Insights

How to Boost Clickthrough Rates 14,000%

Well thought-out rich media can be a boon to a campaign. Learn the strategy secrets from an Advertising.com creative director.

"I hate those shoot the monkey ads," replied my doctor when I explained to her what I do as the creative director of Advertising.com. Not the nicest bedside manner, but I've heard worse when I tell people that my team creates online ads.

With all the complaints about rich media, some advertisers wonder if it's worth it, especially when you consider the additional hassle of dealing with temperamental creative departments. Before answering, however, it's important to define exactly what it is.

Many publishers consider an ad only to be rich media if it automatically takes over a page, with the user having no control over initiating the intrusive message. But because users will only put up with so much of that intrusiveness, publishers limit the amount of this kind of impression and charge accordingly.

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Posted by Susan Kim in | 0 Comments

Ad Networks to Complement Site Buys

Advertising.com explains why networks are heating up, but maintains that site buys are still key to your media mix.

Over the past year, there has been a distinct trend in the kinds of network buys advertisers are making, creating interesting implications for publishers. With more sophisticated targeting capabilities available from networks, advertisers are increasingly addressing multiple objectives through network segmentation. While individual endemic site inventory remains a core branding vehicle, networks provide a valuable addition to the branding mix. (For those not familiar with the term "endemic sites," these are essentially vertical-specific sites. Ex. An endemic site for an automotive advertiser would be Cars.com; an endemic site for a movie advertiser would be Fandango.) This is good news for publishers, because the more sophisticated the targeting tools a network can offer to advertisers, the higher the potential inventory yield for publishers.

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Posted by Dave Jacobs in | 0 Comments

Ad Networks to Complement Site Buys

Advertising.com explains why networks are heating up, but maintains that site buys are still key to your media mix.

Over the past year, there has been a distinct trend in the kinds of network buys advertisers are making, creating interesting implications for publishers. With more sophisticated targeting capabilities available from networks, advertisers are increasingly addressing multiple objectives through network segmentation. While individual endemic site inventory remains a core branding vehicle, networks provide a valuable addition to the branding mix. (For those not familiar with the term "endemic sites," these are essentially vertical-specific sites. Ex. An endemic site for an automotive advertiser would be Cars.com; an endemic site for a movie advertiser would be Fandango.) This is good news for publishers, because the more sophisticated the targeting tools a network can offer to advertisers, the higher the potential inventory yield for publishers.

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Posted by Dave Jacobs in | 0 Comments

Boost conversions with just one ad network

If the hunt for conversions has led you to consider behavioral retargeting, don't waste time working with more than one ad network.

Behavioral retargeting campaigns are often constrained by target population size, which leads advertisers to run retargeting campaigns across multiple ad networks in order to garner additional reach. But the fact is most networks buy inventory from the same or a similar pool of sites, which means there is a lot of overlap in audience between networks. A far more efficient use of budget is to run campaigns across one large, high-quality network. It's the best possible way to optimize reach while controlling frequency and cost.

Why retargeting?
User-based online behavioral retargeting identifies website visitation as an explicit demonstration of interest in an advertiser's products and services. Users that have visited the advertiser's site are thus targeted as they surf other sites with tailored messages intended to drive re-visitation and conversion.

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Posted by Brent Halliburton in Behavioral | 0 Comments

Catch your audience's attention

Measuring an ad's impact with the share-of-voice metric hasn't translated well into online media, but with these pointers, you can boost and measure SOV.

"Share of voice" (SOV) is a metric long used to guide media buys. It attempts to quantify an advertiser's share of advertising activity over a period of time relative to others in the same market segment. For example, in television advertising, SOV may represent the proportion of advertising per advertiser for a 30-minute TV program.

Because SOV is one of the most common means of measuring audience attention in other media, it is no surprise that media planners have attempted to migrate this metric to the internet. Unfortunately, due to the non-linear nature of hypertext, measuring SOV online is difficult and the method that many media planners use to incorporate SOV calculations into media plans is flawed.

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Posted by Brent Halliburton in Branding | 0 Comments

Why Video Publishers Have More Inventory Than They Think

Think we're at our video inventory limit? Think again. Advertising.com's VP of video networks gives pointers.

According to data from AccuStream iMedia Research, 75 percent of all video advertising inventory is sold each month. The truth is that publishers aren't exploiting all the advertising potential of their video content. They are not sold out; they're simply not selling everything they have to offer.

With so much money to be made from video advertising, how can this be?

One reason is that unlike display advertising, unfulfilled video inventory doesn't leave a big blank space on your site. If there's no ad to show prior to a video clip, the publisher can simply skip right to the video content, which means publishers cannot easily account for missed ad opportunities.

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Posted by Aimee Irwin in Video | 0 Comments

5 Essential Video Marketing Tips

Advertising.com gives background on the true video audience and how best to reach it.

Consumption of online video is on the rise. In the U.S., the number of online video viewers has grown from around 55M in 2003 to nearly 140M in 2007, with projections of 160M by 2010. Okay, so video is on everyone's radar by now, but there's a lot more to the story than one might think.

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Posted by Aimee Irwin in Video | 0 Comments

Gain Mindshare and Boost Conversions

Advertising.com's CMO explains how an ad network enables every ad to both increase brand exposure and invite conversions.

Pay only for sales? It's a marketer's dream. And with ad networks, it's an advertising reality.

Because networks work with hundreds of advertisers and thousands of sites with billions of impressions, they've had to develop technologies to automate the allocation process. These optimization tools consider factors such as the marketer's goals, the consumer's observed response, and the websites' characteristics to determine when and where to serve which ad. Optimization became so effective that networks were able to sell advertising on a pay-for-performance or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) basis, with the network shouldering the risk, not the marketer.

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Posted by Mollie Spilman in Networks | 0 Comments

Clear the Ad Inventory Congestion

Advertising.com's VP of the Midwest region outlines the value of ad networks and offers tips to ensure targetable and scalable partnerships.

Not surprisingly, the internet is a hugely popular destination for auto research, putting information about every possible make and model at consumers' fingertips. In fact, a January 2007 eMarketer study found that 32 percent of consumers cited the internet as the best source for retrieving auto-related information. And with consumers spending more and more time in general on the web vs. other media, online marketing is exploding as a way to reach consumers at every stage of the purchase funnel, from building mindshare and influencing preferences before the actual car shopping starts to helping seal the deal among an in-market, auto-buying audience.

Most marketers look first to reach "bottom-of-the-funnel" shoppers -- those consumers closest to making a purchase -- through auto research and informational sites. As a result, advertising inventory on these sites is at a premium. Additionally, advertising on larger, more well-known lifestyle sites is popular, and marketers will vie for inventory there as well. The cost for these "top-of-the-funnel" placements is also high, and inventory sells out fairly quickly.

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Posted by Jon Alsop in Networks | 0 Comments

Network Transparency: Does It Cost You?

When choosing an ad network, don't choose the security of a site list over reach, efficiency and performance. Advertising.com's chief sales and marketing officer explains.

One reason rep firms have come back into vogue is that they offer transparency of the sites they represent-- a security blanket for advertisers who want to be sure they steer clear of the web's sloppier, less desirable sites.

But many online advertising networks don't provide full site disclosure, which makes some advertisers a bit nervous. Where will my ad be seen? Am I risking my brand's reputation? How can I be sure I'm reaching my target if I don't know where my ads are? Am I wasting my money? This unease causes some advertisers and agencies to forego the inherent reach, efficiency and performance of a network for the security of a site list. Big mistake.

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Posted by Mollie Spilman in Networks | 0 Comments