As you folks are based in Paris, it would be nice to have proper contact details and an imprint. Can't find either. Reference: Loi n° 2004-575 du 21 juin 2004 pour la confiance dans l'économie numérique (LCEN).
Ah sorry, that was whois based. Anyway, my feedback on the site is: no idea who's behind it and no word about the team or the organisation/company behind it. Landing pages convert better, if this is clear.
Other than that, the offering looks great.
Edit: If I google your company, it's currently incorparated in Paris, France.
The same as AdRoll conceptually, except we let people in charge of the campaigns (usually marketers, non-developers) add events and segmenting options on their own.
Clicks, form submits, time on site, number of sessions, last seen aren't available in AdRoll. We hope that by making those readily available, we'll be one step closer to make retargeting ads feel more like conversations, and less like...ads!
I'm a fairly senior digital media guy and am fascinated by ad tech (and almost ended up platform-side when I last switched jobs).
As I teach myself programming, I've been dying for great resources on the underlying guts of how DSPs work, API samples, algorithms, etc. but it seems like most of this is all highly proprietary stuff you only learn from actually working on an existing platform and seeing their codebase (which I'll almost certainly never have a chance to do).
Can you recommend any good resources for an inquisitive soul like myself who just wants to get a better technical view of the systems I've spent so many dollars through?
I've played with the UI quickly and couldn't figure out how to actually create a funnel. Yes, I was able to track events, but not relate events to each other (e.g. click on shop + click on buy).
If you're referring to Google Remarketing, it gives you the same capabilities, except it's a terrible pain to set up analytics, track events, make them into a list, move the list to AdWords, and optimize from there. We spent a lot of time doing this ourselves and figured, a unified, nice-looking (thanks for noticing :D) interface was the way to go.
Also, we let you target the same people on Facebook too, and Google Remarketing doesn't let you do that, so there's that too!
The site/page is designed for people who clearly understand retargeting and segmentation. So you're likely targeting "switchers" -- and I'm not sure your messaging is designed to address the inertia of staying with an existing solution. There's also very little about your company and team... stuff that I believe matters to many.
Hey Lance! You're right in that we aren't targeting newcomers to the retargeting space. We want to prove that event-driven retargeting performs better (both for websites and visitors), and we only can do it with customers already doing retargeting.
Digital media guy here--a few follow-up questions if you don't mind...
1. I noticed you seem to load a few of your competitor's tags on your site. I saw AdRoll, AppNexus, Perfect Audience, etc. Can you elaborate on why this is? Seems a bit odd that your direct competitors would let you spend with them.
2. With regards to targeting experienced media buyers, why then is your documentation so light on the "meat" of what experienced buyers need to know? I would expect more details on the interface, case studies of competitor comparisons, details on your total reach, which exchanges you have access to inventory from, how you differentiate, etc. You also need to really expand on your billing section. Aside from a typo, am I understanding you correctly that if I don't spend my entire weekly budget, I lose the difference? I REALLY hope I'm reading that incorrectly. The weekly (vs daily) budget is also a big concern. Beyond that, I need to know how you tie-in with ad servers like DFA, whether you will accept billing off an IAB-approved platform, etc.
3. How would you differentiate yourself from other retargeting networks like Simpli.fi that go way beyond site retargeting? Granted you have a nice interface for helping setup events, but at the day, reach is reach. Site retargeting is also the lowest hanging fruit in the funnel and setting up events is not rocket science for the level of expertise you find with your stated target audience (ie. not newcomers). If a company is using GTM (or other tag management system), there's a decent chance they are using the dataLayer to expose various site events, and it takes all of 5 seconds to add a new tag and apply existing event rules. Not trying to knock you or anything--I just didn't see enough info on your site to answer these questions.
4. Where do you see the space going with to cross-channel attribution as it relates site retargeting? As I noted previously, site retargeting sees such high conversion rates that the actual value those conversions (which tend to be mostly view throughs) is questionable at times. Ie. "Did the impression help get them to become a customer, or would they have converted anyway?" Depending on the number of touchpoints and attribution model used, that value typically declines as the touchpoints increase in path-length models. How do you help your customers define the value of the contribution of the site retargeting inventory you provide from an attribution standpoint?
Also, a couple suggestions from a prospect in your target audience:
Your demo should be built out further and marketed on the homepage. I only found it by looking in your footer, and it should have more data, be more fleshed out, and I wish it did not require a sign-in to see the reporting interface.
Rather than try to get a busy guy like myself signed-in with my company's real site/setup (which requires Work(TM) and budget review), I'd much prefer to play with an existing setup to see if it warrants further exploration.
Media buying is much much more than the interface and challenges of setting up tracking. TBH, that part is the easiest bit for someone who knows what they are doing, and you should remove every bit of friction you can with helping me check the box that your system addresses all my needs (which I wouldn't be able to see with my own site since I wouldn't have historic data or everything setup yet).
Also, your site gives me teasers without any real meat. You should elaborate at a technical buyer/ad ops level as to why we should consider you over the numerous other retargeting players in the space.
Hope this is taken as constructive criticism as it is certainly intended as such. I might be asking some pointed questions, but honestly--this is what I'd be asking any other DSP. Ad tech is not an easy space to launch a business in and succeeding is harder yet. I wish you the best with your business and congrats on getting out of the gate.
This is very similar to what Brad and team did at Perfect Audience (recently acquired by Marin Software). I always liked being able to create my own custom segments off of regex pattern matching.
We're pushing it one step further: you can do the same with events, AJAX interactions, recency of visit, or whatever makes sense for your business. Without modifying the code further, obviously!
Welcome to the retargeting party! We wish you the best of luck.
In fairness, we've been offering this since 2012 via our Segmenting API. Anything that can fire a JS event can be used to trigger retargeting. It's awesome and is in production all over the place: http://support.perfectaudience.com/knowledgebase/articles/21...
Hi Brad ! Congratulations on the acquisition. We're trying to replicate what you did with the API, but with an interface that non-developers can use on their own. What do you think ?
27 comments
[ 29.3 ms ] story [ 1190 ms ] threadThe main issue are our servers being on AWS Europe, will move some closer to the US soon :)
Other than that, the offering looks great.
Edit: If I google your company, it's currently incorparated in Paris, France.
Clicks, form submits, time on site, number of sessions, last seen aren't available in AdRoll. We hope that by making those readily available, we'll be one step closer to make retargeting ads feel more like conversations, and less like...ads!
I'm a fairly senior digital media guy and am fascinated by ad tech (and almost ended up platform-side when I last switched jobs).
As I teach myself programming, I've been dying for great resources on the underlying guts of how DSPs work, API samples, algorithms, etc. but it seems like most of this is all highly proprietary stuff you only learn from actually working on an existing platform and seeing their codebase (which I'll almost certainly never have a chance to do).
Can you recommend any good resources for an inquisitive soul like myself who just wants to get a better technical view of the systems I've spent so many dollars through?
Also, we let you target the same people on Facebook too, and Google Remarketing doesn't let you do that, so there's that too!
1. I noticed you seem to load a few of your competitor's tags on your site. I saw AdRoll, AppNexus, Perfect Audience, etc. Can you elaborate on why this is? Seems a bit odd that your direct competitors would let you spend with them.
2. With regards to targeting experienced media buyers, why then is your documentation so light on the "meat" of what experienced buyers need to know? I would expect more details on the interface, case studies of competitor comparisons, details on your total reach, which exchanges you have access to inventory from, how you differentiate, etc. You also need to really expand on your billing section. Aside from a typo, am I understanding you correctly that if I don't spend my entire weekly budget, I lose the difference? I REALLY hope I'm reading that incorrectly. The weekly (vs daily) budget is also a big concern. Beyond that, I need to know how you tie-in with ad servers like DFA, whether you will accept billing off an IAB-approved platform, etc.
3. How would you differentiate yourself from other retargeting networks like Simpli.fi that go way beyond site retargeting? Granted you have a nice interface for helping setup events, but at the day, reach is reach. Site retargeting is also the lowest hanging fruit in the funnel and setting up events is not rocket science for the level of expertise you find with your stated target audience (ie. not newcomers). If a company is using GTM (or other tag management system), there's a decent chance they are using the dataLayer to expose various site events, and it takes all of 5 seconds to add a new tag and apply existing event rules. Not trying to knock you or anything--I just didn't see enough info on your site to answer these questions.
4. Where do you see the space going with to cross-channel attribution as it relates site retargeting? As I noted previously, site retargeting sees such high conversion rates that the actual value those conversions (which tend to be mostly view throughs) is questionable at times. Ie. "Did the impression help get them to become a customer, or would they have converted anyway?" Depending on the number of touchpoints and attribution model used, that value typically declines as the touchpoints increase in path-length models. How do you help your customers define the value of the contribution of the site retargeting inventory you provide from an attribution standpoint?
Also, a couple suggestions from a prospect in your target audience:
Your demo should be built out further and marketed on the homepage. I only found it by looking in your footer, and it should have more data, be more fleshed out, and I wish it did not require a sign-in to see the reporting interface.
Rather than try to get a busy guy like myself signed-in with my company's real site/setup (which requires Work(TM) and budget review), I'd much prefer to play with an existing setup to see if it warrants further exploration.
Media buying is much much more than the interface and challenges of setting up tracking. TBH, that part is the easiest bit for someone who knows what they are doing, and you should remove every bit of friction you can with helping me check the box that your system addresses all my needs (which I wouldn't be able to see with my own site since I wouldn't have historic data or everything setup yet).
Also, your site gives me teasers without any real meat. You should elaborate at a technical buyer/ad ops level as to why we should consider you over the numerous other retargeting players in the space.
Hope this is taken as constructive criticism as it is certainly intended as such. I might be asking some pointed questions, but honestly--this is what I'd be asking any other DSP. Ad tech is not an easy space to launch a business in and succeeding is harder yet. I wish you the best with your business and congrats on getting out of the gate.
In fairness, we've been offering this since 2012 via our Segmenting API. Anything that can fire a JS event can be used to trigger retargeting. It's awesome and is in production all over the place: http://support.perfectaudience.com/knowledgebase/articles/21...