32
Advertising Automation Software Advertising Automation Software At the forefront of the in-house advertising movement, Nanigans arms marketing teams with the best software to manage their digital advertising in-house. For nearly five years, we have developed the industry-leading advertising automation platform to empower CMOs to achieve their social and mobile performance marketing goals at scale. Nanigans is a leader among eCommerce, gaming, and other pure-play internet companies, enabling in-house teams to take control of their advertising through sophisticated workflow automation, predictive optimization, deep data integrations, and real-time and lifetime reporting tools.

Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

  • Upload
    lekhanh

  • View
    223

  • Download
    0

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

Advertising Automation Software

Advertising Automation Software

At the forefront of the in-house advertising movement, Nanigans arms marketing teams with the best software to manage their digital advertising in-house.

For nearly five years, we have developed the industry-leading advertising automation platform to empower CMOs to achieve their social and mobile performance marketing goals at scale.

Nanigans is a leader among eCommerce, gaming, and other pure-play internet companies, enabling in-house teams to take control of their advertising through sophisticated workflow automation, predictive optimization, deep data integrations, and real-time and lifetime reporting tools.

Page 2: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 2

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Boston (HQ) | New York | San Francisco | London | Singapore | Sydney

Nanigans by the Numbers

200 great customers$400M1T

72TB$9M

100%6

annualized ad spend through platform

ad impressions served

unique data assets

VC raised

year-over-year growth

global offices

Page 3: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 3

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Industry RecognitionWe are proud to be recognized for our impact on driving innovation in marketing technology.

Innovation Awards:Best of Show

Innovation Allstar:Advertising Tech

Winner Two Years in a Row

In the NewsLeading national publications and media outlets have covered Nanigans’ growth and success.

Page 4: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 4

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Strategic PartnersWe have established strategic partnerships as part of our efforts to develop and extend our platform and technologies to more data-driven CMOs worldwide.

Nanigans is a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer.

This strategic distinction, given to only a small group of Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers (PMDs), recognizes Nanigans as a worldwide leader in building best-in-class technology to make marketing easier and more effective.

We are uniquely positioned to maximize ROI as one of only three Strategic PMDs with access to the native Facebook Ads API on desktop and mobile, as well as Facebook Exchange (FBX).

As a Facebook Mobile Measurement Partner, we also offers mobile app developers the ability to track and analyze performance metrics including attribution, lifetime value, downstream conversions, and ROI across acquisition channels.

Nanigans and Oracle Social Cloud strategically partner to deliver customers choice and expertise.

As a a Gold Level member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), Nanigans brings our best-in-class ad automation software to Oracle Social’s Paid Media Partnership Program, a new open API-based strategy for its paid media solution.

The CEO told me that he doesn’t make a move on Facebook without first

talking to his team at Nanigans. He feels like Nanigans is his engineering and his critical partners—they are in fact his strategic partners in making

Facebook successful.

Blake Chandlee, VP PartnershipsFacebook

We wanted to work with the best ad technology platforms in the business and Nanigans certainly fits the bill. The Nanigans platform delivers exactly what today’s modern marketer needs—strong performance-based, data-driven and targeted capabilities that scale.

Meg Bear, Group Vice PresidentOracle Social Cloud

Page 5: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 5

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Our FocusWith a focus since our inception on world-class ROI measurement, attribution, and optimization technology, Nanigans is regarded as one of the most innovative companies in advertising technology today.

By building scalable software that meets the specific in-house marketing needs of today’s largest performance advertisers, we have earned a reputation for developing cutting-edge solutions to complex user acquisition and remarketing challenges. Nanigans is disrupting the traditional agency and ad network model of media buying and is enabling new levels of efficiency and success in the process.

We believe in the in-house advertiser.

Our mission is to arm marketing teams with the best software to manage their digital advertising in-house.

Page 6: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 6

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

In May 2014, Nanigans announced our sharpened strategic focus, moving to a strictly SaaS model to empower in-house advertisers with world-class ad automation software.

Nanigans Sharpened Focus on Software for the In-House AdvertiserSince Nanigans’ inception in 2010, we’ve always focused our resources on doing best by our customers—the advertiser.

We moved away from arbitrage and media markup models early on, instead offering direct-to-publisher media buying alongside transparency into cost data and the minute-by-minute decisioning logic of our algorithms. We then moved to focus on building technology, algorithms and tools to help customers drive real business goals on social, like purchases and lifetime ROI—and at a time when the majority of the marketing world saw social as only a place for engagement.

In continuing our commitment to doing what’s best for the advertiser, we’re excited to announce a sharpened focus on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), offering world-class ad automation technology and tools for the in-house advertiser. As part of this, we will no longer be accepting any new managed services business.

Why are we sharpening our focus on SaaS for the in-house advertiser?

After four years, hundreds of millions in social and mobile ad spend learnings, and hundreds of the world’s largest and savviest performance advertisers as customers, we know the very best results come from:

Skilled operators,

Employed in-house by the advertiser,

Leveraging the best advertising technology.

We believe in the in-house advertiser. We believe in their ability to better understand and reach their customers than a third-party when armed with the right advertising technology—and especially with a skilled operator at the helm of that technology.

We are focusing all our resources on arming in-house marketing teams in ecommerce, gaming and other pure-play internet businesses with world-class ad automation software, and ensuring they have the support and resources necessary to take advantage of all that technology has to offer.

Cheryl MorrisDirector of Marketing

Written by:

Page 7: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

Changes are afoot at Nanigans, as the Facebook ad partner repositions to serve in-house marketers strictly on a software subscription basis. The company has stopped signing new managed services business and will focus on getting its self-serve platform into the hands of marketers in the ecommerce and app verticals.

AdExchanger: What are you up to with the shift to SaaS?

Heretofore we’ve been all Facebook and all of our revenue is purely software and services fees. We don’t mark up the media. All of our clients pay the publisher directly.

That transition was somewhat difficult in that certain types of clients wanted us to take the media. It’s usually agency and brand partners that for whatever reason didn’t want to pay Facebook directly. With agencies, sometimes they want longer credit terms and they wanted us to be accountable potentially for the liability of the media.

But even after getting out of the media reselling or distribution business, which is not unlike an ad network or media buying agency (most of our competitors among PMDs resell media, and most of the DSPs fulfill media) we still were conflicted with two different businesses in different markets. And I decided in Q1 that we needed to pick one to be successful. The two businesses are selling traffic for Facebook, and selling software to enable the client to do their own campaign management and optimization.

Are we doing campaign management as a managed service and selling traffic to the client? Or are we selling software the client uses and taking at least some responsibility for the performance of their campaigns.

Selling traffic would be an I/O-based business?

Right. We’ll try you for a quarter and if it performs, we’ll stay with you.

Business was great last year. But what percentage of it was clients buying traffic and what percentage was clients buying software? It’s not black and white. Some clients are using some of the software – say reporting and analytics – but not pushing ads.

For me, it is pretty binary. There’s a litmus test: Mr. Advertiser, are you taking some responsibility for the performance of the campaign? And better yet, are you willing to sign a

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 7

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Our founder and CEO Ric Calvillo announced this sharpened strategic focus in an interview with AdExchanger’s managing editor Zach Rodgers.

Page 8: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 8

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

one-year contract where you pay us for use of the software independently of how much you spend on ads and independently of the performance of the campaign?

Is the Facebook platform in your future?

Our future is industry-focused. I’d like to consider us a vertically specific, more self-service version of the DSP. Where Turn and MediaMath and Invite [DoubleClick Bid Manager] are very horizontal and will sell to brands, agencies and performance advertisers, we want to focus on ecommerce and app developers and sell them a platform. And whatever sources of inventory are working with them, we want to support. We’re committed to Facebook and RTB.

What else?

The biggest disruption happening in ad tech is not necessarily RTB but the direct-to-publisher client relationship that Facebook and Google have created to the tune of – we estimate – $20 billion. They’ve taken 20% of the online media spend and offered a Web-based platform that SMBs can come to directly, and of the remaining non-SMB enterprise, they’re going to push we estimate a third of them to manage in-house with no middle men – no media agency, no ad network, no DSP.

If you look at Facebook this year, they’re on a $10 billion revenue run rate in Q1. We think half of that is SMB and a third of the remaining half is in-house managed. We’re going after that third non-SMB, that $1.5 billion that is in–house managed for which we think they need a better platform.

http://nani.gs/QIIOOy

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW

Page 9: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 9

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Our BeginningsFounded in 2010, Nanigans has grown from a Boston-based social gaming startup to a global leader in advertising automation technology with additional offices in New York, San Francisco, London, Singapore, and Sydney.

Co-founders Ric Calvillo and Claude Denton started Nanigans as a Facebook social games platform. Nanigans’ quirky, memorable name is a play on “shenanigans,” but our growth since 2010 has been serious business.

From our early days centered on Facebook gaming to today’s focus on building the world’s best software for in-house marketers, here is a look at the original innovators at Nanigans who have led the charge.

Nanigans has the potential to disrupt the online advertising industry, just like Google and Facebook have. And the online ad world is ripe for disruption.

Ric CalvilloCo-Founder and CEO

Page 10: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 10

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Nanigans Co-Founder and CEO Ric Calvillo on CNBC’s Squawk on the StreetSeptember 2012

http://nani.gs/OaB5Yb

WATCH THE VIDEO

Ric Calvillo joined CNBC host Carl Quintanilla live from the New York Stock Exchange to discuss Facebook advertising. The interview covers everything from our history and technology to Facebook’s most promising ad products and opportunities.

Nanigans Co-Founders Ric Calvillo and Claude Denton on The Boston Globe’s The InnovatorsJuly 2013

http://nani.gs/1uGu548

WATCH THE VIDEO

The Boston Globe dropped by Nanigans headquarters to hear CEO Ric Calvillo and CTO Claude Denton share why they founded Nanigans and the most significant issues we are solving for our growing customer base.

Page 11: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 11

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Nanigans Co-Founder and CEO Ric Calvillo on CBS New York’s CEO RadioJune 2013

Ray Hoffman, who helped establish The Wall Street Journal’s broadcasting service and moved on to be known as “the voice of BusinessWeek,” interviewed Ric Calvillo on CEO Radio. They discussed Ric’s early ventures, scaling Nanigans, and what it takes to be successful as an entrepreneur today.

00:12 05:32

http://nani.gs/12ZCUhN

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

Engineering is the best skill to bring to a startup. I’ve seen the effects of a real shortage of engineers in the United States, so I’m trying to do my part to fix that problem.

Ric CalvilloCo-Founder and CEO

Page 12: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 12

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Our Team and CultureNanigans is powered by a team of smart, driven, and fun individuals. Our work hard, play hard culture is a reality, not a cliché.

As we have grown our team of talented engineers, data scientists, marketers, and innovators to more than 150 employees around the world, we have kept Nanigans’ one-of-a-kind culture strong.

Here is a glimpse at what makes Nanigans an incredible place to work, and the team of people who make it that way.

When a team wins the World Series, reporters always ask how they did it. Some player always brings up how it used to be ‘25 guys, 25 cabs’ home at night. But that this team was special. They spent time with each other outside the ballpark. They even spent time with each other’s families. Hell, they were a family. Well, that’s what it’s like at Nanigans.

John DobrowolskiVP Accounts

Page 13: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 13

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

In June 2013, Nanigans published our “culture deck”, which was first featured on Harvard Business Review. Our culture deck is a guide for company hiring and fit as much as it is a signature of what has made Nanigans so successful to date.

Why Executive Teams Shouldn’t Write “Culture Decks”Boston is teeming with entrepreneurship. The “startup renaissance” that followed the financial crisis of 2009 has led to as many acquisitions as it has public companies.

For the founders and CEOs of many startups, the recent influx of additional tech giants to Boston like Amazon, eBay, and Twitter means that hiring—especially when it comes to engineers—will become even more challenging. With far deeper pockets than early- and mid-stage startups, these tech giants will be vying for the same talent our startup ecosystem has been fostering.

How can young startups continue to attract and retain great talent? One of the keys may lie in culture.

Companies are creating “culture decks” to answer the question, “why should I work here?” In Boston and beyond, companies large and small are publishing more and more of these. Some are impressive, clearly well thought out, and critical to recruiting strategies. However, many end up sounding strangely similar—mentioning something about vacation policies, a beer fridge, and how the company is structured. More often than not, these culture decks come across as pre-canned.

Culture decks are becoming as mundane as missions statements. Upon reflection in recently creating our culture deck here at Nanigans, the reason for this seems rooted in two core points:

How companies define culture

Who is behind the creation of these culture decks

Culture is a rich term, used historically to describe civilizations and people, but in the business context it’s often reduced to “org structure,” “mission statements,” and “employee incentives.” Defining culture in this way in the workplace—mapping it to corporate goals—is much behind the reason why many culture decks feel forced.

Perhaps they also come across this way because most are created by founders, CEOs or select members of executive teams. By definition they are much less in tune with what happens on a daily basis on the ground than employees themselves. A company’s founders and executives know what

Cheryl MorrisDirector of Marketing

Written by:

Page 14: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

they’re on a mission to accomplish. They’re in tune with corporate goals and how the company should ideally be projected to evoke success to investors and customers alike. However, this also contributes to the elements of culture being focused on mission statements, organizational structure, and top-line incentives.

Yet authentic culture is not dictated from the top down. Authentic culture emanates from people—a natural expression of who they are, and arises out of shared experiences together inside and outside the office.

Do founders and executive teams affect culture? Absolutely. Top-down created culture decks aren’t necessarily wrong or bad; however, more often than not, they’re simply not in tune with reality.

In witnessing and being a part of an incredibly vibrant startup culture, from a 15-person early stage startup 2 years ago with no venture funding to our now 100+ person company, I know the real elements of company culture aren’t reflected in the traditional definition nor the top-down approach to culture decks.

When we decided to create a culture deck at Nanigans, we took a different approach. In fact, we didn’t even set out to create such a deck. Instead, it was the product of a branding exercise.

We held one-on-one, hour-long conversations with almost all of our employees about company pillars like industry, product, customers, and culture. We asked each thirty-five different questions, such as the following:

What defines a successful company?

What transitions us from provider to strategic partner?

What words best describe our product?

Why do our customers need us?

What about Nanigans scares competing firms?

What’s most critical for us to do now to continue to grow, fast?

What trends and commonalities unite our employees?

As our project was coming to an end and pitch decks and new positioning were created, we kept finding ourselves back to the consistency and passion with which people spoke when discussing our culture—it came through when we talked about our product, industry and customers as much as it came through when we talked specifically about culture.

Despite this, I struggled while putting together our “culture deck.” It felt wrong to package up our authentic culture into a set of slides. In my mind, imposing words and images devalued how special and organic our culture truly was.

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 14

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Page 15: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

Then an executive who’d come to Nanigans from a place replete with a top-down culture deck reacted to my hesitancy by saying, “This is exactly why an executive should never create a culture deck.” Instead of interpreting other employees’ answers to our questions, I began using the real words and imagery they’d used in those conversations. The culture deck came together seamlessly thereafter. The result is a presentation created by every single employee at Nanigans. And upon showing it to executives, their only feedback was, “Keep it exactly as it is.”

There is no cookie-cutter framework or five-step process to creating a meaningful culture deck, just like there is no simple formula for creating great company culture.

Genuine culture is organic, not imposed. It’s why our executive team didn’t write our culture deck, and it’s why we fear not the looming hiring challenges that Boston tech companies face. Culture is what keeps people at Nanigans—not our mission statement or how our teams are structured.

Our culture deck is a guide for company hiring and fit, as much as it is a signature of what’s made us so successful to date:

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 15

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

http://nani.gs/121feTQ

SEE OUR CULTURE DECK

Page 16: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

A work environment that encourages learning is very important for me. When I decided to pursue a part-time postgraduate degree, senior management was willing to support me without a second thought.

Minas IatroTeam Lead, Campaign Management, London

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 16

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Why Join Nanigans?As we grow our team across all areas of the company, we asked some current employees what makes Nanigans so special.

I work with the smartest people in the industry on cutting edge technology. And of course, Friday morning waffles.

Dana BaskinPrincipal Engineer and

Manager of UI Group

Everyone is busy, yet still willing to drop everything to help you out. It’s amazing. When someone does that for you, you continue to do it for them—you pay that forward. That’s our culture. That’s the circle of life at Nanigans.

Laurie BloomAd Operations Manager

Work on some of the hardest technical problems with some of

the best talent in the industry.

Mike ChalsonMachine Learning Software Engineer

Nanigans is a very entrepreneurial environment. Many people that I work with will go on to start companies, become venture capitalist and influence the start up community in general. I look forward to the days of investing into, and working with my current co-workers across my, and their careers.

Per SandellVP Product

Great people in all cross functional groups, regardless of skillset—we’re a product/engineering/ops company; with the fun of Mad Men, but the seriousness of ad tech. It’s Don Draper meets Larry Page.

John MarslandSVP Analytics

We don’t have co-workers, we have friends. Everyone genuinely enjoys each other’s company, has fun together and wants to hangout. The bonus is getting to come to work every day with them.

Erik MansurTeam Lead,

Training and Enrichment

People take ownership individually, and everyone wins as a team. People feel accomplished and play an integral role in the company’s success, instead of just being along for the ride

Carly RogersRVP Campaign Management

There’s no B.S. here. Work matters, results matter and titles and seniority matter a lot less – we’re team oriented and thinkers from the top down.

Derek YimoyinesVP Engineering

Honestly, it’s the people you work with. You won’t find anyone else

like the people here and all under the same roof.

Janina TantocoTeam Lead,

Campaign Management

The world of social adtech moves incredibly fast—blink and you’ll miss something—and Asia is a

huge and diverse market, so no day is ever boring. And I couldn’t ask for better colleagues: super smart and

hard-working, yet they always know when to make a cat joke.

Julia ZhouAccount Director,

Asia Pacific

Nanigans has an autonomous environment where employees are encouraged to be highly engaged with the business and to have a sense of

camaraderie within the team.

Alex Van GentCampaign Manager, Sydney

Page 17: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 17

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Experienced Executive LeadersOur executive team is made up of leaders with decades of experience driving innovation at the world’s top technology companies. Despite the fact that Nanigans is only four years old, our leadership team members average more than two years at the company, managing hypergrowth in our industry from the start.

Here are just a few of the companies where members of our executive team have worked in the past.

Page 18: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 18

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

How to Spend a Million Dollars in One Day on FacebookRecently, one of our customers gave us the lofty goal of acquiring 500,000 new users a day on Facebook. The campaign had already been running for a few weeks and the customer was eager to see more of the great performance delivered to date. This meant it would be necessary to spend one million dollars, on one campaign, each day, for an entire weekend. Was this even possible? We quickly found out!

Advertisers always want value and they want it at scale.

We’re often tasked with the goal of driving value for Facebook advertisers. While our definition of value differs from campaign to campaign, (registrations, app installs, purchases), advertisers always want value and they want it at scale. So what are the steps to driving value? Here at Nanigans our approach is to:

Start with what you know works. Use historical data to identify multiple target audience segments.

Test various creative elements and ad types.

Collect enough data to optimize to the advertisers’ definition of value.

Once we can deliver value, then we can figure out how to deliver more.

In terms of scaling a Facebook Advertising campaign, there are multiple ways to do it and almost all of them add to its complexity.

Add more locations into the traffic mix such as expanding to more countries. Expanding to new countries means that there are multiple languages required for the creative copy in addition to testing different creative elements.

Find target audience segments. This requires even more attention to reach, and interest targeting by geography.

Ensure the campaign set up and strategy is incredibly precise and closely monitor the results.

Carly RodgersRVP, Campaign Management

Written by:

The performance records we set…

An Inside Look

Page 19: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 19

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

This is important because costs vary country by country and the average return can look different depending on where users are coming from. Plus, traffic flows in at different rates, depending on the time of day and who’s online.

Start with what you know, never stop testing, and continuously iterate based on your learnings.

The first step was to take a close look at the traffic already run to date. This helped to determine where performance looked good, why and how we could get more…quickly!

Next, we focused on expanding reach. The campaign’s location parameters were extended so that it had active ads running in every country on the map. If there was translated ad copy available, it was used where it made the most sense. To rapidly scale the campaign, we split up the task of creating new ad plans for each language and matching the appropriate languages to each country. For any new country that we wanted to test, we made sure to start with creative that had performed well previously. Although we wanted to scale fast, we also wanted to make sure that we were testing only a few variables at one time.

We took a similar approach to defining different audience segments within each country. By breaking up each country into various audience segments, we were able to allocate more budget and bid higher on the best segments within that country, while at the same time, weed out the underperformers. If we were targeting an interest group in one country and it achieved good results, we made sure to test it in other countries. By the time our team had completed the ad plans and pushed the ads, we had almost 70,000 ads running in in over 120 countries around the world.

Creative fatigue and market saturation proved to be among the biggest challenges.

Creating the ads proved to be the easiest part of this challenge. The hardest part was maintaining performance at such a high level of volume. Our team broke up the days into four, six hour shifts so that we had someone working on the campaign at every hour of the day. Creative fatigue and market saturation proved to be two of the biggest challenges that we faced, and the team was eager and ready to take these on.

To keep the creative fresh, we ran small-scale tests and pushed new creative almost every hour of the day. Whoever started the day at 6am set up creative tests to be run later in the day, while launching creative tests that were set up by the previous person on shift. As tests completed, we’d analyze the results and add the winning creative combinations to our existing ad plans to be pushed out to different audience segments.

We also closely monitored ad frequency and configured the strategy group settings to maintain an optimal frequency throughout the day. If the ads were displayed too often, particularly in the smaller reach segments, performance declined at a much faster rate. We also leveraged Ad Engine’s Audience Dampener, which can pause down the lesser performing ads within each segment and only allow for a certain number of ads to be active at a given time. With this, ads automatically roll into the testing

Page 20: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 20

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

queue, go through an evaluation process, and then they are either selected to run at scale or paused down.

Market saturation also presented a problem. At some point, no matter how often we iterated on creative, we anticipated that we’d see a natural decline in performance because there was so much traffic running during a short period of time. Following are some ways we worked to slow this process.

We paid close attention to frequency and made sure to define segments in the cleanest way possible.

Interest targets were grouped according to size and overlap to create segments that would be large enough to deliver the volume of traffic we were looking for, but small enough that we could assume performance would be consistent for all users targeted by the group and bid accordingly.

By grouping interest targets that heavily overlapped, it provided better control over frequency so users could be targeted with one ad as opposed to many.

Paying this much attention to detail made a big difference in the long run, and allowed the campaign to scale.

It is possible to efficiently spend one million dollars a day on Facebook advertising.

In the end, we learned a great deal from managing this campaign, all of which has helped shape our campaign management best practices that we have used to manage hundreds successful large scale campaigns. Some key takeaways are:

Understanding the importance of teamwork and how communication is key when you are working closely in a high-pressure environment.

Creative iteration is imperative when you are running at scale, and customizing creative to hyper-targeted audience segments can provide lift to performance.

Frequency is of utmost importance–it’s very important to consider both reach and overlap when defining your audience segments.

And most importantly, we know how to efficiently spend one million dollars on Facebook!

Page 21: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

Advertisers Go Fishing for ROI on Facebook This Holiday SeasonAdvertising on Facebook during the holidays is just like fishing. There are many kinds of shoppers on Facebook ready to make a purchase during the holidays just like there are many types of fish. Advertisers need to know which customers they want to target, design the right marketing strategy, push their ads to the right place, and use the right metrics to capture ROI – similar to how a fisherman ensures his bait reaches the right fish at the right spot and time.

This process usually involves customer segmentation, strategic decision-making and long-term ROI measurement. Preparation, timing, patience – the same procedures an experienced fisherman follows, are what will enable advertisers to succeed during the holiday season.

The graph below gives a high-level view of ecommerce performance in 2012 Q4 by day. We will look at trends from the Q4 2012 holiday shopping season and what’s happened so far in Q4 2013.

eCommerce – Q4 2012

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 21

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Sophie CuiSenior Optimization Analyst

Written by:

The insights we uncover using data…An Inside Look

Page 22: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 22

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

1. Timing – Aim for November

Fish are hungry, invest now! Our data shows that November is the best time to achieve high ROI and bring in long-term revenue because customers are more likely to make purchases from a variety of brands. A comparison of ads placed in October, November and December 2012, showed that Facebook ads placed one to three weeks before Thanksgiving attracted customers who delivered the highest ROI over time — loyal customers with consistent purchasing throughout Q4 and beyond who yielded the highest ROI contributed by lifetime revenue return.

2012 Spend vs. ROI

2. Targeting – Different customers purchase at different times

Similar to how different fish swim at different speeds, customers in various segments shop with different patterns. It’s crucial to understand and identify your target customers. Customers acquired the week before Thanksgiving and Christmas consistently yielded high return, both short-term and long-term while those who shopped right around holidays tended to be last-minute rush shoppers If you are seeking a bigger fish, set an enticing bait and wait; alternatively, if you see high volumes of smaller fish as your target, set lots of small bait but be prepared to act quickly.

1. Loyal customers – These customers performed consistently well even after six months and responded to ads placed in mid-November.

2. Steady shoppers – These customers brought in higher revenue after one month of viewing the ad and responded to ads placed in late October and early November.

3. Flash shoppers – These customers reacted quickly to an ad and made purchases within one month but barely came back again or were easily distracted by other campaigns within a half-year period. They responded to ads displayed in late November and early December.

Page 23: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 23

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

The graph below shows the incremental ROI by daily cohorts in 2012 Q4. Incremental units are first day, first week, first two weeks, first month, first two months, first three months, first six months and lifetime. Red indicates lower ROI and green shows higher ROI.

Page 24: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

3. Gender matters – Female shoppers returned more value than male most of time

Female shoppers who purchased in November yielded more than 3X ROI as compared to male shoppers, although engagement and cost data showed that men had slightly higher click-through-rates (CTRs), measured in a one-month time frame.

CTR – eCommerce Q4 2012

First Month ROI – eCommerce Q4 2012

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 24

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Page 25: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

4. Patience – Think long-term by tracking downstream revenue

Marketing, like fishing, is a game of patience. If your bait is already set, abandoning it too soon could potentially cause you to leave many fish uncaught. High costs from the holiday competition and fiscal pressure at the end of year easily wear out advertisers’ patience. If you are measuring one-week or even one-week ROI, don’t forget to come back and observe what is going on later on. Our data shows that a significant amount of revenue is attributed after one month, or even a half a year later. Loyal customers are sticky and consistently contribute to the revenue over the long run. Instead of a one-week/month attribution window, advertisers should consider use a longer time-frame to measure an ad’s performance. Big fish take longer to catch. Short-term measurement has a higher risk of killing the best campaigns before they have started performing.

Incremental ROI by Placement Month – eCommerce Q4 2012

5. The 2013 holiday season – A more competitive and complicated market

The Facebook advertising market has grown more mature and competitive over the past year. Facebook daily active users grew 16% at the end of Q3 2013 as compared to a year ago. As reported by Facebook, advertising spend in Q3 2013 was 66% higher than Q3 2012. Nanigans has observed that CPMs have almost tripled over the past year.

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 25

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Page 26: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

2012 vs. 2013 – eCommerce Q4

Another important consideration is new ad products. Unpublished Page Posts, Mobile and FBX retargeting are three ad products that have been rapidly adopted by advertisers in the past year. They are effective for bringing in high quality traffic and conversions.

When looking at bid type, CPM-search saw a 41% lower CPA for purchase events at similar volume when compared to CPC bidding (according to Facebook’s most recent data). Advertisers should test different ad types and bidding methods to achieve the best performance.

At last, it is the most exciting time of year again for advertisers. Get your campaigns ready, act on a consistent strategy and focus on long-term lifetime value. Happy fishing!

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 26

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Page 27: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

5 UX Priorities for a SaaS FutureLet’s face it – advertising technology is complex. From the technology that routes requests through myriad servers and exchanges in a matter of milliseconds to the sophisticated bidding algorithms that control spending to the tracking protocols that collect and organize conversion data, it’s a tangled web of systems and lingo that makes up an increasingly important part of the marketing ecosystem.

At Nanigans, we pride ourselves on having a firm grasp on all this complexity. Our culture strongly encourages attacking and solving highly complex technical challenges, and much of our success in the marketplace can be attributed to our ability to provide a product that aptly handles this complexity for our clients. But as we complete the shift toward becoming a true SaaS company, it’s critical that we begin to strip away the unnecessary layers of complexity while continuing to empower our users by giving them the transparency and granular control they often need.

Aside from the naturally complex nature of our industry and our product, we face several UX challenges that must be considered when designing products and experiences for our customers:

Our users spend lots of time in our product, so seemingly small flaws can be magnified because they’re encountered many times in the course of a session;

Many of our users are incredibly sophisticated and analytical marketers who demand high-performance and expert functionality, but;

We must also accommodate many other types of users who often have simpler user-cases and could benefit from a simpler interface;

We are deeply integrated with other platforms, which forces us to make decisions about which patterns and language to adopt and which to translate for our own use; and

We are moving incredibly quickly to deploy new products and features on tight timelines and often don’t have time to utilize “traditional” usability testing methods.

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 27

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Austin Gardner-SmithSenior Director, Product Design

Written by:

How we make complex products simple…

An Inside Look

Page 28: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

As we strive to improve our UX across the product within these constraints, here are five key principles we’re prioritizing with each new feature and screen we design:

1. Progressive Disclosure

For us, progressive disclosure is about making a process simpler by helping users focus on a single decision at a time. In many cases, our features require multiple pieces of input from users in order to function correctly. Presenting all of these input fields at page load can cause confusion and anxiety for users, so we’re creating more controls that allow users to opt-in to a specific feature set before displaying the dials and switches that go along with it.

2. Onboarding

We know that first experiences are a critical piece of the overall user experience and set expectations for the rest of a product. For a piece of software like ours that requires significant setup and technical implementation, it’s even more important. To serve this need, we’ve dedicated an entire cross-functional team comprised of folks from product, UX and engineering to address the specific challenges associated with getting people up and running on Ad Engine.

3. Contextual Help

Providing help documentation has long been a cornerstone of good UX, but taking users to knowledge base articles outside of the product or littering screens with subtitles and help text is certainly less than optimal. One of the biggest issues we’ve recently tackled as a UX team has been creating and enforcing a consistent contextual help pattern via a combination of user-activated tooltips for field definitions and popover-style help dialogs for more immersive content like tips or explanations that appear on focus. This has helped us move closer toward the optimal balance between providing users the help they need and bombarding them with information.

4. UI Consistency

Getting buttons, text, and navigation elements to remain perfectly consistent across screens may seem like a no-brainer, but in practice these things can require lots of work under the covers to ensure that everything is up to date and in line. Anyone who’s worked on a large web project over the course of multiple years knows that CSS has a natural tendency to bloat and double back on itself, even when everyone is making a real effort to adhere to standards and best practices. Pre-processors (we use LESS for almost all of our styling) can help, but they can’t erase the problem without human help. Getting these details right makes a big difference to users – consistency of styles builds confidence in consistency of performance – and therefore is a big priority as we sharpen our focus on SaaS.

5. Feature Segmentation

Fact of the matter is, some users are more advanced than others. By way of training, experience or use-case, their needs are more sophisticated than most – sometimes by a long shot. Many of

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 28

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Page 29: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

these users are among our best, longest-term customers and we love them dearly. But that doesn’t mean that our interfaces should necessarily conform to the highest common denominator. As we go forward, we’re placing more emphasis on segmenting features by user type, putting the most complex ones behind ‘Advanced Settings’ toggles that allow our power users access to the tools they need while keeping less sophisticated users from shooting themselves in the foot by tweaking configurations they haven’t yet mastered.

There are many more UX techniques and considerations in our toolkit, but as we look forward to life as a purely SaaS company, these five principles serve as guideposts that help us understand what to focus on and where to put our energy.

At the end of the day, our application will never sport one of the reductive, almost alarmingly simple interfaces that seem to dominate the headlines of the tech rags and design blogs these days. It was never meant to be, and for us as a UX team, there is a great challenge – and an even greater satisfaction – in designing complex products and experiences to be obvious, fluid, and eminently useful.

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 29

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Page 30: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

3 Major Developments to Come Out of Facebook’s f8 ConferenceMark Zuckerberg took the stage yesterday and immediately announced that this was going to be a different kind of f8. Rather than focusing on dazzling new Facebook features, the company is now focused on stability and encouraging community growth—encompassing users, advertisers and developers. As Facebook continues to grow its audience and network of advertisers, scale becomes even more of a central focus.

Some basic takeaways from his presentation:

Facebook has helped process $3B+ in payments, with 59% of ad revenue on mobile

It’s now handling 470 billion API calls a day

The platform will offer a 2-year Core API stability guarantee (all APIs will be supported for at least 2 years)

And a 48-hour major bug fix SLA(!)

Although we were promised less dazzle, three updates that Facebook shared at f8 are mobile game changers:

1. Parse

Parse started 3 years ago, and is just now coming into its own as the go-to base for developers to build and distribute their desktop or mobile apps. As an indication of Parse’s growth: one year ago 60K apps were on the platform, and now it has 260K. It features a powerful core and native SDKs spanning from iOS to JavaScript; a growth dashboard and user retention metrics. With 6 lines of code you can enable Parse analytics, with 7 lines of code you can run the app via the local data store, and with 8 lines of Java you can send a push notification to everyone in your app. The big changes here are that pricing has gotten more affordable and easy (pay-as-you-go), offline SDKs are on offer, and new analytics allow you to view push notification open rates.

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 30

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software

Per SandellVP, Product

Written by:

An Inside Look The ecosystem we’re helping build…

Page 31: Advertising Automation Software - Nanigans · Advertising Automation Software Advertising ... predictive optimization, deep data ... lifetime value, downstream

2. App Links

This was a huge announcement. Facebook has created an open standard that can translate between a web URL and mobile link. This will allow apps to link between each other and remove the issue of getting to or discovering links. In the same way that the blue bar pops up when you hit “message” from the Facebook app, once you click on it the bar within the tool, you can easily jump back to where you were. It’s incredibly easy to implement; the open source SDK has one line of code to send a user across apps on whatever platform – one line of code. Official partners include Quip, Spotify, Redfin, Pinterest, Vimeo, Hulu, Rdio and Tumblr, but all Facebook apps will now deep link into other apps. Visit www.applinks.org for additional details.

3. Audience Network

Mark unveiled the Audience Network towards the end of the presentation, and he was visibly excited about it. The core goals of this year’s f8 (build, grow, monetize) are embodied in this rollout, which will help developers advertise and expand their business beyond Facebook and into other apps throughout a galaxy of over 1 million advertisers. Facebook’s other goal, putting people first, also comes into play as the focus of the network is to provide ads that are targeted exactly to the people most likely to appreciate them. For marketers who are used to advanced advertising on Facebook, the Audience Network still offers the same measurement tools, as well as familiar targeting types like Custom Audiences, core audiences and lookalike audiences. From the sound of it, developers will be thrilled — reporting, billing and measurement are all taken care of. As a use case, Target talked about finding customers who might be interested in purchasing Frozen on the Huffington Post (most likely the Parenting section). Learn more here.

Privacy

Aside from the major announcements about mobile, privacy was a primary concern during the keynote. Over ten years of Facebook’s existence, users have demanded more control over how they share their information and how the apps use that data. Facebook listened. As of today, you can now edit line by line what data you want to share with apps — and your friends can no longer share your data without permission. As a bonus, if you want to try out an app without sharing information like email, you can use “anonymous login” and will see a “you’re undercover” sign-in screen. These new privacy measures put people first.

What’s Next?

According to Zuckerberg, f8 will be held every year going forward, around the end of April/beginning of May. The social network will continue to build a platform that spans and unites all other platforms, tearing down silos and helping developers ship better apps under a new motto: “Move fast with stable infra.” This unsexy battle cry is the sign of a more mature Facebook, as it focuses on being functional, supportive, and above all friendly to users concerned with privacy as they share, engage and learn on the platform.

We believe in the in-house advertiser. 31

Nanigans | Advertising Automation Software