Atlas Blog

Atlas To Decommission Version 1 and Version 2 of Atlas Reporting API

2010-03-05T19:00:00Z

A note to all of our Atlas users: on Monday, March 15, 2010, we will decommission versions 1 and 2 of the Atlas Reporting API. This will impact your Media Console API usage if you have not yet updated your applications to use version 3.

Therefore, if you are using versions 1 or 2 of the Atlas Reporting API, you will need to update your application to use version 3, the current and most complete version of the Atlas Reporting API. You can access details on version 3 of the Reporting API here.

Please contact your Atlas representative if you have any concerns regarding this change, or reach out to the Atlas API team directly on the Atlas API Developer Forums on MSDN.

Improving Your Atlas Campaign Launch with a Little Bit of Love (Part 2)

2010-02-24T22:21:00Z

Richie Brown is a Learning and Development Consultant at Microsoft Advertising who focuses on the Atlas Advertiser Suite. Richie has a wealth of experience training new users on the Atlas Media Console, and he's agreed to share some of his wisdom here on the Atlas Blog. See below for part two of a two-part series. You can contact Richie at rbrown (at) microsoft.com or find him on Linkedin.

3. Love your clients. Love them, even if they keep you up until the wee hours of the night working on nicely formatted spreadsheets. Ensure they have action tags up and running correctly before the campaign launches because this will give you time for any special scripting and testing. Don't forget - the importance of testing skyrockets when you're running a sophisticated campaign that's focused on analyzing ROI. Sophisticated campaigns will use action tags to pass values like revenue, quantity, and product categories back to Atlas for reporting. As a best practice, provide your client with the Atlas Action Tag Scripting Implementation Guide. For QA, be sure to use the Monitor Actions report to see if your action tags are pinging the Atlas server. Run an Extended Data QA report if you're passing special values for reporting

4. Love your colleagues. Depending on your workflow and division of labor, your traffickers or ad operations team have stepped in to take care of ad assignments. Before trafficking your ads, show some love by having them use the very helpful tool, "View Ad Assignment Summary." Commonly accessed from the Media Plan or Buy Levels in the "Trafficking" menu, this will show all placements with any respective assigned ads. Ensure that you see an ad assignment under each placement. In addition, once they've trafficked the code to their inboxes, ask them to verify that all placement view and click redirects function correctly outside of the Media Console interface. For example, open the redirect attachments and test in a browser. Is the ad assigned to the correct placement? Does the correct creative appear and have a click-through when you test it? Does the click redirect take you to the proper landing page for this campaign? Many of our most successful clients use CT (customer targeting); contact us to learn why. If you're using CT, be sure to include width and height in your placement redirects.

5. Love yourself! You've spent so much time to make sure that all these other groups have what they need. Now it's time to focus on you. Are you using what's available in the Media Console to make easier and smarter optimization decisions? Try setting up and getting trained in Engagement Mapping. This is a powerful feature for which there is no extra charge; contact your Atlas account manager to learn how simple it is to get a sophisticated look into what's really driving conversions. Moreover, schedule daily reports to be delivered starting on day 1 of your campaign. Our scheduling feature allows you to have these reports start and stop when you wish, saving you the time and hassle of getting the reports yourself every day. Our Client Services group recommends scheduling a Campaign Summary by Placement or Campaign Summary by Creative for daily delivery when launching a new campaign. This standard report has all the good stuff you need to keep an eye on your campaign: clicks, impressions, conversions, and more.

Sure, these 5 steps don't cover everything, but it's a great start. Get the kudos you deserve by making sure you and your colleagues start your campaign well aware of your client goals, crucial metrics, the best Engagement Mapping conversion model, and what data and columns to look for in reporting. By showing some love for all the partner teams involved, you can make sure that your next campaign is an easy-to-manage, well-oiled machine.

A big thanks to MTS Team Members Sabrina A,, Traci B., Colleen K., Ben E., Mike R., and Roland C. for their contributions to this post.

Improving Your Atlas Campaign Launch with a Little Bit of Love (Part 1)

2010-02-18T21:49:48Z

Richie Brown is a Learning and Development Consultant at Microsoft Advertising who focuses on the Atlas Advertiser Suite. Richie has a wealth of experience training new users on the Atlas Media Console, and he’s agreed to share some of his wisdom here on the Atlas Blog. See below for part one of a two-part series. You can contact Richie at ribrown@microsoft.com or find him on Linkedin at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rbrown

Fellow media planners, traffickers/ad ops, creative teams in the trendy clothes, publishers, your boss, your Facebook page, and -- don’t forget--your clients: as a media planner, you have many partners to engage to launch a campaign. Given the challenges of coordination with so many people, it makes sense that another major challenge to launching a campaign is spotting mistakes before they occur.

I spoke with several members of the Atlas Media & Technology Service (MTS) teams, the Atlas Media Console wizards whom you and your colleagues contact for help and advice. I asked them what they recommend doing to pinpoint potential issues before a campaign goes live. The result of my interviews was an extensive list of how to do this best; after all, they love to help! So I’ve picked a few of their favorites and have thrown them into 5 categories. We’ll cover two today and three more next week.

What I noticed from all those who contributed is that a little TLC is a significant part of pulling off a successful campaign in the Atlas Media Console. Enjoy this unofficial, non-exhaustive guide to improving a campaign launch with a little bit of love.

1. Love your creative teams. Show these folks you care by giving them the creative guidelines for coding Flash ads before they design your creatives. The Media Console requires a few pieces of special Actionscript in Flash ads to function and track correctly. These guidelines describe how your designers can do this. Also, be sure to get a .gif or .jpeg alternate image for the Flash ads, and consider requesting an advertiser-level default ad for each placement size. Are you not using these default ads? This is highly recommended as a precaution should no ad be available to run in a live placement.

2. Love your publishers. Showing love for your publishers is easy when launching a campaign in the Media Console. First, verify with your publishers what delivery methods they accept. Communicate with them to clarify delivery method before you create your placements. This prevents both you and your publishers having to lose time when your campaign should already be live. If you do need to revise your delivery method in your placement, be sure to retraffic the code for those revised placements. Second, when you send them your trafficked redirects, include the Atlas Guide to Atlas Redirects for Publishers (contact us if you need a copy). This publisher guide outlines how to implement and make any necessary modification your Atlas tags without breaking their functionality. What are some examples of what publishers do with your Atlas tags?

i. Publisher-side click tracking

ii. Cache Busting

iii. Adding width and height dimensions,

iv. Masking the redirect in a newsletter,

v. Restricting redirects to call only one adTag or clickTag,

vi. Appending secondary URLs that will trump the Atlas clickthrough URL,

vii. Appending query strings, and

viii. Dynamic Variable Substitution.

Given all those different use cases for Atlas tags, a little advance communication will certainly go a long way towards a clean and easy campaign launch.

Check back next week for Part 2.

A big thanks to MTS Team Members Sabrina A,, Traci B., Colleen K., Ben E., Mike R., and Roland C. for their contributions to this post.

Atlas Is IPG’s New Go-To Technology Provider

2010-02-09T20:39:00Z

We’re happy to welcome our new partner, IPG, to the world of Atlas. IPG’s agencies, which include McCann-Erickson, Deutsch, Hill Holliday and more will now reap the benefits of Atlas ad-serving, industry-leading analytics and Engagement Mapping.

Per Forbes.com, in discussing the decision to work with Microsoft and Atlas, Quentin George, chief digital officer at Mediabrands, highlighted the flexibility of the Atlas platform. Given our recent investments in APIs, the launch of the Atlas Technology Partner Alliance, and the work we’re doing to knit Atlas into the fabric of enterprise business intelligence and workflow applications, we couldn’t agree more.

Be sure to check out the full article!

Introducing The Atlas Ad Assignment API

2010-02-05T00:59:46Z

This week, Atlas took another step towards offering an end-to-end trafficking API with the release of the Atlas Ad Assignment API.

The Atlas Ad Assignment API will enable Atlas clients and partners to manage and update the assignment of ads to placements within Atlas. In addition to the Ad Assignment API, we’ve also recently released some enhancements to our existing API for Creative Management that improve the service’s speed and performance.

This means that you can now create, edit, list and get properties on all of your campaigns on Atlas—from the media plan level all the way down to the placement level— and then assign ads to those placements via an API connection.

The Atlas Ad Assignment API is part of our continued efforts to offer an open and flexible platform that works for the changing needs of marketers. For technical information, point your team to our API documentation on MSDN. And for any other questions, including how you can use our APIs to your best advantage, please contact your Atlas representative.

Atlas Accreditations

2010-01-21T20:32:00Z

Periodically, we at Atlas receive questions from clients regarding organizations which have accredited our ad-serving procedures.

The questions can be thorny because third-party ad-servers, by definition, don’t house the full end-to-end ad-serving process, and so some aspects of Atlas’ ad serving are not under our control. Moreover, there are three types of approvals that fall under the common usage of “accreditation”:

True accreditation, which requires an audit process
Compliance with an industry group’s standards
Industry-group certification

However, we consider protecting the privacy of internet users and the stability and performance of our clients’ campaigns to be crucial to our way of doing business. Therefore, Atlas strives to be fully accredited by and compliant with the guidelines set out by credible industry groups. For example:

Atlas’ ad impression processing and reporting is accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC), which requires a yearly audit.

We are also in compliance with the guidelines set forth by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI).

For more information, contact your Atlas representative today.

Targeting with Atlas and Microsoft Media Network

2010-01-16T00:18:00Z

You probably know what you can do with Atlas Customer Targeting (CT) within the Atlas Media Console – create segments, target your messaging, and make sure you deliver the right message to the right audience.

But did you also know that using Atlas can make your media spend on the Microsoft Media Network (MMN) even more efficient?

While the MMN specializes in Behavioral Targeting, Category Targeting, and Profile Targeting, you can also use Atlas data to create a custom marketing segment and reach out to viewers who have already expressed interest in you.

With Atlas + MMN, you can identify potential customers, locate them online, and provide them with timely, relevant calls to action through our re-messaging program. To learn more about all of the ways Atlas integrates with the Microsoft Media Network to benefit you, contact your Atlas Rep today!

Happy Holidays from Atlas Blog

2009-12-22T00:31:47Z

We at Atlas would like to wish you happy holidays and a prosperous New Year. We won’t be posting next week, but please join us again during the week of January 4th for more information and tips on Atlas.

A Visit with Atlas EMEA

2009-12-17T18:41:18Z

This week, we spoke with André Knoche, a sales specialist in Atlas’ Hamburg office, to get a view of Atlas EMEA from the front lines.

How long have you been working in Atlas EMEA?

I joined Atlas in May 2007, a few weeks before Microsoft and aQuantive announced their merger (I didn’t know about this when I started though…)

Where did you work previously to joining our EMEA office?

I worked in ad operations at Universal McCann, and before that I worked at a small company that handled Atlas support for clients in Germany. Atlas didn’t have a presence in Germany then. I’ve worked with some of my colleagues in London for over four years now!

Wow, so you’re pretty well-established in the EMEA media world. Are there any significant differences between the EMEA market and the market in any other places you've worked?

While I have never worked outside of Europe, the multitude of languages and cultures is something that sets EMEA apart from other markets like the US. Also, on those rare occasions where we hold EMEA meetings, it’s always fun travelling to places like London or Paris and meeting with my colleagues from across Europe. We’re hoping to have our next meeting in Milan in the spring or summer of 2010 and after that it’ll probably be my turn to welcome everybody here in Hamburg.

What are some market trends in EMEA that you think that our clients worldwide should hear about?

I think the industry as a whole is focused on one thing right now: Efficiency. The advertisers and agencies we speak to are very interested in our Analytics offerings, such as Engagement Mapping or Campaign Builder, to truly understand which of their media buys provide value to them and which don’t.

The second part of the “efficiency story” is clients being more efficient in how they set up their ad operations, e.g. automating workflows for trafficking and reporting. The Atlas API offers a great solution and our clients are very keen to learn how to best leverage it for their own needs.

Lastly, Targeting, especially Re-Messaging, is a market segment that continues to show strong growth – another means for advertisers and agencies to buy their media more efficiently.

Anything else you think our readers could benefit from hearing?

Yes! Despite common belief, David Hasselhoff is not a national hero in Germany. He did however rock this unique leather coat on his appearance at the 1989/90 New Year’s celebration in Berlin.

Take Your Optimization to the Next Level with Atlas’ Advanced Analytics Pack

2009-12-10T22:15:00Z

Did you know that Atlas offers a suite of advanced analytics that allow you to get maximum leverage out of Atlas’ deep reporting capabilities? They’re part of the Advanced Analytics Pack (AAP), a modular reporting system designed to help Atlas clients improve media, creative, and website optimization.

We spoke to Atlas AAP guru—and director of the Microsoft Advertising Institute—Esco Strong. “The AAP was built to provide a scalable data and reporting offering that packages our historically most-requested reports with some innovative new offerings,” he said. “The AAP is designed to offer our clients an ‘all-you-can-eat’ data solution. While the AAP has been around for a while, we are always fine-tuning it and adding functionality.”

The AAP includes robust features such as:

· Search and Display Synergy analysis

· Geographic performance analysis

· Optimal Frequency analysis

· Campaign Builder tool

· Optimization Advisor tool

…And many more functions. Want to learn more? Contact your Atlas representative today.

The Latest on Mobile Ad-tracking with Atlas

2009-12-03T18:43:00Z

For our first post-Thanksgiving post, we sit down with Adam Cane, Atlas Sales Engineer, to talk turkey about our mobile offering.

Describe the mobile advertising market today.

Mobile advertising today is to some degree reminiscent of the early days of Internet Advertising; there isn't yet an agreed-upon standard for tracking conversions, and so click-through rate the primary success metric.

In addition, mobile advertising budgets are pretty small these days, but that will change in time as advertising continues to converge across mediums: TV, phone, and internet.

What specific changes do you see happening in the next 1-3 years?

As mobile advertising budgets grow, advertisers will demand better tracking and standards. The MMA (Mobile Marketing Association - essentially the IAB for Mobile) has released ad-serving standards as it relates to ad size and file size - but has yet to address what those in the mobile business think of as "the conversion conundrum:" How can advertisers accurately and impartially track conversions stemming from mobile campaigns; both post-view and post-click?

Why is that a problem?

Mobile technologies and vendors have typically resorted to server-side cookie technology to persistently track users and log conversions, unlike most internet advertisers, who can use browser-side cookies. However, most mobile vendors bundle their technologies with networks, which means that there's real demand for an unbiased party to track conversions.

So, is there an Atlas solution?

Yes. We're working to ensure that Atlas can offer the same unbiased 3rd-party tracking in Mobile as we do today with internet advertising. Atlas is currently testing with several mobile vendors to "retro-fit" Atlas web browser tracking onto mobile-served campaigns - inclusive of conversions. This will allow agencies and advertisers to manage their mobile campaigns the same way they do online, in addition to taking advantage of Atlas' unique product offerings like engagement mapping.

For more information about how Atlas can track mobile campaigns, please contact your Atlas representative.

Spotlight on Atlas Asia Pacific (APAC): Interview with Pete Cane, Sales Specialist

2009-11-25T18:35:00Z

Atlas Blog will be doing a regular feature spotlighting our offices around the world. It's a chance for our readers to get a direct perspective on the global market for media management technology This week, we have an interview with Pete Cane, a Sales Specialist in our Asia Pacific (APAC) headquarters in Sydney, Australia.

How long have you been working in Atlas APAC?
I’ve been working with Atlas APAC since May 2008, a little over 18 months.

Where did you work previously to joining our APAC office?
I worked in a local company called Clear Light Digital which resold Atlas’ Publisher Ad Serving platforms, and was also a customer of Atlas Media Console. I’ve been around the media and ad serving world in one way or another since the late 90’s.

Are there any significant differences between the APAC market and the market in any other places you've worked?
The APAC region is interesting in that it doesn’t behave like a single homogenous market at all. It’s made up of many very diverse markets, each with their own media landscape. In APAC, we have everything from countries with huge scale and growing media sophistication like China and India, all the way to more mature, but smaller-scale markets like New Zealand, and lots of variations in between.

What are some market trends in APAC that you think that our clients worldwide should hear about?
The biggest ad serving trends in APAC that we’re seeing are reporting, analytics and system integrations.

Agencies and advertisers need much faster access to their campaign data. Customised dashboard solutions which plug into multiple reporting sources are in great demand at the moment. Pulling multiple reports from your systems just to see if a campaign is on track is (thankfully!) becoming a thing of the past. The challenge is that different campaigns have very different measures of success, so you need the ability to customise your dashboard. Atlas and Microsoft have some great solutions here, and we’re busy working with our clients to roll these out.

Anything else you think our readers could benefit from hearing?
Like a lot of markets around the world, APAC in 2009 has been interesting and challenging as the global economic conditions have produced all sorts of effects, some expected, and some not! Thankfully we’re seeing really positive signs in many of the markets, and feel a growing sense of confidence that 2010 will bring back stronger growth and stability to our media landscape.

Atlas Releases Reporting API for Publishers

2009-11-16T20:54:00Z

Atlas has recently released a set of enhancements to Atlas' Reporting API that will enable publishers and networks to programmatically extract publisher reports from Atlas. These reports, entitled Impression Exchange Reports, are available to users with Publisher Admin, Publisher User, and Agency Admin account types, and offer the same data that is available via the external publisher interface in the Atlas Media Console.

Advertisers, agencies, and publishers should all benefit from this enhancement to the Reporting API, as it will offer publishers an automated method to pull Atlas data, and speed the process of reconciling impression counts.

For more information on the Atlas Reporting API and the Impression Exchange Reports, visit MSDN.

Why Use Selective Pinging?

2009-11-11T16:22:00Z

We recently launched an update to the Atlas Universal Action Tag (UAT) called Selective Pinging.

This update allows advertisers and agencies to better manage the flow of conversion and event data that they share with piggybacked networks and publishers.

With selective pinging, the advertiser or agency can decide if a network or publisher should be notified every time a conversion is logged (by turning on the "Always Ping" setting), or only when that network or publisher is actually responsible for delivering the conversion (the "Selectively Ping" setting).

For advertisers and agencies using Atlas, this means marketers now have full control over which partners and publishers receive conversion and action information in real time. Instead of broadcasting conversion data to every piggybacked network or publisher each time a conversion occurs, the marketer can now protect their data by sharing it only with the network that's responsible for driving the action.

For networks and publishers, Selective Pinging will offer more precise and timely insights into how they are delivering conversions for advertisers, and enable them to optimize their campaigns to drive better results and ROI.

For more information about Selective Pinging, please contact your Atlas representative.

Atlas Technology Partner Alliance - now in Beta!

2009-11-05T23:29:00Z

Today we're launching a beta of the Atlas Technology Partner Alliance (ATPA). ATPA is an important component of our ongoing mission to open the Atlas platform and to make it more flexible for our customers. The ATPA will allow advertisers and agencies to connect media management and creative tools from outside vendors to their current Atlas reporting system, regardless of whether they're using our native Atlas systems or a third-party. By integrating with a range of technology specialty firms, we can service a wider variety client demands while maintaining the utility of Atlas analytics to help track and manage advertiser campaigns in one place.

How does the Atlas Technology Partner Alliance benefit advertisers and agencies?

Clients will benefit from a greater selection of providers and tools, while collecting their data in one centralized place. What that means is:

· Integrated reporting: Partner performance is shared between the partner and Atlas allowing for sophisticated performance and ROI analysis across advertising formats, such as rich media and video, search and publisher sites.

· Flexibility and choice: The Partner Alliance gives clients access to some of the best solutions in the marketplace without compromising their data integrity by allowing advertisers to choose from a variety of technology providers while keeping their reporting on our platform.

We'll begin beta testing with a few rich media partners this month and will look to expand the beta to include more partners from many other online specialty areas.Be sure to watch this space for updates.

Interested in hearing about specific partners or participating as a beta client? Contact your Atlas representative.