The Power of Native: Simpli.fi’s Unparalleled Native Solutions

1 Hello and welcome to The Simpli.fi Webinar Series. I’m David McBee. Thanks for joining us each month for industry news, interviews, product rollouts and training on all things related to targeted advertising and connected TV. The Simpl.fi webinar series is available on demand with new episodes posted each month at simpli.fi/webinars along with all of our previously recorded episodes. It's November 2023 and in this month’s webinar, we’ll be discussing Simpli.fi’s powerful and unique native advertising strategies. 2 Simpli.fi's acquisition of Bidtellect in March 2023 brings together two highly complementary DSPs. While Simpli.fi excels in unstructured data solutions like keyword search retargeting, geofencing, and addressable solutions, Bidtellect's DSP has a rich history of innovation in native and contextual advertising since 2014. In today's webinar, we will explore how we set ourselves apart from other platforms. Our strengths in native activation lie in our unmatched native supply publisher ecosystem, diverse native formats for different goals, and proprietary contextual targeting. We've discovered the power of seamlessly blending ads into publisher and content environments, creating a significant advantage for brands. We'll also look at our performance capabilities, featuring a context-driven algorithm and cookieless solutions rooted in contextual relevance. Additionally, we offer unique attribution tools to boost site traffic, an in-house creative studio for native assets, and enhanced reporting for valuable audience and contextual insights to shape future strategies. Stay tuned as we dive deeper into these topics throughout the presentation. 3 Let's things kick off with a fundamental look at what native advertising entails. 4 Native ads seamlessly blend into the publisher's pages where they are displayed. Simplifi's native technology utilizes straightforward creative elements: a headline, supporting copy, imagery, and a "sponsored by" tag. These elements are dynamically rendered across our extensive network of integrated publishers to create an authentically organic advertising experience. 5 Advertisers are increasingly finding value in native ads and we are nearing a hundred billion dollars in annual spend as evidence of native’s effectiveness. 6 The real allure of native advertising lies in its ability to enhance the consumer experience. Unlike disruptive ad formats that interrupt browsing, native ads never take the form of annoying pop-ups or pre-roll videos. Instead, they organically appear on the page, allowing users the choice to engage or not. This user-centric approach benefits both prospects and brands, leading to increased quality site engagement and traffic. Native advertising excels not only in driving high click volumes but also in delivering higher quality clicks from genuinely interested prospects. Our measurement tools track various attribution and data metrics, including time spent on site, bounce rates, cost per site visit, and other indicators of qualified site traffic. This data reinforces the value of native advertising in today's digital landscape. Content syndication is a crucial aspect of what native advertising can achieve. Native ads effectively serve as teasers for articles and other content pieces. In specific industries like pharmaceuticals, healthcare, finance, and B2B, where educating audiences about complex products is essential, native advertising shines. It provides a seamless way to embed brand content within relevant contextual online environments. We offer support for various formats, including video, display, rich media, and high-impact ads. These formats empower brands to achieve their desired outcomes across the entire sales funnel, whether it's building upper-funnel awareness, driving mid-funnel engagement, or securing lower-funnel conversions. Moreover, the current shift towards cookieless advertising is a significant industry trend. Native advertising is well-suited for this landscape as it relies on contextual page-level data sourced from our publishers, rather than relying on audience or user data. This approach ensures privacy compliance and effectiveness in a cookieless environment. 7 Now, let's dive into Simpli.fi's distinctive native contextual solutions that set us apart in the realm of native advertising. 8 First and foremost, our access to inventory and publisher supply is unparalleled. Simpli.fi currently stands as the largest global access point for native inventory. We draw from a vast network of over 30 SSP and exchange partners. To put it into perspective, think of Simpli.fi as a mega-aggregator of native inventory, providing a gateway to the entire native programmatic supply ecosystem. Our reach extends across various publishers, as shown on the right-hand side of this slide. We don't limit ourselves to specific brand categories; instead, we support a diverse range of verticals and can align with any publisher's content or contextual strategies. Given the sheer scale of our inventory, encompassing billions of bids and impressions each month, maintaining supply quality is paramount. To address this, Simpli.fi has developed proprietary tools for measuring and optimizing inventory, particularly focusing on brand-safe environments, sites with good viewability, and sites that are not susceptible to fraud. Moreover, we have established pre-bid integrations with industry leaders such as Integral Ad Science (IAS) and Peer 39. These integrations enable us to target specific viewability percentages, catering to advertisers with precise goals in mind. We take safety seriously, offering anti-targeting measures against unsafe content at the individual article page and keyword levels, effectively shielding brands from potentially harmful environments. Lastly, to combat fraud, all native campaigns running through Simpli.fi benefit from IAS's gold standard pre-bid integration for fraud protection. We're dedicated to delivering a high-quality and secure advertising ecosystem for our clients. 9 Simpli.fi's native offering encompasses a wide variety of native ad formats, including native display, native video, and various high-impact units. 10 This is a classic and highly effective native display ad. It typically consists of a static image and some text. What sets it apart is its ability to seamlessly blend in with the page's font styles, layout, colors, and other elements. This organic integration makes it stand out from traditional display ads, eliminating the typical "ad polish" you often encounter. Apart from a discreet "sponsored content" label, native display ads hardly appear to be ads at all. These versatile native ads can serve multiple purposes across the entire sales funnel. Whether you're aiming to build branding and awareness, drive click-through rates (CTR) in the middle of the funnel, engage users with content, or achieve cost-per-action (CPA) and conversion goals, native display ads are well-suited. And because they seamlessly blend with the surrounding organic content, they don't occupy a corner or column of the page that users tend to overlook, ensuring better visibility and engagement. 11 Native in-content ads appear between two paragraphs in an article 12 Native out-content ads appear on the right rail of a website. 13 Rec widgets are native ads that appear in-line with the publisher’s “recommended viewing” content. 14 In-Ads are native ads within a leaderboard rectangle, or skyscraper ad space. These ads often mimic the look and feel of the page’s original content. 15 Simpli.fi offers an array of video formats and high-impact options. Take, for instance, native video, which seamlessly integrates native assets into publisher pages. These videos come complete with a headline and copy, delivering a captivating and cohesive brand experience. For advertisers with goals centered around video completion rates or building brand awareness, native video and our high-impact rich units are ideal choices. They excel in achieving these objectives by delivering engaging and memorable content. 16 Out-Stream ads have the versatility to appear as videos expanding amidst paragraphs in an article, seamlessly blending into feeds like native ads, or vertically slotting in between content within a mobile app. 17 Reveal ads allow you to share additional content, ideal for adding more text or even a disclosure to an ad. 18 Consider this native rich unit. Cinemagraphs employ animated GIFs within the ad itself, adding a dynamic and visually striking element to your advertising. 19 In addition to native video and rich units, we offer the versatility of carousels within a single ad unit. These carousels allow you to showcase multiple products, each accompanied by various images, headlines, captions, and URLs. This dynamic format provides a highly engaging and interactive way to present a range of offerings to your audience. 20 Engage your audience with a single, vertical image that tracks their scrolling on the page. This ad unit generates in-page motion within a single ad slot, making it an excellent choice for boosting mobile engagement. 21 The scroller employs a parallax effect to present up to three images that dynamically shift in response to the user's vertical movement on the page. 22 Utilize native pharma creative to engage and educate users while addressing industry challenges. Ensure compliance with HIPPA, GDPR, and CCPA. Offer MLR creative support and integrate pharma-specific audience data. Measure performance with metrics like scrip lift, brand study, and NPI reporting. Utilize pharma ad units for both branded ISI and unbranded content. Implement intelligent creative controls for both branded (ISI) and unbranded formats. Guarantee brand safety and viewability, and employ contextual alignment and interest targeting for effective campaigns. 23 Simpli.fi understands the importance of simplifying the creative process for our valued brand and agency partners. That's why we offer the convenience of our in-house Creative Development team. Engaging with this team offers two key approaches to creating assets: One, Repurposing Existing Assets: For brands looking to extend their social media assets to the open web, this option is ideal. We can seamlessly adapt Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn assets to fit contextually relevant open web publisher environments. And Two, Creating Custom Ads: Alternatively, we can craft custom ads by leveraging the copy and images from the advertiser's website or landing page. Our team can develop several versions of ads that align with our specifications. We're committed to a quick turnaround, with ads ready for your team's review within 48 hours of receiving social media assets or permission to use a URL for ad development. It's important to note that our Creative Development team provides these services at no cost, regardless of the campaign's size. We believe in eliminating any creative barriers that could impede your campaigns' success. 24 In a world where audience targeting often takes the spotlight, let's look at the significance of contextual targeting. 25 Contextual targeting empowers advertisers to align their ads with pertinent content, reaching audiences interested in specific topics. It analyzes content context, like keywords and visitor demographics, boosting engagement and performance. As privacy regulations and cookie limitations grow, contextual targeting becomes vital for personalized ad delivery without relying on personal data. These ads seamlessly blend with the content users visit, connecting with potential customers when their intent is evident. Simpli.fi capitalized on this trend, acquiring Bidtellect, a leader in contextual targeting and optimization, after witnessing remarkable performance in this space. 26 A mix of proprietary solutions and third-party offerings, means that Simpli.fi’s targeting options are applicable at all stages of the sales funnel. Let’s dive into each of these. 27 Our first capability is standard contextual alignment targeting. This allows us to precisely target ads based on the subject or category of a webpage. For instance, we can target ads on Forbes.com for finance or ZDnet for technology. We've established partnerships with over 50 diverse site categories, including style and fashion, B2B, technology, and more. 28 In cases where brands seek a more surgical approach to contextual alignment, we've developed our own keyword-based targeting method. This strategy analyzes the keywords found on a page, going beyond the stated category to ensure ads are placed on pages that closely align with the advertiser's desired keywords. This precision ensures a more tailored advertising approach. 29 In addition to our contextual targeting capabilities, we've also introduced our predictive audience targeting. This innovative approach is crafted from online contextual engagement indicators. We monitor user interactions with various types of content and group them into audiences based on the recency and frequency of their content engagement. For instance, if we observe a user engaging with five travel and tourism articles and pieces of content in a given week, it strongly suggests they are planning a trip. We've developed over 30 different categories of recency and frequency engagers with content, spanning areas such as style and fashion, travel, business, and more. This enables us to target individuals based on the specific types of articles they're actively engaging with. 30 We offer a unique approach to demographic targeting known as "context demographics," which doesn't rely on cookies for demographic-based targeting. Unlike the conventional method employed by most platforms, which involves third-party audience segments, our approach is both cookieless and accurate. Our native demographic solution relies on site traffic analytics data rather than cookies, making it a future-proof cookieless approach. For instance, we know that ESPN's audience primarily consists of males aged 18 to 35, while oprah.com caters more to females aged 45 to 64. When we implement demographic-based targeting, we identify sites that have a strong skew towards these specific demographics. We leverage data directly from these sites and publishers themselves, eliminating the need for cookies. This represents another step towards a cookieless and future-proof solution provided by Simpli.fi. 31 We've also harnessed the power of proprietary contextual targeting through a strategic partnership with Bombora, a renowned DMP tailored for B2B advertisers. Bombora specializes in creating personas based on job titles, company lists, and other account-based marketing criteria. We can tap into Bombora's extensive library of key audience personas to benefit Simpli.fi clients. Some examples of these personas include small business decision makers, household professionals, and IT decision makers. We utilize the data associated with these personas to gain insights into the types of content they actively engage with. Subsequently, we've developed contextual targeting solutions centered around these high-value topics and contextual environments. For instance, we've discovered that IT decision makers frequently engage with content related to cloud computing, hardware, software, and big data. This insight enables us to align our clients' ads contextually. This exclusive capability is unique to the Simpli.fi DSP, as it was created in partnership with Bombora. 32 We also provide retargeting and re-engagement targeting tactics, ideal for lower-funnel initiatives. Whether it's retargeting users based on their website traffic or re-engaging users who have already been served an ad, these tactics are highly effective. For instance, you can target a user with a video or high-impact ad to generate awareness and then follow up with a native display ad as they progress through the purchase funnel. In addition to our core targeting strategies, we embrace audience-based buying as part of our comprehensive approach. We offer access to a vast array of third-party demographic audience segments that leverage behavioral, psychographic, and shopper data. For brands and agencies that have invested resources and time in crafting specific audience strategies, we offer first-party data integrations with leading CRM data platforms such as LiveRamp, Adobe, Oracle, and Salesforce. If your first-party data resides within these platforms, you can seamlessly activate it with Simpli.fi. 33 One of the standout features that sets Simpli.fi's native platform apart is our exceptional performance-driven approach. Optimization and reporting ensure that a campaign is delivering on the advertiser’s KPIs. 34 Our optimization algorithm is a powerful blend of contextual relevance and another cookieless approach. We leverage some distinctive data points for real-time campaign optimization, starting with real-time contextual data. When you launch a campaign with Simpli.fi, we quickly gather insights into the top-performing sites, contextual environments, articles, and contextual keywords. With this valuable dataset, we automatically allocate budget towards those publishers and contextual environments that are proving to be the most effective, ensuring that your campaign stays on track towards your KPIs. What truly sets us apart is our unique integration with publishers. Unlike other DSPs or platforms, we integrate at the ad placement level. Here, "placement" refers to a static ad slot on a publisher's page. In this image, the top-right corner features ad slot number one, while the ad centered below the first six tiles resides in slot number two. Our partner publishers offer a range of ad slots, from one to potentially ten, each yielding varying performance metrics. For instance, an ad placed above the fold typically garners a higher click-through rate (CTR), engagement, and viewability score compared to a bottom-of-the-page ad. This allows us to strategically select the most effective ad slots to assist our advertisers in achieving their objectives. Beyond the broader contextual context, we fine-tune our efforts at the individual ad placement level. We also look at domains, devices, times of day and Days of week. These additional layers of data empower us to evaluate successful strategies, make necessary adjustments, and optimize ad placements for superior outcomes. 35 In response to feedback from our agency and brand partners, we've developed a proprietary measurement and attribution solution tailored to focus on site engagement and the generation of qualified site traffic, which we call an "engagement score." Here's how it works: We place an engagement pixel on landing pages and content pages, enabling us to meticulously measure, report, and optimize campaigns based on essential site engagement metrics. These metrics include bounce rate, average time on site, and visits per click. This approach not only allows us to generate high volumes of clicks but, more importantly, ensures that we drive the most qualified site traffic to our clients' websites. It's a game-changer for brands looking to maximize the impact of their advertising efforts beyond just click-through rates. 36 Let’s touch on insights and reporting. Simpli.fi has developed unique tools when it comes to building insights that will fuel future strategies. Our standard reporting covers essential metrics like impressions, clicks, CTC, and conversions, providing a comprehensive view of campaign performance. Unique to Simpli.fi is our engagement reporting, driven by the engagement score previously mentioned. This allows us to highlight the sites, creatives, or tactics driving increased time on site, page views, qualified site visits, and reduced bounce rates. We prioritize integration with third-party measurement partners, encompassing brand safety, ad quality, viewability, brand studies, and foot traffic conversions. Our extensive vetting ensures compatibility with a wide range of measurement solutions, aligning with specific client needs. Our advanced user insights dashboard offers a deeper dive into demographics, empowering you to pinpoint the most responsive audience segments for your ads and site visitors. Lastly, our proprietary contextual reporting can discover the best performing sites, site categories, keywords, and sentiment-based trends. 37 To simplify the complexity of campaign management and assist brands in making informed decisions, we've created a guide. This resource helps brands navigate the native advertising landscape, offering insights into the optimal creative formats and recommended targeting strategies based on a full-funnel approach and individual KPIs. For clients focusing on low-funnel metrics such as COPA and ROAS goals, for example, employing native display with a combination of contextual targeting, retargeting, leveraging 1st party and CRM data, and implementing re-engagement tactics is ideal. 38 Today, we’ve highlighted the key features of Simpli.fi's native advertising offerings, including extensive inventory access, a plethora of cookieless solutions, and unique targeting options. Our unique engagement score and context-driven optimization strategies ensure strong performance. Our insights and reporting tools, along with a guide for creative formats and targeting tactics, help brands make the most of native advertising. Thank you for joining us today. If you have questions about Simpli.fi’s offerings, please reach out to your Simpli.fi account manager or send an email to hi@simpli.fi.