Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience

#11

Post by calbear81 » Thu, Jan 03, 2013, 12:12 AM UTC

I've been using Perfect Audience for Room 77 for a bit over a month or two now and I have some feedback to share as well.

- I appreciate the much better UI for managing campaigns and the funding/billing was all very clear. Kudos for creating an intuitive and simple UI.

- I think the CPA metrics should be broken out into click conversions only and click + view conversions as the view conversions are frankly much less attributable without doing an attribution modeling study. You also run into issues around double counting with any other retargeting or display platforms I might be using.

Wish List

- I'm moving my budgets on display more towards vendors who are providing more support for dynamic ads (feed inclusion, API integration) such as Criteo and Triggit which promises to use information about the products a user was interested in to create more targeted ads that deliver higher CTRs and more relevance.

- Maybe I'm missing it but can I adjust frequency caps myself to specific rules like "no more than 7 ads in a 24 hour period" etc.?

Re: Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience

#12

Post by pbreit » Thu, Jan 03, 2013, 12:21 AM UTC

hayksaakian wrote: post #4

Retargeting as a concept is so counterintuitive. User X visited your site and bounced. Now you need to show an ad to convince him to come back. If this is a solution to visitors bouncing, this seems to be going about it incorrectly. You should give them a good reason to stay on your site in the first place. If this is a solution to visitor retention - as in people leaving because they used your site and forgot about…

Advertising success is hugely dependent on repetition and retargeting is pretty much the perfect way to inexpensively get repeated impressions in front of a defined audience with a confirmed interest.

Re: Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience

#13

Post by brandnewlow » Thu, Jan 03, 2013, 12:23 AM UTC

calbear81 wrote: post #11

I've been using Perfect Audience for Room 77 for a bit over a month or two now and I have some feedback to share as well. - I appreciate the much better UI for managing campaigns and the funding/billing was all very clear. Kudos for creating an intuitive and simple UI. - I think the CPA metrics should be broken out into click conversions only and click + view conversions as the view conversions are frankly much less…

Hi, Roger! I really appreciate this. Responses:

1. Re: CPA reporting, we do break those numbers out in the campaigns table down below your main reporting graph. Sorry that's not more clearly labeled!

2. Re: Dynamic ads, that's not something we have in the main self-service app that you're using but it is something we offer folks who commit to minimums.

3. Re: Frequency caps. We set sane frequency caps automatically and adjust them over time for self-service customers. This protects our brand and the advertiser's! For folks who commit to minimum spends we can give over full control of those settings if desired.

Happy to chat anytime this week about getting you squared away on these fronts. I just wrote to the e-mail address attached to your account to see if we can chat. Feel free to ping me at brad@perfectaudience.com if that's easier.

Re: Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience

#14

Post by gavinbaker » Thu, Jan 03, 2013, 1:18 AM UTC

Thanks for sharing this. I had a marginal experience with PA and your post is making me take a second look.

As an aside, it would be great to see more posts on HN about "why I chose X over Y"

Re: Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience

#15

Post by china » Thu, Jan 03, 2013, 1:28 AM UTC

Thanks for the info - I was signing up with Perfect Audience (currently an adroll customer) and chatted with their olark chat. After getting pretty technical with the guy on the other end, he said "Sorry, I'm not 100% sure on this - I am the CEO not the lead dev. I like to chat to get to know the customers!"

#rad.

Re: Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience

#16

Post by calbear81 » Thu, Jan 03, 2013, 2:52 AM UTC

brandnewlow wrote: post #13

calbear81 wrote: post #11

I've been using Perfect Audience for Room 77 for a bit over a month or two now and I have some feedback to share as well. - I appreciate the much better UI for managing campaigns and the funding/billing was all very clear. Kudos for creating an intuitive and simple UI. - I think the CPA metrics should be broken out into click conversions only and click + view conversions as the view conversions are frankly much less…

Hi, Roger! I really appreciate this. Responses: 1. Re: CPA reporting, we do break those numbers out in the campaigns table down below your main reporting graph. Sorry that's not more clearly labeled! 2. Re: Dynamic ads, that's not something we have in the main self-service app that you're using but it is something we offer folks who commit to minimums. 3. Re: Frequency caps. We set sane frequency caps automatically a…

Thanks for reaching out so quickly regarding the feedback. I'll touch base with you as we build out our display and retargeting strategy.

Re: Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience

#17

Post by brandnewlow » Thu, Jan 03, 2013, 2:55 AM UTC

calbear81 wrote: post #16

brandnewlow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, Roger! I really appreciate this. Responses: 1. Re: CPA reporting, we do break those numbers out in the campaigns table down below your main reporting graph. Sorry that's not more clearly labeled! 2. Re: Dynamic ads, that's not something we have in the main self-service app that you're using but it is something we offer folks who commit to minimums. 3. Re: Frequency caps. We set sane frequency caps automatically a…

Thanks for reaching out so quickly regarding the feedback. I'll touch base with you as we build out our display and retargeting strategy.

Sounds good!

Re: Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience

#18

Post by rscale » Thu, Jan 03, 2013, 3:11 AM UTC

hayksaakian wrote: post #4

Retargeting as a concept is so counterintuitive. User X visited your site and bounced. Now you need to show an ad to convince him to come back. If this is a solution to visitors bouncing, this seems to be going about it incorrectly. You should give them a good reason to stay on your site in the first place. If this is a solution to visitor retention - as in people leaving because they used your site and forgot about…

There's an old saying about advertising frequency:

    The first time people look at any given ad, they don't even see it.
    The second time, they don't notice it.
    The third time, they are aware that it is there.
    The fourth time, they have a fleeting sense that they've seen it somewhere before.
    The fifth time, they actually read the ad.
    The sixth time they thumb their nose at it.
    The seventh time, they start to get a little irritated with it.
    The eighth time, they start to think, "Here's that confounded ad again."
    The ninth time, they start to wonder if they're missing out on something.
    The tenth time, they ask their friends and neighbors if they've tried it.
    The eleventh time, they wonder how the company is paying for all these ads.
    The twelfth time, they start to think that it must be a good product.
    The thirteenth time, they start to feel the product has value.
    The fourteenth time, they start to remember wanting a product exactly like this for a long time.
    The fifteenth time, they start to yearn for it because they can't afford to buy it.
    The sixteenth time, they accept the fact that they will buy it sometime in the future.
    The seventeenth time, they make a note to buy the product.
    The eighteenth time, they curse their poverty for not allowing them to buy this terrific product.
    The nineteenth time, they count their money very carefully.
    The twentieth time prospects see the ad, they buy what is offering.

Re: Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience

#19

Post by some1else » Thu, Jan 03, 2013, 5:45 AM UTC

rscale wrote: post #18

hayksaakian wrote: post #4

Retargeting as a concept is so counterintuitive. User X visited your site and bounced. Now you need to show an ad to convince him to come back. If this is a solution to visitors bouncing, this seems to be going about it incorrectly. You should give them a good reason to stay on your site in the first place. If this is a solution to visitor retention - as in people leaving because they used your site and forgot about…

There's an old saying about advertising frequency: The first time people look at any given ad, they don't even see it. The second time, they don't notice it. The third time, they are aware that it is there. The fourth time, they have a fleeting sense that they've seen it somewhere before. The fifth time, they actually read the ad. The sixth time they thumb their nose at it. The seventh time, they start to get a littl…

What a waste of everyone's time and money.

This could be brainwashing, but luckily we seem to have developed a sort of banner-blindness to all the visual pollution this kind of marketing had caused.

Re: Why I Moved From AdRoll to Perfect Audience

#20

Post by omarchowdhury » Thu, Jan 03, 2013, 6:25 AM UTC

brandnewlow wrote: post #3

This is us :) http://perfectaudience.com Really terrific to see folks appreciating the time we spent slaving over the billing system and trying to make it not completely suck. If anyone on HN is curious about retargeting, especially on Facebook, where low CPMs are plentiful, drop on by!

Is PerfectAudience going to look into CPC billing in the future?