Wrong Portland ad buy shows who owns a geotargeting mistake

0:05Host:You're listening to MBA Training. Today's subject: Wrong Portland ad buy shows who owns a geotargeting mistake. A super PAC backing Susan Collins in Maine spent last week attacking her opponent. In Portland, Oregon.

0:19Expert:The wrong Portland. Wrong coast, wrong state, wrong voters.

0:25Host:Wait, what? How do you even do that?

0:28Expert:You type "Portland" and pick one. They picked the one with better coffee and nobody who can vote in the Maine Senate race.

0:36Host:And here's the cherry on top. The Bangor Daily News reminds everyone that Portland, Oregon was named after Portland, Maine in a coin toss.

0:45Expert:So getting them mixed up is basically a family tradition.

0:49Host:Set it up properly. Who, what, when.

0:52Expert:The group is Defending Main Street, a super PAC, meaning a political group that can raise and spend unlimited money as long as it doesn't coordinate with the candidate. Its spot, "So Many Taxes," attacks Troy Jackson, the Democrat challenging Collins. Their buyer, Cross Screen Media, placed the digital version, and from Thursday to Sunday it ran around Portland, Oregon and spilled into Washington state.

1:20Host:How much money went west?

1:22Expert:About twenty-five thousand dollars, according to the group's own statement to The Hill.

1:27Host:And who caught it? The agency? The client?

1:30Expert:Neither. A woman in Portland, Oregon posted that she kept getting anti-Troy Jackson ads. NBC News picked it up from there.

1:39Host:Oh, come on. Their quality control was a stranger on the internet.

1:43Expert:Quality control, the people paid to check a campaign before and after it goes live, turned out to be one annoyed woman with a phone. Fortune quotes her: "I choose to believe they mixed up Portlands."

1:57Host:Generous.

1:58Expert:More generous than the client.

2:00Host:Right. Sarah Chamberlain.

2:02Expert:President and CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership, the nonprofit tied to the super PAC. She told NBC News she was "absolutely furious" about a "ridiculous" error. Then came the line everyone's repeating: "It has nothing to do with us."

2:20Host:Which, honestly... is fair? The vendor messed up.

2:25Expert:The vendor did mess up, and it owned it. Cross Screen Media called it entirely their mistake, refunded the money and had the ads running in Maine by Monday.

2:35Host:So what's your problem with it?

2:37Expert:Watch where the blame goes. The super PAC named its vendor as the 1903 Group. The 1903 Group told The Washington Sun it was entirely a Cross Screen Media error. And Cross Screen Media is a company inside the 1903 Group.

2:53Host:So the parent blamed the kid.

2:56Expert:The parent blamed the kid, the kid said "yep, me," and the grandparent said "never met them."

3:03Host:Okay, I'm going to defend her anyway. I hire a buyer, the buyer sends my money to the wrong coast. Why is that on me?

3:11Expert:Because your name is on the ad, and nobody in Maine reads vendor contracts. Jackson's spokesperson, Dan Gottlieb, told Fortune that Collins's allies "can't even find it on a map." He didn't say Cross Screen Media can't find it on a map.

3:27Host:Nobody writes a press release about the subsidiary.

3:30Expert:Never. The brand takes the joke, the vendor takes the refund.

3:34Host:I still think "it wasn't us" is the right first sentence. You protect the client's name, fast.

3:41Expert:And I think it's the wrong first sentence for a CMO. Say "we caught it, we fixed it, here's the check we're adding." Blaming the vendor tells your board that nobody on your side looks at launches.

3:54Host:Except nobody on their side did catch it.

3:57Expert:Which is my point.

3:58Host:We're not settling this.

4:00Expert:No. Your boss would hire you, mine would hire me.

4:04Host:Mechanics, then. How do you pick the wrong Portland?

4:07Expert:Through geotargeting, which means telling the ad platform which places should see your ad: by city, by ZIP code or by media market, the TV-style regions buyers plan around. The Hill, citing Google's records, says the ads went to various ZIP codes around Portland, Oregon.

4:26Host:So it's a dropdown.

4:28Expert:That's my guess, and I'm flagging it as a guess. Nobody has published the actual settings, and none of the companies has explained which step went wrong.

4:38Host:Picture that buyer on Monday morning, though.

4:41Expert:I wince for them. One wrong selection, national news, and the client's CEO calling your work ridiculous on the record. That's a brutal week for someone who probably got every other buy right.

4:54Host:The vendor's explanation didn't help them.

4:57Expert:No. The Bangor Daily News reports the Cross Screen spokesperson blamed the sheer number of campaigns they handle.

5:05Host:Oh, that's worse.

5:06Expert:That's "we're too busy to check." You'd never say that in a pitch, so don't say it in an apology.

5:13Host:How many people in Oregon actually saw it?

5:16Expert:The Hill says it racked up more than a million impressions there before it came down, impressions meaning the number of times an ad was shown, not the number of people. That comes from Google's Ads Transparency Center, the public library of ads that, for political ones, shows where they ran.

5:34Host:And not one of those viewers can vote in Maine.

5:37Expert:Unless they're very committed tourists.

5:40Host:Give me the best case that this is nothing.

5:43Expert:Fine. The money came back to the cent, the mistake lasted a long weekend, and the same ad was on broadcast TV in Portland, Maine the whole time. AdImpact, the firm that tracks political ad spending, counted about 675,000 impressions there, per data from MS NOW that Fortune cites.

6:04Host:So the real campaign worked and this was a side dish.

6:08Expert:A side dish delivered to the wrong table. And this race is huge. Fortune cites an AdImpact projection that Maine Senate spending will come in nearly double what it was when Collins last ran.

6:21Host:So as money, it's a rounding error.

6:23Expert:As money, yes. As a message, it gave the other side a free news cycle saying these people don't know Maine. The Maine Democratic Party put out a statement almost immediately.

6:36Host:Now the uncomfortable bit for our listeners. This only came out because political ads are public.

6:42Expert:Yes, and that should bother every brand marketer. Political ads sit in a public library where reporters and bored voters can check the targeting. Your sneaker campaign doesn't.

6:54Host:So the same mistake on a brand account...

6:56Expert:...runs until somebody opens the location report. Which might be never. That's my opinion, but I'd put money on it.

7:04Host:Is there any data on how often location targeting misses?

7:08Expert:Old data. Fortune cites a Location Sciences analysis from years back that found nearly a third of location-targeted ads were delivered outside the area the advertiser paid for. The tools have changed since, so treat that as a warning sign, not today's rate.

7:26Host:And meanwhile the vendor decks promise...

7:28Expert:"Precision hyperlocal audience activation." Precise enough to get the city name right and the state wrong.

7:36Host:Here's my pushback. Platforms automate more of this every month. Isn't the fix just better software?

7:43Expert:The software offered a list of Portlands. A human approved one. The fix is a person whose job is to look at where the ads actually landed, with their name on that check.

7:54Host:Hang on, say that again.

7:56Expert:Where the ads landed, not where you told them to go. The settings screen shows what you meant to do. The delivery report shows what happened.

8:05Host:That's going on a mug.

8:07Expert:Next to "it has nothing to do with us."

8:11Host:So what does a listener do this week?

8:13Expert:Open every live campaign and pull the delivery report by location, meaning the report of where your ads were actually shown, and check it against your target list. Then add one line to your agency agreement: a named person signs off on location settings before launch and sends you the geographic delivery the morning after.

8:34Host:And what are we watching?

8:36Expert:Whether Cross Screen Media or the 1903 Group says what check they're adding. A refund fixes the invoice. It doesn't tell clients it won't happen again.

8:46Host:Or you just hire the woman in Oregon.

8:48Expert:Cheaper than an agency. Better at geography.

8:52Host:Or settle it with a coin toss.

8:54Expert:Worked for Portland once. Please don't plan your media that way.

8:58Host:Drawn from Yahoo, The Hill and The Washington Sun, links in the show notes. That's all. For an honest read on your level, the CMO assessment is at mba-training.com.