1 .What does “effective” online display advertising mean to you

Shaukat Shamim: Today Search Engine Marketing is approximately $20B dollar market and continues to set the bar. Advertisers continue to spend in SEM due to the fact it is economically effective and efficient for them. Search has the element of being very ROI driven, and measurable. However, the problem is they can’t get enough of it, since search engine marketing is only 20% total reach and therefore rather limited.

Our objective here at Permuto is to achieve the the same economics and relevance of search engine marketing in display advertising. When you establish and deliver that every time, advertisers will get a new effective channel for their online display advertising campaigns.

2. How are you able to illustrate the effectiveness targeted display advertising to the advertisers?

Shaukat Shamim: The term “effective advertising” means different things to different types of advertisers. For brand advertisers, they measure the success of their campaigns based upon soft measures such as awareness, purchase intent, and favorability. Performance advertisers, especially commerce marketers, are very much driven by hard metrics driven which are measured by metrics such as clicks, conversions, and ultimately return on ad spend (ROAS). So, any solution that will give them positive ROAS that matches and exceeds their best channels will always get them to turn their head.

3. What about to publishers?

Shaukat Shamim: Publishers, at the end of the day, want to generated the most amount of revenue per page (RPM – Revenue Per Mille or Thousand) which is most often with a higher effective CPM (eCPM). Publishers will try anything that can increase the RPM for their inventory through either higher eCPMs or through better optimization.

4. What is it about display that can lead it to be more effective than other formats?

Shaukat Shamim: Display advertising, unlike SEM, has the added power of presenting and expressing an advertising message visually. Display also has a significant reach advantage over search marketing. However, unlike SEM, the ROI of display advertising for performance advertisers to date has been very unclear and has steered some advertisers away from participating in any significant way.

5. Why has the ROI been different in display advertising?

Shaukat Shamim: ROI in display advertising has been unpredictable for performance marketers. Although some level of targeting can make ad spend on display somewhat measurable, it has no way near the measurability and reconfigurability of SEM. When a consumer searches for something on, say Google or Bing, they are actively telling the search engine what they are looking for. This is an expression of active intent by the user. Display advertising today is missing the same level of active intent found in SEM.

6. What would make a display ads relevant for advertisers? Can measurable ROI be achieved?

Shaukat Shamim: Making an ad extremely intent relevant is the key. In display advertising the challenge becomes a complex task of dissecting the user’s intent at the moment the user is encountered on a particular site. To make this advertising extremely effective, you will have to analyze their categories of interest for specific products and brands and then combine that by determining where they are in the buying process, you can potentially serve dynamically-optimized, brand specific offers to them. This is not a trivial task.

7. How important is the role of creative design?

Shaukat Shamim: Very important. The creative is what the user sees when they encounter the ad. Presenting a targeted visual solution makes a big difference in the effectiveness of the ad unit only if you can measure the results and optimize to improve it’s effectiveness.

8. Advertisers are starting to make better use of shopping data, and personalize their interaction with consumers. To what degree are you expecting this to evolve over the next year? Several years?

Shaukat Shamim: I think advertisers will get very smart about calculating their ROI from using various forms of data. Their businesses depends upon having good information to make smart and informed decisions.

9. Any parting words, or anything that you would like to add to all of this – maybe in an attempt to tie it all together?

Shaukat Shamim: I anticipate seeing significant progress in the fields of display advertising in the next few years. Elevating display advertising to the level of effectiveness and measurability that search engine marketing has enjoyed is the holy grail in advertising. I envision a day when brands and advertisers have an easy way to apply their own branding and logos to display ads and achieve the same level of effectiveness of text-based search engine marketing.

10. What are some of your favorite consumer shopping brands?

Shaukat Shamim: Interesting question… I love brands that are unique and different; ones that evoke a feeling of boldness and strength, and have a sense of style that stands out but understated. Some brands I love are Pal Zileri, Caesar Paciotti (for shoes), Panerai, Yohji Yamamoto (clothing), Robert Marc (for glasses), and Breitling (for watches).