At Screen⁶ we are committed to one mission alone: providing the digital media industry with the best real time and cross device advertising platform. This may sound a bit presumptuous: - how on earth are these guys from Amsterdam going to achieve this? Well, first off: we truly believe in our commitment. Secondly, we take the cautious approach: chop it up!
Our team of elite tech guys (girls, please apply here) has n-years of combined experience in architecting and building complex systems. When stacked together there has always been one common denominator for failure: wanting too much too soon (more on this subject in a few weeks).
That’s why we choose to create three major (and many minor) releases over the coming months instead of one big launch. Without exposing too much about these releases, each will be a complete product in itself with separate beta tests, releases and support environments. Obviously, the product in itself should and will have lots of commercial value, but first and foremost it should just work.
Our commitment to creating the best platform, however, goes much further. For example, we are always striving to use the most advanced and up to date technologies currently available, keeping in mind that implementing just the next Hadoop cluster or aggregated AWS machinery (...) won’t cut it when it’s no good in production.
And what defines ‘the best’? Obviously, this is quite a bold statement - however,leave that to us! Once you see what we have to offer you, there is no way you can’t agree with our implementation of ‘the best’. Therefore, stay tuned for our upcoming product launches.
This way we can fulfil our commitment to you, and you will be able to realize your full potential.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
White Paper: Drawbacks of using cookies for tracking purposes (part 2 of 3)
This is the second part of Screen6's 3-tier launch of its latest White Paper on the drawbacks of cookie usage. We’ll post an update every week. By the end of the third post, we’ll include a downloadable PDF for your convenience. Enjoy reading, and please: give us any feedback you may have!
Category 2. User tracking limitations
Pursuant to measuring the amount of users is keeping track of user behaviour within campaigns or on websites. Simply said, it’s the ability to keep track on who’s doing what. The usage of cookies distorts all tracked information; please read on to find out how.
Overview
In short, these are limitations to cookies related to user tracking:
Site optimization; cookies don’t provide a waterproof insight into site traffic; they do not allow cross device visits! This causes A/B testing and SEO to be significantly less reliable.
Conversion tracking; tracking and attributing any kind of conversion (by a person) with cookies ignores the fact that users utilize multiple devices and remove cookies.
User value; knowing how much was spent on eyeballs or conversions with cookies only shows part of the story as only one path has been taken into account.
Interaction tracking; knowing who did what, and eventually responding to this, is impossible with the use of cookies! This in turn decreases overall effectiveness (e.g. retargeting).
Site optimization issues
One of the most basic usages of cookies in tracking users is to gain insights as to user behaviour on websites. This information is, amongst other things, used for optimising the sites' content, placement, offering, pricing, etc. If the cookies ‘tell you’ that many people left your site at page ABC, you may try to work on a way of countering this. Much money is spent on A/B testing to optimize site performance, including SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and landing page optimization.
However, what cookies don’t tell you is whether some paths are taken by the same user, but on different devices. Also, they won’t tell you who has revisited your site after removing their cookies. This will cause your data to be merely partially accurate. In this case it’s even more obvious; there is more than meets the eye. If you think a certain path doesn’t work, it’s always better to know. "Prevention is better than cure"!
Conversion / attribution tracking limitations
Conversion tracking is the option of taking one impression or click and linking it to a single conversion - this is extremely important for marketers as it may prove to be the bond between an online campaign and the actual (online) sales. One of the more bitter pills to swallow when using cookies is the fact that they are, by default, not suitable for tracking conversions.
To explain why, we should understand the different kind of conversions one may track.
Direct post click conversions (PCC); where someone clicks an ad and in the same ‘session’ converts
Direct post impression conversions; where someone sees a banner and, within the same session, converts
Indirect post click / impression conversions; where someone clicks or sees a banner but later on (typically within 30 days), converts
Attribution and Contribution definition
Conversion attribution; rules that determine ‘who’ will get the conversion attributed. E.g., when there are 5 impressions usually the latest will get the conversion
Conversion contribution; rules that determine whether a conversion will be divided amongst one or more previous exposures
All of these conversions (and methods) are heavily reliant on the use of cookies. This means that only exposures and conversions made on the same device/browser combination will be tracked and attributed accordingly. On top of that, cookies may get deleted between user actions and conversions.
However, in a cookie-centric world, any exposure made on a device other than the device used for converting will not be attributed towards the final conversion. Where advertisers are spending huge amounts of money to reach their audience through different channels (TV, online, etc.), they remain in the dark and have no way of truly knowing whether one, does in fact, strengthen the other.
User value limitations
Campaigns could have basically one (or both) of the following goals: branding and/or performance. For both goals it’s important to be able to track, within a certain level of detail and accuracy, how much was spent on either a unique ‘eyeball’ or to reach a certain goal. As explained above, cookies don’t qualify as the right tool to track all exposures a single user has made during the lifetime of a campaign. This causes cost estimations to be heavily off the mark!
Interaction tracking
Many current advertising campaigns rely on some form of interaction tracking. Video banners for instance have play/pause buttons - when someone clicks the ‘pause’, this is called an event. Tracking these interactions becomes increasingly important as it shows whether users are involved in the campaign, thus showing increased alertness!
The same rules apply here as in the above subject (Conversion / attribution tracking limitations), where interactions made on TV for instance cannot be used to optimize the campaign on tablets.
Next week we’ll tell you more about the implications legal regulations have on cookies
