Outdated or simply inaccurate information regarding how attribution works can infiltrate an organization like a weed, sprouting up over and over again across teams and projects. For example, an ad ops team may believe that mobile app to site attribution isn’t possible, which they relay to account managers, who explain it to sales, who then inform their clients, who tell their account managers — and so the cycle begins again. You hit a roadblock and have to pivot to a new solution that doesn’t necessarily set you or your client up for long-term success.
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In this series of articles, we’re busting some of the most nefarious mobile attribution myths.
In this third installment, let’s tackle an increasingly popular one:
Myth: “Running ads across an app network isn’t advisable for our brand safety since we can’t determine where exactly our media is running.”
Sound familiar? Given the heightened brand safety concerns of the past couple of years, it likely does. And in the mobile realm in particular, where the solutions evolve quickly, outdated and inaccurate information around transparency is common.
Transparency into placements and brand-safety within mobile media buys are absolutely possible. Your partner can and should give you transparency into where your media is running in their network, especially on a managed service basis.
Transparency is also available by default via programmatic buys.
Publisher and site name are typically provided in a pre-campaign whitelist programmatically. Additionally, website and app names are passed in programmatic bid requests, which is the industry standard. The latter may sound redundant (and it largely is if there’s a whitelist provided), but it never hurts to double down on transparency, which is the key to building trust between partners.
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App networks represent a great opportunity for creative advertising within brand-safe environments, but that doesn’t mean advertisers need to take everything on faith. You can and should hold your mobile partners to the same standards of transparency that are applied across all other media buys.
Advertisers should be good actors, and so should supply-side vendors. We have the opportunity as marketers to set the standard around site-level transparency and performance. Obfuscating data creates uneven relationships. True partnerships are built on common understanding and transparency, mutual understanding and sharing of performance insights.
Author’s note: Stay tuned for the fourth and final part of this series, in which we’ll discuss the impact of fraud as it relates to mobile attribution.
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