Gauge the Effects of Targeted Advertising along the Consumer Funnel

Targeted display advertising for individual consumers has become pervasive on social media platform and other online websites (traditional platform). Yet, the effectiveness of targeted advertising across online platforms is not well understood. Moreover, such advertising effect may be different for different types of consumers, i.e. consumers in the early stage and those in the late stage, relative to the final purchase stage. This paper aims at assessing the effectiveness of targeted advertising across online platforms on consumers\u27 final conversion (purchase). In addition, we measure the complementarity and substitutability of online platforms for targeted advertising for upper funnel (early-stage) consumers and lower funnel (late-stage) consumers. We use machine learning techniques to form case-control designs analyzed employing regularized discrete choice models to select relevant features explaining the final conversion. The empirical analysis shows that (1) targeting across platforms is positively associated with the final conversion for the lower funnel consumers, but there is no measurable synergistic effect for the upper funnel consumers; (2) the main effect of targeting on social media is positively related to the final conversion for consumers in the upper funnel but has no significant impact for lower funnel consumers. We leverage upon these findings to discuss actionable managerial prescriptions

Proving Marketing ROI: A Digital Marketing Framework

The purpose of this study is to analyze emerging literature on the best practices in selecting marketing objectives, web analytics/KPI goals, and marketing mix channels by using digital marketing to provide executives with proof of marketing ROI. Evidence-based research was used to analyze emerging trends in digital marketing by combining literature on setting marketing objectives, web analytic and KPI goals, and selecting marketing mix channels. This study contributes a framework that can be used by both educators and practitioners to showcase the most common practices in digital marketing and how they can be applied to create an effective and efficient digital marketing campaign that can quantify and prove marketing ROI

Multi-touch attribution in the mobile gaming industry

User acquisition spend is a big investment for mobile gaming companies. Because of the large scale, even small improvements in how this spend is allocated can provide big returns. To allocate advertising spend well; it is important that the credit of a conversion be attributed as accurately as possible. The current attribution model - standard to the industry - is a last-touch attribution model, which attributes 100% of the credit to the last touch-point. However, before a user installs a game they might see ads from multiple channels that might all affect the user’s propensity to install. With the last-touch attribution model, the uplift of these ads is not observed which skews the returns on advertising spent for different channels. This study looks at how install probability develops as impressions per user increase, how long the effect of an ad lasts and attempts to find better attribution models that attribute credit better than the last-touch model. Three multi-touch attribution models are proposed; two based on the Shapley value and one based on the ad effect time decay of different channels. The data for this study comes from a mobile gaming company and consists of impressions seen by both installed and non-installed users as well as impression channels, impression time and install time. The data was collected during a 38-day period and has data from 44,719,217 users who were divided into a training set and a test set with a 70%/30% split. The test set is used to validate the proposed models against the last-touch attribution model by using the models trained on the training set to generate predictions on install probability for user paths in the test data set. The study finds that the ad effect of all channels declines very quickly after the first day and is almost zero at seven days after the impression. The study also attempts to find the correlation between install probability and the amount of impressions a user has seen. Regarding this objective, the study is inconclusive. This correlation behaves very differently between different channels and because the amount of impressions per users could not be controlled for, it is difficult to deduce causation. Out of the three proposed attribution models, only one is able to outperform the last-touch model when it comes to predicting install probabilities from the training set’s paths. The model that outperformed is a Shapley value based model that considers the times of impressions for each path when calculating credit attribution. Finally, the study finds that only 9.5% of observed installs had impressions from more than one channel during a seven-day attribution window. This combined with the difficulty of validating attribution models based on return on advertising spend means that developing a multi-touch attribution model probably is not a very low hanging fruit for performance marketers. What would be worth looking into would be to test optimizing the frequency of ads shown to users

Market analysis to facilitate expansion of wholesale wine sales and distribution of G Winery

Master of AgribusinessDepartment of Agricultural EconomicsAleksan ShanoyanThe wine industry in Ohio is thriving and has been a major financial contributor to the economy throughout the last decade. The objective of this research is to conduct a market analysis and develop a business expansion plan for G Winery to further its market share within the wine wholesale and self-distribution segment. The results will also inform decisions to create a new position for a Wholesale Account Specialist. The research insights will facilitate planning and decision making in G Winery to support its growing interest of expanding wholesale wine marketing and distribution within Ohio. This study analyzes G Winery’s current business model and provide insights on strategic marketing opportunities, product values, and the internal processes of offering the strongest value proposition for wholesale. The study will examine the current market share controlled by G Winery, as well as identifying direct competitors within the wholesale industry. The internal analysis will identify the most profitable products being offered through wholesale as well as determining a target market for wholesale throughout northwest Ohio. The methods include a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis utilizing primary data from a survey of current wholesale accounts being served by G Winery, paired with extensive market research; the information is used to determine the most successful strategies for business expansion. Furthermore, the study will lay out a job description with key responsibilities for the new Wholesale Account Specialist to focus on securing the market share desired by G Winery

Measuring Multi-Channel Advertising Effectiveness Using Consumer-Level Advertising Response Data

Advances in data collection have made it increasingly easy to collect information on advertising exposures. However, translating this seemingly rich data into measures of advertising response has proven difficult, largely because of concerns that advertisers target customers with a higher propensity to buy or increase advertising during periods of peak demand. We show how this problem can be addressed by studying a setting where a firm randomly held out customers from each campaign, creating a sequence of randomized field experiments that mitigates (many) potential endogeneity problems. Exploratory analysis of individual holdout experiments shows positive effects for both email and catalog; however, the estimated effect for any individual campaign is imprecise, because of the small size of the holdout. To pool data across campaigns, we develop a hierarchical Bayesian model for advertising response that allows us to account for individual differences in purchase propensity and marketing response. Building on the traditional ad-stock framework, we are able to estimate separate decay rates for each advertising medium, allowing us to predict channel-specific short- and long-term effects of advertising and use these predictions to inform marketing strategy. We find that catalogs have substantially longer-lasting impact on customer purchase than emails. We show how the model can be used to score and target individual customers based on their advertising responsiveness, and we find that targeting the most responsive customers increases the predicted returns on advertising by approximately 70% versus traditional recency, frequency, and monetary value-based targeting

Young consumers online and offline channel purchase behaviour

Consumers purchase path has become increasingly fragmented, as consumers now shop across various online and offline channels to complete a single transaction. Certain aspects need to be taken into consideration, to understand how consumers choose between these online and offline channels during their purchase journey to fulfil their requirements. The main aim of this study was to understand young consumers online and offline channel purchase behaviour. This was done by evaluating channel usage from three different directions, 1) channel influencers, 2) purchase journey, 3) value dimensions. The empirical part of the thesis was based on quantitative research method. Primary data for the thesis was collected through survey questionnaires in two phases. The research revealed that young consumers preferred online channel for information search and offline channels for product acquisition. Due to channel evolution, it was possible for them to switch between online and offline channels effortlessly through search and acquisition. It seemed obvious for the young consumers to prefer the circular journey, as this journey narrows down the purchase path significantly compared to the other journeys. Value dimensions play a very important motivating role in channel purchase behaviour among young consumers and an important deciding factor on their channel specific usage during their purchases

Faulty Metrics and the Future of Digital Journalism

This report explores the industry of Internet measurement and its impact on news organizations working online. It investigates this landscape through a combination of documentary research and interviews with measurement companies, trade groups, advertising agencies, media scholars, and journalists from national newspapers, regional papers, and online-only news ventures

An electric commerce platform for material testing laboratories

The emergence of the Internet has allowed businesses to create new sales and marketing channels to provide value for their customers in the marketplace. Engineering manufacturers and suppliers have taken advantage of the internet to automate the customer service aspects of their businesses as well as to market their services in a cost-effective but widespread manner. This work aims to apply the practices and benefits of electronic commerce (e-commerce) to a material testing laboratory through the creation of a functioning website with e-commerce features. The effects of Search Engine Optimization, website accessibility issues, marketing considerations, security concerns, and common business models and strategies regarding web development are examined. Features such as an automated quoting system and a customer portal are also implemented for use at a material testing laboratory

Finding the path(s) towards profitable e-commerce

Relying on a unique and arguably representative sample of transaction e-commerce companies, this paper takes a closer look at whether and how companies could be profitable on-line. This analysis clearly demonstrates that a non-trivial set of winners are emerging, which combine both strong operational excellence as well as fine-tuned to about 3 generic strategic postures. --E-tailing,Strategic Clusters,Post entry performance

’Clock Speed’ Theory of Strategy Making Along the Life Cycle

Regardless of sector, the long term viability of a firm is strongly tied to the quality and timeliness of its strategies. In hi-tech, events unfold much faster than in other value-creating business activities and hence the strategy changes its scope, its focus and implementation challenges often. This article will present a model that can be relied upon to gauge the need for different strategic engagements at four critical points of the market development: start-up, growth, leveling off/shakeout and maturity. The article also surfaces the importance of the elements of speed, horizon and focus to strategy making in hi-tech and comments on the evolution of market complexity.Niezależnie od branży, długoterminowa rentowność firmy jest ściśle związana z jakością i aktualnością jej strategii. W nowoczesnych technologiach wydarzenia rozwijają się znacznie szybciej niż w przypadku innych tworzących wartość działalności, stąd strategia zmienia ich zakres, ostrość i często wyzwania implementacyjne. Niniejszy artykuł przedstawi model, na którym można polegać, aby ocenić potrzebę różnych zobowiązań strategicznych z czterech punktów krytycznych rozwoju rynku: uruchomienia, rozwoju, wyrównywania/restrukturyzacji i dojrzałości. Artykuł również podkreśla znaczenie elementów prędkości, horyzontu i koncentruje się na tworzeniu strategii w nowoczesnych technologiach i spostrzeżeniach na temat ewolucji złożoności rynku