an advertiser's ad to the user through either content matching,
profiling, or filtering.
Improve response by
delivering messages to consumers who are most likely to respond.
The control of the
distribution of ad creative to only those web sites or those users that fit
within the particular targeting parameters.
Targeting has the
potential to dramatically improve the advertiser's ROI
The process of
specifying criteria so that an appropriate ad is served to a user.
47.
Explain 4 various types of targeting?
Geographic
targeting - It is used to target users in specific
geographic locations. E.g.: Country, State/Region, Area Code and DMA.
Demographic Targeting
- Based
on the demographic data – age, sex, salary etc
Internet-related
targeting- It is used to target users who are accessing the
web in specific ways. E.g. IE 7,Mozilla, Firefox etc
Computer
system targeting - It is used to target users who are
accessing the web with specific computer technologies. E.g. Windows 95
Time
and day targeting - It is used to choose the times of
day and days of the week at which ads are served to users.
Contextual/content
targeting - It is used to serve ads to users based
on the content they view in your website. You target an ad to a specific
section of your website based on the content contained in that section. For
example, you can specify that ads for hotels can be served only to the travel
section of your website.You can target to content by using DART sites, zones,
and content categories.
Key-value and keyword
targeting - It is a feature that is used to serve
ads to users based on the following: text that a user enters into a search engine
(for example, a user who is searching for computers)
48.
What is boomerang Targeting?
It is an enhanced
targeting feature that enables you to target ads to anonymous users who perform
specific actions, such as view web pages or ads on multiple occasions, make
frequent purchases, or provide membership data.
49.
Behavioral Targeting
Behavioral targeting uses information
collected on an individual's web-browsing behavior, such as the pages they have
visited or the searches they have made, to select which advertisements to
display to that individual.
50.
What is a cookie ?
In computing,
a cookie (also browser cookie, computer cookie, tracking cookie, web cookie,
internet cookie, and HTTP cookie) is a small string of text stored on a user's
computer by a web browser. A cookie consists of one or more
name-value pairs containing bits of information such as user preferences,
shopping cart contents, the identifier for a server-based session,
or other data used by websites.
A cookie can be used
for authenticating, session tracking (state maintenance),
and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences or
the contents of their electronic shopping carts.
51.
Advantage and Disadvantage of Targetting?
Advantage:
- Deliver your ad to the right audience, and therefore increasing brand awareness
- Eliminates wastage of impressions
- Increased conversion rate.
- High ROI
- Deliver an ad to the right user at the right time
Disadvantage:
- Low reach
- Under delivery
52.
What is Random
Number Generation (RNG)?
RNG is the process of
inserting a random number in HTML tags to defeat browser/proxy caching. Random
numbers change every time the tags are requested and sent. To be sure, cache
busting can be achieved via the inclusion of any random string, however, this
string is most commonly a number.
53.
What is browser/proxy server caching?
Information, such as
web pages, images, etc., are saved on a user’s computer or proxy server so that
the information can be accessed more quickly. The information is accessed more
quickly because the browser and/or proxy server need not re-contact the
original source. This is a natural occurrence in the web and is responsible for
making sure that web pages load as quickly as they do.
54.
What will happen if you do not use RNG to
defeat caching?
Web pages, images,
etc. will be served from the user’s computer or proxy server rather than from
DoubleClick’s servers. This will result in the undercounting of impressions and
will cause counting discrepancies. This is an issue that can negatively affect
both the Advertiser/Client and the Publisher website.
55.
Briefly explain Ad Networks and any two
advantages of ad networks?
They are collection of sites( either partnered,
own or both)
Advantages:
The lower CPM connection: Publishers still have
substantial unsold inventory which is sold to adnetworks at lower price than
the normal price.
Better targeting, higher CPMs:The report suggests
that better ad network targeting and inventory management will generate higher
CPMs.
57.
Define Inventory?
Inventory is the total number of ad views that a
Web site has to sell over a given period of time
58.
What is Yield Management?
Maximizing ad revenue. Making sure that the publishers are making
the most money possible while fulfilling all ad delivery priorities.
59.
Explain Inventory Management Process
Sales team process
Managing the ad inventory available for sale. Responding to proposals and letting the sales
team what’s available for sale. Also forecasting the available inventory on the
specific website for future dates.
60. Explain
Over delivery and Under delivery. What are the optimization you will do for
each case ?
Over Delivery – If the impression delivered by the
ad server is exceeding the per day goal of the overall inventory booked.
Campaign is speeding. Optimization – To control the delivery we can set
frequency cap, hard stop, add targeting,
remove sites/zone etc and apply key-value, extended the rundates etc
Under Delivery - If the impression delivered by
the ad server is below the per day goal of the overall inventory booked.
Camping is running slow. Optimization – To increase the ad delivery – we can ad
more sites/zones, swap the creative, remove targeting, remove frequency
capping.
61.
Sony wants to advertise on Digital camera. What
are some of the benefits and risks running this ad campaign on all available
sites in the world?
Benefits: - You can reach to large number of
audience across the world. Branding and awareness. Reach to various kinds of
people with various interests
MORE IMPRESSIONS, CLICKS and CTR
Risk: Cost of running the campaign is more.
Product is not targeting to appropriate audience. Less rate of conversion.
Wastage of impressions and click cost. We need to target to specific users to
get more ROI
62.
Maruthi wants to run an ad campaign for its new
SWIFT car. Suggest some website to the advertiser so that they can get maximum
reach and ROI. Also explain why you are selecting those sites.
Auto related site – Reach to concentrated audience
so that conversion rate is more.
Example :
CARS.com (Site dedicated to cars and accessories –
Used, New etc) – Carwale.com, cardomain, Autosite.com,
Yahoo/MSN – Popular site in the world and wide
range of audience.
63.
List 4 Publisher adserving tools?
DFP – DART For Publisher (DoubleClick)
Accipiter
Yield Manger
YAHOO APT
HELIOUS
OAS
AD BUILDER
AD MODUS
Value Click
64.
List 4 3rd part Advertiser adserving tools?
DFA
MediaPlex
ATLAS
ZEDO
65.
Define the attribute of a FLASH creative
Button action
on (release) {
getURL (_level0.clickTag, "_blank");
}
Audio, Duration, Animation, Number of loops and Version
66.
What is the use of backup gif while trafficking
a Flash creative?
A.
Client can run both flash and gif together and
get more impressions
B. If the user computer does not have
flash plug-in or version then gif creative will be served
C.
Based on the targeting criteria either gif and
flash can be served
D.
None of the above
67.
List at least 6 creative specification
KB Size, Pixel size, button action, version, loops, Audio,
Rotation, Animation, duration etc
69.
List few types of creative?
Gif/Jpeg
Flash
RichMedia
Expandable
Floating
Popup and Popunder
Click commands/Text
ads
Pixel Ads
