The Pontiflex CPL Blog

The same escalators that went down to the expo area of the Javits Center on the morning of November 4, resurfaced two days later.

What happened in between those rides? In short:

• ad:tech 2009 was refreshingly different from some prior editions that had imploded into a shouting gallery of networks. There was a little more of social, a little more of mobile and a little more on the pressing issue of how publishers can best monetize inventory in a world where CPMs crash faster than a computer running on Vista.

• There were moments of brilliance on display. I particularly enjoyed the panel “Will the Long-Tail go Bankrupt” hosted by Brian Morrissey (Digital Editor Adweek) with participants from Associated Content, Technorati, Digg, Google and others. The panel highlighted how the worlds of branding and direct response are coming together even in the long tail arena, how advertisers and publishers can best serve consumers by providing meaningful experiences (such as coupons), and how advertisers need to be enabled with better tools for campaign  management and optimization.

• There was also sadly a lack of imagination in ready abundance – some companies used so called booth babes who were clearly not from the online ad world and who wouldn’t be able to spot an impression or a click if it ran into them and said Hello. At some booths, I thought of my high school career counselor and wondered if nuclear physics was really all that bad a field to get into at the time (particle accelerators being largely cringe free zones).

Update: Here’s a photo of our booth. Many thanks to all those who stopped by!

As for Pontiflex we  decided not to give away any tchotchkies. Instead, we decided to donate a campaign to the ASPCA. The campaign launched last week. Here is a snapshot of the campaign.

Objectives

• Get 3,000 – 5,000 new members (leads) for the ASPCA. People who opt-in to the ASPCA ad will receive emails from them with information updates, links to the APSCA Facebook and Twitter pages and donation requests.

“We are excited to be working with Pontiflex,” said Debbie Swider, eMarketing senior manager, Member Communications at the ASPCA.

Strategy/Tactics

• Insist on transparency – know where ads are running to protect ASPCA’s brand integrity.
• Pay only for sign-ups (instead of impressions) – to maximize returns.
• Run ads in contextually and demographically relevant environments.
• Optimize campaigns based on lead performance – integrate campaign front end and backend.

Publishers and Creative

The first batch of ads ran on sites that whose audiences were more liable to convert to ASPCA donors. For the campaign launch, the following sites were selected:

a) Planningfamily.com

Update: Here are some stats from Quantcast about the site:

b) North American Media Group

Update: Here are some stats from Quantcast about the site:

Plans are in place to go live on Pet Place.

Because Pontiflex is transparent, it is possible to track performance by sources. As with any online campaign, publishers will be added and removed to the campaign as it is optimized.

Here is one snapshot of some of the creative used.

Budgets

The price of the contact information of an interested person who has raised her/his hand and said “Tell me more!” – a lead – is dependent on the information an advertiser wants to collect. The greater the amount of information, the more is the cost of the lead.

ASPCA decided to collect the basic contact information of a consumer – First Name, Last Name, and Email Address.

This is wise. ASPCA can use this basic contact information to build a relationship with the consumer at multiple touchpoints – email, social networks, etc.  If needed, they can collect more information by deploying relevant communications over a period of time. As in the offline world, online relationships are built on trust.

These leads that are unique to an advertiser’s brand are called marketing leads. eMarketer reported earlier this year that this form of CPL advertising brings a new dimension to lead generation – marketers can entice consumers to opt in based on specific ads—and only pay for valid sign-ups.

And other stuff

• We ran an ASPCA Flash movie at ad:tech to raise awareness about their good work to decision makers, some of which influence corporate giving programs.