1) Semantics are even more important for display ads on blogs than general websites because blog readers engage more with relevant content. 2) Higher reading levels can predict how blog posts are shared - posts between 600-1200 words at a grade level slightly higher than average see the best social sharing across networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. 3) "Conversation targeting" using related topics rather than single keywords increases inventory for advertisers on blogs by making ads more relevant to reader discussions.

1. Semantics & Blogs
Lotico San Francisco Semantic Web Meetup
Hosted by Federated Media Publishing
August 8th 2012
Tim Musgrove
Chief Scientist, Federated Media Publishing
©2012 Federated Media Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

2. Who is FM?
Founded in 2005 to help hundreds of high-quality independent
publishers band together to earn sponsorship and ad revenue
Now a top-ten US audience (comScore) and growing fast
Historically: have paid out well over $100 million to our authors
and publishers
John
Battelle
http://FederatedMedia.net

3. A couple of lessons I’ve learned about
semantics & blogs
1. With display ads on
blogs, you need
semantics even more so
than with a general
audience
2. Higher level semantic
features, such as
reading level, can
predict how much and
where a blog post will
be shared in social
media

4. Part One
Display Ads On Blogs

5. An open secret
• Supply-side advertising
players (including content
networks like FM) often
don’t like targeting to be
too focused
• Why not?
• Because the math isn’t
nice to them
Let’s see that…

6. Ouch…….
To sum up:
Broad targeting
$1,400,000
increases both
CPMs and sold
inventory, but…. $1,200,000
Narrow targeting $1,000,000
brings a sharp
decline in sold
$800,000
inventory
$600,000
So, even though
it has a higher
CPM, narrow $400,000
targeting isn’t
done much.
$200,000
$0
Run-of-network Broad targeting Narrow targeting

7. Is there another way
to implement this?
• Q: What’s the one case when
narrow targeting can have the
effect of expanding the
inventory purchased by the
advertiser, instead of
shrinking it?
• A: When it makes the
advertiser comfortable going
outside their usual content
category
Let’s see that….

8. Typical buy pattern
(without conversation targeting)
Suppose: Advertiser comes to FM w/a “cloud computing” campaign.
This is what their buy usually looks like:
Tech Finance Sports
$ $ $ $ $ $
$ $ $ $ $ $ $
Government & Lifestyle Small Business
Law

9. Modified buy pattern
(with conversation targeting)
But when the advertiser learns about Conversation Targeting,
this is what their buy starts to look like:
Tech Finance Sports
$ $ $ $ $ $
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
$ $ $ $
Government & Lifestyle Small Business
Law
$ $ $ $ $ $

10. Another implementation technique :
Target conversations, not topics
• What’s the difference?
– Topic = a particular theme of subject matter
– Conversation = a cluster of related topics comprised of
various themes
• Results: simplicity for advertiser, and way more
inventory!
• Let’s see an example….

11. The Small Business Conversation
(just a subset of the topics)
affiliate marketing facebook marketing series online advertising small business week
better business bureau family business payroll tax social entrepreneurship
business advice family businesses product marketing social media marketing
business succession planning franchise association quickbooks startup catalyst
center for entrepreneurship franchise business review referral engine startup company
chamber of commerce franchise consulting rieva lesonsky startup magazine
customer service franchisee association ryan hanley startup weekend
dell small business franchisee of the year s corporation susan payton
digital marketing global entrepreneurship week sba 504 loan tj mccue
direct-response marketing guy kawasaki search marketing toilet paper entrepreneur
duct tape marketing ivan walsh small biz tech tour twitter marketing
entrepreneur corner linkedin small business book awards u.s. chamber of commerce
entrepreneur of the year marketing management small business expo viral marketing
entrepreneurs marketing strategy small business influencer viral video marketing
entrepreneurs roundtable multi-level marketing small business jobs bill yahoo small business
facebook marketing national small business week small business trends young entrepreneur council

12. Does it work?
• Aligned CTR: 49% higher than broad targeted
ads
• Global CTR (including non-aligned): still 39%
higher than broad targeted ads
– “Aligned” means the subject matter targeted has
an obvious connection to the ad campaign.
Occasionally this isn’t the case!

13. Exceptional lift in CTR
This charts the first 50 campaigns we put
through Conversation Targeting at FM
0.70%
0.60% RED: the industry standard CTR
YELLOW: the typical CTR for the parent category in FM (Sports, Business, etc.)
0.50% BLUE: the CTR attained by Conversation Targeting at FM
0.40% Channel CTR
DFA-IB CTR
0.30% CT CTR
0.20%
0.10%
0.00%

14. Exceptional lift in CTR
CT usually outperforms the channel it is in.
0.70%
0.60%
0.50%
0.40% Channel CTR
DFA-IB CTR
0.30% CT CTR
0.20%
0.10%
0.00%

15. The exception that proves the rule
CT rarely underperforms the channel it is in.
The few exceptions are unaligned campaigns
0.70%
An unaligned
0.60%
campaign is, for
example, a car ad
0.50%
targeted to art,
museums, fashion
0.40% Channel CTR
DFA-IB CTR
0.30% CT CTR
0.20%
0.10%
0.00%

16. The blog audience dilemma
• A network like FM’s – communities that are
passionate about a common interest –
presents a dilemma to advertisers
• One the one hand, it represents a denser
concentration of influencers and thus is
desirable for advertisers
• On the other hand, this type of audience
may react differently to advertising
– They sometimes can be seen to engage
more in endemic, conversational material….
– And less with conventional display ads (if
targeted using only conventional methods)

17. Two ways that FM resolves the blog
audience dilemma
1. FM encourages advertisers to utilize
content-rich, conversation-oriented
marketing pieces, e.g. sponsored
content series, etc.
2. For display advertising, FM encourages
advertisers to use “Conversation
Targeting” to make sure their ads fit
better into the specific conversation
happening on a blog

18. Success of CT in the blog audience
CT can lift up audience engagement from below the
norm, to above it
0.70%
0.60%
0.50%
0.40% Channel CTR
DFA-IB CTR
0.30% CT CTR
0.20%
0.10%
0.00%

19. Lesson learned
• Those who supposed that avid blog readers are
necessarily more adverse to clicking on ads than
the average internet user, were not quite right
• It turns out, when the ads are made really
relevant via semantic targeting, the CTR’s pop
right up – even above Internet averages
• But it means you need semantics even more for
blog-based ads than for general web-based ads

20. How far down the tree will they go?
• Advertisers presently Tech
are moving below top- Computing
Green-
Tech
level to “mid-level Bio-tech
ontology” Enterprise Consumer
for targeting Computing Computing
• As this market Cloud Servers &
matures, it seems Computing Net-Ops
they’ll keep
driving down Cloud
Storage
Cloud SaaS Cloud PaaS
the tree
Google
This is going to break the
AWS
Storage Dropbox Cloud
Storage
“classifier” approach to
targeting, in favor of more
AWS AWS scalable approaches (can you
Storage Storage
Tool Kits Integrators build a 1-million node
classifier tree, which morphs
daily?)

21. Part Two
What makes a blog post
get shared more (or less)
on various social networks?

22. The case study
Measured two hundred blog posts from leading
bloggers, by these criteria:
– Length of post
– Estimated grade level of post
(6th grade, 7th grade, etc.)
– Number of:
• Tweets
• Facebook shares
• LinkedIn shares
• StumbleUpon’s
• Google+1’s

23. How grade level was established:
a voting engine
Implemented several formulas
established in the literature Formula #1
#2
Updated the vocabulary lists #3
where applicable etc….
Discarded the high and low
Took a weighted average of
the remaining scores
(weightings tuned manually)

24. Effects found: post length
We all know that, in general, writing a longer text can turn out worse than writing less:
Long version:
Short version:

25. Effects found: post length
• In posts ranging from 100 to 600 words in length,
there is more social media amplification as the
posts get longer
• But this effect tapers off in the 600-1200 word-
length range
• For posts longer than 1200 words, the effect
reverses, i.e, adding more words seems to hurt
amplification
• The above pattern held across all the social
networks measured

26. Effects found: grade level
• Generally the grade level on FM’s network
was about a grade-and-a-half higher than
the Internet average, sometimes more
• Taken en masse, the amplification level of
posts did not correlate strongly with grade
level
• However, on closer inspection, we saw that
different audiences with opposite
preferences were cancelling each other
out
• The biggest contrast was between
Facebook-sharers and Linked-In sharers

27. Effects found: grade level
Facebook vs. LinkedIn
• Facebook shares, especially on posts longer
than 600 words, were inversely correlated
with grade level
• LinkedIn shares, especially on posts shorter
than 1200 words, were positively correlated
with grade level

28. Effects found: grade level
Summary
• Grade level works together with post-length
to affect amplification with some audiences
• Facebook sharing is weak on longer posts
unless they are at a lower grade level
• LinkedIn sharing is weak on shorter posts
unless the writing is at a higher grade level
• Googlers and Stumblers and Tweeters lie at
various points in between these extremes

29. Finding the sweet spot
The “sweet spot” would
appear to be:
• Posts between 600 and
1200 words in length
• Written at a slightly
higher-than-average
(but not too high) grade
level

30. Finding the sweet spot
• Posts in the “sweet spot” get the best overall
amplification – avoiding a “penalty” from any of
the audiences measured
600 1200
Words words
amplification
4th grade 8th grade 12th grade
• Caveat: this was a limited sample and a broader study is required
to validate these early results

31. Contact
Tim Musgrove
E-mail: tmusgrove@federatedmedia.net
Twitter: @tmusgrove
http://tech.federatedmedia.net/
http://about.me/tmusgrove
http://www.slideshare.net/TimAtFM