Posts tagged display
Retargeted ads triumph
Sep 23rd
comScore just released a new study they conducted with ValueClick Media on the effectiveness of online display advertising according to its media placement strategy.
The research firm analyzed 103 campaigns from 39 different advertisers covering 7 industries, examining the lift in brand website visitation and trademark search queries across six different media placement strategies.
Here’s a simplified look at what they found:
Retargeting – Served to users that have previously visited an advertiser’s site.
ReTargeted ads had the highest lift in trademark search behavior with a whopping 1,046%. The downside is that retargeting by the very nature of the beast, doesn’t reach as many potential customers so it’s perfect for those who have a high volume of abandoned shopping carts.
Premium Pricing – High visibility placements on premium publishers.
The downside here is the cost, but research showed a higher than average lift for this type of ad.
Contextual Targeting – Ads served to related page-level content
Also an expensive option, but the upside is that contextual advertising had a much larger reach than other types, surpassed only by. . .
Run-of-Network (RON) – Ads which appear anywhere in the network, often optimized by conversion
Efficiency Pricing – Cost-per-click engagement with creative
Both of these were looked at as low cost alternatives that have the best reach but don’t have the lift of targeted ads.
So retargeting it is! Except for one thing…
Anne Hunter, vice president of advertising effectiveness at comScore, says, “One of the key findings of this research is just how effective Retargeting is at generating lift. However, if marketers want to continue to enjoy the benefits of this highly effective strategy, they must also deploy it responsibly and in a manner with which consumers are comfortable.”
This is a topic we’ve discussed before and I don’t know if I’m just noticing them more often or if more advertisers are using them, but I still find it a little freaky, particularly when the ad doesn’t jive with the page I’m reading. For example, yesterday I was reading a serious interview with a breast cancer survivor and the ad that popped up was for a toy store I’d recently visited. Cute, animated mascot and breast cancer just don’t mix. I noticed the ad, but not in a good way.
comScore also found good results among advertisers that used a mix of three or more placement strategies at the same time. In one campaign that used five different methods, the average number of minutes on the brand’s site rose to seven times the norm.
What is the future of display advertising?
Sep 2nd
Google’s director of product management Jonathan Bellack looks at the tech giant’s efforts to help online publishers generate more advertising revenue without being intimidated by the pace of change in the industry.
“For millions of online publishers—from the smallest blogger to the largest entertainment, news, e-commerce and information sites—online advertising revenue is vital. When publishers can maximize their returns, everyone benefits from more vibrant online content and websites,” says Bellack.
But the pace of change in the industry can be intimidating—how can a publisher keep up with what’s new, let alone grow their business?
Google believes that the new technology it is currently developing to make display advertising work better will help to grow the display advertising pie for all publishers, by orders of magnitude.
Bellack says, “We shouldn’t be asking how publishers can eke another 5 or 10% out of display advertising in the next few years. We should be looking at how the industry can double or triple in size.”
Google has three core ad products for publishers: AdSense, DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange.
But what are the key principles guiding Google’s future product innovations for increasing online ad revenues for publishers? Here’s 5 points of explanation from the Google blog.
1. Making life more efficient
For most large publishers, directly sold ads (ads sold by their own sales force) comprise the vast majority of their ad revenues. But today, selling and managing these ads is frustrating, expensive and often involves tedious manual processes.
Imagine a TV network that receives TV commercials in 100 different formats, languages, lengths and video dimensions, and then has to manually convert, translate and edit them all, then manually count the number of TV sets on which the ad appeared before sending a bill.
Things like new standards for video ad serving and systems that connect buyers and sellers are helping publishers support the most engaging and creative ads across their sites. But there are quantum leaps to come in this area, for small and large publishers.
2. Total revenue management
AdSense selects the most valuable ad for publishers from a large number of ad networks, to maximize ad revenues every time a page loads.
New ad serving and “dynamic allocation” technology, like the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, is emerging that enables ad revenues to be maximized across both directly and indirectly sold ad space, ad impression by ad impression, using real-time prices. Second by second, across millions of ad impressions, this can meaningfully boost major publishers’ revenues. Using this technology, the average price that a publisher receives for ad space sold through the Ad Exchange is more than 130 percent higher than the average price of ad space sold directly to ad networks. In fact, without this type of dynamic allocation across sales channels, a publisher’s revenues can never truly be maximized.
3. More insight and control
Our vision is to provide all publishers the smartest possible advertising system that can give them knowledge and control of everything going on with their ad business. The vision is already becoming a reality: the upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers platform offers publishers 4,000 times more data than its predecessor. And in recent years, we’ve been constantly adding new reporting options for our AdSense partners.
4. Betting on openness
An open ecosystem drives meaningful results for publishers. When a wide range of buyers can bid for a publisher’s ad space, through an advertising exchange or network, this creates more competition for that ad space, while giving publishers choice over whose ads they want to appear. On the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, an enormous number of advertisers, belonging to over 50 ad networks, compete for publishers’ ad space. Of course, at the same time, we’re also providing publishers robust technologies and controls that can block any unwanted ads or networks.
Similarly, we believe that one of the best ways to encourage innovation is to open code to the web developer community. of better, more valuable ad innovations.
5. Everything is going to be “display”
Display advertising is about much more than ads in web browsers. People are watching video, reading newspapers, magazines, books and listening to digital music at an ever-increasing rate. They’re turning to a plethora of new devices—smartphones, tablets, e-readers and even video game consoles. We’ve designed our platform, and are continuing to invest in it, to give publishers a single base that can deliver ads into this expanding world—including streaming video, mobile ad delivery and more.
Google improves search ads – they’re going visual!
Nov 25th
The search engine giant has invested in innovative new marketing technologies for its search advertising platform. But will it mean a higher return for advertisers?
Google has certainly been busy this week. First they announce they are about to bring back display advertising from the brink. Today, its bolstering its search ad capabilites.
Google has blended videos, images, maps and more into the search results on its search engine to provide a better “search experience”, and a visual one at that.
The search engine giant has been developing and testing a variety of new ad formats. These formats are focused on giving users ads that are “relevant and useful”.
According to Google’s blog, the company is “committed to giving you the information you want — regardless of the form in which it might appear”. But what does it mean for marketers?
The new formats will allow advertisers to provide richer types of information in the ads.
“Text is often useful, but sometimes videos and pictures are a more effective way to receive information,” it notes on its blog. And if you need an example: “if you want to learn a magic trick, a video showing you how to perform the trick is likely the best result.”
Users might also see an ad with more links so they can quickly find a specific page in an advertiser’s website.
Another example: If you’re trying to find a holiday bouquet to bring to your dinner party hostess, you might see an ad that shows your local florist’s location on a map and provides driving directions.
Starting today, you might spot ads that include images and prices for specific products on Google. But while it experiment with new formats (and new revenue streams and price points, I’m assuming), the company will remain “loyal” to its core principle of “getting the right ad to the right person at the right time”.
Google even touts yet more innovative improvements to its advertising business in the future.
Search advertising is about to change forever. And I can’t help but wonder if all this has been spurred on by the incoming threat of Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Google certainly has been busy lately, what’s next and do all these new improvements mean higher prices for advertisers? Furthermore, is it more work for marketers? Looking forward to seeing some ROI figures from advertisers on the back of these “improvements”.
Do you think the changes will make a vast difference?
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