Ad networks have evolved significantly in recent years and can be classified as either large tier 1 networks such as Google and Yahoo or smaller tier 2 networks, with the large networks focusing on high quality traffic and premium customers while smaller networks target unbranded customers. Ad networks differentiate themselves through tactics related to technology and targeting, compliance and forensics, compelling creative content, and extensive reach. Behavioral retargeting, which serves ads to people who have previously engaged with a brand online, is one of the most effective targeting tactics used by ad networks.

1. Ad Networks and their Tactics
The advertising network landscape looks vastly different than it did eight, five or even three years ago. Like most
things in their early stages, the industry in which ad networks exist has evolved rapidly. The general ad network
space, which of course includes CPA and affiliate networks, has been maturing for some time now.
Compared to traditional ad markets, the online industry could apparently accommodate a huge number of networks
because of the massive growth in users, traffic and websites. In addition, accessing the web via wireless networks
and mobile devices was beginning to take off, providing even more “reach” potential.
Ad networks can be classified in two
1. Large or Tier 1 Ad network such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft adcenter etc…
2. Small or Tier 2 Ad network such as Adbrite, casale media etc…
Large or Tier 1 Ad network Small or Tier 2 Ad network
Large number of advertiser and publisher base Small advertiser and publisher base
High quality traffic Low traffic
Premium brand of customers Unbranded customers can join the ad programme
Better revenue Minimum impression only allowed per month
Source of revenue comes from syndicated ads from
Millions of impressions required other ad networks
The Ad networks can be differentiated based on
1. Representative Network – They represent the work they do in their portfolio with full transparency about
their ads, these ad networks typically promote high quality traffic at the available market prices, they offer
ROS (Run of Site) advertising Example – Travel, Auto Etc.
2. Blind Network – There ad networks typically work on low cost basis model where in they use remnant
inventory combined with high campaign optimization and high targeting of Ads, these type of Ad networks
run on RON (Run off network) Example – Interactive one (Publisher themselves use these ads sometimes as
these ad space are very cheap)
3. Targeted network – These ad networks are called the next gen ad networks where in they specialize in
behavioral or contextual targeting, these ad networks use consumer click stream data to enhance their
inventory value, Ex – Google, Rocketfuel etc.
Ad network space will have to create discernable value in order to differentiate themselves. Potentially powerful
differentiators include:
• Technology and Targeting – This needs investments, and is where the battle is being fought by the new and
emerging platforms that represent a major challenge to less sophisticated networks, this however can be
seen as an opportunity by ad networks if they can build robust engines using real time targeting, bidding &
analytics they could be way ahead in terms of their nearest competitor, some of the Ad networks use real
time verification where in they check how their ads or surveys are performing through an indigenous
technology by placing a cookie on the ad or survey, moreover the biggest challenge is to connect the brand
advertisers and marketers with the customers of other brands.

2. • Compliance and Forensics – Having an in-house or reputable third party compliance and forensics group is
not a luxury, it is an absolute necessity. There are emerging companies in this space who cater to networks
and have cutting-edge technology and well-qualified staff that are specialists. This has the potential to be a
huge competitive advantage for networks that move quickly because many other buy-side platforms are not
yet focused on this issue.
• Compelling Creative – Compelling creative’s could be said as different or unique kind of ad types fired by
the ad network Ex – Ads below the video or Ads circumferencing the content of a website etc, Unique and
compelling creative executions that can’t be delivered in an automated fashion through platforms run solely
by technology will be key. Standard ad units and banners are fine and necessary, but those networks that
can unlock unique and more powerful ad units will stand out.
• Extensive Reach – Networks are able to provide immense reach as a value proposition, and for some
networks this has increased consistently over time. Networks must continue to look for reputable partners –
not just advertisers, but also publishers and other distribution partners – so that reach continues to be a
large piece of the value equation. It is still the case that most advertisers are looking for efficient reach and
expansion of their audience, and this is especially true for those large spenders.
Below are some finer points for an advertiser to look for in an Ad network?
They should look out for.
1. Quality of Sites and Audiences
2. One point of contact
3. One Pricing Model across Network
4. Transparency (it has to be open)
5. Targeting & Retargeting
6. Integrated Solutions and Options (Video, Rich Media, Social, Mobile)
7. Guaranteed Delivery of Impressions
8. Third Party Ad Tracking (DoubleClick, Atlas, Eyeblaster)
9. Third Party Data/Research Provided
Some of the added additional functionality could be
1. Frequency – Users may see the ad only for a limited period of time
2. Sequence Ads – User may see the ads in a specific order
3. Competitors Ads - The competitors ads will be excluded in the page
4. Eliminating Road blocks – Ads of an advertiser can own 100% of the inventory of a page
5. Targeting of ads based on user behavior using retargeting methods
From the above we can infer that ad networks performance is mostly based targeting or retargeting sizeble
customers who could potentially convert and provide huge ROI.
There are many types of retargeting
1. Contextual retargeting – Contextual Advertising is an intelligent form of advertising, which inserts Ads
effectively and relevant to a websites content, this might happen by banners, Text links or Pop Ups, In Text
Advertising mostly consists of Links related to the Content within Texts
2. Behavioral retargeting – This mode of retargeting is widely used by the ad networks (Covered deeply below)

3. 3. Demographic retargeting – Targeting a set of people by age group sex etc.. is demographic retargeting, in
this kind of retargeting business intelligence is a must as they come hand in hand for creating success, when
the AD network uses business intelligence before retargeting they get data which enables them to do
efficient demographic retargeting, shockingly 61% male and 48% male under the age of 36 search for
diapers, this shows how business intelligence is helpful.
More surprises: “Elle girl” searches 48% male (searching for Elle Macpherson, mostly), Travel: “honeymoon”
splits 50/50, but “honeymoon planning” types terms 75% female, Ferrari is mostly searched by kids, this
helps to learn new facts about our audience.
4. Geographic retargeting – Targeting the audience based on their geographic’s, Targeting by geography is
another tactic a company might want to employ. Most serving technologies available today allow a wide
spectrum of region-specific advertising; one can target as narrowly as a certain postal code.
Geotargeted advertising is becoming more and more important within the industry, particularly as slower-
adopting countries get on the web.
One of the successful types of retargeting is “Behavioral retargeting”, this type of retargeting has earned millions
of dollars
So let’s understand the “Behavioral retargeting” world.
Retargeting (also known as “Behavioral retargeting” or “Behavioral remarketing”) is a form of targeted
advertisement in the online advertisement world, this kind of advertisement is based on previous Internet actions
that did proceed to become a conversion, Retargeting is one of the most effective tactic used in the online world,
Retargeting is serving ads to those people who have shown at least some amount of engagement in the brand so this
makes retargeting a smarter spend than most other display ad campaigns as it focuses on your brand’s engaged user
base.
Most likely a company has spent marketing dollars to get a customer to their site in the first place, so the term
Retargeting is derived from the concept of marketing to them again, some of the companies specializes personalized
retargeting
However few concerns can arise
• How do Retargeted campaigns know who your visitors are?
• Will the ads overbear your users?
The answer is the technology used for retargeting the consumers; it works by having you place one line of code on
your site, when a user visits your site, this single line of code drops a cookie onto the user’s computer which starts
the process and has your ads follow your visitors around the World Wide Web.
Retargeting is very essential as it a definite tactic to build huge brand awareness, retaining visitors, battling
shopping cart abandonment, and driving users throughout your conversion funnel.
What are Tactics?
Tactic is a strategy which is carried out; planned and ad hoc activities meant to deal with the demands of the
moment, and to move from one milestone to other in pursuit of the overall goal, It can also be referred to as
means by which a strategy is planned & executed successfully, however success is never achieved without a definite
strategy, in an Ad network tactics are the DNA’s for the success story.
Now the next big question is who drives the tactic or what are the factors that drive a tactic for achieving success,
the answer is “KPI’s” (Key performance indicators), the KPI’s are very important such that they could be deciding
factor between a Excellent, Good & a bad tactic.

4. Tactics may be broken down further into line items which will enable the planner to hit the target harder and
accurate
Defining KPI’s or Key performance indicators
Key Performance Indicators can also be called as Key Success Indicators, help an organization define and measure
progress toward organizational goals, Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable measurements, agreed to
beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization. They will differ depending on the
organization & its causes.
Now the question arises how a KPI is related to a tactic, let’s see the relativity below.
One of the most required KPI for a business is “Repeated visitors”, without repeated visitors business cannot run,
the repeated visitors are bought back for conversion by a tactic called a Retargeting.
Types of Retargeting
• Site retargeting – This is a chief method of retargeting which differ depending on what form of activity the
marketer is capturing and this is the most common method, which involves placing the retargeting tag on
particular pages of a marketer’s web site, or in the universal header so that all traffic from the site is
recognized.
• Creative retargeting – Creative retargeting, another method of retargeting, is the placement of the
retargeting tag within online media that appears on a web site other than the marketer’s own site. A cookie
can then be placed in the browser’s cache of a visitor who is served Flash creative or clicks on a standard
banner that will identify that person when visiting other sites within the advertising network at a later time.
Also known as fourth-party tagging, marketers can use creative running on expensive contextual sites to
enable them to reach these same visitors again with future messages, or exclude them, as they visit other
sites
• Search retargeting - Related to creative retargeting is the method of search retargeting. Here the tag is
placed on one or more landing pages of the marketer’s web site and captures the search term a visitor
entered into a search box to navigate to the marketer’s web site. These search terms can often provide
insight into what products or services the visitor is looking for the web site to provide, and search
retargeting gives the marketer the ability to reach a person who has already, for example, searched for the
marketer’s product and clicked on a corresponding text ad to go to the site.
Let’s check some the real advantages from retargeting, the below picture shows how retargeting works and some of
the statistics showing its advantages
1. When the retargeting tactic is implied it is said to have bought 5x conversion than the normal.
2. Retargeting using Facebook yields 3x more conversion
3. Retargeting using a promotional event can generate upto 44% more traffic

5. Now let’s examine some of the sample results from our clients who used retargeting using
different funnels & goals
Client 1
Funnel: E-Commerce
Goal: Increase Sales
Type of Retargeting: Site Retargeting
Strategy: Retargeting guarantees that your ads will stay in front of your audience. This guarantee can be very
valuable for your e-commerce site in that it gives you opportunities to sell and resell! The best way to do this:
• Retarget visitors of each product category with ads that highlight your brand and the specific category.
Make sure to burn these users if they enter into your checkout process.
• Once your visitors enter your checkout process, you can have a small retargeting campaign that’s focused
solely on those who abandon their shopping cart.
• For everyone who does convert, make sure to not only burn these people from the thank you page, but to
also add another retargeting pixel on this page as well. This gives you an opportunity to advertise new
products or promotions to your customers that they might be interested in.
Client 2
Funnel: Freemium
Goal: Increase Signups
Type of Retargeting: Search Retargeting
Strategy: Unlike e-commerce stores, freemium sites generally focus heavily on acquiring users for its one product,
and keeping these users active enough to want to buy the product. This is a great way to build a long-term ROI.
Here is an effective way to do it:
• Use retargeting to advertise to everyone who has visited your site. This encourages them to come back and
sign up for the free version of your product. If you don’t always drive the best or most relevant traffic to
your site, you should test retargeting your website’s visitors against retargeting your pricing page’s visitors.
These ads should link to landing pages that give a bit more information on your product and should have one
call to action focused on driving sign-ups.
• Use an additional retargeting campaign that’s targeted to everyone who’s signed up for your free trial. You
will need two types of messaging for these ads: one that’s focused on driving activation (use our widget!)
and another that’s focused on encouraging purchase conversion (sign up now and receive 15% off!). For
purchase encouragement, offering a special deal or discount works well, if you can afford to do that.
• Similar to e-commerce retargeting, you should pixel your converted audience – this allows you to target
them later for future resell & cross-sell.

6. Now let’s get into a real time case study and find out the specific results we achieved by
using the Retargeting method.
This client is a leading Hotel & Resorts.
Situation –
• A leading hotel and a resort destination wanted to increase visits to their resorts and spas.
• Their target resorts/spas visitors are a female professionals with a family looking for a quick weekend and as
usually last minute booking.
• Time limit – 5 weeks
Challenge – Locate this very specific audience such as working Mom’s aged between 25-54 and income greater than
$150,000.00
Strategy –
• Started with demographic targeting of Moms between the age 25 – 54 & with income greater than
$150,000.00
• Over laid Ad path audience targeting using a segment or line item called as “Recent travel
research segment”
• Scaled the segment or line item using SIP (Selective inventory partnership)
• Added AD path site remarketing
• Parllely we tested that other audience segments such as Female income greater than $40,000.00+
outperformed higher income groups, which was a positive boost for the campaign
Results -
When the above strategy was applied, we found the below results
Astonishingly the cost per customer decreased as the sales increased and we could constantly maintain the CPA
(Cost per action to $40)
Cost per customer Goal eCPA
$6,000.00 $45.00
$40.00
$5,000.00
$35.00
$4,000.00 $30.00
$25.00
$3,000.00
$20.00
$2,000.00 $15.00
$10.00
$1,000.00
$5.00
$0.00 $0.00
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5

7. Re-Targeting Challenges
Here are some of the reasons I think may be responsible for this discrepancy:
• Finding the right message for the right audience - Finding the right people for your ads is one the greatest
challenge that an advertiser will have to face in his day to day activities, one of the key solution for this is
advanced segmentation of the population who use the internet, the benefits it could reap are increase in
conversion, increased brand loyalty, increased visitor opinion of each interaction etc.
• Communicating to your customers before the competitor does – Its important that the advertiser reaches to
his customer before anybody else reaches him for a conversion, Real time data syndication & leveraging other
display advertisers could be one of the solutions to overcome this problem.
• Cost efficiency while acquiring or reacquiring visitors to the site: Acquiring or requiring the new or lost visitors
is a huge challenge in this ever changing market, some of the solution could be
• Retargeting segments through less expensive channels
• Non-identified visitors via display campaigns
• Registered visitors via Email campaigns
• Reacquire paid searchers via display campaigns
• Web optimization maturity: There has been a lot of talk about web analytics maturity models - and many
companies may be in earlier stages where they are still defining goals and implementing solutions to measure
these goals (which come before optimization), Some of the solutions could be
• Evaluate across all channels for each key segment
• Automate the integration of segment data to partners
• Leverage attribution to better attribute credit to key investments
• Understand how different channels play different roles in buyer lifecycle
• Invest in the channel to trigger the desired behavior
• Optimize spend through leveraging more cost effective channels
• Continuously re-evaluate
The benefits from the above could be that the advertiser could understand how is marketing efforts are performing.
Monetization using Re-Targeting
In the online world companies have gained money using the retargeting tactic - one such company is myThings an
innovator in personalized retargeting, secured $6 million in their third round of funding led by T-Venture, the
venture capital company of Deutsche Telekom, with participation of Accel Partners, Carmel Ventures, Dot Corp and
GP Bullhound.
MyThings retargeting technology is enabling Europe's leading online retailers and marketers, including Price Minister,
Republic, PIXMania, Karen Millen, Etam and Orange, to benefit from increases in return conversion rates in excess of
500%. The company's proprietary optimization technology facilitates serving personally tailored ads, generated in
real-time based on a range of performance-enhancing variables. myThings continues to win business and market
share since introducing the product to a wider market in 2009.

8. An online advertising solution where a retailer's website visitors are retargeted while they browse the Internet, has
proven to outperform other leading online ad tactics, including contextual and behavioral targeting, according to
research from comScore. myThings only uses non-personally identifiable information to perform its retargeting
service.
Let’s see how retargeting has performed in the past years in the on-line world
Refer the below table where retargeting has been best tactic in the past years
Lift in Trademark Search Within 4 Weeks of Exposure
Total world statistics
Lift Reach Index Cost Index
Retargeting 1.05% 30 373
Audience 514% 30 329
Premium 300% 21 1471
Contextual 130% 73 1473
RON 126% 100 100
Efficiency 100% 57 140
*Reach Index = Avg. Reach of Strategy/Avg. Reach of RON x 100
**Cost Index = Avg. Cost of Strategy/Avg. Cost of RON x 100
While display ads may once have been considered primarily a direct response vehicle, and many marketers still rely
on measures of declining click through rates as primary display metrics, studies have shown that banner ads provide
an important branding vehicle and should be considered as such.
Given the cost, reach and effect of various display campaigns, retargeting provides a large benefit with reasonable
costs.
The study found that retargeting campaigns were nearly four times as expensive as simple run-of-network
campaigns, but significantly cheaper than campaigns that used contextual or premium targeting and the reach of
retargeted ads was naturally much smaller than run-of-network campaigns, but the same as those that used
audience targeting and wider than premium targeting.
In return, retargeted display ads gave a 1,046% lift in searches on brand terms within four weeks after exposure.
That was more than twice as high as the second most effective targeting method, audience targeting.

9. Some of the other facts and figures are provided below.
Retargeting off Retargeting on
# of
Category Subcategory Campaigns # of Campaigns % Lift
Home improvement &
Retail goods and services Hardware 136 39 60.00%
Financial services Banking 966 54 27.00%
Automotive Manufacturer's 860 33 17.00%
Consumer packed goods Food and beverages 448 54 17.00%
Business to business Marketing research & Data 141 38 16.00%
Retail goods and service Appeal & Jewelers 47 47 107.27%
Online and retail booking
Travel services 91 45 1140.00%
Financial Services Insurance 104 41 751.00%
Consumer Packaged Goods Food and Beverages 107 38 320.00%
Travel Lodging 196 149 562.00%
Retargeting lift - by Industry
900
800
Lift % (Industry Average)
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0

10. Below are some of the statistics where we can understand how retargeting is performing over the years.
2005 $220.00 Online Advertisment Spending
2006 $350.00
2007 $575.00
2008 $1,000.00
2009 Currency in Millions
$1,650.00
2010 $2,600.00
2011 $3,800.00
So now we would be wonder how could all these be possible, the answer is the robust technology used by the ad
networks to create and supply data and this high efficiency.
So let’s deep dive into the technology part of the retargeting.
Before we get into the actual technology lets understand the base on which the technology is built, these
technologies are based out of databases (Big companies use huge data bases and small companies use small
databases)
There are two main types of marketing databases,
1. Consumer databases
2. Business databases.
Consumer databases are primarily geared towards companies that sell to consumers, often abbreviated as B2C or
BtoC. Business marketing databases are often muc h more advanced in the information that they can provide. This is
much
mainly due to the fact that business databases aren’t restricted by the same privacy laws as consumer databases.
Characteristics of a database
1. Each actual or potential customer is identified as a record on the marketing database
2. Each customer record contains information (used to identify the likely purchases of particular products and
how they should be approached) on:
• Identification and access (eg. Name, address, telephone No)
• Customer needs & characteristics (demographic and psychographic information about customers, the
industry type and decision making unit information for the industrial customers)
• Campaign Communications (whether the customer has been exposed to particular marketing
communication campaigns)
• Customers past responses to communications done as a part of the campaigns
• Past transactions of customers (with the company and possibly with the competitors).

11. 3. This enables the firm to decide on how to respond to the customer need
needs.
4. The database is used to record the responses of the customer to the firm’s initiatives. (e.g. marketing
communications or sales campaigns).
5. The information is also made available to the company’s marketing policy makers which enables them to
decide:
• The target markets or segments appropriate for each product or service.
he
• The marketing mix (price, marketing communications, distributions channel, etc) appropriate for each
product in each target market.
6. Fields are similar to the concept of columns in a sp
spreadsheet
7. Fields can be used in Boolean logic statements to generate a query.
8. The structure of a table must be pre defined before any data can be input, but it is not as free
pre-defined free-form as a
spreadsheet.
The above steps are vital for an ad network the marketing campaigns are devised in such a manner to provide the
network,
most relevant information that the company is seeking.
The growth of database marketing has been facilitated by:

12. • The powerful processing capability and the immense storage capacity of state-of-the-art computers
• The manner in which the telecommunication technology is harnessed to make the customer and market data
available to the wide variety of staff involved in the marketing and sales offices.
Let’s now check some of the advantages & disadvantages of a database
Advantages
• The one-on-one marketing, which directs the customized offerings to individual customers, has provided an
additional thrust to database marketing
• It has employed the database to capture the interactions between a firm and its customers at each point of
time and utilizes the data analysis to search for patterns in these interactions.
• These patterns provide the most attractive potential customers besides providing clues in customizing the
products, pricing and promotions of a product
• When utilized in the proper manner, the database marketing could provide insights into the customer’s
buying behavior across the product categories, so that the companies could devise their programmes and
plans
Disadvantages
• The cost incurred in setting up the software and hardware requirements has made the database marketing
expensive in its establishment.
• The database often demands new skills and organizations from new analytical and decision-making skills in
sales and marketing to a revamped information system organization that could support the entirely new
class of users.
• The database marketing depends on the data quality, while the observational data is powerful the corrupted
observational data could be ‘powerful misleading’, the quality also depends on the quality of analysis and
the extent to which the databases are linked.
• Till now the database marketing has been primarily used as a tactical tool.
Competitor’s landscape
Si no Name of the Database Paid Free
1 mSQL X
2 Firebird X
3 MySQL X
4 Oracle X
5 PostgreSQL X
6 SAP Max DB X
7 SQL Server X
8 Sybase X
9 DB2 X
10 Interbase X
11 Bird step (Velocis) X

13. 12 Ingres X
13 Ovrimos X
14 Cache X
15 Informix X
16 GNU SQL Server X
17 Scimore DB X
18 DX store database system X
19 HSQLDB X
20 Cloud DB X
21 Hive/Hadoop X
48% of the databases available in the market are from open sources and they are real powerful, one such open
source database is Hive where they are the pioneers who support big companies such as “Facebook” & “Groupon”.
The Technology
Hadoop runs on Java 1.6.x or higher, preferably from Sun also rubs only on Linux.
The Performance
Hadoop has been demonstrated on clusters of upto 4000 nodes.
At 900 nodes the performance is good - It can sort upto 9TB data and takes around 2 Hrs)
At 1400 nodes the performance is better - It can sort upto 14TB data and takes about 2.5 Hrs)
At 2000 nodes the performance is at its best - It can sort upto 20TB data and takes upto 2.75 Hrs)
The Bandwidth
It mostly depends upon the types of job the users are running, however each node can process upto 100MB of data
per second, 30 nodes can be accommodated in a rack.
Each node needs to shuffle 100MB/sec of data In aggregate, each rack is then producing about 3GB/sec of data,
given even reducer spread across the racks, each rack will need to send 1.5GB/sec to reducers running on the other
rack. Since the connection is full duplex, that means you need 1.5GB/sec of bisection bandwidth for this job. So the
bandwidth required is about 12Gbps.
The Differentiator
The key differentiator is “Map Reduce” - MapReduce is based on functional programming, Functional
programming can also be called as multithreading, multithreading is one of the popular way of doing parallel
programming, but major complexity of multi-thread programming is to co-ordinate the access of each thread to the
shared data.
These models derives from the map and reduce combinations from a functional language like Lisp (List processing),
In Lisp a map takes as input a function and a sequence of values It then applies the function to each value in the
sequence, a reduce combines all the elements of a sequence using a binary operation. For example, it can use "+" to
add up all the elements in the sequence.

14. It was developed within Google as a mechanism for processing large amounts of raw data, for example - crawled
documents or web request logs, this data is so large it must be distributed across thousands of machines in order to
be processed in a reasonable time.
This distribution implies parallel computing since the same computations are performed on each CPU, but with a
different dataset.
Map written by a user of the MapReduce library, takes an input pair and produces a set of intermediate key/value
pairs. the MapReduce library groups together all intermediate values associated with the same intermediate
key I and passes them to the reduce function.
MapReduce is a programming model specifically implemented for processing large data sets. The model was
developed by Jeffrey Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat at Google