Dynamic Display with Tumri’s AdPod

Tumri, a company located in Google’s home base of Mountain View, California, has developed a technology which automates the creative elements of display ad units.

Unlike the traditional, self-contained display ad unit, Tumri’s AdPod has been developed to construct display ad units in real-time. The ad unit is broken down into a template with various subcomponents. These subcomponents could be brand logo, background image, product image, offer/price, call to action, etc. Each of these subcomponents has the ability to be changed in real-time.

Last month Tumri announced Google’s certification of AdPod, which allows the platform to be used to display ads across Google’s content network.

Tumri’s President and CEO, Calvin Lui explains the benefits:

The obvious benefit is much greater relevancy in front of the consumer and a higher lift in response rates. Even more, there’s lower cost of production. In the traditional paradigm, the advertiser would need dozens of versions of hard assets. For example, if there’s an attempt to geo-target 30 DMAs, a male and female demographic, and numerous sub-demographics within each category, then you have multiple messages and format sizes. You put that all together and do the math, [and] you have hundreds, if not, thousands of possibilities; way too many to leverage effectively.

In actual practice, Tumri’s AdPod will serve as an advanced filter for Google’s content network. As a display ad is served on the content network, Google will pass along keyword information to Tumri, who will then adjust the subcomponents and messaging based on behavioral, contextual and demographic information related to the content. By analyzing the contextual information and mapping it with past search and behavioral patterns, Tumri believes to have a more relevant ad unit.

Ultimately, Tumri has developed a technology that renews the concept of contextually-placed display ads and with falling CPM prices, perhaps Tumri offers a solution to help those large networks more efficiently monetize content.

Clearly Google believes Tumri’s AdPod technology will boost click-through rates on the content network and more importantly drive revenue. Regardless of Tumri’s claim of greater relevancy and ability to rapidly A/B test, this doesn’t change user behavior. More often than not, consumers in the content network are in research mode or the initial stages of the buying cycle. The value would then seem limited to brand awareness and attempting to generate demand rather than capture it.

The click is only the initial step. I can drive all the traffic I want to my website, but if my site is not user-friendly, they’re simply not going to convert.

My point is that while the AdPod technology sounds impressive, an advertiser should be more concerned with investing in website usability. It’s not enough to get users to a website. Understanding how users interact with your site and why, helps marketers reveal those messages and elements with the most selling power.

While it starts with the click, post-click analysis leads to conversion improvement.