Network Optimization and Pixels

Obviouslt one of the most important (if not THE most important) aspects of optimization is properly attributing conversion to the effort/spend.

If you run a lot of networks in your media campaign your pixels may be overwriting or wrongly attributing data. What happens is this: you launch a CPA, CPC and CPM campaign in the hopes of reaching your target audience and producing revenue at a specific ROI. You add in a high reach retargeting network because it makes sense and past tests show it has a high ROI. The results come in and the only buy working is the retargeting buy. You think wow that's really the only thing working...Here is where you are more than likely wrong! It's not that your other buys aren't working, it's just that the high reach retargeting buy is overwriting the cookies because it is the last ad the user viewed before the purchase. This doesn't mean the user actually clicked on it, it just means it was showed to them after the others, probably because the network has that much inventory and since you aren't frequency capping it is just hammering your audience with ads.

Moral of the story is make sure your ad server is attributing the cookie to the appropriate impression, you are watching/testing your frequency caps and maybe most importabtly you are planning your intiatives so they can be analyzed and optimized.