Spring Shopping Extravaganza!

Inspired by a (very successful) ad in People Magazine, I spent some time today at Target updating my spring wardrobe. It's brilliant because they have such cute stuff for about 1/4 the cost of stores like Banana Republic and J Crew. I spent $157 and got:

1) navy jaket
2) khaki skirt
3) green cardigan
4) pink polka dot shirt
5) pink screen-print t-shirt
6) multi-colored blue blouse
7) yellow purse
8) multicolored pair of shoes

I paired these with 5 items that I already own:

a) red-orange blouse
b) white blouse
c) skinny jeans
d) green shorts
e) hot pink heels

to make the following 10 outifts

#1: 6+7+c

#2: 2+4+7+8

#3: 2+3+7+8+b

#4: 1+2+4+8

#5: 2+5+7


#6: 8+a+c
#7: 7+8+d+b

#8: 2+8+a

#9: 1+6+e

#10: 1+5+c


Not bad, huh!?

My life (at least on the internet) will never be the same

Wouldn't it be cool if you could walk away from my blog today having actually learned something? I know, what a concept! Well, I have a lesson for you today :)

So, if you've ever been to Yahoo, weather.com, or any other web site that has extra space where you see ads (almost all do), then you have been the target of the online advertising industry - an industry in which I have been working for the past 6 months and in which I'm hoping to continue working (if the stars align) for the foreseeable future. When I was hired to work for company X, a small start-up online advertising coop, I had no idea what they actually DID. All I knew was that it was my job to make sure that all of their "clients" had "models" at the right times. I had no idea what their actual product was or how those "models" worked. So, I did some research. And I think that what I found might be interesting to you, so here goes.

Let's start with the basics of the business:
The Advertisers and Agencies are the demand side of this business, the networks/exchanges and publishers are the supply side. But what is being demanded and supplied, you ask? Good question! The answer is advertising inventory, which can be loosely defined as "Advertising inventory is the supply of opportunities to display advertising in a particular medium."

What this means is, ever advertisement that you see on a web page represents one piece of advertising inventory. The publishers listed on the right in the value chain above are the producers of this inventory. By building a web page and allowing extra space where they will try to build revenue through inserting advertising, they create inventory that is then traded in the online advertising world. Pretty simple, right? Maybe not, but we'll go with it!

Big publishers (like the oft-mentioned Yahoo or Facebook) have huge sales teams that work directly with buyers (people who want to advertise on their page ie. buy their inventory such as, say, Verizon or Downy) to sell huge chunks of advertising. However, small publishers like a knitting web site can't afford to hire a sales team. This is where ad networks or exchanges come into play. Ad Networks are sales houses for publisher inventory. An ad network strikes deals with lots of publishers for their inventory and then aggregates this inventory and sells it on to advertisers and agencies. Ad networks make their money by buying selling the inventory at a higher rate (to advertisers or agencies) than they bought it for (from publishers). The company I am working for does this, and I'll explain in a moment just how they make money playing this intermediary role.

Let's glance at the other two players in this chain. Advertisers, like I mentioned, are companies who have an interest in advertising their product on the internet. They typically have a designated budget for advertising and want to place their ads in the best places for the cheapest rate. Agencies have relationships with ad networks or publishers and typically take the advertisers money (if they don't have an internal team to do this) and try to buy the best inventory that they can, then take a cut of the money spent for their services.

So, there's a lot of fancy coding, redirecting, content delivery, algorithms, and other things that I don't understand that go on behind the scenes in the online advertising world. Suffice to say that when you view a web page with an ad on it, chances are that in the 3 seconds it took the page to load, multipled ad networks (with inventory) and advertisers/agencies (who want to display their ads in this invetory) have already interacted in cyberspace to determine exactly which ad you see on the page (and how much was paid for that space).

As an ad network, my company buys the inventory in which you may be seeing said ad from publishers and sells it to advertisers at a higher rate. The trick that they use to do this (and they are one of just a few who does this) is to insert tags on users cookies (those things that watch everything you do on the internet) and use complex statistical models to determine what sites that have been visiting and where they are likely to make a purchase. They then sell this service to advertisers, ensuring them that the users (you and me) who see their ads on Facebook or Yahoo are those who are most likely to actually be interested in buying their product. Genius! The crux of the matter, then, is that Company X buys advertising inventory on a Cost Per Thousand basis, and sells it to advertisers on a Cost Per Action basis. An action typically is defined as a user actually purchasing something or at least clicking on the ad as a result of having seen it.

That may sound complex, but break it down with me. Think about it this way. My company buys 1,000 pieces of ad inventory on cnn.com. They pay $4 each, that's $4,000. Then, they sell that inventory to Coca Cola for $8 per Action. So they double their price in hopes that at least half of the views result in a click or a purchase. That's a very simple example and in reality, they would never hope to get that high of a return, but you get the idea. By doing this, Company X assumes the risk that they may not make any money if no one takes "Action" on the ad. But with their "Behavoiral targeting" - the thing where they tag users and use models to determine where they might purchase next - they are able to increase the likelihood that the users who see those 1,000 ads might actually be the people who want to buy Coca Cola.

Whew! So, there's your lesson in how it is that you come to see all those ads on the internet. It's quite interesting to think that if you spend your day on jcew.com, cnn.com, and bloomingdales.com, you might later see an ad for American Eagle because someone was "watching" you that whole time.

Happy surfing (I'll be watching)!

Taylor won't let me put this on our wedding web site :)

So, as the title indicates, Taylor won't let me put this on our wedding web site, but I have to imagine that some of you either haven't heard this story or would take the chance to hear it again, so here goes (from the perspective of Carissa, since I'm the one writing!)

Taylor and I "met" when I was a sophomore and he was a freshman at Vanderbilt. Apparently not an altogether uncommon experience for him, I spotted him at a concert for the Christian A Capella group on campus. I was immediately a fan of this mystery man and, lucky for me (and unlucky for him?), he happened to be wearing a Tenafly Track jacket with the name "Taylor" on it. How convenient. Now these were the days before Facebook made stalking...er..networking much easier, so I had to resort to the ink-and-paper version, the Vanderbilt Newcomer. It's basically headshots of the entire freshman class that is published each year. With no shame whatsoever, I combed the pages of the class of 2006 Newcomer looking for an attractive boy named Taylor. And I found him on page 3 or 4 (what luck!). Taylor Brinkman from Flower Mound, Texas. Jackpot (Talia or Brinkman if you're reading this, I'm sorry).

So, step 2, find out who knows this person. For that I employed the aptly-named-for-stalking Vanderbilt People Finder. This online database listed where students lived including dorm and floor. Lo and behold Taylor lived on Vandy 4, the same hall as some of my buddies from working at the dining hall, Nikhil and Matt Malony. So, the next day at work, I mentioned to Matt and Nikhil that I was interested in meeting their hallmate Taylor.

Oh, Tenafly?" (Matt and Nikhil)
Excuse me, Tena-who? " (Me)
Tenafly, it's his nickname, that's the town he's from. He's from New Jersey I think.
What's his last name?
Um...we have no idea, what is Tenafly's last name?
I thought he was from Texas.
Oh, that's a different Taylor, but I don't think you're talking about him

So, in case you can't follow that. Basically there were 2 Taylors who lived on Vandy 4, and I had stumbled across the "other" one (they are good friends to this day) because he happens to fall earlier in the alphabet. For those who don't know, my future last name will be Smith, so I understand why Matt and Nikhil couldn't think of it...so forgettable. I'm not sure why they assumed which Taylor I was actually stalking, but apparently their intuition was correct.

Anyway, I'm making this long story even longer, so I hope you're at least enjoying it (I'm enjoying writing it!). So that day after work, Nikhil (being the gentleman that he is) volunteered to take me on a stroll of Vandy 4, just to confirm which man I was stalking. He took me by "my" Taylor's room and there he was, sitting at the computer. Confirmed, Tenafly it was.

Later that night, Matt went in to Taylor's dorm room and gave him my screen name (don't judge me), CJL191. Taylor asked who it was and Matt answered, Carissa.

Carissa who? (Taylor)
Carissa, she said she met you at the Victory concert (Matt)
Is she cute?
Taylor, she's a good Christian woman

Seriously. That's the first description that Taylor got of me (but he did have a vague, positive memory of seeing me at said concert, so that's good). Apparently that "good Christian woman" line, which would have sent most 18-year-old men running for the hills, actually worked on Taylor and he kept my screen name. But I don't think anything would have come of it if it hadn't been for his appendix. You heard that right. Just a few days after all of this, Taylor's appendix burst and he had to have an emergency appendectomy and was bedridden for a period of days. During that period, he decided to IM this "good Christian woman" who did not beat around the bush when she told him she wanted to meet him. We agreed that I would bring him lunch since he was otherwise confined to his dorm room. And that is what I did. The first time Taylor and I "met" formally was when I arrived at his dorm room with a burger for him and some broccoli for me (apparently I was trying to give off airs of being a healthy eater).

This all happened shortly before Christmas break. I went to Italy for 2 weeks over the break and (again, being oh-so-subtle) sent him a postcard. Figuring I was in the bag, he IMed me again after break to see if I wanted to go out for a real date. And the rest is history....

Especially the part where the same day as our first date, a co-worker asked me out and I agreed to go with him on a "pre-date" just to get out the jitters. I'm so not kidding, I let this guy take me to dinner and then he dropped me off at the Vanderbilt Basketball game where I told him I was meeting "friends," but really I was meeting Taylor. But like I said, ancient history...