Over the last decade there have been several game changing moments in the progress of online advertising.  The biggest was the birth and rapid growth of search engine advertising, which spawned SEO and PPC. Search advertising enabled marketers to target their desired audience based on users’ declared intent (as evidenced by their searches), and to bid and optimize at the individual keyword level.  Search advertising was the first type of advertising that incorporated impression level decision making in real time.

Now in 2012 display marketers have finally found a solution that combines the keyword element-level control of search and the massive reach of display.  The solution is Simpli.fi.

We recently sat down with Simpli.fi’s Chief Revenue Officer, James Moore, for a Q & A on what it means to be a transparent platform leading the search retargeting revolution.

Inventory

Q: Tell us a bit about Simpli.fi’s reach.

A: Simpli.fi is accessing billions of daily impressions across more than a dozen leading ad exchanges, ad networks and publishers with their own SSP. The bottom line is we can get your message to the right consumer if they are online via a desktop, mobile phone or tablet device.

Q: Will you share your traffic sources? 

A: Of course.  We are happy to disclose our traffic sources for display inventory.  We average more than 200k auctions per second across a vast reach of publishers.  We can provide a complete list of sites where we see impressions on a domain or subdomain level or our clients can view the list in real time by logging into our platform. We work with over 12 exchanges, some of which include: Appnexus, Rubicon, AdBrite, Doubleclick and Right Media. We also have direct integrations with the SSPs and exchanges we work with.

Q: Can you whitelist or blacklist sights? 

A: Yes.  Brand safety whitelist and blacklists, industry specific lists or keyword buys across the entire inventory.  Every clients needs are different. We have our own technology that aids in ensuring optimum brand safety, and often we integrate with DoubleVerify or other third party ad safety vendors at client’s request.

Pricing 

Q: What type of pricing does your platform support? 

A: No two client’s needs are exactly the same,  advertisers need a partner who is flexible and 100% transparent, for that reason, we find it imperative to provide options when it comes to pricing. Based on campaign needs, we will do a max bid CPM or a dynamic CPM, and we also offer CPC pricing.  Either way, we can adjust bidding at the keyword level based on performance.

Q: Will you ever buy the media at one price and charge your client another? 

A: Of Course not, we are a true platform.  You will know the true CPM and eCPC for your campaign overall, and on a keyword level.  Knowing the clearing cost, share of voice on a domain level and adjusting accordingly is central to performance and provides a huge amount of insight for the advertiser.

Performance

Q: In the end what matters most is hitting campaign goals.  Can you speak to Simpli.fi’s technology and “element level” targeting method, and how both contribute to performance?

A: Simpli.fi has built a proprietary technology to collect intent based data on virtually every consumer online in an unstructured manner.  Element level targeting simply out performs pre-built data segments, slow building cookie pools and black box optimization because each campaign aspect can be adjusted at any time during the campaign based on performance. Before a campaign starts, I can tell you on a keyword by keyword basis exactly how many unique prospects we see in the market you want to target, how many impressions are available, and what share of voice you can achieve based on different pricing strategies, in order to get a more accurate picture of delivery.  Further, once we get a conversion pixel placed, we can identify the search history or site visitors who are coming to your website. In short, we don’t guess.

Q: Will the search retargeting campaign build slowly like traditional retargeting campaigns? 

A: Not with Simpli.fi.  We have a proprietary technology that allows us to scale instantly so that campaigns are full strength day one and any optimization changes are instantly effective.

Q: Can you personalize the creative? 

A: We support static, flash and various rich media formats.  Delivering a relevant message based on the keyword searched is important and Simpli.fi has the solution. We also support dynamic display, and can drive it from the keyword searched and many other variables..

Q: What makes Simpli.fi optimization perform so well?

A: Setting aside the seriously experienced AdOps and CS teams, performance is impacted by advanced algorithms making data connections faster than the brain can think and act, trillions of decisions per second, to give you a more accurate idea. The secret sauce is that we can optimize and report on the most granular element level.  Prebuilt segments are simply a dated methodology we have long since replaced.

Q: How granular can the reporting get?

A: We offer the most granular reporting in the industry.  Typical reports include:  conversion, impression and click performance by keyword, domain, context, traffic source, time of day, keyword recency and more.   You can log into our user interface or call customer service to run a single report or schedule  recurring report. We also have a fully functional API (application programming interface).

Q: Are you just a retargeting company?

A: Not at all.  We are a full element-level digital advertising platform that includes powerful DSP, DMP, and SSP features.   Isn’t that a mouth full?  We are able leverage programmatic media buying to meet virtually any goal through a combination of high performing tactics including search retargeting, site retargeting, contextual targeting, demographic targeting and more.  In the end our success speaks for itself.  We have more than 10,000 campaigns, rapid employee expansion, and regularly returning clients with expanding budgets.