What Media Planners Need to Know About Programmatic Buying

Programmatic buying, or the process of executing media buys through digital technology platforms like ad exchanges, agency trading desks, and DSPs or SSPs rather than through manual RFPs, negotiation, and buying, has been advocated for several years now by industry futurists and analysts. (If you need a primer on these platforms, read this past column of mine.) To help put this viewpoint into perspective for media planners, I consulted Joanna O'Connell of Forrester Research, Inc. who co-authored the September 2011 report, "The Future of Digital Media Buying."

In their report, O'Connell and co-author Michael Greene assert that programmatic buying is the future and that those media planners and buyers who do not start engaging in programmatic buying will be in serious jeopardy of losing their jobs by becoming obsolete. Planning and buying as we have known it - decision-making based on understanding media properties and the targeted audiences they attract - will be replaced by quant-based (and cookie-reliant) technologies that, among other aspects of automation, look instead at how users respond to campaign objectives to define where to serve ads. This kind of buying, emphasizes O'Connell, improves operational efficiencies and reduces waste commonly caused by multi-network buys, which tend to deliver overlapping impressions.

Using programmatic buying, according to O'Connell, provides four key benefits:

• Price transparency
• Control
• Granularity
• Insight

For More Information Please Visit: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2165122/media-planners-programmatic-buying

Previous Panda Updates

Here’s the Panda update schedule so far, as we’ve tracked and had confirmed by Google:

• Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011
• Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011 (about 7 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011 (about 4 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011 (about 5 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.4: August 12, 2011 (about 3 week gap)
• Panda Update 2.5: September 28, 2011 (about 7 week gap)

Panda Update - 2011

Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, published a blog post on the Google Webmaster Central blog named More guidance on building high-quality sites.

Amit’s goal with this post is to have those webmasters impacted by this Panda Update, which rolled out internationally about a month ago, with some direction and guidance to help explain what sites Google likes and which they dislike.

Amit said that he cannot document publicly the “actual ranking signals” but will share questions you should ask yourself and consider when trying to understand why a site was impacted by this update. Those questions include:

1. Would you trust the information presented in this article?
2. Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
3. Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
4. Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
5. Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
6. Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
7. Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
8. Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
9. How much quality control is done on content?
10. Does the article describe both sides of a story?
11. Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
12. Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
13. Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
14. For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
15. Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
16. Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
17. Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
18. Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
19. Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
20. Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
21. Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
22. Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
23. Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Source: http://searchengineland.com/impacted-by-googles-panda-update-google-asks-you-to-consider-this-76050