Tim Nichols is a founding partner at ExactDrive, a digital media buying agency with white label, reseller and managed service options available. ExactDrive plans, manages, and optimizes online advertising campaigns with the objective of delivering measurable value and empowering clients to find precisely targeted audiences. ExactDrive has offices in Minneapolis, MN, Milwaukee, WI and SouthWest Florida.
Tim Nichols is also a contributing author on Forbes.com.
The University of Wisconsin - Madison is the largest and oldest public university in the state of Wisconsin. ExactDrive is excited to be seeking interns from UW - Madison (home to Bucky Badger), a highly regarded and selective research university located in Madison, Wisconsin. This is just the start of the strategy to expand our office location in Milwaukee, WI and we are excited to get started.
Intern position details are below:
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Search retargeting is the first cousin of website retargeting and they often get along wonderfully when working and coupled together as a two-punch online advertising strategy. Different than website retargeting, which focuses on displaying advertisements only to people that have previously visited a specific website, search retargeting focuses on displaying ads to people that have previously searched for specific keywords or keyword phrases.
Simply put, search retargeting is a highly effective way to target people who have proven to be interested in certain topics, services and/or products based on their search history.
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There are two primary types of online media buying: Managed and RTB (Real-time bidding). Not all buying strategies use optimization to determine a bid amount. It is therefore critical that you understand which buying strategy the ad platform or ad network you are working with is using.
Managed
Managed buying refers to a situation where an ad platform or ad network is buying inventory from a publisher with which they have a direct financial relationship. This is also known as Buying Direct Inventory, which involves pre-brokered agreements between an advertiser and publisher to deliver a certain amount of specific inventory for a preset cost. Managed bids are always based on booked revenue. Only one Managed bidding strategy utilizes optimization:
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Before deciding how ExactDrive should serve a third-party creative, you must determine the ad tag format: HTML or JavaScript. HTML creatives are easily recognizable by their angle brackets (e.g. <html>). Your browser is designed to read HTML. We often see issues where the ad tag was labeled with the wrong tag format.
JavaScript, on the other hand, is a scripting language that defines variables and functions, which result in a certain output. ExactDrive must wrap JS creatives in HTML so that the browser is told that it is looking at a language. Note that often JavaScript ad tags come pre-wrapped in HTML, but do not be fooled. If the JS is surrounded by HTML markup tags, then the creative is HTML.
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Online advertising can be stressful on a good day. On a bad day, it can generate a lot of fear and self-doubt. Lets discuss how to be aware of the fear and self-doubt and get it under control so you can spend the extra energy on managing a successful online advertising campaign.
Imagine The Following Scenario: You are an owner of an Italian restaurant in Chicago. Actually, you just opened your third location and the financial pressure is immense, expectations from your silent partner are growing and your wife is wondering when you are going to start spending more time at home seeing your family.
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You can now process payments and fund your online advertising campaigns by credit card!
We are excited to announce that ExactDrive ad platform users can now process payments and fund their account using credit cards. This feature has been under request for several months and we are very excited to be rolling it out live.
We will accept and process major domestic and International debit or credit cards, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club and JCB. Users can add and utilize several credit cards at will, processing different amounts per credit card, making it easier to manage payments for different campaigns and clients.
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I recently came across infogr.am, a website that turns creating interactive infographics into an easy task. With a feature set that gives you enough flexibilty to customize and an interface that makes it easy to understand the process, I decided to test it out, especially since ExactDrive will be releasing online advertising industry research reports moving forward, we needed to find an infographic creation software partner.
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During Q4 2013 we announced that advertising clients and resellers using our advertising platform could advertise on Facebook’s News Feed in addition to advertising on Facebook’s Right-Hand Side. Media buying partners, clients and resellers were all very excited and the popularity of the additional quality inventory has been well received. A little over 4 months later we continue to receive a series of general questions about advertising on Facebook, specifically about creatives being displayed on the Facebook Right-Hand Side. Below we have provided answers to the most popular questions being asked.
What is a Facebook Right-Hand Side creative?
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There’s no doubt that when NFL Super Bowl XLVIII kicks off on February 2 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos it is going to be a very tough fought and exciting game to watch.
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I have been an entrepreneur and a business owner one way or another in the online advertising industry since 2003. That's a healthy amount of time thinking about competitive advantages, payroll, regular banner ads Vs. dynamic display ads, campaign optimization strategies, brand safety, growth opportunities and so on.
I’d like to share a few insights that I have picked up along the way. Some thoughts are online advertising focused and others are just thoughts.
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