Lotame

With all of the latest advances in digital media, we are still in the infancy stage when it comes to data intelligence and informative decision making. Consider what is currently happening in the display advertising space. Data and media are continuing to diverge as two separate commodities. On one hand there are data exchanges making cookie files or user information available for purchase. On the other hand, there are media exchanges that make media available for purchase letting businesses use primary or secondary cookie files from other sources to make the ad decision.

This new divergence between data and media, coupled with the notion that bigger is better when it comes to data, makes for an interesting dynamic in today’s industry. Companies are looking to build their own, large cookie pools. In some cases, these are companies with no real technology or mathematical expertise. The natural assumption is that by having large data sets, it would allow for informative ad decision making and that assumption is absolutely warranted. But again, we are only in the infancy stage when it comes to data intelligence and information decision making so it is important to understand all layers involved while pursuing the “data” path.

There is an entire meta-layer between data and media, and that layer is around delivery and optimization. It’s the ability to marry delivery, performance, and backend metrics with data collection and custom audiences. Without this connection, data is meaningless. Imagine for a second you spent $5,000 on the latest and greatest Flat Screen High Definition TV, $600 on the latest Blue Ray DVD drive, but decided to use old audio/video composite cables instead of investing the extra $150 on some good HDMI cables. Your investments in the television and the Blue Ray drive aren’t even close to maximized unless an additional investment is made in the “connection.”

This is unquestionably one of the most important, yet most overlooked aspects of today’s ecosystem. Data is only as valuable as the intelligence or “connection” behind it. In the coming months, the companies that are positioned to efficiently collect and segment data and, more importantly, are able to tie that data in a meaningful way to media through enhanced delivery and optimization techniques, will see an increase in sales, margins, and ROI. By valuing audiences and media separately, there is also a new arbitrage opportunity available to those that truly understand the three aspects of data, media, and delivery.

At the end of the day, companies will need to make smart investments on technology vendors and third party solutions in order to help achieve their goals. As the economy continues to shake out, as costs and expenses continue to be cut, and as resources continue to be reallocated, it is all that more critical for companies to make sound investments that contribute to increased efficiency and productivity. In order to do this, companies will continue to turn towards “data” in order to make informative decisions, to both business and literal ad serving.

You may have noticed some new videos on our homepage. We had a lot of fun creating them and felt it would be a great opportunity for all of you to get a glimpse inside Lotame to see what we are up to. In addition to our new homepage we have re-skinned our YouTube Channel and will be uploading all of our new content there as well.

Stay Tuned!

Lotame Goes Beyond Targeting

When we started Lotame a few years ago, our objective was to help publishers, agencies and marketers make sense of a seismic shift that was taking place in the way that all of us consume media. No longer were we passive consumers, merely being entertained by content—advances in technology (as well as other factors) made it so that we WERE the content.

This was an eye opening time for me and the rest of my founding team at Lotame.

We went to market with our proprietary technology, Crowd Control.

The idea was that we would revolutionize the ad network model by adding a layer of “social data” (this is how we refer to the data garnered from the various behaviors we anonymously track in social networks) on top of current audience segmentation models.

Our approach proved to be very successful.

As we were serving billions of impressions for our clients and partners we realized something; many of the advertisers that we worked with were just as interested in the data coming out of campaigns, as the clicks that were coming from the campaigns.

This was an “ah-ha” moment for me, and over time Lotame began to expand its offerings beyond what we had originally set out to do. My gut was telling me, the more value we can provide for our clients, the more we can move beyond what anyone else was doing in the space.

The more agencies and publishers became enamored with our ability help them learn about their audience, the more we sought to provide tools to help them do so. We even went to so far as to form strategic partnerships with various companies that could provide deeper insights for our clients. On a parallel path, we begin to partner with rich media vendors that could help our clients provide unique experiences within social networks. In no way were we gunning to becoming a creative shop; we just wanted to provide our clients with whatever it took to achieve success.

I began to the see the nature of our company shaping up to look something like this:

Lotame was becoming a true platform for agencies, publishers and marketers. A platform that went beyond what our competitors were currently doing. We felt we kept going beyond what the industry expected from a company that once focused on targeting audiences in social spaces. The word “beyond” seemed to come up so often in reference to the way we worked, we decided to make it our war cry, “Beyond Targeting”.

Since we introduced the notion of Beyond Targeting, people have been asking me what it means — and I have to be honest; Due to my improvisational nature (hat tip to Jerome Garcia) I found myself responding differently to the question each time – “What is BEYOND TARGETING after all?”

The fact is, we started as a company that focused on one thing — and managed to put together a team with so much heart, and so much talent — that we always seem to go beyond what is expected.

*We went beyond targeting by providing clients actionable consumer insights.

*We went beyond targeting when we decided to help our clients deliver appropriate messages in social spaces.

*We went beyond targeting when we created a platform that allows our agency partners to build custom audiences.

So long as I am at the helm of this company, going beyond the expectations of our clients - will be the rule, not the exception.

It is true that Lotame is a company rooted in technology but we have grown to be so much more. We have grown into an advertising platform, a trusted partner for publishers, and an extension of both agency and marketing teams.

Our ability to go beyond is what really makes Lotame successful. I would like to thank my team, my family, and all of our wonderful partners and clients—we could not have gone beyond targeting without you.

Our mission statement at Lotame is quite simple.

“To continuously challenge the conventional wisdom of the world of advertising (catalyzing it’s evolution) through technology, innovation, creativity, and PASSION.”

Rock on.

Andy Monfried

The Lotame blog has been quiet for a while. And for those of you who know our company, quiet is not exactly our style. But we’ve been hard at work and have much to share.

RICH MEDIA BENCHMARKING RESEARCH YIELDS NEW INSIGHTS.

Most recently we released data that validates what we’ve known for quite a while. Measurement of more than 100 ad campaigns and billions of ad impressions confirms that users in a social media environment interact with rich media at a much higher rate than when displaying that same rich media in a non-social context.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE: LOTAME HAS OFFICIALLY MADE HISTORY!

You heard correctly. Our ability to target consumers using the anonymous social data layer has officially been entered into the annals of interactive advertising history as documented by a recent Fast Company article.  The author had a chance to sit down and speak at length with Andy Monfried, CEO of Lotame, who shared his perspective, including:

“They email, they blog, they comment, they post, they share, they link, they upload, they friend, they stream, they write on a wall, they update a profile. There are 160 verbs that we currently track.”  Andy is referring to our ability to find consumers in an entirely new way; a way that enables us to message with more precise relevance than ever before through our proprietary “verb targeting” technology.

AND THERE’S BEEN SOME EXCITING NEWS FOR FORD.

Lotame has been working with the talented Hamerlin Media on a Ford initiative. Together we managed to throw some pretty impressive statistics on the board (as covered in Mediapost), including:

“From January through July, Lotame — which provides behavioral targeting and Web analytics for marketers — delivered better average click-through rates and interaction rates with the ad. In fact, the campaign beat the average click-through rate by nearly 15%, outperforming in click interaction by 88% and delivering a 216% improvement compared with the average action yield. During this campaign, people who saw the ads were 20% more likely to buy a Ford vehicle during the next six months than a controlled group who had not.”
These are important insights for Ford, and Hamerlin deserves big kudos for bringing new thinking to their client.

RACHEL GLICKMAN GOES BEYOND AGE AND GENDER.

Our very own Rachel Glickman, SVP of Publisher Development, took time to share some ink with Mediapost this month. Apparently, Rachel stirred up some controversy in the comments section of her post; but that is what we love about her. Rachel does not settle for the status quo (I think that is what our publishers love about her as well).

We hope you’ve all had as interesting and productive a summer as we’ve had in LotaLand. Look out for more frequent updates from us on what’s happening in our world and new and noteworthy developments across the industry.