11
Online
Advertising
What’s inside:
An introduction to online advertising, a brief history following the
development of the Internet and an exploration of how it works. We look at types of display
advertising, payment models, advertising networks and exchanges. We also explore ad
servers and what they do and learn more about how tracking works. We put it all together
and take a brief look at the future of online advertising followed by an exploration into its
advantages and disadvantages. Finally we include a summary, a look at the bigger picture
and end off with a case study.
Online Advertising › Key terms and concepts
Online Advertising › Introduction
11.1 Introduction
note
Read more about this in
the Search Advertising
chapter.
Banner
An online advertisement in the form of a graphic image
that appears on a web page.
Online advertising, simply put, is advertising on the Internet. Online advertising
encompasses display adverts found on websites, adverts on search engine results
pages (covered in the chapter on Search Advertising), adverts placed in emails
and on social networks, and other ways in which advertisers use the Internet.
Of course, this is not just limited to computers – digital advertising can be found
anywhere you access the web, for example, through mobile devices.
Clickthrough rate (CTR)
Click Through Rate = Clicks / Impressions %
Conversion
A visitor completing a target action.
Cost per acquisition
(CPA)
Refers to the cost of acquiring a new customer. The
advertiser pays only when a desired action is achieved
(sometimes called cost per acquisition).
The main objectives of online advertising are to increase sales, improve brand
awareness and raise share of voice in the marketplace. It is based on the simple
economics of demand and supply. Advertisers aim to stimulate a consumer need
(demand) and then satisfy that need (supply).
Cost per click (CPC)
Refers to when an advertiser pays only when their ad is
clicked on, giving them a visitor to their site – typically
from a search engine in pay per click search marketing.
Cost per mille (CPM)
Amount paid for every 1 000 impressions served of an
advertisement.
Online advertising, naturally, follows web user behaviour. Advertisers want to
place their adverts where potential customers will see them. Digital advertising is
not limited to one specific medium or location – it can be placed almost anywhere
on the web and can consist of images, text, videos, interactive elements, and even
games.
Display network
Content websites that serve pay per click adverts from
the same provider, such as AdWords.
Google AdWords
Google’s PPC program, which allows advertisers to
display their adverts on relevant search results and
across Google’s content network.
HyperText Markup
Language (HTML)
A language read by web browsers. Certain HTML ‘tags’
are used to structure the information and features
within a web page. As an example, HTML emails usually
contain graphics and can be interactive.
Internet protocol (IP)
address
The Internet Protocol (IP) address is an exclusive
number which is used to represent every single
computer in a network.
Internet service
provider (ISP)
Internet Service Provider – this is the company that
provides you with access to the Internet, for example,
MWEB or AOL.
Key performance
indicator (KPI)
A metric that shows whether an objective is being
achieved.
Marketplace Ads
Facebook ad space units, a type of advertising available
on Facebook.
Paid search advertising
Usually refers to advertising on search engines,
sometimes called PPC advertising. The advertiser pays
only for each click of the advert.
Popup
Unrequested window that opens on top of the currently
viewed window.
Tracking
Measuring the effectiveness of a campaign by collecting
and evaluating statistics.
Tracking code
A piece of code that tracks a user’s interaction and
movement through a website.
Traditional media
Newspapers, magazines, television and publishing
houses are the realm of traditional media.
Although the Internet provides new scope for creative approaches to advertising, we
see its true advantages when we realise how trackable (and therefore measurable)
Internet advertising is. It is possible to track all interactions with the advert itself:
the number of impressions served, how many clicks it received, post-click-andview data, and how many unique users were reached. This leads to valuable data
that can be used to make sensible, effective business decisions.
In this chapter, you will learn:
•
The various business objectives you can meet with online advertising
•
All about the various ad formats, payment models and ad types available
•
How and where to publish your adverts
•
How to run an online advertising campaign step by step
11.2 Key terms and concepts
Term
294
Definition
Ad server
The technology that places ads on websites.
Animated GIF
A GIF (type of image file) which supports animations and
allows a separate palette of 256 colours for each frame.
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Online Advertising › Online advertising objectives
Online Advertising › Key terms and concepts
Unique selling point
(USP)
Unique selling point (or proposition) – what makes your
offering different to your competitors’.
Viral video
This is a video that becomes immensely popular, leading
to its spread through word-of-mouth on the Internet via
email, social networks and other hosting websites.
Web analytics
A software tool that collects data on website users,
based on metrics to measure its performance.
Web browser
This is what allows you to browse the World Wide
Web. Examples of browsers include Internet Explorer,
Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
11.3.2 Creating demand
Creating customer demand is a three-step process: inform, persuade and remind.
Customers can’t want what they don’t know about. Advertising needs to convince
them about what they should want and why they should want it. Online advertising
provides a great way to communicate the unique selling points (USPs) of a product,
helping to stimulate demand and reminding customers about the product and why
they want it.
11.3 Online advertising objectives
Advertising, whether online or offline, has a number of objectives.
11.3.1 Building brand awareness
note
Brand awareness is
essential for launching
a new brand or product,
or approaching a new
audience.
Making people aware of a brand or product is an important long-term goal for any
marketer. Once customers know about it, they are more likely to trust the brand.
The better known a brand is, the more business it can do. And the ultimate goal is
to sell more of the product or service.
Online advertising is largely visual, making it an ideal channel for promoting brand
imagery and making people familiar with its colours, logo and overall feel.
Figure 2. A banner ad that creates demand for a new product.
11.3.3 Satisfying demand
Once somebody wants a product, they need to find out how to satisfy that desire.
At this point it is important for the marketer to show the customer how their
particular brand or product will best meet that need.
Figure 1. A banner ad that raises awareness.
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Online Advertising › Types of display adverts
Online Advertising › Online advertising objectives
Standard banner sizes
Figure 3. A banner ad that meets the customer’s need to save money.
11.3.4 Driving direct response and sales
Banner sizes available on the Google Display Network include (all sizes are in
pixels):
note
Google AdWords offers
a rich media banner
advert builder. You can
find it in the ‘Ads’ tab in
the AdWords account
interface.
•
Banner (468 x 60)
All forms of digital marketing need to drive traffic and sales in the long term.
However, the immediacy of online advertising also drives traffic and sales in the
short and medium terms. Unlike traditional media advertising, online advertising
can turn the potential customer into an actual customer right there and then.
What’s more, it is possible to measure accurately how effective the online
advertising campaign has been in this regard.
•
Mobile leaderboard (300 x 50)
•
Leaderboard (728 x 90)
•
Small Square (200 x 200)
note
•
Skyscraper (120 x 600)
Start with the most
common banner size.
11.4 The key differentiator
•
Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600)
•
Square (250 x 250)
Online advertising is able to drive instant sales and conversions. Unlike other
advertising mediums, the consumer can go from advert to merchant in one easy
click. Because of the connected nature of the Internet, online activities are highly
trackable and measurable, which makes it possible to target adverts and to track
and gauge the efficacy of the advertising accurately. Each display advert can be
tracked for success.
•
Medium Rectangle (300 x 250)
•
Large Rectangle (336 x 280)
11.5 Types of display adverts
There are many different ways to display adverts online. Here are some of the most
common options.
11.5.1 Banner adverts
A banner advert is a graphic image or animation displayed on a website for
advertising purposes. Static banners are in GIF or JPEG format, but banners
can also employ rich media such as Flash, video, JavaScript, HTML5 and other
interactive technologies; these allow the viewer to interact and transact within
the banner. Banners are not limited to the space that they occupy; some banners
expand on mouse-over or when clicked.
298
There are standard sizes (measured in pixels) for static, animated and rich media
banner adverts. Creating banners in these sizes means the ads can be placed
on many websites (advertisers sell space in these sizes as well). And here, size
(both dimensions and file size) does matter – you can expect varying rates of
clickthroughs and conversions across the range of sizes. Bigger is usually better,
but if you want to know what works best for your brand, test.
Banners may be animated, static or Flash, but must be under 50k in file size.
Bear in mind that the advertising network often includes a small graphic overlay
on the bottom of the advert, and does not resize your advert to accommodate this.
To avoid this obscuring your advert, you can leave a few pixels of blank space on
the bottom of your advert.
All adverts need to be supplied with a destination URL. Some rich media adverts
allow for multiple destination URLs.
11.5.2 Interstitial banners
These are banners shown between pages on a website. As you click from one page
to another, you are shown this advert before the next page is displayed. Sometimes
the advert can be closed.
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Online Advertising › Payment models for display advertising
Online Advertising › Types of display adverts
11.5.3 Popups and pop-unders
11.5.6 Map adverts
As the name suggests, these are adverts that pop up, or under, the web page being
viewed. They open in a new, smaller window. You will see a popup straight away,
but will probably become aware of a pop-under only after you close your browser
window.
This is advertising placed on an online map, such as Google Maps. This type of
advert is ideal for local businesses and is usually based on keyword searches for
the brand’s offering.
These were very prominent in the early days of online advertising, but audience
annoyance means that there are now ‘popup blockers’ built into most good web
browsers. This can be problematic as sometimes a website will legitimately use a
popup to display information to the user.
11.5.4 Floating adverts
note
Remember: your goal is
to inform and motivate
customers, not annoy
them.
This advert appears in a layer over the content, but is not in a separate window.
Usually, the user can close this advert. In fact, best practice dictates that a
prominent close button should be included on the advert, usually in the top right
hand corner. Floating adverts are created with DHTML or Flash, and float in a layer
above a site’s content for a few seconds. Often, the animation ends by disappearing
into a banner advert on the page.
Figure 5. A map advert on Google Maps.
11.6 Payment models for display advertising
As well as a variety of mediums and formats, there are also a number of different
payment models for display advertising.
11.6.1 CPM
CPM stands for cost per thousand impressions (M is the Roman numeral for a
thousand). This means the advertiser pays for every thousand times the advert
loads on the publisher’s page. This is how a campaign is normally priced when
brand awareness or exposure is the primary goal.
Figure 4. An expanded banner ad, including video, on the Los Angeles Times
website.
11.5.5 Wallpaper adverts
This advert changes the background of the web page being viewed. It is sometimes
possible to click on an advert of this type, but not always. The effect of these adverts
is difficult to measure as there is often no clickthrough, and its chief purpose is
branding.
300
CPM rates for rich media adverts are usually higher than for standard media
adverts. This is often based on file size.
11.6.2 CPC
CPC stands for cost per click. This means that the advertiser pays only when their
advert is clicked on by an interested party, regardless of how many times it has
been viewed. CPC advertising is normally associated with search advertising,
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Online Advertising › Getting your ads online
Online Advertising › Payment models for display advertising
note
Read more about this in
the Search Advertising
chapter.
although it has become very popular in display advertising too, especially when
using ad networks. Banners can be priced this way when the aim is to drive
traffic and conversions. It is also a payment method sometimes used in affiliate
marketing, when the aim is to drive traffic to a new website.
11.6.3 CPA
CPA refers to cost per acquisition. This model means that the advertiser pays
only when an advert delivers an acquisition after the user clicks on the advert.
Definitions of acquisitions vary depending on the site and campaign. It may be a
user filling in a form, downloading a file or buying a product.
note
Read more about this in
the Affiliate Marketing
chapter.
The advertiser rarely has a say over the payment model used – this comes down
to the website owner or publisher, advertising type and other factors, such as the
popularity of the site.
CPM favours the publisher, while CPA favours the advertiser. Sometimes, a hybrid
of the two payment models is pursued.
High-traffic, broad-audience websites (often referred to as ‘premium’ or booked
media) will typically offer CPM advertising. Examples include web portals such as
www.yahoo.com or news sites such as www.cnn.com.
CPA is often the best option for advertisers because they pay only when the
advertising has met its goal. For this reason, it is also the worst type for the
publisher, as they are rewarded only if the advertising is successful. The publisher
has to rely on the conversion rate of the advertiser’s website, something that
the publisher cannot control. The CPA model is not commonly used for banner
advertising and is generally associated with affiliate marketing.
Niche websites with a targeted audience are more likely to offer CPC or CPA
advertising to advertisers with an appropriate product. These can also fall under
the umbrella of affiliate marketing.
11.6.4 Flat rate or sponsorships
When planning a campaign, it is important to know how the advertising will be
paid for and what kinds of advertising are offered by publishers. A lot of this can
be solved by using a company that specialises in advert serving, media planning
and media buying.
Sometimes, owners of lower-traffic sites choose to sell banner space at a flat
rate – in other words, at a fixed cost per month, regardless of the amount of traffic
or impressions. This would appeal to a media buyer who may be testing an online
campaign that targets niche markets.
There are several variations to what a sponsorship on a website entails. Examples
include exclusive adverts on all the pages and slots on a specific page, newsletter
or section, and sponsoring content. Sponsorship means that no other advertiser
will appear in that section. Sponsorships are often difficult to measure and are
mostly used to raise brand awareness. These can be very effective when launching
a new brand.
11.6.5 CPE
With the cost per engagement (CPE) model, advertisers pay for interactions with
adverts, normally placed in videos or applications (such as Facebook applications).
An interaction, referred to as an engagement, usually starts with a rollover (or
mouse-over) that expands the ad. Once expanded, an advert may contain a video,
game, form, or other interactive content. The ad doesn’t take the user away from
the web page, and marketers pay only when an individual completes an action.
302
11.6.6 What payment model can you expect?
note
Read more about this in
the Affiliate Marketing
chapter.
Types of advertising can be seen on a scale from more intrusive (and thus potentially
annoying to the consumer) to less intrusive. In the same way, payment models can
be scaled from those that favour the publisher to those that favour the advertiser.
11.7 Getting your ads online
To get your ads to appear online, you need to find and pay for the space where it
will appear. There are several options for doing this:
•
Premium booked media
•
Advertising networks
•
Advertising exchanges
•
Social media advertising placements
•
Mobile advertising
•
Ad servers
note
Which is the best
payment model for you?
This will depend on the
purpose of your ads and
the return you expect on
your investment. Each
payment model can be
effective and lucrative if
used appropriately.
11.7.1 Premium booked media
Premium booked media works very much in the traditional way of booking
advertising – the advertiser contacts the premium media provider (usually a single
group that oversees a key, high-profile online space) and discusses options for
placing an advert. This will involve negotiating on targeting and pricing for the
space desired, and is usually a costly but high-profile option.
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Online Advertising › Getting your ads online
Online Advertising › Getting your ads online
11.7.2 Advertising networks
11.7.4 Social media advertising
An advertising network is a group of websites on which adverts can be purchased
through a single sales entity. It could be a collection of sites owned by the same
publisher (for example, New Line Cinema, Time Inc. and HBO are all owned by
Time Warner Inc.) or it could be an affiliation of sites that share a representative.
The Google Display Network is one of the largest advertising networks in the world.
Many social media platforms offer an advertising option, as this is their primary
source of revenue. Social media can be an excellent place to reach prospects
because you can usually target very accurately based on user-provided
demographic information.
Facebook
Facebook offers four paid-for advertising solutions:
1.
Figure 6. Ad formats available on the Google Display Network.
Facebook Ads are standard adverts that appear in the user’s right-hand
sidebar. They have no minimum spend and can be bought on either a cost
per thousand impressions (CPM) or cost per click (CPC) basis. These
adverts are served based on interests and demographic information.
For example, an advertiser can request to have their advert shown to all
women in London who are interested in men, who are single and between
the ages of 25 and 35, and who like dogs or puppies.
The advertising network acts as an intermediary between advertisers and
publishers, and provides a technology solution to both. As well as providing a
centralised ad server that can serve adverts to a number of websites, the networks
offer tracking and reporting, as well as targeting.
note
Advertising networks usually categorise the sites by factors such as demographics,
topic, or area of interest. Advertisers pay to advertise in specific channels, and not
in individual sites. Most times, the campaign will then be optimised based on the
best converting sites.
Facebook will show you
the size of the audience
you have targeted and
how much each click is
likely to cost.
Rates are often negotiated with the network, and placements are booked over a
period of time.
Figure 7. Targeting options on Facebook.
11.7.3 Advertising exchanges
Advertising exchanges, on the other hand, are where unsold advertising space
– called inventory – is placed by publishers for bidding. The inventory is sold to
the highest bidding advertiser. Giving advertisers far more control, this type of
advertising mimics the PPC model of search advertising (Generalised Second Price
auction) – but bids are for audience profiles and space rather than for keywords.
It allows publishers to fill unsold inventory at the highest available price, and can
give smaller advertisers access to this inventory.
304
2.
Facebook Engagement Ads are similar to standard ads, but include
an element that fans can engage with, such as a Like or Share button,
a video, an event, or a poll. These are bought on a CPM basis with a
minimum spend threshold.
3.
Sponsored stories are posts that are created whenever someone
engages with a specific element of the brand’s Facebook Page; these
then appear in their connections’ news feeds. You allocate a budget to the
specific post, and this is spent to have the ad appear.
4.
Promoted posts allow you to publicise an existing post that you have made.
A page must have at least 400 Likes before this option becomes available.
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Online Advertising › Getting your ads online
Online Advertising › Getting your ads online
YouTube
note
YouTube offers a wide range of advertising formats and options for businesses.
These are covered in detail in the chapter on video marketing.
You can find out more at
www.youtube.com/yt/
advertise.
note
LinkedIn
note
Facebook Advertising
information can be
found at www.facebook.
com/advertising.
Figure 8. Ads on Facebook.
LinkedIn Ads is a self-service advertising platform that allows you to create and
place adverts on prominent pages on the LinkedIn website, including a user’s
home page, search results pages, groups and more. There are many targeting
options available, including job title, job function, industry, geography, age, gender,
company name, company size, and LinkedIn Group. There is a minimum budget
requirement of $10 a day (though no minimum spend), and ads can be served on
a CPM or CPC basis.
Read more about this
in the Video Marketing
chapter.
Twitter
Twitter offers a self-service ad platform with several options and allows a degree
of specific targeting. The service is still relatively new, which means that it changes
frequently, and not all options may be available to all regions or user accounts.
•
•
Promoted tweets are tweets that appear at the very top of a user’s
timeline, or in Twitter mobile apps. There is no minimum spend, and
advertisers pay when users retweet, @reply to, favourite or click on a
promoted tweet.
Promoted accounts are user accounts that appear on the left of the
user’s Twitter timeline, in the section called “Who to follow”, which
recommends accounts the user may like. Advertisers pay when a user
follows the promoted account.
note
More information about
LinkedIn advertising
can be found at
www.linkedin.com/
advertising.
Figure 10. LinkedIn ads.
11.7.5 Mobile advertising
There are three types of mobile networks that you can choose from when
embarking on a mobile advertising campaign.
Figure 9. A Promoted account on Twitter.
•
note
More information on
Twitter advertising can
be found at business.
twitter.com/advertise/
start.
306
Promoted trends is available only to full-service Twitter Ads customers
and allows a brand to list their brand name, hashtag or slogan in the
left-hand ‘Trends’ section of a user’s Twitter timeline, which is usually
reserved for the most popular topics of the moment on Twitter. These
generally have a flat fee and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,
depending on how wide the geographic targeting is.
Blind networks
These networks target a large number of independent mobile publishers, and
generally allow you to target by country or type of content, but not by specific
websites. Payment tends to be on a CPC basis, which can vary. An example of this
kind of network is BuzzCity (www.buzzcity.com).
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Online Advertising › Targeting and optimising
Online Advertising › Getting your ads online
Premium blind networks
The benefits of ad servers
Advertising on premium blind networks tends to be more expensive, but allow
the advertiser to target better-known brands and high-traffic sites. Broadcasters
or operator portals fall under this category. Payment here is often on a CPM
basis. Millennial Media (www.millennialmedia.com) is an example premium blind
network. While targeting options are available, different networks can work in
different ways, with varying levels of support.
Rather than distribute copies of each piece of creative advertising to each publisher
or media buyer, you can send out a line of code that calls up an advertisement
directly from the ad server each time an advert is scheduled to run. The agency
loads the creative to the server once and can modify rotations or add new units on
the fly without needing to re-contact the vendors. This is referred to as third-party
ad serving.
Premium networks
These networks often offer sales as a direct extension of the big brands that they offer.
More detailed targeting and sales support is available, but they also charge higher
rates. An example of this kind of network is Widespace (www.widespace.com/en).
The ad servers provide a wealth of data, including impressions served, adverts
clicked, CTR and CPC. While publishers have their own ad servers, most of the
third-party ad servers also have the ability to provide performance against postclick activities such as sales, leads, downloads, or any other site-based action the
advertiser may want to measure.
Ad servers provide a consistent counting methodology across the entire campaign
enabling the advertiser to gain an ‘apples to apples’ comparison of performance
across the entire media schedule, which includes multiple websites. This ensures
that the advertiser gets what they are paying for, and avoids fraudulent activities,
such as click fraud, as a good third-party ad server should be audited.
The ad server also allows sophisticated targeting of display advertising. Examples
of third-party ad servers include Google DoubleClick, Atlas and MediaMind.
note
The Mobile Marketing
Association publishes a
set of useful guidelines
for mobile advertising.
Download the latest
version at time of
publishing here: www.
mmaglobal.com/files/
mobileadvertising.pdf.
11.8 Targeting and optimising
Ad servers serve adverts across a number of websites, and can track a user
visiting websites using cookies or IP addresses. This means that ad servers can
offer advertisers:
Figure 11. Widespace is an example of a premium mobile ad network.
•
Frequency capping: this limits the number of times a specific user sees
the same advert in a set time period.
•
Sequencing: this ensures that a user sees adverts in a particular order.
•
Exclusivity: this ensures that adverts from direct competitors are not
shown on the same page.
•
Roadblocks: this allows an advertiser to own 100% of the advertising
inventory on a page.
11.7.6 Ad servers
Ad servers are servers that store advertisements and serve them to web pages.
Ad servers can be local, run by a publisher to serve adverts to websites on the
publisher’s domain, or they can be third-party ad servers, which serve adverts
to web pages on any domain. Ad servers facilitate advert trafficking and provide
reports on advert performance. They have two functions: to help publishers
manage their ad inventory, and to help advertisers monitor and optimise their
campaigns.
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Online Advertising › Targeting and optimising
The ad server can also target adverts based on the business rules of the advertiser
or the profiles of the users:
note
Location targeting can
be very cost-effective
for physical events and
regional offers.
•
Geo-targeting: online advertising has the ability to target markets by
country, province or city, and can even drill them down to something as
specific as their IP address. This is also known as IP targeting.
•
Network or browser type: markets can further be targeted via
networks or browser types such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer,
Chrome and Safari.
•
•
•
•
Connection type: users can be segmented and targeted according
to their Internet connection type, for example, whether they use
broadband or dial-up connections.
Day and time: advertisers can choose the time of day or day of the
week when their adverts are shown. Advertisers can specify when their
campaign should flight, down to the minute. This usually depends on
the client’s objective for the campaign or the product itself.
Social serving: websites gather demographic data about users and
then serve each user targeted and relevant advertising. For example,
Facebook will allow advertisers to select specific characteristics of
users who will be shown an advert.
Behavioural targeting: the ad server uses the profile of a user (built up
over websites visited previously) to determine which adverts to show
during a given visit. Ad servers can base this profile on cookies or on
IP addresses. For example, the ad server may choose to show adverts
for pet insurance on a news page to a user who has visited the pets and
animals section of a general media site previously.
Re-marketing is another form of behavioural targeting. This allows
the ad server to display ads to users after they have interacted with a
website in a certain way – for example, by adding an item to their cart
on an eCommerce page but not checking out. The user may then see an
ad for the product they have in their cart, to encourage them to go back
and make a purchase.
Another approach to behavioural targeting is to set up parameters to
determine when a certain advert needs to be shown. For example: if the
user has clicked on a banner advertising a test drive, and the user has
actually booked the test drive, the next time they see an advert from
the advertiser, a different advert will be shown because the user has
already responded to the first one.
310
•
Contextual advertising: the ad server deduces the optimum adverts to
serve based on the content of the page. For example, on an article about
mountain bike holidays in Europe, the ad server would show adverts for
new mountain bikes, or adverts from travel companies offering flights
to Europe, or perhaps adverts for adventure travel insurance.
11.9 Tracking
The trackability of online advertising is what makes it so superior to conventional
advertising. Not only can an advertiser tell how many times an advert has been
seen (impressions), but also how many times the advert has been successful in
sending visitors to the advertised website (clicks). As discussed in the chapter
on conversion optimisation, the tracking needs to continue on the website to
determine how successful the advert has been in creating more revenue for the
website (conversions).
note
Read more about
this in the Conversion
Optimisation chapter.
As well as tracking adverts, advertising networks can also provide information
about the people who saw the advert, as well as those who acted on it, including:
•
Connection type
•
Browser
•
Operating system
•
Time of day
•
Internet service provider
Many third-party ad servers will set a cookie on impression of an advert, not only
on clickthrough, so it is possible to track conversions that happen indirectly (called
view-through conversions). Simply put, third-party ad servers can track not only
the post click data, but also the post view data: when a user sees an advert, does
not click on it, but goes to the website after viewing the advert (either by typing in
the URL, or by searching for the site).
Using this information, the ad server can target the adverts displayed, helping
advertisers to optimise campaigns and get the most from their budgets.
11.10 Step-by-step guide to online advertising
Knowing the various types of display options and payment models available is all
very well, but you may be wondering how to put this all together as you plan your
campaign. Here is a step-by-step guide that you can follow to ensure that you run
effective adverts.
note
Don’t forget to keep an
eye on any non-digital
advertising that the brand
is doing – this could have
a significant effect on
your results, and you
want to ensure that you
are communicating the
same message.
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Online Advertising › The future of online advertising
Online Advertising › Step-by-step guide to online advertising
1. Determine the goal of your campaign.
Are you embarking on a branding campaign, or is your primary focus direct
response?
2. Identify your key performance indicators (KPIs).
Which figures will let you know if you are succeeding? This should tie in
closely to your goal.
Web users respond well to being told what to do, and the content of an online
advert should be concise and directional. Examples of these CTAs include:
•
“Phone now for the best deals on insurance.”
3. Investigate your target audience.
•
“Click here for fast home delivery.”
What websites are they likely to be visiting? The type of creative you use and
the payment model you follow will largely be determined by the websites that
you advertise on.
•
“Donate now.”
Online advertising is an acquisition and awareness channel. It does not
require users to seek an interaction actively, as search advertising and email
marketing do. So, it is crucial that the adverts are placed in front of the
audience that is most likely to convert.
All advertising needs an appropriate landing page or destination URL. Whether
this involves creating a microsite, or merely leading users to an existing page
on the website, ensure that clickthroughs are not being wasted. Generally,
sending advertising traffic to your home page is not a good idea as it leaves
the user confused about where to go next.
4. Research potential websites to host your adverts.
Niche websites with a smaller, more targeted audience will most likely
charge a flat rate for display advertising, or a CPA rate. They could be flexible
in display options that they give you, but you will need to take into account
their bandwidth costs if they serve the adverts.
High-traffic websites with a broad audience will usually charge on a CPM
basis. They will broker their advertising inventory through an advertising
network, or even a number of advertising networks.
5. Set a budget.
Most advertising platforms will let you set and dynamically manage your
budget. Decide how much you are willing to pay per click, impression, action
or engagement, and set your total budget in line with this.
6. Create your adverts.
Now, you will need to brief your creative team to ensure that you have the
optimum banners for your campaign.
Your online adverts will need to:
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Animation attracts attention, but be wary of being one of several animated
banners on a website. Banners should not be considered in isolation, but
rather in the context of the website on which they will appear.
•
Attract attention
•
Convey a message
•
Entice action
7. Choose or create a landing page.
8. Run your adverts.
note
Now that you’re all set up, you can let your ads go live! Keep a close eye on
your spending to ensure that you’re getting a decent return for your money,
and that nothing unusual is occurring.
If a problem comes up,
you can simply stop your
campaign, change the
creative elements or
modify your approach
- the beauty of online
advertising is that it
can be revised almost
instantly.
9. Track, measure, optimise.
As with all online marketing tactics, you need to track what your ads are doing
and the results they are generating, measure your returns and successes, and
then optimise your online advertising campaigns to get even better returns in
future.
11.11 The future of online advertising
On the web, the convergence of digital devices and channels is leading to new
avenues for online advertising. Digital advertising can reach customers anywhere
where they can access the web.
While we have become used to the Internet as a free medium where we can
read and interact with any content we want, it is the fact that it is an advertiser’s
medium that keeps it free. And that means that as technologies evolve and the way
we interact with content changes, so advertising follows.
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Online Advertising › Case study – Toyota Prius
Online Advertising › The future of online advertising
Previously the level of interaction a web user had with a website could be measured
by the number of pages of that website the user viewed. Now, technology such
as AJAX and rich media such as video mean that the time spent on a web page
can be more meaningful than the number of pages viewed. The key word here is
‘engagement’, and technology and data analysis is working towards being able to
determine how websites can quantify the level of engagement with a viewer.
A little online research will reveal plenty of commentary declaring the decline of
display advertising. Increasingly, consumers are becoming both weary and wary
of advertising. Clickthrough rates on banners are dropping, so the effectiveness of
display advertising is being questioned by some. With the focus in digital marketing
on tracking and measuring response and engagement, should a company spend
money on less measurable activities such as ‘brand building’, where they are
paying on a CPM basis?
note
View-through
conversions are
important to look at
as well, especially
if your campaign is
focused around raising
awareness.
11.12.2 Challenges of online advertising
A lot of display advertising is intrusive, so popup blockers can often prevent
adverts from being served as they were intended by the advertisers. There are
also extensions available for web browsers, such as AdBlock Plus, that will block
advertising on web pages. Technologically savvy consumers are increasingly using
these methods to limit the advertising that they see.
Using third-party ad servers and post-impression tracking, the effect of different
advertising and marketing channels on each other can be observed. Banner
advertising can see an increase in search volume, for example.
Bandwidth can also be an issue, although this is a shrinking problem. However,
campaigns should be planned according to demographics in determining the
richness (and investment) of interaction.
What does this tell us? Measurement should take place across all channels, and
no channel should be utilised in isolation. The best results will be gained through
an integrated and holistic approach to digital marketing.
Consumers are suffering from advertising fatigue, so while new technologies
can provide great results, as soon as the market moves mainstream it can get
saturated. Consumers are increasingly ignoring adverts.
11.12 Advantages and challenges
11.13 Case study – Toyota Prius
11.12.1 Advantages of online advertising
11.13.1 One-line summary
Banner advertising goes a long way towards bridging the advertising divide.
Adverts have a set size, they can look very similar to print adverts, and they occupy
a particular bit of real estate in a publication with a particular number of views. It’s
easy to understand, and it does the things with which buyers are familiar.
Online advertising can take advantage of the emotive qualities of images, videos
and animations. Some campaigns are better suited to images rather than plain
text.
Since banners can contain rich media, they offer levels of interactivity that other
forms of advertising cannot achieve. This allows your target market not only to see
your banner, but also to play with it. Interaction builds a bond and improves the
chances of the consumer remembering your brand tomorrow. Cognitive learning
is a powerful outcome of interactive display advertising.
Modern online advertising is able to bring together a number of other online
marketing tactics such as animations, games, video and Flash.
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Banner ads, like all digital marketing tactics, are measurable. Track clickthrough
rates and you get an idea of exactly how many people are responding to your Call
to Action. Some publishers even have the ability to do post-click tracking, which
means that you can track the user all the way to a sale if that is the purpose of the
advert.
note
Advertising blindness
is not a problem that’s
unique to the web - for
example, TV viewers
are increasingly fastforwarding through
ads or watching
episodes through online
streaming services.
Toyota launches a display advertising campaign to draw awareness to the new Prius and increase
sales.
11.13.2 The problem
The Prius is a hybrid electric car. Toyota needed to raise awareness and drive sales around the
introduction of new models to the Prius line. To address this challenge, they brought the Saatchi
& Saatchi LA team on board (WorldsBestCaseStudies.com, 2012).
11.13.3 The solution
Since the idea for the second Prius had been conceived, debate had surrounded the question of
what exactly the term for the plural of Prius would be (Walsh, 2013). The Saatchi team identified
this as a potential talking point among customers and launched the ‘Prius goes plural’ campaign.
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Online Advertising › The bigger picture
Online Advertising › Case study – Toyota Prius
The promotional video posted on YouTube asked fans what they thought the plural of the name
‘Prius’ should be. The video then gave social media users a month to vote for the best term.
In order to drive awareness and interest in the campaign, they created a series of animated,
interactive display ads.
Some of the display ads featured animated Prius vehicles that sped into life by driving across the
page into the text that the viewer was reading.
Figure 12. An animated Prius ad. (Source: WorldsBestCaseStudies.com, 2012)
11.13.4 Results
The display advertising campaign was incredibly successful in driving awareness, interaction
and traffic to a range of portals. It achieved this by incorporating a fun concept with some eyecatching display adverts that also encouraged interactivity – a perfect blend that speaks to display
advertising best practice.
Here are some figures that demonstrate the success of this display advertising strategy:
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•
The YouTube video alone was viewed over 250 000 times, with almost 300 comments
(ToyotaUSA, 2011).
•
The Facebook Page received over 400 000 likes with 1 141 likes for a single post, although
comments on posts were lacking (Toyota Prius, 2000).
•
The hashtag #PriusGoesPlural trended on Twitter.
•
The campaign received just 1.2 million votes – and the Prius plural was announced as Prii
(Walsh, 2013).
•
This campaign also drove sales with a record of over 1 million Prius sales, even in a tough
economy (WorldsBestCaseStudies.com, 2012).
Figure 13. An interactive ad that allowed users to enter their suggestions.
11.14 The bigger picture
Offline advertising and marketing campaigns can be adapted for an online audience in order
to ensure maximum brand exposure. It is very effective in enhancing offline marketing and
advertising activity and in ensuring a wider reach.
As mentioned, online advertising can be used as an acquisition channel, reaching out to a new
audience. It can be used to initiate a buying cycle and customer relationship, which then plays out
across other online channels. Addressing advertising and other channels to complement each
other will result in a consistent message, and optimum results. Online advertising can be used to
reach a large audience, and then other digital marketing tactics can be used to refine and engage
this audience further. Social media advertising in particular is crucial for building communities
and keeping the brand top of mind.
Online advertising and affiliate marketing go hand in hand. Affiliate networks also act as advertising
networks, allowing for advertising to be purchased on a performance basis.
When seeding new products and viral campaigns, display advertising can be used to reach a wide
audience at a low cost. It can expose a campaign to many new users, and increase the chance that
those who are most likely to pass on a message receive it in the first place. Display advertising also
supports other advertising and marketing channels, such as search advertising and marketing.
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Online Advertising › References
Online Advertising › Summary
11.15 Summary
11.17 Chapter questions
Online advertising has two main objectives:
1.
Online banner advertising and outdoor display advertising both use images to try to increase
sales. In planning, both need to consider placement so as to be seen by their most likely
audience. What are the key differences?
2.
Why is display advertising an effective acquisition channel?
3.
Go to www.wheels24.co.za and www.thetimes.co.za. What advertising can you find on the
front page of these two websites? What products are being advertised, and how are they
being advertised? What can you deduce about the target market for these products?
•
Branding
•
Direct response and sales
The Internet allows for highly targeted and highly trackable advertising across a variety of online
media. Some ways that advertisers can use the Internet are:
•
Banner adverts
•
Interstitial banners
•
Popups and pop-unders
•
Floating adverts
•
Wallpaper adverts
econsultancy.com/uk/blog – UK industry-focused advertising articles.
•
Map adverts
www.bannerblog.com.au – Have a look at Bannerblog for rich media examples.
Ad servers provide trafficking, tracking and reporting solutions to both advertisers and publishers.
They allow advertisers to target display adverts based on parameters, including:
•
User profile (location, operating system, browser, connection type)
•
Behaviour
•
Frequency and sequencing
•
Exclusivity
•
Context of content
Technology allows for increased levels of interaction within an advert, and for advertising tailored
to engagement media such as online videos and social network applications.
11.16 Case study questions
318
1.
Why did display advertising play such a critical role in the Prius campaign?
2.
Why did people find the concept of coming up with a plural for Prius so engaging?
3.
What is the benefit of using interactive adverts, as demonstrated in the case study?
11.18 Further reading
www.adrants.com – Commentary on online advertising campaigns. US focused.
11.19 References
Toyota Prius, 2000. Toyota Prius. [Online]
Available at: https://www.facebook.com/prius
[Accessed 8 May 2013].
ToyotaUSA, 2011. Prius Goes Plural - When One Becomes More. [Online]
Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nUor4gdFoyg
[Accessed 08 May 2013].
Walsh, L., 2013. Prius Goes Plural: Case Study. [Online]
Available at: http://laurawalshblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/prius-goes-plural-case-study/
[Accessed 8 May 2013].
WorldsBestCaseStudies.com, 2012. Toyota: Prius Goes Plural. [Online]
Available at: http://worldsbestcasestudies.com/toyota-prius-goes-plural/
[Accessed 8 May 2013].
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