Forbes published an article titled “Capturing the Hispanic Market Will Require More Than A Total Market Strategy” last week. It caught my attention because it touched on culture, and why marketers can no longer rely on simply translating English copy to Spanish to reach their audience. Today ‘culture’ consists of lifestyle, political, religious and social beliefs as well as values. To reach multicultural audiences effectively brands don’t necessarily need to create products that are specific to these groups; they simply need to create messages that identify with, and build trust among consumers by acknowledging cultural nuances.

I have to credit Digiday with this post. Here’s the list in short order, and it proves we really have been in Ad Tech a long time.

1. You use at least two acronyms in every sentence you speak or write — even if you are addressing people who aren’t in the industry.
2. You’re on a first-name basis with the Ad:Tech booth babes (okay, well maybe not all of us, but I know you’re out there).
3. You’ve worked at 15 different logos on the Lumascape.
4. You’ve pivoted five times — and are thinking of the sixth.
5. You just closed your series G round.
6. You’re sick of carving off a penny per CPM.
7. You’re spending time on the weekends arguing on Adexchanger with other DSPs over whose RTB is truly RTB.
8. You know what the old-timers list is. (via @lowbrowkate)
9. You think a 0.1 percent response rate is pretty damn good.
10. You have 35+ vendor notebooks.
11. You once asked Terry Kawaja for an autograph.
12. You never get your DSPs, DMPs, SSPs and RTB mixed up.
13. You remember when petabytes of data sounded big.
14. You’re considering a Big Data tattoo.
15. You got kicked off the Affiliate Marketing cruise.
16. You tweet 185 times a day, involving yourself into any discussion of ad tech.
17. You make RTB analogies during sports games.
18. Your spouse actually understands the Lumascape.
19. You’ve convinced yourself that buying ads from toolbar providers isn’t ripping off publishers.
20. You get excited when you’re retargeted by Zappos.
21. You wear around a DSP-branded red hooded sweatshirt everywhere you go.
22. You call yourself an “ad tech socialite.”
23. You keep telling people, “The direct mail guys are way worse, you know.”
24. You’re used to parties where the line is 15-deep for the men’s room and there’s no line at the ladies.’
25. You call anything — a website, tool, whatever — a “platform.”
26. You argue vehemently there’s something called “fourth-party data.”
27. You point to your number of queries per second as evidence of success.
28. You have a personal motto of “mo data, mo better.”

A recent article on Digiday asks, “When will Ad Tech Grow Up?” Ed Montes asked the same thing when he wrote, “Quality is in the Eye of the Beholder,” on ClickZ in 2011. Despite being ahead of his time, he hit the nail on the head regarding quality, viewability and cost of media. Find out more by reading his post.

The exchange space is absurd.

Disagree? Okay, open another browser and visit beyondjane.com. Now wait for about 60 pixels and cookies to load onto your computer. Why on earth would a site, ostensibly about women’s lifestyle, need to drop 60 cookies onto your browser just for visiting its homepage? As someone who’s been in this space a while, I could perhaps explain the existence of 25 to 30 of those, which doesn’t make it any more acceptable. But the point is to show how far astray we’ve gone during the first five years of the ad exchange business.

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Kudos to Mike Shields at AdWeek for exposing some of the problems with exchange traded media in his latest article titled, “Suspicious Web Domains Cost Online Ad Business $400m per Year.”

I became suspicious when www.mommy.com suddenly showed up in our top one hundred domains. Holy cow! Where did this site come from?

I looked into it and found that mommy.com is auto-refreshing ads. That’s bad advertising!  Make sure your programmatic media partner is reporting sites with high frequency and low-unique reach. When sites look suspicious, blacklist ‘em to protect mommies and brands everywhere from fraudulent activity.

A recent article on Digiday about retargeting got me thinking about how often the tactic is misused. In retargeting, what goes around comes around, so if you’re tired of being chased around the web by irrelevant ads for months on end, be sure to lead by example and follow these simple rules when setting up your next campaign.

Four Rules to Retargeting

1. Limit the number of retargeting partners to maximize your efficiency and frequency control.
2. Understand your optimal frequency.
3. Calculate your retargeting budget based on the amount of traffic you get to your site.
4. Anti-target your converted users.

Dear Dr. Digilant:

I am really interested in advertising on the Facebook Exchange. What kinds of targeting can I do there and what sorts of results can I expect? –Curious in Cincinnati

I am glad you are thinking about this Curious. Facebook’s real-time enabled exchange (FBX) reaches 995 million people globally per month, making it prime for marketers looking to increase reach and frequency.

Using intent data Digilant can intelligently segment audiences by demographic, geography, behavior and day-part to improve the effectiveness of your remarketing programs. A recent report confirmed that FBX has opened the doors to millions of new unique users, and conversion rates can be up to 70% greater than the leading eight exchanges, so what are you waiting for?

Yours truly, DD

Dr. D here… just giving a shout out to Digiday for writing this piece. Who wants rocket science or artificial intelligence to rule over advertising campaigns? Nobody. What we really want is better advertising that works smarter and delivers results. I’m not saying Digilant isn’t guilty of using some of these terms in our own sales materials but we are agree, it’s time to make things simple so we can focus on doing our job, not decoding the latest industry term.

The Smaller Business Association of New England (SBANE), sponsor of the New England Innovation Awards since its inception in 1986, proudly announces the 2013 Finalists. Digilant was selected from 204 innovative organizations to compete in the final phase of this competition.

Innovation is at the heart of economic prosperity and SBANE continues to recognize those companies and organizations that have transformed their innovative ideas into a product or service that delivers proven value to customers. Former winners come from varying fields such as technology, manufacturing, service (both for profit and not for profit0, and retail / distribution. Winners include notable companies such as Staples, PictureTel, Ben & Jerry’s, Brooks Automation, Direct Tire, Genzyme, Nantucket Nectars, Imagitas!, Aurora Imaging Technology, and iRobot.

Winners and Finalists of this prestigious award (will be/were) honored at the “Evening of Innovation” Gala Dinner on May 8, 2013 at the Westin Hotel, Waltham MA.

Check back with us on May 9th to find out if Digilant made the final cut.