Two days of stifling heat in New York City gave way to an amazing thunderstorm this afternoon, and Mike Bagliebter captured this image looking out our office's south window: lightning bolt striking the Freedom Tower!

adMarketplace is a platform fueled by performance data and built for advertisers to access search channels outside of the major engines. Data-sharing is crucial to the success of any campaign, and can come in many fashions: dynamic variable pass-back (keyword, source, etc), engagement metrics by referrer URL, ranking top revenue sources. But the ideal, most accurate way to track and share data with our platform is by implementing the adMarketplace tracking pixel.

If you're not familiar with pixel placement, it is a transparent image placed on the "Thank You" page of your client's offer to record a full conversion. The success rate for clients using this tracking method is staggering. Roughly 85% of advertisers who provide sufficient, relevant performance data via pixel increase their budgets since our analysts and technology are able to more readily pinpoint efficient sources and keywords.

In addition to tracking via pixel, we work with many bid/analytics platforms, including but not limited to Kenshoo, Atlas, Omniture and Google Analytics.

adMarketplace should be viewed as an extension of your search strategy. By re-allocating 10-20% of incremental spend from Google to adMarketplace, advertisers extend their ROI instead of being forced to bid on terms that are low volume and not profitable. Advertisers are unable to access our search channels when they are only on Google, and this is an easy way to increase visibility and therefore profitability.

So talk to your Account Manager about placing a pixel; it's the best way to take advantage of all adMarketplace has, and very soon will have, to offer.

Last month we shared tips and stats to help plan your Mother’s Day PPC campaigns; with Father’s Day fast approaching, it’s time to do the same for the men in your and your customers’ lives.

If you haven’t updated your ad copy or landing page yet, it’s not too late. A whopping 79% of shoppers won’t purchase gifts until a week before June 17th (18% even wait until the day itself). Compare that to Mother’s Day, where over half of shoppers purchased gifts more than two weeks prior.

And while customers won’t open their wallets quite as wide on Father’s Day as on Mother’s Day (when they spent an average of $152), the average person will still spend $117, 8.5% more than last year, according to a National Research Federation (NRF) survey.

The NRF also found that “online retailers will see their fair share of ‘traffic’ this year as well – nearly three in 10 (28.4%) will shop online, up from 22.1 percent who said so last year.” More money spent online creates greater opportunities to reach new customers. But how will you find them? And how will they find you?

1. Know what customers are buying.
Here’s the lowdown as provided by the NRF:

- Special outing, such as golfing, eating out or heading to a sporting event: $2.3 billion (vs. $2.0 billion last year)
- Electronic gift items: $1.7 billion (vs. $1.3 billion last year)
- Apparel: $1.7 billion (vs. $1.4 billion last year)
- Gift cards: $1.7 billion
- Sporting goods: $641 million
- Books or music: $645 million

2. Update ad creative.
Have any Father’s Day deals or discounts? Highlight them. Offer overnight shipping? Let customers know. As comScore reports, 30% of online shoppers expect overnight shipping options, and 42% abandon shopping carts because of too long delivery timing estimates.

3. Create a Father’s Day-centric landing page.
Centralizing specials and offers right on one page makes for a quicker and easieping experience.

Are fathers getting what they want? Despite increased spending on electronic gifts, one TechBargains.com survey, though perhaps a trifle biased, states that while almost half of dads want a tech gift, less than a quarter will get one. More helpful stats in this infographic:

The final installment in our look at Distribution Channels focuses on that most ubiquitous of modern technologies, the smartphone.

With each new model, app launch, and additional G, smartphones keep getting smarter, faster, and even more indispensible. No surprise, then, that their value to advertisers has increased exponentially.

Are you working with adMarketplace to ensure your ads are shown to the more than 100 million smartphone users in the US?

Quantity alone is not the only benefit. Mobile advertising comes with some other advantages:

Following a brief hiatus due to breaking Yahoo news, Mother’s Day, and SIS Captiva, we’re back with our latest installment in our series on adMarketplace’s Traffic Sources. This week: Rollover/In-Text.

If you’ve ever read an article with a specific word or phrase double-underlined so when you hover over it an ad appears, you’ve encountered rollover in-text ads.

These types of ads work very well for advertisers as they allow them to source traffic based on very specific keyword targeting. These rollover ads also allow advertisers to gain access to unique inventory on a CPC basis, rather than the normal CPM-based banner ads normally seen on content and article sites.

"From a traffic quality standpoint, we have found rollover in-text inventory to perform very well across advertisers in a wide array of verticals,” says adMarketplace Director of Account Management Mateo Llinas. “Due to the nature of this traffic, and the high-intent quality of the users, rollover in-text traffic typically exceeds expectations when optimized appropriately.”

Rollover ads benefit consumers as the ads are more relevant due to the fact that they are selected based on the content of the page, and embedded directly into that content. Since most of these in-text ads are in actual content articles related to a specific subject, the users are not just casual surfers; rather they are reading content online instead of skimming over it. These are highly-interested users looking to garner information on a specific topic.

By being engaged and interested in the article’s subject, these people can be viewed as high-intent users. For instance, if a user interested in organic food is reading an article about healthy recipes, he or she would more likely be receptive to food-related ads. Thus, when the user’s cursor rolls over the underlined text for, say, “chicken” or “quinoa”, he or she will see, read, and click the ad – quite a few steps to get to the advertiser's landing page, but since the user is already interested in the subject, rollover in-text ads engage at a higher rate than is seen on various other types of inventory.

Quinoa is healthy for you and simple to cook; rollover ads are healthy for your CPA and simple to manage.

Read previous entries on traffic sources here:

Part 4: Email
Part 3: Toolbar Search Party
Part 2: Mastering Type-In Domain Traffic
Part 1: Flipping Through the Distribution Channels