Quora Gives Advertisers Ad Auction Analysis.
Quora rolled out keyword targeting for its advertising platform. Keyword targeting allows advertisers to bid on the keywords they’re targeting. Advertisers have the option to target close variations of keywords, target the exact keywords, and exclude words where they do not want their ads to be shown.
Quora also launched Auction Insights, which would give advertisers metrics on how they are performing compared to others in ad auctions. There are three metrics Auction Insights focus on:
- Percentage of auctions in which the advertiser did not win an ad impression in slots available.
- Percentage of auctions in which the advertiser won an ad impression.
- Percentage of auctions in which the advertiser won a top ad slot.
In class, we learned that many companies use some sort of auction to decide which advertiser gets an ad slot. It is not surprising that Quora also uses an auction. However, I find it interesting that the bid value is not the only determining factor in winning an ad impression on Quora. Quora does not only take the bid into consideration; its auction algorithm also takes the ad’s creative relevancy into account. They want both the advertiser and user to have a good ad experience. That is not simply an auction that gives the slot to who bids more anymore. This is where Auction Insights come in handy. I think giving the advertisers an analysis of their ad auction performance is valuable. It gives advertisers a better idea of how to change their creative content or bid to better their auction performance. Also, if an advertiser is always getting a top ad slot, they might consider lowering their bid to see how it would impact their performance.