[{"content":"Most brand spotlights on this blog track advertisers that spend consistently, test dozens of creative variations, and iterate on landing pages every few weeks. Old El Paso\u0026rsquo;s summer 2026 flight is the opposite of that story, and that\u0026rsquo;s exactly why it\u0026rsquo;s worth studying.\nIn the 90 days between May 20 and August 17, 2026, Old El Paso put an estimated $36.2 million in US ad spend behind a campaign that ran almost entirely on YouTube — and almost entirely on two video creatives. It\u0026rsquo;s one of the most concentrated big-budget flights in Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s index, and it\u0026rsquo;s a clean, real-world illustration of a media-buying philosophy that looks nothing like the performance-marketing playbook most digital advertisers follow.\nCompany Background Old El Paso is General Mills\u0026rsquo; Tex-Mex food brand — taco shells, seasoning packets, salsas, and dinner kits that have sat in American pantries since the 1930s. It\u0026rsquo;s a category leader in a grocery aisle that doesn\u0026rsquo;t get much attention in competitive-intelligence writing, because most packaged-food brands don\u0026rsquo;t buy much measurable digital media relative to their retail footprint. When they do spend, though, they tend to spend in a very particular way, and Old El Paso\u0026rsquo;s recent flight is a textbook example.\nThe brand has spent the last year building out \u0026ldquo;Elroy,\u0026rdquo; a singing-cowboy mascot cast through a social media talent-show format judged by Keith Urban, and has used him as the throughline across a string of campaign moments — a \u0026ldquo;Taco Gods\u0026rdquo; spot in summer 2025, a \u0026ldquo;Taco Totality\u0026rdquo; push tied to Cinco de Mayo landing on Taco Tuesday in May 2026, and now a flight built around a track called \u0026ldquo;Pass o\u0026rsquo; the Old El Paso,\u0026rdquo; created with The Martin Agency. That mascot-and-jingle continuity matters for understanding why the creative economics look the way they do below — this isn\u0026rsquo;t a brand testing its way toward a message. It already has one, and it\u0026rsquo;s using paid media to put it in front of as many people as possible.\nIndustry Context Old El Paso doesn\u0026rsquo;t compete for attention with other food brands the way a DTC challenger competes with rivals in the same feed. Its nearest neighbors in Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s advertiser-similarity data are other center-of-store grocery brands and QSR chains — Taco Bell, Kraft Heinz, McCormick, Campbell\u0026rsquo;s, Chick-fil-A, Chicory — most of which show up in the same food-content publisher network rather than head-to-head on the same creative real estate.\nThe more useful comparison is internal. Old El Paso sits inside General Mills alongside Pillsbury and Annie\u0026rsquo;s, and looking at the same 90-day window across all three shows just how differently a single portfolio can allocate budget and creative:\nPillsbury spent an estimated $11.4 million behind 15 unique creatives in the same window — a normal-looking, moderately diversified flight. Annie\u0026rsquo;s spent $6.9 million behind just 4 creatives, already a tight rotation by most standards. Old El Paso outspent both combined and did it with a creative set that, once you strip out a handful of stray test impressions, comes down to essentially the same handful of assets carrying nearly the entire budget. Three sibling brands, three completely different points on the concentration spectrum, all funded from the same corporate parent.\nSpend \u0026amp; Networks: A Standing Start The scale of this flight only makes sense next to what came before it. In the same calendar window one year earlier — May 20 to August 17, 2025 — Old El Paso spent an estimated $1,103 in the US, with a single tracked creative. In the 90 days immediately preceding this flight (February 19 to May 19, 2026), spend was $379,000. Across the full trailing 12 months before the flight began, cumulative spend was $861,000. Then, starting May 20, 2026, spend jumped to $36.2 million in 90 days.\nThat trendline isn\u0026rsquo;t a gradual ramp — it\u0026rsquo;s a step change. Daily spend sat in the low thousands through the winter and spring, then jumped past $100,000 a day in late May and generally ran in the hundreds of thousands to low millions a day through the summer — including a stretch in mid-June that topped $1.7 million a day. Spend briefly dipped back below $100,000 a day on a handful of days in early-to-mid July (as low as roughly $32,500 on July 9) before climbing to the flight\u0026rsquo;s actual peak of $1.82 million a day on July 19. This is the signature of a planned flight going live on a set date, not an always-on program scaling organically.\nWhere did it run? Virtually one place:\nAn estimated $36,175,118 of the $36,175,200 total — effectively all of it — ran through YouTube\u0026rsquo;s video network. A trivial $82 ran through Google\u0026rsquo;s DV360 stack. There\u0026rsquo;s no display retargeting, no native content marketing, no programmatic banner presence worth mentioning. For this flight, \u0026ldquo;advertising\u0026rdquo; meant one channel: in-stream video on YouTube.\nPublishers: Broad Reach, Not a Sponsorship Deal It would be easy to assume a campaign this YouTube-heavy is a handful of influencer sponsorship deals. It isn\u0026rsquo;t. Breaking the youtube.com placement down by channel shows spend landing on some recognizable names — MrBeast, the Stokes Twins, Fuerza Regida, 7clouds, KarolG, Sony Pictures Animation, Jordan Matter, Alan Chikin Chow — each pulling in somewhere between $500,000 and $1.75 million.\nBut those ten channels combined only account for roughly $10 million of the $36.2 million total. The other $26 million-plus is spread across thousands of smaller channels and videos that never accumulate enough individual spend to rank on their own. That pattern — a handful of big, recognizable names at the top, and a long, thin tail underneath — is what a genuine reach-and-frequency buy looks like in YouTube\u0026rsquo;s ad auction: the brand isn\u0026rsquo;t hand-picking specific creators to sponsor, it\u0026rsquo;s buying broad audience reach across YouTube\u0026rsquo;s entire content graph, and the recognizable channels simply happen to have enough viewership to absorb a proportional share of impressions.\nCreative Analysis: Two Assets, 98% of the Budget This is the part of the flight that makes it genuinely unusual. Old El Paso\u0026rsquo;s entire measurable creative output for this campaign comes down to 17 tracked creative hashes, and of those, two videos carry almost the whole budget:\nThis creative alone carried an estimated $17.98 million in spend and 736.6 million impressions — 49.7% of the entire flight\u0026rsquo;s budget by itself.\nThe second video carried $17.44 million and 714.2 million impressions — another 48.2%. Together, these two assets account for roughly 98% of total spend and impressions. A third and fourth video — at $397,000 and $353,000 respectively — cover almost all of the remaining budget. The other 13 creative hashes Adbeat tracked for this advertiser in the window are effectively verification impressions worth a few dollars each, not meaningfully distinct media buys.\nDo the math on cost-per-thousand and something else jumps out: both hero videos ran at almost exactly the same effective CPM, around $24.40. That consistency is a tell. It means Old El Paso wasn\u0026rsquo;t running these as two competing creative concepts being tested against each other for performance — it was buying the same reach-focused YouTube inventory with two edits of what is fundamentally one campaign asset (almost certainly two cuts or versions of the \u0026ldquo;Pass o\u0026rsquo; the Old El Paso\u0026rdquo; spot), split for frequency management or slight targeting variation rather than head-to-head testing.\nLanding Page Analysis An estimated $35.0 million of the $36.2 million total — 97% — lands on oldelpaso.com/products/pass-o-the-old-el-paso, a campaign hub page tied directly to the flight\u0026rsquo;s name. A handful of secondary URLs with different Google Ads tracking parameters ( gad_campaignid, gbraid) pick up the remainder — the kind of parameter fragmentation you\u0026rsquo;d expect from a single campaign trafficked through several ad groups inside one Google Ads account, not evidence of multiple distinct landing experiences. There\u0026rsquo;s no A/B test of different page concepts here, no funnel variation by audience segment. One creative message, one destination, delivered at massive scale.\nDevice split tells a similar story of a broad, undifferentiated buy: spend landed almost evenly between mobile (51%) and desktop (49%), and 99.9%+ of it stayed within the US. This wasn\u0026rsquo;t a campaign carved up by device or geography — it was one message, pushed as widely as the media plan allowed.\nMarketing Lessons Creative concentration and media reach trade off against each other by design, not by accident. A performance advertiser rotating dozens of creatives is managing ad fatigue and hunting for a winning angle inside a smaller audience they can retarget repeatedly. A CPG brand running a national awareness flight is optimizing for something different: frequency and reach against as broad an audience as possible, with a message that\u0026rsquo;s already been decided and produced at high cost (a licensed jingle, an established mascot, agency production values). When the message itself is the asset, rotating it dilutes the very repetition that makes it memorable. Old El Paso didn\u0026rsquo;t need 40 creative variants — it needed enough reach behind one strong asset that a large share of its target audience saw it multiple times.\nA single mascot or campaign property lets you scale spend without scaling creative production. Elroy the singing cowboy has now anchored at least three distinct campaign moments across more than a year — \u0026ldquo;Taco Gods,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Taco Totality,\u0026rdquo; and now \u0026ldquo;Pass o\u0026rsquo; the Old El Paso\u0026rdquo; — each with its own hook but a consistent character and tone. That continuity is what allows a brand to justify pouring tens of millions into one or two hero assets rather than spreading budget across a wide creative testing program: the audience-recognition work was already done by the character, not the individual ad.\nWatch for the \u0026ldquo;step change,\u0026rdquo; not just the trend. Old El Paso went from $861,000 across a full trailing year to $36.2 million in a single quarter. Advertisers monitoring competitive spend in the food and CPG space should treat sudden, order-of-magnitude jumps like this as signals of a planned seasonal or promotional flight rather than a gradual strategic shift — the buying pattern (one network, two creatives, one landing page) confirms it\u0026rsquo;s a scheduled campaign burst, not a change in always-on strategy.\nSibling brands inside the same portfolio don\u0026rsquo;t have to buy the same way. Pillsbury\u0026rsquo;s 15-creative rotation and Annie\u0026rsquo;s 4-creative flight sitting next to Old El Paso\u0026rsquo;s near-single-asset buy, all funded by General Mills in the same quarter, is a reminder that \u0026ldquo;how a company advertises\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t one strategy — it\u0026rsquo;s a portfolio of strategies matched to each brand\u0026rsquo;s specific campaign objective, whether that\u0026rsquo;s testing messaging (more creatives, smaller budgets) or maximizing reach for an already-proven concept (fewer creatives, bigger budgets).\nConclusion Old El Paso\u0026rsquo;s summer flight won\u0026rsquo;t show up in many \u0026ldquo;creative testing best practices\u0026rdquo; guides, and it isn\u0026rsquo;t supposed to. It\u0026rsquo;s a reminder that the rules governing performance marketing — rotate creative, test landing pages, diversify channels — aren\u0026rsquo;t universal laws of advertising. They\u0026rsquo;re tactics suited to a specific goal: finding what works when you don\u0026rsquo;t yet know. Old El Paso already knew. It had a mascot, a jingle, and a message, and the only variable left to optimize was reach. Buying $36 million of YouTube video against two assets is what that optimization looks like at CPG scale.\nWant to see how other advertisers in your category are splitting spend between creative testing and reach buying? Explore Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s live demo to look up the pattern yourself.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/old-el-paso-youtube-video-ad-spend-creative-concentration/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMost brand spotlights on this blog track advertisers that spend consistently, test dozens of creative variations, and iterate on landing pages every few weeks. Old El Paso\u0026rsquo;s summer 2026 flight is the opposite of that story, and that\u0026rsquo;s exactly why it\u0026rsquo;s worth studying.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the 90 days between May 20 and August 17, 2026, Old El Paso put an estimated $36.2 million in US ad spend behind a campaign that ran almost entirely on YouTube — and almost entirely on two video creatives. It\u0026rsquo;s one of the most concentrated big-budget flights in Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s index, and it\u0026rsquo;s a clean, real-world illustration of a media-buying philosophy that looks nothing like the performance-marketing playbook most digital advertisers follow.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Old El Paso Spent $36M in 90 Days on Just 11 Creatives"},{"content":"Fanatical, a PC game key retailer, spent an estimated $102 million on display advertising over the last twelve months across the markets Adbeat tracks. It did that with 254 creatives — but the top-spending one, a 320x100 banner, carries five words of copy: the brand name, \u0026ldquo;SAVE BIG,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;SHOP NOW.\u0026rdquo; That single unit absorbed an estimated $15.9 million.\nMeanwhile, Adobe ran 2,117 separate creatives containing the words \u0026ldquo;learn more,\u0026rdquo; and American Express ran 1,478. Between them, they put an estimated $33.5 million behind that phrasing — about a third of what Fanatical spent in total.\nThat contrast is not about budget size or category. It\u0026rsquo;s about the verb. And once you start reading display ads by their verbs, a pattern shows up that most CTA advice completely misses: the verb you use to ask for the click is a statement about how much you already know. Advertisers who know exactly what a click is worth ask for big things in few words. Advertisers who don\u0026rsquo;t ask for small things in a thousand variations.\nAll figures below are Adbeat estimates for display and native activity between August 2025 and July 2026, across the roughly 35 countries in Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s coverage network and the 939,712 advertisers tracked in them.\nThe concept: every CTA is a price quote A call to action is usually taught as a conversion mechanic — make it contrasting, make it a button, make it urgent. That framing treats the CTA as a piece of interface design.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s better understood as a negotiation. Your ad has spent 1.5 seconds building a small amount of interest. The CTA is where you name your price for that interest. \u0026ldquo;Learn more\u0026rdquo; is a cheap ask: give me thirty seconds of reading. \u0026ldquo;Join now\u0026rdquo; is an expensive one: give me your email, your identity, and a slot in your life.\nReaders price these asks instantly and unconsciously. They are comparing what the ad has promised against what the CTA demands. When those two numbers don\u0026rsquo;t match, the click doesn\u0026rsquo;t happen — not because the button was the wrong color, but because the deal was bad.\nThis is why the same three words can be brilliant on one campaign and disastrous on another. There is no \u0026ldquo;best\u0026rdquo; CTA verb. There is only a verb that is correctly priced for the interest the creative has actually generated.\nThe principle: labor verbs versus reward verbs The strongest predictor of whether a CTA verb feels expensive isn\u0026rsquo;t its length or its urgency. It\u0026rsquo;s whether the verb describes what the reader has to do or what the reader gets to be.\n\u0026ldquo;Sign up\u0026rdquo; is a labor verb. It describes form-filling. \u0026ldquo;Register\u0026rdquo; is a labor verb. \u0026ldquo;Submit,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;apply,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;download,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;complete\u0026rdquo; — all labor.\n\u0026ldquo;Join\u0026rdquo; is a reward verb. It describes membership. \u0026ldquo;Book\u0026rdquo; is a reward verb — it describes having a trip locked in. \u0026ldquo;Play\u0026rdquo; is a reward verb. \u0026ldquo;Get started\u0026rdquo; splits the difference, describing forward motion rather than effort.\nThe mechanism is straightforward: a labor verb asks the reader to picture the work, while a reward verb asks them to picture the payoff. Same click, different mental rehearsal — but the labor-verb version has to overcome the friction it just described. That\u0026rsquo;s a strategic argument about what the ad is asking a stranger to imagine, not a claim that one framing always outperforms the other; process-focused language has its place, and it usually belongs after the click rather than before it.\nThe pattern is easiest to see in the CTA copy of the market\u0026rsquo;s biggest-spending display campaigns, where the verb choice is carrying real budget.\nThe ladder: how five CTA verbs sort the market Ranked by how many advertisers used each phrasing in their tracked creative text over the past year: CTA phrasingAdvertisers using itAsk levelLearn more79,896LowestShop now33,524LowBook now20,275MediumGet started10,823Medium-highSign up8,417HighJoin now5,624Highest The curve is almost perfectly inverse: the more a verb asks for, the fewer advertisers are willing to use it. Roughly fourteen times more advertisers say \u0026ldquo;learn more\u0026rdquo; than say \u0026ldquo;join now.\u0026rdquo;\nThe obvious read is that most advertisers are being sensibly cautious. The more useful read is that most advertisers are hedging — and hedging has a cost, which shows up when you look at what each group does with its media.\nRung one: \u0026ldquo;Learn more\u0026rdquo; and the cost of a vague ask \u0026ldquo;Learn more\u0026rdquo; is the default of display advertising. It is also the verb of advertisers who have not yet decided what they want.\nLook at the spend leaders. Adobe ran 2,117 creatives containing it. American Express ran 1,478. AT\u0026amp;T ran 878. Ford ran 482. These are sophisticated advertisers with real budgets — an estimated $19.7 million, $13.8 million, $10.3 million and $14.9 million respectively — and they are all doing the same thing: spreading spend across enormous creative libraries behind a CTA that commits to nothing.\nThat isn\u0026rsquo;t incompetence. For brand-heavy campaigns where the goal is reach and the next step genuinely is a content page, \u0026ldquo;learn more\u0026rdquo; is honest. But it also means the CTA is doing no selecting. Everybody mildly curious is invited. The qualification burden gets pushed downstream to the landing page.\nThe lesson: if your CTA doesn\u0026rsquo;t filter, your landing page has to. Advertisers who lean on \u0026ldquo;learn more\u0026rdquo; should be measuring landing page engagement quality, not click volume — because a cheap ask buys cheap clicks by design.\nRung two: \u0026ldquo;Shop now\u0026rdquo; and the verb that matches the store 33,524 advertisers used \u0026ldquo;shop now.\u0026rdquo; The top spenders are exactly who you\u0026rsquo;d expect — Amazon, On, Pandora, Ford, Mattress Firm, James Avery — and the verb is doing something specific: it tells the reader that the destination is a store, not an article.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the entire function. \u0026ldquo;Shop\u0026rdquo; pre-loads the mental model of browsing merchandise. Readers who don\u0026rsquo;t want to shop don\u0026rsquo;t click, which is the point.\nFanatical is the extreme case. Just 19 of its creatives carry \u0026ldquo;SHOP NOW,\u0026rdquo; and those 19 account for an estimated $97.0 million — nearly its entire tracked budget. Every one is a variation on savings plus the same two-word ask. No product education, no benefit copy beyond \u0026ldquo;GREAT PC GAMES. FANTASTIC VALUE.\u0026rdquo; When your offer is discount and your destination is a catalog, the verb and the offer are the whole ad — and the creative testing problem effectively disappears.\nNote what happens to creative volume when the ask sharpens. Amazon ran 12,171 \u0026ldquo;shop now\u0026rdquo; creatives; Fanatical ran 19 and outspent them on that phrasing by more than seven to one. Creative sprawl is a symptom of uncertainty, not of scale.\nRung three: \u0026ldquo;Book now,\u0026rdquo; where the verb is the product 20,275 advertisers used \u0026ldquo;book now,\u0026rdquo; and the concentration at the top is striking: Hertz at an estimated $27.0 million, Hotels.com at $17.8 million, Vrbo at $10.3 million.\nOne of Hertz\u0026rsquo;s biggest banners behind that CTA carries seven words total: a discount, the verb, the logo. An estimated $2.1 million behind it.\nTravel is the cleanest example of a reward verb because in travel, booking is the purchase. There\u0026rsquo;s no gap between the action named in the ad and the thing the customer wants. Compare that to a SaaS ad that says \u0026ldquo;book a demo\u0026rdquo; — same verb, but now it names a meeting the reader doesn\u0026rsquo;t want in order to get software they might. The verb only works when it points at the reward.\nThe lesson: before choosing a CTA verb, finish this sentence — \u0026ldquo;clicking this gets me ___.\u0026rdquo; If the verb in your CTA isn\u0026rsquo;t the thing in that blank, you\u0026rsquo;ve named the labor instead of the reward.\nRung four: \u0026ldquo;Get started\u0026rdquo; and the psychology of momentum 10,823 advertisers used \u0026ldquo;get started,\u0026rdquo; and the spend leader is instructive: Hims, at an estimated $15.1 million from just 29 creatives. Its top unit is a 970x250 banner pairing a price point with \u0026ldquo;Get started today.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Get started\u0026rdquo; is the verb of choice for businesses whose next step is an intake flow rather than a purchase — telehealth, tax prep, financial services. Hers, H\u0026amp;R Block and Intuit all appear in the same top ten.\nIt works because it is deliberately ambiguous about the finish line. It promises the first step, not the whole journey, which is a textbook foot-in-the-door structure: secure a small, low-risk commitment, then let consistency pressure carry the person forward. Someone who has answered three questions in a health quiz has already begun behaving like a customer.\nThe landing page data confirms the design. Hims\u0026rsquo;s highest-spend destination is its own homepage, absorbing an estimated $12.4 million — a page built to route people into a quiz, not to close a sale. The verb and the destination agree.\nRung five: \u0026ldquo;Join now\u0026rdquo; and the identity ask Only 5,624 advertisers used \u0026ldquo;join now\u0026rdquo; — the smallest club on the ladder. But the ones who do share a trait: they are selling membership in something, not access to something.\nFaithGateway is the clearest case, with an estimated $7.4 million across 35 creatives. Among its top-spending \u0026ldquo;join\u0026rdquo; banners is a 160x600 offering a free online Bible study with Max Lucado and a blunt \u0026ldquo;JOIN NOW.\u0026rdquo;\nNow look at where those ads land. FaithGateway\u0026rsquo;s top five destinations are all pages titled \u0026ldquo;Online Bible Study Registration.\u0026rdquo; The ad says join. The page says register.\nThat split is the single most transferable thing in this analysis. The ad uses the reward verb to earn the click; the page uses the labor verb because by then the reader has already decided and just needs to know what to do. Reward verb to open, labor verb to execute.\nDiscord shows the same instinct with almost no copy at all. Its top display creative — an estimated $1.8 million behind a single 300x250 — lists three game genres, a server invite link, and \u0026ldquo;JOIN NOW.\u0026rdquo;\nThere is no product description because the product isn\u0026rsquo;t the point. The ask is to become part of a group of people who like those genres. \u0026ldquo;Join\u0026rdquo; is the only verb that can carry that, and it\u0026rsquo;s why the ad needs no explanation.\nWhat about \u0026ldquo;now\u0026rdquo;? Less than you think Urgency modifiers get treated as the active ingredient in CTA copy. The data suggests they\u0026rsquo;re closer to punctuation.\nThe word \u0026ldquo;now\u0026rdquo; appears in the tracked creative text of 130,182 advertisers — roughly one in seven of every advertiser in the index. \u0026ldquo;Today\u0026rdquo; appears for 80,807. When a device is that widely deployed, it isn\u0026rsquo;t a differentiator; it\u0026rsquo;s the ambient noise your ad has to be heard over.\nMore telling is how the modifier splits by verb. \u0026ldquo;Shop now\u0026rdquo; outnumbers \u0026ldquo;shop today\u0026rdquo; by roughly three to one (33,524 advertisers to 11,973). But \u0026ldquo;join now\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;join today\u0026rdquo; are nearly tied (5,624 to 5,074).\nThat asymmetry makes sense. Retail urgency is real — the sale ends, the stock runs out — so \u0026ldquo;now\u0026rdquo; carries information. Membership urgency usually isn\u0026rsquo;t real. Nothing about a community or a subscription expires tonight, and readers know it, so the harder urgency word buys nothing and advertisers drift toward the softer one.\nThe lesson: test your verb before you test your modifier. Changing \u0026ldquo;learn more\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;join now\u0026rdquo; changes what you\u0026rsquo;re asking for. Changing \u0026ldquo;join today\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;join now\u0026rdquo; changes almost nothing.\nThe counterexample worth studying The highest-spending creative behind any join-verb CTA in this analysis doesn\u0026rsquo;t sit on the ladder at all. Running under Google\u0026rsquo;s advertiser domain, a 300x250 Candy Crush promotion absorbed an estimated $31.1 million on its own — more than four times the entire tracked \u0026ldquo;join now\u0026rdquo; budget of FaithGateway. Its copy: \u0026ldquo;JOIN THE FUN\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Play Now.\u0026rdquo;\nTwo reward verbs stacked. \u0026ldquo;Join the fun\u0026rdquo; supplies the belonging; \u0026ldquo;Play now\u0026rdquo; supplies the action, and crucially, playing is the reward. Nothing in the ad mentions downloading, installing, or creating an account — all of which the user will actually have to do.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the ceiling of this technique: name the reward twice, and let the labor stay invisible until the reader has already committed.\nHow to apply this Write your CTA last, not first. The verb has to be priced against the interest your creative actually generates. A vague brand banner cannot support \u0026ldquo;join now\u0026rdquo;; a discount-led retail banner is wasted on \u0026ldquo;learn more.\u0026rdquo; Audit your verbs for labor. Go through your live creative and flag every CTA that describes an effort — sign up, register, apply, submit, download. Each is a candidate for a reward-verb rewrite. Keep the labor verb on the landing page. Once someone has clicked, clarity beats seduction. FaithGateway\u0026rsquo;s ad-to-page handoff is the model. Match verb to destination. \u0026ldquo;Shop\u0026rdquo; must land on a catalog. \u0026ldquo;Book\u0026rdquo; must land on a booking widget. \u0026ldquo;Get started\u0026rdquo; must land on step one of something. A mismatch reads as bait. Watch your creative count as a diagnostic. If you\u0026rsquo;re running hundreds of variants behind a low-commitment CTA, you may be solving a creative problem that is actually an offer problem. Check what your category defaults to — then decide whether to break it. If every competitor in your vertical says \u0026ldquo;learn more,\u0026rdquo; the reward verb is unclaimed territory. Conclusion The verb is the smallest unit of strategy in a display ad and one of the most revealing. It tells you whether an advertiser is fishing or closing, whether they\u0026rsquo;ve priced the click, and whether they know what their audience actually wants to become.\nThe advertisers spending the most per creative in this dataset — Fanatical, Hertz, Hims, Discord — all did the same thing. They picked a verb that named the reward, matched it to a destination that delivered it, and then stopped writing.\nWant to see which CTA verbs your competitors are putting real money behind — and which creatives they\u0026rsquo;ve scaled? Take Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s live demo for a spin and search their ad copy for yourself.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/join-now-ad-copy-psychology/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFanatical, a PC game key retailer, spent an estimated $102 million on display advertising over the last twelve months across the markets Adbeat tracks. It did that with 254 creatives — but the top-spending one, a 320x100 banner, carries five words of copy: the brand name, \u0026ldquo;SAVE BIG,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;SHOP NOW.\u0026rdquo; That single unit absorbed an estimated $15.9 million.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Fanatical banner ad reading SAVE BIG with a SHOP NOW button\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://d35q0bdsk05isd.cloudfront.net/bc6e3d89da5944f5c13c7277fc85e252.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Your CTA Verb Is a Price Tag: The Psychology of Asking for the Click"},{"content":"Auto insurance is one of the most fought-over advertising categories in the US. It\u0026rsquo;s a roughly $350 billion-a-year industry in direct written premiums, and because coverage is legally required in nearly every state, the competition isn\u0026rsquo;t about creating demand — it\u0026rsquo;s about being the name a shopper remembers the moment they start comparing quotes. That dynamic has turned GEICO, Progressive, State Farm, Allstate, and Liberty Mutual into some of the most consistent advertisers in the country, year after year, regardless of economic conditions.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s also a category with a history of swinging its ad budgets hard in response to underwriting pressure. When claims costs spiked in 2022, auto insurers collectively cut advertising spend by roughly 18% in the first half of the year alone, compared to the same period a year earlier, as underwriting losses forced carriers to prioritize margin over market share. A sharp pullback from a major auto insurer isn\u0026rsquo;t a novel event in this category — it\u0026rsquo;s happened industry-wide before, which matters for how to read a single brand\u0026rsquo;s move today.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s less obvious is how differently two of those brands are currently playing the same hand. Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s data shows GEICO and Liberty Mutual running their tracked display advertising almost entirely through a single channel — YouTube video — at a scale most categories never approach. But look at the most recent two quarters, and their paths split hard: one kept its foot on the accelerator, the other cut spend by roughly 85% in three months. Same channel, same category, opposite bets.\nGEICO GEICO is the direct-to-consumer insurance arm of Berkshire Hathaway, acquired outright by Warren Buffett\u0026rsquo;s company in the mid-1990s, and it has long been one of the three largest personal auto insurers in the US alongside State Farm and Progressive. That position has come under public pressure recently — GEICO has been widely described in trade coverage as having fallen behind Progressive on pricing technology and underwriting sophistication, and Berkshire\u0026rsquo;s leadership has been vocal about auto insurance becoming a more competitive market. An aggressive push in paid media is exactly what you\u0026rsquo;d expect from a brand trying to close that gap through sheer visibility rather than product differentiation.\nSpend and Networks Over the 12 months ending July 5, 2026, GEICO generated an estimated 75.6 billion tracked impressions — up from roughly 4.3 billion in the prior 12-month period, a jump of more than 16x. Ad spend grew even faster than impressions did, suggesting GEICO wasn\u0026rsquo;t just buying more volume but buying into pricier inventory along the way. The daily trendline shows a smooth, sustained ramp — climbing from near-zero in spring 2025 to a steady few hundred million impressions per day by 2026 — the signature of a deliberate, ongoing investment rather than a single burst campaign.\nWhere that money goes is even more concentrated than the growth rate. Across the first half of 2026, 99.8% of GEICO\u0026rsquo;s tracked impressions and spend ran through a single network: YouTube\u0026rsquo;s video ad platform. Every other channel Adbeat tracks for GEICO — Google Display Network, DV360, direct buys — adds up to a rounding error by comparison.\nWhy this works: When one channel drives essentially all of your measurable reach, every dollar of production and testing budget can go toward making video creative better, rather than adapting the same message across a dozen formats. GEICO\u0026rsquo;s well-known talking gecko and \u0026ldquo;15 minutes could save you 15%\u0026rdquo; characters were built for exactly this kind of repetition-heavy, skippable-preroll environment.\nThe lesson: Concentration is a strategy, not just an outcome. If your category rewards frequency and brand recall over precision targeting, it can be more effective to dominate one channel completely than to spread a budget thin trying to be everywhere.\nAnd the growth didn\u0026rsquo;t stop a year ago. Comparing Q1 2026 (January–March) to Q2 2026 (April–June), GEICO\u0026rsquo;s impressions grew another 21%, spend rose 32%, and unique ad count climbed 35% — acceleration on top of acceleration, in the same quarter Liberty Mutual went the opposite direction.\nPublishers Outside of YouTube.com itself, GEICO\u0026rsquo;s next tier of publishers is an unusual mix for an insurance brand: recipe and food sites like allrecipes.com, eatingwell.com, southernliving.com, and simplyrecipes.com, alongside real estate destinations like zillow.com and remax.com. Neither category has an obvious topical connection to car insurance.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the point. Recipe sites deliver a broad, household-decision-maker audience at efficient rates — the same person cooking dinner is also the person shopping insurance quotes. Real estate sites are a sharper play: someone actively browsing homes on Zillow is a near-term mover, and movers routinely re-shop every insurance policy they hold. GEICO isn\u0026rsquo;t targeting content about cars; it\u0026rsquo;s targeting life-stage moments that correlate with an insurance decision.\nLesson: For a low-consideration but high-frequency purchase category, publisher selection built around audience behavior (who\u0026rsquo;s about to make a change) can outperform publisher selection built around topical relevance (who\u0026rsquo;s reading about cars).\nCreatives GEICO ran 558 unique ads in the first half of 2026 — a large, actively rotating library — and every one of the top 10 by impression volume is video, consistent with the 99.8% YouTube-video concentration above.\nThe marketing principle at work: high-frequency channels punish creative fatigue fast. Running 558 distinct executions against a single channel isn\u0026rsquo;t just about testing messages — it\u0026rsquo;s about giving the same core promise (savings, ease, a friendly mascot) enough surface variety that a viewer seeing five preroll ads a week doesn\u0026rsquo;t tune it out on the third one.\nLanding Pages Every GEICO landing page Adbeat tracked in this window routes to the same template — a quote-start page at geico.com/landingpage/go558/ — with only tracking parameters (campaign ID, click ID, ZIP) changing between ads. There\u0026rsquo;s no campaign-specific content, no seasonal variation, no alternate offer pages.\nLesson: When the entire advertising job is to get a shopper into a quote flow as fast as possible, a single, heavily-optimized landing page beats a library of campaign-specific pages. The variation GEICO invests in lives entirely upstream, in the creative — not in the destination.\nLiberty Mutual Liberty Mutual is a Boston-based mutual insurer founded in 1912, today one of the largest property and casualty insurers in the US with roughly $44 billion in 2024 written premiums and about 4% of the national auto insurance market. Unlike GEICO, it isn\u0026rsquo;t a pure direct-to-consumer play — it sells through both its own channels and independent agents — but its \u0026ldquo;LiMu Emu \u0026amp; Doug\u0026rdquo; ad campaign has made it one of the most recognizable brand voices in the category over the past several years.\nSpend and Networks Over the same clean 12-month window (ending July 5, 2026), Liberty Mutual\u0026rsquo;s tracked impressions rose from roughly 10.4 billion to 27.2 billion — up 162% year over year, with spend up 226%. Like GEICO, that\u0026rsquo;s real, sustained growth, not a blip. And like GEICO, it runs almost the entire budget through one channel: 99.8%+ of Liberty Mutual\u0026rsquo;s tracked impressions and spend in the first half of 2026 went through YouTube\u0026rsquo;s video network.\nBut the quarter-level view tells a very different story from GEICO\u0026rsquo;s. Comparing Q1 2026 to Q2 2026, Liberty Mutual\u0026rsquo;s impressions fell 85%, spend fell 86%, and the pullback happened entirely inside that same YouTube-video line — spend on the channel dropped from roughly $125 million in Q1 to $17.6 million in Q2, with no meaningful shift toward another network. This wasn\u0026rsquo;t a reallocation across channels Adbeat tracks; it was a straight cut to the one channel Liberty Mutual depends on most.\nWorth noting: that doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily mean Liberty Mutual\u0026rsquo;s overall ad budget fell by anything close to 85% — it\u0026rsquo;s possible some of that spend simply moved to another channel outside Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s coverage. What the data does show clearly is that Liberty Mutual\u0026rsquo;s YouTube-video presence specifically contracted sharply and suddenly in Q2.\nThe more interesting wrinkle: even as spend collapsed, Liberty Mutual ran 30% more unique ads in Q2 than in Q1. Less money, more creative variety — a pattern that looks less like \u0026ldquo;we\u0026rsquo;re pulling back\u0026rdquo; and more like \u0026ldquo;we\u0026rsquo;re testing before we commit again.\u0026rdquo;\nMarketing principle: a spend cut paired with a creative-count increase is a signal worth reading carefully. It\u0026rsquo;s the footprint of a brand in testing mode — running smaller amounts against more variations to find a winner before scaling spend back up, rather than a brand simply exiting a channel.\nLesson: if you\u0026rsquo;re auditing a competitor\u0026rsquo;s pullback, don\u0026rsquo;t stop at the spend number. Check what happened to their creative count in the same window — it tells you whether they\u0026rsquo;re retreating or reloading.\nPublishers Liberty Mutual\u0026rsquo;s secondary publisher mix, outside YouTube.com, leans toward general entertainment and pop culture: fandom.com, people.com, tvmaze.com, and hawtcelebs.com, plus oilprice.com and Amazon. It\u0026rsquo;s a broader, more mainstream-entertainment-adjacent audience than GEICO\u0026rsquo;s recipe-and-real-estate skew — less about life-stage targeting, more about reach among a general adult audience with disposable attention for celebrity and entertainment content.\nLesson: two advertisers can run the same channel at the same scale and still make meaningfully different publisher bets, because \u0026ldquo;reach\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;the right audience\u0026rdquo; aren\u0026rsquo;t the same design decision.\nCreatives Like GEICO, all of Liberty Mutual\u0026rsquo;s top creatives by volume are video, built for the same skippable-preroll environment. The brand\u0026rsquo;s long-running LiMu Emu \u0026amp; Doug characters give it the same kind of durable, recognizable creative identity GEICO gets from its gecko — an asset that makes rapid-fire testing cheaper, since the core characters carry the brand recognition and only the script and offer need to vary.\nLanding Pages Every Liberty Mutual ad in this window points to one page: libertymutual.com/multi-online-quotes, with only campaign and click tracking parameters changing. Functionally identical in structure to GEICO\u0026rsquo;s approach — one heavily optimized quote-start destination, no campaign-specific content pages.\nCross-Advertiser Insights Put side by side, GEICO and Liberty Mutual are running the same playbook at the architecture level — one dominant channel (YouTube video, 99.8%+ of tracked spend for both), one landing page template each, and video creative built around a long-running mascot character. That\u0026rsquo;s not a coincidence; it\u0026rsquo;s what an efficient, high-frequency, low-consideration category converges toward when two competitors are optimizing for the same goal: maximum recall at the moment someone starts shopping quotes.\nThe divergence is entirely in the second half — the actual spend decision, not the structure around it. GEICO is compounding an already-large investment, quarter over quarter, at a moment when its parent company has been publicly candid about needing to compete harder. Liberty Mutual pulled back sharply on the one channel it depends on most, while simultaneously testing more creative than before — a pattern that reads like recalibration, not retreat, though only the next quarter or two of data will confirm which it actually is.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s also worth noting how little either brand varies its funnel once a click happens. Neither GEICO\u0026rsquo;s nor Liberty Mutual\u0026rsquo;s landing pages differ by campaign, season, or creative — both route every ad, regardless of angle, to the same quote-start template. That means all of the competitive differentiation in this category lives entirely upstream, in the creative and media plan, not in the conversion experience itself. For a category this commoditized, that\u0026rsquo;s a deliberate simplification: once someone is ready to get a quote, the fastest path to that quote wins, and neither brand seems willing to risk a slower, more elaborate experience testing that assumption.\nConclusion Two of the largest names in a $350 billion industry are running nearly identical advertising architectures and making opposite bets with them in the same three-month window. That\u0026rsquo;s the value of watching a category over time rather than at a single snapshot: the headline \u0026ldquo;both companies spend heavily on YouTube\u0026rdquo; is true and also tells you almost nothing. The quarter-over-quarter divergence is where the real story — and the real lesson about testing versus retreating — actually lives.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re watching this category, or one like it, the question worth asking about any competitor\u0026rsquo;s spend pullback isn\u0026rsquo;t just \u0026ldquo;how much did they cut,\u0026rdquo; but \u0026ldquo;what happened to their creative count in the same window.\u0026rdquo;\nCurious how your own competitors are splitting their ad budgets across channels right now? Explore the data yourself with Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s live demo.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/geico-liberty-mutual-advertising-strategy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAuto insurance is one of the most fought-over advertising categories in the US. It\u0026rsquo;s a roughly $350 billion-a-year industry in direct written premiums, and because coverage is legally required in nearly every state, the competition isn\u0026rsquo;t about creating demand — it\u0026rsquo;s about being the name a shopper remembers the moment they start comparing quotes. That dynamic has turned GEICO, Progressive, State Farm, Allstate, and Liberty Mutual into some of the most consistent advertisers in the country, year after year, regardless of economic conditions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"GEICO and Liberty Mutual Both Bet the Budget on YouTube. Only One Kept Betting."},{"content":"Red Bull doesn\u0026rsquo;t advertise the way most beverage companies do. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t run coupon campaigns, loyalty offers, or grocery circulars. It runs video at a scale that would make a Hollywood studio envious — and it uses display advertising not to push promotions, but to pull audiences into an ongoing stream of events, seasonal product launches, and branded entertainment.\nOver the past year, Adbeat tracked Red Bull generating an estimated 4.2 billion impressions across display and video channels — data spanning the US and the approximately 35 countries in Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s coverage network. That number is up 19% compared to the prior 12-month period. But the real story isn\u0026rsquo;t the volume. It\u0026rsquo;s the architecture behind it: a video-first strategy, a disciplined product launch calendar, and a landing page approach that turns ad clicks into content experiences rather than purchase pages.\nCompany Background Red Bull GmbH was founded in 1984 by Dietrich Mateschitz and Chaleo Yoovidhya, who reformulated an existing Thai energy tonic for Western tastes and launched it in Austria in 1987 as Red Bull. It introduced a product category — the modern energy drink — that barely existed in the Western world at the time, and built that category into a $10+ billion global business on the back of one of the most unusual marketing philosophies in consumer goods: create media, not just ads.\nThat philosophy shaped everything from the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team to the Red Bull Media House, which produces documentaries, live events, and digital content consumed by hundreds of millions of people who have never clicked on a single Red Bull ad in their lives. The advertising tracked by Adbeat exists alongside that media operation, and understanding that context makes the data significantly more interesting.\nIndustry Context The energy drink market has never been more competitive. Monster Beverage, Celsius, Ghost, Bang, and a wave of better-for-you entrants have flooded the category with new SKUs, new positioning angles, and aggressive retail marketing. Most competitors are spending heavily on trade promotions and social influencer deals.\nRed Bull\u0026rsquo;s response, at least in display advertising, is to operate a completely different playbook. Rather than chasing market-share battles on promotional terms, Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s display strategy is built around brand occasions — seasonal flavors, live events, and interactive experiences — that keep the brand visible and culturally relevant without ever discounting the product.\nAd Spend and Networks Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s network mix is one of the most concentrated in any category. Of an estimated 4.22 billion total impressions over the past year, YouTube accounted for 3.83 billion — roughly 90.6% of the entire footprint. No other network comes close.\nGoogle Display Network added 197.8 million impressions, and Google DV360 contributed another 185.5 million. Amazon Advertising was a distant fourth at 6.5 million. Direct buys, Teads, Adform, and The Trade Desk collectively accounted for less than 1% of total volume.\nThe implication is clear: Red Bull has made a deliberate commitment to YouTube as its primary paid channel. This isn\u0026rsquo;t a media plan that happened to skew toward video — it\u0026rsquo;s a media plan built around video from the ground up.\nWhy this works: Red Bull has spent decades building cultural equity in extreme sports, motorsport, music, and gaming. YouTube is where that audience lives and where Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s owned content library — race highlights, athlete films, event coverage — already attracts massive organic viewership. Running paid video on YouTube means Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s ads appear within a platform where the brand already has a strong editorial presence. The paid impression reinforces what the organic content builds. The two channels compound each other in a way that display-only campaigns cannot replicate.\nThe lesson for other advertisers: Before investing heavily in a channel, ask whether your brand already has organic equity there. When paid and organic presence align on the same platform, every paid impression carries more weight.\nPublishers The publisher breakdown mirrors the network data. YouTube.com captured 3.83 billion impressions — essentially the entire video budget in one place.\nAmong display publishers, the most interesting finding is Vinted.co.uk in the second position, with 134.5 million impressions. Vinted is a peer-to-peer fashion resale marketplace with a predominantly young, style-conscious audience in the UK and Europe. It is not an obvious fit for an energy drink brand. But it makes complete sense when you consider who Red Bull is trying to reach: people aged 18–35 who are actively engaged in culture, whether that\u0026rsquo;s fashion, sports, gaming, or music.\nRunning on Vinted is not about context matching — it\u0026rsquo;s about audience matching. Red Bull isn\u0026rsquo;t trying to reach people thinking about energy drinks. It\u0026rsquo;s trying to reach a demographic where it knows its brand resonates, regardless of what those people are doing at that moment.\nAdditional display publishers include Globo.com (53.2M impressions), Brazil\u0026rsquo;s largest media network, UOL.com.br (22.7M), Fandom.com (10.9M), Twitch.tv (3.5M), and F1mania.net (2.9M). The Fandom and Twitch placements reinforce Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s gaming and esports investments. The F1mania placement connects to the brand\u0026rsquo;s Formula 1 racing operations. Each publisher choice maps to a cultural territory Red Bull already occupies.\nPlatform Split Mobile captured 65.5% of total impressions (2.77 billion), with desktop at 34.5% (1.46 billion).\nThis is consistent with what you\u0026rsquo;d expect from a YouTube-dominant strategy — video consumption on mobile has outpaced desktop for years, and Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s audience skews younger, which further accelerates the mobile tilt. For advertisers planning to mirror this approach, mobile-first video creative is not optional. It is the baseline assumption.\nCreative Analysis Red Bull deployed 733 unique ads over the past year — a volume that signals aggressive creative testing and campaign rotation. Of those, video formats drove 91.5% of all impressions (3.86 billion), with image ads contributing 7.5% (316.8 million) and text ads a marginal 1%.\nEvery one of the top 10 creatives by impression volume is a video. The highest-performing single video generated 383 million impressions on its own — more than some brands generate across their entire annual display budget.\nAmong the image ads, one stands out clearly from the creative phrase data: a 300x600 unit with copy reading \u0026ldquo;ZERO MOMENTS, MISSED? / Red Bull / RED BULL GIVES YOU WIIINGS.\u0026rdquo;\nThis is almost certainly tied to the Red Bull Zero campaign — a dedicated push for the zero-calorie variant of the original product.\nThe creative phrase list returned by Adbeat tells the broader creative story: \u0026ldquo;wiiings,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;without sugar,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;sugarfree,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;monk fruit extract,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;energy drink\u0026rdquo; on the product side; \u0026ldquo;sakura,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;cherry,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;summer,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;spring,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;bright\u0026rdquo; signaling seasonal flavors; \u0026ldquo;pole position,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;checker flag\u0026rdquo; pointing to Formula 1 content; \u0026ldquo;dance,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;style,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;game,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;win,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;play\u0026rdquo; indicating the brand\u0026rsquo;s event and gaming creative territories; \u0026ldquo;los angeles,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;soapbox\u0026rdquo; tied to the Red Bull Soapbox Race event campaign.\nThis is not a brand running one campaign at a time. Red Bull maintains parallel creative tracks simultaneously — each serving a different audience segment or seasonal occasion — while all of it ladders back to the same brand identity.\nThe marketing principle at work: Creative diversification within a single brand voice. Every Red Bull ad looks and feels like Red Bull, but the context shifts — motorsport for one audience, dance culture for another, sugar-free functionality for a third. Red Bull achieves scale without dilution because the brand\u0026rsquo;s identity is strong enough to hold across disparate content territories.\nLesson: If your brand has a clear, culturally recognized identity, you can run campaigns across radically different audience segments without fragmenting brand perception. The consistency comes from visual and tonal identity, not from running the same message everywhere.\nLanding Page Analysis Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s landing page strategy reveals a disciplined campaign architecture that most consumer brands never execute this cleanly.\nThe homepage (redbull.com/us-en/) absorbed 1.16 billion impressions — by far the highest-volume destination. It functions as a brand awareness terminus for top-of-funnel video. Viewers who click through after a YouTube pre-roll aren\u0026rsquo;t expected to buy anything immediately. They arrive at a brand hub that positions Red Bull as a culture platform, not just a drink.\nProduct-specific pages tell the seasonal calendar story. The Red Bull Summer Edition (Sudachi Lime) landing page pulled 483 million impressions across two campaign variants — making it the most heavily supported product launch in the dataset. The Red Bull Spring Edition (Cherry Sakura) drove 125 million impressions to its own page. Red Bull Zero, with its \u0026ldquo;Zero Calories. 100% Wiiings\u0026rdquo; landing page, generated 269 million impressions — indicating it\u0026rsquo;s being treated as a priority product, not just a line extension.\nThe event pages are equally telling. The Red Bull Soapbox Race Los Angeles 2026 event page captured 141 million impressions. A \u0026ldquo;Dance Your Style World Final\u0026rdquo; contest entry page generated 39.5 million impressions. These are not peripheral campaigns — they\u0026rsquo;re meaningful pieces of the paid media budget, used to drive awareness and participation for live events that in turn generate organic media.\nPerhaps the most interesting landing page in the dataset is \u0026ldquo;Red Bull Summer All Day Play: Create Your Spotify Playlist.\u0026rdquo; This page, which pulled 140 million impressions, sent ad-driven traffic to an interactive experience where users build a Spotify playlist branded around Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s summer positioning. There is no product sale. No coupon. No email capture form demanding a signup. The landing page is a piece of entertainment content that reinforces the brand association between Red Bull and summer energy — and that users engage with voluntarily.\nThe \u0026ldquo;Zero Moments Missed\u0026rdquo; landing page (UK-specific, redbull.com/gb-en/cartoons/zero-moments-missed) received 106 million impressions combined across two campaign variants. This is a UK-localized creative execution for Red Bull Zero, with the wordplay \u0026ldquo;zero moments missed\u0026rdquo; doing double duty — it references missing out (a classic energy drink anxiety trigger) while also naming the product variant.\nThe underlying strategy: Red Bull uses paid media to send people not to purchase pages, but to experiences — product showcase pages, event pages, interactive content, and a homepage designed to immerse rather than convert. For a product that sells primarily through retail, in-store purchase is the conversion event. The online advertising job is to build the desire that happens before the shopper reaches the shelf.\nLesson: Not every landing page needs a buy button. For brands distributed through retail or third-party channels, the online advertising goal may be to build category preference and brand association, not to close a direct sale. Design landing pages around the experience you want to create in the consumer\u0026rsquo;s mind, not around the conversion metric you wish you could track.\nMarketing Lessons Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s display advertising strategy, viewed through Adbeat, comes down to four repeatable principles that any advertiser can learn from regardless of budget:\n1. Align paid media with your owned media. Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s YouTube dominance works partly because Red Bull already owns one of the most-viewed sports and action content libraries on the platform. Paid amplifies organic. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t built equity on a platform, paid spend on that platform will work harder but return less.\n2. Run a seasonal product calendar, not a brand campaign. Red Bull doesn\u0026rsquo;t run one campaign per quarter. It maintains distinct creative tracks for the Spring Edition, Summer Edition, Zero, Soapbox Race, Dance events, and the hero brand — simultaneously. Each track can be measured, optimized, and rotated on its own schedule.\n3. Use landing pages to set expectations, not just capture leads. Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s landing pages deliver on the creative promise: seasonal flavors get beautiful product showcase pages, events get registration and hype pages, interactive campaigns get actual interactive experiences. Mismatched landing pages are one of the most common reasons effective creative fails to convert.\n4. Audience context matters as much as content context. Vinted.co.uk isn\u0026rsquo;t an energy drink site. But it reaches exactly the demographic Red Bull wants. Smart media buying targets people, not just pages.\nConclusion At 4.22 billion impressions and climbing, Red Bull is operating at a scale that reflects its broader position in the market: not just an energy drink company, but a media and events company that happens to sell a beverage. Its advertising strategy — 91% video, YouTube-first, seasonal product launches, event-driven campaigns, and content landing pages — is a natural extension of how the brand has always thought about marketing.\nThe lesson for competitors watching this from the outside isn\u0026rsquo;t to copy the tactics. It\u0026rsquo;s to understand the underlying logic: Red Bull spends on advertising to reinforce a brand identity that was built through something much harder to replicate — a decade-long investment in culture, sport, and content that made the brand worth advertising in the first place.\nFor brands at any scale, the question Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s playbook raises is a useful one: where does your paid advertising end and your earned brand equity begin?\nWant to dig into how other beverage advertisers stack up against Red Bull\u0026rsquo;s display strategy? Explore the data yourself with Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s live demo.\nRelated Reading Video advertising: 3 Best practices to capture (and retain) a customer\u0026rsquo;s attention ","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/red-bull-advertising-strategy-brand-spotlight/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRed Bull doesn\u0026rsquo;t advertise the way most beverage companies do. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t run coupon campaigns, loyalty offers, or grocery circulars. It runs video at a scale that would make a Hollywood studio envious — and it uses display advertising not to push promotions, but to pull audiences into an ongoing stream of events, seasonal product launches, and branded entertainment.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOver the past year, Adbeat tracked Red Bull generating an estimated 4.2 billion impressions across display and video channels — data spanning the US and the approximately 35 countries in Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s coverage network. That number is up 19% compared to the prior 12-month period. But the real story isn\u0026rsquo;t the volume. It\u0026rsquo;s the architecture behind it: a video-first strategy, a disciplined product launch calendar, and a landing page approach that turns ad clicks into content experiences rather than purchase pages.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Red Bull Built a 4.2 Billion-Impression Ad Machine: A Brand Spotlight"},{"content":"When I think of credit cards, I immediately think of American Express (AmEx)–particularly their platinum cards. Chances are that a lot of you do, too. That’s how popular this brand is in the payment cards industry.\nWith a vision of providing the world’s best customer experience every day, AmEx has been issuing cards since the mid 1900s. People tout their customer service and rewards programs. But a big part of the reason this brand grew to have more than 141 million users? Their $167M display ad strategy! Let’s analyze their best display ads.\nA look at American Express’s display ad strategies through the years 90% of AmEx’s ad spend is spent on video and image ads. Here’s how the brand has fared in terms of display ads since its inception.\n2006: “My Life, My Card.” This campaign featured the “behind the camera” life details of prominent AmEx cardholders such as Kate Winslet, Wes Anderson, and Robert de Nero. The goal was to increase user acquisition by showing that owning an AmEx card was about personal identity rather than status. This campaign was an incredible success in terms of brand awareness. 2010: “Start Booming.” This campaign was to promote American Business OPEN, the small business division of AmEx. In a time when small businesses were suffering from a recession, the “Start Booming” campaign told the inspiring stories of real business owners who had stayed resilient through it all with the help of AmEx cards. This worked wonders in enhancing brand perception. 2010: “Small Business Saturday.” AmEx started this campaign as a way to show some love to small businesses and encourage people to shop small. It illustrates the people and the stories behind local businesses. Since then, this has turned into an annual initiative by the brand under the name of “Shop Small.” 2014: “#SpotlightOnChange.” Through a series of videos in partnership with LendStreet, a company that helps people in financial distress, AmEx shed light on how the financially underserved could get the help they need. This whole campaign was meant to encourage dialogue around financial exclusion.\n2014: “Everyday Moments.” This campaign promoted the AmEx EveryDay Credit Card–a card designed for frequent use. It highlighted the simpler and joy-filled moments of your everyday life and how the card can help you grab onto such moments.\n2017: “Realize the potential.” AmEx used this campaign to highlight all the benefits of being a cardholder. Free membership for life? Check. Exclusive rewards? Check. Personalized service? Check!\n2024: With Amex Platinum. This simple ad campaign uses various scenarios to capture the benefits of having an AmEx Platinum Card.\nYour browser does not support the video element. Where does AmEx spend its display ad budget? With the help of Adbeat, a competitive analysis platform, we go on a virtual trip to find out where and how AmEx spends its display bucks.\nAd spend and networks From August, 2023 to August 2024, AmEx has spent a whopping $83.7M on all types of display ads, gaining a substantial 18.5 billion impressions in return.\nWhile programmatic advertising takes the lead by making up 50% of the ad spend, video advertising isn’t that far behind, coming in at 46%. This makes sense, considering the fact that AmEx has a huge global audience of different types of customers. It’s just easier to build brand awareness and show how their services will help the users through engaging video content.\nIf you go through AmEx’s video ads, you’ll find a mix of short- and long-form videos, all of which clearly highlight how being an AmEx user will make your life better. The brand runs different campaigns for each of the different services it offers. But all of them have one thing in common: they are educational and urge the users to take action now!\nTake this ad geared towards businesses, for example:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Even though this ad only ran for two months, it managed to get nearly 27M impressions, which is pretty impressive.\nThe reason for this is pretty clear. In just 15 seconds, the ad illustrates how AmEx’s Payment Solutions will make the lives of customer-facing businesses that much easier. And the CTA that urges people to “not do business without it” is super compelling, too.\nPublishers Given AmEx’s love for video ads, it should come as no surprise that the brand spends most of its budget ($38M) on YouTube. Amazon is a little far behind, with AmEx having spent only $8.1M on this publisher. Yahoo and axs.com come in at third and fourth place with an ad spend of $2.5M and $1.9M respectively.\nOn YouTube, the majority of AmEx’s ads are placed on official song videos by famous singers such as Selena Gomez, Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, and The Police. This seems to be a strategic move to target all types of viewers since AmEx has a vast range of services that benefit everyone–from the common man to a small business owner to large enterprises.\nAnd they seem to be getting good results, too. An ad placed on this video of Selena Gomez got a massive 52.5M impressions on an ad spend of just $1.2M!\nSimilarly, the ads on Amazon are placed on the product pages of popular items, ranging from clothes and luggage to electronics. It looks like the brand is, again, targeting all types of users who could benefit from a credit card.\nDespite the lower ad spend, though, the brand seems to be getting an exponentially higher rate of impressions when compared to those from YouTube. The best performing ad was placed on the purchase page of an UberEats gift card and got a massive 120.1M impressions in exchange for a mere $196.5k in ad spend. Comparatively, the next best performing ad, placed on the Amazon homepage, got 113.8M impressions for an ad spend of $265k.\nOn Yahoo, the ads seem to be mostly placed on the finance ($32.2k), sports ($33.3k), and news ($12.4k) channels to target the working population who are the ones most likely to use AmEx’s cards and other payment solutions.\nCreatives The numbers are almost equally split between video ads (46%) and image ads (44%), with the other types of display ads (such as text, text + image, and HTML5) making up less than 11%.\nThe data from Adbeat highlights that AmEx’s best performing video ad (highlighting their business solutions) only ran for two months. But, in that short span of time, it gained nearly 178M impressions on a $4.3M ad spend.\nYour browser does not support the video element. The ad is short and sweet, manages to address the main customer pain points in just 15 seconds, and ends with a compelling CTA– “AmEx: Don’t do business without it.”\nAmEx’s image ads also pack a punch, with each one highlighting a different benefit for users.\nThis 👇 one talks about an attractive welcome offer,\nWhile this 👇 one brings attention to a significant benefit for Delta travelers!\nLanding pages AmEx’s landing pages make a compelling argument as to why you should become a cardmember. Let’s analyze this 👇 one, which got 79.5M impressions with an ad spend of $1.9M.\nThe first thing you notice is the attention-grabbing selling point which talks about how AmEx cards make you enjoy your life more. You’re already hooked and want to check out their offerings. Emotional connection? Check.\nAs you scroll down, you have the option of exploring cards based on what kind of offers you want the most. Is it to rack up points on dining, or collect airline miles while you travel? Click on that tab, and you’ll know which card will suit you the most. Major pain point highlighted? Check.\nBeneath all of this is more information about the common features you get with each card to allay your worries. Sprinkled throughout the landing page are CTAs that urge you to “learn more” and “explore.”\nNow that you’re armed with all the information you need and (probably) ready to sign up for a card, the page presents this ☝️– Buttons making it convenient for you to take action now. Somehow still not ready for a card yet? Worry not, for the landing page promises more services that you can check out!\nAll in all, a super gripping landing page that seems to anticipate your questions at every turn and provides answers that assuage your fears!\nScale up your digital advertising strategy by analyzing your competitors with the help of Adbeat and using that information to your advantage. [ Sign up now! ]\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/analyzing-american-expresss-167m-display-ad-strategy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen I think of credit cards, I immediately think of American Express (AmEx)–particularly their platinum cards. Chances are that a lot of you do, too. That’s how popular this brand is in the payment cards industry.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith a vision of providing the world’s best customer experience every day, AmEx has been issuing cards since the mid 1900s. People tout their customer service and rewards programs. But a big part of the reason this brand grew to have \u003ca href=\"https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/4962/000000496224000013/axp-20231231.htm\"\u003emore than 141 million users\u003c/a\u003e? Their $167M display ad strategy! Let’s analyze their best display ads.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Analyzing American Express’s $167M Display Ad Strategy"},{"content":"As an advertiser, it’s never been harder for you to capture and retain your audience’s attention.\nResearch from the University of California, Irvine and Microsoft reveals that back in 2004, people spent an average of 2.5 minutes looking at any given screen before heading elsewhere. Today, this figure has dropped to just 47 seconds.\nAll of which means that if you’re going to engage potential customers and compel them to take action, you’d better grab their attention fast.\nHow long, exactly, do you have to capture attention with ads? Okay, so we humans struggle to focus on a single web page for more than 47 seconds. That’s less time than it takes for the vocals to kick in at the start of In The Air Tonight (trust me, I just checked).\nMore concerningly, this figure is at the more generous end of the spectrum, as these stats demonstrate:\nNielsen Norman Group found there’s an extremely high chance of users leaving a web page in the first 10 – 20 seconds WARC says people only spend 1.7 seconds deciding whether to engage with social media content Then there’s a separate survey in which 65.9 percent of respondents admitted they always skip in-app video ads if there’s the option to do so after a certain time period, while just 19.7 percent said they don’t skip ads that are relevant to them.\nWhat’s more, a study for the International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication found that about half of people believe YouTube’s five-second non-skippable ad duration is fair, but that they skip ads as soon as they get the chance. Some respondents even wanted the option to skip sooner.\nGiven that people are apparently desperate to hit the “skip” button, many brands have responded by cramming their logo into the opening five seconds.\nThat way, even if the viewer skips your ad, they’ll still remember your brand name. Makes sense, right?\nUnfortunately, it’s not that simple. Google discovered that while ads featuring the brand in the first five seconds perform better for brand awareness and recall, they’re also more likely to be skipped.\nSheesh.\nNone of which gives us a definitive answer to the question: “Exactly how long do you have to grab attention with display ads?”\nBut it’s clear that we’re likely talking about a matter of seconds here. So the earlier you pique your viewer’s interest, the better.\n7 display ads that grab attention early Okay, so we know that we only have a few seconds to hook our audience.\nAnd we also know that displaying your logo in the opening seconds of your video will have people sprinting for the “skip” button.\nSo what do high-performing, attention-grabbing display ads actually look like?\nTo answer that question, we used Adbeat’s competitive intelligence tools to identify high-spending US video ads from the last six months, then analyze what makes them so effective. Here are the examples we found, along with our key learnings for each ad:\nExample 1: Curology: Show, don’t tell Cosmetics brands love dazzling us with complex-sounding ingredients.\nBut the thing is, customers don’t really care if a product contains liposomes or beta hydroxy acids. They just want to know it’ll achieve positive results.\nThat’s why Curology gets straight to demonstrating the “transformative” effects of its skincare products. And they don’t just tell us how well it works — they show us with before-and-after images:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Impressively, they cram all this messaging into a six-second video. And it’s evidently working because they spent an estimated $17.9 million promoting this ad from mid-December 2023 to mid-March this year.\nExample 2: TaxAct: Add on-screen text (early) If you’re going to keep people watching your video ad, you need to get them engaged straight away.\nOne way to achieve this is to add striking copy at the start of your video, just like in this example from tax software platform TaxAct:\nYour browser does not support the video element. The bold white text stands out against the purple background, which draws the eye and naturally encourages viewers to start reading. And because the copy is in sentence case (i.e. only the first word in the sentence starts with a capital letter), it’s both easier to read and friendlier.\nIn fact, the whole tone of this ad — from the light, bleepy-bloopy soundtrack to the voiceover to the CTA — comes across as friendly and unintimidating.\nThat’s a big deal for a brand like TaxAct, given that over half of Gen Z and two-fifths of Millennials say they’ve been brought to tears by tax-related stress.\n👉 Learn more: We lift the lid on the ad secrets of top tax platforms in our article: The battle of Tax Day: Analyzing TurboTax, H\u0026amp;R Block and TaxAct’s display ad strategies.\nExample 3: Safelite: Tell a story Consumers love an engaging narrative, with 94 percent agreeing that “good content tells a story”.\nSafelite uses this knowledge to their advantage by telling a simple story in this 15-second video ad:\nYour browser does not support the video element. It starts by introducing the “characters”. Then it shows the “problem” they’re facing — as you probably guessed, it’s a cracked windshield. And finally, we’re presented with the “solution”: Safelite’s free mobile service.\nThis tried-and-trusted storytelling arc is highly engaging. Indeed, a study published in the Journal of Business Research declared that:\n“Story plot, characters, and verisimilitude trigger consumer engagement by activating cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses in a certain sequence.”\nExample 4: Kiehl’s: Use tight framing Popups. Multiple tabs. Links to dozens of other content recommendations. The online world is full of distractions, which makes it more difficult to grab and hold your audience’s attention.\nOne solution is to keep viewers focused by using super-tight framing, just like in this Kiehl’s ad:\nYour browser does not support the video element. With tighter framing, there’s less chance of people looking at what’s going on in the background of your video, which means they’re more likely to concentrate on your core messaging.\nExample 5: Floor \u0026amp; Decor: Add eye-catching visuals Wouldn’t it be useful if we knew what makes viewers likely to keep watching ads?\nTurns out we do. Research shows that 69 percent of consumers won’t skip ads for products or services they’re already interested in. Unfortunately, that’s not much use for any brand that isn’t a household name.\nMore helpfully, the same survey reveals that over half of viewers don’t skip ads that are visually interesting. Use this to your advantage by adding eye-catching visuals at the start of your video, just like Floor \u0026amp; Decor does here:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Once you’ve reeled the viewer in with some eye candy, there’s a decent chance they’ll stick around to watch the rest of your ad.\nExample 6: Zenith Prep Academy: Trigger serious emotions Every advertiser wants to spark some kind of emotional reaction from their audience. But which emotions should you be targeting?\nResearch from the BBC analyzed ad campaigns from global brands like HSBC, Huawei, and AIG. They discovered that triggering serious emotions — like puzzlement, fear, and sadness — leads consumers to develop a deeper subconscious relationship with the brand in question. What’s more, those emotions increased positive sentiment toward the brand by 35 percent on average.\nZenith Prep Academy shows us how leveraging these sorts of emotions can help us create more engaging ads:\nYour browser does not support the video element. This ad triggers a feeling of fear: that the parent’s child might miss out on a top-ranking university placement. Then it goes on to explain that Zenith can help overcome this challenge, leaving viewers with a positive outcome.\nExample 7: Liberty Mutual: Make it funny! Humor is a tricky issue for advertisers.\nFor starters, it’s subjective. Not everyone finds the same things funny, so you risk alienating a chunk of your audience. Plus you could even end up offending potential customers, which is definitely a bad thing.\nAll of which explains why there’s been a marked downturn in humor in digital video ads in recent years, according to Kantar:\nBut if you get it right, the rewards can be significant. Kantar analyzed consumer ad reactions and discovered that humor was the #1 factor that stopped viewers skipping ads in 30 of the 42 countries studied.\nIn other words: if you can tickle your audience’s funny bone, chances are they’ll watch your ad in full.\nLiberty Mutual takes this advice onboard in this video ad:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Sure, it might not be laugh-out-loud funny. But the comedic tone of voice and slight hint of farce are amusing enough to make you stick around until the end.\nConclusion: Want to create attention-grabbing ads? Start by considering your audience As you can see, there are plenty of tactics you can employ to capture attention from the first second of your video ads. But if you’re going to create ads that work for your brand, you need to start by thinking about what your audience wants to see.\nFor example, we know humor can be super effective. But if you’re launching a campaign spanning multiple markets, it’ll be tough to find a single message or theme that’s funny to everyone.\nOnce you understand your audience, it’s far easier to figure out which attention-grabbing strategies are most likely to resonate.\nWant to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/brands-only-have-1-7-seconds-to-grab-attention-with-video-ads-heres-how-to-do-it/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs an advertiser, it’s never been harder for you to capture and retain your audience’s attention.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/podcast/regain-control-of-your-focus-and-attention-with-researcher-gloria-mark\"\u003eResearch\u003c/a\u003e from the University of California, Irvine and Microsoft reveals that back in 2004, people spent an average of 2.5 minutes looking at any given screen before heading elsewhere. Today, \u003cstrong\u003ethis figure has dropped to just 47 seconds\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll of which means that if you’re going to engage potential customers and compel them to take action, you’d better grab their attention \u003cem\u003efast\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Brands only have 1.7 seconds to grab attention with video ads. Here’s how to do it"},{"content":"Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are make or break for retailers, with over 200 million consumers shopping in-store and online across the 2023 Thanksgiving weekend.\nPer Adobe Analytics, Cyber Monday remains the biggest online shopping day of all time, with total sales climbing 7.8 percent to $38 billion last year — including peak sales of $15.7 million per minute between 10:00 – 11:00 pm Eastern.\nWith so much on the line, it makes sense to start planning your BFCM display ad strategy as early as possible.\nTo help you out, we used Adbeat’s proprietary competitive intelligence technology to identify key learnings from recent top Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns, including brands like:\nHome Depot Pandora Ashley Furniture Let’s get into it…\nHome Depot: Avoid the competition with early BFCM campaigns With consumers actively looking to buy during Cyber Week, it’s an obvious time for brands to chase new customers.\nBut there’s a problem: when every brand has the same idea, winning new customers becomes more expensive. For instance, one study found that the average cost per acquisition from Google Ads during BFCM climbed by 31 percent year on year to $16.79 in 2023.\nWe’d bet dollars to donuts that this trend is true across display ad categories like YouTube and the Google Display Network.\nSo, somewhat counterintuitively, our first tip is to consider shifting your display ad spend earlier in the calendar to avoid all the competition.\nOne brand to take this approach is Home Depot, which ran a Spring Black Friday campaign throughout April 2024:\nYour browser does not support the video element. ( Incidentally, they were far from the only brand to launch an early BFCM promotion. In just a couple minutes browsing our display ad database, we noticed that both Best Buy and Wayfair ran “Black Friday in July” campaigns this year.)\nHome Depot ran various iterations of this video ad, with our spending data estimating they spent $5+ million across the month-long campaign.\nEach ad directed clickers toward a different landing page.\nFor instance, the ad we shared above pointed to a specific product page for an outdoor furniture set that appeared in the video:\nWhereas other variants showcased a wider range of products and linked to a dedicated landing page incorporating all of the retailer’s top Spring Black Friday deals across its outdoors category:\nWhich leads us to another key learning from this same campaign ( thanks, Home Depot!): always take the time to align your landing page content with your ad creative.\nThis way, shoppers know exactly what to expect when they click through, which means they’re more likely to buy something.\nLiving Spaces: Build a dedicated BFCM landing page There’s no point investing a bunch of ad spend and creative energy into your BFCM campaign if consumers end up bouncing the second they arrive on your website.\nUnfortunately, there’s a good chance that’ll happen if you just send clickers straight to your homepage (or some other generic page).\nAs we mentioned in the previous section, it pays to match the messaging on your ad creatives and landing pages. And one of the best ways to do this is to create a dedicated landing page for your Cyber Week campaigns.\nLiving Spaces clearly realizes this.\nIn the following video ad, the furniture retailer promotes its Black Friday event:\nYour browser does not support the video element. If you click through, you’re taken to a dedicated landing page housing all the brand’s BFCM offers:\nThere’s no room for confusion here: you see a Black Friday ad and you’re transported to a Black Friday landing page.\nWhen you provide this sort of watertight user journey, consumers are more likely to stick around, browse your products, and (hopefully) make a purchase.\n👉 Learn more: 8 examples of high-converting display ad and landing page combos\nPandora: Clearly state discounts in ad creative Why do consumers shop during BFCM? Are they caught up in a collective buying frenzy?\nUnsurprisingly, no. The actual reason is far more mundane, with 81 percent of shoppers saying promotions and sales are the #1 factor.\nSo if people are on the lookout for bargains, it makes sense to speak their language in your ad creative. Don’t force them to guess — clearly spell out the discounts you’re offering (and any other relevant details).\nThis is precisely what jewelry brand Pandora did in our next ad example:\nYour browser does not support the video element. It’s not hard to imagine why a shopper contemplating a jewelry purchase would be won over by the promise of up to 40 percent off their purchase.\nPeople who click ads like this are showing high buying intent. They’ve basically already made up their mind to buy something — they just need to find the right product (at the right price). We’d say there’s a good chance this ad had a solid conversion rate.\nPandora also took the smart decision of stating the dates of its BFCM sale in the ad creative.\nThis isn’t just about providing useful information. It’s about building a feeling of urgency and scarcity. More on that in the next section…\nHulu: Use messaging to build urgency and scarcity Urgency and scarcity can be a powerful motivator for consumers.\nHow powerful? Well, research reveals that 81 percent of “FOMO networkers” — people who have a “fear of missing out” on social media — have bought something online in the past month.\nWhat’s more, research published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science concluded:\n“Product and resource scarcity both attract the consumer’s attention [and] increase the perceived value of the items being considered.”\nBlack Friday and Cyber Monday are all about (artificial) urgency and scarcity.\nShoppers know they only have a short period of time to take advantage of BFCM deals. So they feel compelled to click through and buy, simply because they don’t want to miss out.\nAfter all, could you really live with yourself if you missed that juicy 15 percent discount on the combined waffle iron and toastie maker you’ve been eyeing for weeks?\nUse this to your advantage by adding urgency and scarcity-related messaging to your BFCM creatives. Just like streaming platform Hulu did here:\nUnless you take the time to read the small print, you don’t even know how long this offer is available for — you just know it’ll be gone soon.\nWhich means you’re more likely to take immediate action.\nTractor Supply Co: Use aggressive discounts to drive cross-sells If your entire Cyber Week strategy is geared toward selling heavily discounted products, you’re doing it wrong.\nSure, you should absolutely be luring customers with attractive promotions. But the goal here isn’t just to shift a bunch of cut-price products — anyone can do that. Instead, use those sharp BFCM discounts to drive purchases of non-discounted products through upselling and cross-selling.\nWhile the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, upsells and cross-sells are actually subtly different:\nUpsells are about recommending more expensive “premium” versions of the product a customer was originally viewing. Cross-sells involve encouraging shoppers to buy additional related products alongside their original purchase. Ultimately, both help to boost sales — they just do it in different ways.\nOkay, let’s look at how to cross-sell and upsell in a BFCM campaign, courtesy of Tractor Supply Co. In this video ad, the retailer shouts about a big saving on safes, while also featuring images of various other products:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Now, let’s say you clicked that ad and ended up on this product page:\nScroll down and you’ll notice that Tractor Supply Co uses this page to recommend a bunch of “similar items” at more expensive price points (only one of which is available at a discount):\nNot only that, but it also features a handful of related products. Again, you’ll notice that none of them are discounted:\nAnd if you add something to your shopping cart, the retailer suggests recommended products across various categories. Once more, the majority aren’t sale items:\nThis goes to show that combining effective ad creative with some smart UX can give you multiple opportunities to upsell and cross-sell to BFCM shoppers.\nWhich can have a massive impact on your average order value.\nAshley Furniture: Switch up your publisher strategy There’s another key element of display ad strategy planning that we haven’t mentioned yet: choosing your publishers.\nNow, you might assume it’d make sense to place your BFCM ads with the same publishers you use at any other time of year. After all, you’re targeting the same audience, right?\nHowever, that’s not necessarily the right approach.\nTo explain why, let’s use Adbeat to analyze Ashley Furniture’s publisher placements. Here are their top publishers over the past six months:\nAs you can see, this is essentially a who’s-who of generic, high-traffic sites. Beyond Chess.com, there’s no indication of any obvious targeting strategy here.\nNow, let’s take a look at one of the retailer’s 2023 BFCM ads:\nTop publishers for this ad include:\neBay Brad’s Deals OfferUp All of which are specifically geared toward shopping — with a particular focus on bargain-hunting. In other words, exactly the type of people you’d expect to be interested in a Black Friday sale.\nWhat does this tell us?\nDuring Cyber Week, it’s time to ditch the brand awareness campaigns in favor of low-hanging fruit. Target shoppers at the bottom of the funnel and use your most attractive offers to lure them to your store.\nConclusion: Remember your brand and audience BFCM might require a major shift in your creatives, messaging, and publishers.\nBut you should still be targeting the same audience.\nAfter all, Cyber Week is only seven days. Once your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns finish, you want the customers who snapped up your special offers to come back and buy from you again.\nThat’s not going to happen if you abandon your value proposition in favor of bagging some quick sales.\nWant to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/bfcm-display-ad-strategy-best-practices-from-home-depot-pandora-and-more/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBlack Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) are make or break for retailers, with \u003ca href=\"https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/thanksgiving-holiday-weekend-sees-record-number-shoppers\"\u003eover 200 million consumers\u003c/a\u003e shopping in-store and online across the 2023 Thanksgiving weekend.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure\u003e\n    \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-21.png\"/\u003e \n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePer \u003ca href=\"https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2023/Media-Alert-Adobe-Cyber-Monday-Surges-to-12.4-Billion-in-Online-Spending-Breaking-E-Commerce-Record/default.aspx\"\u003eAdobe Analytics\u003c/a\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eCyber Monday remains the biggest online shopping day of all time\u003c/strong\u003e, with total sales climbing 7.8 percent to $38 billion last year — including peak sales of $15.7 million per minute between 10:00 – 11:00 pm Eastern.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith so much on the line, it makes sense to start planning your BFCM display ad strategy as early as possible.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"BFCM display ad strategy: Best practices from Home Depot, Pandora and more"},{"content":"Walk outside your home, and you’re bound to see ads everywhere. On billboards, posters, buses, and even subway platforms. You’ve probably bought something after seeing these ads (as have millions of other people).\nThe reason? These ads are effective. They tug at your heartstrings, make you miss something you never had, or convince you that your life will be better once you sign up for that gym membership.\nBut how do brands know these ads will work? By testing them on various groups of people! In other words: ad testing.\nWhat is ad testing? Ad testing is a process where different versions of the same ad are tested on a group of target consumers to see which one performs (and resonates) better. Based on the target group’s feedback, the ad is tweaked to maximize impact and conversions.\nYou can run tests on an entire ad or only on certain components of it. For instance, you could test ads with different versions of one of the following components (keeping the rest of the ad constant):\nCall-to-action (CTA) Headline Description Visuals Colors How does ad testing benefit brands? Here’s a fun fact: most companies spend around 10% of their entire revenue on marketing, with around 10-20% of that budget allocated for ad testing. This gives us a clue about how important ad testing is for businesses. Here’s how creative testing benefits brands like yours:\nIt lets you measure the impact of your ad by understanding how your target consumers react to it. It allows you the opportunity to tweak certain elements of your ad that aren’t being received well by customers before releasing it to the public. This makes the ad more effective, thereby maximizing its ROI. It gives you cold, hard data to help with the decision of choosing which version of the ad to run with. It lets you segment your consumers into different groups (such as millennials, Gen Z, boomers) and see how their reactions differ. This way, you could run different versions of the ad, with each version targeting a certain group. It drives real customer conversions even before the ad is officially launched! In short, it saves you a lot of time and money by ensuring that the ad you launch is the best possible version to drive results.\nThe basics of common ad testing methods You can test an ad before, during, and after the launch to analyze its performance. Let’s explore some of the most common methods of testing ads.\nSurveys Surveys are a versatile ad testing method, and can be conducted at any stage in the ad development process. Select a diverse group of respondents from your target audience, show them the ad visuals, and send them questions regarding the ad(s) you want to test.\nHere are some of the most common questions used in ad testing surveys:\nWhich element of the ad stands out to you the most? What message do you think this ad is trying to convey? On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to buy the product after seeing this ad? What would you change about this ad? How does this ad influence your opinion of [brand]? How easy was this ad to understand? Do you feel like the claims made by this ad are credible? You can choose certain elements of your ad, a single complete ad, or multiple ads to see which one resonates better.\nHere’s a not-so-secret tip: you can even pop some of your competitors’ ads and ask the respondents which one they like better.\nAdbeat lets you see how your competitors’ ads are performing, which is an essential part of ad testing. [ Sign up now ]\nA/B testing This is usually a type of post-launch ad testing where you segment your audience into two equal groups–group 1 and group 2–and launch two versions of the same ad. Ad A is shown only to group 1 and ad B is shown only to group 2. Then, you measure the engagement, click-through-rate, or conversions for both ads to see which one is better at converting customers.\nEye tracking studies This is a cool (and scientific) way of picking out the most attractive elements from ads. When we look at an ad (or anything, for that matter), our gaze typically tends to focus on the most visually appealing elements first. Eye tracking, basically, uses technology to track the movement of people’s eyes over the ad to see which parts are attracting the most attention.\nAd recall testing This type of ad testing measures an ad’s memorability and comes into play once you’ve launched your ads. After all, an ad that sticks in your mind is always a success, right? Here, you’ll be asking respondents (who have already seen the ad) questions about how much they remember. These questions could range from asking customers to recall specific components of the ad (such as messaging, visuals) or simply asking them which elements from it have stuck with them.\nSocial listening This refers to listening in on conversations happening about your brand on social media. This is a great, often-overlooked way of testing out the effectiveness of your ads post-launch. Some ways in which you can listen socially is by following brand- or ad-related hashtags, checking out the comments under your ad on YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter, or monitoring specific keywords/ tag lines from your ads.\nHow to run an ad testing campaign like a pro Now that you know just how much power ad testing holds, it’s time for a simple 5-step guide on how you can run an ad test.\n1. Pick the ad(s) you want to test Once your creative team has come up with an ad concept and design, create different versions of it to test on consumers. For instance, you might be torn between two different headlines, trying to decide which colors work best, or debating on the tone of voice. This is the perfect time to test this out and see which ones resonate better!\nHowever, keep in mind that your messaging and brand need to stay consistent across the different creatives.\n2. Select your audience Next up is deciding who to test your ads on. They need to be people who would benefit from your product or service. In other words: potential buyers. For example, if you’re launching a new series of running shoes, then your target audience is people who run or work out a lot. However, your target consumers are very diverse and may consist of people of all ages and genders. So, how do you ensure your sample audience is inclusive?\nSimple: by ensuring the audience you select is diverse. For this, you would need a significant number of respondents. This will help you understand how different types of people react to your ad. With this feedback, you could either tailor your ads to be appealing to everybody, or run different versions of it, with each version targeting a separate sub-group.\n3. List out the metrics you want to measure Which will depend on what you want to get out of your ad. Is it brand awareness, sales, traffic increase, newsletter sign-ups, or lead generation? Once you have your goal down pat, you can choose which ad metrics translate to success for you.\nHere are some common ad metrics for you to choose from:\nInitial reaction to the ad Clarity of message Believability Relevance Level of appeal Level of purchase intent Uniqueness Brand fit Total impressions Bounce rate If your goal is to drive sales, you could use level of purchase intent, message clarity, and relevance as your metrics. One thing to remember is that, even if you test the ad on various sub-groups of people, or run it across different advertising channels, your metrics should stay the same.\nFor pre-launch ad testing, you can use market research software such as Quantilope or Meltwater. For testing the effectiveness of your ad campaigns post-launch, Adbeat is your go-to!\n4. Launch the test Now, it’s finally time to take the leap and launch the test! Pick an ad testing method that you feel best suits your ads and wait for enough people to send in their feedback.\nBut, before you launch the test, make sure your questions contain a mix of the following styles:\nA 5-point Likert scale with options like strongly agree/ somewhat agree/ neutral/ somewhat disagree/ strongly disagree. Questions to collect demographic information. Here’s an example for age group options: under 18/ 18-25/ 26-40/ 41-55/ 56+. Open answer fields where respondents have to type their answers. Yes/ No questions. Drop-down questions. 5. Analyze the results and tweak your ads Once you’ve got enough responses from your test, analyze overall as well as ad-specific results and see which ad elements come out on top. You can use these findings to select the ad you want to run with, or tweak the existing ads to come up with the best possible version.\nCongrats! You’re ready to bring your ads to the public at large with confidence.\nWant to beat your competitors by creating better, more visually appealing ads? Get data from Adbeat about your rivals’ ad strategies and hit your campaign out of the park. [ Sign up now ]\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/ad-testing-101-create-effective-ads-that-drive-results/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWalk outside your home, and you’re bound to see ads everywhere. On billboards, posters, buses, and even subway platforms. You’ve probably bought something after seeing these ads (as have millions of other people).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe reason? These ads are effective. They tug at your heartstrings, make you miss something you never had, or convince you that your life will be better once you sign up for that gym membership.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut how do brands know these ads will work? By testing them on various groups of people! In other words: ad testing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Ad Testing 101: Create Effective Ads That Drive Results"},{"content":"The pop of the bottle opening. The gentle glug-glug-fizz as you decant the golden liquid. The foamy head; the condensation on the glass. You just can’t beat a frosty beer on a hot summer’s day.\nBeer-related searches on Google spike during the hottest months of the year…\n…and with International Beer Day still in our recent memory ( who knew?), we decided to use Adbeat’s competitive intelligence data to analyze the display ad strategies of three of America’s biggest beer brands:\nGuinness Bud Light Modelo We looked specifically at US-targeted campaigns in the six months to July 2, 2024. Read on to learn about their spending strategies, ad networks, publishers, and the creatives and landing pages they use to reach, engage, and convert audiences.\nSalud!\nGuinness Ad spend and networks Guinness invested an estimated $427,000 in display ads over the last six months — but almost all of that budget has been spent since the start of May:\nThe majority of those ad bucks were dedicated to programmatic, while about one-quarter was spent on video ads. And almost all went toward Google’s Display \u0026amp; Video 360 (DV360) network.\nPublishers When it comes to publishers, Guinness prioritizes big names in the food and drink space, with about one-third of their budget spent on placements on a single website: Allrecipes.\nTheir ads mostly appear on recipes, rather than anything specifically alcohol-related. Seems they’re all about promoting Guinness as an accompaniment to a delicious meal or a food-based social occasion, rather than just encouraging people to drink it for the craic.\nThe exception to the rule is People. The celebrity news site’s audience skews young (half of visitors are aged under 44) and female (an estimated two-thirds of users are women) — a far cry from the traditional image of an old guy in a flat cap sipping a pint of the black stuff in a smoky pub.\nSignificantly, Guinness says it saw a 24 percent uptick in female customers in 2023, so it seems they’re actively courting a different audience as part of their growth plans.\nCreatives Standard In terms of creatives, a single standard ad accounted for almost half of the brand’s entire display ad budget over the period we analyzed:\nWe can see why. The “lovely day” messaging makes it perfect for summer, while the creative shows off three separate Guinness products — including their alcohol-free offering, Guinness Zero.\nVideo Guinness has created some of the most iconic commercials in history ( who can forget the one with the surfer?).\nAnd they’ve clearly spent big on their latest high-profile ad, fronted by Aquaman star Jason Momoa. The 15-second cut was the brand’s top video advert, attracting an estimated spend of almost $93,000 since the start of May:\nYour browser does not support the video element. But the big names don’t stop there, because Guinness has also enlisted Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Montana to promote Guinness Zero:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Again, Guinness is happy to buck the trend here. The alcohol-free beer market has averaged annual growth of 31 percent over the past four years, largely driven by younger (non) drinkers. Joe Montana isn’t an obvious fit for targeting Gen-Z audiences, so it seems Guinness is aiming to boost sales of Zero among older consumers.\nLanding Pages The vast majority of Guinness ads send clickers to specific product pages, like this one for Guinness Zero, featuring CTAs to buy online, find nearby, or check out on Instacart:\nClearly, Guinness doesn’t just see display ads as a way to boost brand awareness — they want to drive online sales, too.\nOnce again, it seems the brand is ahead of the curve here, with US e-commerce sales of alcoholic drinks expected to grow 27 percent to almost $30 billion between 2024 and 2029.\nBud Light Ad spend and networks In the last six months, Bud Light spent an estimated $328,000 on display ads — the vast majority in the run-up to the Super Bowl:\nBud Light adopted a more diverse spending strategy than Guinness, with half their budget going on programmatic, one-third on video, and one-fifth on direct ads. They also used a mix of ad networks, dropping almost $140,000 on the Google Display Network, $75,000 on YouTube, and $68,000 on Direct Buy.\nPublishers If Guinness wants to expand its reach by tapping into unexpected demographics, Bud Light is seemingly hell-bent on recapturing its traditional target audience of young-ish men. Four of Bud Light’s top five publishers are sports-specific websites, while their entire YouTube budget was spent on sports channels MMA Weekly and UFC:\nThis is hardly surprising given the massive decline in sales provoked by the Bud Light boycott, which saw the brand lose its status as America’s top-selling beer.\nCreatives Standard The brand’s top standard ad, with an estimated budget of just over $14,000, was this banner promoting a competition to win Super Bowl tickets:\nInterestingly, the ad is pretty low on Bud Light branding — there’s just the tiny beer can and the seat logo.\nBy contrast, they also published a bunch of evergreen ads, each of which looks more or less like this:\nThese ads go heavy on the product and the brand’s “ Easy to drink, easy to enjoy” tagline, introduced ahead of the 2023 Super Bowl.\nVideo Bud Light spent approximately one-quarter of its whole display budget for the period on a video ad fronted by another Pro Football Hall of Famer, Peyton Manning:\nYour browser does not support the video element. It’s the definition of a safe bet. Which is no big surprise in the wake of the boycott.\nPost-Super Bowl, they’ve mostly splashed the cash on a new, lighthearted ad featuring rapper Post Malone and a whimsical character called the “Bud Light Genie”:\nYour browser does not support the video element. It lacks the originality of classic Bud ads like “Wazzup?” and the croaking Budweiser frogs, but it’s a crowd-pleaser: mildly amusing and uncontroversial. That’s probably what the brand needs right now.\nLanding Pages Like Guinness, Bud Light clearly sees display ads as a reliable way to drive immediate sales. Outside of the previously mentioned Super Bowl competition, the brand largely steers audiences toward its “locator” page, where customers can order various Bud Light products from nearby stores:\nModelo Ad spend and networks Guess which brand replaced Bud Light as America’s top-selling beer? That’s right: Modelo Especial, which saw a 12 percent sales increase for the year through April 7.\nModelo is evidently eager to solidify its newfound position as market leader, dropping over $269,000 on display ads in the last six months:\nUnlike the other brands in our analysis, Modelo spent heavily on video, with YouTube accounting for more than half of their display ad budget over the period.\nPublishers Modelo’s choice of publishers suggests they’re actively courting a younger audience.\nYouTube is the clear #1, with their top channels including Brazilian record label Love Funk and Italian rapper Baby Gang. Nope, I’ve never heard of him either. But with 1.9+ million YouTube subscribers and over 2.5 million followers on Instagram, he’s clearly a big deal.\nElsewhere in the top five are streetwear site Hypebeast and sports database StatMuse, which is big with Gen Z and Millennial men.\nIn other words, Modelo’s publisher strategy is like a more extreme version of what Guinness is doing. They don’t seem particularly interested in reaching older drinkers — at least, not via display ads.\nCreatives Standard Modelo’s top-spending standard ads mostly look something like this:\nWith plenty of visible branding, a prominent tagline, and no CTA, these ads are clearly all about boosting brand awareness.\nWe also found a bunch of standard ads reinforcing the brand’s sporting partnerships, like this one describing Modelo as the “fighting spirit of Raider nation”\u0026hellip;\n…and this one promoting their sponsorship of soccer club Columbus Crew:\nNot only does the sports connection resonate with Modelo’s target audience, but it also helps the brand target customers in the geographic locations where those sports teams and franchises are based.\nVideo Unlike Guinness and Bud Light, Modelo doesn’t bother with hiring big names for its video ads. Instead, the brand largely focused on promoting the new Chelada range — their take on the michelada, a classic Mexican cocktail:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Modelo’s audience targeting strategy is obvious here, too. Just look at all those young, cool, sexy people hanging out with their Cheladas. And not a middle-aged former quarterback in sight.\nLanding Pages Just like Guinness and Bud Light, Modelo sends ad clickers to landing pages where they can purchase their favorite Modelo products or find out where to buy them in person:\nHonestly, I find it hard to imagine ordering a crate of Modelo Especial via the internet. Surely you’d just go to the store? But 10 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds and one in six 30 to 49-year-olds say they’ve bought beer online, so perhaps I’m missing out.\nConclusion Beer doesn’t change too much.\nSure, new products like Modelo Chelada grab our attention from time to time. But Guinness is one of the most popular beers on the planet — and it’s tasted pretty much the same for over 250 years.\nHowever, the beer industry can’t afford to stand still. Consumer preferences are evolving fast and brands are fighting to reach new audiences. Our analysis demonstrated how Guinness and Modelo are both pursuing a younger customer base, and we’re guessing they’re not the only ones.\nNow, whose round is it?\nWant to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/battle-of-the-brewers-how-bud-light-guinness-modelo-are-competing-through-display-ads/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cem\u003epop\u003c/em\u003e of the bottle opening. The gentle \u003cem\u003eglug-glug-fizz\u003c/em\u003e as you decant the golden liquid. The foamy head; the condensation on the glass. \u003cem\u003eYou just can’t beat a frosty beer on a hot summer’s day\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBeer-related searches on \u003ca href=\"https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y\u0026amp;geo=US\u0026amp;q=%2Fm%2F01599\u0026amp;hl=en\"\u003eGoogle\u003c/a\u003e spike during the hottest months of the year…\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure\u003e\n    \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/image-2.png\"/\u003e \n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e…and with \u003ca href=\"http://internationalbeerday.com/\"\u003eInternational Beer Day\u003c/a\u003e still in our recent memory ( \u003cem\u003ewho knew?\u003c/em\u003e), we decided to use Adbeat’s competitive intelligence data to analyze the display ad strategies of three of America’s biggest beer brands:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Battle of the brewers: How Bud Light, Guinness \u0026amp; Modelo are competing through display ads"},{"content":"Not normally a big fan of weight lifting or equestrianism or modern pentathlon?\nYou might change your mind, because the 2024 Summer Olympics (July 26 – August 11) are here. Given that the two previous editions of the summer Games both surpassed three billion viewers, it’s expected to be one of the most-watched televised events of the past decade.\nIn fact, with the last three Games (two Winter Olympics and one summer Games) all taking place in Asia, viewing times for Paris 2024 will be a better fit for Western audiences — meaning TV figures could be even higher than recent events.\nAll of which is music to the ears of advertisers looking to use the Games to boost brand awareness and sales.\nWith that in mind, we used Adbeat’s exclusive competitive advertising intelligence data to analyze how brands like Gillette, Intel, and Toyota are leveraging the Olympics as part of their US display ad strategies.\nLet’s get into it…\nFairlife: Collaborate with athletes At time of writing, ultra-filtered milk and protein shake brand Fairlife has the highest-spending Olympics-themed display ad, in the form of this video featuring seven-time gold medal-winning swimmer Katie Ledecky:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Per our competitive intelligence data, Fairlife has spent an estimated $301,400 on this ad since mid-April, ramping up its budget as the Games approaches.\nPartnering with an Olympian is an obvious move for any advertiser. But while Fairlife’s approach isn’t going to win any awards for originality, the brand does a great job of integrating its products into the narrative.\nDoes Katie Ledecky really drink Core Power the second she climbs out of the pool? Who knows. Frankly, it doesn’t really matter.\nWhat’s more important is that Core Power stays front and center throughout the ad, and that the product’s key messaging — high-quality protein to build muscle — is highly visible.\nFairlife’s targeting strategy is a little harder to fathom.\nSo far, their entire budget for this ad has been spent on YouTube. But their channel selection is a real mixed bag:\nTheir top five channels include:\nGaming streamers Luke TheNotable and PrestonPlayz Child-friendly channels Masha and The Bear and Toy For Kids Real estate marketplace Zillow So are they targeting teens? Parents with young kids? Property buyers? Or all three?\nPerhaps, given the broad appeal of the Olympic Games, they’re simply using the event to build their brand among as many different audiences as possible.\nToyota: Build a dedicated Olympics microsite Toyota is one of just 15 official Olympic Partners — described by the International Olympic Committee as “the highest level of Olympic sponsorship, granting exclusive, global marketing rights to the Olympic and Paralympic Games and Olympic teams around the world”.\nIt’s safe to assume securing Partner status cost Toyota a pretty penny. So you won’t be surprised to learn that they’ve really leaned into Olympics-themed messaging in recent weeks.\nIn fact, since mid-April, they’ve spent an estimated $1.6 million on ads driving clickers to their Olympics microsite, Toyota Start Your Impossible:\nNot content to collaborate with a single Olympian, the car manufacturer is sponsoring 250+ Olympic and Paralympic athletes as part of Global Team Toyota.\nMany of those athletes appear in the brand’s Olympics-themed display ads, including this one featuring American sprinter Gabrielle Thomas:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Once you click one of those ads, you’re taken straight to the dedicated microsite, which gives fans the chance to write messages of support to their favorite (Toyota-sponsored) athletes as part of the #TeamToyotaSendOff.\nClearly, Toyota isn’t trying to drive a ton of immediate sales here. As far as we can see, there isn’t a single Toyota product on the Start Your Impossible site. Instead, they’re positioning themselves as a vital link between athletes and viewers in dozens of countries.\nIt’s no easy task creating a single campaign with global appeal — but Toyota does a pretty good job.\nGillette: Don’t reinvent the wheel Whenever a major sporting event comes along, it can be tempting for advertisers to abandon their core messaging to make themselves part of the conversation.\nNaturally, you want to get involved in the thing everyone else is talking about. But if you can’t do it in a way that aligns with your existing brand and audience, it’s just not worth the effort. Any new customers you lure in likely won’t stick around when normal service resumes.\nGillette gets it right in this ad for their Venus range of women’s shaving products:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Sure, it features an Olympian, namely gold medal-winning swimmer Lydia Jacoby. But the video is ultimately about highlighting the product’s features and benefits, using phrases like “ ultra-sharp blades” and “ water-activated serums”.\nEven the tagline — “ Feel the power of smooth” — feels like it’s been lifted from a previous Venus campaign.\nSo it’s likely to resonate with existing Venus customers, while also effectively pitching the brand and product to new audiences.\nProcter \u0026amp; Gamble: Demonstrate CSR Like Toyota, Procter \u0026amp; Gamble is a fully paid up Olympic Partner.\nAnd also like Toyota, they’ve enlisted a whole squad of athletes as part of their Games-themed campaign, titled “ Athletes for Good”.\n( Incidentally, P\u0026amp;G also owns the previous brand in our analysis, Gillette.)\nWhile “ Athletes for Good” no doubt involves a mammoth budget, the premise is pretty simple. There are two basic ad variants. This one:\nAnd this one:\nAll the ads are targeting a single publisher: the official website of the Olympic Games.\nAnd they send clickers to a single landing page — a press release explaining how P\u0026amp;G has handed out a bunch of grants to Olympians and Paralympians, helping them support good causes ranging from the environment to mental health to financial assistance for young athletes.\nOnce again, this campaign clearly isn’t designed to sell a ton of P\u0026amp;G products.\nInstead, it’s about reinforcing the brand’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) credentials.\nThis approach might not have an immediate impact on P\u0026amp;G’s bottom line. But it’s an effective way to drum up some positive consumer sentiment. Especially among y ounger consumers, with three-quarters of Millennials and Gen-Zers saying they actively seek out brands that support causes they believe in.\nIntel: Keep it simple Time for yet another official Olympic Partner: multinational tech giant Intel.\nLet’s be honest. There’s no obvious through-line connecting Intel to the Games. Even the smartest marketer might struggle to weave a narrative about how computer chips or data centers have helped an athlete accomplish their Olympic dreams.\nSo rather than trying to force things, Intel keeps it simple by focusing on the practical ways its technology is helping the Olympics come together.\nTheir ads feature impressive-sounding copy like “ game-changing technology platforms”\u0026hellip;\n…which makes Intel feel like a natural part of the Paris 2024 story, rather than crow-barring them into a place where they don’t really belong.\nLike P\u0026amp;G, Intel sends clickers to a dedicated landing page, which explains all the ways in which the company’s products and solutions are helping the Games to reach “the next level”.\nSuch as giving athletes and fans access to private 5G platforms…\n…and reducing the event’s carbon footprint through something called “digital twinning”, which all sounds suitably Blade Runner.\nTo date, Intel has only used a single publisher in this campaign: the Washington Post. Which makes sense given the distinctly high-brow nature of the messaging.\nMajor Fitness: No official partnership? No problem! What if you’re not a massive, global brand that can’t afford to become an Olympic Partner?\nShould you just forget all about the Games? Pause your ads until after the closing ceremony? Or should you join in with all the fun by getting a little creative?\nMajor Fitness (formerly known as Major-Lutie) chose the last of those three options. In the process, they proved that it’s totally possible to join the Olympics party even if you don’t have a multimillion-dollar budget. You just have to be smart about it.\nAs you can see, their approach involved teaming up with gold medal-winning triathlete Gwen Jorgensen:\nYour browser does not support the video element. In the ad, Jorgensen speaks glowingly about Major’s products and the important role they play in her training regime. It’s exactly the sort of thing you’d want to hear if you were thinking of building your own home gym.\nSensibly, if you click through from the video ad, you’re sent straight to the relevant product page:\nWhich just goes to show that Olympics-themed ads don\u0026rsquo;t have to be all about building brand awareness. Provided your product is relevant, you can definitely use them to generate direct sales, too.\nConclusion The Olympics is one of the most high-profile events of the year, so it’s hardly surprising that such a diverse range of advertisers are getting involved.\nFrom tech companies to consumer goods conglomerates to car manufacturers, they’re all desperate to get involved.\nAnd while our analysis highlighted a bunch of different targeting and messaging strategies, most ads we reviewed chose to focus on the public face of the Olympics: the athletes.\nWhich sounds obvious. But in the complex world of advertising, the simplest solution is often the best one.\nWant to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-brands-are-using-the-olympics-in-display-ads-feat-gillette-intel-toyota-more/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNot normally a big fan of weight lifting or equestrianism or modern pentathlon?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou might change your mind, because the 2024 Summer Olympics (July 26 – August 11) are here. Given that the two previous editions of the summer Games \u003ca href=\"https://www.emarketer.com/content/2024-summer-olympics-could-be-most-watched-tv-event\"\u003eboth surpassed three billion viewers\u003c/a\u003e, it’s \u003cstrong\u003eexpected to be one of the most-watched televised events of the past decade\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure\u003e\n    \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image.png\"/\u003e \n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn fact, with the last three Games (two Winter Olympics and one summer Games) all taking place in Asia, viewing times for Paris 2024 will be a better fit for Western audiences — meaning TV figures could be even higher than recent events.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How brands are using the Olympics in display ads (feat. Gillette, Intel, Toyota \u0026amp; more)"},{"content":"Now that summer is in full swing, many of us have one thing on our minds: travel. Interest in travel-related search topics like “hotel” spikes during the hottest months of the year…\n…prompting travel brands large and small to battle it out for our vacation bucks.\nBut how do the travel industry’s biggest advertisers leverage display ads to differentiate themselves? Where are they spending their money? And what types of creatives and landing pages do they use?\nTo answer all those questions (and more), we used Adbeat data to dive into the display ad strategies of three major property-booking platforms:\nAirbnb Booking.com VRBO Here’s what we found…\nAirbnb Ad spend and networks Our estimated data shows that Airbnb shelled out approximately $7.3 million on display advertising in the US in the last six months, with the vast majority spent in just a few days during February, March, and April.\nPretty much all of that budget went toward video ads, with the brand spending an estimated $7 million on YouTube during our study period.\nPublishers We already know YouTube is Airbnb’s top publisher. But let’s get more specific by looking drilling down into their top YouTube channels:\nAs you can see, their placement strategy is heavily tilted toward mainstream Spanish-language music artists. All of which suggests Airbnb is chasing a distinctly youthful audience, with a particular focus on vacationers from Latino backgrounds.\nCreatives Standard Travel marketing is all about selling an experience — from exploring a historic city to embracing a new culture to kicking back on the beach with a cocktail. And that process gets a whole lot easier when you back up your words with attractive imagery.\nFor that reason, Airbnb’s standard ads are image-heavy. In fact, many of them don’t include any words at all, like this one…\n…and this one:\nNative Airbnb takes a somewhat scattergun approach to native ad targeting, with creatives aimed at vacationers…\n…prospective Airbnb hosts…\n…and event planners:\n(Incidentally, ads like the Scottsdale Airbnb example typically use location insertion, allowing brands to automatically tailor their ad text based on searchers’ locations, regular locations, or locations of interest.)\nHowever, it’s important to note that native ads are a minor part of Airbnb’s display strategy, accounting for less than 1 percent of their total budget in the last six months.\nVideo Unusually, Airbnb’s four biggest-spending ads throughout our review period were aimed at Spanish speakers. Now it makes sense why they spent all that money on Becky G’s YouTube channel, huh?\nTheir #1 ad, with an estimated spend of $800,000+, persuaded young parents to book an Airbnb rather than a hotel for their next trip:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Other creatives in the same campaign targeted groups of friends traveling together…\nYour browser does not support the video element. …and even solo travelers with pets:\nYour browser does not support the video element. As you can see, Airbnb has adopted a consistent style of animation, background music, and voiceover throughout these ads. So if you’ve seen one of them, there’s a good chance you’ll recognize the others.\nTime will tell if Airbnb is actually prioritizing Spanish-speaking audiences as part of its display ad strategy, or if they’re planning to expand this campaign to English speakers as summer gets closer.\nLanding Pages Property portals like Airbnb have two main target audiences:\nPeople planning a trip Property owners looking to make some extra cash Those two audience types have totally different reasons to use Airbnb — which requires two different types of landing pages to meet their needs.\nWhen it comes to targeting vacationers, Airbnb prefers to send ad clickers straight to its homepage, or to specific property pages like this one:\nBut their property owner-themed landing pages are a little more sophisticated, featuring an eye-catching earnings estimator that updates based on your current location:\nThere’s also a comparison table designed to demonstrate how Airbnb is way ahead of the competition in terms of protecting property owners:\nIf you’re convinced, you can click the ever-present CTA button at the top of the screen to start your journey as an Airbnb host:\nBooking.com Ad spend and networks Booking.com is already the most popular accommodation-booking platform in the US:\nAnd they’re clearly in no rush to relinquish their lead, spending an estimated $21.1 million on display ads over the last six months — approximately three times more than Airbnb.\nLike Airbnb, the vast majority of their budget went toward video ads, with the brand spending ~$21 million on YouTube.\nPublishers Booking.com’s top YouTube channels suggest they’re targeting a much broader audience than Airbnb:\nTop spot goes to MrBeast, who’s big with younger viewers. But they’re also spending a bunch of money on channels with somewhat older fanbases, like Mariah Carey, The Police, and violinist Lindsey Stirling.\nI guess if you’re already the market leader, it makes sense to cast your net as wide as possible.\nCreatives Standard Booking.com doesn’t spend much on standard ads — but that doesn’t stop the brand experimenting with some clever strategies.\nFor instance, they demonstrate the power of smart copywriting, creating a bunch of ads featuring phrases like “find your overseas home”:\nAll of which makes you subconsciously imagine booking a trip yourself.\nThey’re also happy to experiment with different audiences. For instance, they ran a standard ad campaign targeting baseball fans ( spot the subtle baseball diamond image in the background)\u0026hellip;\n…with every ad in the campaign published on the official Major League Baseball website.\nNative Booking.com ran a grand total of two native ads in the last six months — one text ad and one text/image ad. Here they are:\nThere’s not much to tell you here, other than the fact that native advertising clearly isn’t a big part of Booking.com’s strategy.\nVideo Video ads, on the other hand, definitely play a key role in the brand’s display ad strategy. During our review period, seven different Booking.com video ads racked up $1+ million in spending.\nTheir top ad by spend, with an estimated budget of $5.1 million, was this 15-second video starring Tina Fey:\nYour browser does not support the video element. And there were several other variants of the same campaign, like this one featuring Tina Fey as an influencer…\nYour browser does not support the video element. …and this one incorporating a cameo from Glenn Close:\nYour browser does not support the video element. All share the same irreverent tone of voice, which helps to remind audiences that planning a vacation should be fun.\nOh, and they also spent big bucks (an estimated $2.8 million) on a video campaign to tie in with the launch of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.\nYour browser does not support the video element. These pop culture-infused campaigns say a lot about the brand’s positioning. Both Tina Fey and the Ghostbusters franchise are huge names — but they don’t take themselves too seriously. Just like Booking.com itself!\nLanding Pages Most Booking.com ads send clickers straight to the brand’s homepage. But they do occasionally use purpose-built landing pages, such as during the Ghostbusters campaign we mentioned above.\nTheir Ghostbusters landing page encourages visitors to book their “own haunted getaway”. It incorporates a bunch of imagery and animations from the movie…\n…plus information about some of the famous Ghostbusters locations in New York:\nThere’s even a recommendation for a specific spooky hotel to stay in…\n…which, naturally, ties in with Booking.com’s product offering.\nVRBO Ad spend and networks In the last six months, VRBO spent an estimated $3.6 million on display ads in the US.\nUnlike Airbnb and Booking.com, they didn’t rely solely on YouTube, instead splitting their budget 60:40 between video and programmatic.\nPublishers Surprisingly, YouTube is nowhere to be seen on the list of VRBO’s top publishers:\nHonestly, we analyze a lot of display ad campaigns and strategies, and YouTube is almost always in the top five — most often at #1. So it’s nice to see a brand doing things differently.\nRealtor.com and Tripadvisor both make total sense: if you’re searching for your dream home or browsing attractions, you might be in the market for booking accommodation through VRBO.\nMeanwhile, they predominantly use USA Today to target sports fans…\n…which is another smart move. Because supporting your team might involve a ton of travel, right?\nCreatives Standard VRBO’s top standard ad by spend, with an estimated budget of $587,000 in the last six months, is this evergreen creative designed to replicate the brand’s on-site search bar:\nThis is simple but effective, with a CTA button that looks like a natural part of the creative while also encouraging viewers to click through.\nOur platform data shows us that in the past month, VRBO has started experimenting with some new messaging in its standard ads, prompting people to “be the group trip MVP”:\nThe use of the phrase “MVP” feels very sports-oriented, which ties in with their placements on all those USA Today fan pages.\nNative Almost all of the brand’s native ads feature some combination of the phrases “quick getaway”, “sponsored by VRBO”, and “book now”, plus an image of an attractive vacation property:\nBut we also found a few examples that play around with this tried-and-trusted messaging formula, including this ad promising that VRBO homes are “easy to get to”:\nIt seems VRBO’s strategy here is to promise a friction-free experience, while using their well-known brand name to reassure bookers.\nVideo VRBO clearly feels that privacy is a key differentiator versus other property-booking portals.\nAll the video ads we reviewed included the tagline: “Private vacation rentals.”\nYour browser does not support the video element. Not only that, but they have a campaign featuring different types of group travelers, from young families to sports fans to divorce parties…\nYour browser does not support the video element. …all of which end with the phrase: “With a VRBO, it’s always just you, your people, and no one else.”\nSure, these ads aren’t as flashy as Booking.com’s celebrity campaigns, but they do an excellent job of communicating VRBO’s brand proposition.\nLanding Pages Simplicity is a key element of VRBO’s landing pages, too.\nTheir landing pages all look pretty similar, but they’re tailored to individual campaigns. So when they’re promoting whole vacation homes, they send you to a dedicated landing page…\n…or if you’re interested in road trip inspiration, that’s what you get:\nAgain, there’s nothing particularly exciting or innovative here. It’s all about delivering the smoothest-possible booking experience.\nConclusion From business to pleasure, from family vacations to getaways with friends, and from beach stays to city breaks, there are lots of reasons why we travel.\nWhich, in turn, means there are lots of ways for travel brands to target potential customers. So it’s no surprise that Airbnb, Booking.com, and VRBO have very different approaches to display advertising:\nAirbnb is targeting a specific customer demographic Booking.com is big on building brand awareness through high-profile ad campaigns VRBO cuts out all the bells and whistles to focus on privacy and simplicity Which strategy works best? That’s not for us to decide — but all three definitely made us want to book our next vacation.\nWant to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/airbnb-booking-com-and-vrbo-analyzing-the-display-ad-strategies-of-big-travel-brands/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow that summer is in full swing, many of us have one thing on our minds: travel. Interest in travel-related search topics like “hotel” spikes during the hottest months of the year…\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure\u003e\n    \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image-33.png\"/\u003e \n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e…prompting travel brands large and small to battle it out for our vacation bucks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut how do the travel industry’s biggest advertisers leverage display ads to differentiate themselves? Where are they spending their money? And what types of creatives and landing pages do they use?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Airbnb, Booking.com and VRBO: Analyzing the display ad strategies of big travel brands"},{"content":"By 2027, global online sales are expected to surpass an eye-watering $8 trillion. So it’s no surprise that starting an ecommerce business consistently ranks as one of America’s most popular side hustles:\nOf course, to start an ecommerce business, you first need a website. And if you don’t have the coding skills to create one from scratch, your best alternative is to use a website builder.\nWhile there’s no shortage of options, not all are a natural choice for online store owners. But three solutions that definitely fit the bill are:\nShopify Squarespace Wix Each of those platforms is dropping millions of dollars a year on display ads to win over the next generation of ecommerce entrepreneurs. So we decided to use Adbeat data to deep-dive into their advertising strategies and find out how they spend their money.\nLet’s get into it…\nShopify Ad spend and networks Over the last six months, Shopify spent an estimated $3.8 million on display advertising in the US, with a roughly 60:40 split between video and programmatic:\nWe were kinda expecting to see a big spending spike around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the year’s two biggest online shopping dates. Surely that’s when people are thinking about opening an ecommerce store?\nBut in reality, Shopify drops the majority of its display ad cash in March and April…\n…and (SPOILER ALERT) we saw this trend repeated by both Squarespace and Wix.\nWe’re guessing it’s to do with businesses shopping around for new technology partners at the start of the new financial year. Or maybe people are super keen to start an online side hustle after paying their taxes.\nPublishers As we know, Shopify spends the bulk of its display budget on video ads, so it’s no surprise that YouTube is their #1 publisher:\nTheir YouTube ads mostly appear on generic big channels like MrBeast and Bento e Totó, both of which have millions upon millions of subscribers. But we were amused and delighted to see that they dropped close to $190,000 on the channel of Wix, one of their biggest competitors:\nOutside of YouTube, there’s a distinctly techy feel to Shopify’s placements, which makes sense. You’ve got to have at least some interest in the online world if you’re planning to build an ecommerce site, after all.\nCreatives Standard Trust us: we look at a lot of display ads. But I can’t remember many better than Shopify’s. They clearly understand exactly who they’re targeting and why those people would choose the company’s website-building software.\nAs you can see from Shopify’s top three standard ads by spend…\n…they effectively highlight the platform’s value proposition by focusing on audience goals and pain points like:\nMonetizing your hobbies Selling via multiple channels Building an online store with minimal technical knowledge Each of those ads is accompanied by a clear call to action prompting people to start a free trial. It’s all so simple and effective.\nNative Shopify doesn’t do a ton of native advertising. But when they do, they again focus on key customer pain points like generating more online sales…\n…and making it easy for ecommerce newcomers to launch their first online business:\nVideo So far, we’ve seen Shopify targeting a single audience: first-time online business owners. But things are about to change, because their video ads span the full spectrum of potential Shopify customers.\nWe’ve got ads targeted squarely at enterprise users…\nYour browser does not support the video element. …existing online store owners who want to expand their sales channels…\nYour browser does not support the video element. …and people who are just looking to make their first online sale:\nYour browser does not support the video element. There’s even an ad that targets all those groups at once:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Once again, it demonstrates that Shopify knows who its customers are and what they want to hear.\nOne more key point: pretty much all Shopify’s video ads carry the same “free trial” CTA. It’s so much easier to plan and execute an engaging campaign when you’re totally focused on driving a single action.\nCampaigns Speaking of campaigns…\nDigging into Adbeat’s Campaigns view shines an even clearer light on Shopify’s display ad strategy.\nWe can see their biggest campaign (with an estimated budget of $1.1 million in the last six months) is designed to persuade would-be ecommerce entrepreneurs to build their first online store with Shopify…\n…while their second-biggest campaign is targeting enterprise-level retailers.\nAnd we can also see that the whole budget for their enterprise campaign was spent over just a couple weeks in March and April:\nWhich explains the spending trend we mentioned earlier in this article. It’s all falling into place!\nLanding Pages You’d expect a company that sells website-building software would know how to design a quality landing page, and Shopify doesn’t disappoint.\nInterestingly, most of their top landing pages by spend are simply regular web pages, like their standard Enterprise and Free Trial pages. But they also have a bunch of dedicated landing pages that get rid of all the unnecessary clutter (like the navigation menus at the top and bottom of the page).\nLet’s analyze one of those dedicated pages.\nAt the top of the page, we see some persuasive social proof — namely, the number of businesses that use Shopify — followed immediately by a lead capture form:\nBelow the fold, we’re given three clear, easy-to-understand reasons why we should build our online store with Shopify:\nAnd, last but not least, Shopify hits us with a persuasive customer testimonial and another CTA button:\nYou’ve got to admire the simplicity of Shopify’s approach. They’re selling quite a complex tool, but they make it all so easy to understand — and there’s barely a buzzword in sight.\nSquarespace Ad spend and networks Squarespace has a similar display ad budget to Shopify, spending an estimated $2.7 million in the US over the last six months. And they splash the cash at similar times, too, with a big upturn in spend during March and April:\nThe only real difference is the channel breakdown, with Squarespace committing a slightly higher proportion of their budget to video and direct ads.\nPublishers Given that two-thirds of Squarespace’s display ad budget goes toward video, you won’t be shocked to learn that YouTube is their top publisher. They mostly target big music channels like Bento e Totó and Dua Lipa — but, excitingly, they also dropped an estimated $57,000+ in just two days on Wix’s channel:\nOutside of YouTube, Squarespace spends a bunch of money advertising on The Noun Project, a stock photography and iconography website:\nWhich makes sense — it’s exactly the sort of tool you’d be browsing if you were designing your own ecommerce store.\nAnd, as you can see, there are some more generic, mass-market sites like Weather.com and the New York Times.\nCreatives Standard Whereas Shopify is a dedicated ecommerce website builder, Squarespace and Wix have broader audiences: essentially, they’re targeting anyone who wants to build any sort of website.\nInevitably, this means Squarespace’s ads are a little less focused than Shopify’s. Sure, we’ve got Shopify-esque standard ads prompting people to turn their hobby into a business…\n…but you’ll also find more generic creatives that mention designing “professional websites” rather than anything ecommerce-specific:\nNative None of the website builders we analyzed do a lot of native advertising, but we can see that Squarespace generally sticks with its “professional website” messaging:\nIn our view, it’s just not as compelling an offer as Shopify’s more targeted, ecommerce-centric pitches. But I guess that’s what happens when you have a broad audience.\nOn the plus side, their CTAs are just as clear and direct as Shopify’s, prompting would-be customers to “start your free website trial”.\nVideo Video makes up the lion’s share of Squarespace’s display ad budget, so let’s see where all that money goes.\nTheir biggest ad by far, accounting for approximately one-fifth of their total budget over the period we reviewed, is this 15-second version of Squarespace’s 2024 Super Bowl ad, starring and directed by Martin Scorsese:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Seriously, they got Scorsese to direct it? No wonder they want to show it off!\nThere are also some stylish six-second ads pitching Squarespace as the perfect ecommerce solution…\nYour browser does not support the video element. …plus this super slick number promoting the platform’s AI website-building tools:\nYour browser does not support the video element. All these ads are engaging, persuasive, and beautifully filmed. They’re certainly a cut above Squarespace’s standard and native ads.\nCampaigns It’s no surprise that Squarespace’s top campaign by budget is the Martin Scorsese ad, which has seen an estimated spend of $1.1 million to date:\nBeyond that big-money effort, Squarespace prefers to invest in evergreen campaigns highlighting the platform’s value proposition and benefits, such as the ability to build your own website in minutes.\nLanding Pages Again, no surprise here: Squarespace’s top landing page over the past six months is dedicated to their Super Bowl ad. And it’s excellent, so we’re going to take a closer look.\nAbove the fold, we see the title of the campaign and a CTA to watch the ad:\nBut things get more interesting as we start scrolling.\nImmediately below the fold, there’s a making of video starring Martin Scorsese and his daughter Francesca, followed by a CTA inviting us to try out the website template from the ad:\nThat’s a clever way to draw a straight line between a high-profile, top-of-the-funnel ad spot and the practicalities of using Squarespace to build a website.\nThen we’re presented with the key use cases for Squarespace, such as launching an online store and selling custom merch:\nNext, we learn about the platform’s main features and benefits…\n…before finally being presented with a free trial CTA:\nIt’s a superb demonstration of how you can build a sales and marketing funnel around a single big-budget ad. Well done Squarespace!\nWix Ad spend and networks You might be surprised to learn that Wix is the leading website builder in the world, with a staggering 43 percent share of the global market. Yet, from a brand awareness perspective, Wix is lagging way behind Shopify in the US:\nWhich probably explains why they’re spending so much more on display advertising in the US than Shopify or Squarespace — an estimated $36.6 million in the last six months, per our estimated data:\nAnd, as you can see, almost every cent goes toward video ads.\nPublishers Approximately $35.8 million of Wix’s budget for the last six months was spent on YouTube, with the majority going toward huge, mass-market channels like MrBeast, Bento e Totó ( yet again), and the hideous Crazy Frog.\nIt’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to buy a product that willingly advertises itself alongside the Crazy Frog, but presumably Wix knows what they’re doing.\nOther top publishers include SignUpGenius, a tool that lets you build online sign-up forms free of charge:\nEasy to see why that might be relevant to potential Wix customers, right?\nCreatives Standard As we’ve already noted, the vast majority of Wix’s budget is tied up in video ads.\nStill, they do spend a little money on standard ads, most of which are targeted at web design agencies:\nThey clearly feel standard ads are an effective way to reach this niche B2B audience through industry-specific publications like Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal.\nNative Nothing to report here: Wix hasn’t run a single native ad in the last six months.\nNext!\nVideo Since late-October, Wix has run no fewer than six video ads with budgets of $2+ million. For context, Squarespace and Shopify only spent a combined $6.5 million over the same period.\nWix’s top video ad by spend, with an estimated budget of almost $12 million, was totally different to anything we saw from Shopify or Squarespace.\nYour browser does not support the video element. For starters, there’s the run time: it clocks in at close to two minutes, making it practically feature-length compared to Shopify and Squarespace’s top video ads.\nThe messaging is a radical departure too, focusing entirely on cybersecurity — something we didn’t even see Shopify or Squarespace mention. Clearly, Wix feels this is a major differentiator.\nSurprisingly, they aren’t pushing for immediate conversions from their video ads. Many of their ads don’t feature CTAs at all — and even when they do, they encourage viewers to “learn more” rather than start a free trial.\nWe guess they just prefer the softly, softly approach.\nCampaigns Wix’s campaigns are largely evergreen, covering key platform features and use cases…\n…but they highlight the platform’s extreme approach to spending. Activity practically grinds to a halt from November to February, before picking up in a big way in March.\nLanding Pages When it comes to landing pages, Wix sends most ad clickers to their:\nHomepage Website Security page Wix Studio page However, they do have a couple dedicated landing pages, such as this one prompting users to sign up for the platform’s free tools:\nThis page is all business, starting with an above-the-fold lead capture form and continuing with a bunch of key features and benefits…\n…before closing with some inspiring copywriting and another CTA button:\nWe were surprised not to see any customer reviews or testimonials here. But maybe you don’t have to rely on social proof when you’re a huge, global brand like Wix?\nConclusion Shopify, Squarespace, and Wix all sell the same type of product. Yet they have radically different approaches to display advertising:\nShopify’s ads feel aspirational, often urging ecommerce newbies to turn their entrepreneurial dreams into reality. Wix is far more serious, leaning into big, scary topics like cybersecurity. Squarespace is somewhere in the middle, but clearly prepared to flex its creative muscles in a big way, as demonstrated by their Martin Scorsese campaign. Who’d have thought there were so many ways to sell the concept of building a website?\nWant to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-shopify-squarespace-wix-use-display-ads-to-fight-for-ecommerce-supremacy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBy 2027, global online sales are expected to surpass an eye-watering \u003ca href=\"https://www.statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/\"\u003e$8 trillion\u003c/a\u003e. So it’s no surprise that \u003cem\u003estarting an ecommerce business\u003c/em\u003e consistently ranks as \u003ca href=\"https://www.sidehustlenation.com/side-hustle-statistics/\"\u003eone of America’s most popular side hustles\u003c/a\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure\u003e\n    \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image.png\"/\u003e \n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOf course, to start an \u003ca href=\"/ecommerce-native-advertising/\"\u003eecommerce business\u003c/a\u003e, you first need a website. And if you don’t have the coding skills to create one from scratch, your best alternative is to use a website builder.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile there’s no shortage of options, not all are a natural choice for online store owners. But three solutions that definitely fit the bill are:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Shopify, Squarespace \u0026amp; Wix use display ads to fight for ecommerce supremacy"},{"content":"About one in 13 adults in the US now identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or some other sexual orientation besides heterosexual.\nWhich makes Pride month a massive deal for pretty much every brand.\nAnd it’s even more essential for those with younger-skewing audiences, given that almost one in 10 millennials and more than one-fifth of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+.\nUnsurprisingly, this means Pride has become a battleground for brands looking to target LGBTQ+ consumers — and display ads are one of the most hotly contested warzones.\nBut how are advertisers leveraging Pride month in their campaigns? What messaging and creatives are they using? And how are they converting ad viewers into paying customers?\nTo find out, we used Adbeat to identify eight of the best recent Pride display ads from brands in the US, including big names like Amazon, Hulu, and Tinder.\nLet’s get into it…\nAmazon: Promote products from LGBTQ+ creators The biggest mistake brands can make around Pride is to desperately search for ways to monetize the event ( hence companies selling the obligatory rainbow rainbow tote bags and hoodies featuring their logos).\nIncreasingly, consumers demand authenticity from companies claiming to be allies of the LGBTQ+ community while promoting services or selling themed products.\nIndeed, one survey found that 56 percent of people only view branded Pride merchandise as authentic if that brand is “consistent with their support”.\nWhat does this tell us?\nThat the smartest (and most authentic) approach is to promote products and services from LGBTQ+ creators.\nFor instance, Amazon ran a Pride campaign for its Kindle brand that promoted leading LGBTQ+ authors like Paul Burston and Sophie Santos:\nIn this way, Amazon gets to join in with the Pride conversation, without looking like it’s trying to be the “main character”.\nHulu: Create a Pride-friendly landing page Nailing your Pride advertising is about more than just coming up with a catchy tagline or some jazzy visuals for your ads.\nWhen someone clicks your ad, it’s important to greet them with messaging that matches the tone of your wider campaign. In short, you want to present them with a Pride-friendly landing page.\nStreaming platform Hulu gets it right in our next example.\nConsumers who clicked one of the display ads in this campaign…\n…were transported to a dedicated Pride landing page featuring a host of high-profile movies, TV series, and dramas hand-picked for LGBTQ+ audiences:\nAs well as the headline selections, the page contains subcategories like…\nTrans stories Icons and allies Groundbreaking LGBTQ+ characters …all of which helps to highlight the wealth of LGBTQ+ content on Hulu.\nImportantly, however far down the page you scroll, you always see the Start your free trial CTA button in the top-right corner:\nPluto TV: Get your Pride messaging (and branding) in early Running skippable video ads on YouTube as part of your Pride campaign?\nRemember that while those ads can be anything up to six minutes in length, viewers get the option to skip after just five seconds. That’s a big issue, with research revealing that the average viewer hits “skip” after:\n5.5 seconds of a 15-second ad 7.4 seconds of a 30-second ad So it pays to front-load your most important messaging, including your branding and a reference to Pride month.\nPluto TV, another streaming platform, shows us how to do it in this example:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Within the first three seconds, viewers are presented with the words “celebrate” and “Pride”, plus the Pluto TV logo.\nUS Bank: Use common elements in ads and landing pages One of the biggest mistakes we see when analyzing display ad campaigns is a lack of connection between ads and campaign landing pages.\nWe’ve already discussed the importance of creating a dedicated landing page for your Pride campaign.\nOne of the most effective ways to make your ads and landing pages feel like part of the same campaign is to share common words and images between them. That way, people who click through can instantly see that they’re in the right place.\nFor example, take a look at this Pride ad from US Bank:\n…then look at how the campaign landing page incorporates the same messaging…\n…and imagery:\nTinder: Make Pride ads an extension of your BAU campaigns It’s easy to overthink when it comes to Pride planning.\nYou want to show your support for the event, but you’re struggling to come up with a solid campaign concept. What should you do?\nThe simple answer is to integrate Pride into your regular business-as-usual (BAU) campaigns.\nFor example, when Tinder launched its first ever global brand campaign — It Starts With a Swipe — in February 2023, it chose to retain the same angle and creative style in its Pride campaign, while focusing on an LGBTQ+ couple:\nYour browser does not support the video element. This might sound counterintuitive, but “playing down” Pride is actually a smart strategy. It shows that allyship is normal to Tinder; it’s not just some slogan they drag out every June to get a few more app downloads and subscriptions.\nSkittles: Share LGBTQ+ stories In 2020, candy brand Skittles started swapping its signature rainbow branding for a monochrome version in the US — based on the concept that during Pride, only #OneRainbow matters.\nBut consumers are increasingly hostile toward brands that put themselves front and center in their Pride campaigns. Because it makes your allyship feel inauthentic.\nAs a result, Skittles chose to switch up its Pride campaign in 2023 by focusing on the LGBTQ+ creatives who lent their own unique designs to the brand’s packaging.\nYour browser does not support the video element. Another key point here: Skittles brought added credibility to this campaign by running it as a collaboration with non-profit LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD.\nThis strategy can be a big win for brands, given that 82 percent of consumers prefer to buy from companies whose values align with their own.\nXfinity: Demonstrate year-round support for LGBTQ+ audiences Sure, Pride is a big deal.\nBut, for LGBTQ+ communities, it’s not enough for brands to show their support for one month out of 12. As GLAAD chief communications officer Rich Ferraro told CNBC:\n“There’s power in brands participating in Pride Month, and it’s important for their employees and their consumers to see support for the community during Pride Month. But it can’t just be during Pride Month.”\nSo it pays for advertisers to prove that their allyship doesn’t stop on July 1st.\nTelecommunications company Xfinity attempts to do this with the slogan: “With Xfinity, it’s Pride all year long.”\nYour browser does not support the video element. Importantly, these aren’t just words. Xfinity customers can use the voice command “Pride” all year round to instantly access thousands of LGBTQ+ films and shows on their smart TVs, including content curated around events like:\nBlack Pride LGBTQ+ History Month Transgender Awareness Month Clever stuff!\nAARP: Make Pride about brand awareness, not sales One in 10 consumers believe that when brands sell dedicated Pride merchandise, their only goal is to make money (rather than, for example, to show their support for LGBTQ+ communities and causes).\nThis is a problem for brands.\nIf your audience thinks you’re only mentioning Pride to make a quick buck, your campaign isn’t going to achieve the desired results. Worst-case scenario, it could even put people off buying from you in future.\nAgain, you’re likely thinking: “What can I do about this?”\nOne solution is to simply use the event as an opportunity to get more eyes on your brand, just like AARP does in our next example:\nRather than selling branded merch or promoting the benefits of AARP membership, the organization instead pointed consumers toward its Pride-themed playlist.\n(Which, incidentally, is full of bangers — you can check it out here.)\nFinal thoughts: Pride isn’t about your brand As you can see, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to Pride marketing. You can…\nTeam up with an advocacy group Promote products made by LGBTQ+ creators Shout about your year-round Pride support …and that’s just for starters.\nBut whatever strategy you adopt, one thing’s clear: your Pride campaign shouldn’t be all about you.\nInstead, it should focus on how you can help LGBTQ+ communities — whether by sharing their designs, selling their products, or supporting their causes.\nGet it right and you’ll look like a genuine ally; fall short and you’ll almost certainly be accused of using Pride to drive a quick profit.\nWant to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/8-persuasive-pride-display-ad-campaigns-featuring-hulu-tinder-more/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAbout \u003ca href=\"https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx\"\u003eone in 13 adults\u003c/a\u003e in the US now identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or some other sexual orientation besides heterosexual.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhich makes Pride month a massive deal for pretty much every brand.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd it’s even more essential for those with younger-skewing audiences, given that \u003cstrong\u003ealmost one in 10 millennials and more than one-fifth of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure\u003e\n    \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image-63.png\"/\u003e \n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eUnsurprisingly, this means Pride has become a battleground for brands looking to target LGBTQ+ consumers — and display ads are one of the most hotly contested warzones.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"8 persuasive Pride display ad campaigns (featuring Hulu, Tinder \u0026amp; more)"},{"content":"Whether you write professionally, like to keep your masterpieces within the notes app, or just stick to writing work emails, you’ve probably heard of (and even used) Grammarly.\nWith a motto of “better writing, better results,” this writing assistant app was founded in 2009 to help people write better, plagiarism-free content. Since its inception, this company has spent a fortune on display ad campaigns, with an estimated ad spend of $210.8M in the last year alone.\nClearly, this has paid off, seeing as the app currently has 30+ million users and was valued at a whopping $13 billion at its peak in 2021. Here’s a deep dive into Grammarly’s display ad strategies.\nA look at Grammarly’s display ad strategies through the years It’s no secret that Grammarly invests heavily in display ad campaigns. (The ad spend alone is a huge giveaway.) Here are some of the company’s most notable ad campaigns over the years.\n2017: “Write the future.” Whether you’re a salesperson, a student, a best man, or someone simply looking to win at online dating, writing plays a major role in all of our lives. It’s how we communicate with the world around us. The “write the future” campaign demonstrates this by showing how Grammarly integrates seamlessly into your everyday life, helping you communicate effectively and, thereby, putting you on the path to achieving your goals. All the stories portrayed in this campaign were based on feedback given by real Grammarly users, so these ads also pay homage to customers. Cool, right? 2019: #HelpingYouConnect. Ineffective communication can lead to misunderstandings. But with a writing assistant that helps you find the right words and tone, you can communicate better, bridge the distance between you and others, and form better connections. That’s the message that Grammarly wants to send with this campaign. 2020: Grammarly for professionals. Geared towards professionals, this campaign shows working people and students how they can achieve success with Grammarly by finding the right words to bring their ideas to life. \u0026amp;list=PLfPYYNRetSN8-JlGVFCAgcCud1gQsWPxw\u0026amp;index=9\n2022: Grammarly for students. Designed for students, this campaign showed how using Grammarly can help students take their grades to the next level. With taglines such as “ace your paper” and “writing guidance every step of the way,” the campaign promoted Grammarly’s best features for students – ideation hub, citation generator, and writing suggestions. Your browser does not support the video element. 2023: Enhanced learning with AI. 2023 was the year of the generative AI boom, so it’s no wonder that Grammarly ran campaigns centered around it. This campaign promoted GrammarlyGO, the app’s own generative AI, demonstrating how it can accelerate productivity and arm you with new ideas. Your browser does not support the video element. Where does Grammarly spend the big display ad bucks? Grammarly’s riveting ad history makes it clear that the company uses narrative and testimonial videos to address user pain points and promote its product. But to get the full picture, let’s analyze how (and where) the company spends its U.S. display advertising budget – all with the help of data from Adbeat, the competitive analysis platform.\nWant to get insights into your competitors’ ad strategies? Adbeat is here for you! [Sign up now]\nAd spend and networks According to Adbeat data, Grammarly spent $210.8 million on display advertisements across the U.S. in 2023, gaining an estimated 19 billion impressions.\nOut of this, video ads made up 97% (or 203.8M) of the budget – all of it spent on YouTube ads. This shows Grammarly’s preference for video-first advertising. And it isn’t hard to figure out why.\nVideos are engaging, often tell a story, and allow brands to demonstrate the benefits of using their products. In fact, research by Wyzowl says that as much as 82% of consumers were influenced to buy a product or a service after watching a video about it, and 44% like to learn about a brand’s offering by watching a short video about it.\nTake a look at Grammarly’s video ads and you’ll find that the vast majority of them have these three ingredients: good storytelling, excellent demonstration of how their service benefits people like you and me, and a clear CTA.\nAnd the short video lengths? That’s just the cherry on top. So, it’s no wonder that Grammarly’s ads garner tons of engagement.\nTake a look at this one, for example 👇:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Within 1.39 minutes, this video hits all the right notes by addressing a major user pain point – how Grammarly can help with tone suggestions and reduce workplace conflicts.\nPublishers It comes as no surprise that Grammarly spent a massive amount ($203.8M) on YouTube. Comparatively, the company spent only $316.5k on Yahoo, $217.8k on Reddit, and $213k on weather.com.\nOn YouTube, Grammarly’s ads mostly show up on kids’ and teenagers’ channels such as Bento e Toto, Kids Diana Show, funniflix, and MattyBRaps. This is a clever strategy since students are one of their biggest consumers.\nAnd based on the impressions these ads receive, it seems like Grammarly knows how to target consumers. For instance, the brand spent $2.6M to place ads within this video and received 202.1M impressions in return!\nOn Yahoo, on the other hand, most of Grammarly’s ads go on the finance ($31.7k) and news ($6.9k) channels, with the top ad on the Yahoo Finance page having been seen nearly 2M times. This time around, the ads seem to target working professionals or parents who think their kids might benefit from Grammarly.\nBut Reddit is a totally different ball game altogether. The app’s homepage saw most of Grammarly’s ads (with a $6.2k spend and 991.8k impressions). But other than that, the ads seem to be distributed randomly between a variety of subreddits, including gaming and sports subreddits such as r/discgolf and r/nba.\nFinally, on weather.com, the bulk of Grammarly’s ad spend ($11.4k ad spend with 5.2M impressions) goes towards the website’s homepage, with the rest split between weather forecast pages of different countries.\nFrom this data, it’s clear that Grammarly has found most of its success with video advertising on YouTube and likes to stick to it, only allocating a portion of its ad spend budget on other publishers.\nCreatives Once again, 97% of Grammarly’s creatives are video ads, with the other types of display ads (such as text, image, and HTML5) making up a mere 3%.\nAccording to data from Adbeat, Grammarly’s top ad by spend promoted GrammarlyGO, the brand’s generative AI feature. The ad had a budget of $16.8M, ran for less than 5 months, and was only shown on YouTube. In this short period of time, the ad gained 1.3 billion impressions! Quite a commendable feat.\nYour browser does not support the video element. With a runtime of just 1.31 minutes, this ad manages to highlight all the various ways in which the feature can help a person in their everyday life, no matter what they are writing, or where they are writing from.\nThe tagline “works where you write” puts added emphasis on the core message, and the call-to-action (CTA) at the end lets users know exactly where they can find this helpful product.\nIn short, this video works as a product demo disguised within an ad, which is good thinking!\nThough they are few, when it comes to image ads, Grammarly still packs a punch. Here’s one that manages to demonstrate their product inside a single photo!\nLanding pages So, after spending millions on running ads, you’ve managed to get a few thousand people to click on them and land on your landing page. Now what?\nThey need to be persuaded to hang around, see what you have to offer, and actually make a purchase. This is where your landing page comes in. Let’s analyze how Grammarly makes sure that its landing pages provide enough value to customers to get them to convert.\nHere’s one of Grammarly’s best performing landing pages with an ad spend of $8.1M, which received 380.6M impressions.\nYou’re immediately greeted with an eye-catching backdrop with a helpful tagline “writing guidance every step of the way.” There’s a brief elaboration underneath, with an image of Grammarly “in action.” All of this reassures you that the app does deliver what it promises.\nBut, the real game changer is the CTA: “Get Grammarly. It’s free,” which answers the question of “how much is it?” without any scrolling, which means people stay on the page longer.\nJust below this are 4 clear benefits of using Grammarly.\nAnd, finally, the page demonstrates each feature with visuals, promising to help you ace your assignments!\nThis is an excellent example of a landing page that provides value every step of the way, convincing users that the app is exactly what they need!\nSo, what do you think of Grammarly’s ad strategies? Love it? Hate it? Have a favorite creative? Let me know in the comments below!\nUse Adbeat to get more data and level up your own advertising strategy. [ Sign up now ]\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-grammarlys-210m-display-ad-strategy-helped-it-become-a-13-billion-app/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhether you write professionally, like to keep your masterpieces within the notes app, or just stick to writing work emails, you’ve probably heard of (and even used) Grammarly.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith a motto of “better writing, better results,” this writing assistant app was founded in 2009 to help people write better, plagiarism-free content. Since its inception, this company has spent a fortune on display ad campaigns, with an estimated ad spend of $210.8M in the last year alone.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Grammarly’s $210M display ad strategy helped it become a unicorn"},{"content":"There are two classic ways to show your mom how much you love her on Mother’s Day.\nOne is to write it in a blog post for a leading competitive intelligence platform ( I love you mom!). And the other is to say it with flowers.\nMost Americans choose option #2. Per the National Retail Federation, 74 percent of consumers sent their mom flowers for Mother’s Day 2023, making them the nation’s go-to Mother’s Day gift.\nOn average, households spent a whopping $274 on Mother’s Day presents last year. And with 34 percent of shoppers relying on e-commerce to fulfill their gift-buying needs, the date represents a huge opportunity for online flower delivery brands.\nAhead of the big day, we used Adbeat to analyze how the industry’s biggest players use display advertising to reach, engage, and convert Mother’s Day gift buyers.\nHere’s what we found:\nThe biggest spender: 1-800 Flowers Ad spend and networks 1-800 Flowers is far and away the top display ad spender in the US online flower delivery market, with Adbeat’s estimated data showing a total budget of $3.3 million in 2023 — of which approximately one-third was spent in the run-up to Mother’s Day:\nVirtually all of that money was divided between two ad types (video and programmatic), while almost half was spent on their Mother’s Day campaign.\nNow, let’s dig deeper into the brand’s strategy…\nPublishers YouTube was comfortably 1-800 Flowers’ biggest publisher, accounting for over half of the brand’s display ad budget last year. Almost all of their YouTube spending came in the build-up to Mother’s Day.\nThey predominantly spent money on family-friendly YouTube channels, including kids’ music favorites like Bento e Totó and Cocomelon. We’re assuming their plan wasn’t to target a bunch of two-year-olds, but rather to “gently” remind dads watching with their children that Mother’s Day was on the horizon — and wouldn’t it be nice to celebrate mom’s efforts by buying some flowers?\nOutside of YouTube, 1-800 Flowers divided their spend between high-profile, mass-market publishers like CNN, the New York Times, and Weather.com. This speaks to the brand’s broad audience: rather than targeting one or two niche customer demographics, they’re essentially chasing anyone with a mom.\nCreatives Standard 1-800 Flowers runs two basic types of standard ads.\nFirst, there are generic ads with evergreen appeal…\n…then you’ve got ads geared toward specific events, like birthdays and Mother’s Day…\n…and also, amusingly, ads targeting people who forgot to buy a gift for one of those occasions:\nBetter late than never, indeed!\nBeyond the messaging, there’s not much to differentiate these ads. They’re all designed to showcase the range of products available (including the occasional non-plant-related item), which helps to position 1-800 Flowers as a one-stop-shop for anyone seeking thoughtful, sentimental gift ideas.\nNative As we’ve already seen, native isn’t a major part of 1-800 Flowers’ display ad strategy.\nThey do have a few nice examples, combining attractive imagery with headlines designed to spark curiosity. But for some reason, they’re all geared toward the back-to-school season rather than Mother’s Day.\nIt’s also worth stressing that these ads see pretty minimal spend, certainly compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars 1-800 Flowers are dropping on YouTube.\nSpeaking of which…\nVideo Flowers are an aesthetically pleasing gift, so they need a suitably visual ad medium to showcase them effectively. That’s why so much of 1-800 Flowers’ display ad budget goes toward video.\nTheir top two video ads by spend in 2023 were both 15-second Mother’s Day promos, one of which incorporated a YouTube-specific discount code designed to boost pre-orders ahead of the big day:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Interestingly, these ads aren’t about differentiating 1-800 Flowers from other online flower delivery brands — there’s no mention of things like speedy shipping or a huge product range or sky-high review scores. Instead, their whole strategy seemingly revolves around two key messages:\nMother’s Day is approaching Moms love flowers Which isn’t the most groundbreaking pitch. But it doesn’t need to be, because 1-800 Flowers has vastly higher brand recognition than any other US online flower delivery company:\nSo when Americans think about buying flowers online, chances are they’re going to choose 1-800 Flowers.\nLanding pages The 1-800 Flowers website incorporates a dedicated Mother’s Day category page. But it wasn’t the top landing page for their Mother’s Day campaign — not even close. That honor went to a separate page featuring the same 20 percent YouTube discount code we saw in the previous section:\nNow, you might think 1-800 Flowers is missing a trick here by not creating a less cluttered user interface. If you click through from an ad, do you really need all those menu options at the top of the page?\nThere’s certainly something to be said for offering a clean, conversion-focused experience. But on the flip side, maybe 1-800 Flowers simply wants shoppers to be able to click around its various collections to find the perfect gift.\nHow about the competition? While they might be the biggest display ad spenders in the online flower delivery category, 1-800 Flowers certainly isn’t the only show in town. Let’s look at how their biggest rivals leverage display ads to boost Mother’s Day spending…\nTeleflora Per Adbeat’s estimated spend data, Teleflora shelled out just over $200,000 on display ads in 2023 — pretty small fry compared to 1-800 Flowers. But they did drop $130,000 in the week leading up to Mother’s Day, so they’re well worth a closer look.\nIn all, their Mother’s Day flower delivery campaign ate up about three-quarters of their total display ad budget for the year, with the lion’s share being spent on YouTube.\nWhen we dig a little deeper, we can see Teleflora takes a totally different approach to 1-800 Flowers. While 1-800 Flowers mostly targets families with young children, Teleflora’s ads use phrases like “ let her know you never left” to resonate with older kids (particularly those who’ve already flown the nest).\nYour browser does not support the video element. Full disclosure: This ad made me a little weepy. But I do have a horrible head cold right now, so I’m feeling kinda emotional anyway.\nThe difference between the two brands’ targeting strategies is best demonstrated by their top YouTube channel placements. Whereas 1-800 Flowers is all about nursery rhymes, Teleflora targets more grown-up channels like travel and lifestyle influencer Rakib Hossain and music producer/rapper Timbaland:\nThis feels like a smart approach. If you’ve got a much smaller budget than your rival, there’s no point chasing exactly the same audience.\nFrom You Flowers Like Teleflora, From You Flowers takes a wildly different approach to 1-800 Flowers. They splashed out a healthy $360,000 on display ads in 2023, but surprisingly, only a small proportion was spent in the run-up to Mother’s Day. Instead, their budget was heavily skewed toward early September…\n…with their second-biggest campaign by spend focusing on autumn arrangements:\nWeird, huh? Maybe they think Mother’s Day is just too competitive. Or perhaps they already generate a ton of Mother’s Day sales and are looking to boost conversions at quieter times of the year.\nBut their spending strategy isn’t the only thing that makes From You Flowers stand out — they also spend next-to-nothing on video ads, instead preferring to invest in programmatic advertising.\nIt’s fair to say the brand’s ads follow a set format. Mostly, they just feature a bunch of product images and badges promising 20 – 50 percent discounts:\nOccasionally, they step things up a little by adding some non-discount-related messaging, such as this example that promises a “fast, easy, and affordable” service:\nAnd there’s another key difference that’s worth mentioning, too: most of From You Flowers’ ads point to a specific product page, rather than a landing page incorporating multiple products.\nFor instance, here’s their top landing page by spend for 2023:\nIt feels a little alarming to click an ad and immediately end up on a product page, but From You Flowers gets away with it by including all those “ You may also like” options at the top of the screen.\nSo if you don’t fancy the Southern Peach Bouquet, it’s easy to find a different arrangement.\nFTD FTD only spent an estimated $56,200 on display ads in 2023, about one-quarter of which was spent in the two weeks preceding Mother’s Day:\nJust like From You Flowers, FTD is all about programmatic. In fact, they didn’t run a single video or native ad last year — talk about putting all your eggs (or flowers) in one basket.\nThe lack of video creatives meant there was no room for YouTube in FTD’s top publishers list. Instead, more than one-third of their budget went toward placements with AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons)\u0026hellip;\n…while other top publishers included Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful. So it’s fair to say they’re targeting an older, more house-proud (and possibly also more affluent) audience.\nFTD’s Mother’s Day ads mostly carry the tagline: “ Tell Mom ‘Thank You’.”\nMost also feature the phrase “ bouquets and more”, which speaks to the different types of gifts available via the FTD website.\nConclusion Before I started working on this article, I assumed all the big online flower delivery brands were using similar messaging and chasing similar audiences.\nBut I was wrong, because there’s actually a ton of differentiation in this industry, like how:\n1-800 Flowers is targeting young families while Teleflora is speaking to kids who’ve already left home; Teleflora and 1-800 Flowers are big fans of video, whereas FTD and From You Flowers spend 99 percent of their display ad budgets on programmatic; From You Flowers has a totally different spending strategy, dropping most of its display ad budget in early September. Turns out there’s more than one way to sell a bunch of flowers!\nWant to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-flower-delivery-brands-use-display-ads-to-boost-mothers-day-sales/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere are two classic ways to show your mom how much you love her on Mother’s Day.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne is to write it in a blog post for a leading competitive intelligence platform ( \u003cem\u003eI love you mom!\u003c/em\u003e). And the other is to say it with flowers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMost Americans choose option #2. Per the \u003ca href=\"https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/consumers-spend-record-357-billion-mothers-day\"\u003eNational Retail Federation\u003c/a\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003e74 percent of consumers sent their mom flowers for Mother’s Day 2023\u003c/strong\u003e, making them the nation’s go-to Mother’s Day gift.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How flower delivery brands use display ads to boost Mother’s Day sales"},{"content":"Remember the days when listening to your favorite artist meant buying a record or CD?\nWhile vinyl album sales are on a strong upward trajectory, it’s fair to say we’re living in the digital music age. Streaming overtook physical sales and downloads for the first time in 2018, and it’s hard to see that trend reversing any time soon.\nWhich is music to the ears of the streaming industry, with 91 percent of US internet users listening via some kind of streaming service in 2023:\nSpotify has long dominated the US music streaming market for years, but it’s coming under increasing pressure from Amazon Music and Apple Music — two platforms backed by massive brands with money to burn on ads.\nSo we decided to dive into Adbeat’s competitive intelligence data to understand how those three streaming giants are using display advertising to woo American consumers.\nLet’s dance…\nSpotify Ad spend and networks We estimate Spotify has shelled out approximately $5.6 million on display advertising in the US over the past six months, with three-quarters of its display ad budget dedicated to video ads. But it’s also spent plenty of money on programmatic ads, which — as we’ll see — seems to be a popular channel for reaching streaming customers.\nPublishers You won’t be shocked to learn that the overwhelming majority of Spotify’s display ads are placed on YouTube — or that its top YouTube channels are all music-themed. However, we were a little surprised to see a couple classic acts mixing it with contemporary names like Selena Gomez and Rihanna. Who knew The Police were still so popular?\nOutside of YouTube, it’s a real mixed bag, with Spotify’s five most popular publishers also including:\nHong Kong-based meme community 9GAG Sempre Milan, a news site dedicated to Italian soccer team AC Milan Greek sports news site SPORT24 Athlinks, a platform for amateur athletes to track race results The last one makes sense — lots of people listen to music while they’re out for a run. As for the others, we can only assume Spotify is trying to target diaspora populations.\nCreatives Standard You’d probably assume Spotify’s standard ads would be primarily geared toward driving signups from non-streaming subscribers or users of other streaming platforms. But you’d be wrong, because most of its top standard ads by spend are actually targeting podcasters:\nBut this approach makes total sense when you learn that Spotify made ~$109 million in ad revenue from podcasts in 2021, with that figure set to reach an estimated $414 million in 2024.\nOf course, there’s still the occasional ad aimed at luring new Spotify Premium customers:\nNative Spotify does run some native ads, like this example…\n…but it barely spends any money on them.\nFor whatever reason, native ads just don’t play a significant role in Spotify’s display ad strategy.\nVideo Video ads, on the other hand, are clearly a major focus for Spotify. But it prefers to split its (sizable) budget between dozens of different creatives rather than putting all its eggs in one musical basket.\nIts top video ads by spend include a collaboration with gaming brand StartSelect…\nYour browser does not support the video element. …a teaser for its annual Wrapped marketing campaign…\nYour browser does not support the video element. …and a reminder that you can listen to The Weeknd’s greatest hits on Spotify:\nYour browser does not support the video element. It’s an eclectic bunch. But we guess it makes sense to promote a broad range of artists and brands when your product essentially incorporates every piece of music in the world.\nLanding pages Spotify’s biggest landing page isn’t actually a dedicated landing page at all — it’s just the platform’s standard Premium page.\nWhile we’d generally recommend taking the time to create dedicated, campaign-specific landing pages, Spotify’s Premium page does a pretty good job. It’s clutter-free, with no irrelevant links to distract would-be customers from signing up — just a big CTA prompting readers to take advantage of the 30-day free trial:\nAs you can see from the above screenshot, the page also effectively showcases the sheer range of content available to subscribers thanks to Spotify’s partnership with Hulu.\nScrolling down the page, Spotify also gives us a bunch of reasons to subscribe…\n…before sharing its pricing options (accompanied by separate CTA buttons):\nIt’s all simple but effective stuff.\nAmazon Music Ad spend and networks Over the past six months, Amazon spent an estimated $5 million on display ads to promote its music streaming platform. Its spending strategy isn’t too dissimilar to Spotify’s, with most of the money committed to video, but with a healthy chunk set aside for programmatic ads.\nPublishers Amazon’s ad placements are a lot more mainstream than Spotify’s — there are no obscure meme sites or Italian soccer specialists here, just a bunch of big news and pop culture-related publishers:\nHowever, considering Amazon dropped an estimated $4.3 million on YouTube in the last six months, it chose placements on some pretty weird channels:\nThat’s probably the only chart you’ll ever see where Taylor Swift places a distant third behind Crazy Frog.\nCreatives Standard When it comes to standard ads, Amazon has a clear goal: showcasing the diverse range of ad-free content available through its music streaming service.\nTo that end, it promotes the full catalog of podcasts from news, politics, and culture publisher Slate Magazine…\n…and does the same for CNN’s podcast portfolio:\nSurprisingly, though, there’s not much mention of actually listening to music. Given that most streaming platforms offer pretty much the same music, perhaps Amazon has simply decided that the whole ad-free podcast thing is a bigger differentiator.\nNative Much like Spotify, it’s fair to say that native ads don’t really feature in Amazon Music’s display ad strategy. In fact, this is the only example we could find, and it attracted minimal spend:\nSo let’s move quickly along…\nVideo Amazon Music takes a totally different approach to video than Spotify. Over the last six months, it only ran 17 different video ads, but it supported several of them with six or seven-figure budgets.\nIts top video ads by spend were two variants of an ad promoting Amazon Music’s catalog of true crime podcasts, each of which attracted $1+ million in ad spend.\nYour browser does not support the video element. There were also a couple different ads about music — at last! — featuring Latin artists Nicki Nicole and Ryan Castro, but they have way smaller budgets.\nYour browser does not support the video element. By this point, it’s clear that Amazon just doesn’t consider music to be a big selling point. Which is kinda weird when the platform is called “Amazon Music”.\nLanding pages Amazon rarely (if ever) sends ad clickers toward a dedicated Amazon Music landing page. Instead, its campaigns typically point toward the main Amazon Prime page:\nThis landing page spells out the wide-ranging benefits of a Prime subscription — including ad-free podcasts and music:\nMuch like Spotify, when you reach the bottom of the page, you’re greeted with a bunch of pricing options and a CTA to sign up:\nThere’s no attempt to convince potential customers by sharing review scores and testimonials. But everyone’s heard of Amazon, so we guess social proof is a little unnecessary.\nApple Music Ad spend and networks Apple shelled out way less than Amazon and Spotify over the last six months to promote its music streaming platform, with an estimated spend of just under $300,000. But, intriguingly, its spending appears to have ramped up significantly in recent weeks:\nA small majority of its display ad budget went on video ads, but it also invested a healthy chunk of cash on programmatic ads.\nPublishers Apple Music’s top publishers are a pretty broad mix. There’s the obligatory YouTube, but there’s also pop culture, sports, music news, and even food — with an estimated $432 of spend going toward a recipe for sauteed garlic asparagus.\nObscure but tasty.\nThere’s a distinctly country-and-western twang to Apple’s choice of YouTube placements, with its top channels including country artists Luke Combs and Shenandoah:\nIt’s interesting to see Apple steering clear of big-name music acts like Taylor Swift and Rihanna. Maybe they’re targeting a more niche audience than Amazon and Spotify?\nCreatives Standard Apple Music’s standard creatives fall into three main categories.\nThere are those promoting Apple Music-specific price discounts:\nSecondly, we’ve got ads that speak to the size of Apple’s music catalog ( often accompanied by the same price promotion as the previous ad):\nAnd then there’s a third ad format that pushes Apple Music as part of a broader service offering that also includes things like Apple TV+ and iCloud+:\nNative Apple spends even less on native advertising than Amazon or Spotify. In the last six months, it hasn’t run a single native ad.\nSeems native just isn’t a big hit with streaming platforms.\nVideo Unsurprisingly, the bulk of Apple Music’s display budget went toward promoting the video for its Super Bowl ad, featuring Ludacris, Lil Jon, Taraji P Henson, Usher, and — most excitingly of all — Apple CEO Tim Cook.\nYour browser does not support the video element. Because when you pay for the naming rights to the Super Bowl half-time show, you’ve really got to shout about it.\nBeyond that single, big-budget ad, Apple mostly invested in six-second, gif-style ads spelling out the platform’s key selling points:\nHowever, none of those ads attracted much more than $1,000 in spend.\nLanding pages Essentially, during our study period, Apple Music only ran one big campaign — the Super Bowl ad. So you won’t be shocked to learn that it also relied heavily on a single landing page; a variant of its homepage featuring a banner promoting Apple’s half-time show sponsorship:\nApple Music’s other, non-Super Bowl-related, campaigns mostly just sent clickers to the subscribe page within the Apple Music platform:\nConclusion After diving into the data, our biggest takeaway is that none of the big three music streaming platforms talk much about music.\nSure, Apple ran a whole Super Bowl campaign for its streaming service. But that felt like more of a branding exercise for the whole company, rather than a specific attempt to sign up more streaming customers. Even Spotify — the only dedicated music streaming business of the three — spent as much time talking about podcasts and Hulu as it did about listening to your favorite musical acts.\nIt feels like music has become commodified; something that consumers expect to be able to access for little or no money. That’s forced the likes of Spotify, Amazon, and Apple to search for alternative points of difference.\nWant to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/more-than-music-how-spotify-apple-amazon-promote-their-streaming-platforms-with-display-ads/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRemember the days when listening to your favorite artist meant buying a record or CD?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile \u003ca href=\"https://www.statista.com/statistics/188822/lp-album-sales-in-the-united-states-since-2009/\"\u003evinyl album sales\u003c/a\u003e are on a strong upward trajectory, it’s fair to say we’re living in the digital music age. Streaming \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL8N1S143H/\"\u003eovertook physical sales and downloads\u003c/a\u003e for the first time in 2018, and it’s hard to see that trend reversing any time soon.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhich is music to the ears of the streaming industry, with \u003ca href=\"https://musicwatchinc.com/blog/musicwatch-reports-results-of-2023-annual-music-study/\"\u003e91 percent of US internet users\u003c/a\u003e listening via some kind of streaming service in 2023:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More than music: How Spotify, Apple \u0026amp; Amazon promote their streaming platforms with display ads"},{"content":"Tax Day wouldn’t rank too highly on most people’s lists of favorite dates. But for the tax software industry, it’s like Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Black Friday all rolled into one.\nPer CivicScience, 39 percent of Americans in 2024 prepared (or planned to prepare) their taxes using tax software, with 23 percent using a free tool and 16 percent choosing a paid platform. Intuit TurboTax is comfortably the most popular tax tool, but there are a bunch of other platforms scrapping it out for the privilege of helping us file our taxes correctly.\nAll of those brands spend big money on advertising in a bid to increase their market share. So we used Adbeat’s competitive intelligence tools to analyze the display ad strategies of three of the biggest players:\nIntuit TurboTax H\u0026amp;R Block TaxAct Read on to learn about the platforms, messages, and ad formats they’re using to win our hearts, minds, and wallets.\nIntuit TurboTax Ad spend and networks In the past six months, Intuit has dropped an estimated $19 million on US display ads, spending about half that amount on programmatic ads and roughly two-fifths on video:\nPublishers TurboTax’s top five publishers list reads like a who’s who of popular, consumer-facing online media:\nIts top YouTube channels are all music acts, including the distinctly family-friendly Bolofofos — which is likely being targeted so TurboTax can reach parents watching videos with their kids.\nMost of its other publisher placements are dominated by sports content (think soccer, MMA, and the Green Bay Packers), finance, and current affairs.\nIt’s all pretty generic.\nWhich makes sense: TurboTax is trying to reach all taxpayers rather than chasing a single, distinct customer demographic.\nCreatives Standard TurboTax’s standard ads are loaded with social proof.\nLike this one, which promises a full service guarantee and 100 percent guaranteed accuracy…\n…and this one, which highlights the number of people who started using the platform in the previous year:\nIt’s all designed to reassure taxpayers that TurboTax is a reliable, trustworthy platform.\nNative By contrast, TurboTax’s native ads are strongly geared toward price-related messaging — specifically, how 37 percent of Americans can file their taxes for free using the platform:\nThey also experiment with some more eye-catching creatives and editorial titles. For instance, this example feels like the sort of how-to guide you’d see from a financial publisher like CNBC or NerdWallet:\nVideo TurboTax keeps its video ads short and sweet, with most of its top spenders running for 6 – 12 seconds.\nThese ads are presumably targeting a more affluent audience than its native ads, because there’s barely any mention of filing for free. Instead, they’re mostly about promoting the quality of TurboTax’s service, with five of its top 10 video ads by spend carrying the tagline: “100 percent accurate taxes guaranteed.”\nYour browser does not support the video element. Landing pages TurboTax’s two top landing pages by spend are English and Spanish language variants of the regular TurboTax homepage:\nHowever, TurboTax does have some dedicated landing pages that drive conversions by getting rid of distractions like the top navigation menu. Like its standard ads, these pages are crammed full of trust factors. For instance, this one highlights the extensive experience of its tax experts…\n…and the overwhelmingly positive nature of its customer reviews:\nThat’s a key point, with 98 percent of consumers saying reviews are an essential resource when making purchase decisions.\nH\u0026amp;R Block Ad spend and networks H\u0026amp;R Block has actually outspent TurboTax on display ads over the last six months, dropping an estimated $22.9 million — perhaps because it’s trying to close the gap on the market leader.\nIt also has a totally different platform strategy to TurboTax, spending the lion’s share of its display ad budget on video:\nPublishers Given that most of H\u0026amp;R Block’s display ad spend goes on video ads, you won’t be shocked to learn that YouTube is comfortably its biggest publisher:\nJust like TurboTax, its five biggest channels by spend are all global pop stars. Seems tax platforms are making a major contribution to Becky G’s retirement fund.\nH\u0026amp;R Block also targets a similar mix of content to TurboTax on sites like USA Today and Yahoo — we’re talking sports, finance, news, and puzzles. All general interest stuff that reflects the broad audience for tax tools.\nHowever, there’s some interesting stuff here if we dig a little deeper.\nFor instance, we can see H\u0026amp;R Block is using Ticketmaster to reach local audiences in places like Dallas, Salt Lake City, and Washington:\nAnd it’s also spending a bunch of money on entertainment and pop culture site UPROXX, which predominantly appeals to men aged 18 – 34. Perhaps a sign that H\u0026amp;R Block is chasing a slightly younger audience than TurboTax?\nCreatives Standard Consistency of creatives is clearly a big deal to H\u0026amp;R Block: all of its top standard ads by spend feature the same font, logo, and green color scheme. But its messaging is a little more varied.\nAs you’d expect, several ads focus on price — both in terms of saving money on filing your taxes…\n…and understanding how much it’ll cost to file your taxes before you start:\nBut H\u0026amp;R Block also uses standard ads to build trust by highlighting the number of people using the platform:\nNative H\u0026amp;R Block spends very little on native ads, many of which recycle the same creatives used in the brand’s standard ads:\nMany of its text-and-image ads promote Block Advisors, a separate platform offering tax advice to small businesses. These ads are often geared toward gig economy workers:\nVideo Like TurboTax, H\u0026amp;R Block clearly favors brevity when it comes to video, with all of its top 10 video ads by spend clocking in at 6 – 16 seconds.\nMost of these ads encourage consumers to switch to H\u0026amp;R Block, either from a CPA or a different tax platform. Some even mention its biggest competitor, TurboTax, by name:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Again, this makes sense given H\u0026amp;R Block’s comparatively small market share.\nLanding pages H\u0026amp;R Block’s biggest landing pages by spend aren’t really landing pages at all. They’re just regular pages on the brand’s website, including its:\nHomepage Online tax filing page Tax pro page We did manage to unearth some dedicated landing pages, though.\nThis one, which attracted an estimated $295,000+ in spend, is designed to showcase the range of tax filing options available from H\u0026amp;R Block:\nMuch like the brand’s video ads, this landing page makes a big deal about switching to H\u0026amp;R Block:\nIt also showcases a bunch of trust factors to make it clear that switching to H\u0026amp;R Block is a risk-free move:\nTaxAct Ad spend and networks TaxAct is by far the smallest brand in our tax tool comparison. But it clearly doesn’t lack spending power, shelling out an estimated $41.6 million on display ads in the last six months — almost as much as TurboTax and H\u0026amp;R Block combined. Of that spend, the overwhelming majority went toward video ads:\nPublishers No surprise to see YouTube topping TaxAct’s list of top spenders:\nLike TurboTax and H\u0026amp;R Block, all TaxAct’s top YouTube channels are music artists. But there’s no Becky G here — it’s all aimed at children (and, by extension, the parents forced to sit through all those videos with them).\nAway from YouTube, we can see TaxAct is paying for placements on the eBay homepage (plus a bunch of seemingly random product listings, from weekly appointment planners to copper stranded building wire). Plus there’s the usual combination of news, sports, and finance-themed content on AOL and Yahoo.\nInterestingly, it also spent an estimated $39,800 for placements on Pannchoa, a website that translates Korean news, music, drama, and lifestyle content into English. So it’s presumably either targeting K-Pop stans or Korean-Americans who don’t speak the language.\nCreatives Standard TaxAct’s standard ads push three main messages.\nOne focuses on the cost savings of using its platform…\n…another is all about accuracy…\n…and the third messaging “theme” focus on ease of use:\nAs you may have noticed, some of these ads are specifically targeting eBay merchants:\nThey’re clearly a key audience for TaxAct, which explains why the brand is spending so much on eBay ad placements.\nNative This will be quick…\nIn our six-month review period, TaxAct ran a grand total of three native ads, all of which are recycled versions of its standard ads:\nThose ads saw a minimal spend, so native ads clearly aren’t a big part of TaxAct’s strategy.\nVideo Video, on the other hand, definitely is a key element of the brand’s display ad strategy.\nDespite its monster spending, TaxAct only has a small video ad portfolio, promoting just 10 different video ads so far in 2024. All run for 6 – 15 seconds and feature the same slogan: “Let’s get them over with.”\nYour browser does not support the video element. We’re big fans of this messaging. It doesn’t list a bunch of dull features or try to make filing taxes seem exciting; it’s all about helping customers file their taxes as quickly as possible so they can get on with their lives.\nLanding pages Sorry, landing page fans: TaxAct prefers to send ad clickers straight to its homepage.\nHowever, after a little digging, we managed to find a dedicated landing page targeting eBay sellers:\nLike all the other landing pages we’ve analyzed in this article, it’s loaded with pricing information and review scores:\nBut there’s some interesting stuff further down the page. TaxAct has built a whole content hub for this campaign, all geared toward providing tax advice for eBay merchants:\nThis helps to establish TaxAct as a trusted source of information for eBay sellers.\nConclusion People use tax tools for one specific task. And when they’ve finished, they don’t want to think about those tools for another year.\nThis places major constraints on advertisers — you’re never going to make people buy into the “TurboTax lifestyle”.\nDespite this, the three brands we’ve analyzed take pretty varied approaches to display advertising. TurboTax has a mass-market focus; H\u0026amp;R Block positions itself as a reliable alternative; and TaxAct hammers home a single core message around speed and convenience.\nIt’s almost enough to make tax seem interesting!\nWant to tap into data like this? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-battle-of-tax-day-analyzing-turbotax-hr-block-and-taxacts-display-ad-strategies/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTax Day wouldn’t rank too highly on most people’s lists of favorite dates. But for the tax software industry, it’s like Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Black Friday \u003cem\u003eall rolled into one\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePer \u003ca href=\"https://civicscience.com/more-taxpayers-opt-for-free-tax-software-this-season/\"\u003eCivicScience\u003c/a\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003e39 percent of Americans in 2024 prepared (or planned to prepare) their taxes using tax software\u003c/strong\u003e, with 23 percent using a free tool and 16 percent choosing a paid platform. Intuit TurboTax is comfortably the most popular tax tool, but there are a bunch of other platforms scrapping it out for the privilege of helping us file our taxes correctly.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The battle of Tax Day: Analyzing TurboTax, H\u0026amp;R Block and TaxAct’s display ad strategies"},{"content":"Here’s a thought exercise. How many times have recommendations from other people driven your purchase decisions? And how many times have you bought something online without checking the reviews first?\nAs for me, I have done that a sum total of zero times. That’s right. I never buy anything without reading the reviews first. And I’m not alone in this. 9 out of 10 customers read reviews before they buy something online.\nThis is the power of social proof. It helps brands build credibility and trust among potential customers. And testimonial advertisements are one of the best ways of establishing social proof.\nWhat are testimonial advertisements? Before we talk about testimonial ads, let’s first define what a testimonial is. Testimonials are statements from previous customers detailing their experiences using a brand’s product or service and how it benefited them. They are essentially positive customer reviews meant to act as recommendations for any potential future customers.\nTestimonial ads are simply testimonials or reviews from previous customers repurposed into ads and shared on various channels such as search engines, social media, newsletters, or landing pages.\nTypes of testimonial advertisements When you think of a testimonial, you probably picture a text review on websites like Amazon or TrustPilot. But that’s only one type of testimonial. Testimonials come in various shapes and forms, which means so do testimonial ads.\nWritten quotes Quote testimonial ads refer to written reviews from customers presented in the form of quotes – often with their name and photo or social media handle attached. These are often short and concise, and speak on how your products/ services addressed the customer’s pain points.\nHere’s an example of a quote from a customer that was turned into an excellent testimonial ad along with the number of impressions it received:\nAn example of a quote testimonial ad by T.P. Brake \u0026amp; Muffler along with the impressions it received. Sourced from Adbeat.\nVideo testimonials Video testimonial ads usually consist of customers sitting down and sharing the positive experiences they had with your brand, often with storytelling elements involved. However, they could also be in the form of product demonstrations by customers.\nHere’s an example of a video testimonial ad that features real customers talking about how the product has changed their lives:\nA screenshot of a video testimonial ad from Vegamour, along with the impressions it received. Sourced from Adbeat.\nInfluencer recommendations Influencer testimonial ads refer to endorsements given by an influencer who has used your product or service. Niche influencers often have a loyal fanbase who trust them. So, when influencers recommend a product/ service? Their followers listen. Influencer testimonial ads could be a simple quote from an influencer, a video of them using your product in their everyday life and casually mentioning it, or a full product demonstration with the benefits highlighted.\nOr, instead of working with established influencers, you can turn your customers into influencers by encouraging them to share user-generated content (UGC). This could be something like sharing a photo of them using your product or a video that shows how your product made their life easier. You can now pick the best from these and turn them into testimonial ads.\nHere’s an example of a testimonial ad that features a customer visually demonstrating the different stylish looks you can achieve with the brand’s eyeglasses. The video looks to be an example of user generated content, wherein the customer itself turns into an influencer.\nA screenshot of a UGC testimonial ad from PairEyewear, along with the impressions it received. Sourced from Adbeat.\nExpert endorsements Expert endorsements or opinions are similar to your average testimonial ads – except they come from experts in your field. These endorsements could be in the form of quotes or videos.\nExpert testimonial ads are highly effective because of their reputation and credibility. And if you have ever bought a skincare product because it was recommended by a dermatologist, or a phone endorsed by a tech expert, you know exactly what I’m talking about!\nWhy do testimonial advertisements resonate so well with customers? Should you use testimonial ads as part of your advertising strategy? That’s a big, fat YES. And here’s why.\n1. They act as social proof People trust other people more than they will ever trust any brand. And while personal recommendations from friends and family still reign supreme, online reviews and testimonials aren’t far behind. In fact, as many as 1 in 2 customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.\nAnd when in doubt about a product or service? People typically look to their peers to see which brand they chose, and whether they had a positive experience. If yes, they’re more likely to try out that brand — because, hey, someone’s already been there, done that, and liked it. This is exactly what social proof is- a stamp of approval from previous customers.\nSo, when people read (or watch) testimonial ads, they’re essentially listening to previous customers talk about their positive experiences with your brand. This speaks about the usability of your product/ service, gives you credibility, and fosters a sense of trust among potential customers, allowing them to choose you.\nLike this one, for example:\nA screenshot of a video testimonial ad along with the impressions it received. Sourced from Adbeat.\n2. They highlight how your product/ service makes customers’ lives easier Why do people buy things? To solve a problem or take care of a need. For instance, people buy water bottles because they have a need: carrying water around in a portable container. And water bottles address this need in a convenient way.\nSince reviews often talk about how your product/ service made a customer’s life better by addressing a need they were having, testimonial ads are very effective in highlighting what you can do for your customers. And the fact that this is coming straight from a customer’s mouth only adds to your brand’s credibility.\nHere’s how Hims features customer testimonials on their landing page along with before/ after photos:\nA screenshot of testimonials from the landing page of Hims website.\n3. They show that you’re genuine Gen Z and millennial customers crave authenticity from brands–even when it comes to advertising. And what’s more authentic than a testimonial?\nHowever, to avoid suspicions of fake reviews, always make sure to include the customer’s name, their location (optional), and a photo. If you’re sourcing reviews from social media or sites like Yelp, create a testimonial ad using the original screenshot of the review.\n4. They don’t burn a hole in your wallet Let’s face it. Advertising can really eat up your cost. You need to pay for a designer, copywriter, photographer, editor, model.. you get my point.\nBut testimonial ads? They need none of this (well, mostly), which makes them very cost-effective.\n5. They make your sales numbers go up All the other benefits discussed above ultimately lead to this- an increase in sales. By instilling trust in people and reducing their decision-making anxiety by highlighting the benefits of your products/ services, testimonial ads enhance brand visibility and increase sales.\nAccording to research, displaying testimonials can lead to an increase in conversions by 190% for lower-prices products. For higher-priced products, the conversion rates can go up by as much as 380%!\nHow to gather testimonials from previous customers The first step to creating any testimonial ad is to actually gather the testimonials. Use these tips to get more testimonials from previous customers.\nAsk for reviews from existing customers The best way to get something is simply to ask for it. Reach out directly to your customers, either after a purchase or after the service/ product has been delivered. i.e. when your brand is still top of mind You’ll find that most customers are willing to leave a review.\nA survey conducted by BrightLocal revealed that more than half of the customers leave a review when prompted by the business to do so.\nA screenshot from BrightLocal\u0026rsquo;s Local Consumer Review Survey.\nThe same survey also highlighted how customers prefer to receive these review requests- through email, during the sales, on an invoice, and through social media.\nHowever, generic reviews like “so good” or “loved it!” aren’t going to be much help for you in creating testimonial ads. So, instead of just requesting a review, try asking specific questions. Some examples are:\nHow has this product/ service made your life better? Which of your problems did this product/ service solve? How much time has this product/ service saved you everyday? Would you recommend this to your friends and family? If yes, why? This way, you’ll get specific answers that highlight your benefits.\nLeverage third-party review sites There are several third-party sites, like TrustPilot, Capterra, and Yelp, created specifically for people to review businesses. If you also sell on marketplaces like Amazon, you’ll probably find reviews by customers there. Additionally, if you monitor social media channels to see what people think about your brand, you’re likely to stumble onto comments or social media posts raving about your products/ services.\nInstead of reaching out to customers directly, you can pull testimonials off of these websites and repurpose the screenshots into simple display ads. Such as the one below:\nA screenshot of a testimonial ad by Linenspa. Sourced from Adbeat.\nThe above ad performed quite well, receiving more than 3M impressions!\nA screenshot of the number of impressions received by a testimonial ad by Linenspa. Sourced from Adbeat.\nAlternatively, some brands simply like to mention their average star rating from third-party review sites. Check out the example below:\nA testimonial ad by Mondragon Mechanical. Sourced from Adbeat.\nTips for creating effective testimonial advertisements Now that we have covered the what and the why of testimonial ads, it’s time for the how. How can you make sure that your testimonial ads really stand out? Here are some tips.\nKeep it real. People love authenticity from brands. But they are also wary of fake reviews and testimonials that seem “too good to be true.” In fact, research shows that potential customers tend to be skeptical of brands that only have 5 star reviews. So, to keep it real, include a mix of 5 star and 4 star reviews. And, most importantly, don’t edit out the negative parts of a testimonial. It’s impossible for everyone to love everything about your brand, and customers know this. So, keep your testimonial ads real. Include personal details. Anonymous testimonials are not trustworthy and often seem fake. People trust testimonials that have personal details like name, location, or social media handle attached because they speak of authenticity and are easy to verify. So, include details like a photo of the customer, their name, or social media handle. In short: give those testimonials a face. But make sure you get their permission before you do! Highlight unique selling points. What can your brand do for customers? How is your product/ service going to help them? Pick testimonials that answer these questions. This helps potential customers see themselves benefitting from your brand and increases conversions. Take the below testimonial ad for instance. Talking about money is often considered taboo, so seeking financial advice is something that a lot of people struggle with. Vanguard, an investment advisor, has reassured any potential customers by highlighting a testimonial that specifically addresses this issue:\nA screenshot from a video testimonial ad by Vanguard. Sourced from Adbeat.\nIncorporate visuals. Images and videos help potential customers understand how your product/ service works. You can attach a video or photo alongside a quote testimonial or ask consumers to shoot a video testimonial for you in exchange for some kind of incentive (example: exclusive discounts, free gifts with their next order etc.). Tell a story. Go one step further and include storytelling elements in your testimonial ads to help them resonate with people and forge an emotional connection with your brand. As a bonus, you can include how your products/ services align with your brand values as well. Let’s say you sell green pencils that can be planted once they’re used. Here, it would be a good idea for you to use a testimonial from a customer who believes in sustainability and talks about how your pencil has allowed them to reduce their carbon footprint and also plant trees. Finally, don’t be shy to use those testimonial ads everywhere. We’re talking emails, newsletters, landing pages, underneath product descriptions, social media.. pretty much everywhere you have a presence.\nTake charge of your advertising strategy with Adbeat At Adbeat, we turn raw advertising data into easy-to-understand insights- all so that you can see your competitors’ advertising strategy and use this data to create better display ad campaigns.\nGet ready to knock your advertising out of the park with Adbeat. Sign up now!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-art-of-crafting-powerful-testimonial-advertisements-that-convert/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere’s a thought exercise. How many times have recommendations from other people driven your purchase decisions? And how many times have you bought something online without checking the reviews first?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs for me, I have done that a sum total of \u003cem\u003ezero\u003c/em\u003e times. That’s right. I \u003cem\u003enever\u003c/em\u003e buy anything without reading the reviews first. And I’m not alone in this. \u003ca href=\"https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/01/13/2366090/0/en/Brand-Rated-Nine-out-of-ten-customers-read-reviews-before-buying-a-product.html\"\u003e9 out of 10 customers\u003c/a\u003e read reviews before they buy something online.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Crafting Powerful Testimonial Ads That Convert"},{"content":"In a world where 95 percent of Americans pay for more than one streaming service, it’s hard to remember a time when we weren’t all hooked on video-on-demand (VoD).\nBut it hasn’t always been this way.\nNetflix may not have been the world’s first streaming company, but it was certainly the platform that brought the business model to the mass market. Yet for the first decade of its existence, the company didn’t even do streaming — it was a mail order DVD service.\nEverything changed in 2007 with the launch of Watch Now, Netflix’s VoD service, which opened the door for exponential revenue and subscriber growth.\nOf course, Netflix no longer has the market to itself. Not even close.\nIt’s currently locked in a battle with Amazon Prime Video to be the biggest streaming platform in the US, while the likes of Max, Disney+, and Hulu are snapping at their heels.\nWith the global VoD market expected to be worth $108+ billion in 2024, streaming providers are prepared to spend millions of dollars every year promoting their services via display advertising.\nIn today’s blog post, we’re going to deep-dive into the display ad strategies of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to demonstrate how you can use vastly different methods to promote the same type of product.\nLet’s get into it…\nNetflix Ad spend and networks Adbeat’s estimated data shows that Netflix has spent $40 million on display ads in the US over the past six months, with the vast majority of its budget going to video ads.\nThat’s hardly surprising — it’s a video platform, after all.\nPublishers Also unsurprising is Netflix’s decision to target publishers across the full breadth of the pop culture and entertainment spectrum, covering everything from books to celebrity gossip to gaming:\nAs you can see, the bulk of its YouTube spend goes toward the official channels of some of the world’s biggest pop stars…\n…while six of its 10 top placement URLs with the Los Angeles Times are in the Entertainment \u0026amp; Arts category:\nCreatives Standard While Netflix started as a movie rental service, the platform is no longer seen as the go-to place to watch the latest box office smash hit. Instead, it prefers to invest in its own movies and shows — and this original content is the main focus of its standard ads:\nIn all those ads, the Netflix logo is even more prominent than the names of Steven Spielberg, Emily Blunt, and Chris Evans. These ads aren’t just about promoting content — they’re about the ability to watch that content on Netflix.\nNative Netflix does a great job at making its native ads feel like the types of articles and features you might read on any pop culture website:\nThe visuals are eye-catching without being too promotional, while the headlines share useful information (like the name of the show) without giving too much away. Which, of course, makes you more likely to click.\nVideo Once you watch a couple Netflix video ads, you’ll recognize a clear pattern:\nAn opening shot featuring the name of the film or show; 10 – 15 seconds of dialog and dramatic-looking scenes; a couple seconds focusing on the “Only on Netflix” message; then a final screen featuring the familiar Netflix logo and “ tuh-dum” sound effect.\nYour browser does not support the video element. It might not be super imaginative, but it’s definitely effective at promoting both the content and the streaming platform.\nLanding pages As far as we can tell, Netflix doesn’t build dedicated landing pages to support its display ad campaigns. Instead, it uses the standard “product” pages for the platform’s individual shows and movies. Still, these landing pages are actually highly effective at driving conversions.\nLet’s look at an example for the Netflix original movie Pain Hustlers:\nUnlike a lot of product pages, it strips back the noise by removing unnecessary navigation elements (like a menu bar at the top of the page), which discourages visitors from clicking away.\nPlus there are two prominent call-to-action (CTA) buttons to “Join now”, so there’s no doubt what you’re meant to do next.\nA lot of advertisers could learn from this uncluttered approach.\nCampaigns Netflix has one “business-as-usual” campaign that runs at various times throughout the year to promote the entire platform:\nBut it also launches regular campaigns to promote specific movies and shows that run for much shorter periods — some for a whole month, others for just a couple days:\nThis strategy enables Netflix to capitalize on spikes in interest around individual titles while still dedicating the bulk of its ad spend to the platform as a whole.\nAmazon Prime Video Ad spend and networks Amazon is one of America’s biggest display advertisers, dropping an estimated $296 million on US ads in the last six months, with approximately three-quarters of its budget spent on video ads.\nOf course, Amazon has fingers in a lot of pies. How much is it actually spending to promote its streaming platform?\nAdbeat lets us single out Amazon’s Prime Video campaign, which had an estimated $6.3 million budget over the last six months, skewed almost entirely toward video:\nPublishers Amazon invests in a more diverse bunch of publishers than Netflix for its Prime Video campaign, including websites like Diario AS and El Pais that predominantly target Latin American audiences:\nLooking at its YouTube spend, Amazon is also more prepared than Netflix to target niche channels (like gaming channel PrestonPlayz and country-pop singer Kelsea Ballerini):\nThis could suggest that Amazon’s display ad strategy is geared toward targeting a younger, and generally more online, audience than Netflix.\nCreatives Standard Compared to Netflix, Prime Video’s standard ad creatives are a real mixed bag.\nJust among this small batch of creatives, we can see messaging geared toward:\nIndividual channels like Paramount+ and ViX Premium Content curated for Latin American viewers Original movies like Foe Music-themed content like Taylor Swift’s Eras tour It’s far removed from Netflix’s sole focus on original content. In fact, just one of those ads (the one for Foe) is promoting an Amazon Original movie or show — and the ad doesn’t even tell you that it’s an original.\nInstead, Amazon prefers to showcase the sheer breadth of different content available on Prime Video, original or otherwise.\nNative Amazon hasn’t run a single native ad for Prime Video in the last six months. Not even one. You have to go back to 2022 to find its most recent efforts:\nIt’s a pretty uninspiring bunch, and they’re all largely focused on cheap price promotions rather than the wealth of amazing content on Prime Video — again, a far cry from Netflix’s approach.\nGiven that Amazon has seemingly ditched its native ad strategy for Prime Video since then, it’s hard to believe these ads generated many subscribers who stuck around after the discounts expired.\nVideo Compared to Netflix, Amazon is far more willing to experiment when it comes to video advertising. Rather than churning out a bunch of 15 – 20 second videos focusing on individual shows and movies, it promotes a range of different narratives and messages.\nLet’s take a look.\nFirst up, you’ve got the classic cinematic teaser trailers, which typically run for 2.5+ minutes and promote a single piece of content:\nYour browser does not support the video element. The Prime logo is visible throughout these video ads, while the final 15 seconds are dedicated to a full screen of Prime branding, followed by CTAs to “Watch more” and “Subscribe”. These ads strike the perfect balance between showcasing a movie and promoting Prime Video.\nThen there are the short, sharp 15-second ads rounding up the latest content available on the platform:\nYour browser does not support the video element. The strapline — “ Catch up on hits you missed” — plays on our natural fear of missing out. It’s such an effective message because it’s essentially saying: Everyone else is talking about these shows and movies, and you don’t want to be the odd one out. So you’d better sign up to Prime Video before people notice.\nAnd then there’s a whole other type of video ad, ranging from 30 – 60 seconds in length, that highlights the modern frustration of flicking between multiple different apps to find the content you’re searching for.\nYou might think that’s a weird message for a streaming platform to promote. But, of course, it pitches Prime Video as the solution:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Given that three-quarters of US households pay for more than two different streaming subscriptions every month, it’s easy to see why this ad would resonate with consumers.\nLanding pages Like Netflix, Amazon predominantly sends people who click its ads to “product” pages for individual movies and shows rather than dedicated landing pages.\nFor instance, here’s what you might see if you clicked through from an ad promoting the original movie Foe:\nOnly Amazon could get away with a landing page like that.\nBetween all those menu options, the prominent search bar at the top of the page, and the drop-down “Sign in” button, there are far too many distractions here. So many that it’s easy to miss the “More details” CTA button, which takes you to another page promoting a 30-day free trial of Prime Video.\nStill, Amazon knows that pretty much everyone has already heard of Prime Video, so it doesn’t have to go for the big sell. Instead, it can afford to subtly highlight the huge amount of content it offers and leave visitors to convert themselves.\nCampaigns Prime Video is a “campaign” in itself, rather than a unique brand with its own sub-campaigns.\nStill, we can see that Amazon takes a similar approach to Netflix by splitting its budget between two broad ad themes: ads for the platform as a whole, and ads promoting specific content.\nConclusion Netflix and Amazon are selling the same product: on-demand video. But they do it in very different ways.\nOn one hand, Netflix has a clear value proposition centered on original content. It barely promotes non-original yet exclusive content like Seinfeld, likely because availability varies significantly from one region to the next. On the flip side, Amazon takes a real scattergun approach, highlighting everything from exclusive content to third-party movies and channels.\nOrdinarily, we’d say Netflix’s single-minded focus is more coherent and effective. But Amazon has already demonstrated that it’s perfectly capable of dominating markets with a more generalist approach.\nWe’ll have to wait and see which strategy plays out best in the long run.\nWant to access data like this yourself? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/netflix-vs-amazon-the-display-ad-battle-for-our-streaming-bucks/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a world where \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/internet/streaming-survey/\"\u003e95 percent of Americans\u003c/a\u003e pay for more than one streaming service, it’s hard to remember a time when we weren’t all hooked on video-on-demand (VoD).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut it hasn’t always been this way.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNetflix may not have been the world’s \u003cem\u003efirst\u003c/em\u003e streaming company, but it was certainly the platform that brought the business model to the mass market. Yet for the first decade of its existence, the company didn’t even do streaming — it was a mail order DVD service.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Netflix vs Amazon: The display ad battle for our streaming bucks"},{"content":"Founded in 1938, Samsung is a South Korean conglomerate with affiliates selling everything from life insurance to engineering services to oil tankers.\nBut, from a B2C perspective, the company is best known for appliances and other electronics products. It’s the world’s second-biggest smartphone manufacturer, with a market share of 16.3 percent as of Q4 2023…\n…and it’s also a major player in countless other consumer electronics niches, including smart TVs, refrigerators, and laptops.\nWith global revenues north of $200 billion, Samsung is clearly doing something right, so we decided to deep-dive into the brand’s ad strategy.\nA brief history of Samsung’s ad strategy Let’s start by rounding up a few advertising highlights from Samsung’s 80+ years in business:\n1999: “Samsung DigitAll: Everyone’s Invited”: This snappy tagline was created as part of the brand’s efforts to integrate digital home, mobile, and “personal multimedia” products. The campaign had a simple goal — to transform Samsung into the biggest digital product supplier on the planet. You can’t accuse them of being unambitious.\n2005: “Imagine”: By the mid-noughties, Samsung was a major global player — but it lacked a coherent brand image. The company aimed to change that with its international Imagine campaign, which showed how consumers could build a better life for themselves by — guess what? — buying Samsung products.\n2013: “Design Your Life”: Samsung leaned into its creative side with the Design Your Life campaign, which saw the release of a short film featuring a woman striving to reinvigorate her grandfather’s failing toyshop. All of which was designed to promote Samsung’s GALAXY Note 3 and GALAXY Gear devices (obviously).\n2017: “Do What You Can’t”: Launched in 2017, this campaign was all about defying barriers and achieving the impossible. Inspiring stuff. It saw a bunch of high-profile figures share their success stories, including gold medal-winning South Korean figure skater Sang Hwa Lee.\n2022: “Together for Tomorrow”: Launched at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), this campaign centered on showcasing customizable experiences and sustainable innovations. That’s a smart move, with NielsenIQ data finding that 48 percent of consumers want brands to take the lead on delivering sustainable change.\nWhere does Samsung spend its display ad bucks today? We’ve looked at Samsung’s ad history. Now let’s fast-forward to the present day ( well, 2023) and analyze how the tech giant currently spends its US display advertising budget, based on estimated data from Adbeat’s competitive analysis platform.\nAd spend and networks Adbeat estimates show that Samsung spent a cool $152.2 million on display advertising in the US during 2023, of which the vast majority ($137.1 million) went toward YouTube.\nIn that sense, Samsung is similar to its fiercest rival in the global smartphone market, Apple, which spent two-thirds of its colossal $775 million US display ad budget for 2023 on YouTube ads.\nAnd they’re hardly the only advertisers to bet big on video.\nUS digital video ad spend increased 21 percent year-over-year in 2022, and was expected to rise a further 17 percent in 2023. In our roundup of 2023’s top display advertisers, nine of the 10 biggest spenders committed the bulk of their display ad budgets to video.\nIt’s hardly surprising that Samsung, like so many advertisers, is going crazy for YouTube.\nGoogle’s own research shows that 85 percent of consumers who use YouTube in their shopping journeys have bought from the brand again, or plan to do so in future. In part, that’s because shoppers are happy to believe what they hear on YouTube, with Google’s research also finding that ads on YouTube outperform those on every other platform in terms of credibility and trustworthiness.\nNot that we’re calling Samsung a one-trick pony. Outside of YouTube, it spent significant sums on Direct Buy ($4.9 million), Google DV360 ($3.2 million), the Google Display Network ($2.1 million), and Microsoft Advertising ($1 million).\nStill, 92 percent of the company’s estimated display spending went toward video ads, with the remainder split between programmatic (five percent), direct (two percent), and native (\u0026lt;1 percent).\nAs you can see from the above graph, Samsung’s 2023 spending was heavily focused on two specific periods:\nMid-January to late March, leading up to and following on from the CES technology show. July and August, around the launch of its flagship Galaxy Z flip phone. Digging further back into our data, we can see Samsung repeats this spending pattern year after year: drop a ton of money in Q1, turn off the faucet until summer arrives, ramp up, then go dark again as winter approaches.\nIn some ways, it’s surprising that Samsung spends so little on display ads in the run-up to the holidays — especially given that electronics products are a mainstay of festive gifting wishlists.\nOf course, advertising during the holiday season is a double-edged sword. Every other advertiser is spending a ton of money, too, so it’s hard to cut through — even if you’re a huge brand. Perhaps Samsung prefers to spend its money during quieter periods when consumers are more likely to sit up and take notice.\nPublishers Over the last year, Adbeat estimates show that Samsung spent an estimated $137.1 million on YouTube, $5.7 million on Reddit, $1.3 million on Yahoo, $1 million on MSN, and $731,000 on Billboard. Things don’t change much if we look back over six months rather than 12, although the Washington Post takes Billboard’s place in the top five.\nOn YouTube, a lot of Samsung’s ads show up on family-friendly channels. For instance, the brand dropped $6.1 million to place ads in the content of Cocomelon Nursery Rhymes and $2 million on the channel CVS 3D Rhymes \u0026amp; Kids Songs — including over $834,000 on this video alone, which bought them 65 million impressions.\nObviously, Samsung isn’t trying to sell smartphones or fridges to one-year-olds: it knows parents are watching those videos with their little ones, and are probably relieved when the ads come along. It must be a welcome break from all those renditions of Old MacDonald Had a Farm.\nIt’s a different story on Reddit, which (hopefully) doesn’t have as many newborn members as YouTube. Other than the Reddit homepage, Samsung mostly targets gaming and sports-based subreddits like r/deadbydaylight ($70,500 of ad spend and 9.9 million impressions) and r/NYYankees ($50,600 of spending, 6.6 million impressions).\nAnd then there’s Yahoo, where the bulk of Samsung’s ad spend goes toward content on the sports subdomain, with the rest split between channels like news and finance.\nAll in all, Samsung’s strategy shows a clear understanding of how to leverage different publishers to reach different audiences.\nIt’s also clearly happy to experiment with a wide range of platforms. But when it finds something that works — like YouTube — it’s prepared to double (or triple) down.\nCreatives As you probably guessed, the overwhelming majority of Samsung’s creatives are video ads, with other display formats — image, text/image, HTML5, and text ads — making up a combined seven percent.\nIts top ad by spend, which ran from January 13 – 31 and generated 1.7 billion impressions from an estimated total budget of $21.1 million, focused on a feature unveiled at CES 2023: high-quality night-time photography for smartphones.\nYour browser does not support the video element. Despite having a run time of just 15 seconds, this ad is packed full of punchy, memorable ad copy — phrases like “made for moonlight” and “capture the night”. This helps to reinforce the ad’s key messaging.\nIt also features a clear call to action, prompting viewers to head to the Samsung website to “reserve now”.\nOne of the best things about this ad is that it builds an air of mystery and exclusivity. While the idea of taking better photos at night is definitely attractive, it’s not totally clear what Samsung is actually selling.\nIs it a phone? A digital camera? A piece of software? If you want to find out, you’ve got no choice but to visit the campaign landing page.\nClever stuff!\nLanding pages High-quality creatives and a fat ad budget count for nothing if your landing pages don’t persuade clickers to stick around, learn more, and convert.\nSamsung excels here.\nCome with me as we analyze one of the brand’s top landing pages of 2023, which saw an estimated spend of $6.5 million and generated 557.5 million impressions.\nThere’s a lot to like about this landing page for the Galaxy smartphone series, so we’re going to drill down into a few different elements here.\nFirst up, a nod to the visuals: the attractive banner image showcases the various Galaxy devices in all their glory. So if you’ve clicked through from an advert, it’s immediately obvious that you’re in the right place — which means there’s less chance of you bouncing.\nNext, it’s time for a bunch of features and benefits:\nIf you’ve never owned a Galaxy device — or any Samsung smartphone — before, these USPs give you plenty of reasons to reconsider. As you might have noticed, there are even links at the top of the page targeting people switching from iPhone or other Android devices:\nSo whatever phone you’re currently using, Samsung has a whole bunch of arguments that might persuade you to give its Galaxy range a try.\nWherever you are on the landing page, you’re never far from a CTA button compelling you to “pre-order now”, which makes it as simple as possible for visitors to convert.\nAnd there’s even space at the bottom of the page for Samsung to promote its core values of inclusivity and sustainability:\nThis is yet another key selling point in a world where 82 percent of shoppers prefer a consumer brand’s values to align with their own.\nWant to access data and insights like these for yourself? You can with Adbeat! Request your live Adbeat demo here .\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/inside-samsungs-150m-display-ad-strategy-can-it-overtake-apple/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFounded in 1938, Samsung is a South Korean conglomerate with affiliates selling everything from life insurance to engineering services to oil tankers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut, from a B2C perspective, the company is best known for appliances and other electronics products. It’s the world’s second-biggest smartphone manufacturer, with a \u003ca href=\"https://www.statista.com/statistics/271496/global-market-share-held-by-smartphone-vendors-since-4th-quarter-2009/\"\u003emarket share of 16.3 percent as of Q4 2023\u003c/a\u003e…\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cfigure\u003e\n    \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/JpSSXKwpNV4h1B6Z3wDF%5Fhxven8iIBWEl6JWcR24obnU6oMat00xz%5Fynk%5FrMELamBUrWZU16ucKbk9xcAonaGlPNOIWA0z%5FFATusMaWQamjnYKXFShGFR77odY1oyal8CJfImxQAsB7OFjyajxZN2%5FQ\"/\u003e \n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e…and it’s also a major player in countless other consumer electronics niches, including smart TVs, refrigerators, and laptops.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Inside Samsung’s $150M+ display ad strategy: Can it overtake Apple?"},{"content":"Lazy. Entitled. Zero work ethic. Addicted to their phones. These are some of the most common phrases used to describe millennials. But what nobody tells you is that they are a generation that values work-life balance and is more socially aware, tech-savvy, and influential compared to the baby boomers. In fact their net of influence is so wide that they have reshaped the very landscape of digital advertising.\nHaving surpassed the baby boomers, millennials are also currently the largest generation by size in America with massive purchasing power. So, if you aren’t marketing to them? You’re majorly missing out on ROI, because they’re currently the best group to focus your advertising effects on.\nBut with millennials’ spending habits being so different from any other generation, a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy isn’t going to work. You need to tailor your strategy, which includes learning where their priorities lie, what their habits are, and what values they hold dear. In short? Learn how to “speak millennial.”\nHere are 5 marketing strategies that will help you convert millennials.\n1. Advertise your brand values With a spending power of $2.5 trillion, one thing is clear: millennials have money to spend. But they’re also an incredibly value-driven generation. They have their principles, and they will stick to it. And they’re more likely to buy from you if your values align with theirs.\nWhy? The answer is simple: they are a knowledgeable and empowered bunch who care deeply about–and are the most affected by–social issues. So they only want to spend their hard-earned money on ethical brands that actively contribute towards worthy causes (and have the proof to back up their claims).\nToday, 7 in 10 millennials are brand-conscious and expect companies to take a stand on values instead of staying neutral. This means you, as a brand, need to highlight your core values, such as sustainability, transparency, wellness, and create brand messages that are impactful.\nTake Dove, for instance. In 2004, the brand launched its “Real Beauty” campaign, where they began showing real women with flaws instead of airbrushed supermodels.\nA screenshot of Dove\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Redefining Beauty\u0026rsquo; ad that features a bunch of diverse and \u0026lsquo;real\u0026rsquo; women. Sourced from Adbeat.\nDove .\nSince then, the company has consistently stuck to its values of redefining modern standards of beauty, getting a lot of positive feedback in the process.\nTake a look at Dove’s recent “Arm in Arm” campaign, for instance.\nA screenshot of Dove\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Arm in Arm\u0026rsquo; campaign that aims to end underarm judgement. Sourced from Adbeat.\nDove .\nThe goal of this campaign was to challenge unrealistic beauty standards about women’s underarms while also selling Dove’s range of underarm care products. In other words - sticking to their values while marketing their products simultaneously.\nHere’s what the results of this landing page campaign look like:\nAn image taken from Adbeat that details the ad spend and impressions of Dove\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Arm in Arm\u0026rsquo; ad.\nSource: Adbeat .\nDove ran the above campaign from Nov 2023, gaining 8.5 million impressions in just 2 months.\n2. But be authentic The thing about marketing to a group of digital natives is that they always, always do their research. So if your brand messages are not authentic? They can smell it coming from a mile away.\nIf you want to forge real connections with millennials, ditch the online sales pitches and token messages, and show up with an authentic voice, instead. They don’t want to be just another wallet to brands; instead they want brands that actually care about them.\nBe honest and transparent, speak to them directly through your ads, and show them just how your brand can solve their problems. When millennials see an ad, their first thought is, “okay, but why should I care about this? What’s in it for me?” Create your ads with this question in mind, and you’ll make them feel seen and understood.\nAnd, above all, millennials know that behind every brand is a group of people that are just as flawed as they are. So don’t be afraid of lifting that ‘brand veil’ and showing them your true self.\nPatagonia, the sustainable apparel brand, is a great example of a company that’s authentic. Not only do they make completely eco-friendly outerwear, they are also committed to finding solutions to the environmental crisis.\nA screenshot of Patagonia\u0026rsquo;s ad that urges customers to do their part in mitigating the environmental crisis. Sourced from Adbeat.\nPatagonia .\nThe above display ad, which isn’t really an ad at all, garnered 3.2 million impressions!\nA screenshot from Adbeat that details the ad spend and impressions of Patagonia\u0026rsquo;s Action Works ad.\nSource: Adbeat .\nAnd it’s not just a marketing gimmick, either. They are true environmentalists at heart, who simply stayed authentic to their values and purpose, which is exactly what their customers love about them.\nTake a look at yet another ad that serves as a testament to Patagonia’s authenticity:\nA screenshot taken from Adbeat that shows Patagonia\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Protect the Ocean\u0026rsquo; ad as well as it\u0026rsquo;s analytics.\nSource: Adbeat .\nBecause of the company’s authenticity and commitment to stay true to its values, this company became the go-to for eco-conscious customers who are truly passionate about the environment.\n3. Leverage user testimonials and reviews Gone are the days when shooting an ad with celebrities was guaranteed to get you conversions. The younger generations, especially millennials distrust traditional marketing tactics. They know that the celebrity is being paid to tout the benefits of the product, and will likely never use it themselves.\nBut if they hear your product being recommended by someone who has actually used it? That’s a game changer. This is where “social proof” enters the conversation. Millennials are 38% more likely to rely on word-of-mouth recommendations from actual customers when it comes to discovering brands or making purchase decisions.\nThe reason for this is simple: recommendations from peers are authentic.\nYou can leverage social proof by creating ads out of user testimonials and reviews. This lets potential customers hear from previous customers, lending credibility to your brand.\nHere’s a great example of a testimonial ad by California Closets:\nA testimonial ad posted by California Closets.\nCalifornia Closets .\nThe below display ad by Avocado, a green mattress company, puts a different spin on the testimonial ad type. Instead of using a review by a customer, this ad talks about the fact that the company’s mattress was rated #1 by Consumer Reports, an independent research organization.\nExample of Avocado\u0026rsquo;s testimonial ad along with its analytics. Sourced from Adbeat.\nSource: Adbeat .\nSome brands even go the extra mile and repurpose user complaints into ads with the message that they have fixed the issue(s). This shows that they don’t shy away from criticism and are willing to listen to what their customers have to say.\nYou can also partner up with influencers who have a loyal following and only endorse products and services that they believe in. The influencer’s recommendation acts as a seal of approval for your brand, which is often enough for millennials.\n4. Personalize your products and services Millennials value experiences over material possessions. And they like brands that get personal. Being the most misunderstood generation, they value brands that understand their needs and can offer customized products and experiences.\nIn fact, a study found that 55% of millennials would gladly offer their biometric data to retailers if it meant more convenience as well as a more tailored shopping experience. However, at the same time, they are very selective about which brands to trust.\nSo, if you sell millennials an experience rather than a product, and can offer a higher level of personalization and customization, you’re already one step ahead of the curve.\nCheck out this great ad example from Marriott:\nA screenshot of Marriott\u0026rsquo;s ad along with its analytics. Sourced from Adbeat.\nSource: Adbeat .\nHere, they aren’t selling their resort; they’re selling you the experience of creating your next great story at their resort.\n5. Reward loyalty Once millennials find a brand they love, they tend to stick to it, so long as their values align. And they love talking about their favorite brands to others. Making them feel appreciated by rewarding their loyalty will go a long way towards maintaining good customer relationships.\nThis could be anything from an exclusive discount, a gift, or a unique experience. Another great idea is to create a choose-your-own-rewards program with multiple options as this will give millennials more control (which they love!)\nBelow is an example of a loyalty sale by CVS Pharmacy:\nA screenshot of CVS\u0026rsquo;s ad about a loyalty sale along with analytics. Sourced from Adbeat.\nSource: Adbeat .\n…and another from American Express which received a whopping 314+ million impressions.\nA screenshot of an ad by American Express about its membership rewards along with analytics. Sourced from Adbeat.\nSource: Adbeat .\nBonus: Millennials spend much of their time on their phones, using it for everything from watching Netflix to discovering brands and shopping for products. If you want to get discovered, your ads need to be where they are. Prioritize mobile-first marketing and make it convenient for them to find your brand.\nTake Charge of Your Millennial Marketing Strategy The only “trick” you need to effectively target millennials with your ads is to understand them. They prefer authentic, value-driven brands that offer a high degree of personalization. They also don’t like marketing that’s in-the-face, preferring a more subtle and organic approach.\nKeep these in mind when you design your next millennial marketing campaign. Because, when you market to millennials the right way, you\u0026rsquo;ll have loyal customers for life.\nAnd, hey, don’t forget to use analytic tools like Adbeat to see how your ads are performing. This way, you’ll know whether your millennial marketing campaigns are hitting their mark.\nPerfect your marketing strategies by turning raw ad data into competitive insights with Adbeat. [ Sign up now ]\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/marketing-to-millennials-5-strategies-to-increase-your-roi/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLazy. Entitled. Zero work ethic. Addicted to their phones. These are some of the most common phrases used to describe millennials. But what nobody tells you is that they are a generation that values work-life balance and is more socially aware, tech-savvy, and influential compared to the baby boomers. In fact their net of influence is so wide that they have reshaped the very landscape of digital advertising.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHaving surpassed the baby boomers, millennials are also currently the \u003ca href=\"https://www.statista.com/statistics/797321/us-population-by-generation/\"\u003elargest generation by size in America\u003c/a\u003e with massive purchasing power. So, if you aren’t marketing to them? You’re majorly missing out on ROI, because they’re currently the \u003ca href=\"/why-should-you-market-to-millennials/\"\u003ebest group to focus your advertising effects\u003c/a\u003e on.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Marketing to Millennials: 5 Strategies To Increase Your ROI"},{"content":"Digital advertising showed no signs of slowing in 2023, with global spending reaching an estimated $423.3 billion — accounting for approximately $3 in every $5 spent on ads worldwide.\nBut who’s spending all that money, and how are they spending it?\nTo answer those questions, we analyzed exclusive Adbeat data to identify the 10 biggest display advertisers in the US in 2023, representing a combined $4.6 billion+ of spending on video, direct, programmatic, and native ads throughout the year.\nHere’s what we found:\n1. Apple: Total spend $775m Apple retained its position as America’s top-spending display advertiser in 2023, dropping an estimated $9.1 million on a single day on November 20 (although its total spending actually declined by just over 2.5% year on year).\nTwo-thirds of its outlay, or just under $512 million, was spent on YouTube ads:\nIts biggest ad — an introduction to the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset — accounted for a cool $21.4 million of spending and notched up 1.7 billion impressions in the single week it was live, from June 5 – 12:\nYour browser does not support the video element. When you think about it, this makes total sense:\nApple has forged a reputation for innovative, beautiful product design — and video ads are the best way to showcase these qualities.\n2. State Farm: Total spend $668.6m State Farm near-doubled its display advertising spend year on year in 2023, with the overwhelming majority of its ad budget going to YouTube:\nDigging into State Farm’s top ads by spend, we can see a clear divide between business-as-usual activity and short-term campaigns.\nThroughout the year, the bulk of its budget went toward various six-second video ads featuring the tagline: “TFW you get affordable insurance.”\nThis one, for example, accounted for $80 million in spending and generated 3.4 billion impressions.\nYour browser does not support the video element. When that creative started to get tired, State Farm swapped it out for a different variant.\nThis pattern continued until the end of Q4, when the advertiser bet big on two celebrity ads — one featuring Jimmy Fallon and the other starring Ludacris:\nYour browser does not support the video element. The latter finished the year as State Farm’s seventh biggest ad by spend, despite only debuting on November 24.\n3. Verizon: Total spend $607.4m Verizon slipped from being America’s second biggest display advertiser in 2022 to third place in 2023, with its ad spend dipping by just over 2% year on year.\nInterestingly, one-fifth of its total budget was spent in October, including $8.6 million on October 3 alone:\nOf course, this didn’t happen by chance. Apple dropped the iPhone 15 Pro in late September, with Verizon’s top two ads focusing on the new device.\nIn fact, four of the brand’s 10 top ads of 2023 were centered on new Apple devices, with its single biggest ad — a promo for the iPhone 15 Pro, featuring actors Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes — racking up 3.8 billion impressions and $94.2 million in spend between October 2 and December 8:\nYour browser does not support the video element. 4. Amazon: Total spend $573.3m Amazon slipped a place in our ranking of top-spending US display advertisers, from third in 2022 to fourth in 2023 — although its total spend actually increased by 13% year on year.\nThe e-commerce giant’s spending was spread pretty consistently throughout the year, barring a major spike on December 23:\nIn fact, Amazon’s single biggest ad of the year only ran from December 22 – 24, during which time it attracted $12.3 million in spending and over 683 million impressions:\nYour browser does not support the video element. We know what you’re thinking: “Why would an online marketplace drop all that money two days before Christmas?”\nIt all speaks to the breadth of Amazon’s service offering.\nFor starters, Amazon Prime offers the option of next-day — or even same-day — delivery, making it a life-saver for last-minute Christmas shoppers.\nAnd there’s also the streaming element; a key differentiator given Amazon’s investment in original, festive content like Candy Cane Lane and Your Christmas or Mine?.\n5. Walmart: Total spend $550m Walmart was one of the biggest climbers in the 2023 digital ad spending stakes, with its total spend increasing by a staggering 117% year on year.\nAs with almost all the top advertisers in our ranking, the lion’s share of Walmart’s digital ad budget was focused on YouTube:\nWhat makes Walmart stand out against many of its competitors is its commitment to constant iteration and testing of different ad creatives.\nNo fewer than five of its ads attracted at least $30 million in spend, yet none had a budget of more than $40.2 million.\nThat’s because the retailer consistently chopped and changed creatives, with its single biggest ad by spend only running for a month, from August 22 to September 24.\nYour browser does not support the video element. That’s a smart play.\nThe more you test, the better you understand what works for your audience.\n6. Adobe: Total spend $392.2m There’s no other way to describe it: Adobe went buck wild for digital ads in 2023, increasing its annual spend by almost 250% year on year.\nHowever, as you can see, their spend was far from consistent — slumping from $68.4 million in May to just $27.6 million in the whole of Q4:\nWhat the heck? Did they lose their Google Ad Manager login in October?\nWe’ve no idea. What we can tell you is that four of Adobe’s five top ads by spend in 2023 were for Acrobat, its family of app software and web services — with its single-biggest ad accounting for over $70 million in spend and generating an estimated 5.5 billion impressions before being switched off in June:\nYour browser does not support the video element. Traditionally, search activity around Adobe Acrobat slows toward the end of the year, so we guess this is simply a case of Adobe understanding the seasonality of its products.\n7. Wendy’s: Total spend $305.8m Wendy’s was another advertiser to boost its digital ad spending, from $279.7 million in 2022 to over $305 million in 2023 — an increase of almost 10%.\nOnce again, almost all of that budget was dedicated to a single network: YouTube. That’s not surprising given that video now represents approximately one-third of all display ad spend worldwide.\nThe fast-casual dining chain was more than happy to experiment with landing pages in 2023, with four variants attracting between $20.4 million and $23.5 million in spending.\nSome of those landing pages were for general campaigns promoting the company’s online delivery service, while others were targeted at a single item on the Wendy’s menu (like french fries) or a specific meal, like breakfast:\nJust like with Walmart, Wendy’s approach ( or should that be Wendy\u0026rsquo;s\u0026rsquo;? Wendy\u0026rsquo;s\u0026rsquo;s?) speaks to the benefits of constant testing to understand which creatives, messaging, and landing pages play best with your audience.\n8. Grammarly: Total spend $260.9m Grammarly’s digital ad spend declined by 12% year on year in 2023, but the AI-powered writing assist remained one of America’s top advertisers.\nIts spending patterns echoed those of Adobe, the other big software platform to make our top 10, with its activity dropping off a cliff in the second half of the year:\nSeems that people make the bulk of their software purchases in the first half of the year.\nGrammarly’s landing pages are some of the best we’ve seen, so let’s (briefly) analyze its top-performing example, which saw $24.2 million of spend and 1.9 billion impressions throughout the year.\nWe love how it clearly spells out the product’s features and benefits in the headline and intro copy:\nThe calls to action are simple, persuasive, and promise a low-friction experience for the user:\nAnd if you’re still not convinced, there’s plenty of social proof in the form of customer testimonials and recommendations from high-profile publications:\nWe’d strongly recommend taking the time to look at some of Grammarly’s landing pages yourself, especially if you’re in the software niche.\n9. Temu: Total spend $257.9m Temu only launched in the US in September 2022, yet it’s already broken into our top 10.\nBeyond its short lifespan, there’s another factor that makes Temu unique among America’s top advertisers: its heavy investment in programmatic.\nIn fact, Temu is the only brand on our list not to spend the vast majority of its ad budget on YouTube.\nWith Google DV360 as its top network, the online marketplace’s spending is spread between a who’s who of big-name publishers, including Yahoo, Weather.com, and AOL — each of which accounted for at least $11 million in ad spend.\nIts ads are similar to Wish.com’s, typically featuring a random selection of products (and some slightly clunky ad copy) alongside the Temu branding:\nBut they evidently work, with the marketplace notching up hundreds of millions of dollars in sales every month in the US.\nWhile we’re here, it’s worth briefly discussing Temu’s landing pages, many of which leverage gamification — like a “wheel of fortune” spinner — to drive conversions:\nThis particular version was geared toward incentivizing app downloads…\n…but we’ve seen other versions using the same wheel to promote a “prize” of six free items when you purchase a single product.\n10. Disney: Total spend $235.7m Last but not least is our biggest climber of all, Disney.\nIn 2022, the company spent a paltry $4.1 million on video, direct, programmatic, and native ads. Fast forward to 2023 and that amount had increased by an astonishing 5,649%.\nDisney’s ad spend was heavily skewed toward the back end of the year. Q4 accounted for two-thirds of its budget, while two-fifths came in November alone.\nThat’s because its latest movie, Wish, came out on November 22. Indeed, seven of Disney’s 10 biggest ads of 2023 promoted the animated musical — including its top ad, which attracted $39.1 million of spending and generated 1.6 billion impressions.\nYour browser does not support the video element. Final thoughts We saw record display ad spending in 2023, and we’re expecting more of the same in 2024.\nIndeed, ad network Dentsu has predicted a 6.5% uptick in global budgets this year, which would take total expenditure to $442.6 billion.\nWill the likes of Apple, State Farm, and Verizon still make up the bulk of US spending? Will Temu continue its all-out assault on the American market? Will we see a bunch of new entrants in the top 10?\nThere are only two ways to find out: wait for our 2024 roundup, or sign up for your own Adbeat account to get unparalleled access into how real advertisers are splashing their cash. Request your live Adbeat demo here.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/2023-top-display-advertisers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDigital advertising showed no signs of slowing in 2023, with global spending reaching an estimated \u003ca href=\"https://www.dentsu.com/news-releases/latest-2023-dentsu-ad-spend-re-forecast\"\u003e$423.3 billion\u003c/a\u003e — accounting for approximately $3 in every $5 spent on ads worldwide.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut who’s spending all that money, and how are they spending it?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo answer those questions, \u003cstrong\u003ewe analyzed exclusive Adbeat data\u003c/strong\u003e to identify the 10 biggest display advertisers in the US in 2023, representing a combined $4.6 billion+ of spending on video, direct, programmatic, and native ads throughout the year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2023’s top-spending display advertisers: Who they are \u0026amp; what they did"},{"content":" Stripe is a renowned online payment processing platform that offers numerous advantages for businesses and individuals seeking more effective ways to manage their payments and financial transactions. Here are our top three reasons to migrate to Stripe after several years with Recurly:\nEase of Integration and User-Friendly Interface: One of Stripe\u0026rsquo;s primary strengths lies in its developer-friendly platform and straightforward integration process. Stripe provides extensive documentation, APIs, and SDKs that make it relatively simple for developers to incorporate payment processing into websites, applications, and e-commerce platforms. Even for non-developers, Stripe offers user-friendly tools and interfaces, simplifying the setup and management of payments without requiring extensive technical expertise. Wide Range of Payment Options: Stripe supports a diverse array of payment methods, including credit and debit cards, digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, ACH transfers, and more. This versatility enables businesses to cater to a broader customer base and offer multiple payment choices, potentially leading to higher conversion rates and increased customer satisfaction. Additionally, Stripe\u0026rsquo;s global coverage empowers businesses to accept payments from customers around the world, supporting various currencies and localized payment methods. Robust Security and Compliance: Security is a critical concern when dealing with online payments. Stripe places a strong emphasis on security, employing industry-standard encryption, tokenization, and other security measures to safeguard sensitive payment information. By utilizing Stripe, businesses can shift the responsibility of storing and securing payment data, thereby reducing their PCI DSS compliance scope and potential liabilities. Stripe also provides tools to assist businesses in adhering to regulations such as Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) for European transactions. After dedicating several months to meticulously testing our solution, we are now at the point where we are excited to extend our invitation to our valued customers. We kindly ask and encourage all our customers to embark on this migration journey alongside us, transitioning to the Stripe platform. This step signifies not only our confidence in the capabilities of Stripe but also our commitment to enhancing your payment experience. We believe that this transition will pave the way for smoother transactions, heightened security, and a broader range of payment options, ultimately leading to an even more seamless and satisfying interaction between our services and your needs.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/our-migration-to-stripe/","summary":"\u003cfigure\u003e\n    \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/image-1024x512.png\"/\u003e \n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eStripe is a renowned online payment processing platform that offers numerous advantages for businesses and individuals seeking more effective ways to manage their payments and financial transactions. Here are our top three reasons to migrate to Stripe after several years with Recurly:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEase of Integration and User-Friendly Interface: One of Stripe\u0026rsquo;s primary strengths lies in its developer-friendly platform and straightforward integration process. Stripe provides extensive documentation, APIs, and SDKs that make it relatively simple for developers to incorporate payment processing into websites, applications, and e-commerce platforms. Even for non-developers, Stripe offers user-friendly tools and interfaces, simplifying the setup and management of payments without requiring extensive technical expertise.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWide Range of Payment Options: Stripe supports a diverse array of payment methods, including credit and debit cards, digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, ACH transfers, and more. This versatility enables businesses to cater to a broader customer base and offer multiple payment choices, potentially leading to higher conversion rates and increased customer satisfaction. Additionally, Stripe\u0026rsquo;s global coverage empowers businesses to accept payments from customers around the world, supporting various currencies and localized payment methods.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRobust Security and Compliance: Security is a critical concern when dealing with online payments. Stripe places a strong emphasis on security, employing industry-standard encryption, tokenization, and other security measures to safeguard sensitive payment information. By utilizing Stripe, businesses can shift the responsibility of storing and securing payment data, thereby reducing their PCI DSS compliance scope and potential liabilities. Stripe also provides tools to assist businesses in adhering to regulations such as Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) for European transactions.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter dedicating several months to meticulously testing our solution, we are now at the point where we are excited to extend our invitation to our valued customers. We kindly ask and encourage all our customers to embark on this migration journey alongside us, transitioning to the Stripe platform. This step signifies not only our confidence in the capabilities of Stripe but also our commitment to enhancing your payment experience. We believe that this transition will pave the way for smoother transactions, heightened security, and a broader range of payment options, ultimately leading to an even more seamless and satisfying interaction between our services and your needs.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Our migration to Stripe"},{"content":"With nearly $200M in yearly purchasing power, millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) are changing the way brands advertise their products \u0026amp; services in today’s rapidly-evolving, competitive landscape.On a surface level, it\u0026rsquo;s convenient to simply generalize the millennial generation—they’re always on their phones, and spend an inordinate amount of time crafting an online persona, but they’re also the same people who are the most open-minded about social causes like climate change. So, why are marketers everywhere spending valuable marketing dollars to meticulously analyze their spending patterns and psychographics? The answer’s simple: For brands looking to scale, understanding exactly what millennials want can be an absolute game-changer. Let’s quickly go over a few reasons why you should care about marketing to millennials. Millennials make up 25% of the United States population: According to the population projections from the U.S. Census Bureau, millennials will be surpassing Baby Boomers (born between 1944 and 1964) as the largest group of living adult generations. While they successfully outnumbered Generation X almost 26 years ago, they’re only now becoming the most populous (80 million) generation across the country. While most millennials haven\u0026rsquo;t reached their peak purchasing power yet (due to student loans and starting a family), they are certainly heading that way, and brands realize the importance of getting in front of them early. There are also more millennials in the workforce than other generations, with an expected $1.4 trillion in disposable income by the year 2020. ….and they are smart. Millennials are the best-educated group of young adults in U.S. history: Today , approximately one-third of millennials have at least a four-year college degree, and 54 percent of them have already invested in a business of their own or are planning to do so in the immediate future.Given that 25 percent of the millennials are parents and 42 percent have student debts upwards of $30,000, most of them haven’t reached their peak purchasing power yet. However, they’re slowly catching up—for example, 87 percent of the working millennials currently hold senior management positions in their respective workplaces, and are expected to amass $1.4 trillion in disposable income by the end of this year. In fact, in order to combat their lower-income, millennials are becoming increasingly focused on building up their savings. Ultimately, brands targeting millennials have to go an extra mile to position themselves In front of a target demographic that thinks twice before parting with their hard-earned money. Millennials are also averse to the idea of a typical 9-to-5 job and are instead more interested in creating unique, innovative products that have the potential of changing the world. The average millennial mindset is fairly decentralized, which means, they prefer conducting their own research to form an educated opinion about brands (as opposed to “following the herd”) they want to invest in. ….and they\u0026rsquo;re more receptive to new technologies and online platforms. Millennials are 2.5x more likely than other generations to be early adopters of technology: Not only do all millennials actively use the internet today, but 56 percent of them are one of the first ones in their peer group to try out and adopt new technologies. On the other hand, Baby Boomers face some unprecedented barriers—like physical challenges operating multiple devices—and are skeptical about the internet’s impact on society as a whole. Since millennials almost always have one of their mobile devices on them and are guilty of checking their smartphones at least 43 times a day, they’re much easier to market to than Baby Boomers who are less tech-savvy. Additionally, 46 percent of them also use ad-blockers on their desktops and laptops, making it difficult for brands to reach them with “traditional” digital advertising. As a result, in 2018 alone, 68 percent of businesses have incorporated mobile marketing into their long-term marketing strategy. What’s also worth noting is that a whopping 90.4% of millennials actively use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. The vast majority of them make purchasing decisions based on brand advertisements, peer recommendations, user-generated content, and influencer endorsements that they come across on their social newsfeed. On the contrary, Oracle found that social media ads did not inspire action from both Gen X (born between 1965 and 1979) and Baby Boomers. In fact, more than 50 percent of Boomers have either never seen the appeal of social commerce or are unaware of what it means.\nMillennials are the most brand-loyal out of all generations: More than half (50.5 percent) of the millennials admit to being extremely or quite loyal to their preferred brands—which is striking considering the limitless options that consumers have at their fingertips today. However, they also want companies to work hard—for example, put emphasis on rewards programs and personalized communication—to win their allegiance. All in all, millennials are willing to be long-time customers, as long as you meet their expectations. For example, a significant bottleneck for almost 30 percent of the millennials is rewards lapsing before they can be redeemed, whereas, 28 percent of them feel that not knowing when their rewards will be available is a huge turn-off. On the other hand, people belonging to Gen X and Gen Z are really bothered by the aforementioned factors. For them, the top gripe is not being able to access a company’s website on their desktop, and having to rely on mobile devices to obtain information related to their rewards. Millennials are a very diverse bunch, which often makes it difficult to understand what does or does not appeal to them. However, since they make up for a large majority of the population in the U.S., coming up with a marketing strategy that works for them is a business imperative, especially if your target demographic is people between the ages of 22 and 37 years.Spending time analyzing the millennial mind is just the first step. Eventually, you should be able to pinpoint specific marketing messages and online platforms that invoke a compelling response from Gen Y. So, toss out, or at least make some necessary changes, to your old playbook, if you’re looking to position your brand in front of a millennial audience. In the next post, we’ll go over a few ways in which you can optimize your current advertising strategy to attract millennials.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/why-should-you-market-to-millennials/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWith nearly $200M in yearly purchasing power, millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) are changing the way brands advertise their products \u0026amp; services in today’s rapidly-evolving, competitive landscape.On a surface level, it\u0026rsquo;s convenient to simply generalize the millennial generation—they’re always on their phones, and spend an inordinate amount of time crafting an online persona, but they’re also the same people who are the most open-minded about social causes like climate change. So, why are marketers everywhere spending valuable marketing dollars to meticulously analyze their spending patterns and psychographics? The answer’s simple: For brands looking to scale, understanding exactly what millennials want can be an absolute game-changer. Let’s quickly go over a few reasons why you should care about marketing to millennials. \u003cstrong\u003eMillennials make up 25% of the United States population:\u003c/strong\u003e According to the population projections from the U.S. Census Bureau, millennials will be surpassing Baby Boomers (born between 1944 and 1964) as the largest group of living adult generations. While they successfully outnumbered Generation X almost 26 years ago, they’re only now becoming the most populous (80 million) generation across the country. \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/http%3A%2F%2Fcom.ft.imagepublish.upp-prod-us.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fdd41de4a-68c9-11e8-8cf3-0c230fa67aec?fit=scale-down\u0026quality=highest\u0026source=next\u0026width=700\"\u003eWhile most millennials haven\u0026rsquo;t reached their peak purchasing power yet (due to student loans and starting a family), they are certainly heading that way, and brands realize the importance of getting in front of them early. There are also more millennials in the workforce than other generations, with an expected $1.4 trillion in disposable income by the year 2020. ….and they are smart. \u003cstrong\u003eMillennials are the best-educated group of young adults in U.S. history:\u003c/strong\u003e Today \u003cstrong\u003e,\u003c/strong\u003e approximately one-third of millennials have at least a four-year college degree, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272788\"\u003e54 percent of\u003c/a\u003e them have already invested in a business of their own or are planning to do so in the immediate future.Given that 25 percent of the millennials are parents and 42 percent have student debts upwards of $30,000, most of them haven’t reached their peak purchasing power yet. However, they’re slowly catching up—for example, 87 percent of the working millennials currently hold senior management positions in their respective workplaces, and are expected to amass $1.4 trillion in disposable income by the end of this year. In fact, in order to combat their lower-income, millennials are becoming increasingly focused on building up their savings. Ultimately, brands targeting millennials have to go an extra mile to position themselves In front of a target demographic that thinks twice before parting with their hard-earned money. Millennials are also averse to the idea of a typical 9-to-5 job and are instead more interested in creating unique, innovative products that have the potential of changing the world. The average millennial mindset is fairly decentralized, which means, they prefer conducting their own research to form an educated opinion about brands (as opposed to “following the herd”) they want to invest in. ….and they\u0026rsquo;re more receptive to new technologies and online platforms. \u003cstrong\u003eMillennials are 2.5x more likely than other generations to be early adopters of technology:\u003c/strong\u003e Not only do all millennials actively use the internet today, but 56 percent of them are one of the first ones in their peer group to try out and adopt new technologies. On the other hand, Baby Boomers face some unprecedented barriers—like physical challenges operating multiple devices—and are skeptical about the internet’s impact on society as a whole. \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/FT_19.09.03_DigitalDivideGenerations_1.png?resize=640,411\"\u003eSince millennials almost always have one of their mobile devices on them and are guilty of checking their smartphones \u003ca href=\"https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/02/02/marketing-to-millennials\"\u003eat least 43 times a day\u003c/a\u003e, they’re much easier to market to than Baby Boomers who are less tech-savvy. Additionally, \u003ca href=\"https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Most-Millennials-Have-Installed-Ad-Blockers/1014592\"\u003e46 percent of them\u003c/a\u003e also use ad-blockers on their desktops and laptops, making it difficult for brands to reach them with “traditional” digital advertising. As a result, in 2018 alone, \u003ca href=\"https://makeawebsitehub.com/mobile-marketing-statistics/\"\u003e68 percent of businesses have incorporated mobile marketing\u003c/a\u003e into their long-term marketing strategy. What’s also worth noting is that a whopping \u003ca href=\"https://www.oberlo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/social-media-usage-generation.jpg\"\u003e90.4% of millennials actively use social media\u003c/a\u003e platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. The vast majority of them make purchasing decisions based on brand advertisements, peer recommendations, user-generated content, and influencer endorsements that they come across on their social newsfeed. \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://neilpatel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/pasted-image-0-1.png\"\u003eOn the contrary, \u003ca href=\"https://www.emarketer.com/content/boomers-aren-t-as-influenced-with-social-commerce-as-younger-cohorts\"\u003eOracle found that social media ads did not inspire action\u003c/a\u003e from both Gen X (born between 1965 and 1979) and Baby Boomers. In fact, more than 50 percent of Boomers have either never seen the appeal of social commerce or are unaware of what it means.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why should you market to millennials?"},{"content":"The marketing world is dynamic and ever-changing — trends, technology, and tactics are never stagnant. That\u0026rsquo;s why it\u0026rsquo;s critical that your business stay up with new developments in the industry. Currently, more than 51% of smartphone users admit that they have discovered a new company or product while conducting a search on their smartphone. As a result, it comes as no surprise that brands everywhere are looking for new ways to engage with their audience on the small screen. According to a recent study, mobile ads start triggering an emotional response in consumers in less than half a second, pointing to how brands must develop a \u0026ldquo;one-second strategy\u0026rdquo; for their creative and media-buying efforts. In fact, consumers reacted more slowly to ads seen on desktop computers, which took two to three seconds to pose the same emotional effect. Why does mobile advertising work for brands? Mobile ads are more cost-effective: Opera Software found that the average cost for mobile ads for an iPhone, which has the highest average cost per thousand impressions (CPM), is still less than the CPM for web ads on a desktop.\nSource: Mashable.\nOn the contrary, print ads, for example, can charge as much as $100 for a thousand impressions.The rapid increase in the number of mobile apps and the swift growth of mobile audience on traditional websites has resulted in an abundance of mobile ad inventory on the market. A common misconception here is that mobile ads are usually lower in quality, however, according to an eMarketer report, the click-through rates (CTR) are actually higher on mobile. There\u0026rsquo;s simply not enough demand in the marketplace for mobile ads right now—something that\u0026rsquo;s bound to change as we step into 2020. For example, OLX, a global online marketplace, were able to acquire high-quality customers at 50 percent lower costs by running a relevant and impactful mobile ad campaign. The biggest challenge for them was consolidating their online presence and encouraging users to buy/sell using the OLX app on their smartphone. Using contextual targeting across all Android devices, and creative, video-first optimizations, they observed a 2.5x increase in conversions, a 50 percent reduction in cost per install (CPI) and a 25 percent reduction in the cost of driving a high-quality user listing within the app.\nOwing to a limited screen real estate, easily accessible advertising tools, and lower price point for search ads, mobile ads continue to offer a better, more affordable alternative for promoting your brand to the masses.\nThere are several ways in which you can market your business using mobile advertising. For example, if you don\u0026rsquo;t have an app, but your website is mobile-optimized, you\u0026rsquo;d be better off investing in mobile search or display advertising campaigns. The most popular mobile ad networks come with self-service portals that are designed to drive test campaigns. Google is the main player when it comes to mobile display ads. Outside of the US, InMobi and Adfonic are both great choices.\nWhile ensuring that your mobile ad campaign really works might take more effort than you initially expected, the low cost of the inventory makes it all worth it in the long-term. AR promises an innovative, engaging, immersive experience on mobile: Augmented reality (AR) has successfully become the buzzword people can\u0026rsquo;t stop talking about in the world of technology. While it’s hard to find someone who’s never come across Pokémon GO, the best selling AR mobile game that has millions of users across the globe, it\u0026rsquo;s important to understand that AR isn’t just about gaming and entertainment. AR continues to surprise us with its ever-growing list of potential applications that many industries, advertising included, have benefited greatly from. AR has not only made advertising more interactive than ever before, but it also allows marketers to reach out to their target demographic in completely new ways. For example, Pond\u0026rsquo;s, a brand well-known for their healthcare and beauty products, partnered with InMobi to develop the “world’s first face detection augmented reality rich media mobile ad” that delivers a unique, immersive brand experience to customers. Given that the market is already saturated with face products, Pond\u0026rsquo;s knew they could only stand out by trying their hands at something wildly different. In order to promote their new Acne 10-in-1 Solution, the company chose to target prospects where they were spending most of their time: looking at their smartphones. By using a flurry of relevant filters, Pond\u0026rsquo;s created a personalized ad that doesn\u0026rsquo;t prompt people to download a third-party app/software or visit another website. When users switched to the front-facing camera on their phones, the AR tracked their facial features and automatically identified the various acne-prone areas of their skin.Ultimately, 39,000 users spent an average of 29 seconds interacting with Pond\u0026rsquo;s AR mobile campaign. There are two major types of augmented reality:\nMarker-based AR ads need a marker (also known as the target image) that potential customers can scan with their smartphone cameras and bring the virtual content to life.For example, Panera’s AR mobile ad allows people to browse through the menu items and share their overall customer experience across leading social media platforms. In the following video, you see a user pivoting a Mediterranean Egg White Breakfast Wrap from Panera\u0026rsquo;s menu.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJL_xDO2cOc[/embed]\nHere’s the experience for viewing through mobile devices.\nThe ad employs the OS-level ARCore and ARKit, augmented reality frameworks, in Android and iOS devices.\nWhat does AR provide customers that they wouldn\u0026rsquo;t get from a menu online? According to Panera’s VP of Marketing, Scott Nelson, the ad allows customers to “find information fast and push an overall category innovation”.\nOn a similar note, IKEA, the renowned furniture retailer, was one of the early adopters of AR ads. In 2013, the company released an iOS AR mobile app that customers can use to try virtual pieces of furniture from their most recent launch.\nCustomers can simply place the printed furniture catalog on their floor and scan with their smartphone (or any other mobile device) cameras to view the virtual furniture. This way, customers are able to gauge whether a specific piece of furniture would go with their real-life surroundings.\nWith AR, IKEA successfully sparked customers’ interest in their products, and ultimately, encourage sales.\nLocation-based AR ads don’t need any markers (hence, no requirement for a print image), as they superimpose the virtual content based on a prospect\u0026rsquo;s location (using GPS).For example, bus stops are frequently used for advertising, but with AR, you can turn a run-of-the-mill bus stop poster into an engaging and entertaining experience. For example, Pepsi ran a Pepsi Max AR ad campaign, where a camera and a were placed in the standard London bus stops to overlay virtual objects against a real-life camera view.\nOn a similar note, storefronts usually fall under traditional advertising, however, with AR, you can create an unforgettable digital experience for people passing by. Storefronts can easily be equipped with AR markers that can be scanned.\nBesides being efficient, AR mobile ads are also affordable, as companies everywhere can utilize their own storefronts for ad campaigns.\nThat’s exactly what Net-A-Porter, an Italian online fashion retailer, did when they created AR storefronts at their London, Paris, Munich, New York, and Sydney outlets. Customers were requested to install a mobile AR application on their devices, scan the storefront ad, and unlock various AR experiences including 360-degree views, pricing, and product-related information.\nOverall, launching an AR mobile ad campaign is oftentimes cheaper than running an ad in a leading print magazine. Not to mention, you can use the same AR application for multiple campaigns, which is too big of an advantage to ignore.\nMobile ads offer better targeting options: Failing to connect closely with your customers will cost you loyalty, revenue and brand image. Most people keep their smartphones handy throughout the day. As a result, you don\u0026rsquo;t have to wait for them to get on a desktop with internet access, or notice a physical display, or tune in to TV commercials to promote your brand. With mobile ads, you can follow people even when they\u0026rsquo;re on-the-go. In short, you have round-the-clock access to your customers. The biggest advantage here is that time-sensitive communication, like notifications related to sales and special events, can reach customers without any delay. There\u0026rsquo;s no other advertising medium that gives you the benefit of being \u0026ldquo;always-on\u0026rdquo;. By tailoring your marketing message to the expectations of your mobile audience, you can convey a sense of intimacy that would act as a catalyst for building long-standing customer relationships. For example, location-based ads, for example, are more productive than desktop, as they let you customize your campaign based on the geographical location of your target customers. Imagine a person strolling through a shopping district while on vacation. They\u0026rsquo;re going through their phone and come across an ad for an ongoing sale on handbags from your brand. On clicking the ad, they\u0026rsquo;re able to see your store location (that\u0026rsquo;s 500 meters away) and simply follow the directions to get to your store.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go9rf9GmYpM[/embed]\nAlternatively, consider the following scenario: It\u0026rsquo;s lunchtime and a potential customer is on their phone. They see an ad from a restaurant nearby that includes a free dessert coupon. Here, the restaurant is running a contextually targeted ad, that\u0026rsquo;s possibly geo-fenced within a 2 km radius of the business bay with all the offices. They\u0026rsquo;ve also added a “Call Now ” button on the mobile ad that the customer can click on to order or make a reservation.In 2015, KFC used geofencing on mobile to promote their new burrito range and boost foot traffic into its subsidiaries. During market research, the fast-food giant found that \u0026ldquo;KFC stores had a click-through rate of 40 percent above the industry standard\u0026rdquo; which is a testament to the impact of location-based targeting. As a result, the company was able to build awareness around KFC outlets across the UK simply by using relevant messaging tactics alongside proximity targeting.In another example, the NFL installed a complex micro-location beacon network in the MetLife Stadium (NYC) and Times Square (London) during the Super Bowl to send personalized ads to football fans. Manish Jha, NFL\u0026rsquo;s general manager of mobile, emphasized the ability of beacon technology to \u0026ldquo;connect to the real world, the brick-and-mortar world, with the virtual world with a level of granularity that hasn\u0026rsquo;t existed before\u0026rdquo;.Many major sports leagues including the NBA and MLB are all looking into implementing beacon technology in their stadiums to allow for increasingly personalized ad targeting as well as an enriched fan experience.**What\u0026rsquo;s next for mobile advertising?**According to the IAB Mobile Advertising and Revenue report for 2008 Q2, approximately three-quarters of the total Internet time (71%) is spent on a mobile device. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that mobile ad spends now accounts for nearly two-thirds of the total digital spend.With a rise in the number of smartphones and tablets, mobile ads, by being both cost-effective and conversion-oriented, have become more commonplace.As videos and augmented reality continue to evolve with time, the mobile advertising experience for both customers and brands is expected to improve by leaps and bounds in the coming years.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-brands-like-panera-kfc-and-pepsi-are-leveraging-mobile-ads-to-attract-high-quality-customers-and-why-you-should-too/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe marketing world is dynamic and ever-changing — trends, technology, and tactics are never stagnant. That\u0026rsquo;s why it\u0026rsquo;s critical that your business stay up with new developments in the industry. Currently, more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics\"\u003e51% of smartphone users\u003c/a\u003e admit that they have discovered a new company or product while conducting a search on their smartphone. As a result, it comes as no surprise that brands everywhere are looking for new ways to engage with their audience on the small screen. \u003ca href=\"https://www.mmaglobal.com/news/mobile-marketing-association-reveal-brands-need-one-second-strategy\"\u003eAccording to a recent study\u003c/a\u003e, mobile ads start triggering an emotional response in consumers in less than half a second, pointing to how brands must develop a \u0026ldquo;one-second strategy\u0026rdquo; for their creative and media-buying efforts. In fact, consumers reacted more slowly to ads seen on desktop computers, which took two to three seconds to pose the same emotional effect. \u003cstrong\u003eWhy does mobile advertising work for brands?\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eMobile ads are more cost-effective:\u003c/strong\u003e \u003ca href=\"https://mashable.com/2012/10/23/mobile-ad-prices/\"\u003eOpera Software\u003c/a\u003e found that the average cost for mobile ads for an iPhone, which has the highest average cost per thousand impressions (CPM), is still less than the CPM for web ads on a desktop.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How brands like Panera, KFC, and Pepsi are leveraging mobile ads to attract high-quality customers (and why you should, too!)."},{"content":"Online advertising has come a long way since its inception. Given that search accounts for only 21 percent of active users’ time on the internet, it comes as no surprise that businesses everywhere are using video advertising as an avenue to connect with their target audience. In fact, according to a Renderforest survey, marketers who use video content to promote their brand receive more web-traffic, generate more leads, and close more sales than their counterparts.However, creating an engaging, conversion-friendly video campaign is not everyone’s cup of tea. Previously, we discussed the importance of creating a video-inclusive advertising strategy for your brand. In today’s post, let’s go over a few ways in which you can make video work in your favor: Choose the right video ad format: In order to best deliver your video content to your target audience, it’s important to understand which format is the most suitable for your marketing campaign. Every video ad format engages with the users differently and depending on your business goals, and ROI expectations, you can choose from the following:\nIn-stream ads run before the video that your viewer has selected (on YouTube, or other streaming platforms) to watch. They can be played anywhere in the Google Display Network (or partner platforms in the Google video ad space) and can be skipped after 5 seconds. As a brand, you can use in-stream ads to customize your video campaigns using different overlay text and CTAs. Consider the following skippable in-stream ad from Grammarly, as a reference: In-stream ads charge the advertiser only when the video is viewed for at least 30 seconds, or if the viewer clicks on a CTA.\nPre-roll ads are between15 to 20 seconds in duration and can play before, mid-roll, or after the video that someone’s watching. Since these ads can’t be skipped, remember to include actionable CTAs in your video to benefit from the viewer’s attention. For example, you can encourage people to click on your pre-roll video ads to receive something special in return. If you’re gearing up for a new product launch, you can use the pre-roll ads to get sign-ups in exchange for a free demo. Remember, pre-roll video space is usually available on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, which means you\u0026rsquo;re charged every time a viewer clicks on your ads. Make the click worth their time and yours.\nBumper ads (:06, non-skip) are mobile-friendly, bite-size pieces of content that work well for people “on-the-go”. With only up to 6 seconds to get your point across, brands are expected to consider narrowing their marketing message to a single focus. When paired with longer-form creatives, bumper ads can be used for teasing, amplifying and/or echoing the main narrative. Based on the data from 18 different advertisers and 400 advertising campaigns, Google found that bumper ads increase “ the unique reach of TrueView campaigns by 78% on average”.\nDraw attention from the get-go: A research from 2015 shows that the average attention span is currently down to 8 seconds and is expected to decline even further. Last year, Facebook Business also released a report showcasing how long people watch a video ad before pulling out their phone, scrolling ahead or closing the app/browser.\nSource: Facebook Business\nTurns out, regardless of the type of video ad you’re running, the average number of viewers drops off exponentially very early on. As a result, if you want people to connect with your ads, and learn more about your brand, you must get your message out as soon as possible. People are more likely to click away from content that’s taking too long to deliver the goods—all the more reason to start strong and get everyone’s attention from the get-go. Facebook also recommendsstandalone video ads (that appear in the newsfeeds) to be 15 seconds or shorter to achieve higher completion metrics across the board. On the other hand, in-stream video ads can be between 5-15 seconds for optimal results. With the trend of creating shorter video ads slowly catching up, marketers everywhere have a new problem to solve now: How do you promote your brand in such a short amount of time? In a meta-analysis of video marketing data, Facebook discovered that customers are 23 percent more likely to remember a brand if it was featured in the first three seconds of a video ad.\nSource: falcon.io\nIn short, if one of your goals is brand awareness, you have exactly three to four seconds to establish a visual identity. The following ad from Hefty Party Cups in a great example of how you can create a video that draws people in from the first frame.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeT4FdO7MNk[/embed]\nNot only is the ad short, crisp, and entertaining, but, also opens (and closes!) with Hefty’s logo. In 6 seconds, they’re able to draw parallels between their brand and ‘people having a good time’—a marketing message that’s both clever and persuasive. Use storytelling to establish a compelling emotional narrative: In today’s cluttered advertising landscape, companies are increasingly relying on storytelling to communicate the entire character of their brand to their target demographic. Stories are great for marketing, simply because they hold the power to elicit emotions that can influence who we trust. By playing on collective nostalgia, and helping people discern complex information, stories provide a clever and persuasive medium for your audience to notice, remember, share, and purchase your products.Think about it: Companies like Cisco and GE don’t try to sell you technology—instead, they show you why exactly they’re excited about the overarching theme of innovation. Similarly, Red Bull focuses more on selling a lifestyle that celebrates competitiveness and the spirit of extreme sport, instead of simply asking you to buy their energy drink. Brands, both B2C and B2B, prefer to tell stories that make you laugh or tug at your heartstrings to attract potential (especially, top-of-the-funnel) customers.The biggest lesson here is that the story should be less about you and more about what you (and/or your products) can do for others. For example, if you’re a company that sells solar panel software, your narrative can be about saving the earth or fighting climate change. If you’re in the telecommunications business, then treat your viewers to a story about building connections and real people. In their tear-jerking campaign (that’s doesn’t encourage people to buy airline tickets!), WestJet showcases their commitment to reuniting families and friends across the globe during the holiday season because ‘Christmas should be spent around those you love’. You’re gradually introduced to an elderly couple (amongst others!) missing their daughter who’s moved away. As the husband-wife duo recount stories about her, she appears in the background to surprise them resulting in a joyous homecoming.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0OrlSyqf1I\u0026amp;feature=youtu.be[/embed]\nAccording to Hubspot, tapping into the right emotion is crucial to effective video storytelling, especially when every emotion triggers a specific action. For example, “happiness leads to sharing, sadness leads to giving, fear leads to loyalty and anger leads to virality”. Therefore, when you’re working on your next video campaign, ask yourself the following question: How do I want my viewers to feel after watching my video story? Then, create an emotional undertone that will persuade viewers to follow through on your call-to-action. With ever-changing social trends and saturated environment, it seems more difficult than ever for a business to create compelling video ads. So, how can your company thrive and get results with social advertising? In short, remember to provide a solution to a common pain point, entertain the viewer, evoke emotions and educate your audience. With new options for video monetization being released and more opportunities to place video ads on Instagram and the Audience Network, marketers can now look beyond Youtube when it comes to promoting their ads.The icing on the cake? There are even more advertising formats around the corner for video, with augmented reality ads in development.All in all, a good time to invest in video!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/video-advertising-3-best-practices-to-capture-and-retain-a-customers-attention/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOnline advertising has come a long way since its inception. Given that search accounts for only 21 percent of active users’ time on the internet, it comes as no surprise that businesses everywhere are using video advertising as an avenue to connect with their target audience. In fact, \u003ca href=\"https://www.renderforest.com/blog/video-marketing-statistics\"\u003eaccording to a Renderforest survey\u003c/a\u003e, marketers who use video content to promote their brand receive more web-traffic, generate more leads, and close more sales than their counterparts.However, creating an engaging, conversion-friendly video campaign is not everyone’s cup of tea. Previously, \u003ca href=\"/why-should-brands-invest-in-video-advertising/\"\u003ewe discussed the importance of creating a video-inclusive advertising strategy for your brand\u003c/a\u003e. In today’s post, let’s go over a few ways in which you can make video work in your favor: \u003cstrong\u003eChoose the right video ad format:\u003c/strong\u003e In order to best deliver your video content to your target audience, it’s important to understand which format is the most suitable for your marketing campaign. Every video ad format engages with the users differently and depending on your business goals, and ROI expectations, you can choose from the following:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Video advertising: 3 Best practices to capture (and retain) a customer's attention"},{"content":"In today\u0026rsquo;s technology-first world, where information is readily accessible and attention spans continue to dwindle, brands everywhere are finding new, innovative ways to communicate with their customers. You don’t have to dig deep to figure out why video has emerged as the dominant force in the digital marketing universe. For example, including an explanatory video on your website\u0026rsquo;s landing pages can increase conversion rates by more than 80 percent, and just by mentioning the word “video” in your subject line improves email open rates by almost 19 percent. Lastly, 90 percent of customers agree that videos significantly impact their purchasing decisions.Simply put, video, when equipped with eye-catching visuals and a compelling narrative, provides the perfect medium for introducing your brand, displaying individual products and/or driving sales.As we close in on the next decade, approximately 86% of marketers are actively using video to promote, sell, and exhibit their products/services. The market is rife with advanced video tools and formats that continue to reinforce video as an increasingly powerful, engaging medium to communicate with your target demographic.\nIn short, video advertising is definitively a train that your brand cannot afford to miss. Here\u0026rsquo;s why: Customers prefer video content to any other type of content According to a 2018 survey, 54 percent of customers prefer watching a video from brands they support (or are interested in supporting!) over any other type of content. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that 59 percent of media buyers and marketers are ready to shell out more than $20 million annually for digital/mobile video ads.\nSource: Hubspot\nThese aforementioned statistics about video advertising prove that you can have the best content in the world, and still have trouble engaging with your target audience, simply because they can easily access the exact same information through their preferred medium in 2019: video. In fact, 87 percent of the people openly admitted that they want more video content from their favorite brands.When Wyzowl asked over 600 people about the type of video content they’re interested in seeing—\n39% of people cited explainer videos. 20% wanted to see more entertaining ‘viral’ style videos. 12% would like to see product demo videos. 10% said video blogs. 9% said interactive videos. 6% said they’d like to see more software tutorials. Videos rank higher in Search Engine results Even the most exquisitely crafted videos can flop if they’re never found by the right audience, however, the presence of a video itself greatly affects the most prominent SEO ranking factor: content. Videos are usually characterized by high-quality content, and since they’re part of the media mix on any website, they tend to send signals to search engines emphasizing that your platform contains rich media that’s relevant to the most common search requests in a particular domain. It’s important to note that search engines are expected to consistently increase the ranking factor of videos, as long as customers prefer (or rather demand!) videos to be included in the search results. So, investing in videos can help boost brand awareness and create a “buzz” about your products/ services. Many marketers prefer hosting video content on their own websites to boost SEO, however, when it comes to universal search results, videos (ads, in particular) tend to do well when they’re associated with a big-name brand or are tied to popular publishing platforms like Youtube. If you’re a small business or a bootstrapped startup, running video ads on Youtube can trigger secondary (customer) actions that can catapult your business into the limelight. The best part? You don’t have to burden your website homepage with the slow loading times. Remember, almost 57 percent of customers abandon a website they’re on after three seconds of waiting—which negatively impacts your user experience and ultimately, your SEO ranking. Higher conversions and sales A picture is worth a thousand words, so, can a video be worth a thousand sales? Given that video now shows up in “ 70 percent of the top 100 search results listings”, and that people are anywhere between 64 to 85 percent more likely to make a product purchase after watching a video – this is one marketing force that you cannot choose to ignore. For example, Advance Auto Parts, a North Carolina based automotive aftermarket parts provider, found that by adding a series of how-to videos about their services on their homepage and social media platforms, they were able to encourage their potential customers to stay twice as long on their website and look through twice as many pages. Similarly, Stacks and Stacks, an e-retailer for organizational housewares, reported that people who watched a video about their products were 144 percent more likely to make a purchase when compared to people who didn’t watch a video. Overall, 83 percent of businesses globally agreed that incorporating videos in their marketing strategy has positively impacted their ROI. The best part is that you don’t need to invest in expensive cameras and lighting equipment for your videos. Customers in 2019 have developed a penchant for simple, relatable, and “authentic” videos that don’t necessarily have a high-production value. In fact, people are happy to settle for a lower quality video—in terms of both content and design, as long as they’re provided with a heartwarming story of real people facing the same challenges as them. So, basically, as long as you create videos that capitalize on the emotional triggers of your target audience, you’re good to go! Videos are small-screen friendly As far as digital video viewership goes, mobile\u0026rsquo;s small but mighty screen has been creating waves in the market for nearly half a decade at this point. In fact, 50 percent of Youtube’s global viewership actually comes from mobile devices. Today, consumers, instead of stumbling upon a few \u0026ldquo;moments of truth\u0026rdquo;, are experiencing innumerable micro-moments (that are “the new battleground for hearts, minds, and wallets”) throughout the day while solving problems, exploring interests, searching for specific products, and making decisions. Please note, micro-moments can be defined as moments where we “ reflexively turn to a device to act on a need”— and mobile video is increasingly playing a significant role in meeting that need.Most people, especially millennials (born between 1981 and 1996), are 2X more likely to pay attention to a video advertisement on mobile as opposed to the TV. What plenty of brands fail to realize is that mobile is no longer a “second or third screen” for the majority of their target demographic— it\u0026rsquo;s now the first. A recent Google research also confirmed that smartphone users consider the process of watching a video on mobile “far less distracting than TV”. They also are more likely to share and personally connect with branded video content that they come across on mobile than people watching on TV and desktop.\nSource: thinkwithgoogle\nWhile unboxing and tutorial-style video ads might not seem very appealing at first glance, they encourage customers to check out a company’s website or visit their store, engage in further discussions about the company + their offerings with their peers, (positively!) change their opinion about a brand’s products/services, and even share a video ad across their online channels.\nOverall, videos are not only small-screen friendly, but are an integral part of any mobile marketing strategy, as they help customers in predicting the experience of product ownership. Brands that are successfully using videos GoPro: Fireman Saves Kitten Quick Adbeat breakdown: In the last 6 months, GoPro has paid $221.4K (out of their total ad spend of $235.7K) to Youtube, their primary platform for running video ads. Moreover, a whopping 94 percent of their ads are videos (as compared to native, programmatic, etc.)—a strategy that seems to be working out well for them.\nLet’s look at one of their campaigns:If you\u0026rsquo;ve come across GoPro\u0026rsquo;s user-generated content before, you can probably tell right away that this isn\u0026rsquo;t one of their “typical advertisement videos”. As a brand, GoPro has gone far and beyond to portray themselves as adventurous, so it comes as no surprise that their online channels feature videos of people filming (using a GoPro) while jumping out of airplanes or surfing gigantic waves. However, the following video is slightly different and “off-brand” from the rest of their content.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjB_oVeq8Lo[/embed]\nA firefighter saves a kitten from a deadly house-fire. Why did GoPro choose to cut, polish and promote this particular video for their own marketing? Sure, the video is unique, inspiring, and plays right into the widely-revered theme of “everyday heroism, however, it strays further and further away from the brand’s image of athleticism and extreme sports. With more than42,149,234 views, the video seems to have resonated well with a wider audience that’s not into bungee jumping in the Bahamas, or underwater sea- diving at Galapagos. The Takeaway: Don\u0026rsquo;t be afraid to experiment with different formats and topics when creating a successful video advertisement campaign. Pushing the boundaries of your brand\u0026rsquo;s image isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as you’re able to dabble into the various themes that amplify your brand\u0026rsquo;s personality. BuzzFeed for Purina: Puppyhood Quick Adbeat breakdown: In the last one year, Purina, out of their total ad spend of $12.1M, set aside $15.4K to run video campaigns on Youtube. In 2019 alone, they’ve spent upwards of $500K each on four of their successful video ads between September to November.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3MtFGWRXAA[/embed]\nLet’s look at one of their campaigns:In 2015, Purina, an American pet food brand, teamed up with Buzzfeed to create a native advertising campaign that highlights the unbreakable bond between a puppy and a man. Moving away from the 30-second TV commercial format, the 3.5-minute short film relies on strong storytelling and improv-heavy format to engage viewers and create brand awareness. Overall, the video doesn’t appear to be an ad, and comes across as something you’d share with a dog-loving friend. The Takeaway: Create stories that showcase how your product can make a difference in the life of an average customer without making it feel like an ad. That way, your video ad will not only get its point across and move the marketing needle in your favor while also engaging whole-heartedly with the viewers. Nike Women: Better For It Quick Adbeat breakdown: Out of $14.6M (Nike’s total ad spend in the last 6 months), the brand set aside $2.8M to run video ads on Youtube. Not only this, 19 percent of their total ads are videos.Let’s look at one of their campaigns:Developed by Wieden + Kennedy and Nike Women, the ‘Better For It’ video uses humor to highlight the \u0026ldquo;inner thoughts\u0026rdquo; that women often experience during workouts at the gym. The first-hand account from a real person instinctively connects with the audience because it’s “one of those things that all of us have gone through but haven’t talked about enough”.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF_HqZrrx0c[/embed]\nThis ultimately gives them a leg up on the competition, as a sense of empathy often goes a long way when it comes to influencing a consumer\u0026rsquo;s preferences. The Takeaway: Add a little humor into your marketing messages. Although it can be tough to pull off, it can lower the barrier between you and your audience and establish a sense of relatability.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/why-should-brands-invest-in-video-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn today\u0026rsquo;s technology-first world, where information is readily accessible and attention spans continue to dwindle, brands everywhere are finding new, innovative ways to communicate with their customers.  You don’t have to dig deep to figure out why video has emerged as the dominant force in the digital marketing universe. For example, including an explanatory video on your website\u0026rsquo;s landing pages can increase \u003ca href=\"https://blog.depositphotos.com/2017-video-marketing-stats-why-you-need-to-start-using-video-infographic.html\"\u003econversion rates by more than 80 percent\u003c/a\u003e, and just by mentioning the word “video” in your subject line improves email \u003ca href=\"https://blog.depositphotos.com/2017-video-marketing-stats-why-you-need-to-start-using-video-infographic.html\"\u003eopen rates by almost 19 percent\u003c/a\u003e. Lastly, \u003ca href=\"https://blog.depositphotos.com/2017-video-marketing-stats-why-you-need-to-start-using-video-infographic.html\"\u003e90 percent of customers\u003c/a\u003e agree that videos significantly impact their purchasing decisions.Simply put, video, when equipped with eye-catching visuals and a compelling narrative, provides the perfect medium for introducing your brand, displaying individual products and/or driving sales.As we close in on the next decade, approximately \u003ca href=\"https://www.vidyard.com/business-video-benchmarks/\"\u003e86% of marketers\u003c/a\u003e are actively using video to promote, sell, and exhibit their products/services. The market is rife with advanced video tools and formats that continue to reinforce video as an increasingly powerful, engaging medium to communicate with your target demographic.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why should brands invest in video advertising?"},{"content":"Founded in 1958, Visa is an American multinational finance company that facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards, gift cards, and debit cards.With operations across six continents, Visa processed 100 billion transactions during 2014 with a total volume of $6.8 trillion, according to a 2015 Nilsen report. Let\u0026rsquo;s take a closer look at their advertising strategy: 2006: ‘Life Takes VISA’ After 20 years, VISA replaced their well-known tagline—\u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s everywhere you want to be\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;Life takes Visa\u0026rdquo;—as a part of their latest advertising campaign that was announced during the Winter Olympics. \u0026ldquo;We moved away from just being a consumer credit card long ago, but the brand hasn\u0026rsquo;t kept up with that,\u0026rdquo; Susanne Lyons, Visa\u0026rsquo;s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), explained to WSJ. “ Life Takes Visa reinforces our brand promise to deliver innovative products and services that can be used anytime, anywhere and that empower Visa cardholders to experience life and business their way and on their terms,” she added.\n[embed]https://vimeo.com/146181332[/embed]\nInstead of encouraging people to spend more, the creative messaging focussed more on using Visa for things that are important to on a day-to-day basis. Whether you’re bowling with friends, planning a wedding, or taking dance lessons—VISA’s universally accepted, convenient payment method ensures that you’re financially ready for anything, anywhere. 2009: ‘More people go with VISA’ In order to consolidate their marketing efforts (after their historic IPO announcement), including global creative advertising and media buying, the company launched the “More people go with Visa” (or the “Go” campaign) to highlight the value of using a VISA card over making cash or cheque transactions. The TV commercials (that aired during the “American Idol” on FOX) explore the ways VISA can help people “seize the day” by empowering them to capitalize on the new possibilities, as and when they present themselves. For example, one of the adsfeatures a father-daughter duo bonding over a seemingly ordinary day at the Aquarium. In the end, VISA asks a simple question, “When was the last time you went to the Aquarium with your daughter?“ in an attempt to encourage the viewer to “experience the beauty of every day” and leave the rest to VISA.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0JilkkZU2s[/embed]\n\u0026ldquo;One of the wonderful things about \u0026lsquo;More people go with Visa\u0026rsquo; is it\u0026rsquo;s a universal truth,\u0026quot;said Kevin Burke, Visa\u0026rsquo;s head of global consumer marketing. \u0026ldquo;In some respects, it\u0026rsquo;s just a new, fresh articulation of the attributes at the core of our brand \u0026ndash; universal acceptance, convenience, and security. \u0026hellip; And \u0026lsquo;go\u0026rsquo; is a universal word (that is) understood internationally.\u0026rdquo; The company also created a microsite for cardholders to share recommendations, and merchant offers on different experi­ences that are payable through VISA. \u0026ldquo;This is not about getting people to spend more,\u0026quot;Burke reiterated, \u0026ldquo;We\u0026rsquo;re really looking at how consumers are living their everyday lives \u0026hellip; and how we can get them to convert cash and check transactions to electronic payments.\u0026ldquo;Additionally, they also launched two types of rich-media ban­ner ads containing:\nLive video feeds of customers using their VISA cards across six major international cities (including, Ho Chi Minh City, NYC and Buenos Aires). Google Maps functionality that’d show local merchant recommendations based on user preferences. 2019: ‘Money is Changing’ In a previous study, VISA found that most millennials women didn’t feel confident enough to negotiate for higher pay — in fact, 60 percent of them feel awkward asking their own friends to pay them back. For their latest advertising campaign, the company turned the mic over to women to understand how they think, feel and act when it comes to money.“Meeting the needs of millennial women has become a strategic imperative for us, so we’re working really hard to close gaps,” explained Mary Ann Reilly, senior VP and head of North American marketing for Visa, “We are starting this conversation with women. Not to speak at them. But speak with them. We are having conversations around key themes of money: everything from dating, to friends, to work, self, and family. And we are going to the places where these women are already having these conversations—online and on social media.” Based on their findings from live polling and social listening, they came up with How I Changed It— the company’s first initiative under the Money is Changing campaign — that features real women detailing their approach to money, and how they’re forging a change to make better financial decisions. For example, in the following video, actress and musician Soko, talks about her personal experience with gender pay gap at work. When a male counterpart on a project she was leading was offered $30,000 more than her, she had to speak up — a crucial piece of advice she offers to young women in business — and even “threaten to leave” to secure fair compensation.\n[embed]https://youtu.be/Ay1J6QJlbMk[/embed]\nHere’s a similar story from Mel Jones, a multi-talented producer, writer, and director, who implores women to “have honest conversations” and “just ask for what they want” when negotiating for a professional opportunity.\n[embed]https://youtu.be/3OfGZ5i4Qv0[/embed]\n“We\u0026rsquo;re creating a content series that takes the ‘Money is Changing’ tagline and becomes ‘How I Changed It’ – talking to women who have made a difference and have been able to overcome challenges they\u0026rsquo;ve had around money in the past,” Reilly told The Drum, “We\u0026rsquo;re using some of these small business owners as part of that content series.”As a follow up to Money is Changing, Visa also announced the launch of She’s Next, a global initiative to support women-owned small businesses across the globe through shared technologies, research, and experience. As a starting point, the company partnered with Square and Yelp, amongst other brands, to equip women entrepreneurs with the necessary tools to fuel business growth. In an interview with PYMNTS, David Simon, the senior VP and global head of small / medium enterprise business at Visa, discussed the mentoring aspects of the program, while also highlighting how there’s simply “not enough conversation” around the specific set of challenges that women entrepreneurs face in today’s competitive industrial landscape.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s take a look at their overall advertising strategy:\nAd spend \u0026amp; networks: In the last 6 months, Visa has spent $11.4M on online promotion of their brand, with the majority going towards Youtube ($9.5M), Direct Buy ($1.5M), and Google ($328.2K). By comparison, MasterCard, their direct competitor, also has a similar budgeting strategy, as they, too, rely on Youtube ($752.9K), Direct Buy ($725.2K), and Google ($8.2K) for most of their advertising needs.\nAlmost 84 percent of their ads are video, whereas, 13 percent are direct, and 3 percent are programmatic.Considering that video as the type of content is likely to generate more organic traffic, revenue, and overall ROI, it comes as no surprise that today, 87% of online marketers actively use videos as a marketing tool to achieve their conversion goals. In fact, according to Cisco, “online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2022”.For viewers, videos are the easiest way to learn more about a brand’s offerings, which explains why 6 out of 10 people prefer watching an online video over good ol’ fashioned television. So, what’s the best way to attract potential customers from your target demographic using video content? Hint: There’s a reason Visa, Mastercard, and countless of other industry giants advertise primarily on Youtube, Google’s in-house, video-sharing/streaming platform. Over 1 billion hours of video is watched on Youtube every day, mostly because, 65 percent of people habitually use YouTube when they need help solving a problem. Whether you’re renovating your house or looking to assemble your new IKEA table, about one-third of the internet (1.9 billion people) turn to Youtube for answers. By simply associating your video content with specific emotional triggers, brands are able to engage with a wider audience and accelerate their decision-making process. Visa’s overall strategy of running their video ads on Youtube, alongside prime-time TV spots, is a testament to the proven power of video content and Youtube as a successful advertising platform. Publishers In the last one year, Visa has advertised on Youtube ($9.5M), Go ($640.4K), Bustle ($421.4K), SpanishDict ($389.2K), and AZLyrics ($212.6K). In the last six months, they\u0026rsquo;ve replaced SpanishDict and AZLyrics with TripAdvisor ($161.4K) and NFL ($65.1K).\nOn Youtube, their ads appear on videos that are either trending or belong to channels that have a large subscriber base. For example, they spent $1.3M advertising on this video with 745,845,339 views on a channel that reviews kids’ toys. While the video and the channel are not directly relevant to Visa as a brand, the channel’s 35M subscribers guarantee that the video will be watched by a substantial number of people—including the ones who might be interested in what Visa has to offer.Similarly, another video posted by the same channel that Visa spent $467.9K has been watched 357,978,158 times. Even with other publishers, Visa’s ad placement is completely arbitrary—for example, landing pages that, one can only assume, are visited the most by the general masses. On Bustle and Go, their ads appear on articles about relationships, culinary delicacies, politics, technology, celebrity news, and mental health. Creatives: Seventy-eight percent of Visa’s ads are videos, whereas, 17 percent are images, 5 percent are HTML5, and less than one percent are text-only.\nAll of Visa’s video campaigns are characterized by exceptional storytelling, agile content creation, and catchy taglines that ultimately resonate well with their target audience. Instead of heavily pitching their product/service from the get-go, the company attempts to emotionally connect with the people by introducing them to a relatable everyday scenario that can be simplified with VISA. The duration of these ads is usually between 10 to 45 seconds—short enough to keep the viewer engaged, and long enough to convey the deliver the exact marketing message that’d positively contribute to the purchasing intent of potential customers. Side note: According to Google, ads shorter than 15 seconds are becoming increasingly popular as they successfully capture the attention of mobile users. Given that 75 percent of all videos are played on mobile devices, more and more brands are experimenting with shorter videos to improve their reach, reinforce their message, and curb the overall campaign costs. As a rule of thumb, you should consider “ three simple, impactful use cases for orchestrating your campaign story” and running an effective video campaign:\nTease: Pitch the idea in less than 6 seconds to intrigue your audience. Amplify: Run both short and long-form ads simultaneously to ensure maximum impact and reach. Echo: Remarket your ads to spur immediate action. Landing pages: Visa has dedicated, campaign-specific landing pages to accelerate the whole process of converting visits into sales. For example, one of their most recent campaigns is about contactless cards that allow users to pay with a single tap at merchant facilities like Starbucks, KFC, Whole Foods, CVS Pharmacy, and Costco among others. All their ads under this particular campaign direct the users to the following landing page on Visa’s website that details the many benefits of contactless cards:Using an explanatory video lets Visa walk a prospect through using a product or service, explain intricate nuances of the product much faster and more effectively than text could, and even illustrate the benefits of using your product or service in a more attractive, engaging way.According to a study by Eye View Digital, including a video on your landing page can increase conversions by a staggering 86 percent. Especially for companies that offer a complex product, like Visa, video landing pages are an excellent way to cover and explain a lot of information in a short period of time.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/inside-visas-11-4m-ad-spend-how-one-of-the-largest-finance-mncs-in-the-world-is-disrupting-the-e-payments-market/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFounded in 1958, Visa is an American multinational finance company that facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards, gift cards, and debit cards.With operations across six continents, Visa processed 100 billion transactions during 2014 with a total volume of $6.8 trillion, according to a 2015 Nilsen report. Let\u0026rsquo;s take a closer look at their advertising strategy: \u003cstrong\u003e2006: ‘Life Takes VISA’\u003c/strong\u003e After 20 years, VISA replaced their well-known tagline—\u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s everywhere you want to be\u0026rdquo; with \u0026ldquo;Life takes Visa\u0026rdquo;—as a part of their latest advertising campaign that was announced during the Winter Olympics. \u0026ldquo;We moved away from just being a consumer credit card long ago, but the brand hasn\u0026rsquo;t kept up with that,\u0026rdquo; Susanne Lyons, Visa\u0026rsquo;s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113932414556367223\"\u003eexplained to WSJ\u003c/a\u003e. “ \u003cem\u003eLife Takes Visa\u003c/em\u003e reinforces our brand promise to deliver innovative products and services that can be used anytime, anywhere and that empower Visa cardholders to experience life and business their way and on their terms,” \u003ca href=\"https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20060207005274/en/Visa-Launches-Life-Takes-Visa-New-Brand\"\u003eshe added.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Inside VISA's $11.4M ad spend: How one of the largest finance MNCs in the world is disrupting the e-payments market.."},{"content":"Founded in 2006, Zillow is a real estate marketplace created by Spencer Rascoff (Cofounder of Hotwire), and former Microsoft executives + founders of Expedia—Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink. Apart from providing the estimated value of homes across the United States, the platform also offers several other features including price comparison of homes in and around a certain area; price change of a property within a given time frame (from one, to five, or even 10 years), a \u0026ldquo;Make Me Move\u0026rdquo; price information (which is an informal way to pre-market a house); aerial photographs as opposed to satellite imagery; credit check and eviction history report; and more. In September’11, Zillow had over 24 million unique visitors, representing a year-on-year growth of 103 percent. Out of these users, the company claimed that more than three-quarters were looking to buy or sell real estate in the next two years. Currently, 2 million real estate professionals are listed on Zillow, and 186 homes are viewed on mobile every second. In cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Boston, 90 percent of all the existing homes have been viewed. In 2014, Zillow bought Trulia, a long-time competitor, for $3.5 billion.The company reportedly generated a revenue of $1.3 billion in 2018 (Q1 2019: $454.1 million) and currently operates out of 10 office locations across 2 countries (Canada + United States).Let’s take a look at some of their most prominent advertising campaigns over the years: 2013-2016: “Find Your Way Home” For the first seven years, Zillow didn\u0026rsquo;t have a dedicated advertising budget, and relied primarily on the many USPs of their product to attract prospective customers. According to Rascoff—something that he also repeatedly told the company’s investors—Zillow, despite being the “largest web and mobile player in their category” had little to no brand awareness. “88 percent of Americans can\u0026rsquo;t come up with Zillow when asked to name a real-estate-related website,” he said. As a result, the company decided to double their advertising budget (a $10M to $15M increase) and started testing out some TV ads before announcing their Find Your Way Home campaign. After raising $147 million in IPO (September’12), Zillow partnered up with Deutsch (an LA-based marketing agency that’s worked with the likes of Taco Bell, Volkswagen, and Dr. Pepper) to launch a nation-wide advertising campaign that’d showcase the diversity of homebuyers in the modern times and the unique set of challenges that they face on the daily. Featuring relatable use-cases like a millennial buying his first home, a young family turning over a new leaf, and a multi-generation household searching for a new living space, the company ran 60, 30 and 15-second TV segments across popular cable networks.\nFind Your Way Home speaks directly to Zillow’s target audience (“You\u0026rsquo;re not just looking for a house. You\u0026rsquo;re looking for a place for your life to happen.”), and strategically incorporates advertising elements that they’re the most responsive to.\u0026ldquo;We talk with hundreds of thousands of people each year to understand their needs, frustrations, and desires when it comes to finding a home so that we can build products to help them,\u0026rdquo; explained Jeremy Wacksman, Zillow’s CMO, \u0026ldquo;We hear so many incredible personal stories about the different paths people take to homeownership. We were inspired to bring the modern home shopping story to life with this campaign.\n[embed]https://www.facebook.com/Zillow/videos/10155272686468594/[/embed]\nFinally, the campaign also had a radio, print, and digital outreach that uses socially-driven brand storytelling to convey a simple message: With Zillow, you can overcome common real estate obstacles to find a home where you can truly thrive in. Since the launch of Find Your Way Home, the company has seen their brand awareness increase from a measly 9 percent to a remarkable 40 percent—making Zillow the most widely known brand in real estate category. 2016: “Home” Featuring real people—a single dad raising four daughters, a doting mother who considers the kitchen to be the focal point of her living space, a young man who’s the first person in his entire family to invest in real estate—the campaign highlights personal stories of “ how home is uniquely individual to everyone”.\n\u0026ldquo;As we develop features and tools for Zillow, we talk with hundreds of thousands of people every year to understand their challenges, frustrations, hopes, and dreams when it comes to finding a home,\u0026rdquo; explained Jeremy Wacksman, Zillow CMO. \u0026ldquo;What we ended up hearing were these deeply personal, yet universally relatable ways people turn a house into their home, and that\u0026rsquo;s what inspired this campaign.\u0026ldquo;The 15 and 30-second formats were created by Academy Award-winning documentary director Errol Morris, who spoke to hundreds of people from across the country and selected the final twelve stories that aired on TV. 2019: “Finding Home in America” in collaboration with ATTN: Zillow teamed up with ATTN:, the California-based media company, to create a docu-series that uses live-action footage to explore how social causes such as domestic violence, LGBTQ discrimination, and poverty can lead to housing insecurity. Hosted by Carri Twigg, former Associate Director (Office of Public Engagement) at the White House, Finding Home in America sheds light on the challenges faced by a certain subsection of the society while house-hunting. “[The campaign] was driven a lot by our employees wanting us, the company, to get more engaged in the community,” clarified Racquel Russell, Zillow\u0026rsquo;s VP of Government Relations and Public Affairs.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4BmInioGlg[/embed]\nThe episodic nature of the content—that’s known to “help brands shorten sales cycles, build visibility, and stay resource-effective”—is both entertaining and educational, thereby, establishing Zillow as a “thought leader”in the real estate space. For example, the campaign’s very first chapter sheds light on the LGBTQ housing discrimination that’s rampant across the country, through the eyes of a same-sex couple who were prohibited from purchasing a house in Colorado. The compelling eight-minute segment outlines the legal shortcomings of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and emphasizes the necessity for new federal legislation, like the Equality Act, to prevent housing discrimination on gender and sexual identity.“Breaking through with video content today requires making a real connection with your audience,” explained Brad Haugen, ATTN:’s President. “Together with Zillow, we have created a moving, solutions-oriented narrative about how fundamental having a home is to the human experience.”With Finding Home in America, Zillow strategically demonstrated its commitment to corporate social responsibility by subsequently forming alliances with local non-profits, and employee-led volunteer projects to impress their target demographic. As an add-on, the company also introduced an easily accessible, deeply informative, original economic research section for their tough-to-impress target demographic—the millennials. From illustrating how student loan debt can influence an individual\u0026rsquo;s home buying prospects to how much a single dollar bill will get you in the current real estate market, Zillow created easy-to-follow graphics that are an excellent resource for the GenY-ers who\u0026rsquo;re ready-to-invest in a home.\nSource: Zillow\nAd spend and networks: In the last 6 months, Zillow has spent a whopping $15.8M on online promotion of their brand, with the majority being dedicated to Google ($11.6M), Direct Buy ($1.9M), and TribalFusion ($1.4M). Additionally, they’ve dedicated a reasonable chunk of their budget to YouTube ($940.1K) and TheTradeDesk ($190.9K), as well. By comparison, Realtor.com—with a relatively modest ad spend of $3.1M, also invests prominently in Direct Buy ($1.8M) and Google ($522.4K), however, they prefer Taboola ($728.2K) as opposed to TribalFusion, for their targeted content distribution needs.\nOut of their total ad spend, 82 percent of their ads are programmatic—most of which run on desktop, 12 percent are direct and 6 percent are video. Considering that 80 percent of the advertising process is expected to be automated by 2022, more and more companies are scaling their in-house capabilities to buy or sell advertising programmatically. As a result, US advertisers will be spending approximately $60 billion on programmatic advertising. Marketers everywhere are relying more and more on programmatic buying to run highly-effective, customer-centric, and actionable ad campaigns at a large scale. Programmatic offers several data-driven features to connect with their target demographic to ensure that you only pay for user impressions that match your customer persona. As a result, brands have access to a wider ad inventory and contextual placement options that demonstrate a greater potential for measurable ROI. Not to mention, programmatic ad-buying can be 30% less-time consuming for publishers and nearly 60% for publishers, a BCG’s study found By using programmatic, Zillow no longer has to create insertion orders, re-enter data manually, generate confirmation reports, chase down payments or wait around for documents to be handed from one team to another. From an online advertising standpoint, they’re able to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right audience—which ultimately, eliminates the possibility of their money going towards any campaign that doesn’t yield significant results. Publishers: Four of Zillow’s top publishers have remained the same for the past year —Youtube ($939.9K), City-Data ($531.3K), Cool Math Games ($525.7K) and Topix ($319.7K). In the last 6 months, they’ve moved away from Wikia and currently advertise with Dictionary.com ($324.4K) instead.On City-Data, a social networking and information platform that presents data (such as, real estate, crime stats, weather, sex offenders, schools, etc.) pertaining to U.S. cities, Zillow advertises on landing pages specific to a certain neighborhood or town. For example, they spent $3.2K to advertise on a page about Amity Fields (North Carolina). By advertising on City-Data, the company is successfully tapping into the publisher’s audience—which, in this case, happens to be heavily-interested in real-estate. It’s clear that Zillow is relying on contextual targeting—where your ads are shown only to users that are relevant to your business—to drive low-cost conversions.\nOn Youtube, their ads appear on videos that are either trending or belong to channels that have a large subscriber base. For example, they spent $45.9K advertising on this video with 593,076,989 views on a channel that primarily posts nursery rhymes for kids. While the video and the channel are not directly relevant to Zillow as a brand, the channel’s 60M subscribers guarantee that the video will be watched by a substantial number of people—including the ones who might be interested in what Zillow has to offer. Similarly, another video posted by the same channel that Zillow spent $41.2K has been viewed 1,356,240,737 times.Overall, Zillow’s choice in publishers comes across as both calculated (in the case of City-Data) and experimental (in the case of Youtube). In short, they seem to be focussed on targeting users across the entirety of their sales funnel—a strategy that most brands we’ve covered in the past tend to overlook. For example, their advertisements on City-Data are most likely viewed by people in the consideration or the decision-making stage, whereas, on Youtube, their primary audience is expected to be in the awareness stage. Creatives: Fifty percent of Zillow’s ads are HTML5, whereas, 41 percent are images, 5 percent are videos, 4 percent are text/image and less than 1 percent are text-only.\nSince we’ve already discussed in great detail how Zillow appeals to customers in their videos, let’s quickly evaluate their standard ad creatives, as well. Unlike Zillow, most brands tend to include product USPs, and/or ongoing lucrative discounts in their creatives, which brings us to the obvious question: What could possibly be Zillow’s end-game here? What exactly are they trying to achieve by designing creatives with a one-sentence copy and a CTA?\nResearch shows that people make up their minds about brands (or even people) within the first 90 seconds of their initial interaction. Interestingly, nearly 60 to 90 percent of their assessment is influenced by color alone. In fact, people are more likely to recall the visual identity (as opposed to the name) of your brand, according to a University of Iowa study. Coming back, what’s the first thing that stands out to you in Zillow’s ad creatives? The vibrant blue background, perhaps? Or the company logo that’s simple in form, but, most importantly, very distinctive? Eventually, the Z in a blue setting becomes a signature visual identity that an average user starts associating with Zillow—which is exactly what we think the company is going for. By creating ads that focus less on content and more on the visual identity of the brand, Zillow has chosen to eliminate all distractions and draw attention to what’s important. Landing pages: Most, if not all, of Zillow’s ads, redirect the users to the company’s homepage with a singular search box that prompts the user to enter the general location (neighborhood, city, area, wtc.) of where they want to buy a house in. With just one click, you get access to all the information you need about the houses available for sale/rent in your selected location: price, type, maps, on-site images, and more—all without having to sign up. In fact, you’re only prompted to provide your contact information if you want to save your search criteria, and/or want to contact a real estate agent regarding a property you’re interested in. The straightforward approach of providing only one search box to present additional content (sources, formats, and other logical differentiators) to your users is clearly working out for Zillow.\nMaintaining the continuity from their ad creatives, Zillow’s homepage has a similar tagline (“Reimagine Home”) and visual identity (different shades of blue).\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/reimagine-home-how-zillows-using-their-15-8m-ad-spend-to-dominate-online-real-estate-and-fuel-business-growth/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFounded in 2006, Zillow is a real estate marketplace created by Spencer Rascoff (Cofounder of \u003ca href=\"https://www.hotwire.com/\"\u003eHotwire\u003c/a\u003e),  and former Microsoft executives + founders of Expedia—Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink. Apart from providing the estimated value of homes across the United States, the platform also offers several other features including price comparison of homes in and around a certain area; price change of a property within a given time frame (from one, to five, or even 10 years), a \u0026ldquo;Make Me Move\u0026rdquo; price information (which is an informal way to pre-market a house); aerial photographs as opposed to satellite imagery; credit check and eviction history report; and more. In September’11, \u003ca href=\"https://s1.q4cdn.com/623891520/files/doc_news/archive/Zillow-Group-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2018-Results.pdf\"\u003eZillow had over 24 million unique visitors\u003c/a\u003e, representing a year-on-year growth of 103 percent. Out of these users, the company claimed that more than three-quarters were looking to buy or sell real estate in the next two years. Currently, 2 million real estate professionals are listed on Zillow, and 186 homes are viewed on mobile every second. In cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Boston, 90 percent of all the existing homes have been viewed. In 2014, Zillow bought Trulia, a long-time competitor, for $3.5 billion.The company reportedly generated a revenue of $1.3 billion in 2018 (Q1 2019: $454.1 million) and currently operates out of 10 office locations across 2 countries (Canada + United States).Let’s take a look at some of their most prominent advertising campaigns over the years: \u003cstrong\u003e2013-2016: “Find Your Way Home”\u003c/strong\u003e For the first seven years, Zillow didn\u0026rsquo;t have a dedicated advertising budget, and relied primarily on the many USPs of their product to attract prospective customers. \u003ca href=\"https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/06/17/zillow-kicks-off-its-first-ad-campaign/\"\u003eAccording to Rascoff\u003c/a\u003e—something that he also repeatedly told the company’s investors—Zillow, despite being the “largest web and mobile player in their category” had little to no brand awareness. “88 percent of Americans can\u0026rsquo;t come up with Zillow when asked to name a real-estate-related website,” he said. As a result, the company decided to double their advertising budget (a $10M to $15M increase) and started testing out some TV ads before announcing their \u003cem\u003eFind Your Way Home\u003c/em\u003e campaign. After raising $147 million in IPO (September’12), Zillow partnered up with Deutsch (an LA-based marketing agency that’s worked with the likes of Taco Bell, Volkswagen, and Dr. Pepper) to launch a nation-wide advertising campaign that’d showcase the diversity of homebuyers in the modern times and the unique set of challenges that they face on the daily. Featuring \u003cem\u003erelatable\u003c/em\u003e use-cases like a millennial buying his first home, a young family turning over a new leaf, and a multi-generation household searching for a new living space, the company ran 60, 30 and 15-second TV segments across popular cable networks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Reimagine Home: How Zillow's using their $15.8M ad spend to dominate online real estate and fuel business growth."},{"content":"Founded in October 2002 by Brent Oxley (then a student at Florida Atlantic University), HostGator is a Texas-based provider of shared, reseller, virtual private server, and dedicated web hosting. By 2006, HostGator had crossed 200,000 registered domains and opened their first international office in Ontario, Canada.In 2008, HostGator reached 100,000 customers and started offering unlimited space and bandwidth as part of all hosting packages. Just a year later, they doubled their customer-base and launched toll-free numbers for customers who opted for business-level hosting packages at no additional cost. At the same time, Inc. Magazine rated HostGator as one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States.HostGator was sold to Endurance International Group (EIG) for $299.8 million in 2012. Currently, the company has 1000 employees, and a global reach with localized, in-language offerings for Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Indian, Singaporean, Chilean, Colombian, African, Indonesian and Mexican customersLet’s take a closer look at their advertising strategy: Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last 6 months, HostGator has spent $919.2K on online advertising, out of which, the majority went towards Google ($766.1K), and Direct Buy ($142.5K).\nGiven that 84% of Hostgator’s ads are programmatic, and the remaining 16% are direct, we can safely assume that the company prefers automating the negotiation and sales of the ads space for their paid campaigns—wherein, all crucial parameters like impression tracking, payments, and billings are handled by a third-party software/platform (for example, Ads Manager, in the case of Google). By choosing a programmatic approach to ad buying, HostGator is able to save time, avoid any possible discrepancies related to creative management, and ultimately, optimize their overall campaign delivery. If you’re using the Google Ads Manager for programmatic advertising, you can opt for either of the following options:\n_Programmatic Guaranteed:_You and the buyer decide on the cost (and other general parameters) for an ad inventory that is booked (guaranteed) specifically for that buyer. Preferred Deal: You and the buyer agree on the cost (and other general parameters) for an ad inventory that the buyers can optionally choose to place bids on. The buyer is offered a preferred opportunity to reserve the inventory at the negotiated price. In an event, where the buyer does not make a reservation, the inventory becomes accessible to other interested parties in the Open Auction. Remember, preferred deals are not guaranteed because the negotiated ad inventory is not reserved for the buyers (unlike in Programmatic Guaranteed) and the buyers are under no obligation to reserve the negotiated ad inventory. Despite the promising developments in the native advertising space in recent years, HostGator has little to no ad spend going towards the same—which comes across as an unconventional, but not a surprising move. While most brands have been fairly proactive in terms of adopting native ads to promote their products/services, a Contently report also found that marketers are often skeptical of going all out on native advertising because an average consumer doesn’t trust, or feels deceived by an ad that’s trying too hard to not look like an ad.\nOverall, HostGator’s decision to stick with other forms of advertising seems like a strategic move that’s been working for them. Publishers Four (out of five) of HostGator’s top publishers have remained the same for the past year — Dictionary.com ($54K), Reddit ($42.5), Merriam-Webster ($27.9K), and Thesaurus ($34.5K). In the last 6 months, they’ve moved away from YourDictionary and currently advertise with CoolMathGames($20K), instead.\nMost of their money goes towards ensuring that the ads appear on the homepage of the aforementioned publishers. Apart from that, there isn’t a specific placement pattern that HostGator adheres to, as their ads appear on arbitrary landing pages on all platforms. For example, on Dictionary.com, the company spent approximately $1.7K to advertise on pages that show the definition of the terms ECR, and neurogenic. On Reddit, their ads have appeared on communities related to Asian beauty, and gaming, among others.\nOverall, it’s safe to conclude that HostGator prefers advertising with publishers that are raking in a significant number of visitors every month, so their campaigns are seen by as many people as possible. They’re not putting much effort towards reaching the right people by using advanced targeting parameters like a lot of brands—and that seems to be working out for them at the moment. Creatives Apart from images (97%), HostGator’s ad creatives are 3% text/image-based, with a few videos, text-only, and HTML5 ads sparsely thrown in.\nBased on their most commonly-run ads, here’s what we think makes HostGator\u0026rsquo;s campaigns successful:\nData-driven: Most businesses (both B2B and B2C) today are ready to do practically anything to get potential customers to notice and click on their ads, when oftentimes, all they really need to do is make content consumption easier for you by simply getting straight to the point. The best way to do this is by incorporating credible numbers or statistics in your creatives, preferably in the headlines.\nMost people have a general idea of the amount of money they’re comfortable spending for something before they even consider clicking on an ad, therefore, by including numbers, you’re only accelerating their decision-making process..\nVariable Discounts: Offering good deals, and price reductions are an excellent way to attract customers, however, HostGator takes it a notch higher by ensuring versatility in their ongoing discounts. For example, in one ad they’re providing “25% off Wordpress hosting” and in another, they have “Select domains [available] only at $5.99”. By mixing things up, they strategically avoid repetition, ensuring that the customers are always on alert for whatever the next big deal the company has to offer.\nFocus on USPs: In today’s competitive landscape, people are less interested in knowing how amazing your product/service is, and more inclined to understand exactly how it can make their lives easier. In almost all their ads, HostGator highlights at least one of their primary USPs—”1-Click Installer”, “ Free Sitebuilder” or “Website Hosting”, for example.\nLanding Pages: Almost all of HostGator’s campaigns redirect to their homepage, where the copy instantly tells the customer that the web hosting services offered by the company are powerful, easy and affordable.\nIn an attempt to impress a customer, a lot of brands tend to overload them with information, by using too many CTAs, and/or incorporate several navigation locations that have a negative impact on usability. HostGator not only embraces brevity with open arms, but also limits their navigation to the top of the page, and includes only the most important links—all of which contribute greatly towards maximizing conversions. Additionally, the homepage also offers a live chat option that customers can use to get an immediate response to any queries they’ve related to HostGator’s offerings. Sure, they can always drop an email, call a toll-free number or fill out a contact form during the decision-making process, however, it\u0026rsquo;s important to remember that the customer’s likelihood to convert will most likely decrease with every passing second that a business takes to respond. An easily accessible, aptly-positioned, live chat fills that void, by offering an immediate line of communication to customers. Conclusion:Even though the vast majority of the businesses are hesitant to test waters with programmatic, HostGator is eagerly reaping the benefits that the new-age advertising approach has to offer—such as increased transparency, real-time measurement, better targeting capabilities, and increased audience reach.The company has discovered the exact elements that make for a successful campaign—their publishers, for example, that haven’t changed in the past year; their ad creatives that are consistently number-driven; and their homepage that features only one type of navigation.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/breaking-down-hostgators-919-2k-ad-spend-how-the-web-hosting-provider-is-using-strategically-crafted-campaigns-to-stand-out-from-their-competitors/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFounded in October 2002 by Brent Oxley (then a student at Florida Atlantic University), HostGator is a Texas-based provider of shared, reseller, virtual private server, and dedicated web hosting. By 2006, HostGator had crossed 200,000 registered domains and opened their first international office in Ontario, Canada.In 2008, HostGator reached 100,000 customers and started offering \u003cem\u003eunlimited\u003c/em\u003e space and bandwidth as part of all hosting packages. Just a year later, they doubled their customer-base and launched toll-free numbers for customers who opted for business-level hosting packages at no additional cost. At the same time, Inc. Magazine rated HostGator as one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States.HostGator was sold to Endurance International Group (EIG) for $299.8 million in 2012. Currently, the company has 1000 employees, and a global reach with localized, in-language offerings for Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Indian, Singaporean, Chilean, Colombian, African, Indonesian and Mexican customersLet’s take a closer look at their advertising strategy: \u003cstrong\u003eAd Spend and Ad Networks\u003c/strong\u003e In the last 6 months, HostGator has spent $919.2K on online advertising, out of which, the majority went towards Google ($766.1K), and Direct Buy ($142.5K).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Breaking down HostGator's $919.2K ad spend: How the web-hosting provider is using strategically-crafted campaigns to stand out from their competitors."},{"content":"Launched in 2004 by independent filmmakers—Jake Lodwick and Zack Klein—who wanted to share their professional/personal work online, Vimeo is an ad-free, video-distribution platform that caters primarily to a like-minded creative community. By Dec’13, Vimeo was representing 0.11% of the total Internet bandwidth with more than 22 million registered users, and 100 million unique visitors per month. Notable comedians like Kristen Schaal, \u0026ldquo;Weird Al\u0026rdquo; Yankovic and Reggie Watts have been actively using Vimeo to promote their content, alongside musicians like Kanye West, Nine Inch Nails, and Britney Spears. What\u0026rsquo;s more? Even Barack Obama, the former president of the USA, broadcasts his HD transmissions on the platform. According to Harris Beber, Vimeo’s CMO, the company clocked in a handsome revenue of $160 million in 2018, with a year-on-year growth of 54 percent. By comparison, YouTube, the Google-owned, video-sharing giant, continues to remain silent on their revenue numbers, however, analysts have projected that the platform generated $15 billion in sales the same year. Unlike Vimeo, YouTube doesn’t offer a subscription model to their customers, and instead, allows them to showcase their content on their platform at no charge—which is one of the biggest reasons why it has experienced consistent, monumental growth in the last few years.Regardless, Vimeo is currently home to 90 million creators (and 240 million monthly active users) who use the platform for selling their products/services, discovering potential sponsors, and receiving donations from their viewers via Patreon. The company also acquired VHX, Livestream, and Magisto in recent years to take their subscription-driven, high-definition, video creation platform to the next level. Considering that video content will command 80% of all web traffic in 2019, Vimeo, despite being a smaller, more niche platform, caters to the unique needs of creators (including brands). Let’s take a quick peek into their previous and ongoing ad campaigns to understand how exactly they plan to stand out in the competitive landscape. 2015: The \u0026ldquo;Interrupted\u0026rdquo; campaign: In order to highlight their ad-free experience, Vimeo launched a video ad campaign featuring two partners using sign language to communicate with subtitles transcribing their exchange. A few seconds in, a bunch of pop-ups begin infiltrating the screen and make it difficult for the viewers to follow the subtitles. You cannot skip, or \u0026ldquo;x\u0026rdquo; out of these ads because they\u0026rsquo;re part of Vimeo\u0026rsquo;s whole promo to illustrate that intrusive ads are just pesky distractions that ruin the overall user experience.\n[embed]https://vimeo.com/134776130[/embed]\nBy employing a \u0026ldquo;self-aware\u0026rdquo; approach—that\u0026rsquo;s both bold and exhilarating, the ad elevates the basic narrative of the campaign by poking fun at themselves and including viewers as a part of the joke.\n2019: Business-shift and creator-focused ads: After being in business for over 15 years, Vimeo wanted to evolve and establish themselves as a video-streaming platform that prioritizes creators over viewers. “Many people still perceive Vimeo as a place to watch video,” Anjali Sud, CEO of Vimeo told WSJ, “We don’t compete with Netflix or YouTube for viewers. We are really instead focused on the people behind the camera.” As a result, the biggest challenge for the company was to find a super simple, sticky way to convey a simple message: Vimeo, as a brand, offers tools and services that are designed specifically to give your videos that extra ‘oomph’.\n[embed]https://vimeo.com/318563811[/embed]\n[embed]https://vimeo.com/318562769[/embed]\nMoreover, Vimeo used Youtube\u0026rsquo;s pre-roll spot to run their ad to emphasize their point even more. They start off all their ads with a little tongue-the-cheek disclaimer— “This is an ad before your video. Vimeo doesn’t have these,” to remind people about the ad-free experience they offer. Harris Beber, Vimeo’s CMO, also clarified that the campaign was meant to resonate with not just the creative community, but also to businesses looking to invest in video ads. “We’re building out our product offering so anyone⁠—from filmmaker to a local business to a fortune 100 brand⁠—can create high-quality video at scale,” he said, “Our biggest value is our biggest challenge: We offer so many tools and services to creators, across so many different use cases. That’s very difficult to convey in a world where you have three seconds to capture someone’s attention. We can’t speak to all of that in one campaign, so the simplicity of [this campaign] cuts through all that, no matter what your needs are.”By reaching out to a wider audience pool, the company managed to successfully move away from their current reputation of being a content creation platform to become widely recognized as an end-to-end software for video production, and distribution. In addition to the video ads, the campaign also incorporated digital, social, audio and OOH assets, that communicate the most valuable USPs that Vimeo has to offer in today’s competitive landscape⁠—for example, an ad-free, HD live-streaming experience. Overall, the campaign was able to deliver engaging, likable, and most importantly, informative ads across several channels (including the NYC subway!) that encouraged people to use Vimeo for taking their video content to the next level.Let’s take a closer look at their advertising strategy so far: Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last 6 months, Vimeo has spent a whopping $28M on online advertising, with the majority going towards Google ($22.8M) and Direct Buy ($4.4M). While the former is based on a real-time bidding system, where you (the advertiser) can decide on the maximum amount you’re willing to pay per click on your ad, the latter allows you to directly negotiate with a publisher (for example, ESPN or CNN) to purchase advertising space. Given their ad network preferences, it comes as no surprise that 84% of Vimeo\u0026rsquo;s ads are programmatic, whereas, only 16% of them are direct. Since the company shows no inclination towards investing in native ads, and recently released a large-scale video ad campaign, we can safely assume that they’re primarily using Google to buy ad space before, after and in the middle of YouTube videos. Publishers Three of Vimeo’s top publishers have remained the same for the past year — Dictionary.com ($3M), Merriam-Webster ($569.5K), and Wikihow ($290.2K). In the last 6 months, they’ve moved away from WebMD and freedictionary.com and currently advertise with Food.com ($390.5K) and AccuWeather($269.8K) instead. Most of their money goes towards ensuring that the ads appear on the homepage of the aforementioned publishers. Apart from that, there isn’t a specific placement pattern that Vimeo adheres to, as their ads appear on arbitrary landing pages on all platforms. For example, on Dictionary.com, the company spent approximately $110K to advertise on pages that show the definition of the terms confident, and kalakh; and the phrase, ‘I suppose so’. Overall, it’s safe to conclude that Vimeo prefers advertising with publishers that are raking in a significant number of visitors every month, so their campaigns are seen by as many people as possible. They’re not putting much effort towards reaching the right people by using advanced targeting parameters like a lot of brands—and that seems to be working out for them at the moment. Creatives: After partnering with Fig, an NYC-based agency, Vimeo unveiled a campaign featuring 14 videos that showcase people stuck in a variety of ridiculous (yet comedic!) situations⁠— waxing their backs or navigating through revolving doors⁠—that they most definitely need assistance with. Directed by Emmy Award-winning, Vimeo creator, Alex Prager, the videos are short (17 seconds), and end with a straightforward marketing message that emphasizes on how, “Vimeo can help⁠—but only with your videos.” Well-known for her cinematic, delicately-staged tableau, Prager was instructed to “make a large number of short-format, ‘quick hit’ films with few or no cuts” to maintain a strong visual point of view. After all, the primary objective of this campaign was to deliver simple stories that generate high-level brand awareness and establishes Vimeo as a platform that caters to creators.\n[embed]https://vimeo.com/318564416[/embed]\n[embed]https://vimeo.com/318564121[/embed]\nApart from video, Vimeo’s ad creatives are 52% HTML5, 46% images and; less than 2% are text and text/image. Let’s peep into their HTML5 ads: Pastels are not just easy on the eyes, but are associated with positive emotional connotations like \u0026ldquo;optimism, innocence, festivity, and delight\u0026rdquo;. The tongue-in-cheek copy is very on-brand with Vimeo’s other ads and is a welcome change from the cookie-cutter, hard-selling ad copies that can turn off potential customers, instead of engaging with them. While using a black CTA button isn’t usually recommended, since the color tends to blend in with the rest of the webpage in most cases, however, in Vimeo’s case, it stands out perfectly against the powder blue/green background. Landing page: Almost all of Vimeo’s recent campaigns (especially the video ads) redirect to their homepage, where the viewer is met with their current brand tagline (Vimeo can help*), alongside two CTAs that are visually prominent, and interactive (change their appearance slightly with a mouse hover) without being flashy. The ‘See plans’ CTA is meant for users that are ready to buy when they land on Vimeo’s homepage, however, some people like to test a platform and the features they offer before making a purchasing decision. For the latter, the ‘Join for free’ CTA is a great option based on their current needs. You can also see the ‘Join’ and ‘Upload’ CTA in the top navigation bar that opens up the same ‘Sign Up’ form. While some brands might not be very keen on the idea of having multiple CTAs on their homepage, an invespcro case study found that having more than one CTA can actually increase conversions by 20 percent. When you scroll further down their homepage, you’re met with interactive videos that demonstrate how customizable, brand-friendly, secure, and collaborative Vimeo actually is. In what can only be deemed as a rather smart move, the company doesn’t spend a lot of time elaborating on their features⁠. Instead, they simply use a sentence or two to outline all their USPs, introduce you to their paid-plan pertaining to every USP in as little words as possible (“Plans with custom players from $7”), and then throw in a ‘Compare plans’ CTA that encourages viewers to check out the pricing plan that aligns with their requirements. You can obviously click on ‘Learn More’ under every USP to get all the information you need about how Vimeo can help you as a content creator. Conclusion While Vimeo can simply never compete with Youtube in terms of numbers at the moment, the best part is that they aren\u0026rsquo;t even trying to. Instead, they\u0026rsquo;re more focused on introducing a profitable business model that works only for a specific, community-driven audience group. In short, they’ve successfully managed to make a dent in the uber-competitive, video-sharing landscape, without actually competing at all. As for their advertising strategy, their recent creator-centric campaigns hit the nail on the head by reminding potential users of the multitude of services Vimeo offers for creating, distribution, and optimization of video content. The \u0026lsquo;artsy\u0026rsquo;, ad-free alternative to Youtube has managed to consistently hit the home run by maintaining an eccentric, light-hearted voice (throughout their campaigns) that speaks directly to their target audience. Their hefty investment in video ads is an indication that the medium seems to be serving them well. On a similar note, they’ve undoubtedly narrowed down the advertising elements that work for them—their publishers, for example, that have more or less remained the same in the past year. Overall, Vimeo seems to be putting their money where their mouth is by delivering campaigns (albeit, sporadically) that are straight-forward, engaging and effective without being redundant and lackluster.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/inside-vimeos-28m-advertising-strategy-how-youtubes-artsy-ad-free-alternative-is-making-a-dent-in-the-video-sharing-landscape/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLaunched in 2004 by independent filmmakers—Jake Lodwick and Zack Klein—who wanted to share their professional/personal work online, Vimeo is an ad-free, video-distribution platform that caters primarily to a like-minded creative community. By Dec’13, Vimeo was representing 0.11% of the total Internet bandwidth with more than 22 million registered users, and 100 million unique visitors per month. Notable comedians like \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/kschaal\"\u003eKristen Schaal\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/weirdal\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;Weird Al\u0026rdquo; Yankovic\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/reggiewatts\"\u003eReggie Watts\u003c/a\u003e have been actively using Vimeo to promote their content, alongside musicians like \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/user260655\"\u003eKanye West\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/ninofficial\"\u003eNine Inch Nails\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/user40678327\"\u003eBritney Spears\u003c/a\u003e. What\u0026rsquo;s more? Even Barack Obama, the former president of the USA, \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/obamawhitehouse\"\u003ebroadcasts his HD transmissions\u003c/a\u003e on the platform. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Screenshot_20190904-211629__01.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Screenshot_20190904-211629__01.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/blog/post/everything-we-do-we-do-for-you-note-from-cmo/\"\u003eAccording to Harris Beber\u003c/a\u003e, Vimeo’s CMO, the company clocked in a handsome revenue of $160 million in 2018, with a year-on-year growth of 54 percent. By comparison, YouTube, the Google-owned, video-sharing giant, continues to remain silent on their revenue numbers, however, analysts have projected that the platform generated $15 billion in sales the same year. Unlike Vimeo, YouTube doesn’t offer a subscription model to their customers, and instead, allows them to showcase their content on their platform at no charge—which is one of the biggest reasons why it has experienced consistent, monumental growth in the last few years.Regardless, Vimeo is currently home to 90 million creators (and 240 million monthly active users) who use the platform for selling their products/services, discovering potential sponsors, and receiving donations from their viewers via Patreon. The company also acquired VHX, Livestream, and Magisto in recent years to take their subscription-driven, high-definition, video creation platform to the next level. Considering that video content will \u003ca href=\"https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/youtube-vs-vimeo\"\u003ecommand 80% of all web traffic in 2019\u003c/a\u003e, Vimeo, despite being a smaller, more niche platform, caters to the unique needs of creators (including brands). Let’s take a quick peek into their previous and ongoing ad campaigns to understand how exactly they plan to stand out in the competitive landscape. \u003cstrong\u003e2015: The\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u0026ldquo;Interrupted\u0026rdquo; campaign:\u003c/strong\u003e In order to highlight their ad-free experience, Vimeo launched a video ad campaign featuring two partners using sign language to communicate with subtitles transcribing their exchange. A few seconds in, a bunch of pop-ups begin infiltrating the screen and make it difficult for the viewers to follow the subtitles. You cannot skip, or \u0026ldquo;x\u0026rdquo; out of these ads because they\u0026rsquo;re part of Vimeo\u0026rsquo;s whole promo to illustrate that intrusive ads are just pesky distractions that ruin the overall user experience.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Inside Vimeo's $28M advertising strategy: How Youtube's artsy, ad-free, alternative is making a dent in the video-sharing landscape."},{"content":"Formerly known as Dapulse, Monday.com is a team management platform that was founded in 2012 by Roy Mann (former C-level Executive at Wix) and Eran Zinman (former R\u0026amp;D Manager at Conduit Mobile). Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company raised a $1.5 million in a seed funding round to build a “next-generation” collaboration tool that allows you to create tasks, share files, plan workloads, and ultimately, visualize projects and processes that your team is collectively working on.Aside from word-of-mouth, Monday’com’s initial growth was a direct result of hyper-targeting their target audience across social channels like Facebook and Instagram. In order to maximize their success, the company leveraged Facebook’s lookalike feature to upload a pixel of their existing customer database, in an attempt to find more people with similar personas. “Unlike the traditional B2B approach, [where we] target conventional decision-makers like CEOs and senior managers, [Monday.com] did something different and created a direct response advertising funnel,” explains Rotem Shay, Adwords Team Leader responsible for performance marketing campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. “Our target decision-maker [was] basically anyone [with] a computer [who] works with a team. Some might say that we hacked B2B to become B2C, but I say that our marketing approach has always been H2H—human to human.”After bagging $25 million in a Series B (2017) led by Venture partners, the company decided to move beyond Facebook, and ramp up their Adwords by targeting specific industries and verticals. In fact, 70% of their users came from the non-tech sector, like, construction, wedding planners, breweries, and even churches, amongst others. Since Monday.com is available in several different languages, the campaigns were tailored to reach prospects outside of the English-speaking market.Around the same time, the company also changed their name to Monday.com from Dapulse, that was “a big part of a maturity phase” according to Mann. “For billions of people all around the world, Monday means work. All that is good, all that is hard, and all that is real about work,” he wrote on the company’s blog. They even released a fun, light-hearted video announcing the rebranding, where they poked fun at their “dead name” and went over the unusual, yet hilarious reactions they’ve received for the same since inception.\n[embed]https://youtu.be/9Th4qTv-4jE[/embed]\nIn 2018, Monday.com raised $50 million in a Series C funding round led by NYC-based growth equity firm, Stripes Group, that has previously invested in other well-known brands such as Blue Apron, Refinery29, GrubHub, and Flatiron Health. Valued at $500 million, the company also claimed to have tripled their customer base to 35,000 companies since the previous year by roping in big-names like Carlsberg, AT\u0026amp;T, WeWork, Discovery Channel, and McDonald’s. Monday.com also invested in relatable, but, informative video campaigns that were featured in YouTube’s list of Top 10 True View for Action ads for garnering one of the highest reach, clicks, and engagements. As of 2019, the company is focusing on introducing transformative features to their product that’s being actively used by 35,000 paying teams across more than 200 verticals. Let’s take a closer look at their advertising strategy, including their ad spend, creatives, publishers and landing pages, that has largely contributed to their consistent growth: Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last six months, Monday.com has spent $12M on online advertising, out of which, the majority went towards Direct Buy ($8.3M), Google ($2.1), and Youtube ($1M). Additionally, they’ve also invested in the native advertising platforms like Outbrain ($418.5K) and Google Native ($108.9K). While Asana, and Trello—Monday.com’s direct competitors in the project management space—also spend most of their advertising budget on Direct Buy and Google, none of them seem to be very keen on experimenting with large-scale video campaigns. Given that 92% of B2B prospects with a high purchasing intent tend to consume online video content on the daily, it’s important for brands everywhere to make video an integral part of their overall marketing strategy. Even the biggest names in the marketplace, like eBay and Amazon, discovered that when they use a video ad to highlight specific USPs of a product, the conversion rate is likely to increase by 35 percent. On a related note, videos, alongside native and display ads, drive immediate conversions on desktop—which explains why most of Monday.com’s campaigns are geared towards desktop users.Lastly, instead of putting all their eggs in one basket, the company boasts of a pretty diverse campaign portfolio. Out of their total ad spend, 35% goes towards video, whereas, the remaining is reserved for running direct (43%), programmatic (18%) and native (4%) ads. Publishers Monday.com’s primary publishers have remained the same over the past year, with most of their ad spend going to Youtube ($4.2M), Spanishdict ($1.2M), DailyMail ($532.4K), and Dictionary.com ($141.9K)). Urban Dictionary ($151.9K) has been a new addition to the top five tally in the last 6 months, replacing CNN.On Youtube, their ads appear on popular music videos that are trending and are likely to garner a significant number of views. For example, they’ve been featured before Moonlight by XXXTentacion (401,070,042 views), A Star Is Born by Lady Gaga + Bradley Cooper (642,951,896 views), and Sugar by Maroon5 (3,003,321,885 views) to name a few. As for the other publishers, Monday.com ads don’t follow a fixed pattern—which means that they appear on arbitrary landing pages that aren’t relevant to their product. For example, on Spanishdict, the ads were shown to people looking to translate common phrases like, what you\u0026rsquo;re drinking, gracias por aceptar mi solicitud, happy birthday or antes de comer. Similarly, on DailyMail, the ads can be found on celebrity news updates about Hailey Baldwin, Johnny Depp, Kate Middleton, Rachel Weisz, and so on.One can assume that these pages are either expected to get a lot of organic attention or are promoted well and often by the publishers.Overall, we can conclude that Monday.com has been actively advertising with publishers (and pages) that get a significant amount of traction every month to ensure that their ads are shown to as many people as possible. While they did admit to using targeting parameters in their paid social media campaigns to attract the right people, it’s unclear if they’re doing the same for other ads. Creatives As we discussed earlier, Monday.com heavily uses video to promote their services—as a result, 65% of their creatives are video, followed by images (21%), text/image (12%) and text-only (2%). From the outset, the following ad clearly didn’t have a million-dollar budget, however,by striking a balance between being informative and being creative, the company is able to channel their awareness of the market into how people consume video content. The 30-second segment starts with a short sketch about how their product—with its easy organization and user-friendliness—contributes to the daily team victories. Think of the satisfaction you get from throwing a paper ball into the trashcan on your first try, or peeling the protective sticker off of a phone. That’s what using Monday.com feels like.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoAGqV7cvqY[/embed]\nAnother video features an existing user of Monday.com, who outlines the ways using the product has helped their brand and what makes it different from other project management tools out there. Using customer testimonials as a “trust signal” can be powerfully persuasive for prospects—after all, you’re more likely to purchase a product that has received positive feedback, and glowing recommendations from “real” people.\n[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjwKYyMw384[/embed]\nIn late 2018, after Monday.com unveiled their NYC office, the company ran a series of humorous, and whimsical ads with an attention-grabbing tagline—”Manage Anything. Even New York”. The creative implores viewers to “win a championship” or “stamp out crime” using Monday.com because it’s actually just that simple. Overall, their graphic and visual language has undergone a significant change over the last year to showcase how simple it actually is to use Monday.com. “From the start, we’ve marketed our product directly to anybody and everybody—not as enterprise software to be adopted by the CEO, but as a tool that anyone can use,” says Guy Levin, the UI/UX designer at Monday.com, “I started building an illustration bank of characters that reflect the diversity of people who use our product. While we do have a lot of corporate “suit-and-tie” types who use our product, many of our customers are much more casual. They work from home, on-the-go, out in the field, and we wanted our illustrations to reflect that.” As a result, they incorporated tight color palettes, straightforward compositions, and simple shapes to bring a certain playfulness and emotion to the difficulties that everyone faces at work. In order to communicate their marketing message more clearly, the creatives rely on vibrant hues and tonal contrast to keep a clear focus on the foreground. Landing Pages In addition to constantly optimizing their campaigns for maximum success, Monday.com has created a cohesive customer experience for anyone who clicks on their ads and lands on their homepage. Unlike a lot of brands that rely on cheesy stock images, their homepage welcomes you with custom-designed graphics that visually communicate the wide range of problems that the project management tool is trying to solve. The copy is short, engaging and is reflective of what Monday.com is all about: simplicity and humanity. The one-field form (that requests for your email address) makes it clear that you don’t have to jump through hoops to start using the product—and can dive right in with just your email. Not only this, the company also ensures that a customer’s first experience with the product caters to their specific needs—for example, if someone signs up on the platform looking for a Gantt chart, then, they’re directly introduced to Monday.com’s timeline.On further scrolling, you can spot trust signals (that we discussed previously), like the brands currently using Monday.com to collaborate with their teams, and featured testimonials from their business owners. The multiple CTAs on the homepage are a nice touch, as they’re known to increase conversions by 20 percent, according to an invespcro study.\nConclusion Despite being in the market for only 7 years, Monday.com has managed to establish themselves in an extremely competitive landscape by improving their product and refining their advertising strategy, in order to consistently attract more customers. Instead of limiting themselves to a certain ad-type, they’ve been experimenting with several different ones to engage with customers and ultimately, figure out what works the best for them. Not to mention that they have plenty of room to play around, given that the company’s “ target market is anyone who has a team and works with a computer”.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/monday-com-raises-150m-more-in-equity-funding-heres-an-in-depth-look-into-their-12m-ad-spend/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFormerly known as Dapulse, Monday.com is a team management platform that was founded in 2012 by Roy Mann (former C-level Executive at Wix) and Eran Zinman (former R\u0026amp;D Manager at Conduit Mobile). Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company raised a $1.5 million in a seed funding round to build a “next-generation” collaboration tool that allows you to create tasks, share files, plan workloads, and ultimately, visualize projects and processes that your team is collectively working on.Aside from word-of-mouth, Monday’com’s initial growth was a direct result of hyper-targeting their target audience across social channels like Facebook and Instagram. In order to maximize their success, the company leveraged Facebook’s \u003cem\u003elookalike\u003c/em\u003e feature to upload a pixel of their existing customer database, in an attempt to find more people with similar personas.  “Unlike the traditional B2B approach, [where we] target conventional decision-makers like CEOs and senior managers, [Monday.com] did something different and created a direct response advertising funnel,” explains Rotem Shay, Adwords Team Leader responsible for performance marketing campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. “Our target decision-maker [was] basically anyone [with] a computer [who] works with a team. Some might say that we hacked B2B to become B2C, but I say that our marketing approach has always been H2H—human to human.”After bagging $25 million in a Series B (2017) led by Venture partners, the company decided to move beyond Facebook, and ramp up their Adwords by targeting specific industries and verticals. In fact, 70% of their users came from the non-tech sector, like, construction, wedding planners, breweries, and even churches, amongst others. Since Monday.com is available in several different languages, the campaigns were tailored to reach prospects outside of the English-speaking market.Around the same time, the company also changed their name to Monday.com from Dapulse, that was “a big part of a maturity phase” \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/07/11/monday-israel-funding/#20027994367f\"\u003eaccording to Mann\u003c/a\u003e. “For billions of people all around the world, Monday means work. All that is good, all that is hard, and all that is real about work,” he wrote on \u003ca href=\"https://monday.com/blog/its-official-dapulse-is-now-monday-com/\"\u003ethe company’s blog\u003c/a\u003e. They even released a fun, light-hearted video announcing the rebranding, where they poked fun at their “dead name” and went over the unusual, yet hilarious reactions they’ve received for the same since inception.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Monday.com raises $150M more in equity funding: Here's an in-depth look into their $12M ad spend."},{"content":"Launched in 1998 as Continuity by Ken Howery, Luke Nosek, Max Levchin, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, Paypal is an online payments system that works as an electronic alternative to conventional transaction methods like money orders and checks. Over the years, the company has operated worldwide as a payment processor for commercial users including online vendors and auction platforms, who benefit from one-click transactions, and seller protection in exchange for a nominal fee. After PayPal\u0026rsquo;s IPO was listed at $13 per share that eventually generated more than $61 million, the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. By 2017, the company was earning US$13.094 billion in annual revenue (20.8% increase from 2016) and their market valuation was projected to be US$98.2 billion. They were ranked 222nd on the 2018 Fortune 500 of the biggest corporations in the United States. As of 2019, PayPal is operational in more than 200 countries and have 277 million active, registered users. The company allows customers to send, receive, and retain funds in 25 different currencies.On the marketing front, the company has invested in TV commercials, social media channels, and outdoor advertising since their inception. Jeff Goldblum’s ‘OneWayToPay’ campaign: In 2012, PayPal decided to move on from being known as “just a mobile payment provider” and get people talking about the other advantages their service offers, like, online shopping and in-store transactions.Paypal’s first-ever nation-wide ‘OneWayToPay’ campaign included four videos featuring Jeff Goldblum who praises the ubiquity and convenience of the platform—from being accepted pretty much anywhere to not requesting for your personal information over and over. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s so easy and quick. You do it, you PayPal it, and you\u0026rsquo;re done,\u0026rdquo; he says in one of the videos, “You want to move on with your life. You want to have lunch. You want to go take a tango lesson.\u0026quot; \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s a lot of consumer awareness of the PayPal brand, but the understanding of all the different ways you can pay with PayPal is something we wanted to focus on,\u0026rdquo; Anuj Nayar, PayPal\u0026rsquo;s (former) Senior Director of Global Communications explained on their website,” PayPal is expanding our core product to solve problems for consumers, merchants, developers, and advertisers — not just trying to re-create a wallet that we already invented 14 years ago.\u0026ldquo; While the company did not air these commercials on TV, they purchased ad spots on Hulu, AOL, and Yahoo to deliver their marketing message to potential users. The videos were also seen on the several web properties owned by eBay (acquired by PayPal in October 2002). 2014 Holiday campaign with Conan O\u0026rsquo;Brien and Ellen DeGeneres In order to bring attention to the speed and security that make PayPal stand out from the crowd, the company partnered with The Many — a California-based agency that’s worked for Hot Wheels, TripAdvisor, and GoFundMe in the past—to create a thoroughly integrated campaign for digital, social and TV.By collaborating with popular TV show hosts, Ellen and Conan, alongside Collegehumor’s YouTube channels PayPal inserted themselves into conversations about the importance of credit card fraud and identity theft. They lay the basic foundation to launch a large-scale digital campaign that focussed solely on PayPal’s online security. Overall, the entire campaign resulted in an increased total payment volume—27 percent from the previous year.During the same year, Apple also unveiled their digital wallet and mobile payment service—Apple Pay, establishing themselves as direct competitors of PayPal. Soon after, when the technology conglomerate was under fire following the iCloud Hacking scandal, PayPal issued a full-page takeover in The New York Times taking a shot at Apple and introducing their new One Touch App functionality.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s enjoy our money, not worry about it. #paypalit for a safer and more secure way to pay: http://t.co/DFAH3bqniS. pic.twitter.com/e5udR8zGBJ\n— PayPal (@PayPal) September 15, 2014\nThey also released a series of innovative co-marketing activations with Munchery and StubHub, sending an extremely clear message in the process: “PayPal is the brand of the People Economy, and with the One Touch App, that economy is easier and faster to tap into than ever before.”In a social campaign called ‘Epic Experience Time’, PayPal compiled seven real-life experiences with famous influencers (a mini-golf session with Olympic hockey player Hillary Knight or fishing with Shark Tank’s Daymond John) that the users could bid on eBay. In order to increase the reach of the campaign, the company also teamed up with Vine star Avery Monsen to create a 7-second teaser for every experience. The auction proceeds went to a charity picked by the influencer. PayPal’s decision to promote experiences than products was based on giving millennials what actually matters to them. “Millennials are all about streamlining their lives,” said Maude Standish, Director of Strategy at The Many. “For example, they don’t want a million books; they want the experience of reading the book on their kindle. They don’t want to own records, they want to own the experience of listening to music.” At one point, an exclusive yoga class for you and your dog was going for $1,225, whereas the bid for fishing with Daymond John was at a whopping $3,400. ‘New Money’ campaign In 2016, the company introduced the New Money campaign that aimed to simultaneously make a strong statement about the future of money and unveil the new PayPal to the masses. Targeting millennials in Singapore and Asia Pacific specifically, the marketing initiative started off with a 45-second commercial that highlighted the endless possibilities of a paperless payment method that’s not limited by geographical factors or time zones. “New Money has no boundaries,” explained Leanne Sheraton, PayPal’s head of APAC marketing \u0026amp; consumer business, “We have the technology, the innovation for people to be able to buy and sell securely and confidently no matter where in the world they are. These are the possibilities of the new global economy.” The commercial features quick cuts, and tosses light-hearted insults at the \u0026ldquo;old money\u0026rdquo; that are represented by banks closing at 5 p.m, green lampshades, glimpses of suspenders—and everything else that ‘new money’ aims at changing. The commercial first aired during the annual SuperBowl was produced by Nabil Elderkin, who’s highly-renowned for his work with popular music artists like Kanye West and Nicki Minaj.As PayPal moves forward and aims to completely transform how an average person navigates the complexities of a global economy, their overall advertising strategy continues to be a deciding factor in their long-term success. Let’s take a closer look at their current advertising strategy: Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last six months, PayPal has spent $20.4M on online advertising, out of which, the majority went towards Google ($15.2M), Direct Buy ($4.4M) and Google Native ($548.1K). Google allows you to connect with prospective customers when their most recent online activity (searching for a specific product/service that you provide or reading an article about the industry you operate in) is directly related to what your brand has to offer. When your ads appear in relevant places, you’re in a better position to convert interested viewers into long-time customers. The Google Network is classified into broad groups, so brands have more control over the placement of their ads:\nThe Search Network that includes the Google search results pages, other Google assets like Maps and Shopping, and search platforms that have partnered with Google to show ads. The biggest intrinsic advantage of using the search network is that you can spend your bid on “high-intent” keywords, ensuring that your text ads will be served to users who have the purchasing power and willingness to convert. The Display Network that includes Google-owned platforms like Gmail, YouTube, and Blogger, in addition to the thousands of Google-partner websites on the Internet. Unlike the search network, your ads are consumed mostly by passive customers who’re not actively looking for a solution to their pain points. As a result, the display network is perfect for brands that want to invest in top-of-funnel brand awareness. Considering that PayPal relies heavily on image-based (or display) ads, we can safely assume that they’re rather keen on telling more and more people about their brand, as opposed to getting higher click-through-rates (CTRs) and conversions. This also explains why they also invest just as much (if not more) money in desktop advertising than mobile. According to Yahoo! Research, omnichannel advertising increases brand engagement and “stimulates disengaged consumers to transition to engaged stages”. However, it does not persuade an already interested consumer, thereby, making it more effective for the early impressions and not the late ones.” By coordinating their online campaigns with the ones running on TV, PayPal has been able to encourage customers to pursue their preliminary interest in the product and ultimately, make the eventual purchase. In a surprising, yet, pleasant twist, 76 percent of PayPal’s ads are programmatic, which means they use real-time bidding to deliver deeply relevant, measurable, and compelling ads. Additionally, 22 percent of their ads are Direct, and only 3 percent are native. Publishers PayPal’s primary publishers have remained the same over the past year, with most of their ad spend going to SpanishDict ($1M), Merriam Webster ($444.9K), Dictionary.com ($315.1K), and Wikihow ($303.3K). Buzzfeed ($306K) has been a new addition to the top five tally in the last 6 months, replacing eBay (PayPal’s former parent company that they separated form in 2018). As for the placement, PayPal’s ads don’t follow a fixed pattern—which means that they appear on arbitrary landing pages that have nothing to do with their product/service. For example, on Dictionary.com, the ads were shown to people looking up the meaning of sacrilege, refugee capital, invent, and forfeit among others. Similarly, on Buzzfeed, the ads can be found on articles about cats, life hacks, guacamole recipe, star wars, portable battery packs and more. One can assume that these pages are either expected to get a lot of organic attention or are promoted well and often by the publishers.Overall, we can conclude that PayPal has been actively advertising with publishers that get a significant amount of traction every month to ensure that their ads are shown to as many people as possible. They’re not concerned about reaching the right people by using any targeting parameters like a lot of other brands—and that continues to work in their favor.\nCreatives PayPal has a very diverse portfolio of ads that includes 69 percent images, 18 percent HTML5, 7 percent video, 6 percent text/image and less than 1 percent text-based. In the following ad that targets businesses and merchants, PayPal introduces their B2B customers to their easy checkout feature that makes it easy for buyers to make a payment without leaving the website.The copy is short, data-driven and directly speaks to the audience.Numbers add weight to a benefit statement, which in this case, happens to highlight how PayPal Checkout can increase conversions for merchants. Not to mention, customers find percentages easier and faster to read when they’re written with % versus the word percent. The call to action (CTA) —\u0026ldquo;Learn more\u0026rdquo;—is critical to the display ad, because it not only encourages the viewer to take action, but also helps set expectations for what they’re about to see next. On a related note, sometimes, prospects don’t want to be greeted with hard-sell CTAs like Buy Now or Sign Up right away, therefore, going with other helpful and more welcoming alternatives might be a better idea. Alternatively, for their B2C customers, PayPal’s campaigns were aimed to normalize the act the sending payments to your family, friends, co-workers and other personal acquaintances. While the short, straightforward tagline of ‘Give the gift of money’ stays the same across multiple creatives, the scenarios — what you’re making the payment for — continue to change. For example, in one creative, the payment is being made ‘for dinner’ but in the other, it’s being made ‘for wedding’. For their video campaigns, they partnered with the NYC-based agency, Walrus, to come up with fact-based, quirky character animations to illustrate how big of a number 19 million (number of online stores using PayPal) actually is. The 15-second video opens in a clinical “infographical” way with an overly serious voiceover and uses a bar graph with the PayPal logo on top. Since these are meant for both web and social networks, the videos were rendered at 2500 x 2500 pixels, so they can be easily re-positioned for any aspect ratio. In the long-run, this not only saves time, but also keeps file sizes manageable. Overall, the videos are a fun and inventive way of communicating why a business should use PayPal by establishing how many happy customers PayPal actually has. What’s notable is that they started investing in video campaigns like these only in the last 6 months — and considering that a generous amount of their ad spend is going towards these ads, we can assume that the company has received favorable results. Landing Pages Most of the PayPal ads direct customers (whether B2B or B2C) to a landing page dedicated to the USP mentioned in the ad. For example, there are specific pages for ‘send money online’, ‘use PayPal Checkout to increase conversions’, and ‘ create an invoice with ease’ that go into more detail about a person can benefit from a specific functionality that PayPal offers. Overall, all landing pages open with simple, yet, relevant imagery. In the first scroll, you can see a straightforward, user-centric headline and description about the specific value proposition of the feature — for example, “sell more online”, and “make it easy for shoppers to pay the way they want” on the PayPal Checkout page). Remember, value creates desire, which ultimately, leads to a higher number of conversions.By using two conversion paths—”See how it works” and “Sign Up”—the company is able to address two different types of customers in their sales funnel: those who’ve already made a decision to convert, and those who prefer having a little more information on hand before they make up their mind. Another interesting element here is how PayPal uses strategically uses colour to draw users closer to the conversion event. The ‘Sign Up’ button has a different colour scheme than the entire background of the page—while on blue or blue on neutral—making it stand out from the rest of the design. When you scroll further, you’ll find that the landing page addresses specific customer concerns to alleviate worry, reassure visitors, and build trust. For example, on the page about ‘Send Money Online’, PayPal answers potential questions related to security, transaction fees, mobility, and access. Overall, the information on the landing page is detailed—but well packaged, which persuades people to keep on reading further, instead of leaving after the first scroll. Conclusion Unlike most brands that spend their money on only a particular ad-type that’s worked for them—native, programmatic, video, or direct—PayPal continues to remain diverse and has been experimenting with everything to see what sticks. They seem to be focusing more on perfecting the grassroots-level stuff, like, creatives, landing pages, channels, and ad formats that work the best for a certain ad-type. In some cases, they’ve discovered the exact elements that make for a successful campaign—their publishers, for example, that haven’t changed in the past year, however, they’re still trying a lot of new things on the side, like, their video ad campaigns that appeared on the internet radar only six months ago. In short, PayPal has figured out a lot about the advertising approaches that work for them, but that’s not stopping them as they continue to refine their overall strategy, and try new ways to engage with customers.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/theres-new-money-in-town-how-paypal-is-using-their-20-4m-ad-spend-to-attract-and-convert-more-customers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLaunched in 1998 as Continuity by Ken Howery, Luke Nosek, Max Levchin, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, Paypal is an online payments system that works as an electronic alternative to conventional transaction methods like money orders and checks. Over the years, the company has operated worldwide as a payment processor for commercial users including online vendors and auction platforms, who benefit from one-click transactions, and seller protection in exchange for a nominal fee. After PayPal\u0026rsquo;s IPO was listed at $13 per share that eventually generated more than $61 million, the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. By 2017, the company was earning US$13.094 billion in annual revenue (20.8% increase from 2016) and their market valuation was projected to be US$98.2 billion. They were ranked 222nd on the 2018 Fortune 500 of the biggest corporations in the United States. As of 2019, PayPal is operational in more than 200 countries and have 277 million active, registered users. The company allows customers to send, receive, and retain funds in 25 different currencies.On the marketing front, the company has invested in TV commercials, social media channels, and outdoor advertising since their inception. \u003cstrong\u003eJeff Goldblum’s ‘OneWayToPay’ campaign:\u003c/strong\u003e In 2012, PayPal decided to move on from being known as “just a mobile payment provider” and get people talking about the other advantages their service offers, like, online shopping and in-store transactions.Paypal’s first-ever nation-wide ‘OneWayToPay’ campaign included four videos featuring Jeff Goldblum who praises the ubiquity and convenience of the platform—from being accepted pretty much anywhere to not requesting for your personal information over and over. \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s so easy and quick. You do it, you PayPal it, and you\u0026rsquo;re done,\u0026rdquo; he says in one of the videos, “You want to move on with your life. You want to have lunch. You want to go take a tango lesson.\u0026quot; \u0026ldquo;There\u0026rsquo;s a lot of consumer awareness of the PayPal brand, but the understanding of all the different ways you can pay with PayPal is something we wanted to focus on,\u0026rdquo; Anuj Nayar, PayPal\u0026rsquo;s (former) Senior Director of Global Communications \u003ca href=\"https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2012/10/pay-any-way-you-want-%E2%80%93-with-paypal/\"\u003eexplained on their website\u003c/a\u003e,” PayPal is expanding our core product to solve problems for consumers, merchants, developers, and advertisers — not just trying to re-create a wallet that we already invented 14 years ago.\u0026ldquo;\u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n      \u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/1qCaRbO6_uY?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n    \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n      \u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/UVDEw494tn8?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n    \u003c/div\u003e\nWhile the company did not air these commercials on TV, they purchased ad spots on Hulu, AOL, and Yahoo to deliver their marketing message to potential users. The videos were also seen on the several web properties owned by eBay (acquired by PayPal in October 2002). \u003cstrong\u003e2014 Holiday campaign with Conan O\u0026rsquo;Brien and Ellen DeGeneres\u003c/strong\u003e In order to bring attention to the speed and security that make PayPal stand out from the crowd, the company partnered with The Many — a California-based agency that’s worked for \u003ca href=\"https://themany.com/work/double-loop-dare/\"\u003eHot Wheels\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://themany.com/work/tripadvisor/\"\u003eTripAdvisor\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"https://themany.com/work/gofundmes-big-and-small-ad-campaign/\"\u003eGoFundMe\u003c/a\u003e in the past—to create a thoroughly integrated campaign for digital, social and TV.By collaborating with popular TV show hosts, Ellen and Conan, alongside Collegehumor’s YouTube channels PayPal inserted themselves into conversations about the importance of credit card fraud and identity theft. They lay the basic foundation to launch a large-scale digital campaign that focussed solely on PayPal’s online security. \u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n      \u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/62zkt0LO2Ok?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n    \u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n      \u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/q58ObZf9xMc?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n    \u003c/div\u003e\nOverall, the entire campaign resulted in an increased total payment volume—27 percent from the previous year.During the same year, Apple also unveiled their digital wallet and mobile payment service—Apple Pay, establishing themselves as direct competitors of PayPal. Soon after, when the technology conglomerate was under fire following the \u003ca href=\"https://www.businessinsider.in/Inside-The-Underground-iCloud-Hacking-Ring-That-Leaked-Those-Naked-Celebrity-Photos/articleshow/41520910.cms\"\u003eiCloud Hacking scandal\u003c/a\u003e, PayPal issued a full-page takeover in The New York Times taking a shot at Apple and introducing their new One Touch App functionality.\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-29-at-4.51.53-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-29-at-4.51.53-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"There's new money in town: How PayPal is using their $20.4M ad spend to attract and convert more customers."},{"content":"Chicago-based Groupon was launched in 2008, and offers an eCommerce marketplace for people looking to purchase vouchers and coupons for a diverse range of local activities, goods, and services. Whether you fancy a cruise vacation, a romantic dinner or a manicure, you can simply use the platform to discover the best deals, discounts, and offers available around you. With 48.2 million active customers, the company currently operates in 15 countries and generated a revenue of US$2.84 billion in 2017. In 2011, Groupon created an online app (195 million downloads) that leverages a user’s geolocation to find the best deals in entertainment, travel, home improvement, beauty, food, and other personalized activities. By March 2018, 72 percent of all their sales were taking place through a mobile device. 2018: Tiffany Haddish Superbowl campaign In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel (2018), Tiffany Haddish shared an anecdote about using Groupon to book a swamp tour for herself, and her co-star Jada Pinkett Smith. After the segment went viral, the company signed the actress for a Super Bowl commercial depicting Haddish as a savvy shopper who supports local businesses and saves money by using Groupon. Within 8 days, the ad amassed 7 million views on Youtube, helping Groupon build a stronger brand presence, and increasing sales momentum. At the same time, the company worked with SocialCode, the marketing agency that spearheaded successful social media campaigns for brands like Toscano, VISA, and Michael Kors, to run video ads across Facebook and Instagram. Groupon also used Google to run similar paid search campaigns across the web built around long-tail keywords. With Haddish, Groupon tried to undo the PR disaster caused by their 2011 Super Bowl commercial starring A-list celebrities like Cuba Gooding Jr., Elizabeth Hurley, and Timothy Hutton. While each ad began with the premise of supporting a noteworthy cause (wildlife conservation, saving the rainforests, the Tibetian crisis), the pitch quickly and abruptly moves away from their initial message to plug Groupon. For example, Hutton starts off his commercial by announcing, “The people of Tibet are in trouble. Their very culture is in jeopardy,” before saying, “\u0026hellip;but they still whip up an amazing fish curry and since 200 of us bought at Groupon.com, we’re each getting $30 worth of Tibetan food for just $15 at Himalayan Restaurant in Chicago.” The commercial (that Groupon reportedly invested $3 million in) sparked an immediate controversy post-airing, with a vast majority of people agreeing that it “missed the mark” and was ‘distasteful’. Eventually, the company axed the entire campaign and shifted their advertising strategy to focus only on display and search ads, instead of TV. That’s before the Haddish opportunity fell into their lap. 2019: Brand makeover + Reformed approach to advertising According to Craig Rowley, Groupon’s new CMO, the company is preparing for a big change in 2019, where they’re “moving away from the vouchers of the past” and “building a true global marketplace with new partners and a broader selection of local services and experiences”. By partnering with nationally renowned brands like Costco, AMC theatres, Sam’s Club, TripAdvisor, and Pandora, alongside the local mom-and-pop stores, Groupon is all set to mature into a platform where users can buy tickets, order food, discover branded experiences and earn rewards on repeat purchases. Rowley further clarifies that the company will be revising their media spend, and will be investing more on YouTube and cinema advertising this year. He also believes that they haven’t been as aggressive with social media marketing as they should be—something that they plan on fixing in the near future. “A lot of the marketing and the idea behind how the brand is going to be served up, it’s going to shift to incorporate more of those things and really play out the idea that we are a true local marketplace,” he said. Let’s take an in-depth look into what Groupon’s ad spend, top publishers, creatives, and landing pages actually look(s) like. Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last 6 months, Groupon has spent a whopping $65.8M on online advertising, with the majority going towards Direct Buy ($63.4M), where the company negotiates with a publisher (for example, ESPN or CNN) to purchase advertising space. Apart from the pricing, an advertiser can decide the ad placement, copy, and even the exact duration the ad will run for. As opposed to programmatic ad-buying where you have the option of contextual targeting, direct ad-buying relies entirely on getting traction from the publisher’s audience. This explains why successful direct ad-buying is all about choosing relevant publishers that have the kind of audience you’re trying to attract. For example, Mailchimp, the marketing automation platform that also invests predominantly in direct ad-buying, advertises mostly with technology-forward publishers—and their ads appear on pages related to the latest smart home devices, upcoming innovations, and workplace productivity hacks. Groupon also has a hefty budget dedicated to YouTube ($2M), and Google Search Partners ($249.3K), with very little money going towards Google Native ($1.4K), Taboola ($611) and Outbrain. This explains why 97 percent of their ads are video, and almost none are native. On the contrary, while RetailMeNot, Priceline, and Ebates, direct competitors to Groupon, also invest heavily in direct ad-buying ($10.3M, $9.2M, and $3.9M respectively), video ads are not an integral part of their advertising strategy. Another thing that sets Groupon apart is that the company consistently advertises on both mobile and desktop, whereas, the others have been partial to mobile. Publishers Groupon’s top three publishers have remained the same for the past year —Youtube ($64M), Yahoo ($150K), and Target ($87.9K). In the last 6 months, they’ve moved away from Imgur and Best Buy and currently advertise with Coolmath Games ($85.3K) and Addicting Games ($76.3) instead.On Youtube, their ads appear on videos that are either trending or belong to channels that have a large subscriber base. For example, they spent $3M advertising on this video with 714,699,284 views on a channel that reviews kids’ toys. While the video and the channel are not directly relevant to Groupon as a brand, the channel’s 31M subscribers guarantee that the video will be watched by a substantial number of people—including the ones who might be interested in what Groupon has to offer. Similarly, another video that Groupon spent 1.8M on has been viewed 107,237,427 times and is posted by a channel with 633K subscribers. On the other hand, most of their ads on Yahoo are featured on the eCommerce section of the website—and specifically on pages selling mp3 players which probably get substantial traction. Overall, it’s safe to conclude that Groupon prefers advertising with publishers that are raking in a significant number of visitors every month, so their campaigns are seen by as many people as possible. They’re not putting much effort towards reaching the right people by using advanced targeting parameters like a lot of brands—and that seems to be working out for them at the moment. Creatives As we discussed earlier, 97 percent of Groupon’s ads are video, whereas, the remaining 3 percent are a combination of text, image, text/image or HTML5 type ads. In the last 6 months, the company has run :06, :15, and :30 second-long video ads featuring Haddish, where their primary focus has been remarketing to customers who’ve visited their platform but not made a purchase, and reaching out to past customers who have not returned to the platform in a long time. They’ve also used Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences tool to find potential customers who share the same characteristics as their existing customer base.\n[embed]https://www.facebook.com/Groupon.US/videos/2217771211570027/[/embed]\n[embed]https://www.facebook.com/Groupon.US/videos/2217775241569624/[/embed]\nThe snippets put Haddish’s comedic chops on display, as she covers a range of Groupon offerings including restaurants, nightclubs, spas, or playtime for the kids. All of them follow a similar format, where the beginning is light-hearted and relatable, and the ending is witty, charming and might even get a laugh out of you. For example, in the ad titled Foodie, Haddish is talking about using Groupon to check the ratings and reviews of a restaurant before making a reservation while her friend is busy clicking pictures of the food to post online. Towards the end, the actress digs into the food (seemingly ruining her friend’s picture!) and asks the friend to friend to, ‘Just get done with it already!’ We all have that one perfect, but a mildly annoying friend (like Haddish’s), who insists on clicking pictures at the table when everyone just wants to eat their food in peace. While using this common occurrence as a backdrop, Groupon quickly gives you a rundown of how to use the platform to save money as part of your everyday routine. As a result, an average user is drawn in by the relatability, but decide to stay long enough for endless services that Groupon offers. Landing Pages Most video ads lead to Groupon’s homepage, where they use geo-targeted segmentation to automatically set up your location and showcase several ‘things to do’ in your area to choose from—some of which are available at a reasonable discount. When talking numbers, it’s always advisable to clarify exactly what the said numbers signify. Rather than suggesting that you’re offering 33 percent off to the user, try showing them how the discount will affect their final transaction amount. For example, instead of telling you about the discount you’re getting on a product, Amazon shows you the current price, the original price, and the cumulative discount in absolute figures. Groupon does something similar (as shown below), that’s been working in their favor:On scrolling further, you’re greeted with a pop-up that features a bold value proposition statement (like, “70% off on 1000s of Chicago deals”) and encourages you to enter your email address.Instead of promising you a vague and superfluous benefit (for example, “this product will change your life”), Groupon has decided to keep things simple, and straightforward with their copy. After all, they’re not here to convince you to grab your credit card for an extravagant purchase; they just want your email. Going for a lengthy copy for a low-friction task, such as this, would be incredibly wasteful.In just three lines, they’ve been able to convey the primary USPs of their product, which goes to show how brevity can be a game-changer for brands looking to drive conversions. That being said, there are also video ads that direct potential customers to a “Save With Tiffany Haddish” page that claims to feature deals that’re inspired by the actress herself. From an average person’s point of view, the transition from the Groupon ad to the landing page below is much more seamless because Haddish serves as a constant theme. Everything else, including the layout, the email pop-up, and the copy, remains pretty much the same as the landing page we discussed previously. Conclusion In today’s fast-paced, and mobile-heavy market, video content and Youtube should be an integral part of your online ad strategy. The reach is too enormous to ignore, the price is too flexible to pass up, and the emerging attribution models are transforming video campaigns to have a measurable impact on your bottom line. Unlike most brands that are hesitant to dip their toes into YT advertising, Groupon has managed to successfully churn out video content that resonates with their target audience—and ultimately, leads to more conversions. For marketers working up towards their first big advertising campaign, they’ve also managed to set an excellent example. After their first commercial campaign wasn’t received as well as they hoped, they went on to make a groundbreaking comeback last year that continues to pay off even today. Additionally, instead of tweaking their campaigns to attract people that match with their customer persona, they choose to advertise with publishers that can simply deliver their marketing message to a large audience. Given that they’ve stuck with the same three publishers in the last year, we can assume that they’re aware of the publishers that consistently yield positive campaign results. From the lack of investment in native ads to dedicating most of their ad spend to video ads, Groupon’s advertising strategy might come across as unconventional in the present landscape. However, it seems to be working exceptionally well for them.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-groupon-is-using-most-of-their-65-8m-ad-spend-on-video-ads-to-successfully-increase-conversions/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eChicago-based Groupon was launched in 2008, and offers an eCommerce marketplace for people looking to purchase vouchers and coupons for a diverse range of local activities, goods, and services. Whether you fancy a cruise vacation, a romantic dinner or a manicure, you can simply use the platform to discover the best deals, discounts, and offers available around you. With 48.2 million active customers, the company currently operates in 15 countries and generated a revenue of US$2.84 billion in 2017. In 2011, Groupon created an online app (195 million downloads) that leverages a user’s geolocation to find the best deals in entertainment, travel, home improvement, beauty, food, and other personalized activities. By March 2018, 72 percent of all their sales were taking place through a mobile device. \u003cstrong\u003e2018: Tiffany Haddish Superbowl campaign\u003c/strong\u003e In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel (2018), Tiffany Haddish shared an anecdote about using Groupon to book a swamp tour for herself, and her co-star Jada Pinkett Smith. After the segment went viral, the company signed the actress for a Super Bowl commercial depicting Haddish as a savvy shopper who supports local businesses and saves money by using Groupon. Within 8 days, the ad amassed 7 million views on Youtube, helping Groupon build a stronger brand presence, and increasing sales momentum. \u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n      \u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/GM1QDBvzm1Y?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n    \u003c/div\u003e\nAt the same time, the company worked with \u003ca href=\"https://www.socialcode.com/work\"\u003eSocialCode\u003c/a\u003e, the marketing agency that spearheaded successful social media campaigns for brands like Toscano, VISA, and Michael Kors, to run video ads across Facebook and Instagram. Groupon also used Google to run similar paid search campaigns across the web built around long-tail keywords. With Haddish, Groupon tried to undo the PR disaster caused by their 2011 Super Bowl commercial starring A-list celebrities like Cuba Gooding Jr., Elizabeth Hurley, and Timothy Hutton. While each ad began with the premise of supporting a noteworthy cause (wildlife conservation, saving the rainforests, the Tibetian crisis), the pitch quickly and abruptly moves away from their initial message to plug Groupon. For example, Hutton starts off his commercial by announcing, “The people of Tibet are in trouble. Their very culture is in jeopardy,” before saying, “\u0026hellip;but they still whip up an amazing fish curry and since 200 of us bought at Groupon.com, we’re each getting $30 worth of Tibetan food for just $15 at Himalayan Restaurant in Chicago.” \u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n      \u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/vVkFT2yjk0A?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n    \u003c/div\u003e\nThe commercial (that Groupon reportedly invested $3 million in) sparked an immediate controversy post-airing, with a vast majority of people agreeing that it “missed the mark” and was ‘distasteful’. Eventually, the company \u003ca href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/02/11/groupon.ad/index.html?iid=EL\"\u003eaxed the entire campaign\u003c/a\u003e and shifted their advertising strategy to focus only on display and search ads, instead of TV. That’s before the Haddish opportunity fell into their lap. \u003cstrong\u003e2019: Brand makeover + Reformed approach to advertising\u003c/strong\u003e According to Craig Rowley, Groupon’s new CMO, the company is preparing for a big change in 2019, where they’re “moving away from the vouchers of the past” and “building a true global marketplace with new partners and a broader selection of local services and experiences”. By partnering with nationally renowned brands like Costco, AMC theatres, Sam’s Club, TripAdvisor, and Pandora, alongside the local mom-and-pop stores, Groupon is all set to mature into a platform where users can buy tickets, order food, discover branded experiences and earn rewards on repeat purchases. Rowley further clarifies that the company will be revising their media spend, and will be investing more on YouTube and cinema advertising this year. He also believes that they haven’t been as aggressive with social media marketing as they should be—something that they plan on fixing in the near future. “A lot of the marketing and the idea behind how the brand is going to be served up, it’s going to shift to incorporate more of those things and really play out the idea that we are a true local marketplace,” he said. Let’s take an in-depth look into what Groupon’s ad spend, top publishers, creatives, and landing pages \u003cem\u003eactually\u003c/em\u003e look(s) like. \u003cstrong\u003eAd Spend and Ad Networks\u003c/strong\u003e In the last 6 months, Groupon has spent a whopping $65.8M on online advertising, with the majority going towards Direct Buy ($63.4M), where the company negotiates with a publisher (for example, ESPN or CNN) to purchase advertising space. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.16.09-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.16.09-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eApart from the pricing, an advertiser can decide the ad placement, copy, and even the exact duration the ad will run for. As opposed to programmatic ad-buying where you have the option of contextual targeting, direct ad-buying relies entirely on getting traction from the publisher’s audience. This explains why successful direct ad-buying is all about choosing relevant publishers that have the kind of audience you’re trying to attract.  For example, Mailchimp, the marketing automation platform that also invests predominantly in direct ad-buying, advertises mostly with technology-forward publishers—and their ads appear on pages related to the latest smart home devices, upcoming innovations, and workplace productivity hacks. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.17.05-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.17.05-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.17.38-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.17.38-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e Groupon also has a hefty budget dedicated to YouTube ($2M), and Google Search Partners ($249.3K), with very little money going towards Google Native ($1.4K), Taboola ($611) and Outbrain. This explains why 97 percent of their ads are video, and almost none are native. On the contrary, while \u003ca href=\"https://www.retailmenot.com/\"\u003eRetailMeNot\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://www.priceline.com/\"\u003ePriceline\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ebates.com/\"\u003eEbates\u003c/a\u003e, direct competitors to Groupon, also invest heavily in direct ad-buying ($10.3M, $9.2M, and $3.9M respectively), video ads are not an integral part of their advertising strategy. Another thing that sets Groupon apart is that the company consistently advertises on both mobile and desktop, whereas, the others have been partial to mobile.   \u003cstrong\u003ePublishers\u003c/strong\u003e Groupon’s top three publishers have remained the same for the past year —Youtube ($64M), Yahoo ($150K), and Target ($87.9K). In the last 6 months, they’ve moved away from \u003ca href=\"https://imgur.com/\"\u003eImgur\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://www.bestbuy.com/\"\u003eBest Buy\u003c/a\u003e and currently advertise with \u003ca href=\"https://www.coolmathgames.com/\"\u003eCoolmath Games\u003c/a\u003e ($85.3K) and \u003ca href=\"https://www.addictinggames.com/\"\u003eAddicting Games\u003c/a\u003e ($76.3) instead.\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.18.12-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.18.12-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eOn Youtube, their ads appear on videos that are either trending or belong to channels that have a large subscriber base. For example, they spent $3M advertising on \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlxIEWygQYY\"\u003ethis video\u003c/a\u003e with 714,699,284 views on a channel that reviews kids’ toys. While the video and the channel are not directly relevant to Groupon as a brand, the channel’s 31M subscribers guarantee that the video will be watched by a substantial number of people—including the ones who might be interested in what Groupon has to offer. Similarly, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ-BWzOwbI4\"\u003eanother video\u003c/a\u003e that Groupon spent 1.8M on has been viewed 107,237,427 times and is posted by a channel with 633K subscribers.  On the other hand, most of their ads on Yahoo are featured on the eCommerce section of the website—and specifically on pages selling mp3 players which probably get substantial traction. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.18.37-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.18.37-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eOverall, it’s safe to conclude that Groupon prefers advertising with publishers that are raking in a significant number of visitors every month, so their campaigns are seen by as many people as possible. They’re not putting much effort towards reaching the right people by using advanced targeting parameters like a lot of brands—and that seems to be working out for them at the moment. \u003cstrong\u003eCreatives\u003c/strong\u003e As we discussed earlier, 97 percent of Groupon’s ads are video, whereas, the remaining 3 percent are a combination of text, image, text/image or HTML5 type ads. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.19.06-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screen-Shot-2019-07-22-at-9.19.06-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e In the last 6 months, the company has run :06, :15, and :30 second-long video ads featuring Haddish, where their primary focus has been remarketing to customers who’ve visited their platform but not made a purchase, and reaching out to past customers who have not returned to the platform in a long time. They’ve also used Facebook’s \u003cem\u003eLookalike Audiences\u003c/em\u003e tool to find potential customers who share the same characteristics as their existing customer base.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Groupon is using most of their $65.8M ad spend on video ads to successfully increase conversions."},{"content":"In today’s fast-paced, competitive landscape, brands everywhere are constantly re-inventing how they attract prospects and convert them into full-time customers. From media companies and publishers to eCommerce or consumer brands, there’s no denying the inevitable: Most consumers aren’t very responsive to traditional, disruptive banner ads anymore. As a result, the native ad spend has increased consistently in the last five years — simply because native ads seamlessly blend in with a website format, and are not disruptive to the user experience.\nSource: eMarketer\nEarlier, desktop used to be predominantly the platform for running any or all kinds of advertising campaigns but mobile has recently gained traction in the market. If you’re planning to invest in native advertising for your brand and are confused about which platform to with, consider the following parameters before making a decision:\nPersonal targeting: Mobile combines a personalized experience with a more powerful tracking system.Although desktop has had a substantial head start over mobile in terms of marketing funnels, and conversion optimization tools, the advantages have not stood the test of time due to the industry’s massive growth. After the EU announced that users need to be explicitly informed about the cookies that a desktop’s unified tracking system uses, there was a sharp decline in the effectiveness of ad campaigns. As a result, marketers, especially ones using native tools, were driven to find better solutions for reaching out to the right audience.Mobile uses a unique ID (instead of cookies) to identify and store vital user information. As opposed to cookies, these IDs are also more resilient and can persevere across version updates without being lost in the event of a device upgrade. Despite the problems with having only one central tracking ID and the sheer volume of data produced by billions of users, mobile allows you to measure way more user analytics than desktop does. For example, mobile has access to information regarding the device’s built-in features like storage capabilities, GPS, gyroscope, and even the accelerometer. On the other hand, the desktop is severely limited to only the browser content, and the system’s IP address and referral source. As a result, the mobile is able to capture user interactions that desktop cannot. Coupled with the introduction of elegant dashboards and diverse functionalities, brands can keep tabs on their users — existing and potential to determine who matters the most for long-term success.For example, Facebook’s dashboard is designed to allow personalization of ad campaigns that helps you identify users based on a wide array of interests and tailor your native ads to really flourish. Therefore, instead of hoping for virality by running a campaign on a major desktop publisher, native advertising can be an absolute game-changer when you use contextual targeting on mobile.\nUser reachability: Even though mobile offers an obvious audience advantage, it’s important to remember that the trend of volume alone being the deciding factor for the success of native advertising has passed. Mobile continues to stand out from desktop because of the conceptual difference between how the general population uses the two platforms for content consumption. Consider this: I’m simultaneously using the word processor on my desktop (PC) to write this post and run a number of browser tabs for research purposes. As a fellow marketer, I’m also dabbling in tools like Adbeat to understand the advertising strategy of a competitor, and Zapier to schedule posts on social media. Overall, the desktop has easily become a platform that most of us reserve for professional productivity—a space designed for focus.Contrarily, mobile has become an integral part of your everyday life. Tim Hayden and Tom Webster, authors of The Mobile Commerce Revolution perfectly explain how people have more “intimate expectations” from their devices:“The device [the smartphone] goes to the bathroom with most users…and we already highlighted studies that show that some smartphone users will answer a call, text or social media notification [in the bedroom].”Given that the majority of your target audience uses mobile on a much more personal basis, you’re in a better position to reach out to them for advertising. With native ads on mobile, you’re not disturbing them at work or at a time which they’re supposed to be concentrating. You’re meeting them in a much more personal space – a context that’s crucial to the creation of high-performing ads. Lastly, given the personal nature of mobile devices, you’re expected to have more luck understanding user behavior of a specific individual, as compared to a shared-family desktop that’s likely to have several users.\nCTR and viewability: According to BI Intelligence, native ads that appear on mobile as sponsored or branded content reportedly have higher engagement rates than on desktop. Not only this, the click-through rates (CTR) for native ads was the highest on mobile devices (smartphones: 0.38 percent, tablet: 0.33 percent) in 2015. Meanwhile, desktop struggled with a CTR of 0.16 percent. In terms of viewability, smartphone users spend an average of 3 minutes and 54 seconds looking at native content, as opposed to the desktop users who spend only 2 minutes. The variation in numbers may be explained the ad-blocking habits that are prevalent in today’s consumers. Globally, 45 percent of them use an ad-blocker of some kind because they’re more cynical, cautious, and intolerant towards any form of intrusive advertising.\nIn the last decade, the number of users who’ve installed ad blockers on their desktop has increased from approximately 21 million to more than 181 million. So, regardless of how catchy your copy is, your native ad campaigns are bound to deliver an unsatisfactory performance when run on desktop, simply because not enough people will be seeing them.\nConversion rate: Since desktops offer the comfort of a larger screen, they’re usually preferred by most consumers for browsing and for making online purchases. Mobile devices are often used when a person has something in particular that they are looking for. Often, it’s for pre-purchase research where they compare two products or check reviews from existing consumers before making a decision. Naturally, this means that mobile has a better mid-funnel conversion rate.\nSource: invespcro\nA native ad is more likely to be successful on mobile if you’re looking to create brand awareness or want to target users in the consideration stage. However, on desktop, you’d be better off creating campaigns that are meant to attract users who’re in the decision stage and have already made up their mind about buying a product. In short, on mobile, your ads should be content-first and focus on your brand, whereas, on desktop, you should use appropriate CTAs like Buy Now, or Learn More.\nAudience size: At a fundamental level, mobile has a bigger audience size (nearly 200 million users more than desktop) that gives the platform an unparalleled advantage when it comes to advertising. Mobile also accounts for 59.9% of all internet traffic and is projected to become the fastest-growing advertising channel by 2020.\nSource: nativeadvertisinginstitute\nConsidering that native advertising is slowly shifting from publishers to social media, more and more brands are spending their native ad budget on Facebook which explains why 87% of their income actually comes from mobile ads. Another interesting tidbit is that most users prefer watching videos on their smartphones, which has led to brands incorporating using video-based messaging in their business models and native ads to attract users.\nSource: amazonaws\nIn short, given the current advertising trends, you can reach a large number of people by running ads on mobile as opposed to the desktop.\nWhile desktop seems to be losing the battle against mobile, it’s important to remember that both channels cater to very different (and often specific!) needs for the consumers. When you have clarity on the kind of audience you are targeting, you’re in a better position to determine which channel will be better at communicating your marketing message. For example, the Gen Y (25-39 years) old prefers mobile both in terms of usage and ownership. According to a Twitter study, the younger your target audience is, the more receptive they’re towards native ads and other content marketing initiatives. On a related note, online shopping has a clear gender bias. Women are more likely than men to use a desktop to make a purchase, whereas, men (as opposed to women) are more open to using mobile devices for buying anything online. Overall, we must acknowledge that there are notable differences between desktop and mobile. Targeting one channel over the other will only help you deliver different messages, get different results, and achieve different targets.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/mobile-vs-desktop-native-ads-what-are-the-key-differences/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn today’s fast-paced, competitive landscape, brands everywhere are constantly re-inventing how they attract prospects and convert them into full-time customers. From media companies and publishers to eCommerce or consumer brands, there’s no denying the inevitable: Most consumers aren’t very responsive to traditional, disruptive banner ads anymore. As a result, the native ad spend has increased consistently in the last five years — simply because native ads seamlessly blend in with a website format, and are not disruptive to the user experience.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Mobile vs Desktop native ads : What are the key differences?"},{"content":"In the early 2000s, Adobe’s Flash became extremely popular with the advertisers everywhere, as it was the first time they were able to create animated, and interactive banner ads—for example, micro-games that allowed users to throw a ball, punch a monkey or shoot at ducks, as shown below. While they were successful in capturing the audience’s attention, eventually ads using Flash’s ActionScript programming language started experiencing numerous security breaches that resulted in frequently released patches and newer version of the plugin. Since Flash is third-party software, people had to constantly update or even reinstall the plugin to not only secure their devices and browsers, but to also view any kind of flash files across the internet. For marketers, this meant trouble because they could never be sure if their ads were actually reaching their target audience. Not to mention, Flash drained mobile devices of their battery and consumed most of the resources on desktops. In 2010, Steve Jobs famously called Flash “unnecessary” in the mobile era that\u0026rsquo;s all about “low power devices, touch interfaces, and open web standards”—and at the same time, encouraged companies like Adobe to focus on creating new HTML5 tools. Soon after, Flash was dropped from the Android platform and in late 2011, Adobe announced that they’re no longer updating Flash to be compatible with the upcoming mobile device configurations. In 2015, Amazon suspended Flash ads on all of their platforms and recommended people switch to HTML5 instead. Google followed suit by automatically pausing Flash ads and converting them to HTML5 wherever possible. Finally, many prominent news publishers including Conde Nast, New York Post, Slate, and AOL released a manifesto-style letter urging advertisers to put Flash to rest and use HTML5 to promote their brand. Fast-forward to July 2017 and Adobe finally announced that Flash will no longer be distributed at the end of 2020. What is HTML5? HTML5 is the first version of HTML (the language that’s used to create web pages) that lets developers write audio, video and other types of animations straight into the source code of any webpage. Apart from headers, footers, and sidebars, HTML5 also makes it much easier for developers to produce content that displays properly on different browsers, screen sizes, and resolutions—making it perfect for creating ads that will be shown on a wide array of devices and screens.For example, consider the following rich-media ads for Nike Airmax. Aren’t they much more attractive, and engaging than the Flash ad that we saw above? In short—unlike Flash, HTML5 ads work seamlessly across smartphones, tablets, and desktop. You don’t need any proprietary plugins or software programs to create multimedia ads anymore. As long as you have an up-to-date browser, you will most likely not face any compatibility issues, and excessive battery or resource consumption. HTML5 has proven to be a remarkable addition to the traditional banner ad game, considering that rich-media HTML5 ads boost the click-through rates (CTR) by 267 percent and offer brands a substantial uptick in performance. Since they are embedded within the page, they’re more subtle, elegant, non-intrusive and less interstitial-y—which means, for an average user they obviously are a more attractive choice to engage with as opposed to static display ads. Not to mention, consumers today are experiencing “banner ad fatigue” that stems from the inability to differentiate the static elements on an ad from the static elements in your webpage. HTML5 ads are expected to get higher views and clicks because they tend to stand out (with short videos and gifs) from the rest of the on-page content.Aside from the standard motion elements, HTML5 readily supports 3D and interactive ads that a user can play around with. They run seamlessly within the native applications and can be designed to be responsive in all kinds of webpage placements, browsers, and devices—thereby eliminating the demand to create individual ads separately for all of them. For example, consider the following ad campaign that was created for Nike’s latest collection of sneakers that featured:\nA short, engaging video sequence (that was also included to bypass the autoplay limitation) of the Kenyan National Running Team training using the upcoming Nike Free shoe model. An interactive photo gallery with intuitive navigation, so the users can engage with the six different shoe models of the Nike Free collection and learn more about their individual specifications.[playlist type=\u0026ldquo;video\u0026rdquo; ids=\u0026ldquo;5067\u0026rdquo;] Overall, the ads were viewed over 50,000 times, had a CTR of 22.3 percent and 47 percent interaction rate. That being said—relevance is crucial for the success of a display campaign and considering that different people engage with different media and message types, it’s important that your ad creatives cater to everyone’s engagement preferences. HTML5 allows you to create dynamic rich media ads that adapt to browsing behavior, location, purchasing history, or any other data that you want and have access to. For example, you can show certain products to customers over the age of 40, and an entirely different product-list to customers under the age of 40. You can even change any component of a dynamic creative, including exit URLs, call-to-action (CTA) text, images, content, and more. Let’s consider the following ads by Skype that uses the same content, creative and offer value, but uses geotargeting to change languages while showcasing them in the U.S. and Holland. Similarly, in Nike’s case not only wanted to create an animated HTML5 banner campaign that was “as innovative as their shoe”— but also wanted it to appear simultaneously across seven countries. Using HTML5’s responsive cross-screen and retina ready technology, a compelling rich media ad was easily delivered to the U.K., Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy and Spain—with the language undergoing a dynamic change to display the dialect of the target audience in each country/region. As a result, users were captivated by the experience and impact a simple HTML5 ad was capable of providing, and ultimately, Nike Free has a successful launch.Now that we’ve made a strong case for personalized display advertising, and how you can boost your click-through and conversion by a huge margin by using dynamic creatives—let’s move onto the next big question every business has when presented with something new:\nHow cost-effective is HTML5, and more importantly; How easily can my team learn their way around it? Fortunately, HTML5 is extremely affordable and accessible for companies that are already (or are planning to) work in-house, as it allows you to create and deliver rich media experiences with any third-party installation. As a result, you can fully embrace an agile approach towards work, and come out on top with ads that are consistently performing well across all devices and platforms.Furthermore, thanks to the several Creative Management Platforms (CMPs) available in the market, you don’t have to go through the hassle of getting third-party specialist agencies onboard for front-end skills. By using the drag-and-drop functionality that a CMP offers, your in-house team can easily produce rich media advertising campaigns in no time. You also have complete creative control on image resizing, text optimizations and file-size control. Not only this, but you can also rely on multi-variant testing to fine-tune your campaigns for the best results, and use live performance analytics to measure how people are responding to your ads. HTML5 ads are easier to create than ever, especially if you have the right tools at hand. When paired with a Creative Management Platform (CMP), marketers can track viewer data and use functionalities like heatmaps to gauge the success of their overall ad design, or real-time updating to revise banners that are already live. Overall, you have an end-to-end, in-house solution for creating and running a successful HTML5 campaign at your fingertips, which is ideal for brands that want to save time, money and effort. What’s more? According to eMarketer, video and rich media are destined to see the greatest growth among the various kinds of digital display in the coming years. As an advertiser, where every click and conversion matters, HTML5 can serve as an effective means of engaging potential customers.Afterall, in today’s competitive landscape, grabbing a customer’s attention has become somewhat of a challenge for every brand. Whenever someone engages with your ad campaign, they’re consciously choosing to take a leap of faith and trust you to deliver on the primary punchline of your ad. The more you treat your potential customer-base like partners, the faster you can leverage the latest technology to deliver dynamic rich media campaigns that combine relevance, information, and interactivity.In conclusion, HTML5 ads continue to perform better by consuming fewer resources, allowing multimedia banners, and being natively supported across all browsers. Not to mention, with the launch of more and more HTML5-capable devices in the past decade, it’s safe to say that your audience is ready for the next big thing in digital advertising.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/an-introduction-to-html5-rich-media-ads-and-why-brands-should-invest-in-them/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the early 2000s, Adobe’s Flash became extremely popular with the advertisers everywhere, as it was the first time they were able to create animated, and interactive banner ads—for example, micro-games that allowed users to throw a ball, punch a monkey or shoot at ducks, as shown below. \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://i1.wp.com/digiday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/monkey-banner2.gif?resize=1440%2C440\u0026ssl=1\"\u003eWhile they were successful in capturing the audience’s attention, eventually ads using Flash’s ActionScript programming language started experiencing numerous security breaches that resulted in frequently released patches and newer version of the plugin.  Since Flash is third-party software, people had to constantly update or even reinstall the plugin to not only secure their devices and browsers, but to also view any kind of flash files across the internet. For marketers, this meant trouble because they could never be sure if their ads were actually reaching their target audience. Not to mention, Flash drained mobile devices of their battery and consumed most of the resources on desktops. In 2010, Steve Jobs famously \u003ca href=\"https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/\"\u003ecalled Flash “unnecessary”\u003c/a\u003e in the mobile era that\u0026rsquo;s all about “low power devices, touch interfaces, and open web standards”—and at the same time, encouraged companies like Adobe to focus on creating new HTML5 tools. Soon after, \u003ca href=\"https://www.stuff.tv/news/adobe-drops-flash-google-play-store\"\u003eFlash was dropped from the Android platform\u003c/a\u003e and in late 2011, Adobe announced that they’re no longer updating Flash to be compatible with the upcoming mobile device configurations. In 2015, \u003ca href=\"https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-ditches-flash-ads-amid-ad-industry-push-towards-html5-ads/\"\u003eAmazon suspended Flash ads\u003c/a\u003e on all of their platforms and recommended people switch to HTML5 instead. \u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/9/13903878/google-chrome-block-flash-html5\"\u003eGoogle followed suit\u003c/a\u003e by automatically pausing Flash ads and converting them to HTML5 wherever possible. Finally, many prominent news publishers including Conde Nast, New York Post, Slate, and AOL released a manifesto-style letter urging advertisers to put Flash to rest and use HTML5 to promote their brand. Fast-forward to July 2017 and Adobe finally announced that \u003ca href=\"https://www.wired.com/story/adobe-finally-kills-flash-dead/\"\u003eFlash will no longer be distributed\u003c/a\u003e at the end of 2020. \u003cstrong\u003eWhat is HTML5?\u003c/strong\u003e HTML5 is the first version of HTML (the language that’s used to create web pages) that lets developers write audio, video and other types of animations straight into the source code of any webpage. Apart from headers, footers, and sidebars,  HTML5 also makes it much easier for developers to produce content that displays properly on different browsers, screen sizes, and resolutions—making it perfect for creating ads that will be shown on a wide array of devices and screens.For example, consider the following rich-media ads for Nike Airmax. Aren’t they much more attractive, and engaging than the Flash ad that we saw above? \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://the-brandidentity.com/app/uploads/2018/03/NKMY_4-1.gif\"\u003eIn short—unlike Flash, HTML5 ads work seamlessly across smartphones, tablets, and desktop. You don’t need any proprietary plugins or software programs to create multimedia ads anymore. As long as you have an up-to-date browser, you will most likely not face any compatibility issues, and excessive battery or resource consumption. HTML5 has proven to be a remarkable addition to the traditional banner ad game, considering that rich-media HTML5 ads boost the \u003ca href=\"http://site.adform.com/\"\u003eclick-through rates (CTR) by 267 percent\u003c/a\u003e and offer brands a substantial uptick in performance. Since they are embedded within the page, they’re more subtle, elegant, non-intrusive and less interstitial-y—which means, for an average user they obviously are a more attractive choice to engage with as opposed to static display ads. Not to mention, consumers today are experiencing \u003ca href=\"https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/09/30/ad-fatigue\"\u003e“banner ad fatigue”\u003c/a\u003e that stems from the inability to differentiate the static elements on an ad from the static elements in your webpage. HTML5 ads are expected to get higher views and clicks because they tend to stand out (with short videos and gifs) from the rest of the on-page content.Aside from the standard motion elements, HTML5 readily supports 3D and interactive ads that a user can play around with. They run seamlessly within the native applications and can be designed to be responsive in all kinds of webpage placements, browsers, and devices—thereby eliminating the demand to create individual ads separately for all of them. For example, consider the following ad campaign that was created for Nike’s latest collection of sneakers that featured:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An introduction to HTML5 rich media ads and why brands should invest in them."},{"content":"Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process of gathering, analyzing, and distributing data about companies, products, and customers in a specific marketplace to help managers in making more informed, strategic decisions. According to the 2018 State of Market Intelligence Report, companies monitor a diverse range of audiences, including customers, partners, direct competitors, indirect competitors, and prospects. In fact, 82% of them thoroughly track their own company as a necessary part of their CI efforts. With this attentive approach, they’re able to get a well-rounded perspective on the performance of their company in the greater marketplace.Since competitive monitoring is often time-consuming and a drain on internal resources, it comes as no surprise that many businesses rely on multiple products and services to accelerate the process. While 58% of them employ at least one competitive intelligence software tool, 34% choose to turn to research or consulting firm for more comprehensive results. Here’s the catch, though: A single solution will not always give you a complete picture, which explains why 39% of study respondents said that they prefer to use more than two tools to fulfill their CI-related objectives. Given that being disruptive is pretty much the only way you can succeed in this economy, learning more about your competitors is crucial to product development and marketing. Let’s take a quick look at how you can use CI to grow your business: How can CI be useful?\nUnderstand customer and marketplace expectations: Easier to run than a marketplace scan or SWOT analysis, CI not only carries out an in-depth analysis of what your current and future competitors are up to, but also gives you an insight into why they are making major strategic decisions, settlements or investments, and how receptive the overall marketplace is to these moves.Your competitors might be spending hundreds of dollars every year on advertising—or they’re simply relying on referral partnerships and word-of-mouth to promote their brand. When you use CI to do market research, it helps you objectively see and understand how the marketplace perceives these brands, so that you offer customers exactly what they want, and take advantage of opportunities that your competitors are overlooking.CI relies on triangulation of data to fill specific information gaps related to pricing strategy, margins, product development pipelines, and launch timing.For example, using CI in the pharmaceutical industry has helped save or generate millions by suspending development of ineffective drugs, forgoing unprofitable deals or licensing opportunities, and expediting the development process for new drugs based on what the competitors are doing. Learn from your immediate competitors\u0026rsquo; success and failures: With CI, you can keep tabs on your competition’s ad spend, probe into the returns from their campaigns, understand useful characteristics about their target audience, and ultimately, capitalize on your learnings. You can start by dividing your existing and prospective competitors into three broad groups: Primary or direct competitors who have the same target audience as your brand and offers a similar product or service; Secondary competitors whose products or services are a high or low-end version of what your brand offers or has a similar product or service with a different target audience than your; Tertiary competitors who’re only tangentially related to your brand’s business model. You’d be rubbing shoulders with these brands frequently and elbowing for attention in the same market—so, how do you stand your ground? Take into account the companies—including the global ones—that you admire and take a closer look at their advertising practices that you can implement easily. For example, if you’re in the music streaming space, your primary competitor will be Spotify who’ve spent a whopping $29.6M on advertising in the past year alone. When you look at their top publishers (see below), you’ll notice that they spent substantial money ($856.7K) on Youtube, which also explains why 3 percent of their total ad spend goes towards video ads. However, in the last six months, they’ve moved away from Youtube (along with Pitchfork, another prominent publisher) and are investing their money on AccuWeather ($645.8K), World Lifestyle ($241K) and Cool Math Games ($194.5K). They’ve retained Reddit and LittleThings from last year, which they continue to dedicate a chunk of their ad spend on. Overall, we can assume that Spotify was receiving measurable ROI by advertising on Reddit and LittleThings, but didn’t achieve the best possible outcome from Pitchfork and Youtube. As a competitor just getting into the advertising space, this information can be extremely valuable and help you shape your advertising strategy using Spotify’s successes/failures. Many businesses lose a substantial amount of capital and pay a steep opportunity cost simply because they’re trying to get their message across channels and touchpoints that were previously viable, but are not as effective anymore. For example, if you run a company that primarily relies on trade shows to engage with prospects, using research-based CI can point you towards competitors that are getting better visibility and generating more profitable results through different strategies, like inbound marketing.\nIdentify product and marketing demand gaps: While a lot of A/B testing is required when you\u0026rsquo;re looking to get the word out for your brand, it always helps to know what’s working or not working with your competitors, so that you can learn from their failures and replicate their wins. As a business, your primary focus is offering a strong value proposition for your product or service that meets the requirements of your prospective buyers. CI highlights the buyer demands that your competitors are not fulfilling, as well as potential audience groups that you haven’t considered marketing to. For example, imagine you’re launching a platform where people can compare cars specifications and prices before making a purchase. Currently, with your business model, you’d be competing with the likes of Edmunds and Kelley Blue Book. In order to attract customers, you start running direct ads on various networks. While the results aren’t outstanding, you’re in a comfortable position to break even.On a closer look at your competitors, you find that both Edmunds and Kelley Blue Book spend the entirety of their ad spend on running native ads on popular content distribution platforms like Outbrain, and Taboola. Not only this, looking at the current trends: Native ads get 53% more views than traditional display ads. Native ad spending is expected to increase to $41.1 billion in 2019, accounting for 61% of overall digital display ad spending in the U.S. Clearly, the auto industry has embraced native advertising to promote their brands, and even the buyers seem more receptive to native ads more than any other type of display ads. Now that you’ve identified a gap in your marketing strategy, you can rectify it by investing in native ads to drive more engagement and brand awareness. Oftentimes, a company is investing a reasonable amount of local resources in a project (for example, a very high-risk R\u0026amp;D program) that’s not yielding positive results. By reallocating these resources to another area with actual growth potential, you’re looking at better monetary gains and faster decision-making. In today’s fast-paced, technologically advancing world, businesses are always under pressure to enhance the way things operate and function to allow for new techniques, protocols, and materials. When you’re keeping an eye on both big and small players in the market, it’s easy to grow your company because you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and can simply adopt something from your competitor that you like. The “something” can be marketing campaign components, customer service methods, sales strategies, advertising approach, or service delivery processes. CI makes it possible for you to learn how to position, market, distribute, and even build out the product. That being said, it’s important to remember that CI must involve constant monitoring for it to work. You cannot come back to it occasionally, or after a competitor has stepped up their growth and expect life-changing results. After all, knowing what your competitor is about to do ahead of time can either prompt you to implement a strategic response, or at least react in a timely manner.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/5057-2/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCompetitive intelligence (CI) is the process of gathering, analyzing, and distributing data about companies, products, and customers in a specific marketplace to help managers in making more informed, strategic decisions. According to the  \u003ca href=\"https://www.crayon.co/state-of-market-intelligence\"\u003e2018 State of Market Intelligence Report\u003c/a\u003e, companies monitor a diverse range of audiences, including customers, partners, direct competitors, indirect competitors, and prospects. In fact, 82% of them thoroughly track \u003cem\u003etheir own company\u003c/em\u003e as a necessary part of their CI efforts. With this attentive approach, they’re able to get a well-rounded perspective on the performance of their company in the greater marketplace.Since competitive monitoring is often time-consuming and a drain on internal resources, it comes as no surprise that many businesses rely on multiple products and services to accelerate the process. While 58% of them employ at least one \u003ca href=\"https://www.crayon.co/about-intel\"\u003ecompetitive intelligence software tool\u003c/a\u003e, 34% choose to turn to research or consulting firm for more comprehensive results. Here’s the catch, though: A single solution will not always give you a complete picture, which explains why 39% of study respondents said that they prefer to use more than two tools to fulfill their CI-related objectives. Given that being disruptive is pretty much the only way you can succeed in this economy, learning more about your competitors is crucial to product development and marketing. Let’s take a quick look at how you can use CI to grow your business: \u003cstrong\u003eHow can CI be useful?\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How brands can use competitive intelligence to scale in a global marketplace."},{"content":"Comparisons.org accumulates useful information about tens and thousands of products to help users in making the right purchasing decision. With their unique “side by side” comparison functionality, they demystify the often complex world of credit cards, mortgages, auto insurance, refinancing and other similar services for an average person. Additionally, they also have simple, to-the-point articles on a wide range of topics that encourage readers to save money by being well-informed consumers. Let’s take an in-depth look at what their online advertising strategy looks like in terms of ad spend, publishers, creatives, and landing pages. Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last 6 months, Comparisons has spent $15.3M on online promotion of their brand, with the majority going towards native advertising and content distribution platforms like Outbrain ($5.8M), Yieldmo ($5.3M), and Taboola ($3.8M). Additionally, the company also dedicated a substantial budget to other networks, including, Revcontent ($263.7K), Yahoo Gemini Native ($83.6K), and ContentAd ($28K). While there’s no money going towards direct ads, 66% of the company’s ads are native, and 34% are programmatic. In the last decade, brand engagement practices have tremendously on account of consumers everywhere embracing new digital devices evolving. In order to reach the right audiences, marketers are increasingly relying on programmatic buying to create highly-effective, relevant, and measurable ad campaigns—at scale. Programmatic combines the assurance and safety of reserved buys with the audience precision and automation of real-time auctions. As a result, ad booking is a much more streamlined process for both sellers and buyers that optimizes resource-consumption and boosts efficiency. For example, a recent Boston Consulting Group study found that using Google’s programmatic ad-buying tool is 60% less-time consuming for publishers and nearly 30% for agencies. Considering that 80% of the total mobile display ads are bought programmatically, it comes as no surprise that most of the Comparisons’ ads run on mobile devices, and not desktop. Publishers From the beginning, Comparisons has advertised prominently with CNN ($589.7K), Fox News ($407.5K), Rolling Stone ($354.6K), Someecards ($292.5K) and Hometalk ($2291.6K). On all the platforms, most of their money goes towards ensuring that the ads appear on the homepage. Other than that, there’s no specific placement pattern that Comparisons adheres to, as their ads are displayed alongside arbitrary articles, author profiles, and landing pages on the publishers’ platform. Most companies practice contextual targeting to attract their target audience and tend to put a lot of thought into their ad placement. In a previous post, we discussed how Mailchimp, a popular email marketing, and automation tool, primarily advertises with publishers that cover technology-related news. Not only this, their ads can be often seen on posts that are “latest smart home devices, upcoming innovations, and workplace productivity hacks”. Comparisons has struck gold by following a simple online promotion strategy: Advertising on the homepage of some of the most-visited platforms in the United States. Creatives Trying to initiate a conversation around insurance seems like a fairly boring and unattractive way to grab the customer’s attention, however, something about the headline makes you want to click and learn more. The obvious cliffhanger —”Drivers Around California are Furious About This New Rule” — creates an information gap by implying that there’s a future problem or concern that currently are unaware of, but should know about. Most people are likely to click on the ad out of curiosity. Although clickbait has certainly gotten plenty of bad reputation recently, one cannot deny that it continues to work in some cases by leveraging well-worn, psychological patterns that potential customers are drawn to. For example, by directly addressing “people born between 1953 and 1979”, they’re implying a degree of exclusivity that appeals to an individuals’ instinctual longing to feel special.If you truly believe in the product or service you’re selling, you’re obligated to do whatever it takes to get the brand name out there. In Comparisons’ case, the clickbaity headlines seem to be working well, considering they’re included in almost all of their creatives.The images accompanying the creatives make use of emotional triggers to connect with their audience and incite a favorable action. For example, the above ad features an image of a visibly-distressed old man. For an average viewer, this evokes fear and concern as the message is obvious —’Consider seeking help immediately, if you don’t want to end up like this person’. In short, using audacious images to elicit a strong reaction from viewers can be a great way to increase engagement and brand recall. Given that most of their ads are native, 80% of their ads are text/image, whereas, the 19% are image-based and 1% are text-only. Landing Pages There’s a clear disconnect between the ad (that promises you an Insurance fact that’s apparently shocking consumers everywhere) and the landing page that people get after clicking. Turns out, the much-hyped fact is simply about how consumers can use the internet to compare prices of the different insurances available in the market before making an informed purchasing decision. The content comes across as a thinly-veiled attempt to promote Comparisons and ‘trick’ readers into using the platform. There’s no real value proposition that the landing page offers, so people are more likely to leave after discovering that they’ve been misled and there’s nothing new for them to learn about insurance. While Comparisons’ landing page (and ad!) uses a catchy headline to drives click-through-rates, the content doesn’t provide enough “meat” for anyone to stay. However, this combination seems to be working great for them. Even if people are not particularly impressed with the “fact” they were promised, they can simply move on to get a free insurance quote simply by entering their age. Conclusion Contrary to the popular trend of direct ad buying, Comparisons has chosen to use the entirety of their $15.3M ad spend to run programmatic and native ads. For both creatives and landing pages, they’ve opted for a ‘clickbait’ approach, where they heavily rely on emotional triggers to attract a viewer’s attention and encourage them to click on a link. Considering that 50% of people still fall for a well-placed clickbait despite knowing the risks of clicking on unknown links, running ads that appeal to the curious nature of the human mind is a valid marketing tactic that’s proven to work. However, it’s important to remember that while clickbait makes it easy to entice users into clicking on your ad, a person is more likely to feel let down by the content that’s presented to them on the landing page. For all you know, they might end up switching to your immediate competitor for a more trustworthy and authentic experience. In the long-term, Comparisons can think about moving away from clickbait and adopt a slightly honest and reliable approach towards advertising. As far as publishers go, they have a very straightforward strategy of going with platforms that get a reasonable amount of traffic from people in the United States. They are not picky about placement and are happy to spend most of their money on featuring ads on the homepage of their publishers. Overall, Comparisons has figured out a few things that work great for them when it comes to advertising, however, there are still areas they can improve upon.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-comparisons-orgs-is-successfully-leveraging-clickbait-to-drive-traffic-and-engage-with-customers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eComparisons.org accumulates useful information about tens and thousands of products to help users in making the right purchasing decision. With their unique “side by side” comparison functionality, they demystify the often complex world of credit cards, mortgages, auto insurance, refinancing and other similar services for an average person. Additionally, they also have simple, to-the-point articles on a wide range of topics that encourage readers to save money by being well-informed consumers.  Let’s take an in-depth look at what their online advertising strategy looks like in terms of ad spend, publishers, creatives, and landing pages. \u003cstrong\u003eAd Spend and Ad Networks\u003c/strong\u003e In the last 6 months, Comparisons has spent $15.3M on online promotion of their brand, with the majority going towards native advertising and content distribution platforms like Outbrain ($5.8M), Yieldmo ($5.3M), and Taboola ($3.8M). Additionally, the company also dedicated a substantial budget to other networks, including, Revcontent ($263.7K), Yahoo Gemini Native ($83.6K), and ContentAd ($28K). \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.49.28-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.49.28-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eWhile there’s no money going towards direct ads, 66% of the company’s ads are native, and 34% are programmatic. In the last decade, brand engagement practices have tremendously on account of consumers everywhere embracing new digital devices evolving. In order to reach the right audiences, marketers are increasingly relying on programmatic buying to create highly-effective, relevant, and measurable ad campaigns—at scale. Programmatic combines the assurance and safety of reserved buys with the audience precision and automation of real-time auctions. As a result, ad booking is a much more streamlined process for both sellers and buyers that optimizes resource-consumption and boosts efficiency. For example, \u003ca href=\"https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/monetization/programmatic-guaranteed-revenue/\"\u003ea recent Boston Consulting Group study\u003c/a\u003e found that using Google’s programmatic ad-buying tool is 60% less-time consuming for publishers and nearly 30% for agencies. Considering that \u003ca href=\"https://www.marketingweek.com/2015/06/29/rise-of-the-machines-programmatic-set-to-account-for-80-of-online-ads-by-2018/\"\u003e80% of the total mobile display ads\u003c/a\u003e are bought programmatically, it comes as no surprise that most of the Comparisons’ ads run on mobile devices, and not desktop. \u003cstrong\u003ePublishers\u003c/strong\u003e From the beginning, Comparisons has advertised prominently with CNN ($589.7K), Fox News ($407.5K), Rolling Stone ($354.6K), Someecards ($292.5K) and Hometalk ($2291.6K). \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.50.01-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.50.01-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eOn all the platforms, most of their money goes towards ensuring that the ads appear on the homepage. Other than that, there’s no specific placement pattern that Comparisons adheres to, as their ads are displayed alongside arbitrary articles, author profiles, and landing pages on the publishers’ platform.  Most companies practice contextual targeting to attract their target audience and tend to put a lot of thought into their ad placement. In a previous post, we discussed how Mailchimp, a popular email marketing, and automation tool, primarily advertises with publishers that cover technology-related news. Not only this, their ads can be often seen on posts that are “latest smart home devices, upcoming innovations, and workplace productivity hacks”. Comparisons has struck gold by following a simple online promotion strategy: Advertising on the homepage of some of the most-visited platforms in the United States. \u003cstrong\u003eCreatives\u003c/strong\u003e Trying to initiate a conversation around insurance seems like a fairly boring and unattractive way to grab the customer’s attention, however, something about the headline makes you want to click and learn more. \u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.51.32-PM.png\"\u003eThe obvious \u003cem\u003ecliffhanger\u003c/em\u003e \u003cem\u003e—\u003c/em\u003e”Drivers Around California are Furious About This New Rule” \u003cem\u003e—\u003c/em\u003e creates an information gap by implying that there’s a future problem or concern that currently are unaware of, but should know about. Most people are likely to click on the ad out of curiosity. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.52.08-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.52.08-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e Although clickbait has certainly gotten plenty of bad reputation recently, one cannot deny that it continues to work in some cases by leveraging well-worn, psychological patterns that potential customers are drawn to. For example, by directly addressing “people born between 1953 and 1979”, they’re implying a degree of exclusivity that appeals to an individuals’ instinctual longing to feel special.If you truly believe in the product or service you’re selling, you’re obligated to do whatever it takes to get the brand name out there. In Comparisons’ case, the clickbaity headlines seem to be working well, considering they’re included in almost all of their creatives.The images accompanying the creatives make use of emotional triggers to connect with their audience and incite a favorable action. For example, the above ad features an image of a visibly-distressed old man. For an average viewer, this evokes fear and concern as the message is obvious \u003cem\u003e—\u003c/em\u003e’Consider seeking help immediately, if you don’t want to end up like this person’. In short, using audacious images to elicit a strong reaction from viewers can be a great way to increase \u003ca href=\"https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/12/02/creative-display-ad-ideas\"\u003eengagement and brand recall\u003c/a\u003e. Given that most of their ads are native, 80% of their ads are text/image, whereas, the 19% are image-based and 1% are text-only.\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.53.47-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.53.47-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eLanding Pages\u003c/strong\u003e There’s a clear disconnect between the ad (that promises you an Insurance fact that’s \u003cem\u003eapparently\u003c/em\u003e shocking consumers everywhere) and the landing page that people get after clicking. Turns out, the much-hyped fact is simply about how consumers can use the internet to compare prices of the different insurances available in the market before making an informed purchasing decision. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.54.47-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.54.47-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eThe content comes across as a thinly-veiled attempt to promote Comparisons and ‘trick’ readers into using the platform. There’s no \u003cem\u003ereal\u003c/em\u003e value proposition that the landing page offers, so people are more likely to leave after discovering that they’ve been misled and there’s nothing new for them to learn about insurance. While Comparisons’ landing page (and ad!) uses a catchy headline to drives click-through-rates, the content doesn’t provide enough “meat” for anyone to stay. However, this combination seems to be working great for them. Even if people are not particularly impressed with the “fact” they were promised, they can simply move on to get a \u003cem\u003efree\u003c/em\u003e insurance quote simply by entering their age. \u003cstrong\u003eConclusion\u003c/strong\u003e Contrary to the popular trend of direct ad buying, Comparisons has chosen to use the entirety of their $15.3M ad spend to run programmatic and native ads. For both creatives and landing pages, they’ve opted for a ‘clickbait’ approach, where they heavily rely on emotional triggers to attract a viewer’s attention and encourage them to click on a link. Considering that \u003ca href=\"https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/50-percent-of-users-fall-for-clickbait-despite-knowledge-of-risks-finds-experiment/\"\u003e50% of people\u003c/a\u003e still fall for a well-placed clickbait despite knowing the risks of clicking on unknown links, running ads that appeal to the curious nature of the human mind is a valid marketing tactic that’s proven to work. However, it’s important to remember that while clickbait makes it easy to entice users into clicking on your ad, a person is more likely to feel let down by the content that’s presented to them on the landing page. For all you know, they might end up switching to your immediate competitor for a more trustworthy and authentic experience. In the long-term, Comparisons can think about moving away from clickbait and adopt a slightly honest and reliable approach towards advertising. As far as publishers go, they have a very straightforward strategy of going with platforms that get a reasonable amount of traffic from people in the United States. They are not picky about placement and are happy to spend most of their money on featuring ads on the homepage of their publishers. Overall, Comparisons has figured out a few things that work great for them when it comes to advertising, however, there are still areas they can improve upon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Comparisons.org's is successfully using affiliate marketing to drive traffic and engage with customers."},{"content":"Tax preparation and filing can pose quite the challenge, and having a software that helps you accurately determine and manage your tax liabilities can be a game-changer. According to Exponential, more and more people in the U.S. prefer online tax filing or using a tax filing software, instead of relying on retail and walk-in tax services. The 2018 NSBA Tax Survey found that one in three businesses spend more than 40 hours and $10,000 every year doing their taxes. Given that 67% of small business owners consider “paperwork to be one of the biggest tax concerns,” it comes as no surprise that most of them are migrating to third-party platforms to file their returns. Today, the market is flooded with companies offering digital services, and software for individuals and businesses looking for an economical and timely way to file their tax returns. TaxAct and H\u0026amp;R Block, for example, are already big names in the industry. In this post, we’d learn more about how these two companies spend their advertising money and get a detailed understanding of their frequently used campaigns, creatives, publishers, landing pages and more. Let’s get started: TaxAct Founded in 1998, TaxAct offers a software package to professional partners, individuals, and companies, allowing them to file their state and federal tax return easily with a helpful, step-by-step guide. In 2000, the company launched a cloud-based version of TaxAct before selling two-thirds of the ownership stakes (worth $89 million) to TA Associates, a Boston-based private equity firm, in 2004. Finally, in 2012, TaxAct was sold to Bluecora for $287 million. The company is now pursuing new growth opportunities by investing in small business and mobile products. Let’s take a closer look at how paid advertising is helping them achieve their targets: Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last 6 months, TaxAct has spent a whopping $5M on ads, with the majority being dedicated to Google ($2.4M) and $1.4M going towards Direct Buys. In the United States, the Federal individual income tax returns are filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) every year by April 15. As a result, companies like TaxAct tend to double down on advertising between January and April, in order to attract customers looking to file their returns without having to jump through multiple hoops. TaxAct’s ad spend has been $4.2M in the last three months alone (Jan: $1.3M, Feb: $1.8M, March: $1.1M) which means, they’re capitalizing on the current tax season to get as many conversions as possible. TaxAct is also one of the many companies that have added programmatic ad buying to their overall marketing strategy. Side note: Programmatic ads lead to better targeting of potential customers and 508% more conversions than pay per click (PPC). As a result, advertisers in the U.S. are expected to spend almost $69 billion in programmatic display advertising.Sixty-eight percent of TaxAct’s ad spend goes towards programmatic ads, and the remaining is dedicated to video ads (5%) and direct ads (27%). Publishers Most of TaxAct’s ad spend in the last year has gone to the same publishers—CBS Local, Merriam-Webster, YouTube, Wikia, and SpanishDict. Additionally, they also advertise on Reddit, AZLyrics, Urban Dictionary, ESPN, Yahoo, and Life Hacker, amongst other platforms. On CBS Local, where they’ve spent $287.7K in the last six months, their advertisements primarily appear on location-based homepages; for example, Detroit, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. With Merriam-Webster, TaxAct adopts a more contextual targeting strategy and spends a significant amount to advertise on the ‘legal’ section of the dictionary that includes several terms related to taxes. Someone looking up the definition of ‘tax credit’—especially during the tax season—will be more interested to know what TaxAct has to offer. Similarly, on SpanishDict, in addition to advertising on the homepage, TaxAct also ensures that their ads appear on the ‘translate’ section of the website for commonly searched terms like, ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘I miss you’ which most likely get a higher traffic than the rest of the pages on the platform. Creatives TaxAct’s ads prominently feature images (94%) and videos (4%). The copy is short, crisp and conveys the exact USPs of Taxact. For example, by using attention-grabbing terms and phrases like, ‘$0 filing’ and ‘Your biggest refund guaranteed’, the company is putting themselves in their customer’s shoes and speaking directly to the questions, reservations, and concerns they have about online tax preparation.\nThe bright orange/red CTAs stand out in the creative and encourage more click-through rates. Landing Pages All TaxAct ads lead to their homepage where the customers can find more details about the pricing plans and services they offer. The copy is short, to-the-point, and effectively communicates the value proposition that the company has to offer. For example, the landing page opens with the following sentences—‘Simple federal filing for free’ and ‘Get your biggest possible refund fast’. They immediately capture the customer’s attention and conveys exactly how TaxAct can be of help. The CTA buttons that appear throughout the landing page highlight the primary USP of the product—file your tax return for free—and encourage the customer to ‘take action’. The landing page also mentions TaxAct’s $100k Accuracy Guarantee policy that helps assuage fears and buffer the notable uncertainty that a prospect might have about the company. H\u0026amp;R Block Founded in 1955, H\u0026amp;R Block offers a wide range of tax preparation and electronic filing services that help individuals and businesses get the maximum refund. With approximately 12,000 retail tax offices across the United States and the world, the company has globally contributed to 800 million tax returns since its inception. With H\u0026amp;R Block, customers can connect with 70,000 highly-skilled tax professionals worldwide. In 2018, the company reported annual revenue of more than $3.1 billion. Over the years, H\u0026amp;R Block has invested in numerous high-profile marketing campaigns—the most notable one being the television commercial featuring NBA player Anthony Davis and Mad Men actor Jon Ham. Let’s take an in-depth look at their overall advertising strategy: Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last 6 months, H\u0026amp;R Block has spent $4.6M on advertising with the majority being dedicated to Google ($2.3M) and $1.7M going towards Direct ads. In lieu of the tax season, the company’s ad spend in the last three months alone has been $3.8M (Jan: $1.1M, Feb: $2M, March: $768.5K). In fact, H\u0026amp;R Block primarily runs ads only from January to April every year.Programmatic ads constitute 58% of H\u0026amp;R Block’s ad spend, and the remaining goes towards video ads (4%), direct ads (37%), and native ads (1%).Overall, the company has spent more money running ads on mobile devices (iPhones, iPads, Androids and Android tablets) than on Desktop. Publishers In the last year, H\u0026amp;R Block has dedicated most of their ad spend to Youtube ($166.3K), US Magazine ($143.6K), The Hill ($132.3K), Page Six ($91.5K), and Merriam-Webster ($82.4K). Additionally, they’ve also advertised with other publishers, including Quizlet, Amazon, Bustle, Buzzfeed, and Minq. On Page Six, the company seems to invest more money on specific tags, for example, Jeff Goldblum ($7K), New York City ($5K), Rappers ($5K), BAFTAS ($2.6K), and Gal Gadot ($2), amongst others. It’s safe to assume that these tags probably get most of the website’s traffic and/or are frequently clicked on by people who H\u0026amp;R Block wish to target. Similarly, on The Hill, the company pays more for their ads to appear on the ‘policy,’ ‘senate,’ and ‘administration’ news categories, instead of the homepage. Creatives H\u0026amp;R Block has experimented with a variety of advertising creatives in a possible attempt to figure out what their audience is the most responsive to. During NBA games, they run the following ad on popular sports platforms like Bleacher Report, NCAA.com and CBS Sports to attract customers following the scoreboard. With seasonal campaigns like this, H\u0026amp;R Block was able to connect with their target audience by joining an ongoing conversation about a trending topic. In another ad creative, the company ran a promotion, wherein they offered a 5% bonus to customers who put some or all of their refund on an Amazon gift card. Customers are more likely to engage with a business when they receive a discount or a special bonus for converting. After all, who doesn’t like free stuff? Moreover, this ad was published on Amazon, which means, the company was able to tap into Amazon’s customer base and offer them an incentive to file their returns using H\u0026amp;R Block.Apart from A/B testing their ads, H\u0026amp;R Block’s creatives also feature compelling copy, and actionable CTA’s that are pretty much icing on the cake. Landing Pages The first thing that a potential customer sees when they visit the H\u0026amp;R Block landing page is the different pricing plans that the company offers and the services covered in each of them. For the best possible outcome, Hubspot recommends using CTA buttons of a color that starkly contrasts with the background of the landing page. In H\u0026amp;R Block’s case, the green buttons ‘pop’ easily against the white background to capture the customers’ attention and persuade them to sign up. A common mistake that companies make while designing a landing page is adding SEO-based links throughout the content which make navigation harder and distract customers. The landing page of H\u0026amp;R Block is carefully optimized to include links that are absolutely necessary and promote conversion. The landing page copy closely aligns with their campaign copy, so the customers don’t feel misled or ‘duped’ when their post-click experience is vastly different from the pre-click one. Conclusion Both TaxAct and H\u0026amp;R Block run most of their ads during the peak tax season. Since most people are looking into online tax preparation and filing solutions at the same time, they’re more likely to get their ad spends’ worth. By investing their money in the relevant categories, topics, and tags on the publishers’ platform, TaxAct and H\u0026amp;R Block are rightly using contextual targeting to their advantage. After all, someone from their target audience will be more open to engaging with their business after coming across one of their ad campaigns. So, why not show your ads to customers who’re most likely to convert? With a distraction-free UX, meaningful content and strategically-placed CTAs, the landing pages for TaxAct and H\u0026amp;R Block have been designed for optimal conversions.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-taxact-and-hr-block-leverage-the-tax-season-to-optimize-their-advertising-strategy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTax preparation and filing can pose quite the challenge, and having a software that helps you accurately determine and manage your tax liabilities can be a game-changer. \u003ca href=\"https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/online-tax-filing-on-the-rise-retail-on-the-decline-data-finds\"\u003eAccording to Exponential\u003c/a\u003e, more and more people in the U.S. prefer online tax filing or using a tax filing software, instead of relying on retail and walk-in tax services. The \u003ca href=\"https://nsba.biz/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Tax-Survey-2018.pdf\"\u003e2018 NSBA Tax Survey\u003c/a\u003e found that one in three businesses spend more than 40 hours and $10,000 every year doing their taxes. Given that \u003ca href=\"https://www.carefulcents.com/best-tax-software-for-small-businesses/\"\u003e67% of small business owners\u003c/a\u003e consider “paperwork to be one of the biggest tax concerns,” it comes as no surprise that most of them are migrating to third-party platforms to file their returns. Today, the market is flooded with companies offering digital services, and software for individuals and businesses looking for an economical and timely way to file their tax returns. TaxAct and H\u0026amp;R Block, for example, are already big names in the industry. In this post, we’d learn more about how these two companies spend their advertising money and get a detailed understanding of their frequently used campaigns, creatives, publishers, landing pages and more. Let’s get started: \u003cstrong\u003eTaxAct\u003c/strong\u003e Founded in 1998, TaxAct offers a software package to professional partners, individuals, and companies, allowing them to file their state and federal tax return easily with a helpful, step-by-step guide. In 2000, the company launched a cloud-based version of TaxAct before selling two-thirds of the ownership stakes (worth $89 million) to TA Associates, a Boston-based private equity firm, in 2004. Finally, in 2012, TaxAct was sold to Bluecora for $287 million. The company is now pursuing new growth opportunities by investing in small business and mobile products.  Let’s take a closer look at how paid advertising is helping them achieve their targets: \u003cstrong\u003eAd Spend and Ad Networks\u003c/strong\u003e In the last 6 months, TaxAct has spent a whopping $5M on ads, with the majority being dedicated to Google ($2.4M) and $1.4M going towards Direct Buys. In the United States, the Federal individual income tax returns are filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) every year by April 15. As a result, companies like TaxAct tend to double down on advertising between January and April, in order to attract customers looking to file their returns without having to jump through multiple hoops. TaxAct’s ad spend has been $4.2M in the last three months alone (Jan: $1.3M, Feb: $1.8M, March: $1.1M) which means, they’re capitalizing on the current tax season to get as many conversions as possible. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.17.02-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.17.02-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eTaxAct is also one of the many companies that have added programmatic ad buying to their overall marketing strategy. \u003cstrong\u003eSide note:\u003c/strong\u003e Programmatic ads lead to better targeting of potential customers and \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/05/16/trends-in-programmatic-advertising-to-watch-this-year/\"\u003e508% more conversions\u003c/a\u003e than pay per click (PPC). As a result, advertisers in the U.S. are expected to spend almost \u003ca href=\"https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-programmatic-ad-spending-forecast-update-2018\"\u003e$69 billion in programmatic display advertising\u003c/a\u003e.Sixty-eight percent of TaxAct’s ad spend goes towards programmatic ads, and the remaining is dedicated to video ads (5%) and direct ads (27%). \u003cstrong\u003ePublishers\u003c/strong\u003e Most of TaxAct’s ad spend in the last year has gone to the same publishers—CBS Local, Merriam-Webster, YouTube, Wikia, and SpanishDict. Additionally, they also advertise on Reddit, AZLyrics, Urban Dictionary, ESPN, Yahoo, and Life Hacker, amongst other platforms. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.17.45-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.17.45-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eOn CBS Local, where they’ve spent $287.7K in the last six months, their advertisements primarily appear on location-based homepages; for example, Detroit, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.18.27-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.18.27-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eWith Merriam-Webster, TaxAct adopts a more contextual targeting strategy and spends a significant amount to advertise on the ‘legal’ section of the dictionary that includes several terms related to taxes. Someone looking up the definition of ‘tax credit’—especially during the tax season—will be more interested to know what TaxAct has to offer. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.19.02-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.19.02-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eSimilarly, on SpanishDict, in addition to advertising on the homepage, TaxAct also ensures that their ads appear on the ‘translate’ section of the website for commonly searched terms like, ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘I miss you’ which most likely get a higher traffic than the rest of the pages on the platform.  \u003cstrong\u003eCreatives\u003c/strong\u003e TaxAct’s ads prominently feature images (94%) and videos (4%). \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.30.07-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Screen-Shot-2019-06-07-at-3.30.07-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eThe copy is short, crisp and conveys the exact USPs of Taxact. For example, by using attention-grabbing terms and phrases like, ‘$0 filing’ and ‘Your biggest refund guaranteed’, the company is putting themselves in their customer’s shoes and speaking directly to the questions, reservations, and concerns they have about online tax preparation.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How TaxAct and H\u0026R Block leverage the tax season to optimize their advertising strategy."},{"content":"Founded in 1966, Edmunds is a one-stop online resource for automotive information including car prices, dealer inventory listings, national incentives database, and vehicle comparisons. Using images, videos, news articles, blog posts, and discussion boards, the company caters to users looking to learn more about SUVs, sedans, minivans, wagons, trucks, luxury cars, coupes, crossovers, electric cars, and hatchbacks.Over the years, Edmunds has launched: a free online magazine for auto-enthusiasts, Car Week—a week-long event to connect car dealers with customers, a True Market Value Used Vehicle Appraiser that displays the actual transaction prices for used cars, and a hackathon event called Hackomotive to invite new ideas to scale the company. In their first-ever TV commercial that aired in 2012, Edmunds introduced the character of the ‘Car Head’—a company representative with a car for a head—who encourages consumers to avoid haggling with car dealers by using the company’s ‘Prime Promise’ tool to compare vehicle costs to secure the best deals. According to Datalogix, 59% of U.S. car buyers use Edmunds while making a purchasing decision, and more than half of their website visits actually result in a conversion.Let’s take a closer look at their overall advertising strategy: Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last 6 months, Edmunds has spent a whopping $12.6M on online promotion of their brand, with the majority being dedicated to Outbrain ($11.6M), content distribution and native advertising platform. Additionally, Taboola ($735.2K), Direct Buy ($87.5K), and Yahoo Gemini Native ($79.7K) are also advertising networks that they’ve invested in. By comparison, Kelley Blue Book (KBB), a direct competitor to Edmunds, also invests heavily in native advertising with an ad spend of $9.5M on Taboola and $1.9M on Outbrain for the same time periodAlmost 99% of their ads are native—most of which run on mobile devices and have a 406% chance of a higher click-through-rate (CTR) than banner ads. Why, you ask? Simple! Banner ads are intended to show up at a designated place. On small screens, this can often interrupt the surrounding messages and in turn, the overall user experience of the platform they’re displayed on. On the other hand, native ads tend to blend in with the look, feel, and style of the website; and offer a distraction-free value proposition to the consumers. In an attempt to close intrusive ads, most people end up accidentally clicking on them—which is fairly understandable, keeping in mind the touch screen nature of smartphones. On the contrary, the clicks on native ads are a result of genuine interest and have a higher chance of a conversion. Publishers From the very beginning, Edmunds has stuck to advertising with the same publishers—CNN ($1.5), Rolling Stone ($980.9K), ESPN ($617.6K), The Hill ($393.7K) and Daily Caller ($379.7K). They’ve also advertised with The Verge ($334.7K), SBNation ($331.6K), Politico ($307.9K), Fox News ($298.4K), and Curbed ($252.1K). Quick side note: Kelley Blue Book uses more or less the same publishers as Edmunds. CNN ($256.2K), Slate ($245.3K), NBC News ($222.1K), Android Central ($219.1K), and NBC Sports ($186.1K) have been their top publishers in the last 6 months. On CNN, the ads appear largely on the homepage and on posts that fall under the ‘tech’, ‘business’ and ‘success’ category. One can assume that these pages get reasonable traffic, which explains why most of Edmunds’ ads have been running on and off with the same publishers for more than 600 days.\nKelley Blue Books takes a slightly different approach while advertising on CNN. Although, their ads appear under the same categories as Edmunds—technology and money, they tend to be featured next to the video news section of the platform, as opposed to the plain-text articles. Similarly, on Rolling Stone, Edmunds’ ads are displayed on posts under two specific categories—movies’ and TV—whereas, on ESPN the ads can be seen on posts under the racing, MLB, and NFL categories. Creatives Given that Edmunds relies heavily on native ads for promoting their services, it comes as no surprise that 89% of their ads are text/image based.Since Edmunds makes revenue from car dealerships looking to advertise, they don’t really have any discounts to offer to the buyers. By saying, ‘Take a Peek at 2019’s Coolest SUVs’ or ‘These 25 Crossovers Are The Best You Can Buy’, the company is able to draw an average user’s attention by telling them something interesting and extending an invitation to learn more. Considering that native ads are more likely to receive twice as much visual focus than banner ads, it’s important for brands to use this opportunity wisely when designing in-feed creatives. Edmunds is very straight-forward with their images. Most of them include an automobile (cars, trucks, etc.) that’s relevant to the headline and communicates exactly what the brand is about.The ads clearly reflect the content’s purpose and core message, without being click bait-y or misleading in any way. For any kind of ads to work—including native, it’s important that people trust your brand from the get-go, and they’d quickly lose interest if you’re deceiving them into visiting a landing page or buying your product. Landing Pages Instead of directing traffic to their homepage, Edmunds’ native ads lead to dedicated landing pages on the website. For example, an ad saying, ‘Best Sedans for 2018 \u0026amp; 2019 - Reviews and Rankings’ takes the user to the following landing page that contains:\nReviews, specs, inventory, and photos of different Sedan models. Price of different types of Sedan. Buying guides for Sedans. Sedan videos. Every section has a single call-to-action (CTA) that redirects to a separate landing page that has more information about the specific topic that the user is interested to know more about. The CTA copy (for example, ‘Read Buying Guide’ or ‘Research Sedans’) is short and simple, but can be more compelling and persuasive than it is right now. Remember, as Neil Patel rightly puts it, \u0026ldquo;Your homepage is a hub. It’s a jump-off point to the rest of your site’s content. A landing page is a destination. It’s where you want visitors to end up.\u0026rdquo; When you send visitors to your homepage, you\u0026rsquo;re sending them on a quest to navigate your website and find the landing pages that interest them. They\u0026rsquo;re seldom going to convert, when the onus of responsibility is on them. Therefore, it\u0026rsquo;s a business imperative to make sure that the very first page they see when they stumble upon your platform, plays an extremely pivotal role in convincing them to dedicate their time and attention to what you\u0026rsquo;ve to offer. Something KBB can also learn from, given that all their ads lead the homepage in most cases. Currently, there’s no sign-up prompt on the landing page, that can help customers stay-up-to-date on Edmunds latest products and services. By encouraging users to join the platform, a brand can easily build an email marketing list that can be used to relay for e information about the company, including any ongoing offer, to the customers. Conclusion Almost the entirety of Edmunds’ ad spend goes towards native ads—something most brands can actually take notes from. On average, customers are 25% more likely to look at native ads than display ads, and see an 18% increase in purchasing intent after viewing the former. Despite some obvious challenges related to dynamic size variation, content orientation, viewability measurement, or programmatic vendors, more marketers should embrace the benefits of native ads and consider incorporating them in their long-term marketing strategy. For Edmunds, native advertising has clearly worked wonders, which explains why they continue to invest in it. The creatives are high-quality, relate closely to the headline, and accurately represent what the company has to offer. A well-designed, to-the-point landing page is easy to navigate and steers users exactly in the direction that you want them to take. The copy on both the ad and landing page tells people what they want to know in as little words as possible. Overall, Edmunds are aware of the publishers that yield them actionable results, and the ad placement that leads to maximum CTRs. They seem to have figured out how to optimize their advertising to get the best possible outcome.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-edmunds-spent-12-6m-on-native-advertising-to-drive-measurable-roi/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFounded in 1966, Edmunds is a one-stop online resource for automotive information including car prices, dealer inventory listings, national incentives database, and vehicle comparisons. Using images, videos, news articles, blog posts, and discussion boards, the company caters to users looking to learn more about SUVs, sedans, minivans, wagons, trucks, luxury cars, coupes, crossovers, electric cars, and hatchbacks.Over the years, Edmunds has launched: a free online magazine for auto-enthusiasts, Car Week—a week-long event to connect car dealers with customers, a True Market Value Used Vehicle Appraiser that displays the actual transaction prices for used cars, and a hackathon event called Hackomotive to invite new ideas to scale the company. In their first-ever TV commercial that aired in 2012, Edmunds introduced the character of the ‘Car Head’—a company representative with a car for a head—who encourages consumers to avoid haggling with car dealers by using the company’s ‘Prime Promise’ tool to compare vehicle costs to secure the best deals. \u003ca href=\"https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/243622/edmundscom-goes-programmatic-giving-non-auto-bra.html\"\u003eAccording to Datalogix\u003c/a\u003e, 59% of U.S. car buyers use Edmunds while making a purchasing decision, and more than half of their website visits actually result in a conversion.Let’s take a closer look at their overall advertising strategy: \u003cstrong\u003eAd Spend and Ad Networks\u003c/strong\u003e In the last 6 months, Edmunds has spent a whopping $12.6M on online promotion of their brand, with the majority being dedicated to Outbrain ($11.6M), content distribution and native advertising platform. Additionally, Taboola ($735.2K), Direct Buy ($87.5K), and Yahoo Gemini Native ($79.7K) are also advertising networks that they’ve invested in. By comparison, Kelley Blue Book (KBB), a direct competitor to Edmunds, also invests heavily in native advertising with an ad spend of $9.5M on Taboola and $1.9M on Outbrain for the same time period\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-28-at-9.48.56-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-28-at-9.48.56-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eAlmost 99% of their ads are native—most of which run on mobile devices and \u003ca href=\"http://www.fastener.io/blog/mashable-brand-lab-native-ads-get-406-higher-ctr\"\u003ehave a 406% chance of a higher click-through-rate (CTR)\u003c/a\u003e than banner ads. Why, you ask? Simple! Banner ads are intended to show up at a designated place. On small screens, this can often interrupt the surrounding messages and in turn, the overall user experience of the platform they’re displayed on. On the other hand, native ads tend to blend in with the look, feel, and style of the website; and offer a distraction-free value proposition to the consumers. In an attempt to close intrusive ads, most people end up accidentally clicking on them—which is fairly understandable, keeping in mind the touch screen nature of smartphones. On the contrary, the clicks on native ads are a result of genuine interest and have a higher chance of a conversion. \u003cstrong\u003ePublishers\u003c/strong\u003e From the very beginning, Edmunds has stuck to advertising with the same publishers—CNN ($1.5), Rolling Stone ($980.9K), ESPN ($617.6K), The Hill ($393.7K) and Daily Caller ($379.7K). They’ve also advertised with The Verge ($334.7K), \u003ca href=\"http://sbnation.com/\"\u003eSBNation\u003c/a\u003e ($331.6K), Politico ($307.9K), Fox News ($298.4K), and Curbed ($252.1K). Quick side note: Kelley Blue Book uses more or less the same publishers as Edmunds. CNN ($256.2K), Slate ($245.3K), NBC News ($222.1K), Android Central ($219.1K), and NBC Sports ($186.1K) have been their top publishers in the last 6 months.  \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-28-at-9.51.15-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-28-at-9.51.15-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eOn CNN, the ads appear largely on the homepage and on posts that fall under the ‘tech’, ‘business’ and ‘success’ category. One can assume that these pages get reasonable traffic, which explains why most of Edmunds’ ads have been running on and off with the same publishers for more than 600 days.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Edmunds spent $12.6M on native advertising to drive measurable ROI"},{"content":"Have you come to find that online advertising is one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your website? Are you concerned about keeping the pace with your competition? Are you seeking ways to one-up your competitors on the way to the top?\nIt doesn’t matter what type of advertising and marketing strategy you’re using, there’s no way to avoid your competition.\nAccording to Recode, online advertisers are now outspending television advertisers by tens of billions of dollars.\nWhile there are many forms of online advertising - with video and social media picking up steam - it’s search and display ads that remain top dog. Check out this passage from the same Recode article:\nAt 42 percent of total spending, search ads like those on Google remain the biggest form of online advertising, expected to reach $95 billion this year. Online search and classified spending is expected to grow less than 10 percent.\nYou’re reading that right. It’s $95 billion with a “B.” It’s these types of numbers that show just how fierce the online advertising world has become.\nAll this leads to an important question: what steps can you take to better understand what your competition is doing?\nThis is where a competitor ad analysis comes into play. Your goal is simple: to gain a better understanding of everything your competitors are doing, from keywords to budget to platform (and everything in between).\nHere are five simple, yet effective, steps you can take as you conduct a competitor ad analysis. Focusing on these details will give you a better idea of what you’re up against.\n1. Know Your Primary Competitors Get this: just because a brand is bidding on the same keywords or advertising on the same websites doesn’t necessarily mean they’re your direct competition.\nAnswer these questions to help you define your market and offerings:\nWhat does your company do? What type of product or service does your company offer? Who are your customers and where do they live? Are you targeting customers in a particular industry or location? As you answer these questions, among others, you may come to find that companies you previously considered competitors pose no threat to your business.\nYou can then compile an accurate list of your top competitors, which puts you in position to run an analysis that you can actually use to your advantage.\n2. Focus on the Keywords When it comes to search ads, such as those that you see on Google, there’s one thing you can’t afford to overlook: keywords.\nWhat keywords are your competitors bidding on? Are they sticking closely to one primary keyword and a couple variations, or branching out with a broader approach?\nHere’s an example of the top three ads on Google for the keyword phrase “cheap car insurance.”\nWhile you expect to see companies like Liberty Mutual and Geico in this slot, Rate Kick is a lesser known brand. It’s safe to assume the company has not only analyzed its top competitors, but realizes that the keyword phrase “cheap car insurance” puts it in front of the right audience.\nBut these brands don’t stop there. They’re also advertising for related keywords, such as “affordable car insurance.”\nEven if your budget prohibits you from keeping up with your competition, knowing their keywords can help you formulate a plan for getting the most bang for your buck.\n3. Touch on All Types of Advertising Some brands focus solely on one form of advertising, such as search ads or video ads. Others understand the importance of spreading themselves around, giving them the opportunity to reach their audience in many different ways.\nA competitor ad analysis is not complete until you understand what your competition is doing across the board.\nSticking with the example above, it’s easy to see that the top car insurance companies are spending big money on search advertising.\nBut are they doing the same on display advertising? How about social media?\nSome are, some are not. Check out this screenshot of the top display advertisers on the Google Network for the keyword phrase “cheap car insurance.”\nThis is an entirely different ballgame. If you focused solely on search ads, you’d miss out on the many brands (and potential competitors) using display advertising to drive targeted traffic.\nYou need to know what your competitors are doing with every form of online advertising. This is the only way to feel confident in your ability to outperform them.\nFor Geico, here’s a breakdown of where the brand is spending its advertising dollars:\n4. The Ad Creative Strategy Matters You could have the biggest budget in your industry, a thorough understanding of your target market, and a list of high converting keywords, but if you don’t have the right ad creative strategy you can’t expect to beat the competition.\nFor example, when it comes to display advertising, there are three things to think about:\nThe type of ad The size of the ad The ad design Let’s start with a breakdown of the type of ad (once again using Geico as an example):\nGeico is focused primarily on image and HTML5 ads, with video in a distant third.\nNow, let’s take a look at the size breakdown:\nIt’s bread and butter is the 300x250 ad, but there are some others sprinkled in here and there.\nAnd now, here’s the fun stuff - a detailed look at the ad design. This is what separates the contenders from the pretenders:\nNot only does this show that Geico uses a variety of different ad designs, but also that they’re running more than one at the same time.\nAs an outsider looking in, there’s nothing better than access to this type of information. It doesn’t give you insight as to why your competitors are doing certain things, but it absolutely shows you the type of strategy they’re relying on.\n5. Campaigns: One Step Deeper than Strategy In point #4 above, you learned the importance of understanding the ad creative strategy you’re competitors are using.\nIt’s a good start, but you can go deeper by examining individual campaigns.\nHere’s a look at three of the newest campaigns rolled out by Geico:\nThis is helpful in many ways:\nYou can see the target audience You can see how much money was spent on the ad You can see how long the ad was active (possibly giving you a better idea of its success/failure) In the example above, if you’re an insurance agent in Asheville, NC and Geico is a top competitor, you’ll want to dig through this campaign to better understand its strategy.\nDon’t Ever Stop At first, it’s exciting and insightful to learn more about your competitors. The information can validate all the work you’ve been putting in. It can also give you insight into changes you can make to achieve greater success.\nBut then something happens: you think you’ve uncovered everything you need, so you stop paying attention to the competition.\nWhen it comes to online advertising, you can’t do this. Things are always changing. For example, social media advertising increased by 36 percent to more than $22 billion in 2017. It goes without saying that companies that weren’t using social advertising in 2016 jumped on board in 2017.\nYou don’t have to run an ad analysis for every competitor every day of the week, but you should get into the habit of regularly doing so.\nFinal Thoughts Now what do you think? Are you more confident than ever in your ability to understand how your competitors are using online advertising to their advantage?\nFrom how your competition spends their advertising budget to display creatives, every nugget of information you unearth will lead you toward a more effective strategy for your brand.\nYou now have what you need to conduct a thorough competitor ad analysis, all with the idea of making more informed and confident advertising related decisions in the future.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-simple-and-effective-guide-to-competitor-ad-analysis/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHave you come to find that online advertising is one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your website? Are you concerned about keeping the pace with your competition? Are you seeking ways to one-up your competitors on the way to the top?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt doesn’t matter what type of advertising and marketing strategy you’re using, there’s no way to avoid your competition.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to Recode, \u003ca href=\"https://www.recode.net/2018/3/26/17163852/online-internet-advertisers-outspend-tv-ads-advertisers-social-video-mobile-40-billion-2018\"\u003eonline advertisers are now outspending\u003c/a\u003e television advertisers by tens of billions of dollars.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Simple and Effective Guide to Competitor Ad Analysis"},{"content":"What approach do you take when creating a landing page? Do you throw something together and hope for the best? Do you consider every last element, realizing that even the smallest details can have a big impact on conversions?\nLet’s start here: there is no right or wrong way to create a landing page. What works for you may not work for the next company. And what works for them could lead you to plenty of lost time and money.\nEven so, all the best landing pages share the same elements and basic approach.\nUnbounce, an industry leading landing page builder, shares the following five elements of every successful landing page:\nYour unique selling proposition (which should be mentioned several times) Images and/or videos explaining the product/service The benefits of the product/service, typically broken down into bullet points Social proof (testimonials are great) Call-to-action With all five elements, your landing page is designed with conversions in mind. With four or less, you may struggle to reach your full potential.\nThe general goal of every landing page is the same: for a visitor to take action, such as placing an order or sharing their email address.\nThis leads us to a telling statistic on conversions shared by WordStream:\nA typical website conversion rate is about 2.35% on average. But the top 10% of companies are seeing 3-5x higher conversion rates than average.\nIf you want to find yourself among the top 10% of companies, keep reading. We’re going to share five landing page examples, along with something important you can learn from each. Here we go!\n1. StartupBros (Call-to-action) There used to be a time when getting someone to download an ebook was easy. There wasn’t a lot of information out there, so people jumped on any opportunity to learn from a professional (even if that wasn’t the true intention).\nIn today’s day and age, this is much more difficult. Online competition is higher than ever before, which is why it takes a detailed approach to generate a high download rate.\nAbove, we discussed the importance of a strong call-to-action. Well, that’s exactly what you get with this landing page.\nThere are a couple of things to pay attention to here:\nThe use of the ebook image before any content, which provides a clear idea of what the page is about The opportunity to download the ebook before reaching the end of the landing page A final reminder in the last sentence to take action Here’s a closer look:\nUp to this point, the landing page is focused on exciting the reader by touching on pain points and discussing “how to break free.”\nThen, you see this(above). It’s a clear call-to-action allowing you to either click a link or image to download the ebook. There’s no confusion. There’s nothing to stop you from simply clicking and downloading.\nIf you pass up this opportunity, the final line of content hits you again:\nA successful landing page doesn’t have a single call-to-action. There’s more than one reminder to take action, and sometimes that’s exactly what it takes to generate a strong response.\n2. Ecommerce Empire (Social proof) A solid call-to-action is a must, but this will typically fall on deaf ears if it’s not backed up by social proof.\nYou want your readers to feel like they’re missing out if they don’t take action. You want to give your readers peace of mind by showing them that others have taken the first step.\nEcommerce Empire goes above and beyond with social proof, providing several different types of testimonial.\nTo start, there’s the standard testimonial that looks something like this:\nThese are the easiest to secure, as you aren’t asking your customers to do anything more than provide an honest review.\nIf you want to take things to the next level, seek out this type of social proof:\nAnyone can say you have a great product or service, but this type of proof goes above and beyond that. A sales screenshot like this provides extra value, as it speaks louder than words.\nIf you have testimonials, experiment with the many ways to share them on your landing page.\nAnd if you don’t have testimonials, dig some up before the official launch. Even if it means sharing your product or service for free, it’s better than publishing a landing page without social proof.\n3. Neil Patel (Benefits) As one of the top minds in the internet marketing space, it’s no surprise that Neil Patel knows a thing or two about creating aesthetically pleasing, high converting landing pages.\nYou don’t have to look any further than NeilPatel.com to see what we’re talking about.\nThere are many things that will catch your eye, but for the sake of this section we’re focusing on the emphasis put on the benefits.\nNeil gets right to the point by adding this section shortly after the heading. Here’s what you see:\nIt’s not your typical bullet point arrangement (it’s horizontal instead of vertical), but it takes on this basic form. Here are three things to make note of:\nThe heading: through the use of a strong heading - Here is what I’m going to show you - there’s no question about what’s to come. You know exactly what you’re getting if you continue to read. A break down of four specific points: it’s clear as to what you’ll learn if you sign up. The four benefits are laid out in an easy to follow manner. A sense of urgency: this isn’t something you have to do, but it may help improve your conversion rate. By adding a warning about “limited space” readers are more inclined to take immediate action. Above all else, this example shows that there’s more than one way to share benefits and product features on your landing page. It doesn’t have to be the “same old” bullet point list.\n4. Backlinko (Use of image to explain the product/service) The best landing pages include just the right amount of text. There’s enough words to get the point across, but not so many that the reader becomes bored before taking action.\nBut remember, there are other ways to connect with your audience. For example, the use of images and videos can be very powerful, even if you only include one (or one of each).\nThe Backlinko landing page is designed with one thing in mind: for visitors to share their email address in order to access a strategy and case study on how to increase organic traffic.\nRight before the “click to access” button you’ll find the following:\nThe use of this image does three things:\nIt acts as social proof, as the strategy is backed up by cold hard statistics It breaks up the content, giving the reader something else to focus on It excites the reader immediately before they have the opportunity to sign up The Backlinko landing page only has one image, but it’s a powerful one that’s designed and implemented with conversions in mind.\n5. Teambit (Unique selling proposition) A landing page should leave no questions unanswered as to what the product or service is, and more importantly, why and how it stands out from the competition. This is where a unique selling proposition comes into play.\nThe Teambit landing page does a nice job sharing its unique selling proposition multiple times in a variety of ways.\nYou’re hit with it as soon as you visit the page:\nThis isn’t a lot of text. Furthermore, it’s not displayed in any special way. However, it clearly tells the reader what Teambit does and how it can help. There’s no guesswork here.\nAs you make your way down the landing page, the unique selling proposition only gets stronger.\nThis section, located approximately one-third of the way down the landing page, dives into the finer details of what makes Teambit better than the competition. Pay close attention to:\nThe use of a powerful headline that plays into the reader’s emotions Three unique benefits of Teambit conveyed in an easy to digest manner The use of images to attract and maintain the reader’s attention If you learn nothing else from the Teambit landing page, let it be the fact that you can (and should) share your unique selling proposition in a number of ways.\nConclusion Now that you’ve reviewed these five examples, you should have a better idea of what it takes to create a well-optimized, high converting landing page of your own.\nAs long as you’re open to making changes and obsessive with testing, you’ll find your landing page in a better place soon enough.\nWhat are your thoughts on these landing page tips? Have you followed this advice in the past? Would you add anything else?\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/5-things-you-can-learn-from-these-5-landing-pages/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat approach do you take when creating a landing page? Do you throw something together and hope for the best? Do you consider every last element, realizing that even the smallest details can have a big impact on conversions?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet’s start here: there is no right or wrong way to create a landing page. What works for you may not work for the next company. And what works for them could lead you to plenty of lost time and money.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"5 Things You Can Learn From These 5 Landing Pages"},{"content":"With the advent of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and chatbots in recent years, email might seem like an outdated medium for marketing. However, nearly three-quarters of businesses everywhere continue to invest email marketing to increase engagement (22%) and retain their existing customers (29%). Out of the several email marketing services available in the marketing, Mailchimp, and Sendgrid stand out as the most popular choices for managing contacts and segmenting users to creating highly engaging emails and tracking campaign performance.Today, we’re going to compare the two services in terms of their ad spend, landing pages, creatives and publishers to get a comprehensive understanding of they run their paid advertising campaigns. Mailchimp Launched in 2001,Mailchimp was designed for small businesses looking to scale as an alternative to the high-end, oversized, and expensive tools and resources. While the founders—Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius—started the company as an email marketing solution, they eventually expanded to offer other services including Google ads, landing pages, signup forms, and more. In 2016, the platform was clocking in annual revenue of $400,000,000 with just 550 employees and increased their user base from 12 million to 16 million. Despite their extraordinary growth, MailChimp’s success didn’t wasn’t an overnight affair. They’ve spent years experimenting and testing to create a practical, loveable, result-oriented product that caters to the millions of people across the globe.Let’s take an in-depth look at how paid advertising has contributed to their progress: Ad Spend and Ad Networks In the last 6 months, Mailchimp has spent almost $1.2 M on ads, with $1.1M going towards Display ads alone. Most businesses—big or small—like to kick off the new year by investing in new technologies and tools, which explains the sudden increase in the ad spend for Jan'19 ($644.3K). Additionally, a considerable amount of their ad spend is also allocated to Google ($85.7K) and YouTube ($52.1K). There\u0026rsquo;s little to no money going towards Native or Programmatic advertising, which confirms Mailchimp\u0026rsquo;s preference for direct buying as opposed to real-time bidding. What does that mean, you ask? Well, in layman terms, Mailchimp buys ad impressions in bulk from specific publishers instead of auctioning each impression off to the highest bidder. Publishers Adopting a more contextual targeting strategy, Mailchimp mostly advertises on platforms that primarily cover technology-related news. For example, their top 5 publishers include Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Fast Company, The A.V. Club and New York Magazine. As a result, their ads can usually be seen next to articles talking about the latest smart home devices, upcoming innovations, and workplace productivity hacks. They\u0026rsquo;re also moving away from publishers like mmafighting.com, thesaurus.com, dictionary.com, The Weather Network, ESPN, Rotten Tomatoes, and more, as they are not likely to generate relevant traffic for Mailchimp. Unlike their competitor, Mailchimp only started advertising proactively in 2018, which explains why they still appear to be experimenting with a mixed bunch of publishers. While they seem to have found a strong footing with their current publishers, in addition to other well-known platforms such as Vox, The Verge, Jezebel, Deadspin, and Vice, it would be interesting to see how they budget their ad spend in the coming months. In the last 30 days, they\u0026rsquo;ve pitched in a significant amount of money on publishers they\u0026rsquo;ve discovered very recently— Gizmodo($153K), Lifehacker ($139.9K), and The A.V. Club ($74.9K). In the long-term, they probably benefit more from not putting all their eggs in one basket and strategically investing in new as well as old publishers that have worked well for them in the past. Creatives In August 2018, Mailchimp announced a complete rebrand and introduced a variety of marketing automation features for small businesses looking to sustainably scale up. Therefore, most of their recent ad creatives, including images, GIFs and videos, focus on establishing Mailchimp\u0026rsquo;s USP as \u0026lsquo;more than just email\u0026rsquo;. The copy is conversational and to the point, so that an average customer can easily gauge what services Mailchimp offers. Their videos use childlike illustrations that are purposefully off-kilter to showcase the various optimization tools that Mailchimp has to offer. The yellow paired with black, albeit a very non-web platform choice, remains consistent across all their branding collateral which is important for building recognition. Earlier, Mailchimp\u0026rsquo;s did not have a distinctive colour scheme—in fact, most of their ads last year incorporated different colours as shown below—making it difficult to ensure brand recall.All their ads urge the viewer to \u0026rsquo;learn more\u0026rsquo; by clicking on the prominently displayed call-to-action (CTA) button. As Michael Aagaard accurately points out on Unbounce—CTAs \u0026ldquo;represent the tipping point between bounce and conversion\u0026rdquo;. While visual cues like shapes and colours are important for attracting a potential customer\u0026rsquo;s attention, ultimately, a CTA is what drives them to take action by creating a sense of urgency. Landing Pages For most of their campaigns, Mailchimp directs all traffic to their homepage where the headline + sub-headline is less about them and more about how they can help a potential customer’s business. Using the correct pronouns can have a lasting impact on how responsive customers are towards your marketing messages. It’s crucial that your landing page copy “ speaks to your target audience and not at them.”While writing copy for your marketing campaign, pay attention to the number of times you include the words ‘you’ vs. ‘we’. Mailchimp hits the nail on the head by using second person pronouns in almost 80% of their copy and dedicating only 20% to the first person pronouns. By focusing on the customer and their business, they’re able to personalize the landing page and the product they’re selling. In addition to compelling, customer-centric copy, Mailchimp’s homepage also includes a personalized CTA button (that convert 42% more visitors) that encourages people to sign up for free. Whether you want the users to subscribe to your newsletter, visit your blog, or download an e-book—a CTA is important for guiding them to the next stage of your sales funnel. Sendgrid Founded by Isaac Saladana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins in 2009, Sendgrid to simplify email delivery for businesses, primarily focussing on shipping notifications, newsletter, friend requests, and sign-up confirmations. Since then, the company has evolved to provide ISP monitoring, feedback loops, push notifications, SMS, domain keys, and sender policy framework (SPF).In 2017, Sendgrid generated $111.9 million in revenue (a 40% increase from the previous year), with $15 million coming from marketing campaigns alone. Additionally, the company announced that they were processing 36 billion emails per month. In 2018, they were acquired by Twilio, a California based cloud communications platform.Here’s a closer look into their advertising strategy: Ad Spend and Ad Networks Sengrid has spent a modest $929.2K on ad campaigns in the last 6 months, with the majority being dedicated to Google ($813.9K) and only $22.7K going towards Display ads. Unlike Mailchimp, Sendgrid has remained pretty consistent with their advertising during this time—with the exception of a notable spike starting 2019. One can assume that ads on the desktop have yielded better results for them as opposed to mobile, which explains why they continue to invest more money into the former than the latter.Sendgrid is one of the many businesses actively using programmatic technologies for advertising—a trend that’s expected to influence 65% of digital media this year. Programmatic ad-buying account for a whopping 89% of their ad spend. Publishers Taking a slightly unconventional approach, Sendgrid’s mostly advertisers on platforms that are not directly related to their product domain or brand values. For example, one of their top 5 publishers includes getitfree.us a website that collates the latest offers and deals. Similarly, MarketWatch and Kiplinger are about personal finance and business forecasting; Dogster is a magazine about—well, dogs; and Reddit is a user-driven community that covers pretty every topic under the sun. In the past year, they’ve experimented with several other publishers including Social Blade, wikiHow, Nicki Swift, Racked and Deviantart—some of which they continue to advertise with. However, they’re strategic with the spending and don’t seem to be putting a significant amount of their money on new—or any advertisers. In fact, contrary to Mailchimp that has spent $254.6K in the last 365 days on their current top publisher (Gizmodo), getitfree.us—Sendgrid’s current and overall top publisher made only $41.8K. Creatives In the last 6 months, Sendgrid has invested in a diverse set of ad campaigns. For example, the following campaigns focus on improving deliverability and dynamic email templates—both of which are key USPs or selling points of the product. They often leverage seasonal events like the holidays or their Twilio acquisition (Oct 2018) to engage with their potential audience. Some of their advertising campaigns are also designed to promote content on the Sendgrid blog and resource section. For example, the following ads direct traffic to Be an Email Superhero: 8 Ways to Beat Your 2018 Email Goals Right Now and Your Guide to Email A/B Testing and Optimizing Your Call to Action. Creating meaningful content for your customers establishes you as an expert in the industry, improves your SEO and in turn, contributes to lead generation.Overall, Sendgrid frequently experiments with their ad creatives—something Mailchimp can do more of. Additionally, they opt for a clear design, a compelling CTA, and noticeable branding in all their creatives, while the aesthetic features (like, background colour, logo placement, etc) and messaging changes constantly. Even though more than 75% of “advertising impact is determined by creative quality”, brands tend to focus more on ad targeting and placement. Implementing an A/B test is the best way to find out exactly the kind of creatives works for different audiences. Landing Pages Most of Sendgrid’s ad campaigns lead to the landing page below that includes an eye-catching illustration, data-driven copy that outlines their USPs, and a compelling CTA. Conclusion In terms of website traffic, Mailchimp globally ranks 330, whereas Sendgrid is currently at 11,510. With over $600 million in annual revenue, Mailchimp has doubled its valuation (to $4.2 billion) in the last 2 years. On the other hand, Sendgrid clocked in an estimated revenue of $97.8 million in 2018. Clearly, Mailchimp is more popular at the moment, however, Sendgrid isn’t too fair behind either. We’ll most likely be noticing an increased spend from both of them companies as the year goes on.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-battle-of-email-marketing-services-how-mailchimp-and-sengrid-run-their-paid-advertising-campaigns/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWith the advent of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and chatbots in recent years, email might seem like an outdated medium for marketing. However, \u003ca href=\"https://themanifest.com/digital-marketing/state-email-marketing-2018\"\u003enearly three-quarters\u003c/a\u003e of businesses everywhere continue to invest email marketing to increase engagement (22%) and retain their existing customers (29%). Out of the several email marketing services available in the marketing, \u003ca href=\"https://mailchimp.com/\"\u003eMailchimp\u003c/a\u003e, and \u003ca href=\"https://sendgrid.com/\"\u003eSendgrid\u003c/a\u003e stand out as the most popular choices for managing contacts and segmenting users to creating highly engaging emails and tracking campaign performance.Today, we’re going to compare the two services in terms of their ad spend, landing pages, creatives and publishers to get a comprehensive understanding of they run their paid advertising campaigns. \u003cstrong\u003eMailchimp\u003c/strong\u003e Launched in 2001,Mailchimp was designed for small businesses looking to scale as an alternative to the high-end, oversized, and expensive tools and resources. While the founders—Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius—started the company as an email marketing solution, they eventually expanded to offer other services including Google ads, landing pages, signup forms, and more. In 2016, the platform was clocking in annual revenue of $400,000,000 with just 550 employees and increased their user base from 12 million to 16 million. Despite their extraordinary growth, MailChimp’s success didn’t wasn’t an overnight affair. They’ve spent years experimenting and testing to create a practical, loveable, result-oriented product that caters to the millions of people across the globe.Let’s take an in-depth look at how paid advertising has contributed to their progress: \u003cstrong\u003eAd Spend and Ad Networks\u003c/strong\u003e In the last 6 months, Mailchimp has spent almost $1.2 M on ads, with $1.1M going towards Display ads alone. Most businesses—big or small—like to kick off the new year by investing in new technologies and tools, which explains the sudden increase in the ad spend for Jan'19 ($644.3K). Additionally, a considerable amount of their ad spend is also allocated to Google ($85.7K) and YouTube ($52.1K).  \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-16-at-9.33.35-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-16-at-9.33.35-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e There\u0026rsquo;s little to no money going towards Native or Programmatic advertising, which confirms Mailchimp\u0026rsquo;s preference for direct buying as opposed to real-time bidding. What does that mean, you ask? Well, in layman terms, Mailchimp buys ad impressions in bulk from specific publishers instead of auctioning each impression off to the highest bidder. \u003cstrong\u003ePublishers\u003c/strong\u003e Adopting a more contextual targeting strategy, Mailchimp mostly advertises on platforms that primarily cover technology-related news. For example, their top 5 publishers include Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Fast Company, The A.V. Club and New York Magazine. As a result, their ads can usually be seen next to articles talking about the latest smart home devices, upcoming innovations, and workplace productivity hacks. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-16-at-9.31.53-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-16-at-9.31.53-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eThey\u0026rsquo;re also moving away from publishers like mmafighting.com, thesaurus.com, dictionary.com, The Weather Network, ESPN, Rotten Tomatoes, and more, as they are not likely to generate relevant traffic for Mailchimp. Unlike their competitor, Mailchimp only started advertising proactively in 2018, which explains why they still appear to be experimenting with a mixed bunch of publishers. While they seem to have found a strong footing with their current publishers, in addition to other well-known platforms such as Vox, The Verge, Jezebel, Deadspin, and Vice, it would be interesting to see how they budget their ad spend in the coming months. In the last 30 days, they\u0026rsquo;ve pitched in a significant amount of money on publishers they\u0026rsquo;ve discovered very recently— Gizmodo($153K), Lifehacker ($139.9K), and The A.V. Club ($74.9K). In the long-term, they probably benefit more from not putting all their eggs in one basket and strategically investing in new as well as old publishers that have worked well for them in the past. \u003cstrong\u003eCreatives\u003c/strong\u003e In August 2018, Mailchimp announced a complete rebrand and introduced a variety of marketing automation features for small businesses looking to sustainably scale up. Therefore, most of their recent ad creatives, including images, GIFs and videos, focus on establishing Mailchimp\u0026rsquo;s USP as \u0026lsquo;more than just email\u0026rsquo;. The copy is conversational and to the point, so that an average customer can easily gauge what services Mailchimp offers. Their videos use childlike illustrations that are purposefully off-kilter to showcase the various optimization tools that Mailchimp has to offer. \u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n      \u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/_boGtscavzg?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n    \u003c/div\u003e\nThe yellow paired with black, albeit a very non-web platform choice, remains consistent across all their branding collateral which is important for building recognition. Earlier, Mailchimp\u0026rsquo;s did not have a distinctive colour scheme—in fact, most of their ads last year incorporated different colours as shown below—making it difficult to ensure brand recall.\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-16-at-9.31.09-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-16-at-9.31.09-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eAll their ads urge the viewer to \u0026rsquo;learn more\u0026rsquo; by clicking on the prominently displayed call-to-action (CTA) button. As Michael Aagaard accurately points out on Unbounce—CTAs \u0026ldquo;represent the tipping point between bounce and conversion\u0026rdquo;. While visual cues like shapes and colours are important for attracting a potential customer\u0026rsquo;s attention, ultimately, a CTA is what drives them to take action by creating a sense of urgency.\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-16-at-9.32.54-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-16-at-9.32.54-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eLanding Pages\u003c/strong\u003e For most of their campaigns, Mailchimp directs all traffic to their homepage where the headline + sub-headline is less about them and more about how they can help a potential customer’s business. Using the correct pronouns can have a lasting impact on how responsive customers are towards your marketing messages. It’s crucial that your landing page copy “ \u003ca href=\"https://keysplashcreative.com/why-pronouns-matter-so-much-in-copywriting/\"\u003espeaks \u003cem\u003eto\u003c/em\u003e your target audience and not \u003cem\u003eat\u003c/em\u003e them\u003c/a\u003e.”\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://assets.website-files.com/5be2fc56e0d7eef944dd625e/5be2fc56e0d7ee25a9dd6909_really-good-ux-mailchimp-landing-page.gif\"\u003eWhile writing copy for your marketing campaign, pay attention to the number of times you include the words ‘you’ vs. ‘we’. Mailchimp hits the nail on the head by using second person pronouns in almost 80% of their copy and dedicating only 20% to the first person pronouns. By focusing on the customer and their business, they’re able to personalize the landing page and the product they’re selling. In addition to compelling, customer-centric copy, Mailchimp’s homepage also includes a personalized CTA button (that convert \u003ca href=\"https://dsim.in/blog/2017/07/21/113-cta-stats-to-quantify-its-power-for-brands/\"\u003e42% more visitors\u003c/a\u003e) that encourages people to sign up for free. Whether you want the users to subscribe to your newsletter, visit your blog, or download an e-book—a CTA is important for guiding them to the next stage of your sales funnel. \u003cstrong\u003eSendgrid\u003c/strong\u003e Founded by Isaac Saladana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins in 2009, Sendgrid to simplify email delivery for businesses, primarily focussing on shipping notifications, newsletter, friend requests, and sign-up confirmations. Since then, the company has evolved to provide ISP monitoring, feedback loops, push notifications, SMS, domain keys, and sender policy framework (SPF).In 2017, Sendgrid generated $111.9 million in revenue (a 40% increase from the previous year), with $15 million coming from marketing campaigns alone. Additionally, the company announced that they were processing 36 billion emails per month. In 2018, they were acquired by Twilio, a California based cloud communications platform.Here’s a closer look into their advertising strategy: \u003cstrong\u003eAd Spend and Ad Networks\u003c/strong\u003e Sengrid has spent a modest $929.2K on ad campaigns in the last 6 months, with the majority being dedicated to Google ($813.9K) and only $22.7K going towards Display ads. Unlike Mailchimp, Sendgrid has remained pretty consistent with their advertising during this time—with the exception of a notable spike starting 2019. One can assume that ads on the desktop have yielded better results for them as opposed to mobile, which explains why they continue to invest more money into the former than the latter.\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-22-at-9.32.52-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Screen-Shot-2019-04-22-at-9.32.52-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eSendgrid is one of the many businesses actively using programmatic technologies for advertising—a trend that’s expected to influence 65% of digital media this year. Programmatic ad-buying account for a whopping 89% of their ad spend. \u003cstrong\u003ePublishers\u003c/strong\u003e Taking a slightly unconventional approach, Sendgrid’s mostly advertisers on platforms that are not directly related to their product domain or brand values. For example, one of their top 5 publishers includes getitfree.us a website that collates the latest offers and deals. Similarly, \u003ca href=\"https://www.marketwatch.com/\"\u003eMarketWatch\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kiplinger.com/\"\u003eKiplinger\u003c/a\u003e are about personal finance and business forecasting; \u003ca href=\"https://www.dogster.com/\"\u003eDogster\u003c/a\u003e is a magazine about—well, dogs; and \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/\"\u003eReddit\u003c/a\u003e is a user-driven community that covers pretty every topic under the sun. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-10.36.27-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-10.36.27-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eIn the past year, they’ve experimented with several other publishers including \u003ca href=\"https://socialblade.com/\"\u003eSocial Blade\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page\"\u003ewikiHow\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nickiswift.com/\"\u003eNicki Swift\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://www.racked.com/\"\u003eRacked\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://www.deviantart.com/\"\u003eDeviantart\u003c/a\u003e—some of which they continue to advertise with. However, they’re strategic with the spending and don’t seem to be putting a significant amount of their money on new—or any advertisers. In fact, contrary to Mailchimp that has spent $254.6K in the last 365 days on their current top publisher (Gizmodo), getitfree.us—Sendgrid’s current and overall top publisher made only $41.8K. \u003cstrong\u003eCreatives\u003c/strong\u003e In the last 6 months, Sendgrid has invested in a diverse set of ad campaigns.\n\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-10.36.59-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-10.36.59-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e For example, the following campaigns focus on improving deliverability and dynamic email templates—both of which are key USPs or selling points of the product. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-10.37.54-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-10.37.54-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eThey often leverage seasonal events like the holidays or their Twilio acquisition (Oct 2018) to engage with their potential audience. \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-10.38.35-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-10.38.35-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e Some of their advertising campaigns are also designed to promote content on the Sendgrid blog and resource section. For example, the following ads direct traffic to \u003ca href=\"https://sendgrid.com/blog/be-an-email-superhero-2018/\"\u003eBe an Email Superhero: 8 Ways to Beat Your 2018 Email Goals Right Now\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://www.sendgrid.com/resource/email-a-b-testing-and-calls-to-action/#ab-testing-essentials\"\u003eYour Guide to Email A/B Testing and Optimizing Your Call to Action\u003c/a\u003e. Creating meaningful content for your customers establishes you as an expert in the industry, improves your SEO and in turn, contributes to lead generation.Overall, Sendgrid frequently experiments with their ad creatives—something Mailchimp can do more of. Additionally, they opt for a clear design, a compelling CTA, and noticeable branding in all their creatives, while the aesthetic features (like, background colour, logo placement, etc) and messaging changes constantly. Even though more than 75% of “advertising impact is determined by creative quality”, brands tend to focus more on ad targeting and placement. Implementing an A/B test is the best way to find out exactly the kind of creatives works for different audiences. \u003cstrong\u003eLanding Pages\u003c/strong\u003e Most of Sendgrid’s ad campaigns lead to the landing page below that includes an eye-catching illustration, data-driven copy that outlines their USPs, and a compelling CTA.\n\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-10.39.49-PM.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screen-Shot-2019-05-07-at-10.39.49-PM.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eConclusion\u003c/strong\u003e In terms of website traffic, Mailchimp globally ranks 330, whereas Sendgrid is currently at 11,510. With over $600 million in annual revenue, Mailchimp has doubled its valuation (to $4.2 billion) in the last 2 years. On the other hand, Sendgrid clocked in an estimated revenue of $97.8 million in 2018. Clearly, Mailchimp is more popular at the moment, however, Sendgrid isn’t too fair behind either. We’ll most likely be noticing an increased spend from both of them companies as the year goes on.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Battle of Email Marketing Services: How Mailchimp and Sengrid run their paid advertising campaigns."},{"content":"According to a recent survey, most people are not pleased with their ad experiences across social media (45%), retail websites (36%) and news aggregators (34%). In fact, more than 51% of them believe that the digital universe should be home to fewer ads, since most pop-ups heavily interfere with the content, interrupt shopping experiences, take up the entire screen and increase loading time.With the evolution of the advertising landscape, brands are becoming more focused on creating a user experience that matches the customers\u0026rsquo; expectations and maximizes their ability to monetize.Here\u0026rsquo;s when native advertising comes in.\nWhat is native advertising? Native advertising is sponsored content that blends in with the editorial environment of a platform to influence customers in a granular, discrete way. For example, promoted tweets are tightly woven within the Twitter layout, making them look exactly like regular tweets that can be favorited, shared and replied to.\nSource: contentmarketinginstitute\nUnlike traditional banner ads or pop-ups, native ads are highly targeted, mobile-friendly and not disruptive to the user experience. As a result, they perform much better in terms of engagement, viewability, reach and click-through-rate. Nearly 54% of marketers also believe that native advertising (especially on social media) will become the most valuable revenue stream for a brand in the next 2 years.\nDespite being a fairly new concept, native ads are being widely used to drive conversions, attract new customers, and increase brand awareness. Currently, 65% of businesses have set aside a budget of $1,000 to $25,000 for running native ads within a user\u0026rsquo;s content feed, recommendation modules/widgets, search results and catalogue listings.In 2015, Purina, an American pet food brand, teamed up with Buzzfeed to create a native advertising campaign that highlights the unbreakable bond between a puppy and a man. Moving away from the 30-second TV commercial format, the 3.5-minute short film relies on strong storytelling and improv-heavy format to engage viewers and create brand awareness. Overall, the video doesn’t appear to be an ad, and comes across as something you\u0026rsquo;d share with a dog-loving friend.\nPurina used multiple digital channels to promote the video that garnered 22 million views on YouTube alone.\nAdditionally, Purina also published articles that mimic the listicle-style structure that Buzzfeed is known for. For an average reader, these articles look exactly the same as the other non-sponsored content on the platform. However, if you look closely, all the articles are subtly promoting the brand to potential customers.\nWhat is programmatic ad buying? With the advancement in online advertising technology, new processes and solutions are constantly being explored to revolutionize the buying of ad space. We’ve moved away from meaningless keyword stuffing and “spray and pray” marketing to adopt significantly more efficient ROI-maximizing strategies. Using predictive analytics and automation algorithms, marketers now compete in a real-time auction to purchase ads compatible with their target audience and budget.\nUnlike traditional PPC, programmatic ad buying:\nAllows you to target different audience demographics based on age, gender, location, interests and other actionable parameters. Offers flexibility across several different digital channels. For example, the ad will be displayed on a specific platform and to a custom pool of users only. Uses an attribution model to cater to your company\u0026rsquo;s advertising budget. Reduces manual interference, so you can less time on manually compiling and reading spreadsheets. Real-time bidding (RTB) is expected to account for more than $18.2 billion of digital ad sales (U.S.) this year, which is a tremendous increase from $3.1 billion in 2013. With 60% of marketing leaders acknowledging AI as the key to running effective programmatic campaigns, it\u0026rsquo;s safe to say that more and more brands will be using third-party providers or in-house platforms like Adbeat to optimize their ad-buying.\nSource: softway\nWith the powerful combination of programmatic and native advertising, you can unlock new mobile opportunities and deliver better brand experiences across multiple screens.\nWhat is programmatic native advertising? Programmatic native ads cater to both the customers and the placement at scale by leveraging contextual signals and machine learning.Most of your target audience\u0026rsquo;s attention is spread across various screens and channels that shape their preferences and purchasing decisions. People browse through an e-commerce mobile app while watching a Youtube video or text their friends while listening to a podcast on their tablet. For advertisers, this means that the purchase funnel is infinitely more complicated than it used to be a couple of years ago.Programmatic native accounts for non-linear conversion paths, thereby, allowing brands to target the right individual with the right message when the opportunity arises. In simple terms, you get a detailed blueprint of customer intent across the apps they use, stores they visit, websites they stop by, and videos they watch. With a thorough understanding of consumer preferences, you can turn to programmatic buying to create an ad campaign that\u0026rsquo;s relevant and more likely to increase conversions.For example, Shu Uemura, a L\u0026rsquo;Oréal Luxe makeup brand, wanted to create brand awareness in the U.S., drive sales for their latest collection and grow their email subscriber list. After identifying their target audience— women between 25 to 30 years of age with a history of purchasing luxury beauty products online, the brand organized their consumer data and used programmatic buying to convert prospects.Next, they tapped into their user-list to reach both existing and potential customers who had already dropped by a L\u0026rsquo;Oréal web property. As an additional step, Shu Uemura also created a lookalike audience of people similar to the previous group.Finally, the brand combined programmatic buying and first-party data to show targeted promotional messages to their audience, depending on where they were positioned in the sales funnel.With programmatic-native, they were able to drive 2X more revenue, achieve a 2,200% return on ad spend (ROAS), and increase their overall website traffic. Apart from direct financial results, Shu Uemura was able to centralize their ad buying across all media partners, which ultimately helped optimize their workflow.In 2016, programmatic native adoption grew by 86%, with 4,182 brands purchasing ad space on the top-200 online publishers. Even though the overall market penetration of programmatic native advertising remains fairly low, the consistent campaign delivery and high-grade performance has attracted marketers everywhere.\nWhy is programmatic native advertising more effective for brands? Contextual targeting: The purpose of programmatic-native is rendered ineffective if you\u0026rsquo;re showing fitness-related ads on a marketing blog. Apart from the UI, it\u0026rsquo;s also important to ensure that your campaigns match the overall theme, content, and audience-type of a platform. For example, Google Adsense has automated systems scan the text of any website for keywords and match them to an inventory of advertisers who use AdWords to deliver relevant ads to users.\nA recent Adlucent survey found that 7 out of 10 buyers prefer ads that cater to their shopping habits and personal interests. In fact, 46% of the respondents agreed that being exposed to relevant ads is crucial to their online experience. Ultimately, when your ad campaigns are more contextually targeted, people will be interested in finding out more about your brand and you\u0026rsquo;re likely to get a higher a click-through-rate (CTR). Mobile-friendly: Today, nearly 77% of Americans own a smartphone—a number that\u0026rsquo;s expected to increase after the 5G launch. As a result, marketers today are building smart, responsive websites and apps that are targeted towards a mobile-first audience. Unlike banner ads, programmatic-native is compatible with organic movements (like tapping/swiping) and easy to navigate on the small screen, resulting in better performing ads. So, whether you want customers to make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter or indulge in other conversion-related actions, programmatic-native offers a highly effective approach to lure your target audience in a multi-screen world. Provision of multiple assets: For a successful ad campaign, you\u0026rsquo;ll need a brand name, a click-through URL, a headline, a logo, a headline, and an image. You\u0026rsquo;d also want to experiment with various CTAs, image type, or headline length to understand what resonates the best with your audience. With programmatic-native, you can manage multiple assets, have greater control over ad placement and focus on long-term engagement.\nHere are a few things you should keep in mind while creating an ad using multiple assets:— Write short and persuasive headlines that communicate the purpose of your ad in one-glance. Remember, you don\u0026rsquo;t have the luxury of a wider desktop screen and are dealing with shorter attention spans. — Optimize your ads for search engines by using specific keywords (for example, the name of the brand, event, industry, course, model or products). Why, you ask? Simple, 70% of mobile searches end with the customer clicking and taking action on the website within an hour. — Add a personal touch to emotionally connect with your readers and offer an appealing value proposition. Put yourself in their shoes to identify common customer pain points and personalize your marketing message. — Apart from using visual content like charts, videos and infographics, make sure you include a clear CTA (call-to-action) in your ad to direct customers to an external landing page/platform.\nEase of media buying: Imagine this: You launch an ad campaign that\u0026rsquo;s expected to generate a higher than an average number of clicks and calls. Soon, an automated alert informs you that the average call count is now 6x higher. In an all-programmatic system, one would assume all calls to be high quality, and invest more into the ad spend for an even better response. However, when there\u0026rsquo;s human involvement, it would be easy to notice some red flags right away. Like, the sudden influx of calls can be due to the web login being down and people not being able to access their accounts. Programmatic-native takes a more manumatic (manual + automatic) approach, leading to smarter real-time ad buying decisions. In the long run, using programmatic technology in conjunction with the human brain will help you determine if you should optimize or kill a campaign.While programmatic-native offers plenty of advantages, many media buyers are concerned about losing control. Advertisers tend to set campaign parameters of who, when, and how they want to target, however, most times, they are not necessarily met. Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s competitive intelligence helps you pinpoint the ad placements and traffic sources that are successfully working for other brands in your domain, so you can optimize your buying strategy for the better.With audience insights, powerful targeting, and automated media buying, an ideal programmatic native ad leaves a long-term positive impression on your brand perception. Effective for both promoting content and prospecting new customers, they can also be used to re-target at opportune moments by allowing intent-based distribution of ads.In the most recent times, new technologies, tools, and solutions are being developed to make it easier for brands to adopt the programmatic-native approach to advertising. If you\u0026rsquo;re looking to test the waters, we hope the above pointers have been helpful.Do you plan to invest in programmatic-native for your company?\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/programmatic-native-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAccording to a recent survey, \u003ca href=\"https://www.adweek.com/digital/new-study-highlights-how-much-people-dislike-digital-ads/\"\u003emost people\u003c/a\u003e are not pleased with their ad experiences across social media (45%), retail websites (36%) and news aggregators (34%). In fact, \u003ca href=\"https://www.adweek.com/digital/new-study-highlights-how-much-people-dislike-digital-ads/\"\u003emore than 51%\u003c/a\u003e of them believe that the digital universe should be home to fewer ads, since most pop-ups heavily interfere with the content, interrupt shopping experiences, take up the entire screen and increase loading time.With the evolution of the advertising landscape, brands are becoming more focused on creating a user experience that matches the customers\u0026rsquo; expectations and maximizes their ability to monetize.Here\u0026rsquo;s when native advertising comes in.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Understanding Programmatic Native Advertising — and Why It's Important For Brands"},{"content":"A supply-side platform (SSP) is a software technology that allows publishers to sell ad space via an intermediary platform called ad exchange. It is a publisher\u0026rsquo;s equivalent to a demand-side platform (DSP). It is a basic building block of programmatic advertising along with DSPs and ad exchanges.\nWhat is Programmatic Advertising? Programmatic advertising is the most popular way to buy and sell ads these days. It uses machine learning and automation to make transactions smooth and fast. There are primarily two types of programmatic advertising.:\nProgrammatic RTB: RTB refers to real-time bidding. Publishers use their SSP to specify the kind of ad inventory available. Advertisers use DSPs to find suitable ad inventory among many SSPs and ad exchanges to place their bids on. Just before a new user lands on a page, while it\u0026rsquo;s loading, the highest bidder is awarded the ad space. In this case, each ad impression is sold in real time.\nProgrammatic Direct: Here, advertisers purchase guaranteed ad space beforehand. Though everything is automated, it is a bit more manual than RTB, especially in the early stages.\nIf you want to learn more about programmatic advertising, check out the guide here.\nHow does a Supply-Side Platform work? Supply-side platforms connect publishers\u0026rsquo; ad inventory to multiple ad exchanges, networks, and DSPs. The idea is to get exposure to as many advertisers as possible in order to get the best rates.\nThey help publishers share their audience data (like demographics, age, interests) on an ad-impression level. If this information matches the criteria set by advertisers, their demand-side platform will bid for the particular ad impression, and the highest bidder is chosen by the SSP.\nSSPs also give publishers more control over their inventory. This is by allowing them to set a minimum price for their ad inventory and also by giving them the power to decide which advertiser can and cannot buy their ad space.\nThanks to the popularity of programmatic advertising, there are many SSPs in the market. As you can see, 86.2% of all digital display spend will be programmatic by 2020.\nIt can be overwhelming to choose the right SSP. Many specialize in certain geographical locations, ad types, and much more.\nFor example, if your audience is the Chinese market, an SSP like Mobvista is ideal. And if you\u0026rsquo;re looking to sell native ads that target Europe or Asia, Glispa is a great choice.\nHow do you Choose the right Supply-Side Platform? Choosing the wrong SSP can impact your business in many ways. Apart from losing revenue, the wrong choice could even harm your brand. Ask the following questions before you commit to any SSP.\nDoes the company really own the platform? Building a supply-side platform can be time-consuming and expensive. There are many companies that play middlemen by white labeling SSPs built by other companies. As a publisher, depending on such companies can be very risky. The market keeps on changing. Because you are involved with data, there are many risks involved. You need to choose an SSP that keeps updating itself based on the fluctuations. For this, it\u0026rsquo;s best to make sure the company you\u0026rsquo;ve chosen owns the platform.\nDoes the SSP have integrations with brand safety tools? There are many threats publishers face when giving out their ad space to random bidders. Some ads might mimic site navigations, while others might serve up an outright negative experience to your audience. Your SSP should have inherent features to block such advertisers or should be easily integrated with tools that offer such protective measures.\nWhat is the geographical strength of the SSP? While all SSPs want to be global, this is rarely the case. In programmatic advertising, it\u0026rsquo;s very important to have an SSP that is strong in areas where your impressions come from. Largely, this a U.S. vs. non-U.S. scenario. Make sure you are super clear as to where most of your audience is coming from.\nWhat kind of features are available? All SSPs will have the “open exchange” feature, which allows everyone to bid on your ad inventory. But if you want more features, it\u0026rsquo;s better that you inquire beforehand. For example, features like “private exchanges,” where certain advertisers get access to ad inventory before the public for a higher price, are great options to boost revenue.\nHow easy is it to use? It\u0026rsquo;s true that, with practice, any platform can eventually become easy to use. But in programmatic advertising, even a small operation might require you to work with multiple interfaces to collect data and whatnot. You don\u0026rsquo;t want a platform that adds complexity. The best way to understand the ease of use is by checking out the platform yourself.\nDo they have 24/7 Support? A reliable supply-side platform always comes with great support. You need to check if the provider offers 24/7 support; things can go wrong at any time. You need to have access to a support system that is responsive and capable of resolving technical issues that may arise. The best way to know this is by checking review sites like G2 Crowd.\nSupply-Side Platforms You Need to Check Out First There are many SSPs to choose from. Here are a few examples you should consider first before you start hunting for more.\nPubmatic Ad Format: Video, Native, Display Top Location: Global\nPubmatic is one of the leaders in the SSP space and has come out with a cloud version this year so that companies can take programmatic advertising in-house. Their SSP gives access to 200+ DSP platforms.\nAppnexus Ad Format: Video, Native Top Location: Global\nAppnexus is a popular SSP which is great for video advertising. It gives you complete control over your inventory and gives access to all major ad exchanges in the world.\nRubicon Project Ad Format: Display, Video Top Location: Global\nRubicon Project is another top SSP provider that\u0026rsquo;s worth checking out. It\u0026rsquo;s been regarded as one of the market leaders by many industry-publications.\nOpen X Ad Format: Display (mobile), Video Top Location: Global OpenX is great for mobile publishers. They already provide 900+ premium app publishers access to 11,000+ advertisers and 135+ DSPs.\nGoogle Ad Manager Ad Format: Native, Display Top Location: Global\nThe Google Ad Manager contains what is formerly known as DoubleClick for publishers. It is one of the best SSPs with a worldwide reach. While there is width, in terms of location, you need to determine whether there is enough depth.\nMopub Ad Format: Banner, Rich Media Top Location: USA\nMoPub is an SSP owned by Twitter. It specializes in mobile ads and is known for great cross-promotion via apps.\nMobvista Ad Format: Native, Banner, Full Screen, Video Location: Asia\nMobvista is one of the leading SSPs in the Asian market, particularly China. They offer 24/7 support and are regarded as market leaders. They are most suitable for app developers looking to monetize their apps.\nGlispa Ad Format: Native, Custom Top Locations: Asia, Europe\nGlispa acquired Avocarrot which was one of the best SSPs to sell native ads. They also specialize in mobile ads. It is a self-serve platform, meaning you get full control to optimize and test in order to gain maximum revenue.\nThese are just a few of the top supply-side platforms in the market. If you are new to programmatic advertising, it\u0026rsquo;s a good idea to analyze what kind of advertisers buy ad inventory from your competitors. Check out our free tool to get a sneak peek!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/programmatic-advertising/supply-side-platform/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA supply-side platform (SSP) is a software technology that allows publishers to sell ad space via an intermediary platform called ad exchange. It is a publisher\u0026rsquo;s equivalent to a demand-side platform (DSP). It is a basic building block of programmatic advertising along with DSPs and ad exchanges.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"what-is-programmatic-advertising\"\u003eWhat is Programmatic Advertising?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProgrammatic advertising is the most popular way to buy and sell ads these days. It uses machine learning and automation to make transactions smooth and fast. There are primarily two types of programmatic advertising.:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What is a Supply-Side Platform and How to Choose One"},{"content":"A demand-side platform (DSP) is a software technology that allows advertisers to buy ad space from publishers via an intermediary platform called ad exchange. It can be used to buy search ads, display ads, TV ads, and much more.\nIt is a basic building block of programmatic advertising.\nWhat is Programmatic Advertising? Programmatic advertising is an automated process of buying and selling ads with the help of data and software. There are two primary types of programmatic advertising:\nProgrammatic Real-Time Bidding: Here ad placements are sold real time. Advertisers specify their target audience and place their bids via their DSPs while publishers use an SSP (supply-side platform) to let the algorithm know the kind of ad inventories available. Just before a new user lands on a page, while it\u0026rsquo;s loading, the algorithm calculates the highest bidder for that page and places the ad of that advertiser. In this case, each ad impression is sold in real time.\nProgrammatic Direct: This is for advertisers who want guaranteed ad placements. Though most of it is automated, it is a bit more manual than real-time bidding. In this case, publishers specify their audience beforehand, and interested advertisers reserve a large chunk of ad impressions beforehand.\nCheck out this guide to learn more about programmatic advertising.\nHow does a Demand-Side Platform work? Demand-side platforms connect to an ad exchange where publishers make their ad inventories available. Using a DSP, advertisers can buy these ad inventories via real-time bidding or pre-fixed contracts, as mentioned above.\nAdvertisers also use DSPs to optimize their campaigns and to generate reports to analyze the outcome of campaigns. They can also integrate their own data or data from third-party agents to better their targeting.\nProgrammatic advertising has become the most popular method to buy ads online.\nThis has resulted in many DSPs coming into the market, and it can be hard to decide which is the best one for you. From the type of ad impressions available, to the security offered and kind of targeting possible, there are a variety of DSPs to choose from. For example, if you don\u0026rsquo;t have a big ad budget, Choozle is a great choice. If brand safety is your number one priority, Mediamath is a great option. Before me move on to more DSP examples, let\u0026rsquo;s see how you can choose the right platform.\nHow to choose the right demand-side platform? There are many great DSP companies. As your ad budget is on the line, you cannot afford to choose the wrong company. To make things easy, here are a few questions you should ask yourself before choosing.\nWhat type of Ad inventory is the DSP focusing on? Demand-side platforms choose to focus on specific niches. While some are great for desktop-ad inventory, others specialize in mobile-ad inventory. There are DSPs specializing in native advertising, and the list can go on. You need to be very clear about what type of ad you want to run, because there are specialized DSPs for each ad type.\nIn how many countries are the ad inventories available? As programmatic advertising happens in real time, it\u0026rsquo;s important for DSPs to have servers in the country where the ads are placed. You should determine whether your target country is part of their list. If not, there\u0026rsquo;s no use jumping in.\nAre you dealing with a service company or a product company? There are many companies that do not own a DSP of their own. These companies act as middlemen who just have white-labeled versions of another company\u0026rsquo;s DSP. It\u0026rsquo;s better if you deal directly with the product company who owns their own software, because they\u0026rsquo;ll have developers to fix possible issues.\nWhat kind of pricing options are available? This completely depends on your objective. If you are looking for brand awareness, CPM (cost per mille [thousand impressions])is a good option. But if you are looking for clicks and conversions, CPC (cost per click) is the way to go. Many DSPs do not offer CPC because it poses a risk. However, there are some DSPs that even offer CPA (cost per acquisition).\nBe very clear as to what exactly you wish to achieve with your ad campaigns, and choose a DSP with the relevant pricing option.\nWhat kind of targeting is possible? Almost all DSPs will have standard targeting options, such as location targeting, device targeting, website targeting, and much more.\nBut if you want more hypertargeting, you need to ask many questions. You have to ask what kind of third-party data integrations are possible. You should ask if it\u0026rsquo;s possible to use your own data (first-party data) to maybe create look-alike data.\nBottom line: You have to be super clear about the kind of targeting you want before approaching a DSP vendor.\nWhat kind of reporting is available? Reporting starts from the planning phase where the reach and the volume are estimated, to the campaign phase where things can be optimized for better performance. Post-campaign insights are also very valuable for future planning.\nWhat kind of metrics will be most important for you? If you are an agency, you might be interested in certain metrics that show the value of your service. It\u0026rsquo;s important to ask them the kind of reporting available.\nHow safe is this company? Programmatic advertising, though novel and cutting edge, has issues of its own:\nThere have been many cases of ad fraud, where low-quality ad impression are sold at exorbitant prices. You need to see whether the DSP vendor has taken any steps to monitor and counter such threats. Another cause for concern is contextual brand safety. What kind of websites would you not want your ad to show up on? Will they be able to make sure your brand is not advertised on such websites? A very important factor is the safety of your data. We live in a world where information equals money. If your competitors get hands on your CRM data, the results can be very bad. You need to ask how the company would handle your data and whether it\u0026rsquo;s later repackaged and sold off. What kind of service is provided? When it comes to high-tech software and lots of data to deal with, you\u0026rsquo;ll need expert support most of the time. You should make sure the DSP company offers support services. Many companies will provide this for an extra fee. If so, you should inquire about the costs involved and the type of support.\nYou should also ask if they offer 24/7 support or phone support if these things are important for you.\nHow is the platform priced? Different vendors have different pricing structures. Almost all DSPs require you to have a minimum monthly ad spend that will result in extra service fees if not adhered to. The minimum ad spend expected is usually around $5,000–$10,000. Some DSPs would want you to agree to take a yearlong commitment, while others might offer you an escape clause within the first 60 days. Everything depends on the company. In some cases, you might even be able to negotiate.\nBecause the pricing is complex and involves a lot of money, you need to really dig into the specifics to see the best fit.\nExamples of Demand-Side Platforms Now that you know the questions to be asked before jumping in, here are a few top DSP examples you might want to check out:\nMediaMath Segment: Enterprise USP: Ultra Safety\nMediaMath is one of the biggest DSP vendors in the market, serving close to two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies. They provide extreme safety by assuring a refund in case the ad runs next to inappropriate content. In addition, users get complete access to their data and the assistance of a team of ad experts.\nChoozle Segment: Small Business USP: Budget Friendly Choozle is a very popular choice for companies low on funds. It gives almost all the targeting capabilities for $99/month. The best thing is that there is no minimum ad spend required.\nTubemogul Segment: Midrange USP: Video ad inventory TubeMogul is a demand-side platform specializing in video advertising. They enable advertisers to run ads on television and digital platforms. They even have a “nonhuman traffic program” that provides a refund if White Ops identifies the traffic you receive as nonhuman. They are one of the most transparent and safest DSPs in the market.\nCentro Segment: Midrange USP: Mobile ad inventory\nCentro is one of the market leaders. They specialize in mobile targeting and use mobile IDs instead of cookies. According to G2 Crowd, Centro has the largest market size.\nStackadapt Segment: Small Business USP: Native ad inventory\nStackAdapt is the highest performer among all DSPs according to G2 Crowd. They are popular thanks to their ease of use. Moreover, they do not require a minimum spend and are thus preferred by many advertisers on a budget.\nChoosing the right DSP platform is as important as finding the right publisher to place your ads on. Make sure you spend enough time anlayzing a particular platform before deciding it is the best for you. If you are interested in knowing how your competitors are spending money on ads, feel free to check out our free tool.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/programmatic-advertising/demand-side-platform/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA demand-side platform (DSP) is a software technology that allows advertisers to buy ad space from publishers via an intermediary platform called ad exchange. It can be used to buy search ads, display ads, TV ads, and much more.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is a basic building block of programmatic advertising.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"what-is-programmatic-advertising\"\u003eWhat is Programmatic Advertising?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProgrammatic advertising is an automated process of buying and selling ads with the help of data and software. There are two primary types of programmatic advertising:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What is a Demand-Side Platform and How to Choose One"},{"content":"Programmatic buying and direct buying are different methods used to buy display-advertisement inventory. When display advertisement became a thing in the 1990s, advertisers bought ad space in bulk by striking deals with publishing websites. This expensive method is called direct buying.\nThings have changed. These days, advertisers can use software to purchase ad space with the help of data as opposed to traditional manual methods like human negotiation, manual insertion orders, etc. This method is called programmatic advertising and can be broadly categorized into two types:\nRTB ( real-time bidding): RTB is an auction-based model in which each ad impression is bought individually. Programmatic direct: Programmatic direct is very similar to direct buying when it comes to purchasing ad space. After the purchase, the entire campaign works with the help of technology and data. Today, we\u0026rsquo;ll compare RTB, direct buying, and programmatic direct so that you get a better idea of what to go for.\nWhich method is user-friendly? Direct buying is prone to miscommunication and human errors, while programmatic has no such issues. Also, running multiple ad campaigns and modifying existing campaigns can be a very tedious process in the case of direct-sold. The same tasks can even take days for nonprogrammatic.\nThat is because direct buying is a completely manual process. Everything from contacting the publisher to the final negotiation, and even after, involves tons of emails and phone calls. Things are much simpler in programmatic.\nIn programmatic RTB, almost everything is automated, though some manual interaction is required only for ad-quality review, billing, and technical support. Programmatic direct is a bit similar to direct buying in terms of acquiring the ad space. But if there are no negotiations, it\u0026rsquo;s as seamless as RTB. Also, everything after buying the ad space works with the help of technology.\nWhich method gives better targeting options? Programmatic gives you insane targeting options that are simply not possible with direct buying.\nIn direct-buy display advertising, ad impressions are presold in bulk. You are basically betting on the publisher to attract a certain kind of audience that you are interested in. For example, if you want to sell tech-related stuff, it would make a lot of sense to run ads on TechCrunch.\nIn programmatic, you can hypertarget your customers. For example, you can target iPhone users who use the Gmail app and bought frozen meat in the last 30 days. This kind of targeting gives you a lot of power. For example, The Economist was able to achieve an ROI of 10:1 thanks to such hypertargeting:\nIs my ad delivery assured? Your ad delivery can be assured in both direct buying and programmatic direct.\nIn these two cases, the ad inventory is presold at a fixed CPM, and future delivery is promised. When it comes to programmatic RTB, auctions happen in real time, thus there is a possibility that your ad might not be delivered at all if you bid too low.\nThe slightly unpredictable nature of RTB can put off some advertisers. But then, as each impression is sold separately, you can easily increase your bid in real time and increase your chances of getting displayed. But this would also mean that you need to be constantly on your toes.\nHow volatile is the cost per impression? The cost per impression will be uniform when it comes to direct buying and programmatic direct; that\u0026rsquo;s not the case with programmatic RTB.\nIn the first two cases, bulk ad inventories are sold at once. There is a prefixed CPM and thus no room for change.\nFor programmatic RTB, each impression can have a different price based on how you decide to bid for each. You have the opportunity to bid high for a particular impression that you deem very important. Usually, the eCPM (effective CPM) is calculated to understand the net CPM over tons of individual impressions.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s the barrier to entry? The barrier to entry for all three—direct buying, programmatic direct, and programmatic RTB—is pretty high compared with ad networks. When it comes to direct buying and programmatic buying, you have to commit to buying a minimum amount of ad space, which can sometimes mean six-figure contracts. For example, a single ad space in the business section of the Los Angeles Times can cost up to $1,080 per day.\nAdvertisers using programmatic RTB might be paying per impression, but the total ad spend is always huge. That\u0026rsquo;s because they require a demand-side platform (DSP) like MediaMath, which helps them automate the whole process. For the free maintenance of the DSP, your ad spend should be at least $5,000–$10,000 per month.\nWhich method offers better ROI? Programmatic advertising is great for long-term ROI when compared with direct buying. The advantage of using software is that it learns and gets better with time. This ensures maximum ROI in the future. That is why nearly 70% of B2B marketers decided to increase their programmatic ad spend in 2017.\nWhen it comes to direct buying, there is an element of luck. There is no guarantee of conversions. Moreover, you also don\u0026rsquo;t get much insight into the type of people viewing your ads when compared with programmatic. It is very similar to traditional TV advertising.\nFinal thoughts: Which one should you go for? Direct buying and programmatic direct is perfect if you have a set budget and want to ensure complete spend of it. While direct buying is fine if you\u0026rsquo;re just starting out, once you expand to more than one publisher, programmatic direct is the way to go. You get to see everything under one dashboard and can also play with more data.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re not looking for assured ad placements in specific publishers, programmatic RTB is a good choice. However, here everything depends on your bidding. If you are just starting out, check out our guide on programmatic advertising to get a better overview.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/programmatic-advertising/programmatic-ads-vs-direct-buying/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eProgrammatic buying and direct buying are different methods used to buy display-advertisement inventory. When display advertisement became a thing in the 1990s, advertisers bought ad space in bulk by striking deals with publishing websites. This expensive method is called direct buying.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThings have changed. These days, advertisers can use software to purchase ad space with the help of data as opposed to traditional manual methods like human negotiation, manual insertion orders, etc. This method is called programmatic advertising and can be broadly categorized into two types:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Programmatic Ads vs. Direct Buying: Which to choose?"},{"content":"In the advertising world, there is much confusion about the difference between programmatic advertising and the Google Display Network (GDN). After display advertising became a thing, it was ad networks like GDN that helped advertisers to connect with many publications. But for almost a decade, programmatic advertising has grown to become the number one way to buy display ad space.\nNow, programmatic advertising accounts for 82.5% of total digital as spend.\n[ Source: eMarketer]\nFor starters, the most important thing to understand is that the GDN is an ad network that connects you to tons of publishers, and programmatic advertising is a method of buying ad space using technology in an automated manner. So the real comparison should be on how ads are run via each platform.\nHow does the Google Display Network work? The Google Display Network works like an interface between the advertiser and the publisher.\n[ Source: Spatially]\nYou can use the network to choose your target audience based on domain, interests, demographic, and many other criteria. You also have control over ad schedule and placements within a website. A placement can be a mobile app, a specific website, or a specific page on a site, or even an individual ad unit. For example, you can choose to target people from the USA below the age of 30 who visit pages related to “relationships” in wikihow.com.\nSimilarly, you can target millions of websites around the world via the Google Display Network.\nThe ad placements are decided beforehand based on your bidding.\nHow does programmatic advertising work? Programmatic advertising is the use of machine intelligence to buy ad placements that are most suitable for you. There is no middleman in the form of an ad network here. Ad inventory is sold in platforms called ad exchanges.\nYou will have to use a DSP, or display-side platform, to key in the type of audience you want to target; ad publishers use an SSP, or supply-side platform, to convey the availability of ad inventory to ad exchanges. When a visitor enters the website, ad exchanges get information about the user. If it matches the specifications of your target audience, you automatically enter an auction with other advertisers.\nThe advertiser with the highest bid gets his ad shown on the webpage. All of this happens automatically in milliseconds. Each ad space is sold in real time via bidding. This is also called RTB (real-time bidding).\n[ Source: Spatially]\nWho gives better reach? The Google Display Network has a huge audience base. It provides access to all of the websites that have signed up to be a Google partner. This amounts to around 70% of the web but is still less than what a DSP can offer.\nDSPs can give you access to the GDN\u0026rsquo;s ad inventory plus other ad exchanges, like Rubicon Project, AdScale, and more. This would sum up to more than 95% of the web.\nSo if you want to have a wider reach, there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt that programmatic advertising is the way to go.\nWho wins the targeting game? Both programmatic advertising and the Google Display Network offer some decent targeting options, such as the following:\nKeyword targeting, where you can select keywords that are related to your ad messaging. Topic targeting, where you can choose the topic related to your ad. In this case, websites related to that topic will be chosen to show your ads. Interests targeting, where you can choose the interests of your target audience. Demographic targeting, where you can choose the location, age group, and similar information about your target audience. The main difference lies in the data used for targeting. The GDN uses Google search data to target users. While this is decent, it\u0026rsquo;s not as advanced as programmatic advertising.\nIn programmatic advertising, many third-party agents, such as Nielsen\u0026rsquo;s eXelate, provide in-depth data. For example, you can target “Vodafone users who bought frozen meat last week and also have the Uber Eats iPhone app installed.” This level of targeting is not possible using the Google Display Network. Moreover, with programmatic advertising, you can use data you collected to improve ad targeting. This kind of targeting is not possible with the GDN.\nWho supports more variety of ad types? Both programmatic advertising and the GDN support all major ad creatives, such as images, video, HTML5, and rich-media ads. Rich-media ads are super interactive with visitors. These are more effective than static ads because they engage with the user and demand attention by inciting curiosity.\nFor example, check out this ad:\n[ Source : Digital Monopoly]\nIt looks like a normal display ad, right? But as soon as the user hovers over it, the ad expands and gives users an array of products to scroll through:\n[ Source : Digital Monopoly]\nBut when it comes to such ads, the Google Display Network is a bit behind. A huge number of its publishers do not support this technology on their websites.\nOn the other hand, this type of advertising is much more accessible in DSPs. It offers a huge inventory of formats that too in premium publishers like Forbes. You also have the ability to easily change the content of your creatives via the ad server.\nHow is the pricing model different? The pricing model of the Google Display Network is varied. You can opt for the following:\nCPC (cost per click): Here, the cost is decided for every click. CPM (cost per mille): Here, the cost is decided for every thousand impressions. CPA (cost per action): Here, the cost is tied to a particular action. This can be anything from signing up for your newsletter to trying out a free trial of your product. In programmatic advertising, the pricing model is almost always in CPM where it\u0026rsquo;s calculated using the formula:\nCPM = (Ad spend/Ad impressions) x 1000.\nThe CPM is calculated like this because the cost impression for each impression can be different depending on the bidding. This also means that there is a possibility that you don\u0026rsquo;t buy some impressions at all if you underbid. On the contrary, when it comes to the Google Display Network, impressions are always assured.\nWho is more Cost Effective? In the Google Display Network, there is no minimum spend that\u0026rsquo;s expected. You can start off with a couple of bucks and then scale it based on your requirements. However, most DSPs require a minimum ad spend close to $5,000-$10000 a month to be maintained free of cost. If you don\u0026rsquo;t spend that much, you\u0026rsquo;ll end up paying a minimum fee depending on your contract.\nIf you are starting out, it would make sense to first play with the GDN and then invest on a DSP when you put more serious money into the foray.\nIs video advertising possible? Video advertising is possible in both programmatic advertising and the Google Display Network. But in the GDN, video advertising is limited mostly to YouTube because not many Google partners offer video ad options.\nIf you want to target a niche audience on a specific website, programmatic advertising is the way to go. For example, if you are selling high-quality fashion goods, it might make much more sense to run video ads on Vogue.com than on YouTube.\nBut if you don\u0026rsquo;t want to shell out too much money, you could target fashion channels on YouTube. Again, it all comes down to preference and money.\nConclusion There are a lot of differences between programmatic advertising via DSPs and advertising via the Google Display Network. Though programmatic clearly has an advantage on many fronts, such as targeting, you need to ask yourself whether you really need those extra features.\nMany advertisers use a combination of both the GDN and a DSP to manage different kinds of ads in their ad portfolio.\nYou can check out this guide to get a complete overview of what programmatic advertising is and how you can incorporate it into your marketing funnel.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/programmatic-advertising/programmatic-vs-google-display-network/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn the advertising world, there is much confusion about the difference between programmatic advertising and the Google Display Network (GDN). After display advertising became a thing, it was ad networks like GDN that helped advertisers to connect with many publications. But for almost a decade, programmatic advertising has grown to become the number one way to buy display ad space.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, programmatic advertising accounts for 82.5% of total digital as spend.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Programmatic advertising vs Google Display Network: Which one should you choose?"},{"content":"Programmatic advertising has become the center of attraction in the advertising world. As you can see, it is growing an additional ten billion dollars every year:\nIt accounts for 82.5% of total digital display ad spending right now and this number will only increase. So how did it all start?\nWhen digital advertising first came up in the early 1990s, everything was manual. It worked just like traditional media. Advertisers had to reach out to each publisher and negotiate. It meant so many emails back and forth before a deal was closed. Moreover, ad impressions were bought in bulk, which meant a lot of initial spend before testing the waters.\nWhile this model was okay in the beginning, as more publishers and advertisers came into the picture, things became tedious. Advertisers had to reach out to hundreds and thousands of publishers, and they had the difficult task of finding the best deal among all these advertisers.\nThen came ad servers in 1995, which made it possible for both publishers and advertisers to manage thousands of ad creatives in one place. Ad networks were also born soon in 1998, which bundled many publishers together. This meant advertisers could stop contacting each publisher individually. All they had to do was contact one ad network.\nMore than a decade later in 2009, programmatic advertising was born - revolutionizing the whole digital advertising industry.\nAdditional Read: Programmatic advertising vs Google Display Network: Which one should you choose?\nWhat is programmatic advertising? Programmatic advertising is an automated process of buying ad space in real-time with the help of data. It makes the whole process much more fast, efficient, relevant, and targeted.\nProgrammatic advertising is, in fact, an umbrella term for many different ways to buy media using digital technology and data.\nBefore we move on to the details of each, it\u0026rsquo;s important you understand why many advertisers prefer it.\nWhy programmatic advertising is valuable There are many benefits to programmatic advertising. According to Google, these are the top reasons it\u0026rsquo;s becoming more popular every day:\nThese factors can be summed up as:\nTargeting: Thanks to the huge amount of data available, advertisers can laser target the audience they want. Performance: The ROI is great because you have a program working for you that learns on the run. Insights: Ultra-specific targeting and having a program that learns as it goes, allows you to get better insights on all your campaigns. Inventory quality: When it comes to Programmatic Direct, the quality of inventory is also way better. Terminologies used in programmatic advertising Before we move onto different types of programmatic advertising, it\u0026rsquo;s important to understand a few terminologies. Knowing what these terms mean will go a long way in unravelling the complex world of programmatic advertising.\nAd Inventory: It is the total amount of advertising space made available by publishers for advertisers for a given period of time. Ad Exchange: It\u0026rsquo;s a platform where ad inventory is sold. Ad Server: It is the host-like technology that actually shows the ads in a website. Browser Cookie: Browser Cookies are data that\u0026rsquo;s stored in your web browser based on your surfing history. It helps advertisers show relevant ads to site visitors. Ad impression: One ad impression is equal to the ad showing up for one user. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean that the user clicked on it. CPM (Cost per Mille): Mille is the Latin word for “thousand.” CPM refers to the cost of 1000 ad impressions on a webpage. DMP (Data Management Platform): DMP is like a warehouse where huge chunks of user data is collected, organized, and stored. It helps publishers, agencies, and brands to make the ads more effective. DSP (Demand-Side Platform): DSP is a technology used by advertisers to automate ad buying. MediaMath, Invite Media and DataXU are a few of the top DSPs. SSP (Supply-Side Platform): SSP is a technology used by publishers to automate ad selling. OpenX, Google, Right Media and PubMatic are the top SSPs. Now that you know the basic concepts, let us look into the different types of programmatic advertising.\nThe 3 types of Programmatic Advertising There are mainly three types of programmatic advertising. Which one you should go for depends on your preferences. For example, RTBs are perfect for first timers testing the waters while programmatic direct is for more experienced advertisers who know what\u0026rsquo;s best for their brand. Also PMPs can be a budget-friendly way to get premium ad space.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s dig into each to give you a complete idea:\nReal-Time Bidding (RTB) RTB is an auction-based model that happens in milliseconds.\n$19.55 billion were spent on RTBs in the US alone.\nIt accounts for 42% of all programmatic display ads.\nTo understand RTB, you need to dissect the whole into different steps:\nPublisher updates the availability of ad inventory to ad exchanges via their SSP. Advertisers decide the audience they want to target. This is based on all the data they have like interests, demographics, and many more. A visitor enters a website. While the page is loading, the user\u0026rsquo;s information and page content are reported to ad exchanges via cookies. If website information matches an advertiser\u0026rsquo;s specifications, the advertiser enters the auction for real time bidding. Many similar advertisers enter the same auction. The advertiser with the highest bid wins the ad space and his ad is shown on the webpage. The publisher gets paid for that impression. The whole process from bullets 2-6 is automated and happens within the fraction of a second.\nRTBs are preferred by many advertisers because of the following reasons:\nPer-Impression Buying: RTB allows advertisers to buy impressions individually instead of agreeing to buy them in bulk for a predetermined price. This is much more cost effective. Easy to test: As impression level data is obtained, advertisers can analyze effectiveness of a particular ad creative for a target audience. This helps advertisers to be more agile. Remaining ad space gets sold: As RTB auctions happen automatically when a visitor enters a particular page, unsold inventory which was previously unwanted also gets sold. If you are looking for the most cost-effective way to get into programmatic advertising, RTB is the way to go. It is a great way to do a lot of testing and see what\u0026rsquo;s working.\nPrivate Marketplace (PMP) A private marketplace is basically an RTB auction that allows only a selected number of advertisers to take part in. It is more like an invite-only method offered by big publications like Forbes where the ad costs are in the premium range. There are no middlemen like SSPs and ad exchanges in this case.\nIn the US alone, $8.99 billion worth of ads were run on PMPs.\nOver 45% of all ad auctions are done via private marketing places.\nPMPs are great for various reasons:\nTransparency: This is the greatest advantage offered by PMPs. Advertisers get to know the kind of ad inventory they are buying and the publisher gets to know the type of creatives their visitors are seeing. Preferential access: PMPs are usually done before RTBs. This means that advertisers get early access and preference over the public. Premium rates: Publishers can make much more money via PMPs than RTBs. If you are looking for premium access at lesser rates, PMPs are a great place to start. It\u0026rsquo;s much more cost effective than programmatic direct.\nProgrammatic Direct Programmatic direct ads are sold manually. Here, specific ad inventories are bought based on a fixed CPM. Negotiations may or may not happen depending on the publisher and advertiser involved. Once ad space is bought, the rest of the process works programmatically.\nTwenty-seven billion dollars were spent on programmatic direct in 2018 in the US alone. It is the most popular type of programmatic display advertising and growing every year:\nIt is set to account for 61% of all programmatic display advertising by 2020.\nProgrammatic is preferred because of:\nMore control: Both publishers and advertisers can be certain of the number of inventories bought and sold. Advanced Insights: Publishers will be able to give deeper insights in regards to audience behavior. This makes it easier for advertisers to gauge the value of their campaigns. If you\u0026rsquo;re focused completely on premium placements, then brand safety programmatic direct is perfect for you. However, you also need a big ad budget as this is the most expensive choice among the three.\nKey tips to get started in programmatic advertising If you are new to the world of programmatic advertising, the following tips are a must-read before you start your first campaign. If you have some experience, you can just skim through the headers and jump into the case studies at the end.\n1. See how programmatic advertising fits into your marketing funnel There are many ways to use programmatic advertising. You have to decide which particular way is the best. Almost all advertisers use it to improve at least one of these three areas:\nLead Acquisition: No matter what your business is, its success depends on your ability to get more people to try your product or service. With programmatic advertising, you can hyper-target people who fall into your customer persona. Lead Nurturing: Existing leads need to be nurtured multiple times before they actually convert. Thanks to cookies, retargeting is one of the most popular ways to convert leads into paid customers using programmatic advertising. Customer Loyalty: Most people think that marketing ends once someone buys your product or service. This is far from the truth. Programmatic advertising can be used to maintain the relationship, improve chances of upselling, and even of your customers recommending your product or service to their friends or colleagues. You have to first analyze your funnel and see where you have too much churn. Use programmatic advertising in that stage to give it a little bit of a boost.\nIf you have the budget, you can even use programmatic advertising in all stages of the funnel.\n2. Decide what type of programmatic ads you want to run When it comes to programmatic advertising, you have two choices:\nNative Advertising: These are ads that blend into the editorial content of a website. They are super effective as long as the page you lead them to doesn\u0026rsquo;t turn out to be irrelevant. Display Advertising: These are ads that do not look like the editorial content of the website. They stand out as ads and are placed in specific areas outside the editorial space. The best way to choose between the two is by observing what\u0026rsquo;s working in your industry. You can use our free competitive analysis tool to get an in-depth analysis of your competitor\u0026rsquo;s ad strategies. You can check out everything from the kind of ads they are running to the publishers they are targeting and much more.\n3. Choose the right programmatic ad platform Many times, choosing the right programmatic ad platform can be as important as targeting. If you get the first step wrong, everything that follows is bound to be less successful.\nBut then, there are many platforms out there and it can be hard to decide which one is the most suitable for you. To start with, you can check out our mini guide on how to choose the right programmatic ad platform.\n4. Decide if you want to go for an agency or build an in-house team Programmatic advertising is not simple. It\u0026rsquo;s complicated and there\u0026rsquo;s money involved. Most companies do not risk it by doing things themselves and hire expert agencies instead to do the job for them.\nWhile only 16% of companies went for an in-house team before 2018, this number is changing quickly.\nHowever, in an Adweek survey, we got to know that as much as 86% of advertisers are planning to take the in-house route. Almost 75% of respondents felt that agencies are not transparent when it comes to reporting financial data, and 73% felt that agencies are not equipped to measure programmatic results accurately.\nSo, should you go for an in-house team or an agency? A mix of both would be the best choice. Building an in-house team with all the expertise can be a challenge. The best thing to do is work with what you have and fill in the gaps with the help of agencies.\nFor example, if you have a team with good analytical skills experienced in data management, hire an agency to do the optimization and vice versa.\n5. Learn from other advertisers The best way to learn is by looking into the practical experiences of other advertisers. We\u0026rsquo;ve done tons of industry roundups and case studies so that you don\u0026rsquo;t have to learn a lot of things the hard way.\nHere are two of them, to get you started:\nHow Answers.com makes millions in revenue using native ads: This case study looks into the complete native advertising funnel of Answers.com. You can use many of their hacks and tweak it a little bit to suit your own industry. An Uncensored Peek Inside Grammarly’s $2.2M Display Strategy : Grammarly\u0026rsquo;s growth story is linked to their really good display strategy. This post is a sneak peek into their ad networks, publishers, ad creatives, and even landing pages! All the data used in the above case studies were taken from our competitive analysis tool. Feel free to check it out to know your own competitor\u0026rsquo;s ad strategy.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/programmatic-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eProgrammatic advertising has become the center of attraction in the advertising world. As you can see, it is growing an additional ten billion dollars every year:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Programmatic-Display-Ad-spend.png\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Programmatic Display Ad spend\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Programmatic-Display-Ad-spend.png\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt accounts for 82.5% of total digital display ad spending right now and this number will only increase. So how did it all start?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen digital advertising first came up in the early 1990s, everything was manual. It worked just like traditional media. Advertisers had to reach out to each publisher and negotiate. It meant so many emails back and forth before a deal was closed. Moreover, ad impressions were bought in bulk, which meant a lot of initial spend before testing the waters.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What is Programmatic Advertising: The Beginner's Guide"},{"content":"When the internet was born, display ads were the very first form of digital advertising. Back then, they were called banner ads. But they died a slow natural death, mainly because they were super intrusive and irrelevant to web users. To provide some perspective, the CTRs of the first banner ads back in 1994 were 78%. Now the average CTR in the U.S. is 0.8%, half of which are accidental clicks.\nHowever, with better technology, we are now seeing the renaissance of display ads. Companies are spending outrageous amounts of money on them:\nDisplay advertising has become relevant again as advertisers can now do hyper-targeting based on interests, demography and much more. This has made display ads less intrusive than ever before.\nThe variety of ads has also gone through a sea change. Today\u0026rsquo;s advertisers have access to HTML5 interactive ads and video ads in addition to the usual image ads. But with so many possibilities, it can get a bit confusing. This Guide is designed to make things simple and actionable for you!\nWhat is display advertising? Display advertising can be defined as a type of advertising that\u0026rsquo;s seen on publishing sites and is separated from the editorial content. Advertisers have the option of using images, videos or graphics to entice people into clicking the ad.\nDisplay ads can blend in seamlessly with the design and style of a website, which is why they\u0026rsquo;re commonly used by publishers, such as the New York Times.\nIn the example below, an ad for Grammarly appears directly below a row of news stories on the New York Times\u0026rsquo; homepage—much in the same way a print ad might appear in the Sunday paper.\nDisplay ads are more powerful than print ads, of course, because they\u0026rsquo;re digital. This ad is not just programmatically generated based on the viewer\u0026rsquo;s browsing and search history, but it also includes a customizable CTA that the advertiser can set and an external landing page that the CTA will take users to.\nDisplay ads can be a powerful means of lead generation for a product, a way to bring bounced users back to your site or get prospective customers into your conversion funnel or simply a means of increasing brand awareness among the demographic that you\u0026rsquo;re targeting.\nMcAfee AntiVirus uses two different landing pages for branding and conversions.\nFor example, this is the header of the landing page used for branding purposes:\nAs you can see, the main intention of this page is to get users to watch their branding video, which talks about how they\u0026rsquo;re changing the world one client at a time.\nThis is how their conversion-focused landing page looks:\nThere are clear CTAs to get the user to at least try the free trial. The copy on the page is clearly intended to push for direct sales.\nWhat are the different types of display ads? Text Ads Text ads generally consist of a headline, at least 20 words of body text, and a link to the advertiser\u0026rsquo;s landing page.\nSince they take up less screen real estate and offer no multi-media, text ads are generally the least expensive type of display ad you are able to purchase, so they\u0026rsquo;re great if you have a limited advertising budget. They\u0026rsquo;re usually also quicker to produce, since less creative work is required—though you still shouldn\u0026rsquo;t skimp on the effort when crafting your ad\u0026rsquo;s headline and body text.\nSome publishers do primarily serve text-based display ads to their visitors because it\u0026rsquo;s often easier to make a batch of text blend in with the content around it than it is to make a video or large graphic blend in. So if you\u0026rsquo;re looking to reach a specific site\u0026rsquo;s visitors, it\u0026rsquo;s worth checking whether they show text-based display ads.\nAt the same time, however, without the ability to add rich elements like images, text ads aren\u0026rsquo;t going to build a strong sense of brand awareness among the people who see them.\nUltimately, text ads are best for targeted placements among users with high-intent. Say someone searches “new york city plumber” and then stumbles upon a text ad with your phone number and hours of operation right in it—that\u0026rsquo;s the kind of targeted intent that you want to capture with text ads rather than any broad-based kind of brand awareness play.\nImage Ads Image-based ads come in all shapes and sizes. The possible size is generally determined by publishers and ad networks. The Google Display Network allows a wide variety of sizes:\nWe analyzed 40,000 high-performing image ads (creatives with an ad spend of more than $3,000) to see if there\u0026rsquo;s any relation between image size and success. We found an amazing correlation. You can check out the entire study here.\nImage ads are much more effective than text ads. Humans are visual beings. Our minds are designed to process images 60,000 times faster than text. Moreover, you can use your brand colors and logo, which in turn reinforces your brand image in the mind of the visitor. It gives you a whole new dimension in terms of creativity.\nAlso, compared to HTML5 and video-based ads, image ads are easier and less expensive to create. Testing also becomes a simpler process as it\u0026rsquo;s easy to create multiple versions of the same ad in different sizes.\nAll these factors make image ads the most-used type of display ads. Ironically that is the only problem; everyone is using it! Many brands are moving towards HTML5 ads to stand out and garner attention.\nImage ads are used for mass awareness campaigns. The idea is to familiarize your audience with your brand. If you are super-focused on clicks rather than impressions and if you have a good ad budget, it is better to create HTML5 ads.\nHTML5 Ads HTML5 ads are essentially mini web pages and require lots of back-end coding. However, it\u0026rsquo;s one of the most interactive and attention-capturing ad formats you can use. It\u0026rsquo;s easy to catch the attention of people as it will be the only moving content on the whole page.\nThe possible sizes in the Google Display Network are the same as that of image ads.\nOne of the best advantages of HTML5 ads is that it can be made non-intrusive. Undertone did a really cool ad for MLS:\nThe entry is a bit flashy but many wouldn\u0026rsquo;t find it intrusive. In fact, it looks pretty cool and arouses curiosity. Then it suddenly goes away in a flash and settles at the side. At this position, the ad is fully viewable but far from intrusive as it\u0026rsquo;s neatly packed on the side.\nThere are so many creative ways to improvise HTML5 ads. For example, NordicBet uses it to gamify the whole experience:\nMatch.com makes their HTML5 ad look like a part of the publisher\u0026rsquo;s website:\nThe sky is the limit with HTML5 ads. It is also much more effective than static image ads in many cases if done well. A recent study by Aarki saw an increase of 86.48% in ROI by replacing a static ad with a similar HTML5 variant.\nThe only problems with HTML5 ads are the costs involved, which can go up to hundreds of dollars.\nVideo Ads Video ads are videos that play automatically when a visitor enters a publisher\u0026rsquo;s page. The video is usually muted and the volume can be turned on by clicking the volume button in the player.\nThis video ad in Forbes uses subtitles so that people understand what\u0026rsquo;s going on even without volume:\nThe problem with such ads on publications is that the context is a bit less. Many people come to such websites to read and find popup videos annoying.\nHow to find the right publishers (direct buy vs. ad networks) There are two ways to approach publishers. The obvious way is to get in contact with them directly. However, many prefer to buy display ads through middlemen called ad networks.\nThis is because, when you buy direct, you have to buy in bulk, and this can often be expensive. For example, Forbes has set a minimum limit of $500:\nWhen it comes to direct dealings, sometimes you\u0026rsquo;ll be able to negotiate; sometimes you won\u0026rsquo;t.\nSo why do some advertisers choose to go for direct buys?\nThe advantage is that you can get preference over other advertisers that come via ad networks. Also, the publishers will have a dedicated team that works with you to ensure the best results.\nAd networks, on the other hand, are great if you don\u0026rsquo;t have a large ad budget. You can try it out and see what works, and, at the same time, you also get access to a huge number of publishers.\nWhile there are many ad networks out there, the Google Display Network is the most popular. The best way to choose the right publishers is by finding out what your competitors are doing. You can use competitive analysis tools to get in-depth stats on what works for your industry.\nWhat are the different ways to target your ads? Apart from the ad creative, one major aspect influencing the success of your ad campaign is the targeting. Here we\u0026rsquo;ve chosen the targeting options provided by the Google Display Network as it\u0026rsquo;s the most popular ad network: Contextual targeting: With contextual targeting, you advertise on websites that have content similar to your product. For example, advertising your soccer balls on a soccer news channel is contextual targeting. Here the data about the visitor is not taken into consideration. And it\u0026rsquo;s not just on the internet; almost all ads in print media are examples of contextual targeting.\nDemographic targeting: The demography of your ideal target audience consists of gender, age, location, marital status, education and much more. This type of targeting is suitable only if any of these traits are common to all your customers.\nPsychographic targeting: Psychographics refers to a person\u0026rsquo;s interests, likes and dislikes. This can be anything from political perspectives to hobbies. If your customers have common interests, this type of targeting can be way more accurate than contextual targeting.\nRemarketing: Remarketing is all about targeting people who\u0026rsquo;ve already been exposed to your brand. This can be done by adding certain tags onto your own website so that Google tracks these users. However, due to GDPR, this type of targeting is losing ground.\nPlacement targeting: This allows you to place your ad in places where you will get maximum attention. You can even choose the exact page you think will be most relevant.\nHere is a detailed guide on how to target efficiently.\nDisplay advertising KPIs: The art of analyzing your ad campaigns Once you start running your campaigns, you have to keep your eye on certain important metrics:\nCTR (Click-Through Rate): This is the number of people clicking on your ads. It\u0026rsquo;s the basic benchmark to check if your ads are effective. If the CTR is poor, this could be due to two reasons—either your ad copy and image are not good enough, or your targeting is poor. Bounce Rate: If a visitor comes to your site and exits without clicking on any links, it is considered a bounce. In this context, bounce rate refers to the percentage of people bouncing off your landing page after clicking your ad. A high bounce rate would suggest that people did not see what they were expecting. You can try testing different landing page copy and visuals to see what works best. Conversion Rate: Conversion rate is the percentage of people who completed your goal. The goal can be anything from buying your service to registering for your weekly newsletter. ROI (Return on Investment): This is probably the most important metric of all. Return on investment is an attempt to quantify the amount your business made as a result of your ad campaign. If the ROI is less than your total ad budget, you have some serious changes to make. Here is a detailed guide on how to analyze your display ad campaign in the Google Network.\nOnce you do the analysis, you might find that you\u0026rsquo;re not getting traffic or conversions. Here\u0026rsquo;s a step-by-step guide on how to fix your traffic and conversion problems.\nDisplay advertising tactics From copywriting to creative design, there are a lot of individual skills that are involved when crafting a great display advertising campaign.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve written several pieces on the Adbeat blog focusing on various tactics that you can use to get more customers and spend less—while getting more:\nWrite Higher Converting Display Ads With These 8 Formulas: The ad copy is one of the most instrumental aspects of an ad that drives CTRs. But does this mean you have to spend thousands of dollars on professional copywriters? Not if you read this post. Display Advertising: It’s Not All About Banners and Visuals: Many advertisers put all their effort in the ad creatives and forget the many other aspects of display advertising that make a huge difference. Read this post to not fall into the same pit. How To Sell Enterprise Software With Display Advertising: This post is for our B2B advertising friends who are trying to find a way to grow using display ads. Lots of hidden tactics in here! The Power of Celebrity in Display Advertising (Donald Trump Edition) : Getting celebrities in your advertisements is a million dollar game. But there is a way to use their name and fame to get your ads clicked without paying them any endorsements. Display advertising examples Display advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry. As a lot of money is being spent, there are many case studies that can guide you in your own campaigns.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve been doing a popular series called “The Business of Display,” which looks into a particular industry every week. We\u0026rsquo;ve released many such posts so far:\nThe Business of Display Part 1: Niche Viral Sites: Here we look into the ad strategies of Digital Trends, InsideGov and History Fanatic. The Business of Display Part 2: Viral Quiz Sites \u0026amp; Click Arbitrage: Here we look into the ad strategies of Playbuzz, Buzztroopers and Quizfactory. The Business of Display Part 3: Nutraceuticals: An insight into how nutraceuticals use display advertising to gain profits. The Business of Display Part 4: Information Products: A complete analysis of how information can be sold as a product. This includes everything from its sales funnel to its display ad strategies. Also includes a case study of Old School New Body. The Business of Display Part 5: Affiliate Review Sites: Analysis of how affiliate review sites use display advertising to get more conversions. Also includes case studies of NextAdvisor and Total Beauty. The Business of Display Part 6: Lead Generation for Contractors: Breaks down the lead generation sales funnel of contractors. The Business of Display Part 7: Making Money with Coupons: A complete insight into how coupon websites work and how display advertising fits into their overall strategy. Case studies of the top five coupon websites have also been done. The Business of Display Part 8: Credit Card Affiliate Offers: A complete overview of how credit card affiliate systems work and an in-depth analysis of how they use display advertising. Advertising Strategies from the Billion Dollar Business of Meal Kit Delivery:How top meal kit delivery companies use display ads to rake in tons of profit. A complete breakdown of their ad networks, publishers, ad creatives and even landing pages has been done. How WebMD (and Others) Use Display Ads to Make $10m+ in Ad Revenue:The first thing that people do when they get sick these days is to Google their symptoms, even before meeting the doctor. While most ailments lead to cancer, according to online health publications, these guys are making millions of dollars in ad revenue. This post is a sneak peek into their ad revenue. Display advertising case studies There\u0026rsquo;s no better way to learn about how to run a display advertising campaign and get inspired than to learn from the best.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s why we\u0026rsquo;ve taken some of the most successful companies out there that have used display advertising and taken apart their strategies, tactics, spending and ad types to help you improve.\n0 to 1 Million Customers in 3 Months: Jet\u0026rsquo;s Display Strategy Revealed: Just two years after their official launch, Jet was acquired by Walmart for $2 billion. Walmart\u0026rsquo;s main aim was to take on Amazon. But why did they choose Jet? It all comes down to their amazing growth story. Jet hit 1 million users in less than 3 months from their launch! In this piece, we take apart all of the ad networks, publishers, ad creatives and landing pages that Jet used on its road to success. How Walmart and Target Use Display Advertising:Big box stores are large retail stores that sell almost everything, from diapers to TV remotes. These companies are well-known for splashing tons of money on television commercials and billboards. But what is their display ad strategy like? In this post we unravel the mysteries! An Uncensored Peek Inside Grammarly’s $2.2M Display Strategy : Grammarly\u0026rsquo;s growth story is probably one of the most phenomenal of all. Today they have 6.9 million daily users, many of which were gained through a sound display strategy. In this post, we study their ad networks, publishers, ad creatives and even landing pages! All these insights were gained via our competitive intelligence tool. If your industry is missing here, feel free to check out the tool yourself!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/what-is-display-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen the internet was born, display ads were the very first form of digital advertising. Back then, they were called banner ads. But they died a slow natural death, mainly because they were super intrusive and irrelevant to web users. To provide some perspective, the CTRs of the first banner ads back in 1994 were \u003ca href=\"http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/happy-birthday-digital-advertising/139964/\"\u003e78%\u003c/a\u003e. Now the average CTR in the U.S. is \u003ca href=\"http://eroi.com/death-of-the-display-ad/\"\u003e0.8%\u003c/a\u003e, half of which are accidental clicks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, with better technology, we are now seeing the renaissance of display ads. Companies are spending outrageous amounts of money on them:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What is Display advertising: The Ultimate Guide"},{"content":"According to an Adobe survey, 45% of respondents had no desire to view ads. The main reason? Most ads are intrusive. People get hit by an average of 5,000 ads per day! After a while, they just become blind to those ads.\nNative advertising solves this huge psychological challenge of intrusion. These are ads that are designed to blend into the natural content of a website. The automobile and travel industries are the top industries using native advertising.\nIf done well, native advertising can be really good. But the risk is that sometimes people feel cheated when they find out they\u0026rsquo;ve been reading a sponsored post. But surveys have shown us that if the quality of the ad is good, it actually boosts trust in the brand.\nWhat is native advertising? Native advertising can be defined as a type of digital advertising that matches the function and form of the platform upon which it appears. Form refers to the design, while function refers to the role the platform plays in terms of user experience.\nThe beauty is that the ad blends in with the editorial content of the platform.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s take a look at this page featuring Warby Parker:\nFrom a design perspective, it looks like a normal blog post. It has a header, which gives you the feeling that this a “how to” post on building a business. There\u0026rsquo;s a blog banner right under the title. The content gives a brief story line of the company, and there\u0026rsquo;s even a quote section, just like other blog posts. Toward the end, you spot a huge CTA to check out Warby Parker\u0026rsquo;s products. Now you realize why the blog banner had the image of their product.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a neat little soft sell!\nWhat are the different types of native ads? Some consider promoted listings on ecommerce websites and paid search ads to be native ads. While these ads do satisfy the definition of native ads, in the advertising industry, the term “native ads” refers to native ads that appear in a publication.\nThere are two types of native ads. Here is a look at both of them:\nIn-feed units: These ads are mixed with normal content. They are pretty hard to spot because they look exactly like the normal editorial content.\nRecommendation widgets: These feature promoted content seen as recommendations at the end or the side of some pages. These ads may or may not look like the site\u0026rsquo;s editorial content.\nWhy is native advertising so effective? Recently, people have started using neuroscience to understand the effectiveness of ads. Neuroscience is a cutting-edge life science that analyzes the brain-wave activity and pupil movements that people exhibit when exposed to ads.\nNielsen conducted a study comparing native ads and standard display ads. These were the findings:\nNative ads command two times more visual focus than standard display ads. When it comes to native ads, the text actually gets read. The majority of the ads are read just like normal editorial content. However, in standard display ads, the text is ignored. The ads\u0026rsquo; headlines can be used to trigger specific emotions and associations with the brand. Those are the reasons why more and more brands are turning toward native advertising. According to eMarketer, 58.3% of digital-display spending in the U.S. will be on native ads this year; in 2017, spending was 54%.\nAs you can see, the trend is clearly moving in the “native” direction. It\u0026rsquo;s better if you jump on the bandwagon before it\u0026rsquo;s too late!\nHow to get started with native advertising Step 1: Decide how native advertisement fits into your marketing funnel Before you splash your ad budget, you need to figure out why you are doing this. There should be a very specific goal. Otherwise, you\u0026rsquo;ll never be able to determine whether it\u0026rsquo;s working or not. The basic question to ask is, “How does native advertising fit into our overall funnel?”\nHere are some examples to give you some perspective:\nIf you are looking for fresh leads at the top of the funnel, it might make sense to create a simple video that boosts your brand. If you are looking to warm up leads, it would make sense to retarget your existing customers\u0026rsquo; in-depth articles that slightly mention your brand without being too sales-y. If you are looking for conversions, you have to retarget your leads with case studies or even product landing pages! Bottom line is that you need to have a sound native-advertising strategy.\nStep 2: Do some competitive analysis Competitive analysis is the most overlooked yet most important part of native advertising. If you can get access to the strategies used by your competitors, you are already one step ahead. Most companies spend tons of money in the initial stages to find the right formula.\nWhat if you had access to their core strategies?\nHow about getting to know the publishers they\u0026rsquo;ve been targeting all these years, the ad networks they are working with, the creatives they\u0026rsquo;re using in each website, and even the landing pages they are directing traffic to?\nThere are free competition analysis tools, such as Adbeat, that give you in-depth knowledge on what your competitors and even other companies are doing.\nThis sort of intel will make your native ads much more powerful.\nStep 3: Create a landing page for your native ads Getting click-throughs is just one part of an ad. Once you get people\u0026rsquo;s attention, how do you make the most of it? This depends on the landing page you are using.\nAfter going through hundreds of landing pages, we found that there are seven types of landing pages that work very well for native ads.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve also come up with a formula to write awesome landing-page copy for native ads.\nStep 4: Decide how you want to run your native ads There are two main ways to get your ads out there:\nTalk directly to publishers. Get access to top publishers via ad networks. Let\u0026rsquo;s look into both:\n1. Directly reaching out to publishers: There are many sites, such as TNW, BuzzFeed, and Forbes, that are open to inquiries. You can just send them an email and start negotiating. The advantages are manifold:\nYou get the best ad placements. You will work with a dedicated team that will make sure your ads give you maximum results. However, these publishers will require you to spend a minimum amount, which can be expensive. If you cannot afford this, it\u0026rsquo;s better to go for an ad network.\n2. Going through ad networks: Ad networks are services that act as middlemen between large publications and advertisers like you. The advantages they bring to the table include the following:\nYou can get visibility on a number of publishers at the same time, without spending too much money. If you find a good ad-network partner, they will help you in strategizing the whole campaign. There are many ad networks out there.\nCheck out our guide on how to choose the best ad network for your native ad campaign.\nNative advertising: Examples and case studies The best way to learn native advertising is by looking into the strategies of other companies. In our experience, every company has something very valuable to teach. Even if they\u0026rsquo;ve failed in native advertising, you can always learn from the mistakes and make sure you don\u0026rsquo;t commit the same ones.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve compiled some of the most common deadly mistakes most people make while starting out with native advertising.\nWe do Industry Roundups and individual case studies from time to time. Here are a few for your reference:\nNative advertising industry roundups How top fashion retailers are using native ads: This study looks into the strategies used by four top fashion retailers. These are million-dollar companies spending tons of money. It\u0026rsquo;s not just celebrity gossip these brands rely on. You can check out the case study here. How meal-kit delivery businesses are battling it out with native ads: This study analyzes the strategies used in the billion-dollar meal-kit delivery industry. It\u0026rsquo;s a yummy showdown with a lot of exciting tips to take away. Check it out here. Native advertising examples How Answers. com makes millions in revenue using native ads: This is an in-depth study that focuses on how Answers.com is using native advertising to generate millions of dollars. These hacks can be applied in any industry with a few tweaks. You can check out the case stud y here. This list will be constantly updated, so make sure you bookmark this page and come back later.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/native-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAccording to an \u003ca href=\"https://downloads.pagefair.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Adblocking-Goes-Mainstream.pdf\"\u003eAdobe survey\u003c/a\u003e, 45% of respondents had no desire to view ads. The main reason? Most ads are intrusive. People get hit by an average of \u003ca href=\"https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cutting-through-advertising-clutter/\"\u003e5,000 ads per day\u003c/a\u003e! After a while, they just become blind to those ads.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNative advertising solves this huge psychological challenge of intrusion. These are ads that are designed to blend into the natural content of a website. The \u003ca href=\"https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/02/travel-and-automotive-industries-are-keeping-native-ad-spend-alive/\"\u003eautomobile and travel\u003c/a\u003e industries are the top industries using native advertising.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What is Native Advertising and why is it so effective?"},{"content":"According to Statista, 8% of 18– to 29-year-olds are in a committed relationship with a partner or spouse they met online. Using a dating app has become a meaningful and common method for people to find the love of their life. Of course, there are many more people out there using these various apps looking for casual dating, friendship, and other things.\nWithin this pool of eager singles, you have a plethora of subcategories for different niches and preferences.\nBecause of this, the dating industry is extremely saturated, with 1,500 apps fighting for the same users: single women and single men. Among the key players, we\u0026rsquo;ve noticed that the biggest have differentiated themselves largely by using a tool that\u0026rsquo;s proved powerful in many other industries and niches: native ads.\nToday, we analyze three dating apps that have made it big using native ads and other methods:\nMatch.com: One of the oldest dating platforms in the internet Zoosk: A dating app that is available in more than 25 languages OurTime: A dating app concentrating on an older demographic Match.com Match.com, founded in 1993, is probably the oldest and biggest company on the list. When the World Wide Web became popular, it was one of the first few sites that helped people hook up.\nThe site is now under the Match Group, which owns most of the popular dating apps, including Tinder, OKCupid, and Plenty of Fish. The Match Group is forecasting a revenue of up to $1.72 billion this year.\nIt works on a subscription model and costs $20.99 per month if you choose a 12-month membership.\nAd spend Match has spent $29.2 million in the last 24 months, almost entirely on mobile ads.\nAs you can see, 94% of their ads were native ads.\nWhile they did put a lot of money on Taboola ($9.7M) and Adblade ($5.6M) last year, they\u0026rsquo;ve since put all of their money on Yahoo Gemini ($11.5M):\nPublishers Yahoo seems to be Match\u0026rsquo;s most successful publisher so far. They\u0026rsquo;ve spent around $11.5 million dollars here:\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve put more money on topic homepages than on individual posts. For example, the finance, style, automobile, and sports sections have been pumped with a lot of ads. When it comes to individual pages, they\u0026rsquo;ve targeted sports pages related to soccer and the NFL. These are male-dominated pages, and we all know that men are more into dating sites than women.\nMatch\u0026rsquo;s second biggest publisher is Classmates.com, a database site that helps you find your long-lost high school friends and plan reunions.\nMany folks using Classmates will be hit with old memories of crushes and “first loves.” Recollection of such youthful experiences can easily make singles open to the idea of hooking up. This is probably the most creative way to target potential leads!\nCreatives They\u0026rsquo;ve put all of their money on simple image ads. They\u0026rsquo;ve also flirted a little with HTML5:\nThe best part is that their image ads don\u0026rsquo;t look like ads at all!\nHere is one example. The ad blends really well with the website and looks more like an extension of it, with the apparent option to choose age:\nHere is another one, which works similarly. For this ad, they\u0026rsquo;ve also used the picture of a female model to get more attention:\nThe CTA for both creatives is “View photos” or “See more pics.”\nFor native ads, the creatives look like this: As you can see, the text is targeting a particular locality, in this case, “Ashburn.” This is much better than using the term “your area,” as in the previous creatives.\nLanding Page Match\u0026rsquo;s landing page is their website itself, with the profiles of singles listed on it. This the best way to get people to use their service. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t even feel like a landing page:\nEach profile acts like a CTA. When you click on a person, it takes you to the sign-up page:\nThe header says “Register Now and Look for Free!” For a single guy who\u0026rsquo;s just seen an attractive woman, this is probably the best CTA you can use at the top of a lengthy form. There\u0026rsquo;s even a screenshot of the profile on the side to keep the leads motivated!\nZoosk Zoosk was founded in 2007 and has a presence in over 80 countries in over 25 languages. They have a user base exceeding 40,000,000 users. According to Wikipedia, they had an estimated revenue of around $178 million in 2013.\nThough their service had no monetization strategy in the beginning, after a tough year in 2014, they introduced a premium fee to message someone more than once. It costs $12.49 per month if you get on a 6-month membership.\nAd spend Zoosk has spent over $1.4 million in the past 24 months.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve tried out Google Networks ($625.9K), Direct Buys ($175.9K), and also native ads via Yahoo Gemini ($437.8K). Their constant reliance is on Google Networks.\nThe sudden rise of spend in January 2018 reflects their trying out Yahoo Gemini: But because they\u0026rsquo;ve not continued with Gemini, we can assume it was a failed experiment. They\u0026rsquo;ve also toned down Direct Buys after a few initial experiments.\nIn total, they\u0026rsquo;ve concentrated 13% on direct buys, 49% on programmatic ads, and 38% on native ads.\nPublishers Just like Match.com, Yahoo is Zoosk\u0026rsquo;s top publisher, where they spent most of the money. But it was all spent on one go in January 2018.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve mainly concentrated on individual pages inside finance and sports sections instead of going for the main hub page or homepage. This could be the reason they didn\u0026rsquo;t get much ROI.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve run a lot of ads on Mingle2.com, which is a free dating website that relies on ads for monetization.\nWith the quality of this website being low, users will look for a better experience. Running ads here is super contextual because people are here with the intention of finding a partner. This was a direct-buy ad. However, they\u0026rsquo;ve reduced spending here for some time now. This could be after finding better channels with higher ROI.\nZoosk has also tried out Dailymotion and American Military News in an attempt to get the attention of male users.\nBut Zoosk stopped spending on these publishers after an experiment or two.\nCreatives Though they tried out both image ads and text ads in the beginning, recently they\u0026rsquo;ve been trying mostly image ads.\nThis is their most-used ad:\nAt the top, they\u0026rsquo;ve mentioned “Online now” and “4 miles away” to induce FOMO. Moreover, the cross and tick symbol is a well-known reference to dating apps. The CTA “Find your next date” coupled with a CTA button, “Browse Singles,” is good enough to get clicks from singles.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve also used GIFs to portray how it would look inside their app: Notifications in the “Chat” icon are sure to ring a bell with many people!\nThis is their most-used native ad creative:\nOne of the biggest problems most dating apps have is the lack of female representation. This is a great effort by Zoosk to attract women above the age of 40. So what happens when you click on this creative? More on that in the next section!\nLanding Pages For the standard ads, they\u0026rsquo;ve used their homepage for conversions. There is a simple account-creation form to the right, with options to sign up using Google or Facebook.\nIn the copy, they\u0026rsquo;ve used terms like “40,000,000 singles worldwide,” “3 million messages sent daily,” and “over 30 million downloads” to gain trust.\nHowever, when it comes to native ads, like the image ad shown above in the previous section, the visitors are taken to a blog on the Zoosk website.\nThe header is the same as the ad copy: “Where to Meet Men in Your 40s”; the image used is also the same. To the right, there is a display ad that says “local singles want to chat,” with a CTA to “Accept.” Many site visitors will convert here.\nThe whole blog is like a mini guide to help older women to get back into the dating scene.\nAs you can see, it also quotes other Zoosk users who have found success with the app. It ends with a CTA to sign up to Zoosk for free.\nOurTime OurTime, founded in 2011, is the newest platform in this list. They cater to people above the age of 50. They have an estimated annual revenue of $8 million.\nOurTime runs on a subscription model, just like Match.com,but it is less expensive at just $11.99 per month for a 6-month membership.\nAd spend OurTime has spent around $3.9 million over the course of 24 months. They\u0026rsquo;ve not depended on ads constantly for gaining leads. It looks like they\u0026rsquo;ve used ads to mainly boost their sign-ups from time to time.\nOf all such campaigns, the recent one was their biggest, for which they spent $1.5 million in July 2018 alone. This campaign was run entirely on the Yahoo Gemini network.\nOther networks they\u0026rsquo;ve tried in the past are Taboola ($819.2K) and Google ($578.4K).\nPublishers Like all other websites, OurTime\u0026rsquo;s primary publisher is Yahoo via the Yahoo Gemini network. Just like the others, they\u0026rsquo;ve spent money on finance- and sports-related pages. They\u0026rsquo;ve concentrated on hub pages, just like Match.com, and also on a few individual pages, which are related to romance and marriage.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve used Classmates, just like Match.com, to catch the attention of the “reunion” crowd.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve spent decent money on yourdailydish.com via Taboola.\nThis is an entertainment website with content that can be addictive. For example, the top pages they\u0026rsquo;ve targeted talk about hilarious Twitter account renames and funny animal photobombs. In a way, it is the kind of website jobless singles would spend time on.\nCreatives OurTime has spent most of their money on image ads with text. They\u0026rsquo;ve even tried some image and HTML5 ads.\nFor the recent native ad campaigns, they\u0026rsquo;ve used an image of a mature woman with some simple text:\nThe copy is to the point and describes what their service offers.\nThe display ads also are similar. It\u0026rsquo;s just that they\u0026rsquo;ve used multiple images. Here, they\u0026rsquo;ve used just “mature woman” instead of specifying any name.\nThe CTA is similar to what others have used; it\u0026rsquo;s about seeing more pics of potential dating partners.\nLanding Pages The standard ads take visitors to a landing page. This is what the page looks like initially:\nOnce people click on “Search Now,” they\u0026rsquo;re taken to another page, which asks for their country:\nSimilarly, it asks for zip code, preferred username, password, birthday, and email address.\nIt is basically a lead-generation form that shows just one step at a time. This is a great idea to improve conversion, for two reasons:\nBy showing just one question at a time, people are not overwhelmed. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like it requires much effort, as opposed to a form that shows everything in one go. Once they are invested in it—after answering a couple of questions—people won\u0026rsquo;t feel like quitting just like that. Conclusion When it comes to targeting, choosing Classmates is a very creative approach adopted by both Match.com and OurTime. When choosing your publisher, try to think outside the box like these brands. Running ads on Mingle2.com is a great growth hack by Zoosk. When it comes to context, this strategy is a killer. Try to find sites that are offering your type of service on a freemium model. These websites will probably run ads as their monetization strategy.\nWhen it comes to ad creatives, Match.com stole the show. They just proved that the best ad creatives are ones that don\u0026rsquo;t even look like ads!\nOurTime nailed it with their interactive landing pages. It is a great hack to reduce bounce rates. This works very well, especially if you have a lead-generation form that can seem too long.\nNow, what if you could find your competitor\u0026rsquo;s ad strategy just like we decoded the strategy of these dating apps? Check out our free app now.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/native-ads-run-by-dating-apps/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAccording to \u003ca href=\"https://www.statista.com/statistics/309559/us-adults-spouse-partner-online/\"\u003eStatista\u003c/a\u003e, 8% of 18– to 29-year-olds are in a committed relationship with a partner or spouse they met online. Using a dating app has become a meaningful and common method for people to find the love of their life. Of course, there are many more people out there using these various apps looking for casual dating, friendship, and other things.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWithin this pool of eager singles, you have a plethora of subcategories for different niches and preferences.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Dating Apps Spend Millions on Native Ads to Get More Singles Aboard"},{"content":"The internet has become an integral part of human civilization. Every day, thousands of new users are gaining access to it. It\u0026rsquo;s not just about social media, though: The internet is changing the way we conduct monetary transactions. Even governments are using the internet for important missions.\nWith such huge implications, threats also have become more dangerous. Too much is at stake. This is why the global antivirus market is booming. According to SBWIRE, the global antivirus-software market is set to reach a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18% by 2022.\nBut due to the availability of tons of free alternatives, it\u0026rsquo;s not easy to get the attention of this large user base. There are millions of people relying on Avast Free Antivirus, AVG Free Antivirus, and many more.\nFrom our analysis of our own advertising data , we\u0026rsquo;ve found that the top antivirus companies are spending heavily on one thing: display ads . Some of these companies are creatively running ads on unrelated topics to get good conversions. That is just one example.\nTo show you how they do it, we explored the ad strategies of three leading antivirus companies:\nBitdefender: The leader in antivirus hardware Webroot: The leader in cloud-based antivirus software McAfee: One of the oldest antivirus companies on the planet Bitdefender Bitdefender is the only non-U.S. company on the list. It was founded in Romania back in 2001 and, as of 2017, has acquired 500 million users worldwide. The company\u0026rsquo;s annual revenue is estimated to be about $140 million. While everyone else on this list is concentrating on antivirus software, Bitdefender is spending tons of ad money to sell their antivirus hardware.\nAd spend and Ad network In the past 24 months, Bitdefender spent $17 million, of which $11.9 million was spent on Google Networks and $3.6 million was spent on direct buys.\nBitdefender spends more money on mobile than it does on desktop. Most of its ad spend is concentrated on the iPad. For example, in February 2018, about $212K was spent on desktop while $1.4 million was spent on mobile, of which $1 million targeted iPads.\nThe reason could be related to what they are selling: “The Bitdefender BOX.” It is a Wi-Fi router that also acts as a security device for all of the devices connected to it. This product appeals to people who own more than two devices. When it comes to people who have an iPad, we can almost be sure that they will also have a mobile phone and a computer. So this audience would be much better to target than desktop or mobile phones users alone.\nPublishers All of Bitdefender\u0026rsquo;s publishers cover technology and computers. Their biggest publisher is PCMag. The company spent $1.5 million running ads on PCMag, of which $1.3 million was for direct buys. Most of this money was spent to be featured on the homepage.\nOther technology-related publishers include PCWorld, MacRumors and TheVerge.\nRecently, Bitdefender also spent heavily on wikiHow, targeting pages related to the Nintendo game Animal Crossing: New Leaf.\nPeople playing the game will use consoles like the Nintendo DS, which requires a Wi-Fi router. This is an excellent strategy to get exposure among these users.\nCreatives Initially, they used only image-based ads. But slowly, over the years, they\u0026rsquo;ve migrated completely to HTML5 ads. One of their most-used HTML5 ads is this one, in which they portray the Bitdefender BOX as the best for all of your devices, including PC, tablet, and smartphone. This is done by just switching the image of the device from one to the other. Here are a few stills from it:\nThough the CTA “Buy Now” is part of the ad copy, they haven\u0026rsquo;t added a button to make it more clickable.\nLanding Pages Bitdefender\u0026rsquo;s landing page looks very modern and stylish, with diagonal lines separating sections of the page.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve used a background image of a little kid using a PC. This is a great way to trigger concern in customers when it comes to their children\u0026rsquo;s safety.\nWhen it comes to landing-page copy, they\u0026rsquo;ve done everything in the book to improve conversions. First, they\u0026rsquo;ve mentioned their USP as the only solution to protect all devices in one go. Another interesting pointer is to generate FOMO(fear of missing out) by slashing prices. Also, the big CTA button that reads “Buy Now” is standing out from the rest the content and won\u0026rsquo;t be missed by anyone.\nThe second and third sections elaborate on why the Bitdefender BOX is the best in the market. It lists all of the cool features:\nThe fourth section contains industry reports from PCMag and other popular publishers that rate Bitdefender BOX highly:\nThese are trust signals to convince visitors of the product\u0026rsquo;s quality.\nFurther down, specs of the product are provided. This is for the geeks who like to get into the nitty-gritty:\nThe last section consists of a very appealing HTML5 animation that\u0026rsquo;s similar to the ad creative, again signifying how it protects every device.\nWebroot Webroot is a private company founded in Colorado in 1997. Since then, they have expanded globally, with operations in Australia, Japan, Austria, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland. The company\u0026rsquo;s annual revenue is $25 million, and they have been on a double-digit YoY growth spree for the past four years.\nIn 2014, they decided to revamp their antivirus product completely and run it completely in the cloud. Thus it doesn\u0026rsquo;t use up any of the local computer\u0026rsquo;s resources.\nAd spend and Ad network Over the past 24 months, Webroot has spent a total of $3.6 million, of which $3.1 million was used to place ads on Google Networks. They ramped up their spending over the past year. That could be a result of the tremendous growth they\u0026rsquo;ve experienced recently.\nWhile they\u0026rsquo;ve experimented a little bit with mobile in the past, they are spending all of their money on desktop ads. That is because their main target is the computer market, in both homes and small businesses.\nPublishers Webroot\u0026rsquo;s top publishers are Dictionary and Merriam-Webster: For both websites, Webroot has concentrated on the homepage the most. That could be an attempt to capture the home PC market.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve also placed ads on “security” and “password-related” pages in MakeUseOf, Windows Central, and Bleeping Computer:\nThat\u0026rsquo;s logical because those are keywords that are relevant to what the company\u0026rsquo;s product is all about.\nCreatives Webroot is also migrating from image ads to HTML5 ads. Though they haven\u0026rsquo;t completely shifted, they are going in that direction. As you can see, in the last 24 months, they used 60% image and 39% HTML5 ads, while in the last month, 60% of their ads were HTML5 and only 34% were image-based.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve been testing the HTML5 and image versions of the same ad. But they\u0026rsquo;ve put more money into HTML5, meaning that\u0026rsquo;s working more. This is the image version of their most-used ad: In the HTML5 version, the “Get protected today” CTA button keeps on blinking in orange and blue.\nWebroot is running another major ad that reads, “Don\u0026rsquo;t get hacked.” This ad is targeted toward homes and home offices:\nAgain, they\u0026rsquo;ve put more money into the HTML5 version of this ad.\nLanding Pages Webroot has used contextual landing pages for each ad. Ads targeting small businesses are taken to a particular page, and ads targeting individuals are taken to another.\nHowever, there are striking similarities in the layout in most sections of the pages.\nFor the page targeting nonbusiness users, they\u0026rsquo;re using conversion tactics, such as giving discounts and using award badges as trust signals:\nThe next section of the page is full of customer reviews:\nBelow that, there is another testimonial section decorated with awards the company has won:\nThe bottom-most part of the page is reserved for listing system requirements:\nThe landing page targeting small businesses is very similar. These pages have an extra few sections, such as comparisons between different plans and comparisons between competitors:\nMcAfee McAfee is one of the largest dedicated security-technology companies and was founded way back in 1987. Intel acquired the company in 2011 for $7.68 billion and renamed it Intel Security. However, the company was spun back from Intel in a deal with TPG, with Intel now owning only 49% of the shares. McAfee has a revenue of $2.5 billion every year and is growing at an annual rate of 6.6%. They are set to be valued at $102 billion by 2020.\nMcAfee has a great a suite of antivirus products that cater to everyone from individuals with a PCs to multimillion dollar companies with huge servers.\nAd spend and Ad network In the past 24 months, McAfee spent $2.9 million. Their spending has increased significantly recently, after splashing more than $800K just during the months of April and May. Most of their money is spent on mobile ads. This could be an attempt to take over the “App Store,” since most of the ads are targeting iPad users. While they\u0026rsquo;ve concentrated mainly on Google Networks, McAfee has also tried out other networks, such as Conversant and MediaMath. They\u0026rsquo;ve also tried native advertising via Outbrain.\nPublishers Their biggest publisher in terms of money spent is Whitepages.\nHowever, it looks like a really expensive experiment gone wrong. As you can see, the ads were stopped after just 28 days.\nThe native ads run on the technology-related pages of CNN and The Verge seem to have given McAfee much better conversions:\nBusiness Insider and TechTarget are the major publishers the company has accessed via the Conversant channel.\nWith Business Insider, McAfee tried placing ads in trending news. It seems to be a failed experiment — they stopped running ads there after 74 days. TechTarget has more educational posts related to viruses and other threats. This seems to be working pretty well, even after 280 days.\nCreatives With McAfee, we can see an opposite trend compared with the others on this list. They are slowly moving toward image-based ads. In the last 24 months, they ran only 41% image-based ads, while in the last month, 70% of their ads were image-based. McAfee\u0026rsquo;s branding is geared toward innovation. Their most popular HTML5 ads compare their innovative standards with booming sectors like the health care and aerospace industries. These ads seem to be mainly for branding rather than for conversions. Here are a few stills from it:\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve used the image-based ads to increase the downloads of their free software.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a good emphasis on “free” in the ad copy, and a clear CTA “Download Now.”\nLanding Pages People who click on the HTML5 ads are taken to a page that\u0026rsquo;s designed purely for exposure to their enterprise products. They have a “Watch Video” CTA button that\u0026rsquo;ll open up a video explaining how they\u0026rsquo;re changing the world.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve used statistics to prove their mettle in handling large-scale security issues:\nThe last CTA of the page is to subscribe to their newsletter: As you can see, there are two constant CTA buttons that remain in all of the sections: the “Contact Us” and the “Feedback” button. Mcafee is not looking for direct conversions from this page. They are trying to generate enterprise leads.\nThe story is a bit different for their image-ad campaigns. Those ads take people to a sales page, where they directly try to sell their software at a 50% discount.\nTo the right, there\u0026rsquo;s a comparison section to show extra features that most of their competitors don\u0026rsquo;t have.\nAt the end of the page, there\u0026rsquo;s a list of other products with discounted pricing.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s also a “Buy Now” CTA button under each product that takes people directly to the checkout page.\nConclusion A significant trend we see is that while two of these companies are moving toward HTML5 ads, one is moving toward image-based ads. What this shows is that even within an industry, the type of ad creative that works changes from company to company. You can only know what works by doing some A/B testing. Webroot\u0026rsquo;s way of testing is probably the best way to find this out. They\u0026rsquo;ve used the same design in both HTML5 and image ads.\nAlso, Macfee\u0026rsquo;s ad strategy is a great example of how you have to completely change the tone and style of ad creatives and subsequent landing pages based on the target audience.\nWhile all three companies have a sound strategy, Bitdefender using wikiHow pages to attract the Nintendo crowd is a masterstroke. That shows that you need not always target pages directly related to your keyword. Instead, try to find pages that are less obvious but very relevant.\nWant to know the secret ad strategies of your competitors? Check out our free tool!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-the-biggest-antivirus-companies-spend-their-advertising-budgets/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe internet has become an integral part of human civilization. Every day, thousands of new users are gaining access to it. It\u0026rsquo;s not just about social media, though: The internet is changing the way we conduct monetary transactions. Even governments are using the internet for important missions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith such huge implications, threats also have become more dangerous. Too much is at stake. This is why the global antivirus market is booming. According to SBWIRE, the global antivirus-software market is set to reach a \u003ca href=\"http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/global-antivirus-software-market-to-grow-at-a-cagr-of-18-by-2022-along-with-major-regions-analysis-and-revenue-analysis-forecasts-to-2023-952948.htm\"\u003ecompound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18% by 2022\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How the Biggest Antivirus Companies spend their Advertising Budgets"},{"content":"The web hosting industry is set to be a $154 billion market in 2022. Tens of thousands of companies are competing for a diverse audience — from college kids to multi-national corporations. To stay in business, most companies have differentiated themselves by catering to a specific niche.\nThe best of the lot use digital advertising channels to reach the top:\nRackspace has dominated the high-end corporate world with their interactive HTML5 ads that can test a website\u0026rsquo;s server speeds. Liquid Web has captured the SMB market by strategically concentrating on specific niches at different intervals of time. Bluehost has come up with clever ad campaigns to make WordPress users feel special with “exclusive” discounts. We analyzed their complete advertising funnel — from the niche of publishers they\u0026rsquo;re running ads on to the type of ad creatives they\u0026rsquo;re using and even their landing page strategies.\nRackspace Founded in 1998, Rackspace was made private in August 2016 thanks to a $4.3 billion deal by Apollo Global Management. However, there are rumors that they might go for another IPO soon.\nThanks to annual revenue of around $2 billion, they spend millions of dollars per month on ads. Also, they can afford a higher CAC (customer acquisition cost) as their customer LTV (lifetime value) is very high.\nAd Spend and Ad Networks Rackspace spent $46.9 million in the last 24 months. They\u0026rsquo;ve focused more on the Google Network by spending $37 million there while only $7.9 million was spent on direct buys.\nHowever, they\u0026rsquo;ve completely trimmed down money spent on direct buys since November 2017:\nMost of the buy-ins were spent to get exposure on the homepages of premium business publishers like Forbes, Fortune and TechRepublic.\nThis is a result of Rackspace completely stopping ads on these sites, which used to be their main focus.\nPublishers Rackspace has spent $4.4 million on Forbes, $1 million of which was for its U.S. homepage alone.\nThese are expensive campaigns with a minimum CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) of $10. There is a possibility that while these campaigns provided good ROI in the beginning, after a point, the same people begin to see the ad over and over again. This could\u0026rsquo;ve reached a saturation point, thus reducing ROI and forcing them to look for other channels.\nAfter drastically reducing their spend on direct buys, Rackspace is now focusing heavily on “how-to” websites like Tutorials Point, Tom\u0026rsquo;s Hardware, How-to Geek and wikiHow and even websites like Dictionary and Thesaurus via the Google platform.\nThese campaigns are an attempt to attract individuals and SMBs that have the money to spend but do not come under the “premium” corporate category.\nCreatives Rackspace stands out from the rest of the advertisers on this list because they use creative HTML5 ads. They also use image-based ads in their campaigns.\nTheir most successful ad campaign consists of two HTML5 visuals.\nOne reads “Don\u0026rsquo;t keep your audience waiting on page loads” and shows a text box where leads can enter their web address. There\u0026rsquo;s a CTA that says “Test your server.” This is probably the best interactive ad we\u0026rsquo;ve seen in a long time:\nThe idea is to encourage leads to enter their web address to see their results.\nThey also lure enterprise customers who are using Google Cloud and AWS with these ads:\nLanding Pages Many of Rackspace\u0026rsquo;s ads direct leads to their homepage, which is used to build trust and redirect leads to sub-landing pages that are more personalized.\nThe landing page starts with Rackspace\u0026rsquo;s value proposition:\nThe CTA — Get Started — takes people to another page that lists the main features.\nIf you move down the homepage, they\u0026rsquo;ve flaunted their recent “Partner of the Year” award from HPE:\nThe main aim of this section is to garner trust and establish their authority at the same time.\nFurther down the homepage there\u0026rsquo;s a section that shows the different services they offer:\nThere is a “Learn More” CTA under each service. When clicked, it takes you to a landing page that explains how Rackspace is the best in the industry when it comes to that particular service.\nThe next section of the homepage tries to sort visitors based on their industry:\nUnder each industry, there is copy that tells the visitor how many customers they serve and to the right is a video that explains more. Once you click on the CTA, it takes you to industry-specific landing pages.\nBelow that section are two CTAs:\nThe “Request Free Quote” button opens up a lead generation form while the “Chat Now” link opens up a chat window. Both are aimed at pushing you further down the funnel.\nThe last section of the homepage is mainly to educate site visitors:\nThis is an attempt to reduce bounce rates and make visitors curious enough to stay on the website.\nWhile their homepage is a great landing page, we feel the first section falls a bit short. While they have mentioned their value proposition, there is a good chance many visitors will bounce as they haven\u0026rsquo;t done anything to incite curiosity.\nWhat we can learn from Rackspace\u0026rsquo;s Ad Strategy Rackspace makes good use of HTML5 ads; they\u0026rsquo;re some of the best in the advertising industry. Use interactive HTML5 ads to grab your leads\u0026rsquo; attention. If you can get them excited and curious about your product, you\u0026rsquo;ll notice an increase in click-through rates. This strategy works well with any type of user if you can get the ad copy right. Rackspace ads take leads to the homepage instead of a dedicated landing page. However, the links within the homepage redirect leads to niche landing pages. These landing pages are a great way to segment leads and guide them through specialized funnels. When dealing with enterprise customers, it\u0026rsquo;s important you take them to personalized web pages and make all further communication based on these inputs. Liquid Web Liquid Web is a $100 million web hosting company founded in 1997. They specialize in managed web hosting services catering to SMBs and manage over 500,000+ sites spread over 130 countries. They also have a huge e-commerce customer base thanks to their specialization in WooCommerce hosting.\nAd Spend and Ad Networks Liquid Web has spent around $6 million on ad networks in the last 24 months. They\u0026rsquo;ve gone all in on Google Network sites by spending around $5.8 million there.\nOur data shows that they\u0026rsquo;ve been spending like hills and valleys over the past two years:\nAll the spikes denoted times when they ran discount campaigns. For example, they spent $330.7k and $334.4k on their most recent holiday sale: A very interesting thing to note is that the majority of their ads are mobile ads targeting iPad users. This is because the iPad has become the most popular device used by SMBs ever since its launch.\nPublishers Liquid Web has spent massive amounts of money on publishers like MacRumors and 9to5Mac.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve even targeted iPhone and iPad-related pages in Softonic:\nAs you can see, all these ads ran during the same time period.\nLiquid Web\u0026rsquo;s overall strategy is to conquer a particular niche and then move on to others. At any given time, they mostly concentrate on similar websites so that they hit the same user again and again via different publishers.\nCreatives Liquid Web concentrates only on image-based ads. A lot of these are GIFs.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve tried a few text-based ads. But those don\u0026rsquo;t work as well as images when it comes to the discount campaigns that they run throughout the year: Season-specific colors are used for relevance.\nFor normal campaigns, they seem to have found decent success using GIF ads:\nLanding Pages Liquid Web has done a much better job with their landing page compared to Rackspace. The first section of the landing page has elements that stimulate interest. They\u0026rsquo;ve kept links called “[proof]” that can induce curiosity.\nEvery link in the header except the “Chat With Us” button takes the user further down the page.\nBelow, they show their different plans:\nEach plan has an “Order Now” CTA button that will take the visitor directly to the checkout page.\nThey have a section showing an industry report that proves how they are better than their competition:\nThis is great proof to show how they\u0026rsquo;re better than their competitors.\nThis is followed by another section that compares them to their competitors in terms of pricing and features:\nThere are many CTAs in between these sections:\nJust like Rackspace, both are aimed at lead generation.\nTowards the end, there is an FAQ section and list of blogs to read:\nThese two sections are designed to reduce bounce rates and educate visitors.\nLiquid Web\u0026rsquo;s landing page is very similar to Rackspace\u0026rsquo;s homepage and even better in many aspects. The only negative is that they haven\u0026rsquo;t done anything to guide visitors to personalized sub-landing pages. Though they are targeting just SMBs, this kind of personalization will help them increase conversions.\nWhat we can learn from Liquid Web\u0026rsquo;s Ad strategy Liquid Web does a great job of concentrating on a specific niche for a certain time period. If you have a diverse user base, try hitting on a particular subset of users for a continued period of time. This will help you establish yourself in that genre. After some time move on to other subsets. This strategy can be more effective than trying to hit everyone all at once and spreading yourself thin. Display ads can be a good way to maximize the exposure of your discount campaigns. Liquid Web is a great case study on this as they\u0026rsquo;ve spent millions of dollars just on these campaigns. Bluehost Founded in 2003, Bluehost was acquired by Endurance International Group in 2011 for an undisclosed amount. Along with their sister companies, FastDomain, iPage and HostMonster, they host more than 2 million websites. They target low-end customers who can only afford shared hosting.\nAd Spend and Ad Networks In the last 24 months, Bluehost has spent $6.2 million on display ads, out of which $4.2 million was spent on Google Networks while around $1.8 million was spent on direct buys.\nJust like Rackspace, they also stopped direct buys some months ago.\nLooking into their publishers gave us some idea as to why this could\u0026rsquo;ve happened.\nPublishers Most of their direct buy ads, around $851.3k, were spent on one publisher - The Woks of Life. This could have been an attempt to ride the “Asian food” trend that\u0026rsquo;s been rising over the years:\nBut why did they suddenly stop the spend?\nThis looks like a recurring theme that\u0026rsquo;s very similar to what happened to Rackspace with Forbes.\nThe problem here is that after a particular amount of time, you\u0026rsquo;ve already gotten exposure to the publisher\u0026rsquo;s core audience. Unless the publisher is able to bring in an equal number of new users, the ROI is bound to go down. This means that direct buys may not be a long-term option if you depend on just one publisher.\nBluehost has also run tons of ads on the Google Network targeting websites like wikiHow, Reddit and Dictionary.\nCreatives Bluehost\u0026rsquo;s ad is completely image-based.\nThey have mainly two styles of image ads. This is their most used one:\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a very inspiring ad that can attract anyone planning to create a website. They\u0026rsquo;ve included pricing of $2.95/mo and a CTA of “Get Started.” The rock-bottom pricing is sure to catch anyone\u0026rsquo;s attention.\nThe other style is based on their tie-up with WordPress - the most popular CMS on the planet:\nWordPress formally endorses Bluehost as the best hosting service for WordPress sites. These ads are part of this campaign and are one of their most successful ads to date.\nLanding Pages Bluehost has mainly two types of landing pages. The first one is for users coming through the “Launch Your Dream Site Today” ad. The other one is for people coming through the WordPress ad. Both pages follow the same layout and give the same discounts. The only difference is the heavy WordPress branding in the second type.\nAnyone who\u0026rsquo;s planning to start a WordPress site will instantly feel the connect:\nIronically, this “Special Offer” is there for every visitor.\nFurther down the page there is a features section:\n“Recommended by WordPress” is the highlight of this section. This induces major amounts of trust in the visitor.\nTo make it more appealing, they even have exclusive WordPress support:\nThe continued use of “WordPress” is also for SEO. This page ranks on the first page for the keyword “WordPress hosting.”\nWhat we can learn from Bluehost\u0026rsquo;s Ad strategy Bluehost placing ads in The Woks of Life was a great idea, especially since “Asian food” has been trending for some time. As their target audience is pretty large in volume, this is an excellent tactic. Place ads on websites that deal with trending niches that your customers might be interested in. You can identify trends using Google Trends. Bluehost makes WordPress users feel special with their creatives and landing pages. Though they give offers to everyone, their creatives make it look exclusive. This tactic works pretty well when you are dealing with B2C customers who don\u0026rsquo;t have much money to spend. Make your offers also seem exclusive. Create landing pages and ad campaigns targeting a particular subset of your user base. You can choose to give special discounts or other benefits to this subset or make it look like you are. Conclusion For this study, we chose three companies from the same industry serving slightly different customer niches. We did this to provide you with an overview of how each company changes their pitch and style of ads accordingly. Moreover, you also get a holistic view of the web hosting industry.\nOf all the strategies, the HTML5 ads used by Rackspace were the most unique. Bluehost\u0026rsquo;s strategy of making existing discounts look exclusive is another strategy you can try to increase your ad conversions if you are in the B2C segment.\nThe most interesting insight of them all is the failure of direct buy-in ads over a period of time that reflected on both Rackspace and Bluehost. This shows that relying too much on a particular publisher for a long period of time is not sustainable, no matter who your target audience is.\nWant to know the secret ad strategies of your competitors? Check out our free tool!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-web-hosting-platforms-generate-leads/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe web hosting industry is set to be a \u003ca href=\"https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/web-hosting-services-market-reaches-to-usd-154-billion-by-2022-at-16-of-cagr-industry-affirmations-by-mrfr-300512202.html\"\u003e$154 billion market in 2022\u003c/a\u003e. Tens of thousands of companies are competing for a diverse audience — from college kids to multi-national corporations. To stay in business, most companies have differentiated themselves by catering to a specific niche.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe best of the lot use digital advertising channels to reach the top:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRackspace has dominated the high-end corporate world with their interactive HTML5 ads that can test a website\u0026rsquo;s server speeds.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eLiquid Web has captured the SMB market by strategically concentrating on specific niches at different intervals of time.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBluehost has come up with clever ad campaigns to make WordPress users feel special with “exclusive” discounts.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe analyzed their complete advertising funnel — from the niche of publishers they\u0026rsquo;re running ads on to the type of ad creatives they\u0026rsquo;re using and even their landing page strategies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How 3 Web Hosting Platforms use Digital Ads to Generate Leads"},{"content":"Project management companies face a huge challenge when it comes to acquiring customers.\nThe project management industry is huge—it is set to hit $6.7 billion by the year 2022—and the number of tools on the market is exploding as well. That means that companies in this space face an unprecedented amount of competition when it comes to getting in front of potential users.\nTo cut through the noise, the best of the best are using digital advertising.\nWe analyzed advertising spend from some of the top project management companies out there—Aha!, Monday, and Smartsheet—to understand just how they are setting themselves apart in this competitive landscape. We looked at the demographics they\u0026rsquo;re targeting, the networks they\u0026rsquo;re using, whether they\u0026rsquo;re finding text, video or image ads more successful—and we collected all the results of our analysis here, so you can learn how to better spend your advertising budget, or prove to your boss that you need one today.\nAha! Aha! is a product management tool that is used to drive product strategy using visual roadmaps. The main aim is to help teams keep track of the “why,” “when,” and “why” of their roadmap. It integrates with other project management tools like Jira and Asana.\nFounded in 2013, their bootstrapped journey has been phenomenal, considering that they have more than 200,000 users worldwide. Aha! is the only company in this list to have refused VC funding.\nAd Spend and Ad Network Aha! has spent around $1.6 million in the last 24 months, almost entirely on the Google Network. While they have been mainly concentrating on desktop ads, they\u0026rsquo;ve also ramped up their ad spend on mobile ads since April. For example, so far in July, only $68.5k was spent on desktop ads, while a whopping $140.3k was spent on mobile ads.\nThe concentration on mobile ads coincides with their launch post-April of integrations with apps like Google Hangouts, Asana, Jira, Rally, and GitHub. Out of $140.3k spent on mobile ads, $114.8 were used to target iPad users.\nPublishers Aha! has been spending heavily on FashionBeans and ESPN in the last couple of months. FashionBeans is a popular publication that blogs about men\u0026rsquo;s fashion, style and grooming. But, why would a B2B tech company spend heavily on sports and men\u0026rsquo;s fashion websites?\nEighty-five percent of FashionBean\u0026rsquo;s customer base is less than 44 years old with the major chunk coming in the 25 to 44 age range. According to a 2018 Pragmatic Marketing survey, 60% of product managers are men and 63% of them come in between the ages of 25-44. Most of them are millennials and are more internet-savvy compared to the rest of the project managers.\nAlso with ESPN, most of the sudden spike in advertising in June to July coincides with the start of the MLB season. Aha! has also spent a lot to advertise during events like the NBA Finals. This could be an attempt to cash in on ESPN\u0026rsquo;s 13% year-over-year growth of millennials in primetime viewership.\nWe can assume that Tutorials Point is a steady source of traffic for Aha! as they\u0026rsquo;ve been running ads there for quite some time. Aha! has even increased the ad spend there in the last two months. The pages Aha! targets with its ads are the ones that offer readers project management tool hacks and other related topics.\nCreatives Aha! mostly uses image-based ads and publishes only a few text-based ads.\nThe creatives for all of their ads are very similar. While the headers vary a bit, the messaging after that is always: “The world\u0026rsquo;s #1 product roadmap software.”\nThe visuals within the ads are also all the same. It is basically a laptop screen showing their app. While this is decent, it is not as great as other apps — like Monday — that show GIF ads. We\u0026rsquo;ll explore this more later. The CTA is also a constant “Try Aha! FREE.”\nAfter analyzing all their creatives, it seems that they could\u0026rsquo;ve done more testing to see if it improves conversions.\nLanding Pages Aha! landing pages all use lead generation forms as a way to encourage leads to take the next step and get started. There are two types of landing pages.\nThis landing page is mostly seen on desktop ads:\nAs you can see, this page is highly visual. Toward the right, there\u0026rsquo;s a GIF of the app in action. Further down the page there are logos of some of their more well-known customers. This uses social proof to get leads to take action. There are more screenshots that show the different features, and even a video at the bottom of the page to help convince leads to sign up.\nThis landing page is mostly used for mobile ads: It\u0026rsquo;s a shorter page and the content is highly textual. All of the visuals we saw in the desktop version have been replaced by FAQs. They probably took this route to increase the page\u0026rsquo;s loading speed on mobile devices. One thing worth noting is the lack of company logos on this page. The mobile landing page focuses more on sharing information and value than focusing on social proof.\nTAKEAWAYS: What we can learn from aha\u0026rsquo;s ad strategy! In mobile ads, Aha! has been putting almost all their money on iPad users. This is because iPad has become the product manager\u0026rsquo;s best friend across several industries. The key is to target devices that your audience uses the most. Ask yourself questions like: Does your audience consist of mostly Android or iOS users? Do they use iPads or iPhones? Aha! placing ads on websites like ESPN and FashionBeans is a great example of targeting the interests of their audience. Be sure that the pages you target with ads are relevant to the audience\u0026rsquo;s needs and interests. For example, users checking out player stats may or may not be interested in a project management tool. The best thing to do is test where you place your ads and check conversions. Monday Monday — formerly known as dapulse — is a visual project management tool that mainly supports customers in non-tech spaces, such as architecture and the food industry. While most project management tools dominate the tech market, only 30% of Monday\u0026rsquo;s customers are from the tech world.\nIt was founded back in 2012 with $1.5 million from seed funding. It is one of the hottest startups in project management since recently raising $50 million in Series C funding. This takes their total funding received to date to $84.1 million.\nThey also have more than 35,000 paid customers with a year-over-year growth of 3x.\nAd Spend and Ad Network Monday started spending on ad networks and direct buys in January 2018. They\u0026rsquo;ve already spent a total of $1.1 million, of which $961.2k was spent on direct buys.\nWhile they\u0026rsquo;ve run ten direct buy campaigns so far, most of their budget was spent on one campaign called “The Intuitive Management Tool.” The total ad spend on this campaign amounts to $814.5k, of which $808.8k was spent on TNW.\nThey targeted articles related to AI, Bitcoin, Bixby, SpaceX, #deleteFB and other trending topics. The target audience for these posts is comprised of early adopters. This fits well with their tool because of its innovative approach to project management.\nPublishers Other than TNW, Monday is also experimenting a lot with Glassdoor through the Google Search Partners network. These ads give Monday exposure among project managers who are searching for “project manager salary,” “project management interview questions,” and similar keywords in Glassdoor. The fact that Monday has published 143 unique ads over the course of 152 days shows us that they are doing a lot of testing to find a working formula.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve also started running ads on sites like Dummies and Dictionary. Once they find a winning combination, there\u0026rsquo;s a good chance they\u0026rsquo;ll scale things up. These campaigns are run on evergreen content and thus have the potential to drive constant traffic, unlike trending posts, as seen in TNW.\nCreatives Monday\u0026rsquo;s ad strategy mostly focuses on image-based ads. As you can see, 94% of their ads are image-based.\nWhile they\u0026rsquo;ve tried a few YouTube video ads, they have yet to put any decent money there. Here is one such example:\nA lot of their image-based ads are actually GIFs that show the app in bright and attractive colors:\nThese GIFs have the ability to arouse curiosity because most project management tools aren\u0026rsquo;t this visual. None of their competitors are using the power of GIFs.\nThey use two types of creatives. The first one stresses how simple it is to use their tool:\nThe second type, which isn\u0026rsquo;t used as much as the first example, talks about how they\u0026rsquo;re changing the project management space by making things visual: These are the two main USPs of Monday. After testing both types, they seem to have found more success with the “simple” pitch as they\u0026rsquo;ve ramped up that campaign recently.\nThe CTAs used are mainly “Create free account.” This makes sense because their business involves a lot of free users at the top of the funnel, which trickles down to a few conversions. The intention is to attract a huge user base to try out their free trial. According to Capterra, out of 1,00,000 free users, Monday has only 30,000 paid users.\nLanding Pages There are two types of landing pages Monday uses. Both are more visual — using lots of bright colors — than text heavy. These pages are designed to do two things:\nHighlight how simple it is to use the app or how visually appealing it is Collect email addresses and get leads to sign up for the free trial The ads that focus on how simple it is to use the app redirect leads to the homepage:\nThe ads that focus on the visual appeal of the app redirect to a landing page that shows off the visual aspects of the tool:\nThis page has a GIF running in the background — giving leads a sneak peak of what\u0026rsquo;s within the app.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s interesting to note that neither landing page relies on tactics like FOMO, scarcity, social proof, or customer testimonials to encourage leads to start a free trial. Monday has distinguished itself from its competitors by instead focusing on two things: simplicity and visual appeal.\nTAKEAWAYS: WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM MONDAY\u0026rsquo;S AD STRATEGY! Using GIFs in image ads is a really good way to stand out! Monday does this well by using GIFs to highlight the app\u0026rsquo;s simplicity and visuals. If your product has two main USPs, always test both to see which results in the most conversions. Do not stick to the one that you “think” is the best; instead , use what appeals to your audience the most. Smartsheet Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-based management software primarily meant for project managers. Of all the three companies we\u0026rsquo;ve focused on, Smartsheet has been around the longest — it was founded in 2005. Since then, they\u0026rsquo;ve raised a total of $113.2 million, with the latest round producing $52.6 million in Series F funding in May 2017. They are the only company on this list to go public. They have a whopping 3.6 million users, with 90% of Fortune 100 companies using Smartsheet\u0026rsquo;s tools.\nThe app is designed with a similar look and feel of a standard spreadsheet so the learning curve is less steep. This might be why Smartsheet is used by more than half of Fortune 500 companies. Smartsheet is also used in a wide range of industries. For example, more HR teams use it.\nAd Spend and Ad Network Smartsheet has spent $893.3k in the past 24 months, with $777.7k of the total spent on Google\u0026rsquo;s network. However, they\u0026rsquo;ve been slowly reducing the amount of money spent on mobile ads. The average monthly mobile spend has dropped from $23.3k/month in 2017 to $12.9k/month in 2018, while the average desktop spend has slightly increased from $17k/month in 2017 to $17.7k/month in 2018.\nTheir heavy spend on mobile ads last year mainly targeted iPad users. This might have been an attempt to increase their app downloads. There is a possibility that although they have millions of free users, the number of paid conversions could\u0026rsquo;ve been pretty low. This could be the reason for their sudden cut in mobile ad spend this year.\nPublishers Like Monday, Smartsheet also has had decent success with Glassdoor via the Google Search Partner network. They\u0026rsquo;re also targeting keywords like “salaries of scrum masters” and “salaries of project managers” with decent success as they\u0026rsquo;ve increased the spend recently.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve also featured ads in websites like Excel-Easy and Excel Functions targeting posts about excel sheets and project management. This is a great tactic to target MS Excel\u0026rsquo;s customer base since Smartsheet is very similar to it.\nCreatives Smartsheet ads are split almost equally between image and text ads.\nSince the content of these ad types are the same, it\u0026rsquo;s likely that Smartsheet is testing to see which is most effective to attract and convert more leads.\nInside the creatives, “Gantt Chart Template” is their most used header. For image-based ads, the Gantt chart is also part of the creative as a visual in the background. This makes sense considering “Gantt Chart Template” has over 27,100 searches per month in Google. This shows that Smartsheet understands its audience, which is why they\u0026rsquo;ve created ads that are more likely to attract interest.\n“Nothing to install” is a phrase they use in all of their image ads. While this might have been a great pitch to compete with Excel years ago, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t make much sense in 2018, when everything is cloud-based.\nLanding Pages Smartsheet has done a great job with creating specific landing pages that are very relevant to the creatives. For example, they have dedicated landing pages for Scrum Software-based and Gantt Chart-based creatives. Both of these landing pages are used to collect email addresses in exchange for a free 30-day trial.\nThe “Gantt Chart” landing page has a GIF that shows how the app works, followed by a list of features. For social proof, they\u0026rsquo;ve included the logos of well-known customers like Netflix and Cisco.\nThe “Scrum Software” landing page uses a video to show how Smartsheet works. Customer testimonials are used to increase the trust factor for this page. They\u0026rsquo;ve also used a comprehensive comparison table to show that they offer more features than their competitors, including Asana, Basecamp, and Microsoft Project. If you have features that are better than your competitors\u0026rsquo;, this is a great way to showcase that fact.\nTAKEAWAYS: WHAT we can learn from smartsheet\u0026rsquo;s growth strategy! Add your best organic keywords to your ad copy. If these keywords already attract organic traffic, then chances are they\u0026rsquo;ll also work for paid ads—as long as you get the targeting right! Create landing pages that match your ad creatives. Many advertisers make the mistake of creating niche-focused ad creatives that lead to their homepage with generic content. This can kill your conversion rates because it isn\u0026rsquo;t clear to leads what they\u0026rsquo;re expected to do once they get to the page. Stand out from the crowd Each of the companies we highlighted have a distinct ad focus. Whether it\u0026rsquo;s their messaging, the types of leads they target or the ad type used, each company has done a good job of differentiating itself from its competitors.\nWhen developing your next ad campaign, it\u0026rsquo;s important that you have a clear understanding on who your audience is and what they\u0026rsquo;re trying to accomplish. Tailor your ads to speak to their specific needs in order to increase lead conversions. The more specific your targeting is, the better your chances are of standing out and getting noticed by your target audience.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/project-management-companies-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eProject management companies face a huge challenge when it comes to acquiring customers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe project management industry is huge—it is set to hit $6.7 billion by the year 2022—and the number of tools on the market is exploding as well. That means that companies in this space face an unprecedented amount of competition when it comes to getting in front of potential users.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo cut through the noise, the best of the best are using digital advertising.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How the Best Project Management Companies Spend their Advertising Budgets"},{"content":"We\u0026rsquo;re living in the golden age of tech where it\u0026rsquo;s becoming increasingly easier to create customized experiences for customers.\nOne place we\u0026rsquo;re seeing this is in website design. Instead of hiring an expensive developer to build a site or spending hours trying to learn code and building a website DIY-style, online website builders are the new go-to because they help users save time and money.\nWith professional results that look like a developer invested several hours building, what user wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want to take advantage and try?\nAs the easy website building industry continues to grow to include more options, these platforms have to get creative with their advertising to ensure they stand out. We\u0026rsquo;ve found three of the biggest site builder platforms and done a deep dive into how they target customers and run their advertising campaigns.\nSquarespace Squarespace is both a website builder and hosting platform. Features range from access to designer templates to data insights designed to help users optimize sales and improve end-use customers\u0026rsquo; experience.\nUsers on the platform range from casual bloggers to established e-commerce stores. Regardless of what type of business they run or the type of site they want to build, all users have access to Squarespace\u0026rsquo;s award-winning design templates. Users don\u0026rsquo;t need design or creative experience to create professional-looking sites.\nAd spend and ad networks Squarespace has spent approximately $56.5 million on networks like Google and Direct Buy. Over $37 million of this has been spent on Google\u0026rsquo;s ad network and over $16 million has been spent on Direct Buy.\nBy using Google\u0026rsquo;s network and Direct Buys, Squarespace is able to increase their reach and target people who are in the early stages of the buying cycle: from awareness and research to comparison and purchase. The more exposure Squarespace gets with these audiences, the better the chances of them standing out when leads are ready to buy.\nUnlike other industries where a specific group of people uses the product, like real estate ads that only apply to people buying or selling a home, web hosting caters to a larger demographic. With approximately 1.89 billion websites in the world, Squarespace\u0026rsquo;s ads cater to just about any person or company that wants to share their brand.\nPublishers More publishers are added to desktop than mobile over time. Over 6,000 were added to desktop in June versus 461 added to mobile during the same time.\nSome of the top publishers Squarespace uses include Neatorama which is a blog that covers a wide range of special interest topics, sports related sites like Baseball Reference and Pro Football Reference, as well as reference sites like Wikia and Dictionary.com.\nAdvertising on these types of sites targets potential customers across a wide range of interests. For example, people on sports reference sites might be inspired to start their own site sharing information they\u0026rsquo;re passionate about. By showing display ads on these sports reference sites, Squarespace gives the audience a starting point by showing how easy it is to build their own website.\nCreative Over seventy percent of ads are HTML5 and include some kind of animation. These ads are a little like short video clips that are packed with lots of insightful information about the platform.\nAds use wording like “Make your website today” and “Designed to stand out,” which does two things:\nReinforces how easy it is to get started Highlights the fact that templates make it easier to stand out and look professional The images used reference different projects and business types to show that Squarespace is versatile and can be used by any kind of business. Some ads offer discounts when users sign up with a .edu email, making it easy for younger millennials to get started. This perhaps encourages them to start a business while in school — like so many startups before them — without worrying about shelling out lots of cash to design a great website.\nAlso interesting to note, almost all ads, regardless of whether they\u0026rsquo;re on mobile or desktop, have the same CTA. They all say “Start Now,” which gives a sense of consistency across ads and devices.\nAlso interesting to note, almost all ads, regardless of whether they\u0026rsquo;re on mobile or desktop, have the same CTA. They all say “Start Now,” which gives a sense of consistency across ads and devices.\nLanding pages Standard ads take people to the site\u0026rsquo;s homepage instead of a separate landing page that reinforces a specific message from an ad.\nHowever, the homepage does a good job of showcasing many of the features the platform has to offer. Plus, there are several CTAs for leads to click on as they scroll down the page. Common CTAs include “Start a Free Trial” and “Create a Site.”\nThe homepage also puts a unique spin on social proof. In addition to listing some of the brands that use their platform, Squarespace also showcases well-known celebs, founders, and artists as they setup their own websites. The videos for each person are light humored and really play up how easy the platform is to work with.\nWeebly Weebly is a website-building platform dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and small business owners with their e-commerce, website and marketing needs. Compared to Squarespace, Weebly is relatively new — it launched in 2006.\nTo get started, new users decide first on what type of site they want to build — for example, an online store, business site, blog or something else — and then Weebly serves up templates specifically designed for those types of sites.\nUnlike Squarespace that boasts its design features, Weebly\u0026rsquo;s website promotes the platforms e-commerce, marketing, and build-on-the-go — they have an app — feature.\nAd spend and ad networks To date, Weebly has spent over $3 million advertising on ad networks. The majority of that spend has gone towards Google.\nThe majority of their ad spend is on desktop with $1.1 million spent on that platform in June and over $37,000 spent on mobile that same month.\nUsing Google\u0026rsquo;s ad network gives Weebly the opportunity to target potential customers where they spend a lot of time online. This exposes more people to Weebly\u0026rsquo;s specific product features and increases the chance of these features matching audience needs.\nPublishers By far, desktop has the most publishers added month over month compared to mobile. In June, Weebly added almost 2,000 publishers to desktop versus 24 publishers on mobile.\nWeebly uses similar publishers compared to Squarespace. For example, they also advertise on reference sites like Wikia and Dictionary.com and a few others like Manta, Amazon, and Reddit. Amazon makes sense for users interested in e-commerce. For example, sellers might see Weebly\u0026rsquo;s ads and decide to build their own website as another way to market their products. Showing ads on a social media platform like Reddit helps Weebly get noticed because word of mouth travels quickly and helps inform users of what choices to make.\nCreative Eighty-two percent of ads are image-based and have call outs like “Have an idea?” or “You\u0026rsquo;re a creator” with simple design images that give a hint of the type of aesthetic to expect on the platform — simple and clean.\nThese standard ads appear on desktop and use CTAs like “Start Your Website.” The images used in these ads showcase the different types of sites current customers have.\nLanding pages Landing pages for standard ads take users to a simplified version of the homepage. These landing pages are geared towards e-commerce instead of just listing all of the features the platform has available for new users.\nLeads can learn about website templates and features designed specifically for e-commerce.\nThere are only two CTAs on landing pages: one at the top of the page and one at the bottom. Both say “Get Started.” The CTA at the bottom uses social proof — “Join 50 million users” — as another way to encourage leads to sign up.\nWix Wix is a free platform that also offers premium plans with additional features based on user needs. For example, if users want to have a custom domain name without “Wix” included, they can upgrade to a paid plan.\nThis web hosting platform is suitable to use by casual bloggers all the way up to businesses like restaurants.\nWix\u0026rsquo;s website messaging focuses on the fact that users don\u0026rsquo;t have to know how to code to take advantage of the numerous features available. They just need an idea of what they want to create and Wix will guide them through the build process.\nAd spend and ad networks Wix has spent a little over $622,000 on ad networks so far. They mostly use Google but also rely on DirectBuy to get in front of potential customers.\nMost of the ad spend is on mobile with about $69,000 spent in June on mobile and almost $34,000 spent on desktop. Wix also offers a mobile app so when users see ads on mobile they can also sign up and get started on their mobile device.\nAdvertising on mobile and also offering a mobile app speaks to how easy it is to use the product — new users don\u0026rsquo;t even need a computer to start building a professional-looking site.\nPublishers Wix spends more on mobile advertising but adds more publishers to desktop each month compared to mobile. There were 26 publishers added to desktop in June and three added on mobile. This might be because the app is still relatively new and Wix is promoting how it can be used as a companion to the web platform. Desktop is still Wix\u0026rsquo;s bread and butter but the app means users can manage their stores, contact customers, and run promotions on the go.\nPublishers Wix has spent most of their ad spend on include Merriam-Webster, The Next Web, and NPR.\nThese publishers represent a diverse mix of sites but all of them cater to business news and information — these are people who may be interested in building a site to further their business or launch a new one.\nCreative Eighty-six percent of ads are image-based:\nDesktop and mobile ads focus on how easy it is to get started building a new site. Users simply decide what kind of site they want and then start designing it.\nNative ads use the same messaging but the imagery is different. It shows the tool in action or people using it.\nThe most common CTAs in standard ads are “Start Now” and “Start Creating” and encourage people to click and find out more about the product.\nLanding pages The landing pages for standard ads refer to Wix as a playground where users can let their imaginations run wild and create whatever they can dream up. At the top of the homepage is an HTML5 autoplay video that loops and shows a person interact with abstract art. The video loop changes when users come back to the site again.\nThe rest of the landing page puts an emphasis on design features, available templates, and references the many features available.\nThe only downside is that there are only two CTAs — one is in black at the top of the page and the other is a hyperlink in the web features section. The CTA at the top of the page isn\u0026rsquo;t pinned so it gets lost as leads scroll down.\nLeads might be sold on the product because the web page flows well but there isn\u0026rsquo;t an easy, obvious way for them to take action. There\u0026rsquo;s a higher chance that they\u0026rsquo;ll bounce and leave the page without doing anything.\nKey Takeaways There you have it. Three leading web hosting sites and the different tactics they use to stand out and engage with their audience. Here are some key takeaways to help you create your own advertising campaigns — especially if you\u0026rsquo;re in a crowded marketplace.\nDiversify from competitors by highlighting key features. This helps target specific people looking for specific features. For example, Squarespace focuses on its extensive template library, Weebly focuses on helping with marketing and e-commerce features, while Wix caters to creatives who don\u0026rsquo;t want to have to learn code to build a beautiful website. Get to know your audience and differentiate yourself by using your advertising to focus on one key feature.\nUse social proof. Squarespace uses celebrity influencers to showcase the sites they\u0026rsquo;ve made on the platform and Weebly\u0026rsquo;s landing page highlights how many users are already using it. More so than ads, this helps to convince leads that one brand instead of another is right for them.\nUse Google Ads to get as much exposure as possible. Advertise on the same networks your competitors do so that the same audience sees you. You\u0026rsquo;re all essentially catering to the same audience — people who want to build a no-fuss website — so why not do a little research so that you\u0026rsquo;re seen just as frequently by your audience.\nInclude multiple CTAs on your landing page. Make it easy for leads to jump to your sales page at any time while they\u0026rsquo;re on the landing page. You\u0026rsquo;re losing out on sales when there\u0026rsquo;s only one or two CTAs on your landing page. Make it clear to leads what they need to do and repeat it three to four times on your landing page to boost conversions.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/website-builder-platforms-advertising-campaigns/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re living in the golden age of tech where it\u0026rsquo;s becoming increasingly easier to create customized experiences for customers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne place we\u0026rsquo;re seeing this is in website design. Instead of hiring an expensive developer to build a site or spending hours trying to learn code and building a website DIY-style, online website builders are the new go-to because they help users save time and money.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith professional results that look like a developer invested several hours building, what user wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want to take advantage and try?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Leading Website Builder Platforms Manage Their Advertising Campaigns"},{"content":"Gaming has come a long way. Over the past few decades it\u0026rsquo;s evolved from pixelated arcade games to gaming consoles and handheld devices to high-def online games. Gaming still has its roots in entertainment, but the industry also includes educational and gambling options as well.\nThis evolution means that there are millions of users to target with hundreds of games competing for attention. The most successful games — from multiple player to educational brain games — have shown staying power because they\u0026rsquo;ve been able to keep up with user needs and adjusted not just the gaming experience but how they target users with ads.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve taken a closer look at some of the most popular games in different gaming niches to show you how diverse advertisers use ad networks to reach their target audience and grow their user base.\nKeep reading to find out how you can apply these principles to your own campaigns.\nFinal Fantasy XIV Final Fantasy XIV is a “massively multiplayer online role-playing game” also referred to as MMORPG, or MMO, for short. Once players create an account and choose their avatar, they\u0026rsquo;re placed in a fantasy world where they interact with multiple players as they all explore their surroundings and fight together against an invasion.\nWith MMO games players don\u0026rsquo;t win in the traditional sense in that the objective isn\u0026rsquo;t to beat the game. The longer players are in the game and advancing to new levels, the more experience points they get. These points contribute to earning money and specialized equipment as players continue to explore.\nSince Final Fantasy was first released in 1987, it\u0026rsquo;s gained popularity worldwide and amassed millions of loyal fans. To date, there are 15 games in the series and each one caters to a mostly male, millennial demographic. Although in some niche areas, like Korea, the split between millennial men and women is equal.\nAd spend and ad network So far, $372,600 has been spent advertising on Google\u0026rsquo;s ad network and a little more than $65,000 has been spent on direct buys.\nBy advertising on Google, Final Fantasy XIVis able to take advantage of the different ad types Google Ads offers and reach as many users in their target audience as possible. For example, Final Fantasy XIV can use Google display ads so that ads show up on sites their target audience spends time on. So if a user Googles “the best MMO games,” relevant Final Fantasy XIV ads will appear on review sites like GamesRadar and PC Gamer.\nNotice Google also lists the top games at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). These aren\u0026rsquo;t ads but the fact that Final Fantasy XIV is listed puts it in front of users.\nMost of the ad spend is on desktop, which makes sense considering the game is played on desktop. When a new user sees an ad, it\u0026rsquo;s easy for them to get started because they don\u0026rsquo;t have to switch devices. They just create an account, set up their profile and they\u0026rsquo;re ready to play.\nDirect buy is used to a lesser extent, but by buying traffic, this gets Final Fantasy XIV in front of relevant audiences, which increases the chance of converting more people.\nPublishers Even though the MMO demographic — millennial males — spends hours a day on mobile devices, Final Fantasy XIV only adds publishers on desktop. In June they added 179 new publishers to desktop and one to mobile.\nSome of the publishers Final Fantasy XIV spends most of their advertising budget on include Gamepedia, Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango.\nRotten Tomatoes is an interesting choice given that it\u0026rsquo;s known mostly for its movie and TV show reviews. However, there have been five Final Fantasy movies and three TV shows. Therefore, people searching for reviews of these movies are more likely to be interested in the game series than people searching in other movie genres.\nCreative Almost all of the ads are image-based. The game itself is beautifully designed, so one way to pique new user interest is to use ads to highlight the dramatic design of the game. This gives new users an idea of what to expect and gets them interested in exploring the game for themselves.\nAll standard desktop ads use social proof to encourage new users to join. They use copy that says “Join over 10 million adventurers,” which speaks to how popular the game series has become. To avoid the fear of missing out (FOMO), users already interested in the game are more likely to go ahead and try it.\nThe calls to action (CTAs) for all ads — standard and native — say “Play the free trial.” This approach hooks new users because they get to experience the game for free before buying the full version.\nLanding pages The landing pages for these ads are a hub of information. The value the game offers — vivid design, a compelling story and an engaging user experience — is discussed throughout the landing page as a way to inform and excite users so that they sign up to play the game.\nThe first CTA — sign up now— is the first thing leads see on the landing page because it appears above the fold:\nLeads also get an overview of the features within the game and then a video showing the game in action as they scroll down the landing page:\nInterestingly, there\u0026rsquo;s only one CTA on this page. The original “sign up now” CTA that was initially above the fold pins to the top of the page when leads scroll down the page.\nLumosity Lumosity is a different kind of gaming experience in that games are scientifically designed to boost user memory, information processing speed and more. This game falls into a new browser-based gaming category known as “brain games.” These games aren\u0026rsquo;t purely designed for entertainment; they\u0026rsquo;re meant to improve users\u0026rsquo;cognitive functions at the same time.\nLumosity launched in 2005 and has grown to include over 50 million users. Part of their success attracting so many users is their commitment to showing users the research and science behind the games. This gives the games credibility and builds customer trust in the product because the benefits are based on third-party data.\nLumosity also tracks user progress as they play to show them how much they\u0026rsquo;ve improved over time.\nAd spend and ad network Lumosity\u0026rsquo;s ad network spend totals roughly $775,000 with most of that going towards AppNexus and Google.\nMost of their ad spend is on desktop ads. In June, Lumosity spent about $69,600 on desktop and $29,800 on mobile. Even though Lumosity also has a mobile app, the idea is that users get the best results when they devote more attention to the games vs. playing anywhere at anytime when their attention is divided — like while they\u0026rsquo;re in transit, waiting in line or at an event.\nAppNexus uses “ machine learning to deliver better outcomes for advertisers.” AppNexus has a “Customizable DSP” that helps Lumosity serve up ads to the exact people they want to target. Note: Lumosity only uses AppNexus to run ads on desktop as a way to target their specific audience.\nWhen Lumosity first launched, they thought that baby boomers would be their biggest market, but millennials have proven to be the heaviest users. So ads appear in places where millennials spend the most time online. We\u0026rsquo;ll explore this idea more later.\nPublishers Since most of Lumosity\u0026rsquo;s advertising spend is on desktop, that\u0026rsquo;s where they add the most publishers over time. In June, Lumosity added 37 new publishers to desktop and only two on mobile.\nSome of the publishers Lumosity uses include The New York Times, Coolmath Games, Britannica and Merriam-Webster sites. People using these sites are looking for ways to learn more and Lumosity advertising here positions them as the tool to help readers understand and apply what they\u0026rsquo;re reading to real life much quicker.\nInteresting note, Lumosity has spent over $185,000 on ads appearing in the New York Times, which is much more than it\u0026rsquo;s spent on any other publisher. This speaks to Lumosity\u0026rsquo;s ability to find the places where their target audience spends time and put as much advertising in front of them as possible.\nCreative 94% of Lumosity\u0026rsquo;s ads are image-based:\nThis is because their ads are served up as mini-games designed to entice leads to click and convert. Lumosity calls these mini-games “fit tests” because your brain is like a muscle that you have to work out and gauge its fitness level before starting a customized workout program.\nThe CTAs for their ads are some variation of “Play Now” or “Play Another.” These CTAs get leads to either try a game or keep testing the product before they commit to buying it.\nLumosity also uses text and text/image ads. Text ads, for example, are used for search ads using Google\u0026rsquo;s ad network. So when users search terms like “brain training games,” text ads like the one below appear in Google\u0026rsquo;s search results.\nLanding pages All of Lumosity\u0026rsquo;s landing pages follow a similar format:\nThe value proposition appears first, front and center for leads to see when they open the page. There\u0026rsquo;s a CTA immediately underneath the value proposition. There are multiple sections below this that guide leads to conversion. For example, there are sections on how the program works, the benefits of regular training and information about the science behind the tests — there are over 50 tests for users to play.\nPublishers Clearing House You might remember Publishers Clearing House\u0026rsquo;s (PCH) popular door-to-door sweepstakes from a few years ago. Since then PCH has become a billion-dollar enterprise. Part of that growth was to expand into the world of online gaming and gambling, which includes free online sweepstakes. PCH is similar to gambling and casino sites in that winning depends on how many people enter to win the jackpot.\nUnlike other gaming sites, PCH doesn\u0026rsquo;t cater to a specific demographic. For example, anyone over 18 years old can take part in the sweepstakes, which means that PCH has a sizable audience to target. This is why digital advertising helps PCH get in front of as many people as possible.\nAd spend and ad network PCH spends $10 million on ad networks with more than half of their ad spend going towards Revcontent and Google. In June they spent $1.2 million advertising on mobile and $105,600 on desktop. With mobile phone users estimated to reach 4.68 billion by 2019, it makes sense for PCH to invest so much in mobile advertising to stretch its ads reach.\nRevcontent is a content discovery network, so ads appear as recommended content on websites related to PCH\u0026rsquo;s content and games. Here\u0026rsquo;s an example of what the placement for a PCH ad looks like with Revcontent:\n[ Source]\nContent discovery combined with Google\u0026rsquo;s ad network gets PCH in front of people based on where they spend time online and what they search for online. Remember, PCH has a fairly large audience, and these networks combined help get their ads seen.\nPublishers PCH adds about the same number of publishers to mobile and desktop at the same rate every month. In June they added 233 publishers on desktop and 244 on mobile. In addition to the ad networks they use, adding the same number of publishers to each ensure maximum exposure regardless of where their target audience is and what devices they use.\nPCH also uses a wide range of publishers such as Opposing Views, GSN, Mommypage, and Faithit to appeal to a wide demographic.\nCreative 64% of ads are image and text-based with ads showing leads details like how much they can win by playing.\nThe CTAs for mobile ads are either “Play Now” or “Enter Now.” Some desktop text/image ads also show lifestyle images of people living the type of life you would expect after winning a sweepstakes. Images of large houses act as incentives to get PCH\u0026rsquo;s audience to participate in the draw.\nLanding pages Standard mobile and desktop ads include a lead generation form with a large CTA button at the bottom of the page. Native mobile and desktop ads take leads to a sign-up page on the website where they can register to play. When leads click on the CTA, they\u0026rsquo;re also taken to the lead generation form.\nBoth landing pages highlight the value of the sweepstakes and keep the lead form short so that new users can get started as quickly as possible. CTAs on landing pages vary from “Submit Entry” to “Begin” to “Continue.”\nKey Takeaways There are many kinds of gaming sites available but what\u0026rsquo;s made them successful is their ability to cater their advertising strategy to the needs and expectations of their audience. By putting their audience\u0026rsquo;s needs first, instead of just trying to sell a product, these three gaming sites have seen tremendous growth and longevity over the years.\nHere are a few key lessons from these sites as you choose the best networks to run your ad campaigns on.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t rely on only the “popular” networks. You have a better chance of attracting “the right” users if you use networks that get you in front of specific audiences. Smaller networks can get you quality traffic when you understand your audience\u0026rsquo;s behaviors and where they spend time online.\nDepending on your product type and user demographics, focus on one platform. If your product is web-based, then target desktop users so that it\u0026rsquo;s easy for them to click the ad and get started. Mobile and desktop have their unique benefits, but your focus should be to advertise where your audience spends time and are more likely to see your ad.\nUse unique CTAs. Use terms that are in-line with what you\u0026rsquo;re trying to get leads to do. Gaming sites often use “Play Now” and “Enter Now” to tie into the fact that leads are about to play a game.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-the-best-gaming-sites-choose-their-ad-networks/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGaming has come a long way. Over the past few decades it\u0026rsquo;s evolved from pixelated arcade games to gaming consoles and handheld devices to high-def online games. Gaming still has its roots in entertainment, but the industry also includes educational and gambling options as well.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis evolution means that there are millions of users to target with hundreds of games competing for attention. The most successful games — from multiple player to educational brain games — have shown staying power because they\u0026rsquo;ve been able to keep up with user needs and adjusted not just the gaming experience but how they target users with ads.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How the Best Gaming Sites Choose Their Ad Networks"},{"content":"Education is a big industry: From storied universities with massive endowments to learning apps with millions of users, it\u0026rsquo;s one of the most lucrative around the world, clocking in at an estimated global $1.9 trillion in 2017. That makes sense—everyone needs an education!\nWith all of the competition in the education space, it\u0026rsquo;s no surprise that education apps and universities also spend big—on advertising.\nAs of 2017, advertising spending for educational services had reached $1.91 billion in the U.S alone. This spending has been used to entice new students to join web-based programs, traditional universities, and app-based programs.\nWe did some research and found four advertisers in these categories and compared the strategies they use to boost their advertising lead generation. What we found is that each advertiser uncovered a specific need they wanted to fill and designed creative campaigns to generate more leads.\nKeep reading to find out how they do it.\nBabbel Babbel is a subscription-based language-learning app and web-based platform designed to help users easily learn a new language.\nTheir user base continues to grow: They counted 70,000 new U.S. users in January, which is up from the 40,000 counted in August 2017. Despite their strong growth, Babbel\u0026rsquo;s biggest challenge is getting users to stay for the long term and choose the platform over competitors that offer similar programs for free.\nTo retain users longer so that they see the value in Babbel\u0026rsquo;s service, the company has done a great job of reiterating how easy it is to learn the ins and outs of the app. They\u0026rsquo;ve positioned themselves as partners by keeping lessons short and offering a lesson-review feature and audio vocabulary pronunciation to give users the support they need to keep learning.\nTo help encourage new users to stick with the app and to turn learning a new language into a daily practice, Babbel has partnered with Apple Watch. That way, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter where users are—they can make good use of their time and spend it learning a new language.\nAd Spend and Ad Networks Babbel\u0026rsquo;s ad spend is over $20 million, with most of their spend going toward three networks: Outbrain, Taboola, and Revcontent. Their mobile ad spend far exceeds their desktop spend, with $2.6 million vs. $434,400, respectively, in June. This split makes sense, considering most users are on their phones or other mobile devices and can do lessons from anywhere—the interface is very interactive and easy to navigate—and Babbel can send in-app notifications to keep users engaged with the app.\nOutbrain, Taboola, and Revcontent are all content-discovery networks, so ads on these networks appear as recommended content and native ads on publisher sites. This approach to lead generation helps Babbel increase their reach because, combined, these networks cover many well-known and highly regarded news websites, such as CBS, MSNBC, and NBC News.\nPublishers When it comes to mobile and desktop, Babbel adds the same number of publishers over time on each platform. For example, in June there were 453 publishers on mobile compared to 504 on desktop.\nThe publishers that Babbel spends the most on are the ones focused on news sites like Opposing Views, CNN, ESPN, MSNBC, The Hill, NBC News, and others. You\u0026rsquo;ll recall that the ad networks Babbel uses target these types of sites. Focusing on news sites makes sense, given that Babbel targets “ adult learners over the age of 25 who are \u0026lsquo;motivated by self enrichment.\u0026rsquo;” Not only is Babbel getting in front of a large audience, but they\u0026rsquo;re also getting in front of more of the right people to generate a constant stream of leads. Creatives Ninety-two percent of ads are a combination of text and an image. Text-only ads appear on mobile, and these ads focus on how fast and fun it is to learn with 10-minute lessons.\nBabbel has chosen their ad copy very carefully. For example, “ Practice Spanish,” “Start speaking Spanish immediately,” and “Speak a new language with confidence” all speak to how easy the program is, encouraging users to stick with the program.\nDesktop ads have a gamified feel to them. Ads ask the audience “what language do you want to speak?” and the audience responds by choosing an option. This bolsters the idea Babbel is trying to get across: It\u0026rsquo;s easy to learn a new language. Users just have to pick a language and get started.\nNeither the mobile nor the desktop ads have obvious CTA buttons, although the “More” icon is a creative take on a CTA button. If people who are interested in the app don\u0026rsquo;t see the language they want to learn in the ad, clicking on “More” will take them to Babbel\u0026rsquo;s website to explore and learn more.\nLanding Pages Mobile ads link to either an advertorial or a simple landing page where users can choose which language to learn.\nThe advertorial emphasizes endorsements from language experts as a way to reinforce how easy it is to learn a new language without putting in an inordinate amount of time.\nThis particular advertorial has a video about Babbel at the top of the page and is followed by a short article that highlights how courses are designed and how easy they are to follow along with.\nThe CTA at the bottom says, “Start learning now,” which is in addition to the two CTAs at the top. One says, “Try Babbel”; the other isn\u0026rsquo;t obvious, but it\u0026rsquo;s the list of languages on the right side of the page.\nWhen users click on one of these languages, they\u0026rsquo;re taken to the same simple landing page as people who click on a different ad.\nDepending on the language new users choose to learn, they\u0026rsquo;re taken through a mini tutorial that tests their skill level. This approach adds to the gamified feel introduced in the ad. Getting new users to click through each page builds their curiosity to find out how well they did. This approach helps lead generation because new users start using the app right away, for free, and get firsthand experience with how easy the app is to use. Georgetown.edu Georgetown and other dot-edu sites use marketing to target students looking to pursue secondary education. There are so many schools to choose from that dot-edu sites try to stand out by offering unique programs and experiences to attract students.\nLead generation for schools highlight things like the different programs available, the campus culture, and the high-profile events, research, and projects taking place.\nSpend some time on Georgetown University\u0026rsquo;s website and you\u0026rsquo;ll see examples of their vibrant campus community, programs for social change, and a strong emphasis on their research opportunities.\nAd Spend and Ad Networks Georgetown spends most of its $5.9 million ad-network budget on Google and Taboola. This combination allows for two things:\nOrganic searches. Students looking for specific keywords that focus on areas such as academic programs, school location, and extracurricular programs are more likely to find this school. Content discovery. Ads for this school will appear on sites that new students already spend time on. Most of Georgetown\u0026rsquo;s ad spend is on mobile. They spent $742,800 on mobile compared to $13,100 on desktop in June to run ads using Google and Taboola. This focus makes sense, considering 98% of Gen Z—specifically students between 16 and 20 years old—own a smartphone. Millennials ages 25–34 aren\u0026rsquo;t far behind: 97% of them own a cell phone. Chances are they\u0026rsquo;re more likely to see ads on mobile than on desktop.\nPublishers To reinforce their focus on mobile advertising, Georgetown adds more publishers to mobile than desktop. In June, they added 84 publishers to mobile compared to 25 on desktop. Georgetown spends most of their ad spend on publishers like Yahoo, US News, ESPN, the Washington Post, and MSNBC. They spend so much on Yahoo — $861,000 so far — because these users tend to be older and more mature. This makes sense, considering 25.7% of Georgetown\u0026rsquo;s school population is between 25 and 29 years old.\nCreatives Ninety-seven percent of ads tend to be either a text and image combination or image only. Using these formats, Georgetown runs a range of ads that highlight specific programs, like their graduate school for arts and science or the urban and regional planning program. Ads either ask questions like “How will you change education?” for the MA in Educational Transformation program, or they highlight a key takeaway of the program, like “Be prepared to help solve national and global healthcare problems” for the MS in Health and Public Interest program. Georgetown offers a wide range of programs to attract a diverse student community, so their ads showcase this by highlighting different programs. What\u0026rsquo;s interesting, though, is that all of the ads use one type of CTA—“Learn More”—which is fitting for an educational institution!\nLanding Pages Ads take leads to either an advertorial or a lead-generation form.\nThe advertorials include a video intro about the program being advertised, a program overview below that, and links to detailed program information—like the curriculum, course schedule, and tuition fees. The CTA on these pages says, “Request Information,” at which point visitors add their contact information.\nThe lead-generation landing pages have large images of professionals working in the program to show the target audience the outcome if they enroll in the program. The CTA for these landing pages is always “Request Info.”\nCraftsy Craftsy is an online platform that offers a wide range of craft-related courses using high-definition interactive video tutorials and downloadable workshops.\nThey have been around for eight years and cater to the people who spend time on sites like Pinterest and want to learn how to make the crafts they find. Craftsy courses walk users through crafts step by step to make learning easy.\nCraftsy competes with crafting videos on YouTube and other creative websites. What differentiates Craftsy is the fact that they also sell the supplies, kits, and patterns that crafters need for the crafts they create on the platform. It\u0026rsquo;s a full-service site that goes beyond video tutorials to boost their lead generation.\nAd Spend and Ad Networks Most of Craftsy\u0026rsquo;s ad spend on networks has increased on mobile over the last two years. In the last six months, Craftsy has spent $4.5 million on two main networks: Google and Direct Buy.\nWith Google, Craftsy can attract organic traffic by catering to people searching “how to\u0026hellip;” topics to create a craft. Search terms like “how to knit” and “how to draw” have 49,500 and 550,000 searches per month, respectively. Direct Buy helps Craftsy buy access to the exact audience they\u0026rsquo;re looking for. The craft industry is worth an estimated $44 million, so Craftsy wants to get in front of specific audiences— 45% of Pinterest users are women with 1 out of 2 millennials using the platform every month—to maximize their lead generation and ultimately their long-term growth potential. Publishers Craftsy added more publishers on desktop than on mobile. This makes sense, considering crafters will use their desktops rather than their mobile devices to work through courses and to create crafts.\nCraftsy has added fewer publishers over time, but June data shows that 40 publishers were added to desktop that month compared to 26 added to mobile. The publishers Craftsy uses operate in the craft and DIY space. For example, their ads can be found on Little Things, E Online Bravo TV, I Am Baker, and Instructables.\nThe demographics of crafters are changing to include more millennials. As a result, the types of publishers Craftsy uses also gets them in front of their specific target audience. Part of why they\u0026rsquo;re adding fewer publishers each month might be because they\u0026rsquo;ve found the right mix of publishers to help their lead generation efforts. Creatives Eighty percent of their ads are image based, which makes sense, considering crafting is a very visual task and users are likely visual learners.\nStandard ads on desktop use the tagline “Explore the digital destination for makers.” Each ad shows a different craft in action. For example, knitting, painting, and cake decorating. The CTAs on all of their desktop ads alternate between “Learn More,” “Start Your Free Trial,” and “Watch Free.” These images and CTAs serve to get their target audiences\u0026rsquo; attention and then convert them by offering a free intro to the platform.\nNative ads focus on time sensitivity and use “Limited Time Offer” to get leads to convert instead of endlessly browsing the site. This way, Craftsy can at least filter users through their sales funnel when they get an email address, and then continue to market the benefits of the platform to their email subscribers. Landing Pages Landing pages for standard ads on desktop highlight the different courses available. The courses are categorized based on popularity and staff picks so that new leads have a place to start as they look for the right course. Each section of the page has its own CTA. For example, “Start Watching,” “Watch Now,” and “Choose Interests,” depending where on the landing page leads are. Landing pages for native ads desktop have a free trial CTA above the fold. Below this section, there\u0026rsquo;s a list of available crafts to learn, social proof from course instructors who are leaders in the industry, exclusive offers on Craftsy, and an FAQ section. All of these sections combined give leads the most relevant information they need to make a decision and then convert. As leads scroll through the landing page, a “Start Free Trial” CTA stays pinned to the top of the page. So even as leads get further down the page, there\u0026rsquo;s still an easy way for them to take the next step without having to scroll all the way to the bottom. There\u0026rsquo;s also a “Start Free Trial” CTA at the bottom of the page.\nInstitute for Integrative Nutrition The Institute is an online nutrition school that offers a health-coach training program. Their focus is to offer students an education in holistic nutrition, health, and wellness, as well as business management. Their guest lecturers are leaders within the industry. They include Deepak Chopra, MD; Geneen Roth; Andrew Weil, MD; and Arianna Huffington.\nConsumers are more aware of the benefits of “clean eating,” and they demand more information about these products. The problem is, because there\u0026rsquo;s so much information out there, people don\u0026rsquo;t always know where to start on their path to a healthier lifestyle.\nIIN\u0026rsquo;s (Institute for Integrative Nutrition) program is meant to train coaches to meet the demands consumers have as they look for better health options.\nAd Spend and Ad Networks Ninety-six percent of IIN\u0026rsquo;s $2.6 million network spend is on Google. Most of the ads they run on this network appear on mobile, with $277, 100 spent in June, compared to $43,200 spent on desktop in the same month.\nUsing coursework to teach instructors about healthy eating isn\u0026rsquo;t new, but as consumers are asking more about it, nutritional experts are searching online for more information to cater to evolving consumer needs. By using Google AdWords, IIN can find the words and phrases experts search for and then tailor their ads accordingly so that they show up at the top of SERPs—as paid ads. This helps with lead generation. Publishers More publishers have been added to desktop over time than to mobile. Most recently 50 were added compared to 40 on mobile.\nSome of the top publishers that IIN uses include health and wellness sites like: Psiphon Healthy Living, LiveStrong, Clean Plates, and Bodybuilding. Consumers interested in healthy living are on these sites, but more importantly, so are nutritional experts and coaches. They\u0026rsquo;re on these sites to keep an eye on what\u0026rsquo;s trending in the industry so they can share new information with their clients and be prepared to answer questions.\nCreatives Eighty-four percent of ads are image based, so they stand out on publisher sites—especially the ones with a lot of copy. The ads themselves focus on how easy it is to become a coach and the fact that the program is 100% online—for flexibility. The CTAs on desktop ads alternate between “Free Class,” “Sample a Class Now,” and “Get Curriculum Guide.”\nMany ads portray women leading a healthy lifestyle by including images of them practicing yoga, grocery shopping, and more. This isn\u0026rsquo;t surprising, considering there are a lot of programs that cater to women.\nLanding Pages Landing pages for ads are lead-generation forms. The offer gives leads a sneak peek into the curriculum by submitting their contact details. The form only has three fields—name, email, and optional phone number—to encourage leads to share their information.\nThe CTA is the same for all ads: It\u0026rsquo;s “Send me my class,” and there\u0026rsquo;s also a customer support pop-up that offers a live chat and immediate answers to leads.\nKey Takeaways From Advertising Lead Generation for Education Sites As you can see, there are many ways for education sites to differentiate themselves so that they stand out and generate lots of leads. Here are the most important takeaways from our research:\nChoose networks based on how you want to reach people. If there are specific sites your target audience spends time on, use content-discovery networks. To find out where your audience spends time, use Google Analytics to see what sites they leave to come to your site. If you want to target people looking for specific information, use Google AdWords to research search terms, and use the Google network to advertise. Put keywords into the ads so that they appear at the top of SERPs.\nUse more than one style of landing page to attract users. The style should match the ad. For example, use an advertorial for “Learn More” CTAs to give leads sufficient information about the product without overwhelming them. Add a short video and include the most important points. If this is the only thing they see, at least they hear about the value you offer.\nOffer leads a free experience. If you offer a service, give leads access to a free trial to get a feel for what you offer. This is a chance to hook them before asking them to switch to a paid plan or buy the service.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-4-types-of-education-sites-use-advertising-to-maximize-their-lead-generation/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEducation is a big industry: From storied universities with massive endowments to learning apps with millions of users, it\u0026rsquo;s one of the most lucrative around the world, clocking in at an estimated global \u003ca href=\"https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/19-trillion-global-higher-ed-market\"\u003e$1.9 trillion in 2017\u003c/a\u003e. That makes sense—everyone needs an education!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith all of the competition in the education space, it\u0026rsquo;s no surprise that education apps and universities also spend big—on advertising.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs of 2017, advertising spending for educational services had reached \u003ca href=\"https://www.statista.com/statistics/470693/educational-services-industry-ad-spend-usa/\"\u003e$1.91 billion in the U.S alone\u003c/a\u003e. This spending has been used to entice new students to join web-based programs, traditional universities, and app-based programs.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How 4 Types of Education Sites Use Advertising to Maximize Their Lead Generation"},{"content":"Download, start now, get started. You see calls to action (CTA) like these all the time, but do you ever stop to think about their impact on your ad campaigns? Oftentimes, CTAs are an afterthought hastily tacked onto the bottom of an ad.\nLeads know you want them to click the button so it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter what it says, right? Well, not quite.\nCTAs are just as important as the ad copy and need just as much attention. CTAs are supposed to excite leads and get them to click and buy something — not just act as a placeholder.\nBut how do you craft the perfect CTA?\nTo find out, we\u0026rsquo;ve taken a look at some of the longest-running desktop ad campaigns available and broken down the types of CTAs they use. Here\u0026rsquo;s what we\u0026rsquo;ve learned about what makes specific CTAs so successful and what you can do to improve your next ad campaign.\n1. Adobe Adobe is a computer software company with digital products ranging from graphic design tools like Photoshop to digital marketing management tools like Adobe Marketing Cloud.\nAdobe has been around for over 30 years, so their ad campaigns are less about telling people who they are and more about showcasing their products. Like this ad for Photoshop Lightroom CC: Ad Creative and Copy The headline of this ad, “Bye, Bye, Birdie” stands out because it speaks to the fact that the Lightroom CC product is the new and improved way for users to edit their images. With a few simple clicks, users get professional-looking images without hiring a creative team to do it for them.\nThe text under the headline backs up the claim that Adobe Lightroom CC is quick and easy to use with the phrase “Fix photos fast.”\nThe CTA “Learn how” is inviting and encourages leads to click on it to find out more about the product. The position of the CTA also helps because people read from left to right. First, they see the solution the tool offers and then the invitation to take the next step.\nLanding Page The landing page for this ad does something interesting. When leads click on “Learn how” in the ad, that\u0026rsquo;s exactly the experience they get when they get to the landing page. There\u0026rsquo;s a video above the fold that shows leads exactly what the product does and why it\u0026rsquo;s the best option. The landing page also lays out how to use the product on different devices with more about the editing features. This creates a truly educational experience because it answers many of the questions potential customers have, like how to use the tool, what makes it so easy to use, etc.\nAnother interesting fact about this landing page is that there are two new CTAs on this page. Positioned against the black background, the blue CTA buttons stand out. This way, leads can choose to Buy now or Choose a plan. Both buttons take leads to the same page where they can choose a plan.\nAd Networks Over the past six months alone, Adobe has spent over $2.6 million advertising on the Google network. This amount of exposure gets Adobe in front of leads in the evaluation stage of the buying cycle. With this much exposure the CTA has to be specific to each kind of add Adobe runs so that as many leads as possible convert and buy something.\n2. Zoho Books Zoho Books offers accounting software for small businesses. Companies can track anything from invoicing to product inventory with this tool.\nZoho Books\u0026rsquo; longest-running ads focus on helping small businesses keep their costs down. For example, one of their recent ad campaigns focused on how easy it is to create KPI dashboards — without IT. Ad Creative and Copy Almost ninety percent of Zoho Books\u0026rsquo; ads are image-based with minimal text. This, combined with the use of pops of color, helps the ad to stand out and get noticed on webpages.\nThe text in this particular ad is a simple promise that will resonate with users who struggle to create complex views or reports without getting help from IT or the development team.\nThe CTA in blue stands out against the white background and is the first thing eyes are drawn to in the ad. The text on the button, “Sign up free,” drives home the benefit of spending less getting what\u0026rsquo;s needed. Customers get an easy way to use the tool and a free trial.\nLanding Page The landing page for this ad does two things really well. For leads that are sold on the benefits of the product right away, there\u0026rsquo;s a lead form at the top of the page. There\u0026rsquo;s no need for this group of leads to wade through lots of information to find what they need. By having this form and CTA at the top of the page, there\u0026rsquo;s a better chance of converting these leads.\nPlus, the red CTA from the ad is repeated here on the landing page, so it\u0026rsquo;s clear to leads what they\u0026rsquo;re expected to do next.\nThe second thing this landing page does well is cater to people who need a little more convincing before they sign up for the free trial. In the middle of the page, there\u0026rsquo;s an example of what the dashboards look like and more details about the functionality and a video testimonial below this.\nAt the very bottom of the page is the second CTA. It also uses the red theme and says “Sign Up Now.”\nAd Networks Like Adobe, most of Zoho Books\u0026rsquo; ad spend is on the Google network. This makes sense considering that “ as of 2016, there were 28.8 million small businesses, which accounted for 99.7% of US businesses.” Google has a wide reach, which helps Zoho get in front of more of their target audience — and more clicks on their CTA.\n3. LivePlan LivePlan is a business-planning software for businesses just starting out and needing help thinking through their business needs.\nMany of their longest-running ads repeat how easy it is to use the product to create a business plan. This speaks to people who are looking for a tool that makes this part of doing business as easy as possible. Ad Creative and Copy What\u0026rsquo;s great about this ad is that there\u0026rsquo;s no need for leads to dig for information, the solution to their problem is clear: “LivePlan makes business planning easy.”\nBusinesses want to make a business plan without the headache of running the numbers in one app, tracking pitch presentations in another, and sharing feedback and insights with stakeholders in yet another tool. LivePlan shows how they consolidate all of these actions to help businesses through the planning phase.\nThe CTA, “Get Started,” is the perfect closer for the ad because it\u0026rsquo;s clear what the next step is. Basically the ad is saying “we\u0026rsquo;ve got what you need” and the CTA text affirms this with “start using it now.”\nLanding Page The top of the landing page gives leads two options to get started.\nLeads can take a video tour of the product to see how the tool works and how easy it is to use. The copy above the buttons reiterates how easy it is to use the product. Leads can get started right away and choose their plan. The bottom of the page is packed with customer testimonials for leads who are considering the tool but aren\u0026rsquo;t quite sold. The testimonials act as social proof that shows leads that the customers giving the testimonial are “ putting their reputation with their own tribe on the line.” They\u0026rsquo;re, in effect, saying, “you\u0026rsquo;ll love this product as much as I do.”\nThere are testimonials from current customers and industry experts. Both of these carry a lot of weight for prospective customers. And at the end of this section is another CTA to close the deal. All the content up to this point is designed to persuade leads to buy so that by the time they get to the CTA at the bottom, they\u0026rsquo;re primed and ready to take action.\nAd Networks In the last six months, LivePlan has spent about $53K advertising exclusively on Google networks. It\u0026rsquo;s a large spend, but they\u0026rsquo;ve set up their ads and CTA to create a kind of funnel for leads. As more people see the ad and click on it, they\u0026rsquo;re given two options, both of which end with a CTA to buy.\n4. FilmFanatic FilmFanatic is a movie app available on Chrome. Once users download the app, they get access to free movies, updates, and more, through it.\nMany of FilmFanatic\u0026rsquo;s text ads use CTAs like “Download FilmFanatic” and “Install FilmFanatic.”\nThe image ads use “Start Now” instead. FilmFanatic has a fairly even split between text and image ads to help them reach different kinds of leads. Ad Creative and Copy The copy on all of the ads focuses on being able to watch movies for free. This is a promise that does a good job of attracting attention to the ad. After all, who wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want to see free movies?\nBy telling leads that they can get something for free, FilmFanatic gives leads a chance to save money while doing something they enjoy.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s great about the image ad is that it also lists the required steps leads have to take to get started. This shows leads that in three short steps, they\u0026rsquo;ll be ready to start using the app.\nThe large green CTA button stands out and makes it clear what to do next. Notice how “start” is in all caps and the green arrow above it? These two elements draw even more attention to the CTA and do a good job of subliminally guiding leads to the next step.\nLanding Page There\u0026rsquo;s only one bold CTA on the landing page for this ad and it says to “Download” the app. This works well with the ad CTA because leads are ready to get started and having an action on the page helps to boost conversions. There aren\u0026rsquo;t any distractions to keep leads from clicking the bright green button at the top of the page.\nAd Networks Like the other examples on this list, the majority of FilmFanatic\u0026rsquo;s ad spend is on Google\u0026rsquo;s network.\nWhat You Can Learn From These Advertisers We\u0026rsquo;ve looked at a few different advertisers that have successfully run long-term ad campaigns. What\u0026rsquo;s the secret to their success? We\u0026rsquo;ve put together a few points that stand out to us:\nLanding pages explore the offer in more detail. Ads are meant to be an introduction to what you offer and the landing page gives more detail about the specific solution the ad introduced. Landing pages can include lead gen forms, videos, testimonials, feature overviews, and more, as a way to show leads exactly what they\u0026rsquo;re getting. Offer multiple CTAs on the landing page. You\u0026rsquo;ll notice that all of the landing pages — except FilmFanatic \u0026ndash; have more than one CTA. This way, no matter where leads are on the page, there\u0026rsquo;s an easy way for them to take action — like Buy, Sign up or Download something. Make sure that your CTAs are in a color that stands out and uses words that repeat the ad CTA or offer the next step — like the Adobe ad that gets leads to “Learn More” and the landing page that got leads to “Buy Now” or “Choose a Plan” once they\u0026rsquo;ve learned more. Copy used in the ad has to introduce the solution. Understand and segment your audience so that your ad campaigns speak to specific needs. Ads are meant to get your audience interested and excited about your solution and wanting to click to find out more or buy something. Be specific and avoid ads that say “Click Here” or “Submit.” You\u0026rsquo;ll notice that all of the CTAs we looked at give clear directions to leads so that they know what to expect. Don\u0026rsquo;t spend time crafting great ad copy without giving the same amount of attention to the CTA. Your ad copy is the intro and the CTA is a clear invitation and closer. The key here is to find what combination of these findings works for you. Start by choosing one of the key findings above and test it out for a few months. If you see that more customers are converting from your ads, then the adjustment makes sense for your business. Add more of these pointers over time.\nTake Your Time If you\u0026rsquo;re able to run ads for longer than a few days or weeks, then you have time to experiment with what your ads will look like. Will you focus on text or image? How will your CTA tie in with your ad copy? How will your landing pages expand on the ad in an exciting way for leads?\nMake one adjustment at a time and check to see the difference it makes.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/4-unique-calls-to-action-used-in-long-running-ad-campaigns/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDownload, start now, get started. You see calls to action (CTA) like these all the time, but do you ever stop to think about their impact on your ad campaigns? Oftentimes, CTAs are an afterthought hastily tacked onto the bottom of an ad.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeads know you want them to click the button so it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter what it says, right? Well, not quite.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCTAs are just as important as the ad copy and need just as much attention. CTAs are supposed to excite leads and get them to click and buy something — not just act as a placeholder.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"4 Unique Calls to Action Used in Long-Running Ad Campaigns"},{"content":"Remember when the advertising strategy of choice used to be the “one size fits all” approach? There were only a handful of TV channels and newspapers to choose from so everyone saw the same ads regardless of their interests.\nFortunately for advertisers — and customers — advertising has evolved to be able to show audiences exactly what they need. In fact, online advertising has emerged as the most pervasive form of advertising, especially because it allows for more refined targeting. Now audiences see ads they can relate to.\nBut these improvements mean that there are more ads competing for customers\u0026rsquo; attention. Advertisers have to find new ways to use targeting to stand out or risk having their ads buried amongst others in their market.\nThis is why native advertising is so beneficial. By partnering with native advertising platforms you reach audiences far beyond social media and your email list — you reach people in the places they spend the most time — like websites and blogs that they visit daily.\nBut how do you know which networks to use for the best targeting? Keep reading to find out.\nWhat is Native Advertising, Anyway? Native ads are paid advertising that looks a lot like content you see on the web. They don\u0026rsquo;t look like obvious banner or display ads, so people are more likely to click on them.\n[ Source]\nThink about it. People are exposed to between 4,000 to 10,000 ads a day! Because audiences are constantly bombarded with ads, it\u0026rsquo;s getting easier to tune them out and scroll right past them without a second thought. Audiences only focus on content that serves an immediate need or speaks to an interest.\nSeeing an ad for local real estate agents is more appealing to someone looking to buy their first home than ads about the latest Subaru Forester SUV.\nBut before we get into how to use native ads to target customers, let\u0026rsquo;s look at the different types of native ads available to you.\nIn-Feed Ads These ads show up as branded content next to other content on the site. For example, in Facebook audiences might see a sponsored post for your product mixed in with their regular updates.\nBecause the ad looks like the content around it and doesn\u0026rsquo;t take away from the user experience like a display or banner ad might, audiences are more likely to click.\nFor example, Facebook users might see an in-feed ad like this one while scrolling through their feed on a desktop:\nOr these on mobile: [ Source]\nPaid Search These ads show up on search engine results pages at the top. So if someone searches for “the best restaurants in Miami” in a search engine, the first few results on the list with the word “ad” next to them are paid searches.\nWith this ad type — also known as pay-per-click or PPC — you only pay when people click on the ad. Companies that pay more appear at the top of the ad list. This means that their PPC is also higher since people a more likely to click on the first link they see.\nTo give you an idea of how much companies spend, Crazy Egg, a data analytics and visualization company, surveyed 30 content marketing agencies and collected cost data from over 600 digital publishers and found that “the average cost of launching a native advertising program with a top-tier news publisher is $54,014.29.” Content Discovery These ads appear as recommended content at the bottom of web pages and look similar to content already on the page. Content discovery networks, which we\u0026rsquo;ll go into more detail a little later, use behavioral data to help drive traffic back to advertisers\u0026rsquo; sales pages.\nUsing a content discovery network for your native advertising is an expensive option, but the main benefits are 1) higher click-through rates because ads are targeted and appear in front of engaged and interested people and 2) better recall in customers compared to other types of ads.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s look at examples. On the Fortune website, ads appear at the bottom of the page and appear as “sponsored stories.” What\u0026rsquo;s interesting is the mix of ads you see on a site like Fortune\u0026rsquo;s. This range is bound to capture the interest of readers.\nOr this one from CNN Money. These ads appear as “paid content” but again showcase a wide range of topics to get readers to click on them. [ Source]\nPromoted Listings When browsing eCommerce sites like eBay and Amazon — for let\u0026rsquo;s say a camera — customers see promoted listings mixed in with the products they\u0026rsquo;re searching for. These ads say “sponsored” and other than that they look like any other product listing on the search results page.\nThese ads are great because they get specific products in front of customers. This added exposure increases the chances of your products being seen because they stand out from everything else on the page. Now that you have an idea of the types of native ads available to you, let\u0026rsquo;s look at how to choose the right network to run these ads from.\nRemember, you want to be able to use publishers that relate to where your target audience spends time.\nUse More Than One Network to Expand Your Reach Once you know what types of ads you want to run, you need a platform to help bridge the gap between you and publishers. This is where native advertising networks come in. The way it works is you partner with a network and, based on the publishers they work with, they make sure your ads appear on these sites.\nBut there are a few things to consider when choosing a content discovery network to “host” your native ads. For example:\nWhich publishers do you want the ads to appear on? This is based on your audience. What targeting features are available? Also, can you retarget customers? What tracking and data analysis is available to help adjust and plan for future campaigns? You\u0026rsquo;ll need to experiment with a few different networks and test the results like click-through rates to find the right ones. Let\u0026rsquo;s say you have a meal tracking and weight loss app you want to advertise. Choose at least two networks that work with publishers that specialize in nutrition and physical fitness or sports — for example recipes.com or ESPN.\nThis way you spread awareness of your product based on where your target audience is likely to spend time. If your audience is trying to lose weight, then they\u0026rsquo;re trying to eat right and spend time on recipe sites. Get your ad to stand out by highlighting the fact that you can help them plan healthy meals and lose weight.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t limit yourself to just one network either. At least in the beginning test out a few to see which networks lead to the most click-through rates and sales. Run comparative tests by posting the same ad in different formats on different publishers.\nOnce you know which networks yield the best results, focus on two. These are the two you should invest the most money on but keep investing in the others to maximize your reach.\nIn this example you can see that the advertiser uses multiple networks but invests over $9 million on Google and Yahoo Gemini. They also use the popular Outbrain platform to spread their reach.\nNative Advertising at Your Fingertips Now that you know what native advertising is and how to choose the right network, let\u0026rsquo;s look at which network platforms are available to you. We\u0026rsquo;ve found five of the most popular examples available.\nOutbrain A lot of the native ads using the recommended content ad format use Outbrain. It\u0026rsquo;s a leader in the content discovery network realm.\nThe publishers it uses are high quality and have a wide audience reach. Some examples include:\nThe New York Post The Daily Telegraph Fortune Time CNN US Weekly Fast Company Mashable The Wall Street Journal The Guardian It\u0026rsquo;s a little harder to get started on Outbrain since they require that sites have at least 500,000 monthly viewers in order to use their services.\nSome features of this platform include:\nFlexible pricing to meet different budgets Dedicated account management to help you create the best campaigns for your audience A user-friendly campaign dashboard Three different native ad formats: in-feed, in-ad and recommendation widget One thing to keep in mind is if you\u0026rsquo;re approved to use their platform, you have to sign an exclusivity agreement. As a result you won\u0026rsquo;t be able to A/B test competitive widgets; you can only use theirs.\nTaboola Taboola is another native ad network powerhouse. This platform gives advertisers access to over 1 billion users across its different publishers. To do that advertisers can use ad formats such as in-feed and video ads.\nPublishers they\u0026rsquo;ve partnered with include:\nDaily Mail USA Today MSN AOL Bloomberg NBC By advertising on these and other publishers\u0026rsquo; sites you can even use Taboola\u0026rsquo;s lead generation feature to find your target audience and connect with them. Once you have their email address you have more opportunities to sell them on your product offers and the benefits.\nPlus there\u0026rsquo;s a range of campaign settings for you to choose from. You can use campaign scheduling to specify when your ads will be seen, track your spending to stay on budget or decide how to allocate your traffic. You can let Taboola automatically optimize your ad so the right people see it or make sure that traffic is distributed evenly.\nThe data Taboola collects makes it easy for you to target the right people within your audience. You can even use this data to retarget people who\u0026rsquo;ve shown interest in your brand but haven\u0026rsquo;t bought anything yet.\nZergNet Similar to Taboola and Outbrain, ZergNet offers your audience content recommendations that direct traffic back to your sites. It\u0026rsquo;s fairly new compared to its competitors but it manages to recommend over 1 billion articles per day.\nPublishers they\u0026rsquo;ve partnered with include:\nTime Inc CBS IAC NBC Viacom News Corp Wenner Warner Brothers Rolling Stone About.com Unlike Outbrain and Taboola that work with more business and tech-related publishers, ZergNet focuses on publishers with influence in subjects that millennials might find culturally meaningful. This approach has worked because ZergNet has helped attract over 100 million visitors to publishers.\nSome of ZergNet\u0026rsquo;s notable features include:\nA strict approval process to ensure that the best ads make it to customers The widget code is easy to install and can be customized to fit the native ad format you need Real-time reporting that also includes geotargeting and device for added insights All of this combined means ZergNet only promotes the most relevant content to audiences, which improves clicks and revenue for advertisers.\nGoogle Native With Google AdSense you can create native in-article and in-feed ads that look just like the content around them. Let\u0026rsquo;s say your audience scrolls through a news feed every morning. Your in-feed ads can appear here for a seamless user experience.\nCreating an ad with AdSense gives you two options. You can let Google automatically create one for you or you can manually do it yourself.\nRegardless of which option you choose, you can view reports to track your ad\u0026rsquo;s performance and audience engagement.\nYahoo Gemini Native Yahoo Gemini combines search and native ads to increase your ad\u0026rsquo;s reach. When searching in Yahoo these are the ads that appear at the top of the search, in the Yahoo news feeds or at the top of email inboxes. Yahoo Gemini\u0026rsquo;s research shows that “users are 3.6 times more likely to do a brand search and up to 56% more likely to notice a search ad if they’ve been exposed to a native ad.”\nNot bad considering that with Yahoo Gemini there are over 2 billion impressions seen every day.\nThis platform offers a wide range of ad formats so that you can create ads your audience will want to click on. For example:\nSearch ads Image ads Video ads Carousel ads Mail ads Plus if you use Google AdWords for budgeting and bidding, you can import that information into Yahoo Gemini to help you manage your campaigns better. There\u0026rsquo;s no need to switch between accounts to track your spending.\nThe Sky\u0026rsquo;s the Limit The first step in getting the most out of your native ads is to know your audience.\nWho are they? What are their demographics What are they interested in Where do they spend time online? The answers to these questions will help you decide which native advertising networks to partner with. Each one has access to a slightly different audience, so use more than one. As you see results, adjust your campaign — for example, paid searches might work better for your audience because they\u0026rsquo;re more likely to find your product there than scrolling through their news feeds.\nThe great thing about native advertising networks is that they allow you to be as targeted as you want and give you the flexibility to create custom ads that get noticed.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-to-choose-a-native-ad-network/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRemember when the advertising strategy of choice used to be the “one size fits all” approach? There were only a handful of TV channels and newspapers to choose from so everyone saw the same ads regardless of their interests.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFortunately for advertisers — and customers — advertising has evolved to be able to show audiences exactly what they need. In fact, online advertising has emerged as the most pervasive form of advertising, especially because it allows for more refined targeting. Now audiences see ads they can relate to.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to Choose a Native Ad Network"},{"content":"The bigger your advertising budget, the better. More money means more flexibility to choose where you advertise and how you target your audience. You don\u0026rsquo;t have to pick and choose advertising channels based on cost—you can pick them based on what\u0026rsquo;s most relevant to your target audience.\nBut having a big budget isn\u0026rsquo;t without its drawbacks. Whether your budget is big or small, you have to figure out the best way to spend it. A bigger budget means you have far more options to choose from, and you have to do more cost-benefit analysis before getting started.\nAnd you have to think even more about :\nWhere you\u0026rsquo;re going to advertise. Does your audience spend more time on social media, or surfing the web? What types of ads you\u0026rsquo;ll run. Will you focus on PPC search ads, display ads, or social ads? How to spend your budget. How much will you spend on ad networks? Without good answers to these questions, your big budget won\u0026rsquo;t help you get more new customers.\nBut there\u0026rsquo;s good news: Lots of large advertisers have figured out how to successfully allocate their big budgets, and luckily there\u0026rsquo;s a lot we can learn from them. For example, some weight-loss advertisers, like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and Nutrisystem, have gotten creative and figured out how to use their budgets to stand out in a crowded marketplace.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a breakdown of how each of these companies spends their budget and what we can learn from them to increase acquisition.\nWeight-Loss Companies Use Targeted Ad Campaigns to Increase Their Reach You don\u0026rsquo;t have to look far to find weight-loss products and programs. Whether you\u0026rsquo;re surfing the web, watching TV, or riding the train, you\u0026rsquo;re going to see ads for different apps, fitness trackers, budget gyms, weight-loss clinics, weight-loss supplements, and meal-planning services.\nWeight-loss is one of the biggest and most profitable markets today. As of 2017, it was worth an estimated $66 billion.\nPart of the reason it\u0026rsquo;s such a big market is that the vast majority of people want two things:\nBased on a study from 2013 160 million people in the United States are overweight or obese: nearly three-quarters of men and more than 60% of women. 49% of Americans want to lose weight. Even though this number has dropped in the last 25 years it still shows that people are willing to try to lose weight. But with so many options available, it\u0026rsquo;s hard for people to know which approach to use and where to start. Do they join a gym and get a personal trainer? Do they subscribe to a meal-planning service? Or do they skip all of that and have surgery?\nBecause of the numerous options, companies have to use their budgets to design advertising campaigns that get them in front of the right people, based on their chosen niche.\nFortunately, there are some companies that have made a mark and have become mainstays in the market. If we look at the meal-plan weight-loss companies out there — Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, and Weight Watchers — we\u0026rsquo;ll see that even though they compete with new digital tech such as apps and fitness trackers, they\u0026rsquo;ve found a way to use their budgets to stand out and speak to the specific needs of their target audience.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s look at how their budgets compare, what types of ads they run, how they distribute them, and what we can learn from all of this.\nJenny Craig Started in 1983, Jenny Craig Inc. helps people lose weight by giving them access to nutritious meals and a dedicated personal consultant.\nTo compete within the changing weight-loss marketplace, Jenny Craig has a sizable budget — figures from 2009 were nearly $34 million — to make sure ads get in front of their target audience.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s how they spend their budget.\nAd Networks Used Jenny Craig uses lots of networks to help get its ads seen. However, the majority of their ad network budget — approximately $639K — is spent on two main networks: Google and Outbrain.\nFocusing on these two networks allows Jenny Craig to do two things:\nGenerate ads that appear in Google when people search for related weight-loss terms Use native advertising to appear on sites their target audience spends time on Publishers Used To compete against companies that target millennials with fitness trackers, apps, and fad diets, Jenny Craig has partnered with Curves to target a slightly different demographic. The company\u0026rsquo;s main audience is composed of men and women over the age of 35.\nIdeally, this audience has already tried different apps and fitness trackers and hasn\u0026rsquo;t seen any results. The Jenny Craig and Curves collaboration gives this group a well-rounded diet and fitness solution.\nTo target this group of customers, Jenny Craig uses publishers like U.S. News \u0026amp; World Report and ESPN. This targeting is on point because the majority of U.S. News visitors, for example, are older than 35. Types of Ads Jenny Craig spends most of its advertising budget on ads that showcase customers who\u0026rsquo;ve lost a lot of weight in a short time. This tactic means that social proof works to sell their weight-loss program.\nMost of the ads they run are a mix of HTML5 and image ads that either call out how much weight customers can lose quickly or how little the program costs. Landing Pages The landing pages for these ads — and most landing pages on the site — focus on:\nHow little the program plans cost and how much weight people can lose Special offers that help customers save on meal plans They tie in perfectly with the ads themselves because they reinforce the weight-loss message presented in the ads by showing real people who\u0026rsquo;ve seen results. By including a before and after picture of customers, along with the consultants who helped, the ads highlight how Jenny Craig makes its customers successful.\nThis layout is powerful because it doesn\u0026rsquo;t just tell customers what to expect, it shows them. It\u0026rsquo;s a little like a visual testimonial, which works because more people respond to visual prompts than purely text prompts.\nWhere Ads Appear The highest ad spend is on desktop, which might be due to the target audience. Gen X and baby boomers spend less time on their mobile devices than millennials do. This means ads appear where the target audience is most likely to see them.\nNutrisystem Nutrisystem is similar to Jenny Craig in that it provides nutritious meals to customers. But that\u0026rsquo;s where the similarities end. Whereas Jenny Craig offers plans for 12 weeks or 12 months, Nutrisystem offers four-week plans. On top of that, they also offer specialized plans for men, vegetarians, and people with diabetes.\nTheir budget for ads is over $297 million based on figures from 2009. Here\u0026rsquo;s how they spend it.\nAd Networks Used The majority of their $660K ad network budget is spent on Google and Direct Buy. With Direct Buy, Nutrisystem can buy ad space directly from any publishers and networks they choose to use. This gives them flexibility on where their ads are placed and what the ads look like from a creative standpoint.\nPublishers Used Nutrisystem caters to women — 70% of its customer base are women. As a result, most of the publishers they work with are geared toward women.\nFor example, ads appear on online spaces like Cosmo, Good Housekeeping, and Woman\u0026rsquo;s Day. Types of Ads Seventy percent of Nutrisystem ads are image-based, with a lot of focus placed on their spokesperson, Marie Osmond. These ads also highlight the fact that customers can save 40% off of the program.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that the ads emphasize how much weight customers have already lost and the opportunity for new customers to improve their health.\nAds also have obvious CTAs that stand out in contrast to the rest of the ad image. For example, these CTA buttons are orange and stand out against the reds and purples in the ads. Landing Pages Nutrisystem\u0026rsquo;s ad landing pages do two things really well:\nThey reiterate the amount of weight customers can lose quickly, and they highlight a specific program package — Turbo 13. The page gets viewers excited about all of the benefits of the programs and free products, and the CTAs are clear. They position Nutrisystem as a partner in weight loss by offering a free diet analysis and custom report. This tool isn\u0026rsquo;t just a lead magnet; it also gives site visitors who are unsure of whether they need the program a place to start. Together, these two components serve to get potential customers excited about the program and the outcomes, and they offer a tool to help people take an additional step and start their weight-loss journey.\nWhere Ads Appear Similar to Jenny Craig, most of Nutrisystem\u0026rsquo;s ad budget is spent on desktop to cater to their older, female target audience.\nWeight Watchers Weight Watchers offers a slightly different program than the first two programs and has seen huge benefits. The program — Freestyle — lets customers eat what they want and track the SmartPoints for the foods they eat. No more counting calories; this is weight-loss made easy. This way, customers can eat the foods they enjoy but stay within the allowed SmartPoints “budget.”\nWeight Watchers is aware of how much time customers spend online — as well as competition within the market — and gives customers two plan options to choose from:\nPlan 1: A combination of weekly meetings and an online companion tool Plans 2: Just the online companion tool To convert leads to customers, Weight Watchers spends about $117 million on advertising based on 2009 reports. Their overall marketing budget has dropped, but they\u0026rsquo;ve homed in on digital marketing and become more particular about where they advertise. Here\u0026rsquo;s the breakdown.\nAd Networks Used Weight Watchers spends most of its $366K ad network budget on Direct Buy. They also use Amazon Advertising, but to a lesser extent. Both of these networks give Weight Watchers more flexibility on where their ads appear. For example, with Amazon Advertising, Weight Watchers can use display ads for their Freestyle program so that they appear on desktop or mobile while customers browse Amazon.\nPublishers Used Weight Watchers focuses on more than just weight loss. Their new advertising campaign aims to help customers lead a more healthy lifestyle. This is why so many of Weight Watchers\u0026rsquo; ads appear on medical publication websites like WebMD and Medicine Net.\nOne surprising publisher on their list is Oprah\u0026rsquo;s site. Weight Watchers advertises there because Oprah\u0026rsquo;s a board member and an investor. Sometimes, she even appears in their ads to share her experience using Weight Watchers. Types of Ads Most ads are either HTML5 or image based. They focus on Weight Watchers\u0026rsquo; Freestyle program that lets customers eat what they want and live a healthier lifestyle. These ads don\u0026rsquo;t always include a spokesperson, but they use aspirational images of women to get potential customers excited to join. Landing Pages The landing pages for Weight Watcher ads remind viewers of the benefits — online access, weekly meetings, and personal coaching. This is a different approach from its competitors that focus on how much weight customers can lose in a short time — or free products and discounted programs.\nPlus, to compete with all of the apps available on the market, Weight Watchers\u0026rsquo; landing pages also highlight their app and how it works to keep customers on track to meet their weight-loss goals.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s even a section that focuses on Oprah\u0026rsquo;s weight-loss journey, which offers a mix of influencer marketing and a customer testimonial.\nWhere Ads Appear While most of their budget is spent on desktop advertising, mobile advertising isn\u0026rsquo;t that far behind. This makes sense, considering that Weight Watchers offers an online weight-loss option. So while people are browsing on mobile and see a Weight Watchers ad, it\u0026rsquo;s easy for them to sign up on their mobile device and get started right away.\nBefore You Begin Your Next Campaign . . . Each of these companies stands out in the weight-loss market. They\u0026rsquo;ve each approached their advertising campaigns in a unique way, and their success shows that they\u0026rsquo;re spending on the right combination of networks, publishers, and ad creative.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s what you can learn from them to help you spend your budget on channels with the most ROI and attract as many new customers as possible.\nFocus on Solving One Specific Problem Each of these companies offers some form of meal planning, but they all focus on addressing a specific customer concern:\nJenny Craig ads focus on making weight loss easy by creating plans for customers to follow. Nutrisystem ads focus on making weight-loss programs accessible by highlighting special offers. Weight Watchers ads focus on promoting a flexible and healthy lifestyle. For your part, figure out one thing your audience wants to accomplish, and then make sure that your advertising campaign makes your solution clear. Use bold text, clear CTAs, and images of people enjoying themselves while using your product.\nUse Social Proof Whether it\u0026rsquo;s celebrity endorsements or testimonials from average, everyday customers, each company uses this to influence their target audiences buying behaviors.\nWith a large budget, you can afford influencer marketing; just keep in mind who you choose needs to be relatable. This needs to be someone your customers can see themselves in and can respect their opinions.\nAlternatively, you can ask current customers for testimonials and include them on your site or ad landing pages. Get creative and add a video to your site of people talking about their experience with your product. Testimonials help convince people on the fence to choose you because they respect the opinions of people similar to them.\nFocus Budget on Two Main Networks These companies use multiple networks, but often times the focus is on two. The networks they choose typically correspond to the publishers they use. For example, Weight Watchers uses the Amazon Advertising Platform to get in front of their audience and advertises on Amazon, which gets the programs in front of their specific target audiences.\nOne way to maximize your budget here is to experiment before committing to your top two networks. Test out multiple options, and check where your traffic and conversions are coming from. Allocate a small part of your budget, and distribute evenly among the networks you choose.\nBased on the data you collect — views, clicks, conversions, etc. — home in on the top two performing networks. These are likely the ones from which you\u0026rsquo;ll get the most audience engagement. Continue to use other networks to spread your ads so that you catch target audience members who might not be reached through the main networks you use.\nRun segmentation to understand where your audience spends time All three companies we looked at put a considerable amount of focus on desktop advertising. This is because of the demographic they targeted and where they know their audience hangs out.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s worth noting that all of the companies we looked at have apps so that they can compete with other weight-loss programs. Just because apps aren\u0026rsquo;t their main focus doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean they should ignore this avenue completely. The benefit is that there will be customers who like the programs these companies offer but will want a convenient option to stay committed to their weight loss.\nTo find out where your audience spends time, there are a few tactics you can try. Check your Google Analytics to see where traffic to your site is coming from, and check how much engagement you have on social media platforms; if you have an email newsletter, include links to different kinds of sites — like medical or fitness — and track which links email subscribers click on. The content they\u0026rsquo;re interested in might be an indication of the types of places they\u0026rsquo;ll visit on their own.\nUse your landing page to reiterate how you plan to solve an issue and offer additional value Each of the landing pages of these weight-loss companies has a specific focus that corresponds to what issues customers want help with. Based on what you learn about your target audience, keep their needs as the focus of your advertising campaign. Be specific — like if your product is low cost and premium quality, say that — because you\u0026rsquo;re targeting specific people with specific needs. This will help you stand out from competitors who are similar but don\u0026rsquo;t offer the exact solution customers want.\nLike Nutrisystem, you can offer a tool that also acts as a lead magnet so that you can follow up with leads again. Or you can do what Weight Watchers did and use a celebrity endorsement as a testimonial.\nThe focus you choose has to speak to your solution so that it\u0026rsquo;s clear — like Jenny Craig\u0026rsquo;s “lose 16 lbs for $16” — how you plan to help your customers. With Jenny Craig customers, it\u0026rsquo;s clear to customers that not only can they lose weight but they also don\u0026rsquo;t have to spend a fortune doing it.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/what-we-can-learn-from-how-the-top-weight-loss-advertisers-manage-their-campaigns/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe bigger your advertising budget, the better. More money means more flexibility to choose where you advertise and how you target your audience. You don\u0026rsquo;t have to pick and choose advertising channels based on cost—you can pick them based on what\u0026rsquo;s most relevant to your target audience.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut having a big budget isn\u0026rsquo;t without its drawbacks. Whether your budget is big or small, you have to figure out the best way to spend it. A bigger budget means you have far more options to choose from, and you have to do more cost-benefit analysis before getting started.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What We Can Learn From How the Top Weight Loss Advertisers Manage Their Campaigns"},{"content":"One of your best traffic sources could be something that you\u0026rsquo;re completely ignoring, even though it\u0026rsquo;s right under your nose. Businesses always want to know where the next best traffic source is coming from, and, although that\u0026rsquo;s going to vary somewhat from field to field, one stands out as a pretty powerful traffic driver that\u0026rsquo;s overlooked.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s Content Discovery Networks. These are something that everyone is familiar with but many people haven\u0026rsquo;t considered using as a business tool.\nCombined with the recent surge of advertisers using “Native Ads” (presell landing pages disguised as news articles/blog posts), many advertisers have begun to move away from standard ad networks (Google AdWords, Bing, Facebook, etc.) and have started allocating more ad spend to ad networks like Outbrain and Taboola.\nAny time there is a massive shift in allocation… you should be paying close attention.\nThis post explains what Content Discovery Networks are, how they work and at the end you’ll get case studies for advertisers like Uber that are seeing success with these networks.\nWhat Are Content Discovery Networks? Content Discovery Networks, sometimes called Content Recommendation Engines, are ad networks that place ads in the “Around the Web” and “Recommended Stories” sections commonly found on large publishers and news sites.\nThe idea behind them is to serve ads that look like they’re a natural part of the page. Publishers and advertisers love them because they don’t look or feel like advertising.\nThey work extremely well at driving traffic and sales when they’re paired with the right landing page. Since many ads placed on Content Discovery Networks are headlines, their landing pages are commonly a “native ad” or an article lander that appears like a new story.\nIn addition, their CPCs and CPMs tend to be a bit lower than “premium” ad networks like Google AdWords. They also tend to have more lenient policies regarding what kinds of images and wording advertisers can use in their ad copy and landing pages.\nWho Uses Content Discovery Networks? Content Discovery Networks can work for pretty much any business in any niche. The key, as with all advertisements, is to use the right strategy and the right ad for your specific offer and business. However, there are three use cases that seem to have really cracked Content Discovery Networks as a highly effective ad platform: lead generation, SaaS software and click arbitrage.\n1. Lead Generation and Direct Response Direct response and lead generation companies use Content Discovery Networks to send traffic to VSLs, native ads and presell pages. They like these networks because they tend to be a bit cheaper and allow them to “get away” with certain ad images, copy and landing pages that might not fly on Google.\nPlus, the “newsy” feel of the ads is the perfect segue to a video sales letter, presell page or advertorial, particularly if it uses the angle of a recent news story.\nSome of the biggest direct response/lead generation advertisers on Content Discovery Networks include LowerMyBills.com, The Motley Fool (case study below) and nutrition/supplement companies like Force Factor.\n2. B2B/B2C SaaS Software Large SaaS advertisers like LifeLock and Salesforce use Content Discovery Networks to drive traffic to their content marketing — blog posts or whitepaper downloads that address some specific issue their prospect might be having.\nIf they\u0026rsquo;re also going after lead generation, they\u0026rsquo;ll litter the page with opt-in links and lead magnets in order to capture an email address. Going for the email is a more effective strategy since their products tend to have a higher price point and a longer sales cycle.\nHere’s an example of an ad from Salesforce:\n3. Click Arbitrage (viral news and quiz sites) Viral news and quiz sites are far and away the biggest advertisers on Content Discovery Networks. They love native ad networks because they often offer two rates: one rate for advertisers sending traffic to sales pages (direct response) and a lower rate for advertisers sending traffic to pure content (news and quiz sites). Therefore they can buy lots of lower-priced traffic, fill their sites with ads from networks with high payouts (like Google AdSense) and make money through click arbitrage.\nAnd again, Content Discovery Networks appear to be more lenient with what they’ll allow you to get away with on your landing pages. Many of these viral sites are optimized to make as much ad revenue as possible, meaning they’re often jam-packed with ads. While many ad networks disapprove of advertisers sending traffic to landing pages filled with ads, Content Discovery Networks don\u0026rsquo;t seem to have such strict standards.\n5 Big Content Discovery Networks There are a lot of Content Discovery Networks out there to choose from, but five of the biggest are:\nTaboola: Some of Taboola’s advertisers include NextAdvisor, The Motley Fool (case study below) and Ancestry.com. Yahoo Gemini Native: Ads on this network are shown alongside teasers for actual Yahoo news stories, meaning their appearance is slightly different than the “Recommendations” sections shown on other publishers. Some of their top advertisers include Verizon, LifestyleJournal.com and LendingTree. Revcontent: Claiming to power 250 billion content recommendations per month, Revcontent bills itself as a quality-driven platform for ads. Outbrain: Some of the top advertisers using Outbrain include People.com, Refinery29 and Bills.com Content.ad: They claim to serve more than 30-million clicks per month. Some of Content.ad’s top advertisers include HowLifeWorks.com, Answers.com and Instant Checkmate. How Can You Use Content Discovery Networks for Your Business? So, now that you’re aware of the benefits of Content Discovery Networks, you\u0026rsquo;re probably wondering what it looks like to actually use one. This is where competitive intelligence comes in. The best way to design a campaign optimized for traffic from these networks is to analyze what other people have already successfully done.\nIn the next section you’ll find six case studies that demonstrate different ways to effectively use a Content Discovery Network. You’ll get an in-depth look at how to use Content Discovery Networks and replicate this success in your own campaigns.\nCase Study: The Motley Fool — Lead Generation The Motley Fool is a financial news publisher focused on giving investment tips/advice. They offer free and premium information and currently send traffic to pages designed to sell their premium investment newsletter/community, Stock Advisor. Networks and Spend While most large direct response advertisers continue to rely heavily on Google, The Motley Fool has allocated huge portions of their ad budget to Taboola and Outbrain (with Yahoo Gemini being just behind Google).\nAd Creative\nAd creatives on Content Discovery Networks are generally very simple — all you need is an eye-catching image and/or a compelling headline.\nMany advertisers use images of celebrities or headlines with celebrities in them because people love them and are drawn into what they have to say. That\u0026rsquo;s why Kim Kardashian West has 59 million followers on Twitter.\nOne of The Motley Fool’s most seen ad used Stephen Hawking\u0026rsquo;s name to pique interest:\nStephen Hawking was perhaps the most well-known scientist of our age. Pretty much everyone knows how absolutely brilliant he was. So if he was predicting the biggest event in the history of civilization, you were probably going to want to pay attention.\nAnyone interested in investing or finance will be curious because markets are largely influenced by “random” events, and if you can predict those events better than other people, you\u0026rsquo;re going to profit. (Think The Big Short.) If there was something that Hawking was predicting would be a major event that would shift the way society functioned, you would probably want to know what it was.\nWhile we don\u0026rsquo;t necessarily recommend slapping random celebrity names all over your ads, the point is that you want to pick the juiciest, most controversial detail you can out of your company or content. When people see something that\u0026rsquo;s controversial or connected to major figures, they\u0026rsquo;re tempted to click.\nLanding Pages\nHere’s where things get interesting. Direct Response publishers in the finance niche often tie real-life events and people into their ad copy, even if the product itself has little to do with that specific person/event. The Motley Fool does this same exact thing on their “presell” page.\nThe headline builds on the curiosity started with the ad. What was Hawking’s prediction? How can I use it to my advantage? The only way for them to get this information is to opt-in.\nAfter opting-in they’re immediately shown a video sales letter that plays more buildup. Viewers are then pitched a subscription to the “Motley Fool Stock Advisor” newsletter and community and the end of the video:\nAnd remember: they had to opt-in to see the video, so even if they don’t buy The Motley Fool can follow up with them and send more offers.\nWhy This Technique W orks\nThe Motley Fool is able to generate leads because they follow a pretty tight three-step system:\nPique a reader\u0026rsquo;s interest with a bold ad claim. Offer the reader value (in this case, investment advice) on their landing page. Force the reader to produce an email to get that value. This works because it nags at that part of our monkey brain that really wants to know what the answer to something is once we see the question — which means becoming a lead. “What is that huge event Hawking predicts?” is the catalyst to the click and “How can it earn me money?” is the prompt for the email. Although it seems simple, we all know how well these type of clickbait-y ads can work because we are tempted by them and headlines like them every day.\nCase Study: Quicken Loans — Lead Generation Another company that\u0026rsquo;s using Content Discovery Networks is QuickenLoans. Specifically, they\u0026rsquo;re using native ad networks to advertise their services around refinancing mortgages. This is a great topic for a native ad because it\u0026rsquo;s a broad topic that can apply to a variety of people across different websites — it\u0026rsquo;s not a hyper-specific interest. If someone\u0026rsquo;s a homeowner, chances are they have a mortgage.\nNetworks and Spend QuickenLoans spends a lot on Google search, but they\u0026rsquo;re also spending $7,000,000 on Outbrain and Taboola alone. Clearly, native ad networks are part of their ad strategy. Any ad budget — especially an ad budget that can accommodate millions of dollars — should be spread across channels. Lumping all your spend onto Google or Facebook is a surefire way to inject a little instability into your ad efforts.\nAd Creative\nQuickenLoans has several different versions of ads on Content Discovery Networks that encourage people to rethink their mortgage. Some of them feature a person looking towards the camera. This is an easy ad to replicate and update — the picture can be swapped out for any other photo of a person, which gives this “one” ad more run for its money: They also have text-only versions of the ad. But we like the ones with people looking straight at the reader. The bold colors of this (blue contrasting with yellow) and the confidence of this man catch the eye, even in a sea of other faces. QuickenLoans uses their short title to plant an idea in the reader\u0026rsquo;s head: rethinking their 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. This is that same enticing nugget as The Motley Fool\u0026rsquo;s Stephen Hawking claim.\nLanding Pages\nQuickenLoans is pretty clever about how they capture you as a lead once you click on their ads. Their landing page looks like it\u0026rsquo;s a short quiz, and they start you off by asking a few questions from dropdown menus:\nThe reassurance that there\u0026rsquo;s no registration or login required makes the viewer more likely to continue with the quiz. If you do, you\u0026rsquo;re plunged into several rounds of more intense series of questions that ends with a prompt for your email:\nNotice how, again, they reassure the viewer that they\u0026rsquo;re trustworthy? They have those customer satisfaction awards and the “we respect your privacy” copy next to the email field. This is priming the reader to enter their email by building trust. Obviously, when a reader puts their email in, they\u0026rsquo;re being turned into a lead, so building that trust is important for QuickenLoans\u0026rsquo; success.\nWhy This Technique Works\nWhat QuickenLoans is doing well on their landing page is asking people to put effort in. If someone\u0026rsquo;s willing to spend the time to answer a couple of pages of survey questions, they\u0026rsquo;re going to want their results. Because of this, they\u0026rsquo;re likely going to put in their email — after all, they did the hard work and they want to reap the rewards.\nThey also build that trust throughout, from the man in the business suit to the customer service awards. This impresses upon their potential leads that QuickenLoans can be trusted with something as important as the mortgage to your house. If your company is asking for something or trying to convince someone of something high stakes, building up this early relationship is important.\nCase Study: Likesharetweet — Click Arbitrage LikeShareTweet is a viral content site that came out of nowhere in the middle of 2014. They now have millions of visitors/month. What makes them interesting to study is that they appear to offer no products or services so they likely make 100% of revenue through advertising.\nIn this case that means they\u0026rsquo;re likely making most if not all profit from click arbitrage fueled by traffic from Content Discovery Networks. They place their own, low-cost ad on a native ad network. Then, when someone clicks on their ad, they take them to a landing page that\u0026rsquo;s crawling with ads. When someone clicks on any ad on that page, LikeShareTweet makes more money from that click than they spent to get it.\nNetworks and Spend Top network by far: Taboola.\nAd Creative\nThere are two types of ads that LikeShareTweet uses…\nType #1: Sex Appeal A simple picture of an attractive woman tied into a list post — effective and not rocket science. People are drawn to attractive people and they love list posts, especially posts about celebrities and money. This ad ties everything together.\nType #2: The Weird and Bizarre Weird and bizarre images work really well at getting click-throughs. People see them and wonder what the heck is going on? What\u0026rsquo;s the story behind that image? Is it even real? Both ads above are truly bizarre and almost impossible not to click.\nAgain, these are more extreme examples of good concepts. You probably can\u0026rsquo;t — and probably shouldn\u0026rsquo;t — just stick a photo of a hot guy or girl or some really strange is that photoshopped?! image on the top of your ad and call it a day. But you can think about what is eye-catching and what speaks to the lowest common denominator of your audience and use those things to build wide-reaching campaigns. Although if you have strange images, by all means, use them!\nLanding Pages\nLikeShareTweet is very aggressive with the number of ads they use on their landing pages. They’re using ads in a few key places we’ve seen other large viral news sites use — specifically, a bar of ads from Taboola at the top above the article and a Google AdSense ad just above the photo.\nThey also show pop-ups with Taboola ads:\nThese are pretty classic methods of gaining ad revenue but, again, LikeShareTweet is just doing a more extreme version than what we normally see.\nWhy This Technique Works\nPart of what makes this technique work so well is playing into your audience\u0026rsquo;s hands. The ads are specifically designed around things that we know interest people — celebs, beautiful people, rich people, weird bodies — and they\u0026rsquo;re really tempting to that part of us that whispers you can take five more minutes out of work to read this! It looks crazy!\nThe other reason it works so well is that LikeShareTweet has their own audience nailed. The person that clicks on a LikeShareTweet article is probably going to click through to another ad article, so LikeShareTweet takes advantage of that. It\u0026rsquo;s a classic lesson in how to use your ad space: know your audience and charge a premium for others to cater to them.\nCase Study: Intuit — Content Marketing Perhaps you’ve never heard of Intuit, but you’ve no doubt heard of — or maybe even used — their suite of products. They’ve developed a couple of the biggest pieces of finance software in the past 20 years, including QuickBooks and TurboTax.\nNetworks and Spend Although they still buy most traffic through Google, they also spend on Taboola and Yahoo Gemini. Although they\u0026rsquo;re not pouring millions into native ads, we\u0026rsquo;d bet that Intuit is continuously reusing other content for their ads on these networks in an extremely cost-effective manner because of their approach to landing pages.\nAd Creative\nThe copy of Intuit\u0026rsquo;s ads is very similar to any other non-ad article you would see at the bottom of a website or news article. It\u0026rsquo;s got an attractive header photo and a clear, simple title: What works really well here is that they\u0026rsquo;re asking a question that a lot of people have — who counts as a dependent on my taxes, anyway? And if you had never thought of trying to claim your partner as a dependent, we bet you\u0026rsquo;re thinking about it now.\nThis is clearly geared to young, unmarried people — the copy and the 20-somethings in the photo make that clear. And young people, who might not have an accountant and are probably not tax experts, are a great target for this ad, this question and TurboTax software. We\u0026rsquo;d bet that this is a play straight out of Intuit\u0026rsquo;s buyer persona playbook.\nLanding Pages\nThe landing pages that Intuit uses for these sorts of ads are blog posts. This particular ad takes you to exactly what you\u0026rsquo;d expect: a post that answers the question they posed.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s one reason we suspect it\u0026rsquo;s so easy for Intuit to make these ads. They\u0026rsquo;re already writing the blog posts, they already have this content in the world and now they\u0026rsquo;re marketing themselves with it using ads on Content Discovery Networks. If you have a blog filled with articles that are genuinely helpful to your userbase, this can be a cheap and easy approach to getting some traffic — or maybe even leads.\nAlthough this is definitely a content marketing-based ad for TurboTax, they also have a “Start for Free” button and a “Subscribe Now” field for their email list. If someone enjoyed this article, especially if they learned something about their taxes from it, they might turn into a lead by signing up for more.\nWhy This Technique Works\nIntuit\u0026rsquo;s content marketing ads work for two main reasons. The first is cost, as we just discussed. If you\u0026rsquo;re a company with a good cache of online content, repurposing that at a low cost using native ad networks can be a great option. Of course, TurboTax is software that has a huge potential userbase. So the key here is to pick articles that are broadly applicable. Save the hypertargeting for social ads.\nThe other reason it works is that they\u0026rsquo;ve really nailed their audience in the ad. The young interracial couple, the question that piques an inexperienced tax filer\u0026rsquo;s interest and the sunny Instagram vibes of the photo are all great ways to target a millennial audience. We\u0026rsquo;d guess this ad would be much less successful if it were targeted to retirees.\nCase Study: Babbel — Generate Signups Babbel is a language-learning program that has some stiff competition. Alright, we\u0026rsquo;ll say it, it\u0026rsquo;s Duolingo. When competing with such a well-known company, you\u0026rsquo;ve got to use every trick in the book to capture attention. Besides the heavy hitters like Duolingo and paid counterpart Rosetta Stone, there is a ton of language software out there to compete with. Let\u0026rsquo;s see how Babbel uses Content Discovery Networks to their advantage.\nNetworks and Spend Obviously, Babbel is using Content Discovery Networks to fuel their growth. They\u0026rsquo;ve got almost no money in Google and more than 15 million between Taboola and Outbrain. This is pretty consistent over time, and they\u0026rsquo;ve increased spend in the last few months, pushing even more heavily into the native ad market.\nAd Creative\nBabbel has a pretty eye-catching ad, using some techniques we\u0026rsquo;ve seen before. They use a face looking right at the camera and a high-contrast background, which is a good strategy for gaining attention. But they painted the face in the colors of the Spanish flag, immediately signaling something to do with Spain or Spanish. Their copy, “This App Can Teach You Spanish In Just 3 Weeks,” sounds a little clickbait-y, but it speaks to a direct frustration of all language users: the time it takes to learn a new tongue. The claim is a little unbelievable, but not so outlandish that it seems outright false. This is the perfect balance to get people to click away.\nLanding Pages\nTurns out, the claim isn\u0026rsquo;t false — at least according to Babbel\u0026rsquo;s landing page. This is a great example of how to get people to sign up for your product. At the top, and on the side, they have different flags that signal what languages you can learn, giving you intuitive information about the product\u0026rsquo;s value.\nThen, they give you a scientific study that proves their product works. If that didn\u0026rsquo;t convince you, you can click on a BuzzFeed-style video challenge where different people are learning Spanish in three weeks:\nThe video is enticing to click on and delivers in entertainment value. You can see what seems like people “instantly” learning Spanish — just like you could with Babbel\u0026rsquo;s app. Then, at the end there\u0026rsquo;s a signup button: That leads directly to a page of languages you can learn and, from there, to your first lesson. At the end, they ask for your email.\nWhy This Technique Works\nThis technique works because their landing page is so convincing. Anyone who had an interest in quickly learning a language would be immediately sucked in by Babbel\u0026rsquo;s language offerings, their fun video and their scientific studies that prove their products worked.\nPlus, getting people started on a lesson before requiring signup is a great way to ensure that they\u0026rsquo;re invested in the app and want to continue. This means people are signing up as users, not as leads. If you\u0026rsquo;ve got a product with a free trial or demo, you should absolutely link that in your landing page to get people invested in your product, rather than taking them straight to pricing or signup.\nCase Study: Uber — Geotargeting One thing we haven\u0026rsquo;t really seen in our Content Discovery Networks yet is geotargeting. We had interest and age targeting in our ads, but Uber is using native ads to focus on specific metro regions. This makes sense for their product and for their ad spend.\nNetworks and Spend Uber is really going in on Yahoo Gemini Native in their ad spend. They\u0026rsquo;re spending nearly double what they spend on Google! They\u0026rsquo;ve also got a good chunk of change in Outbrain as well. Clearly, native ads are part of their long-term strategy.\nAd Creative\nOne ad that Uber has recently been running is targeting the Austin metro region. It\u0026rsquo;s a limited-time offer geared towards getting new drivers:\nUber doesn\u0026rsquo;t need to build trust with a consumer because a lot of people already know who they are. This is why such a simple ad is effective. They make a promise: at least $1600 for your first 200 trips as a driver. And that\u0026rsquo;s it. But for someone sitting at their computer thinking about driving for Uber, this seems pretty good. Say they average 20 trips a day for 10 days. That\u0026rsquo;s $1600 for two normal work weeks, which is $3200 a month — and that\u0026rsquo;s a pretty good paycheck.\nLanding Pages\nTheir landing page is perhaps the simplest of all the case studies we\u0026rsquo;ve been over today. It\u0026rsquo;s a simple signup form with a cheery picture of a driver.\nThis is appropriate for the ad because it\u0026rsquo;s an employment offer. When people are clicking, they\u0026rsquo;re expecting something serious and professional. And if they want to sign up, view the terms and get driving, then they\u0026rsquo;ve got to put in their information.\nWhy This Technique Works\nUber has three main things happening here:\nGeotargeting works because this ad is providing a specific offer to a specific set of users. This can lower ad spend and make ads more effective. Concrete numbers help the ad come alive. It\u0026rsquo;s a company guarantee, so they\u0026rsquo;re free to put the numbers in, but if you don\u0026rsquo;t have some sort of guarantee, any solid numbers on how your product or service helps people earn money or achieve their goals is good to put in. Professional landing page signals that Uber is serious and legitimizes the ad as an offer of employment. Even if you aren\u0026rsquo;t posting job ads on a Content Discovery Network, you can still take each of these lessons back to your own ads, especially if you are a professional product or service.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t Sleep on Content Discovery Networks Over the past year or two there has been significant traffic growth on Content Discovery Networks. My feeling is that we’re just seeing the beginning of a whole new brand of advertising. Anyone who is looking for another great traffic source should really consider testing out a few campaigns on these networks.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-1-traffic-source-youre-not-using-content-discovery-networks-2/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of your best traffic sources could be something that you\u0026rsquo;re completely ignoring, even though it\u0026rsquo;s right under your nose. Businesses always want to know where the next best traffic source is coming from, and, although that\u0026rsquo;s going to vary somewhat from field to field, one stands out as a pretty powerful traffic driver that\u0026rsquo;s overlooked.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s Content Discovery Networks. These are something that everyone is familiar with but many people haven\u0026rsquo;t considered using as a business tool.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The #1 Traffic Source You're Not Using: Content Discovery Networks DO NOT PUBLISH"},{"content":"The success of your paid advertising campaigns has less to do with the ad itself and more to with what happens after the click.\nYou can have the most persuasive ad copy, that perfect “eyeball-grabbing” image and buy the highest quality traffic… yet if your landing page is poorly designed for paid traffic, you’re going to have a really hard time achieving a positive ROI.\nWe’ve found 12 different styles of landing pages that are working very well for advertisers who drive millions of dollars worth of display traffic to their site every year.\nIn this post we’re going to cover what they are, who’s using them and why they work. You’ve probably seen some of them, but I guarantee there are one or two that will be new for most people.\nLanding Page #1: Is It a Landing Page or an Article? It’s an “Article Lander” One “new” type of landing page is the “ article lander.” This is usually a presell page that looks like a news article, scientific study, press release or a blog article. They can be multiple pages (like the “Old School New Body” sales funnel we analyzed in the “ Business of Display Part 4: Info Products” post) or they can be single page landers like the examples below.\nThese tend to work well because they don’t raise most peoples’ “Sleazy-Marketer-Wants-My-Money” flag. People have started to become blind to traditional sales letters, video sales letters or anything that indicates that someone wants them to buy something. An article lander just looks like an informational article.\nBills.com, a free resource for anyone with questions about finances, uses an article lander as a presell page for their financial services. The article lander presells the customer on the benefits of debt consolidation. Once you read the article you’re going to be more receptive to actually finding out more about what you can do to manage debt.\nThe headline “The Secret to Paying Off Credit Card Debt If You Own a Home” is written like the headline from a news article or press release. There are even links to other articles to keep customers on the site longer. The body copy is written in the style of a news article with a slight sales twist.\nMoral of the story: it doesn’t scream “advertisement.”\nArticle landers are also easy to A/B test. All you need to do is change the text on the page. A video sales letter, for example, requires you to re-record the audio, re-record the video, reformat the video, upload the new video, etc.\nIn addition, it’s easy to find the bottleneck in your funnel if you’re using a multiple page article lander. You can easily uncover which page causes the highest number of users to exit the page. For example, if you notice that a lot of people drop off on page 3 of 5 in the article sequence, you now know there is an issue with page 3 and can start to brainstorm ways to improve that specific page and NOT the entire sequence.\nLanding Page #2: From Print to Digital — The Advertorial Advertorials (also known as “Native Advertising”) were the hottest new landing page in 2014. They were even featured in an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.\nThese are the internet version of ads direct response marketers have been using for years in newspapers and magazines.\nOne of the best old-school marketers who commonly used these ads was Gary Halbert. In one issue of his “Gary Halbert Letter” he writes:\nMake Your Ad Look Like A News Story Here is how to “think” about your newspaper ads. Think about what could be the best possible piece of luck you could have. Think about a reporter who heard a rumor about your product or service and decided to check it out. And then, he fell in love with it. In fact, he loved it so much, he went back to his typewriter and wrote a full-page rave article about what you are selling.\nHere’s an example of an old-school advertorial selling a new fishing lure:\nAdvertorials are very similar to article landers. The small difference is that Advertorials are always made to look like news stories and are written in a more “newsy” style. Article landers can be written in this style, but it’s not a hard-and-fast rule. Article landers also tend to be hosted on the company’s domain. Advertorials are often found on “Advertorial Portals” like Health Headlines, How Life Works and First to Know. These sites buy display traffic and send it to advertorial content that contains an affiliate link.\nHere’s a great example of an advertorial for a probiotic health supplement on How Life Works:\nHere’s another example from LowerMyBills:\nBoth advertorials educate the consumer the way a news article would BEFORE they pitch the product. The probiotic advertorial explains what a probiotic is and why it’s beneficial. The LowerMyBills advertorial teaches you about a new government program called “HARP,” which was created to help homeowners refinance their mortgages and save money.\nAdvertorials can work very well at building trust as a presell page in just about any market.\nLanding Page #3: Tell Me About Me — The Quiz/Survey Landing Page Over the past couple of years more and more marketers have been using quiz and survey landing pages. They’re a bit more complex to set up, but they work very well with cold traffic (we’ve seen the results firsthand).\nBasically, an advertiser sends traffic to a landing page where the prospect uses a quiz to figure something out about themselves.\nWhy they can’t lose weight… The acidity level of their body based on the foods they eat… The problem with their golf swing… There are three reasons why these work:\nAgain, it’s not obvious it leads to a sales pitch. If done right, the information that you’ll receive is tailored to your specific needs. It’s not a pre-packaged solution meant for everyone under the sun. It’s for YOU. People crave to know more about themselves and why they suffer from certain problems. This is why Cosmo quizzes, BuzzFeed quizzes and the daily horoscope are so popular. Here’s a great example from Alkaline Foods, a site that sells products related to the Alkaline diet (a diet based on the premise that the cause of many health issues is due to high acidity levels in your body).\nThe landing page is very simple and just has a call-to-action to take the quiz.\nYou then take a six-question survey. Like a multi-page article lander, you can see where people drop off and fix that specific question. Sometimes people will exit the page if they find the question too “difficult.” The theory being that they’d rather quit the survey than answer the question wrong (even if there are no wrong answers).\nThey eventually ask you for your name and email so they can send you the link to your report (getting you to opt-in to their list in the process).\nThen you’re given the report on the next page (without having to check your email).\nAt the bottom there’s a link to a video “The 5 Super Foods” which is a VSL for “Energize Greens,” a natural greens supplement.\nEven though they eventually try to sell you a product, they’ve already built trust with the quiz + report on your body’s acidity levels. You’re more likely to trust them AND buy their product as they’ve already given you valuable information that can help with your health.\nLanding Page #4: WARNING… It’s the Video Sales Letter The video sales letter (or “VSL”) was created/made popular by marketer Jon Benson. He created the first “ugly” video sales letter for his diet book, “The Every Other Day Diet.”\nOver the years they’ve gotten more and more advanced with some people spending thousands of dollars on copywriting and production, but the majority of people still do it the “ugly” way: words on a PowerPoint being read out loud.\nThe advantage to using a VSL is that prospects don’t have to read. We live in an entertainment-based society and most people prefer to watch videos than read text. Plus, the video format forces them to listen to your sales message. They can’t scroll down and look at the price of the product like a traditional sales page. They have to wait until they get to the end of your video, after you’ve already had time to sell them on the benefits of your product. When you do a good job, the price becomes irrelevant.\nOne of my favorite VSLs at the moment comes from Perfect Origins, a nutraceuticals company that specializes in weight loss and probiotic supplements:\nLanding Page #5: The Lead Generation Page Lead magnets are a great source of traffic for advertisers doing lead generation. A lead magnet is an incentive that you offer users in exchange for their email address. It can be anything from an infographic to an eBook to access to a bonus webinar. The point is to offer something of value to increase the number of leads you get.\nZoom, a video conferencing platform, uses a lead magnet on their landing page to grow their email list.\nUsers can enter their contact information to get the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions report.\nGiven that they’re reinforcing their brand compared to their competitors, you know that the information is going to also be useful to users. Once the form\u0026rsquo;s submitted, the report\u0026rsquo;s emailed to the user for review.\nVery simple, very effective landing page style.\nLanding Page #6: Just Give It to Me — The Simple Sign-up/Opt-in Page The more straightforward your offer is, the more simple your landing page can be.\nFor example, Slack is a leader in virtual team communication. Their sign-up landing page simply explains what they offer and the benefits users get. There\u0026rsquo;s an offer asking new users to sign up for free and use the free plan for as long as they need.\nLanding Page #7: Thou Shall Not Enter — The Gated Landing Page Everyone knows the importance of building up an email list. But building up a list is doubly important if you’re running an eCommerce store.\nWhen a user comes from a display ad to an eCommerce store, they’re likely going to get caught up browsing the products. If they end up NOT buying something, they’re probably just going to exit the page, not bother to opt-in in the small section on the right and then completely forget about your eCommerce store.\nOne way that eCommerce stores have solved this is by creating a “gated” landing page. This means that the prospect is required to enter their email address before they’re able to browse the products.\nHere’s an example from zulily, a huge eCommerce store that sells discounted clothing and items for your house.\nThere’s definitely going to be a percentage of people who get angry and just exit the page.\nHowever, the “Daily Deals Up to 70% Off!” copy is pretty tempting and most people are going to be willing to opt-in just based on that.\nAnother eCommerce that uses a gated landing page is Frank \u0026amp; Oak, an online menswear store.\nThey’ve chosen to go the “premium” route and make it feel like an exclusive club, as opposed to zulily’s strategy of offering great deals. Plus, all the logos at the bottom are great social proof. Most people are going to see these and trust them enough to enter their email.\nLanding Page #8: All Are Welcome - The Ungated Landing Page The more laid-back cousin of a gated landing page is an un gated landing page. These landing pages have content that\u0026rsquo;s freely available for anyone to see and use. So unlike gated landing pages, when users get to an ungated landing page, they don\u0026rsquo;t have to enter an email address to access your content.\nUngated landing pages build brand awareness and reduce friction. Think about it. If someone is online researching for their business but only gets partial information, think about how excited they\u0026rsquo;ll be when they click on your paid ad, arrive on your landing page and find full, free access to your content. Chances are they\u0026rsquo;ll willingly give you their email address just so you can send them more information.\nThese users are qualified leads because they\u0026rsquo;ve shown an interest in you. Chances are good they\u0026rsquo;ll keep coming back and eventually buy something from you.\nClearbit, a data enrichment tool, uses ungated landing pages to offer users access to their data-driven marketing eBook.\nWhen users click on the “see all chapters” link below the email form, they\u0026rsquo;re taken to the section of the landing page where they can link to any of the available 12 chapters.\nUsers have the option to enter their email address if they want the book emailed to them but this isn\u0026rsquo;t required.\nLanding Page #9: Say It Again - The Repeat Offer Page Motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar put it best when he said, “Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.” By having a landing page designed to repeat your ad\u0026rsquo;s message, you encourage users to take action. It\u0026rsquo;s clear to them what they get now vs. waiting to buy later on.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s say you have a special offer, a new product feature or something else that gives users lots of value: use this landing page style to reinforce the message.\nOn GoToMeeting\u0026rsquo;s landing page they\u0026rsquo;ve included a special offer callout message. It\u0026rsquo;s right at the top of the page and in green, which stands out from everything else on the page and reminds visitors to buy the annual plan and save 20%.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s great here is that the offer\u0026rsquo;s repeated again just below the orange “Start My 14-Day Trial” button. Users can either start a trial or pay up front and save.\nLanding Page #10: The Soft Touch Video Page With attention spans getting shorter by the year, videos work to get users to stop scrolling and listen to what you have to say. This page style works when videos are less about making a sale and more about showing off the culture within your company.\nFor example, depending on your user base, use a little humor in the video to come off as less stiff and formal. It makes you relatable, and the more users can relate to you and your product, the more likely they\u0026rsquo;ll be to want to use it and pay for it.\nWistia, a platform that helps businesses create, manage and share videos, uses a video on its paid advertising landing page to set the tone for the kind of experience visitors can expect.\nWistia is a fun and lighthearted company and their landing page video speaks to that. The video in this particular example is only 59 seconds long but it packs in a ton of information about how to use the tool and when to use it — all with a little humor added in. There\u0026rsquo;s some animation and shots of teams having fun interacting with each other. It\u0026rsquo;s informative and not at all pushy.\nPlus, the lead generation form right next to the video makes for a smooth enrollment process for users. The video gets them excited about the product and the form closes the deal.\nLanding Page #11: Get Moving! - The Countdown Page Fear of Missing Out or FOMO is the idea that the thought of missing out on an event or experience causes some people anxiety. When it comes to marketing, you can use FOMO to emphasize time-sensitive opportunities to get users to do buy something.\nWhether you\u0026rsquo;re promoting an event like a webinar series or a new product launch, use a countdown to get people excited and to emphasize registering or buying sooner rather than later. Set the time to track for a week or two. You can set it for longer but it\u0026rsquo;s more impactful and gives a sense of urgency the closer to the deadline it is. The whole point of the timer is to create FOMO. Give leads too much time and they might store the information thinking they have time to take action but don\u0026rsquo;t come back to do anything.\nMarketing Summit used this idea to promote their marketing conference. To get visitors to sign up for the event, Marketing Summit included three design elements on their landing page:\nA tagline that gives insight into the value people get from attending A countdown clock showing how much time\u0026rsquo;s left to register A large, bright CTA button to drive leads to take action Landing Page #12: The Testimonial Page Social proof is a powerful way to grow your email list because it uses feedback from current users to influence new users. Anand Iyer, the former Head of Product at Threadflip, frames the power of social proof this way:\nUltimately, marketplaces are social businesses. They depend on relationships and network effect. That’s why you can drastically lower the barrier to entry for new users and increase conversion by leveraging social proof — basically promoting that many other people are using and loving your product.\nWhen new users see testimonials from current users they see the product as more valuable. Social proof also helps you grow trust with new users who are still getting to know you. A landing page dedicated to users\u0026rsquo; testimonials does just that.\nInfusionsoft is an email marketing and sales platform for small businesses. For example, users can build automated campaigns that help them manage their email marketing more efficiently.\nWhen users click on an ad and land on the landing page, they\u0026rsquo;re greeted with a list of real customers, their company and contact information.\nAs users scroll down the landing page they see some of the features Infusionsoft offers. What\u0026rsquo;s great here is that mixed in with theses features are testimonials backing up each one.\nAlso worth noting is the landing page includes two places for users to sign up. There\u0026rsquo;s a green CTA button at the top of the page and a form with four fields at the bottom of the page. So users have the option to sign up right away based on their initial impression or wait until they get to the bottom of the landing page and learned more about the product and features. There are only four fields so it\u0026rsquo;s a short and easy form for users to fill in and get started.\nPut your plans in motion Your landing page is one of the most important components in getting paid advertising to work. All 12 of these are proven page types that work depending on your offer and your audience.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/12-bold-landing-page-styles-for-paid-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe success of your paid advertising campaigns has less to do with the ad itself and more to with what happens \u003cem\u003eafter\u003c/em\u003e the click.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou can have the most persuasive ad copy, that perfect “eyeball-grabbing” image and buy the highest quality traffic… yet if your landing page is poorly designed for paid traffic, you’re going to have a really hard time achieving a positive ROI.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve found 12 different styles of landing pages that are working very well for advertisers who drive millions of dollars worth of display traffic to their site every year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"12 Bold Landing Page Styles For Paid Advertising DO NOT PUBLISH"},{"content":"Creating a successful campaign on Google Display can be tricky.\nJust ask my friend Bob.\nNote: Urban Dictionary defines “my friend” as ‘a phrase that people use when they are too embarrassed to admit they are talking about themselves’. I assure you, that’s not the case here. [Image source: wikipedia.org]\nBob works at an ecommerce store that sells construction equipment and was tasked with creating a campaign for generating leads.\nFor his first campaign Bob had a budget of $200. He placed his banners here and there and got a hundred clicks that resulted in zero leads.\nBob’s boss was not impressed. Since their normal average CPL (cost per lead) is around $60, the boss expected to get at least 3 conversion for his $200.\nBob knew he was probably doing something wrong, but the the only problem he saw was that the budget was just too small.\nHe got another $1,000 from the company and scaled the campaign without making too many changes in ad placements, targeting methods, etc.\nThis time around he got a couple of conversions.\nAgain his boss wasn’t pleased; this campaign was generating leads with a $600 CPL – ten times higher than what was expected.\nMy friend Bob was ordered to stop wasting the company’s budget.\nSo what was he doing wrong?\nBob ran into two very common problems with display ad campaigns:\nThe campaign wasn’t delivering enough relevant traffic The people that came from the display ads didn’t convert well Here’s how you can fix both:\nProblem 1: Not Enough Relevant Traffic If your campaign isn’t getting enough traffic, the first thing you should check is how you’re doing your targeting.\nBe Sure You’re Not Over-Targeting Sometimes people are too specific with their targeting options; they and end up narrowing down the audience so much that traffic is reduced to a trickle.\nIt’s kind of like trying to find a significant other. If you’re looking for someone who’s funny, likes outdoor activities, and lives within 30 miles of your home, you’ll probably have a good-sized pool of candidates from which to choose.\nBut if you’re looking for an attractive, funny, competitive ostrich racer who can dance like a god, loves lutefisk, and lives down the street, you’re probably going to have an over-targeting problem. That is to say: so few people will meet that criteria, you’re going to be forever alone.\nThe same can hold true for advertising.\nThere are quite a few positive targeting options available on the Google Display Network. Thinks like interests, topics, placements, demographics, remarketing, and keywords. With so many to choose from, it’s easy to get carried away. So if you’re having a problem with volume, you should pull back a bit.\nFor example, if your selling fishing rods, you might simply focus on “fishing” as an interest (Hobbies \u0026amp; Leisure \u0026gt; Outdoor \u0026gt; Fishing).\nYou probably don’t need to narrow down further by demographic (i.e. gender, age, etc.)\nMake Sure Your Placements are Relevant Pay attention to your placements. An ad for ladies perfume isn’t likely to do well on a site with a predominantly male audience. If your product or service skews towards a specific group, it’s important to make sure you’re ads are placed where that group will see them.\nHow to Improve Your Targeting Here are a few things you can do to improve:\nUse GDN recommendations for manual placements. Google Display Network allows you set placements for your ads manually. They also provide some guidance for doing it right, which may be useful for the beginners. Target the sites your competitors are targeting. To find sites your competitors are advertising on, you can use software like Adbeat. Adbeat is able to show you the publisher placements your competitors are using and a lot more. Targeting the same sites as your competitors (who are presumably having success with the placement) is a great technique for reaching your audience faster. Use keyword targeting. Take the time to do proper keyword research. Once you’ve found keywords that will get you closer to your target audience, the placements will be selected automatically. Limit the number of placements. If you’ve got a small budget, limit the number of placements you’re testing on. For example: if your budget is $200 and you split it across 10 placements, you’ll get very few clicks (if any) from each of those web sites. Even if you do get some conversions you won’t have enough data for proper analysis; the sample size will just be too small. Problem 2: Display Traffic Converted Into Leads Poorly Once you get relevant traffic to your site, you have to do everything possible to help the visitors convert. To do that, it’s important you track the right metrics and adjust your campaign accordingly.\nConduct a Deep Analysis of Your Campaign We’ve already prepared a bunch of tips on how to analyze Google Display Campaign performance in a previous article. There are insights on targeting, segmenting, and assessing traffic. It’s definitely worth a quick, five-minute read.\nBesides looking at the standard Adwords reports, I suggest you turn to Google Analytics and also check out the following data:\nThe number of leads that come from a region relevant to your business (e.g. Bay Area) The number of conversions that come at certain hours The screenshots below illustrate how to find both of these data points: Finding the number of visitors (and conversion) from a certain city is relatively easy\n[Source: analytics.google.com] The last column will show you the number of conversions from the city you’ve selected\n[Image Source: analytics.google.com] [Image Source: analytics.google.com] This is how you see at what time did users from San Francisco converted at your website\n[Image Source: analytics.google.com]\nConversions only took place between 9 and 11 am and 1 and 4 pm..\n[Image Source: analytics.google.com]\nKnowing the best converting geo-location and time, can go along way in helping you optimize your campaign.\nOptimize Your Landing Page The landing page is the first thing people see when they visit your site and it can make or break a campaign.\nFor some design inspiration and best practices, check out these resources: InstaPage, HubSpot, and Colorlib.\nAs for landing page improvement, there are 3 main points of leverage you should focus on first:\nMake sure you have a effective headline. A good headline can work wonders. Logistics company eMove increased their conversion rate by 67.8% by simply changing their headline and sub-headline.\nImprove your to call-to-action (CTA) buttons Even small tweaks can be helpful. Extra Space Storage managed to increase reservation numbers by 7.8% with the help of simple color button change. Clear call to action - big red button offering free trial\n[Image Source: netflix.com]\nStart A/B testing Constant testing can lead to big improvements. The Obama campaign got an extra $60 million in donations in 2008 after A/B testing variations on their website. That’s a 40.6% conversion rate increase.\nTakeaways Making campaigns work on GDN is no easy task. But with so much potential upside it can definitely be worth the effort.\nIn summary:\nUse GDN recommendations for manual placements Use Adbeat or another competitive intelligence tool to see where your competitors are advertising and test those placements. Use keywords targeting. Avoid testing too many placements when you’ve got a small budget. Dig into reports to find ways to optimize your campaign. Address shortcomings on your landing page and start A/B testing to improve your conversion rate. Did you screw up your first Google campaign? Drop a comment below, we’d love to hear about it.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/first-google-display-campaigns/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCreating a successful campaign on Google Display can be tricky.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust ask my friend Bob.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote: Urban Dictionary defines “my friend” as ‘a phrase that people use when they are too embarrassed to admit they are talking about themselves’. I assure you, that’s not the case here.\u003c/em\u003e \u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/image5.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"my friend\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/image5.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e[Image source: wikipedia.org]\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBob works at an ecommerce store that sells construction equipment and was tasked with creating a campaign for generating leads.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"First Google Display Campaigns Are Tricky: Here’s How to Fix Traffic \u0026 Conversion Problems"},{"content":"Imagine that you have been running ad campaigns for a client for a year, and it’s been going well.\nYou can and should suggest increasing the ad budget to your client, but you must make sure that the client will get benefit from the extra cost.\nIf the agency\u0026rsquo;s goal is only increasing its own revenues, it will be extremely difficult to \u0026ldquo;sell\u0026rdquo; this idea to the client.\nIn this post we’ll cover a 4 point strategy to help convince your client to increase their advertising budget. These tips will help the client see the opportunity rather than only the potential expense.\n1. Show Your Clients That a Campaign is Getting Results but there is Still an Opportunity for Scaling Up. Often a campaign is already proven to be working based on whatever metrics you’ve established. Here’s 3 examples:\nPositive return on Investment (ROI).\nHigh-quality traffic (creating sales leads).\nOn target Cost Per Action (CPA).\nFor each client, the goals may differ. For example, if the customer is ok with the current cost per conversion, we can increase the amount of traffic and hence the conversions by increasing the budget.\nAdwords has a built in functionality to show you where these opportunities exist right from the Adwords interface.\nIf the Client Uses Google AdWords\n1.Open the AdWords account. Choose the Campaigns tab. 2. Sort campaigns by the “Status” column. We are interested in the “Limited by budget” status. If we see that the cost per conversion is within the required range, and at the same time there is a “Limited by budget” status, this means that we can painlessly increase the budget and get more conversions.\nAnalyze Traffic by Hour of Day (Suitable for Any Ad Network) to find missed opportunities later in the day.\nYou can look at traffic and conversion data by hour directly in your Adwords account by using pre-defined reports (formerly called Dimensions). However, because it’s a more universal approach, we’ll show you another option using Google Analytics instead.\n1. Open the Google Analytics account. On the menu bar, choose Acquisition \u0026gt; Source/Medium. 2. Then choose the right source, for example, the Ad Network you want to analyze. 3. Press the Secondary dimension button and enter “hour”. 4. Select 25 lines in order to display all 24 hours on the screen. 5. Now we can see the number of users at each hour throughout the day. If, for some reason, we see that there is no traffic after a certain hour, this is a good indication that the daily budget is running out by this time.\nObviously you’ll have to keep in mind normal traffic trends based on geography, business type, etc. If we know for example, that for a particular ad campaign the main traffic occurs during business hours, but by 2 am the clicks from Ad Network have ceased. Then this is definitely a sign that the daily budget has ended early.\nIf budgets were higher for the campaign, this would not have been an issue. This is exactly the type of opportunity you might choose to point out while talking with your client about the possibility of raising the budget.\n2. Prove that the current budget is not enough to get statistically significant results Just to keep the math simple as an example, let\u0026rsquo;s say that an e-commerce client has a budget of $10,000 per month evenly distributed across 10 networks. This means that there is only $1,000 for each network.\nThe client has 11 advertised products for sale and the budget is evenly distributed among them. The average cost per click is $1. This means that the client receives 1,000 clicks per month from each ad network.\nAt the same time, for each of the products, there are only 91 clicks per month (1000/11), or about 3 per day. Just 91 clicks per month for each product isn’t nearly enough traffic to give you statistically significant results for a typical 1-2% conversion rate targeted action.\nIf a network is given such a small budget, it will take too much time to get a statistically significant amount of traffic.\nIn this situation, you can suggest increasing the budget for some (or preferably all) networks to receive a reasonable amount of traffic for each of the products.\nReducing of the number of networks and/or products is also an option, but not the best one if they want to identify optimal acquisition channels quickly and maximize revenue.\n3. Show Your Clients that Competitors are Spending M ore Many agencies have found that the argument that the client’s competitors spend more money works well. This can be a powerful incentive, but you need data to back up such a claim.\nThere are a lot of services that help assess the budgets of competitors for search campaigns, but not for display or native campaigns. To get access to competitors’ budgets on display and native campaigns, we suggest usingAdbeat.\nHere’s how to do it:\n1.Open Adbeat, and on the menu bar, choose Tools.\n2. Choose Advertiser Compare Tool. 3. Enter your competitors’ URLs. 4. In this example we will choose two main competitors, but you can add up to five at a time. 5. Sort by the period or by the date you want. 6. Keep in mind that if the month hasn’t finished yet, its budget may be lower. Now you can see the display ad budgets of your customer’s competitors.\nYou can make a screenshot or create an Excel table based on data from Adbeat, or just copy and use our readyAdbeat Excel table template. Here we see that the second row is our budget, and the second and the third lines include competitors’ budgets.\nIn column B we see the budget for September, and in column D for October. Columns C and E contain the difference between our budget and that of competitors.\nIf _competitors_have more budget, then the difference will be highlighted in red. And ifwe have a larger budget, the difference will be highlighted in green.\nA simple visual like this table backed by reliable data from a trusted source is a great tool. It’s easy for a client to see the missed opportunity, and because of that they can make a strategic decision to increase spend more easily.\n4. Show Your Customers That Their Competitors Use Other Traffic Channels AdBeat.com helps with defining traffic sources for ad campaigns as well. You may get information like sources of traffic, ad spend, as well as look at banner examples using Adbeat.\nThis is how it’s done\n1. Go to the Top Advertisers section on the menu bar in Adbeat. 2. Enter the competitor’s website URL. 3. Press the See All Networks button. 4. See the whole list of ad networks used by your competitor. In this section, we can see all ad networks, or select just some that are interesting to us. Look for differences in your own client’s budget allocation. There may be missed opportunities here, and you can suggest trying out some new networks.\n5. Final Step: Create a Presentation Highlighting the Opportunities You’ve Uncovered Highlight everything that the client could receive if the budget is increased.Here is an example format we’ve come up with: [Sample presentation slide covering a specific opportunity]\n6. Finally, Organize and Guide the Conversation Prepare an email for the client. For example:\n“Hello Jack,\nWe have some ideas on how Company X can get better results/profit/conversions.\nHow about we meet to talk about it at 10 am (your time) on Wednesday?”\nConclusions Being persuasive about the need for a client to bring more money to the table is not an easy task.\nIn this article, we’ve given some practical tips on how to show a client that increasing the budget for an ad campaign is necessary to get the best results.\nHighlighting the fact that competitors are spending more than your client on their campaigns can be a powerful motivator. If that doesn’t trigger your client’s competitive drive, we’d be surprised! Show opportunities to scale up on new traffic channels that your competitors may already be using effectively. Providing a data backed expectation that the success of the campaign will improve should the budget be increased will help you be more persuasive. Prove that effective measurement of the success of the campaign requires a larger budget. After getting all your points together, make a simple easy-to-understand presentation and schedule a meeting with the client. Tell us what you think in the comments below!\nLet us know if you followed our tips and managed to persuade your client to increase budget or try a new approach.\nLet us know if you have any tips of your own, how a conversation around budget has gone in the past for you, or any other advice you may have on this topic.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-to-get-clients-to-increase-advertising-budgets/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eImagine that you have been running ad campaigns for a client for a year, and it’s been going well.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou can and should suggest increasing the ad budget to your client, but you must make sure that the client will get benefit from the extra cost.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf the agency\u0026rsquo;s goal is only increasing its own revenues, it will be extremely difficult to \u0026ldquo;sell\u0026rdquo; this idea to the client.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this post we’ll cover a 4 point strategy to help convince your client to increase their advertising budget. These tips will help the client see the opportunity rather than only the potential expense.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Guide for Ad Agencies:  How to Get Clients to Increase Their Advertising Budgets"},{"content":"Footwear is a multi-billion dollar industry. Nike Inc.\u0026rsquo;s market capitalization alone is $105.3 billion and growing.\n[Image Source: nytimes.com]\nTo sell more shoes, footwear advertisers have invested heavily in display advertising. As a result, there’s a lot of data that we can look at. But for this post, we decided to focus on comparing the landing pages of some top footwear advertisers.\nMeet the Candidates For our analysis we looked in Adbeat and chose three high-spending footwear advertisers. We also limited our analysis to campaigns that lasted for no more than one quarter. The advertisers and campaign details are as follows: NewChic - $45,600 for a two-month campaign Puma - $32,700 for a four-month campaign Zulily - $97,800 for a three-month campaign And here are the banners for each advertiser…\n[Image Source: adbeat.com]\nI should point out that none of these advertisers sell footwear exclusively; they also sell other items. The banners, however, are advertising specific footwear products and lead to specific product pages when we click on them.Which brings me to my next point: The “landing pages” for each of these are really e-commerce product listing pages. So to evaluate these pages, we needed to use some very specific criteria.\nThe Criteria To make a solid, unbiased assessment easier we decided to use a checklist created by WooCommerce. Billed as the Essential Product Page Checklist, the 26-item checklist offers a solid benchmark for making sure a product page has everything it needs to close the sale.Let’s get started.\nAnalysis Section 1: Product Photography Mark Hayes, a Shopify contributor, says:\n“When shopping online, customers aren\u0026rsquo;t able to touch whatever you\u0026rsquo;re selling. That\u0026rsquo;s exactly why product photography is so important in swaying a potential buyer\u0026rsquo;s purchase decision.”\nThere are four things WooCommerce recommends considering when it comes to product-page images.\nMorethan one image provided NewChic has 10 images of the sneakers on the product page. You can see five mini-pictures of the sneakers in the screenshot below and scroll to see the rest of them using navigation arrows.\n[Image Source: newchic.com]\nPuma has five photos of the training shoes, taken at different angles.\n[Image Source: puma.com]\nZulily also has five images of the boots they’re selling. Unlike NewChic and Puma, you can see mini-versions of all the images without clicking on arrows.\n[Image Source: zulily.com]\nPhotos are sharp, clear, and high resolution All three pages get passing marks for having sharp, high-quality photos.\nZoom feature is enabled While Puma and Zulily allow us to zoom in on the photos, NewChic doesn’t.As you can see from the screenshot below, Puma allows such a deep zoom we can almost see into the soul of the shoe. Puma— check! Zulily— check! NewChic— miss!\n[Image Source: puma.com]\nPhotos show all aspects and views of the product (for example, included components, the unassembled version, etc.) Potential customers are able to see the product from all angles on NewChic’s website. While Puma and Zulily present fewer images on their websites, they still allow customers to see top, front and side views of the footwear.\nProduct Photography Scores NewChic - 3 pointsPuma - 4 pointsZulily - 4 points\nSection 2: Copywriting Strong copywriting is essential to optimizing your conversion rate. According to RaptMedia studies, 63% of consumers said they’d think more positively of a brand if it gave them content that was more valuable, interesting or relevant. Here are the important points:There are four things WooCommerce recommends considering when it comes to product-page copywriting.\nAt least three descriptive sentences are written about the product NewChic lists product features, describes the shoe, toe and closure type, describes it as a male or female product, and suggests several occasions and seasons for which the shoe is appropriate.These sentences aren’t overly descriptive, but at least there are several points listed.\n[Image Source: newchic.com]\nPuma lists five features of their product and has one descriptive sentence above this list. Zulily uses the same model for product description and their product page.\nCopywriting is, ideally, original to your store We checked the text with the help of anti-plagiarism software called quetext.com. All three websites had 100% unique text on their websites.\nContent makes use of keywords and/or phrases relevant to the product in question for the purpose of search engine optimization All three advertisers made use of keywords and phrases that help with SEO.\nContent has been spell-checked and reviewed for grammar At first glance, we found no misspellings or grammar errors on any of these three product pages.Just to make sure, we used the Grammarly app to check the pages at NewChic, Puma and Zulily.0 critical mistakes total for Puma and Zulily’s descriptions. NewChic, however, didn’t fare so well. Two errors showed up (see below).\n[Image Source: grammarly.com]\nCopywriting Scores NewChic - 3 pointsPuma - 4 pointsZulily - 4 points\nSection 3: Product Features and Specifications Features are listed in short sentences or bullet-point form NewChic is the only online merchant here that lists product features in a numerical list vs. standard bullet points:\n[Image Source: newchic.com]\nThe points are short, though. As for Puma and Zulily, they do list the features of their products in bullet point form:\n[Image Source: puma.com]\n[Image Source: zulily.com]\nProduct dimensions/size is listed, or a size chart is available All three product pages list available sizes.They also have a size reference section that includes a table showing how U.S. sizes correspond to other size systems.Here is how it looks on NewChic’s product page:\n[Image Source: newchic.com]\nPuma also lists the available sizes and provides users with a size chart.\n[Image Source: puma.com]\nIn addition to the selection of available sizes, Zulily informs users about which sizes are not in stock at the moment and invites users to ask for notification when the stock becomes available.\n[Image Source: zulily.com]\nCountry of creation or origin is listed Every product page failed this one.There is no information about the manufacturing country on any of the pages.Either they don’t find it necessary to display this information to potential customers, or they’re omitting it for a reason. Perhaps they\u0026rsquo;d rather not tell them where their products are made. Working conditions in manufacturing countries have sometimes been a point of tension between footwear makers and activists.\nAny required legal information (logos, disclaimers, licensing, etc.) has been put in place Standard copyright signs appear on NewChic and Zulily’s sites. NewChic and Zulily have updated copyright signatures to 2018 at the bottom of their product pages. Puma has plenty of information about the Puma brand at the bottom of the page.\n[Image Source: puma.com]\nProduct Features and Specifications Scores NewChic - 3 pointsPuma - 3 pointsZulily - 3 points\nSection 4: Related Products/Intelligent Product Suggestions We probably don\u0026rsquo;t need to discuss the importance of upselling and cross-selling.It seems obvious that connecting potential buyers to other products and/or showing a wide selection of goods might increase the overall number of items purchased.\nProducts in the same set, family, or by the same designer/artist are linked NewChic has “recommended for you” and “you might also like” sections at various spots on their product page, so we can affirm that they\u0026rsquo;ve fulfilled this point.\n[Image Source: newchic.com]\nPuma has a “you may also like” section that connects to other items. As you can see, the offered products that might be “liked” by users include similar shoes and accessories.\n[Image Source: puma.com]\nZulily leaves links to the products “more from this event” and “you may also like.”So, we can check off this point on the checklist for all three e-commerce shops.\n[Image Source: zulily.com]\nAdditional relevant products are linked as needed We checked whether all of the suggested products can be reached in one click. They turned out to be clickable on all the observed pages.On Zulily’s website, it\u0026rsquo;s also possible to add to your cart items from the same collection en masse—quite a clever move, as customers can plunk multiple items into the “buy” queue without leaving the single product page.The items at “you may also like” from the screenshot above don’t have an “Add to Cart” option on Zulily’s page. Only those at “More from this event” allow us to “add to basket.”\n[Image Source: zulily.com]\nRelated Products/Intelligent Product Suggestion Scores Perhaps Puma and Zulily deserve an extra point here for upselling cheaper accessories and providing an “add to basket” option for other items at the checkout page.However, in all cases, the guidelines of the checklist were met.NewChic - 2 pointsPuma - 2 pointsZulily - 2 points\nSection 5: Other Items to Check Add-to-cart button is functional and easy to find The three product pages call “the cart” by different names, but the buttons all do the same job.\n__[Image Source: newchic.com]\n[Image Source: puma.com]\n[Image Source: zulily.com]\nURL is clear (ex. /woo-t-shirt/ vs. /shirt-37837483-color-32/) We’d say the shorter, the better. WooCommerce suggests omitting numbers where possible.For small sites this seems reasonable. For larger e-commerce sites this seems nearly impossible. Just have a look at the current web addresses for our product pages. https://www.newchic.com/sneakers-3622/p-1195605.html http://us.puma.com/en_US/pd/fierce-strap-women%E2%80%99s-training-shoes/pna190274627956.html https://www.zulily.com/p/truffle-ecru-namaste-ankle-boot-271325-52690973.html?pos=1\u0026amp;fromEvent=271325 The addresses are neither short nor attractive. We’d say NewСhic wins in this category, but the URL still doesn’t look perfect.\nOther Item Scores NewChic - 1 pointsPuma - 1 pointsZulily - 1 points\nBreaking Down The Results We can see that there’s no breakout winner among the participants. Zulily and Puma have an equal score: 14 out of 16 possible points. NewChic ended up with 12 points. Things they’re doing right (you can follow their example):\nimages of the items being sold are of high resolution and quality copywriting is strong for all three product pages features of the products are well listed in product descriptions CTA buttons are functional and clearly seen Things they can improve:\nURLs can be improved copywriting is suboptimal on NewChic’s product page Do you agree with our checklist assessment? Perhaps you discovered some “misses” on your own ecommerce store’s product pages. Tell us in the comments section.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/e-commerce-landing-page-showdown/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFootwear is a multi-billion dollar industry. Nike Inc.\u0026rsquo;s market capitalization alone is $105.3 billion and growing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/pasted-image-0.png\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e[Image Source: nytimes.com]\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo sell more shoes, footwear advertisers have invested heavily in display advertising.  As a result, there’s a lot of data that we can look at.  But for this post, we decided to focus on comparing the landing pages of some top footwear advertisers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"meet-the-candidates\"\u003eMeet the Candidates\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor our analysis we looked in Adbeat and chose three high-spending footwear advertisers.  We also limited our analysis to campaigns that lasted for no more than one quarter. The advertisers and campaign details are as follows: \u003cstrong\u003eNewChic - $45,600 for a two-month campaign\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cstrong\u003ePuma - $32,700 for a four-month campaign\u003c/strong\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eZulily - $97,800 for a three-month campaign\u003c/strong\u003e And here are the banners for each advertiser…\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/pasted-image-0-3.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/pasted-image-0-2.png\"\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/pasted-image-0-1.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"E-commerce Landing Page Showdown - Which Footwear Advertiser Comes Out on Top?"},{"content":"In this guide, we will talk about various ways to analyze the performance of your ad campaigns on Google Display Network.\nThis analysis is performed with the help of the following metrics and dimensions: Conversions, Bounce Rate, Cost per Conversion, Clickthrough Rate (CTR), Demographics, and Traffic from different devices.\nNote: This article is for people who manage Google Display Network Campaigns. Reader’s level of training: Beginner/Intermediate.\n1. Make sure that conversion tracking is turned on and is working. Go to Adwords and sign in to your account. Click the Tools tab and select Conversions\nCheck the Tracking status; it should say “Recording conversions.” If the status differs from Recording conversions, there might be a problem with conversion tracking.\nThere are other variations of the tracking status:\nUnverified - the tag you have placed on the website is not verified yet N o recent conversions - Google has not recorded any conversions in the last seven days Tag inactive - Google no longer sees the tag and has not recorded any conversions in the last seven days Next steps:\nTo solve a problem with incorrect conversion tracking go to Google Support and follow the given instructions.\n2. Import parameters from Google Analytics\nPrior to importing any parameters, it is necessary to link your Google Analytics and Google AdWords accounts.\nGo to Google Analytics and click on the Admin gear Select an account you want to link with AdWords Select a property you want to link and click Adwords Linking 4. In a new window, click + New Link Group and select linked AdWords accounts. Click Continue.\n5. Complete the process of linking Analytics and AdWords accounts by titling your new link group, turning on all the views you need and then clicking on Link accounts.\n6. After linking the accounts in AdWords, different metrics will appear in the Google Analytics tab. To display the columns from this tab, click the on Campaigns tab (or Ad groups, Ads, Keywords) and select Modify columns.\nThen select the Google Analytics tab and click on the metrics you want to display.\nAs you can see, Bounce rate is not the only parameter we are able to import. All the metrics on the screen above are available to be imported.\nAs for Bounce rate, a high figure might be a concern. You should aim at lower Bounce rate, but it all depends on the campaign, as Google claims.\n3. Segment traffic by country (check how each country “converts”)\nIf your display campaign is targeted towards different countries, it makes sense to check each country\u0026rsquo;s performance.\nGo to Google Adwords and sign in to your account. Click the Settings tab and select Locations.\nSelect the campaign you want to check.\nPay attention to the cost of conversion: it may vary for different countries. For example, target cost per conversion is 100 pounds. However, for Italy and the UK conversions are more expensive. In this case, there are two options:\n1) If the cost of conversion is just slightly high, you can decrease the bids. To do this, choose a country and click Set bid adjustment. Next, click Decrease by from the drop-down menu, enter an appropriate percentage (e.g., 20) and then click Make changes. If the cost per conversion is not very close to your target, it may be more reasonable to stop advertising for the selected country. To do this, you will need to exclude the country from campaign locations. Click on the Settings tab and choose All settings. Next, find Targeted locations and click Edit. Find the campaign you want to exclude from the list of targeted countries, click Remove and then Save.\nEnter the location in the search field, choose Exclude and then Save.\nIf the cost per conversion is OK, but the average position is low, you can increase the bid. To do this, repeat the same steps as decreasing a bid, but in this case, choose Increase by from the drop-down menu.\n4. Analyze placements to check traffic volume, its quality, and cost per conversion\nPlacements are the sites where Google shows your ads. Usually, they are selected automatically (unless you specify them yourself), so it makes sense to analyze Placements to find inappropriate ones.\nClick the Display network tab and select Placements Note:\nIf there is a low clickthrough rate (CTR) on a placement (many impressions, but few clicks), it is reasonable to add it to the exclusions.To do this, stay on the Display Network tab and Placements and find Campaign placements exclusions. Click + Exclusions. If Cost per Conversion exceeds the target value, you may also take excluding this placement into account. If your campaign is not supposed to be displayed in mobile ads, it is vital to exclude adsenseformobileapps.com in Campaign placement exclusions because advertising is often shown in games, and this is not the best place to advertise serious products. 5. Analyze demographics\nSelect the campaign you want to analyze.\nClick the Display network tab and select Demographics. You can filter demographics by clicks, conversions, and impressions.\nYou can find more accurate data below:\nWhat you should pay attention to:\nGender. If the product is targeted toward a male audience, perhaps the best solution is to turn off the ad for the female audience. Stay on the Demographics tab and find Campaign gender exclusions. Click + Exclusions, choose Female and then Save. Otherwise, the cost of conversions may be too high.\nIn the example here, with a target conversion value is 100, the conversion cost of Female is 5 times higher than Male!\n6. Analyze traffic coming from different devices (desktop, mobile, tablet)\nSelect the campaign you want to analyze. Click the Settings tab and select Devices\nWhat you should pay attention to:\nWhich devices produce more conversions at favorable prices. If the cost is too high, you can apply the bid adjustment. To do this, stay on the current tab, find the Bid adjustment column and click on the dash that corresponds to the type of device you want to apply the bid adjustment to. Then select Decrease by from a drop-down menu, enter the value you want and click Save. If the cost is very high in general, you can stop showing ads for this type of device. To do this, follow all of the previous steps and enter 100 in the field. Conclusions In this post, we’ve outlined a series of steps for analyzing performance and then taking action to optimize your Google Display campaign. To recap, here’s a summary:\nMake sure that the conversion tracking is configured and working correctly.\nImport parameters from Google Analytics to analyze the quality of traffic.\nSegment traffic by country to check cost of conversion by country.\nAnalyze placements to check traffic volume, its quality, and cost per conversion.\nFigure out demographics to target your product better. Eliminate Demographics that aren’t performing.\nSort out traffic coming from different devices to better adjust your bids.\nDo you follow these steps on your Google Display campaigns? Do you find them effective?\nIs there anything we missed, or that you would do differently?\nPlease, share your thoughts in the comments below!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-to-analyze-performance-of-ad-campaigns/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn this guide, we will talk about various ways to analyze the performance of your ad campaigns on Google Display Network.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis analysis is performed with the help of the following metrics and dimensions: Conversions, Bounce Rate, Cost per Conversion, Clickthrough Rate (CTR), Demographics, and Traffic from different devices.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNote\u003c/strong\u003e: This article is for people who manage Google Display Network Campaigns. Reader’s level of training: Beginner/Intermediate.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"1-make-surethatconversion-tracking-is-turned-on-and-is-working\"\u003e1. Make sure that conversion tracking is turned on and is working.\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGo to \u003ca href=\"https://adwords.google.com\"\u003eAdwords\u003c/a\u003e and sign in to your account. Click the Tools tab and select Conversions\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Step by Step Guide on How to Analyze Performance of Your Ad Campaigns on Google Display Network"},{"content":"A couple of weeks ago, while spending a weekend at my country house, I fell ill. My head was aching terribly and my throat was sore.\nAs luck would have it, there wasn’t a single bottle of aspirin in the house.\nMy only option was to start browsing health-related websites looking for home remedies I might be able to use.\nWhile on these sites I started noticing a lot of health insurance banners. The odd thing was, some of them didn’t look like insurance banners at all.\nFor example, the banner text in this ad is clearly an insurance offer, but the image looks like an ad for a celebrity gossip site.\nAs I continued to see more ads like these, I started asking myself: why did the advertiser decide to go with this creative? Is it really effective?\nAfter nursing myself back to health it occurred to me that health insurance banners might be a good topic for an article.\nSo I rolled up my sleeves and studied over 100 banners related to health insurance. Here’s what I found\u0026hellip;\nSome Companies Offering Health Insurance Don’t Specify Whom Their Insurance Is For This point is tightly connected with personalization.\nA HubSpot survey says thatcalls-to-action targeted to the user had a 42% higher conversion rate than calls-to-action that were identical for all visitors.\nRegarding content marketing, DemandGen states thatleads who are nurtured with targeted content produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities.\nHealth insurance companies often don’t specify for whom their insurance is suitable—men/women, mature/young, etc.\n[For example, this banner looks like it doesn’t focus on any particular segment of an audience.]\nEven if the banner is good and has a clear message, it can always be improved to work even better.\nHere are some ideas of how I would improve this: 1. Segment your target audience into several categories and make separate banners for each\nAnalyze your incoming traffic and divide your audience into segments according to demographics, geographic location, and behavior.\nThen make individual banners for each of these segments.\nFor example, Health IQ, an American health insurance provider, divided its audience into several lifestyle segments and made separate banners for each.\nHere is their banner for cyclists:\nHere is their banner for weightlifters:\nAnd here is Health IQ’s banner for runners:\n2. Make a separate landing page for each segment\nThis initiative will take considerable time and some money, but the advantages that come with personalizing the appeal may be well worth the investment.\nOnce you segment your audience, you can make a separate landing page for each segment.\nFirst, optimize each landing page text for the specific target group.\nEach segment of consumers should see separate and relevant customer testimonials, statistics, headings, and CTAs.\nSecond, adapt the visual information appearing on the landing page, such as videos, images, and info graphics, to each consumer segment.\nUsing a similar color scheme for both the banner and the landing page helps strengthen their similarity and coherence.\nHealth IQ, for example, also created separate landing pages for each banner and audience segment.\nThis is where the banner for cyclists leads:\nThis is the landing page for the runner banner:\nBy improving messaging and focusing creatives and landing pages to call out to a target audience, campaign performance can be improved dramatically.\nCompetition is Fierce, Insurance Ads Need to Work Hard to Stand Out Health insurance advertisers spend a lot on advertising; that means their ads are often competing with other health insurance ads on the same page. So it’s critical they create ads that stand out.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s how one health insurance company, Cigna, found a way to stand out from the rest, by inviting celebrities who played doctors on television to take part in its advertising campaign.\n[I recognized Lisa Cuddy from House M.D. and Turk from Scrubs. Damn, how cool this banner looks!]\nCigna also used photos and videos featuring the celebrities on its landing page.\nDamn, they even lured Neil Patrick Harris, once known on TV as Dr. Doogie Howser, here. [Image Source: cigna.com]\nWithout knowing exact numbers, I think we can all agree this type of campaign is expensive.\nBut one thing I can say for sure—having popular celebrities appearing in ads like this offers a bunch of benefits for a health insurance company.\nFirst, the presence of a celebrity in ads greatly increases their visibility.\nAdvertisers hate the phenomenon of banner blindness. The eye-catching presence of a familiar celebrity may be a solution to this problem.\n“ People who are interested in a particular celebrity are assumed to purposefully direct their attention to this celebrity’s ad ,” confirms the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.\nSecond, the presence of a celebrity increases the ad’s credibility.\nNeil Patel believes that “ A testimonial from a powerful influencer can boost your trust and credibility .”\nCelebrities act as influencers.\nThird, ads with celebrities allow more accurate targeting.\nFor example, if you invited Larry King to participate in your ads, you\u0026rsquo;d be likely to attract the attention of a middle-aged audience.\nSimilarly, Bear Grylls\u0026rsquo; image will likely attract risk takers and people with an active lifestyle.\nSo if you can, consider using a celebrity in your ads. Sure it can be expensive, but it’s an excellent way to stand out from other health insurance companies.\nIf you decide to move forward you can use a service like Contact Any Celebrity or visit a celebrity\u0026rsquo;s website and send a letter with a commercial offer to the celebrity or their agent.\nConclusions Using better targeted ads and messaging that call out to a specific audience segment is good advice for any vertical or industry. So if you’re not doing that, or not doing it well, I encourage you to start doing so.\nUsing a celebrity can be trickier if you don’t have the budget. But you may be able to find a celebrity of smaller stature like a local celebrity or a recognizable person that’s specific to your audience and get them to participate for a lot less than you think.\nDo you have any other ideas for how advertisers from the health insurance industry can improve their banners? What are the principles for creating banners in your company? What advice would you give other advertisers?\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/health-insurance-banners/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA couple of weeks ago, while spending a weekend at my country house, I fell ill. My head was aching terribly and my throat was sore.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs luck would have it, there wasn’t a single bottle of aspirin in the house.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy only option was to start browsing health-related websites looking for home remedies I might be able to use.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile on these sites I started noticing a lot of health insurance banners.  The odd thing was, some of them didn’t look like insurance banners at all.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Can You Go Wrong with Health Insurance Banners? (These 2 Cases Prove You Can!)"},{"content":"Advertising on top-tier publishers like the New York Times or the Associated Press can be a mixed bag for advertisers. On the one hand, if your campaigns work, the amount of quality traffic these sites generate can make for some big wins. On the other hand, if your campaigns fail, the lost ad dollars can be hard to swallow.\nThese top-tier sites command higher advertising costs than most small advertisers are used to. For example, Forbes has their minimum display advertising budget set at$500. For Run-of-Site campaigns (where your ads can appear on any and all pages of their site) they want a $10 CPM. For more targeted campaigns (channel targeting or geo-targeting) you’ll have to cough up a $15 CPM.\nTo buy a single ad in the business section of LA Times, you needto spend as much as $1,080. Moreover, you’ll need to commit to 100,000 impressions over seven days—at a minimum.\nAt these prices, getting enough traffic and stats to accurately determine if your campaigns are working is going to be expensive. So much so, that a lot of smaller advertisers are going to be scared off.\nBut what if you could test these top tier publishers for less?\nIn this post, we’re going to explain how to do just that.\nThe Basic Concept Here’s the basic idea: since it costs too much to buy direct, we’re going to buy through an ad network and save some money.\nWhile this method won’t work for every publisher, it will work for a lot of them. That’s because the vast majority of these top-tier publishers serve a portion of the ads they show from ad networks.\nIf we’re able to buy our ads through an ad network we’ll be able to access almost the same inventory for less money. CPC bids on an ad network will be cheaper than going direct; and the minimum campaign budgets ad networks require is usually much lower.\nNow before we get started, there can be a couple of hiccups to this approach:\nFirst, ad networks typically only support standard banner sizes. (Think: 300x250, 336x280, etc.) That means you won’t be able to test more exotic formats like page-takeovers via an ad network. For that, you’d still need to go direct.\nYou should also keep in mind that ad network ads have lower priority when compared to Direct Buy ads. In other words, the publisher might only show ad network ads if they don’t have a direct buy contract. This can make it difficult for you to run a campaign at a specific time of day. If that time-slot is being taken-up by a direct buy advertiser, his ads get priority so your ads won’t get shown.\nFor most people neither of these are deal-breakers.\nGetting Started In this section we’ll cover two different ways to get started with this strategy.\nAs you read this, keep in mind: we’re using the Google Display Network in our example because it’s by far the most popular. However, you can use these same basic techniques with many other ad networks.\n1. Determine if the Publisher is Using the Google Display Network A simple way to check if the site is using Google display is to check the website itself. Any banners that are being run on Google display will have the Google Display Network badge in the corner.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s how this icon looks like. [Image Source: forbes.com]\nYou can also use Adbeat to see what ad networks the selected site partners with, and if Google Display is among them.\nCTA: Adbeat is a tool that allows you to find out what networks any website partners with. Moreover, Adbeat can show you whether your competitors use websites on which you decide to launch your ad campaigns. Try it for free now!\nLet\u0026rsquo;s imagine that we need to know what networks the Forbes website is working with.\nTo do this, we enter the word “forbes” in the search and open Adbeat publisher profile:\nImmediately after that, you will see a complete list of all the networks that partner with the Forbes website. Google Display is among them, bingo!\nThis means that you can run a test campaign on Forbes using the Google Display Network.\n2. Create a List of Related Sites If for whatever reason you aren’t able to run on the exact publisher site you want through an ad network (or aren’t able to get enough traffic for your test) you can try running on some related sites instead.\nIn order to find relevant sites for your ads, you can use different tactics.\nFirst, you can use a free tool calledGoogle Display Planner. It’s a great resource for generating ideas for ad placements and targeting settings.\nSecond, you can use your own campaign performance data.\nIf you have already used Google Display targeting options (interests, topics, keywords) for several weeks or months, you can check the placement report. It will show you relevant display domains and placements.\nAfter you’ve create your list of relevant sites, you can check how much traffic each of them receives usingAlexa Rank.\nTo do this, enter the name of the site in the Alexa search bar:\nLet’s check how popular the website of “The New York Times” is.\nOn the next page you will see its global traffic rank:\nThe smaller this number, the more traffic the selected site receives. The New York Times’ website is very popular.\nYou should check the Alexa Rank of every site you plan to test.\nIf a website ranks below 50,000, you can consider it a good candidate with a decent amount of traffic.\nRunning Your Campaign When it comes to setting up a test campaign, we recommend you use a $200-$500 budget and you try to get at least 200 clicks.\nIt also makes sense to run several test campaigns, testing one placement per campaign. This way, it will be easier to control the performance of each placement.\nAfter you’ve reached your budget, it’s time to analyze the results. For that, we recommend paying attention to some specific metrics:\nClick-Through Rate - A low CTR can indicate that the audience of a website isn’t a good fit or that your banners need improvement.\nAs a reference, the “US, Europe and Worldwide Display Ad Click-Through Rates Statistics Summary” says thatacross all ad formats and placements normal Ad CTR is 0.05%.\nCost Per Action - This is another important indicator you should keep an eye on. The appropriate CPA will, of course, vary greatly by industry. Wordstream published some stats for average CPAs that you might want to take a look at to make sure you’re in the ballpark for your industry.\nA high CPA can be a sign that the site’s traffic is just too expensive for the campaign you’re trying to run.\nConversion Rate - If you’re not sure how well your conversion rate aligns with your industry peers, this post lists the average Conversion Rate in Google Display for various industries.\nBounce Rate - Bounce rate statistics can be found by checking your Google Analytics data. For the most part, bounce rate shouldn’t be above 90%.\nAs Chris Boulas, an entrepreneur and marketing expert, says, \u0026quot; 70%-90% is typically normal for display campaigns that don\u0026rsquo;t use highly sophisticated targeting parameters.\u0026quot;\nFinal Thoughts Testing potential top tier publishers using ad network inventory is a great way to reduce a lot of the risk associated with expensive direct buys.\nIf you use the methods outlined above and carefully analyze the results, you should be able to get a pretty good feel for whether or not your campaign will be successful should you decide to take the plunge.\nDo you test popular sites through ad networks before buying ads directly? Do you know other ways to understand if it\u0026rsquo;s worth buying ads directly on popular sites? Drop us a note in the comments!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/direct-buy-ads/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAdvertising on top-tier publishers like the New York Times or the Associated Press can be a mixed bag for advertisers.  On the one hand, if your campaigns work, the amount of quality traffic these sites generate can make for some big wins.  On the other hand, if your campaigns fail, the lost ad dollars can be hard to swallow.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese top-tier sites command higher advertising costs than most small advertisers are used to.  For example, Forbes has their \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/selfserve/faq.html#cost\"\u003eminimum display advertising budget\u003c/a\u003e set at$500.   For Run-of-Site campaigns (where your ads can appear on any and all pages of their site) they want a $10 CPM. For more targeted campaigns (channel targeting or  geo-targeting) you’ll have to cough up a $15 CPM.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How To Test The Effectiveness Of Direct Buy Ads Before Signing 6-Figure Contracts"},{"content":"“Oh, no!” That\u0026rsquo;s probably every contractor\u0026rsquo;s reaction on realizing they\u0026rsquo;ve exceeded the client’s budget.\nFor an agency, mistakes like this can cost big money or spell the loss of an important client.\nFor an advertising specialist who overspends the budget, it can even result in losing a job.\nBut don\u0026rsquo;t despair. We’ve got you covered.\nIn this article, we\u0026rsquo;ll explain what to do and how to make sure it never happens again.\nWhat To Do When You\u0026rsquo;ve Overspent First, don\u0026rsquo;t panic! Stop the advertising campaign in which you went over-budget as soon as possible. Investigate. Figure out who made the error and what caused the problem. Try and identify some positives. For example, is the amount the budget was exceeded small relative the entire budget as a whole? Even though the budget was exceeded, did the client get more leads or engagement? Finding a silver lining will make things easier when it comes time to notifying your client. Notify the client as soon possible; preferably before they have a chance to discover the budget overrun themselves. When it comes time to notify your client, here’s a sample email you can use as a template:\n“I’m sorry to inform you that we’ve exceeded the monthly budget for AD NETWORK in October. The overrun amount is $X (we allocated $Y, but spent $Z). The moment the overrun was discovered, we immediately paused all AD NETWORK campaigns. These campaigns will remain on pause until the end of the month. What happened: A week ago we increased the CPC from $X to $Y. The change was small enough that we didn’t anticipate a large change in traffic. However, we ended up receiving a surge of traffic and that’s what caused the overrun to occur. The positive news is, the quality of the additional traffic was on par or better than the normal traffic we’ve been receiving. As a result, I’m pleased to report we’ve generated an additional X leads. The plan for next month:\nExclude all Audience Network and Audience Expansion campaigns. \u0026hellip; … I recommend we resume our AD NETWORK campaigns on the first of the month. In the meantime we’re honing our process to avoid more unpleasant surprises in the future. I understand how important it is to keep a tight rein on spending. We’ll continue to look into the situation and take measures to improve our ability to stay on track with the agreed upon budget. Regards, Your Name\nHandling a Negative Client Response The face your client makes when you overspend his/her budget\nIf your client demands a refund (it happens), here are some suggestion on how to handle it:\nFirst, try to direct their attention to any positive outcomes. For example, if you exceeded the advertising budget, but thanks to your mistake the client received more leads, you can tell your client that the money was not spent in vain. Oftentimes this can be enough to dissuade them from demanding a refund. Of course, if you didn’t generate more leads or conversions this isn’t really an option.\nSecond, if you have a long-term contract, offer to slightly reduce the budget for the next few months. Let\u0026rsquo;s say your annual advertising budget is $120,000.\nYou were allowed to spend $10,000 a month, and you spent $15,000.\nOffer to reduce the budget to $9,000 for the next five months, long enough to cover the budget overrun.\nThis measure may not work, because a client could rightly argue that he wants to spend exactly $10,000 a month. But in my experience, this usually works well.\nThird, offer the client some of your services for free. For example, offer free banner design or something of that nature.\nThis will lower your ROI for that client, but if it\u0026rsquo;s important to keep them as a client, it’s often worth it.\nHow to Prevent Overspending in the Future Once you’ve investigated the matter, you should already have some ideas on how to prevent the overruns from happening in the future.\nHere are some additional measures you can employ:\nSet campaign spending limits where possible (daily or monthly). Almost all self-service advertising networks allow you to set campaign spending limits on a daily or monthly level. This is your first line of defense for reining in spending. When in doubt, contact your ad network rep for help.\nMake sure the advertising specialist has an accurate idea of the budget The advertising specialist needs to knows exactly what budget he or she has to work with on a monthly, annual, weekly or daily basis.\nA client may say, \u0026ldquo;My budget is $3,000.\u0026rdquo; By default, it\u0026rsquo;s assumed this is a monthly budget, but it is important to clarify.\nIt is necessary to know precisely for what period and on what channels advertising should be distributed.\nIf anything remains unclear after a conversation with the client related to the budget or advertising channels, always ask again. This is essential.\nConfigure an alert system You can configure Google Analytics to send you notifications about budget overruns in the form of email or SMS. But this works only with Google AdWords.\nGoogle has quick instructions on how to do this but they can be hard to follow.\nHere’s a detailed step-by-step guide:\nGo toGoogle Analytics.\nSelect the appropriate account, property, and view.\nClick Customization and select Custom Alerts.\nClick Manage custom alerts and then + New alert.\nSet up the alert.\n- Name the alert\n- Select the view your alert is supposed to be applied to.\n- Select the period for which the alert will be generated ( Day, Week, Month).\nFor example, a daily (weekly, monthly) alert is based on daily (weekly, monthly) changes in traffic/behavior.\nGo to the Alert conditions section.\nThis applies to: select the dimension to which the alert applies.\nAlert me when: select the metric to which the alert applies, and the condition generating the alerts. Enter the value for the condition.\nHere we’ve created the alert that will notify us when PPC costs exceed 1000 in a day\nClick Save Alert. Also, be sure to turn on alerts in all of your advertising networks.\nOne common reason for budget overspending is that the expert forgets to turn on notifications in other networks besides AdWords.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s what an advertising specialist at one agency we talked to told us:\n\u0026ldquo;We exceeded the advertising budget twice. It happened because we didn’t take into account the fact that Google Analytics notifications do not work with LinkedIn ads. Because of this, the budget was exceeded twice, and we did not notice anything until it was too late.\u0026rdquo;\nThere is one method you can use to avoid going over-budget in all networks (not just in Google Analytics).\nTo begin, you need to know the average cost per click on your particular system. Let\u0026rsquo;s say it is $1.\nAlso, let’s imagine that our monthly budget is $3,000. Our daily budget then will be $100.\nSimple math suggests we should receive about 100 clicks per day.\nFrom that number, you can configure alerts for when traffic exceeds your target number. You will receive a notification if the number of daily clicks exceeds 100.\nSet up regular reporting Alerts may fail to notice small amounts of of over-budget spending. Therefore, over time you can gradually exceed the budget without detecting a problem.\nMake sure that you receive a report on the state of the advertising budget at least once a week.\nThat way, if the budget has been slightly exceeded for several days, you will be able to notice the trend toward overspending and take action.\nHere are instructions for setting up Google Analytics Custom Reports.\nReduce human error by improving your processes One reason for overspending is simple human error. It’s not too uncommon for even an experienced person to forget he raised a spending limit and accidently overspend a client’s budget.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s likely that if the agency had a clear, written procedure for what needs to be done when a campaign begins and when changes are made, this wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have happened. Introducing proper processes for employees to follow is a manager\u0026rsquo;s direct responsibility. Even if you’re a one-man shop, you should take the time to create processes.\nIf you don\u0026rsquo;t have them yet, create checklists for the process of launching and customizing campaigns .\nMake sure your advertising specialist always has the right checklist at hand and goes through it before the start of each new campaign.\nOf course, a checklist won\u0026rsquo;t help if you\u0026rsquo;re trying out a new traffic channel or a new ad network.\nIn this case, as a manager you should exercise tight control over the advertising budget for the first few days or weeks, and check the state of the budget daily.\nConclusion Exceeding your client\u0026rsquo;s budget is a big problem. For the agency as a whole, it can result in the loss of a client and important revenue. For the specialist who made the mistake, it can mean the loss of a job.\nWhatever the cause, it’s important to tackle the problem head-on and notify the client immediately. When it comes time to contact them, we recommend building upon the email template we included above.\nAnd finally, some quick takeaways for avoiding this problem in the future:\nConfigure campaign spending limits directly on the ad network. Most self-serve ad networks support some kind of campaign spending limits. While they’re not perfect, they do a pretty good job as a first line of defense. Configure an alert system. Set up Google Analytics to send you notifications about budget excesses in an email or SMS. Make sure that you turn on alerts in each of your networks, not just Google Adwords. Set up regular reporting. Alerts may fail to notice small overruns, so be sure to get a report on the state of the advertising budget and review it at least once a week. Make sure the advertising specialist has an accurate understanding of the budget. The specialist needs to know exactly how the budget is to be spend with regard to both time (weekly, monthly, annually) and on which advertising channel. Do your best to eliminate the human error. Create checklists for the process of launching and customising campaigns. Have you ever exceeded a client\u0026rsquo;s budget? How did this happen, and what did you do next? What measures did you put in place to prevent the problem from happening again?\nPlease share your story in the comments.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/clients-budget-is-overspent/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e“Oh, no!”\u003c/em\u003e That\u0026rsquo;s probably every contractor\u0026rsquo;s reaction on realizing they\u0026rsquo;ve exceeded the client’s budget.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor an agency, mistakes like this can cost big money or spell the loss of an important client.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor an advertising specialist who overspends the budget, it can even result in losing a job.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut don\u0026rsquo;t despair. We’ve got you covered.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this article, we\u0026rsquo;ll explain what to do and how to make sure it never happens again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What To Do If You’ve Overspent Your Client's Budget and How Not to Repeat It"},{"content":"“The report of my death was an exaggeration”\nMark Twain\nIn 2016, the amount of money spent on display advertising in the US surpassed what was spent on Search for the first time ever.\nIn 2017, spending on display in the US will hit $40.86 billion. But even with positive news like that, there are still a few problems display still hasn’t solved.\nIn this article, we’re going to discuss what I see as the three biggest problems that display is facing: banner blindness, ad-blocking extensions, and fraud.\nBanner Blindness pasted image 0 20\n[Image Source: thefirstbannerad.com]\nThe first banner ad ever was purchased by AT\u0026amp;T and ran on Hotwired.com back in 1994. Interestingly, about 44% of the people who saw the ad clicked on it. Nowadays, a 44% click-through rate (CTR) is practically unheard of.\nAccording to Smart Insights, the average ad click-through rate (CTR) across all ad formats and placements is just 0.05%.\npasted image 0 25\n[Image Source: smartinsights.com]\nThere are a lot of explanations for the low CTR of modern day banner ads. One factor is “banner blindness”. The term “banner blindness” refers to a phenomenon where website visitors consciously or subconsciously ignore banner ads.\nThe facts are sobering: 86% of consumers suffer from banner blindness and only 14% of users are able to recall the last display ad they saw.\nTo combat the problem, advertisers have attempted to create better placements. In one eye tracking study it was revealed that “Native ads—units delivered within core content areas—were seen 47% more quickly than banner ads in traditional locations on the same pages.”\nStatistics like that reveal why many advertisers are shifting spend to native advertising. User simply notice native ads more because native ad placements are located inside main content blocks of publisher sites. As a result, they also enjoy a higher CTR than standard display banners.\npasted image 0 22\n[Image Source: businessinsider.com]\nAdvertisers also created new ad types that are harder to miss. W elcome-page ads, for example, appear before the user is able to see the main website content. Forbes.com is a large publisher that uses this ad format liberally.\npasted image 0 23\n[Image Source: forbes.com]\nThere are also website-skin ads or page take-over ads that are designed to fill in the negative space on a publisher site with branded content.\npasted image 0 21\nThe frame around the main page is a website-skin ad\n[Image Source: imdb.com]\nBoth of these types of ads are more or less impossible to ignore and are just two examples of how the industry is taking action to solve the banner blindness problem.\nAdBlock is Strangling Publisher Revenue A recent report from PageFair says that AdBlock is now installed on615 million devices. A real and emerging threat to online advertising, in 2016 AdBlock usage grew by 30% globally.\nAccording to Juniper Research, digital publishers are going to suffer a loss of over $27 billion by 2020 due to AdBlock.\nRandall Rotenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), a business organisation that develops ad standards, says this about the situation with AdBlock:\n“I’m really not worried about whether advertising will be able to find its way through digital channels. I am concerned \u0026ndash; very, very concerned \u0026ndash; that costs of ads will go up and up and up from this unethical obstruction”.\nWith some publisher sites having so many ads they look like Times Square on a Saturday night, it’s no wonder ad blocking is continuing to grow.\npasted image\n[Image Source: wikipedia.org]\nCreating ads that are easier for users to tolerate is the name of the game right now. And that’s just what advertisers and the industry as a whole is working towards. We elaborate more on the topic of ad blocking extensions and how the industry is responding in our blog here.\nAd Fraud The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and WhiteOps recently released their third annual report dedicated to digital ad fraud. According to the report, lossesdue to bot fraud are estimated to reach $6.5 billion dollars in 2017.\nWhile this represents a 10% improvement over the previous year’s $7.2 billion dollar ad fraud loss, the amount is still staggering.\nHere are a few more alarming statistics on ad fraud:\nFor every $3 spent on digital ads, fraud takes $1 1 in 5 ad-serving websites are visited exclusively by fraud bots. The ad fraud botnet “Chameleon” costs advertisers over $6 million a month. Smartphone click fraud increased 102% from January – April 2017. In a 2015 Wall Street Journal article IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg said the following:\n“I’ve always believed that once we established a real compliance program with teeth across the industry, it [display ad fraud] can be contained relatively quickly. It’s in its early stages now.”\nTwo years later in a 2017 AdAge article on ad fraud he was more explicit: \u0026ldquo;We can\u0026rsquo;t deal with this shit anymore. This is serious.\u0026rdquo; said Rothenberg.\nThe above-mentioned report by the ANA suggests some action steps for the industry to fight fraud. Among them is joining the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), an organization whose goal is the elimination of fraudulent traffic. From the TAG website:\n“TAG works to combat the negative impact of fraudulent traffic by developing anti-fraud standards and protocols for all types of entities in the digital advertising supply chain.”\nIAB makes registration at TAG mandatory for all of its 650 members. This is a huge step forward for the industry as members of the Interactive Advertising Bureau account for 86% of online advertising in the United States.\nThe ANA is also demanding transparency for sourced traffic and for refusal to pay for non-human traffic to be written in media contracts.\nTakeaways Regardless of the problems we’ve outlined above, display advertising is still going strong. According to Statista, spending on display ads in the US is projected to be $46.7 billion dollars in 2019. In addition, Native ads are projected to continue to grow as advertisers move towards the higher engagement they’ve been shown to produce.\npasted image 0 24\n[Image Source: emarketer.com]\nWhat are your thoughts on the current state of display advertising? Are you planning on investing in a display ad campaign in the near future? Please tell us what you think about the current state of display advertising.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/display-ads/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“The report of my death was an exaggeration”\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMark Twain\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, the amount of money spent on display advertising in the US surpassed what was spent on Search for the first time ever.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2017, spending on display in the US will \u003ca href=\"http://www.mediamath.com/blog/emarketer-9-display-advertising-trends-for-2017/\"\u003ehit $40.86 billion\u003c/a\u003e.   But even with positive news like that, there are still a few problems display still hasn’t solved.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this article, we’re going to discuss what I see as the three biggest problems that display is facing: banner blindness, ad-blocking extensions, and fraud.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Three Things That Are Trying To Kill Display Ads And Just Can’t Do It!"},{"content":"If you’re on the agency side, this scenario has probably happened to you: a client suddenly stops answering your emails or they have abruptly broken off relations with your agency - sometimes without even giving a reason why.\nIf you’re a client, you rely on an ad agency to deliver professional service that gets results, but chances are you’ve had a bad experience with at least one agency before.\nIn this post, we’ve listed the most important things that agency clients hate. See if you agree with us or if we’re missing something that should be added to our list!\n1. Clients Hate When Agencies Don’t Send Regular Reports Sometimes agency employees have so much to do that they simply forget to notify a client of the project status. Huge mistake!\nWithout regular reports, the client may get the feeling that the agency has done nothing (even if that’s not the case).\nTherefore, it’s very important to assure your client that the work is not standing still, and the agency hasn’t forgotten about it.\nHow to avoid this:\nMake sure that your weekly task plan includes something like \u0026ldquo;Send a report to the client.\u0026quot; Or, you can simply put a reminder on the calendar. pasted image 0 14\nYou can also use our template for reports:\npasted image 0 15\n2. Clients Hate When Agencies Don’t Offer New Ideas Clients hate when they have to constantly push the agency into action, especially when the agency doesn’t propose any new steps or ideas.\nThe client understands that the agency has experience that the client may not have. That’s why they are paying for your services, and they’re expecting you to bring that experience to use on their accounts.\nHow to avoid this:\nYour goal is to offer the client some fresh ideas.\nInclude in regular reports some reasonable and interesting solutions that you can offer your client. You can think about what worked well for your past clients and offer using it for your current client (new traffic channels, new publishers, etc.).\nFor instance, we tested PPC advertising in Quora for one of our clients. It went amazingly well. The client has a very niche software product, and every bit of quality traffic is invaluable for her. When later a different client was in need of new marketing ideas to increase the reach, we suggested Quora ads based on this past experience.\nIf it’s difficult to come up with new ideas for display advertising, try using Adbeat.\nNote: Adbeat is a tool that helps you find out everything about the display campaigns of your competitors. You can see how much money any company spends on advertising, which publishers they use, and more. Try Adbeat for free right now !\nDon’t be afraid that the client may not agree with your ideas. Even if the client rejects them, they will appreciate that you had something to offer.\n3. Clients Hate When Agencies Forget About Important Details Of The Project It may happen that during a conversation your client asked you for something or you agreed upon something, and then it was simply put on the backburner and forgotten.\nPart of why a client is pays an agency is to make sure nothing falls through the cracks, so attention to detail is going to be expected.\nEven if the client asked for a simple change in one banner or one word in ads, and you forgot about it, the client can easily become dissatisfied.\nHow to avoid this:\nSend meeting notes to your client. They will help make sure that you didn’t miss any important details during the conversation. List the main points of the conversation in these notes. Specify whether you understand everything correctly and ask whether there is something in the list that you have forgotten about.\npasted image 0 16\nThis is how your meeting notes may look like. [Image Source: templates.office.com]\nHere you can find more templates for meeting minutes.\nFor more general points (i.e., overall budget, ad networks), we advise you to update a client’s brief more often. Be sure to include in this file all of your client’s concerns. For example, an increase in the budget for advertising (input exact figures there).\nHere you can find a template of a brief (it will be especially useful for agencies engaged in PPC).\nA brief will help you remember not just the random small details, but also things that are big picture and always important.\n4. Clients Hate When Agencies Don’t Admit Mistakes Clients hate when some troubles occur (for example, when the budget is exceeded), and the agency does not report on this or does not admit that something bad has happened.\nThe client will usually sooner or later find out as well as come to a decision that the agency is dishonest or unwilling to admit mistakes, and therefore can’t be trusted.\nHow to avoid this: You need to understand that anything can happen, mistakes occur, and this is quite normal. In any case, telling the bitter truth is better than not telling the customer anything at all.\nSend an email or slack message to your client. Admit your mistake, explain its cause, apologize, and tell a client what measures you took to ensure that the error does not happen again. We wrote an entire article about what to do if you exceed a client\u0026rsquo;s budget. In the article, you can find tips on what to say to your client and examples of how to write a letter with explanations.\n5. Clients Hate When Agencies Do Not Keep Promises Sometimes sales reps can promise too much to clients wishing to close more deals. This might also be done because the person doing the selling doesn’t understand how feasible it is to hit a specific goal or result.\nThat’s why account specialists who work directly on the client account can not always fulfill the promises that the salesperson gave to the client.\nFor example, a salesperson promises a prospect 150 leads monthly to get a contract signed. The potential client is delighted. He smiles imagining how his revenue is on track to triple soon.\nBut in the end, this client may get only ten leads a month of questionable quality because the product is quite niche or there’s no real demand for it.\nIf this promise of 150 leads per month was run by a marketing specialist first, together they would have been able to provide a more realistic forecast and avoid having unmet expectations later.\nHow to avoid this:\nDuring the sales process, honestly tell the client what you can do for him and be upfront about what you can\u0026rsquo;t do or can’t promise. This is also a good way to check the sophistication the client and his or her ability to understand the reality of achieving results with advertising. Make sure that besides a salesperson, a specialist who implements campaigns is present during key conversations with the client. Educate your sales people so that they have enough information about running an ad account to be able to sell without over promising. For example, you may choose to make this a rule - if your salesperson wants to promise something to the client, he must first confirm with someone from account management (or PPC department, etc.), and ask if his promise is reasonable.\n6. Clients Hate When Agencies Need \u0026ldquo;Hand-Holding\u0026rdquo; Clients hate when they have to re-work something after the agency did something. For example, when the end result is full of some small and annoying mistakes (i.e., the agency designed banners, but the copy contains typos, so the client has to make changes on their own in order to go live under a tight deadline).\nHow to avoid this:\nAt the beginning of the relationship, get as many details as possible about the standards of quality required by the client. For example, ask if the client has a corporate style guide for banner design. Also, implement checklists to make sure every detail is performed in a way that meets the client expectation. pasted image 0 12\nMake sure that every specialist who works on the account always follows a checklist suitable for various aspects of their responsibilities.\n7. Clients Hate When Agencies Lack Industry Expertise Industry expertise can be a big factor for whether the agency and the client will be able to speak on equal terms.\nIt’s very important to the client that the agency understands the metrics that are important to him or her, and that they understand what is important to companies from the client industry.\nAgency specialists don’t have to be pros in the client\u0026rsquo;s industry, but they have to be informed so as not to make stupid mistakes (for example, confusing astronomy and astrology).\nHow to avoid this:\nStudy the client\u0026rsquo;s industry and product (for example, read some authoritative resources related to this industry).\nGet expertise from those who have it . Ask your client for a consultation/interview to gather data and understanding. Communicating this way with a client is a great way to quickly get up to speed on the industry.\nStudy client\u0026rsquo;s target audience/buyer persona. Help them develop this if they can’t clearly describe it up front.\n8. Clients Hate When Agencies Do Not Care Enough About Security Since the client trusts the agency with his passwords and money, he wants to be reassured about the security of this data.\nYou need to show the client in every possible way that you are conscious about security, have processes in place, and that you will never risk a breach.\nHow to avoid this:\nMake sure that all agency specialists have signed a non-disclosure agreement, and inform the client about this. Make sure that the agency staff does not upload any data to the public. Take note that this can happen not only intentionally, but accidentally as well. For example, some specialists may not know that if they use Lightshot - a tool for taking screenshots - and press the wrong button, their screenshot becomes available for the entire Internet.\npasted image 0 13\nUse reliable password security software. For example, LastPass. Discuss with the client in advance whether the agency can use the name of client\u0026rsquo;s company in some agency\u0026rsquo;s promo materials, case studies, etc. 9. Clients Hate When Agencies Do Not Meet Deadlines This is probably one of the most common and relevant problems for many agencies. Each agency should have its own approach of how to manage to do the work on time.\nHow to avoid this:\nImprove planning. Namely, always remember that the estimated time and the duration are often very different. Be aware of dependencies and bottlenecks in your workflow and take these into account. For example, estimated time for doing a particular task may be eight hours, but in fact, the task will be completed in more like 1 week, because you will likely end up waiting for approvals, and so forth.\nFinal Thoughts No agency wants to lose clients and no client wants to have a bad experience with the agency that they hire. This post covered points in the agency/client relationship that we’ve found most commonly to cause a break down.\nAs an agency, what do you do to ensure that the client is always satisfied? Do you have each of the above points covered?\nAs client, have you ever had situations when an agency didn’t deliver on one of the points above or for some other reason?\nShare your story in the comments!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/things-ad-agency-client-hates/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you’re on the agency side, this scenario has probably happened to you: a client suddenly stops answering your emails or they have abruptly broken off relations with your agency - sometimes without even giving a reason why.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you’re a client, you rely on an ad agency to deliver professional service that gets results, but chances are you’ve had a bad experience with at least one agency before.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this post, we’ve listed the most important things that agency clients hate. See if you agree with us or if we’re missing something that should be added to our list!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"9 Things Every Ad Agency Client Hates and How to Avoid Them [Infographic]"},{"content":"Men’s underwear is a billion dollar industry, and it\u0026rsquo;s on track to grow even bigger.A recent Men’s Underwear Market Report predicts that “increasing numbers of metrosexual men in the U.S. [are] anticipated to fuel revenue growth of the boxer shorts segment during the period 2016-2026.” With so much market growth on the horizon, we decided to do a deep-dive into how Mack Weldon, a popular men’s underwear maker, runs its display campaigns. Last year, Mack Weldon made the news when they reportedly doubled underwear sales through podcast advertising. This kind of marketing savvy makes them the perfect candidate for a post like this.Here are our observations\u0026hellip;.\nDon’t be Afraid to Go Native Unlike a lot of other retailers, Mack Weldon focuses mainly on native advertising.They’re definitely ahead of the curve.\n“Native ads used to be used exclusively by digital publishers. E-commerce sites have only recently begun taking advantage of them , but some online stores rely on them more than any other platform,” states Ryan Kh, a digital marketing expert.\nAccording to data from Adbeat, Mack Weldon has spent $7.9M on display ads over the past six months.\nAdbeat is a tool that helps you find out everything about the display campaigns of your competitors. You can see how much money any company spends on advertising, which publishers it uses, and so forth. Try Adbeat for free right now !\nWhile what they’re spending is impressive, it’s where they’re spending that is most interesting. The top two networks they’re spending on are: Taboola and Outbrain.Taboola and Outbrain are the guys that make those \u0026ldquo;sponsored content\u0026rdquo; and “recommended” widgets that you see on many websites.Another thing to pay attention to is the gap between spending on Taboola and Google Display. Mack Weldon is betting big on native advertising and judging by their sustained spend on these networks, it’s working well for them.By contrast, Tommy John, Mack Weldon\u0026rsquo;s direct competitor, doesn’t seem to be doing much display at all. Adbeat shows only very small spends on Google and Taboola.Jockey, another competitor seems to focus most of their ad spend on direct buys.It’s tough to say why neither competitor is using much native advertising as part of their display strategy. There definitely seems to be some opportunity here. In fact, Mack Weldon recently began working more closely with Taboola to scale their native advertising even more.\nWhen it Comes to Banners, Use Product Images That Appeal to the Most People Mack Weldon sells four types of underwear on their website: briefs, trunks, boxers and boxer briefs.\n[Image Source: mackweldon.com]\nYet, they only advertise two types of underwear in their banners: trunks and boxer briefs.A Huffington Post/Ask Men underwear survey helps us understand why: boxer briefs are the most popular type of men’s underwear.\n[Image Source: huffingtonpost.com]\nSo what can we learn from this?If you have a lot of products, use an image of the most popular and mainstream of them in your ads; those that most people prefer.It pays to keep in mind that display advertising itself is being viewed by a large number of people. You’re banners need to appeal to as many potential buyers as possible to give you the best shot at success.\nMake Your Landing Page Inform First, Sell Second Taboola has a good post on landing page best practices where they recommend your page should “inform first, sell second”. Mack Weldon’s landing page does just that. Like most landing pages designed to receive traffic from content discovery networks, it’s formatted as an article that lists the advantages of the company\u0026rsquo;s underwear. After teaching users about the thought and quality that goes into every piece, they follow up with some impressive stats to build trust, like: “With over 1.5 million shipped and less than 2% returned – they did something right.”\n[Image Source: mackweldon.com]\nOne of the most distinctive features of this landing page is that it doesn’t attempt to sell anything; at least, not directly. Instead the purpose of the page is to smoothly lead the user to the next page where goods are offered for sale. Notice, the CTA button is located at the bottom of the page (just as the Taboola article recommends).\n[Image Source: mackweldon.com]\nNeil Patel would approve. He believes that users prefer to learn about the offer before clicking on the CTA. “Make sure your visitors know what they are getting before you present them with a call to action,” says Patel.For comparison, here\u0026rsquo;s what you see as soon as you visit Tommy John’s landing page.\n[Image Source: tommyjohn.com]\nAnd as for Nike, they literally drop you into their online store product listings and prices.\n[Image Source: store.nike.com]\nFrom a design point of view, Mack Weldon’s page is minimalistic. Black text is clearly visible on a light background, and the blocks of text are arranged sequentially one after the other. This makes it pleasant for the reader and removes the element of “congestion” that is inherent in the pages of some other companies.\nConclusions Statistics say that the U.S. men’s underwear market is expected to reach nearly $6B by 2026. From what we can see, Mack Weldon is the dominant display advertiser in the space and they’re doing a few key things to stay on top.Here are a few lessons from their campaigns that you can apply to your own:-Try to use native ads even if this type of ad is not typical of your industry.-Use images of your most mass-oriented products in banners, because display advertising is focused on a very wide audience.-Make your landing page inform first and sell second.Do you have any interesting or unusual observations regarding display ads? Have you had any good or bad experiences with native advertising?Please, share your opinion in the comments.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/secrets-of-mack-weldons-display-campaigns/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMen’s underwear is a billion dollar industry, and it\u0026rsquo;s on track to grow even bigger.A recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.reportlinker.com/p04665949/Men-s-Underwear-Market-Increasing-Number-of-Metrosexual-Men-in-the-U-S-Anticipated-to-Fuel-Revenue-Growth-of-the-Boxer-Shorts-Segment-During-the-Forecast-Period-U-S-Industry-Analysis-and-Opportunity-Assessment.html\"\u003eMen’s Underwear Market Report\u003c/a\u003e predicts that \u003cem\u003e“increasing numbers of metrosexual men in the U.S. [are] anticipated to fuel revenue growth of the boxer shorts segment during the period 2016-2026.”\u003c/em\u003e With so much market growth on the horizon, we decided to do a deep-dive into how Mack Weldon, \u003ca href=\"http://observer.com/2017/06/mack-weldon-ceo-brian-berger/\"\u003ea popular men’s underwear maker\u003c/a\u003e, runs its display campaigns.  Last year, Mack Weldon made the news when they reportedly \u003ca href=\"https://digiday.com/marketing/mack-weldon-doubles-underwear-sales-podcast-advertising/\"\u003edoubled underwear sales through podcast advertising\u003c/a\u003e.  This kind of marketing savvy makes them the perfect candidate for a post like this.Here are our observations\u0026hellip;.\u003cimg alt=\"Mack Weldon\u0026rsquo;s Display Campaigns\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Screenshot_2.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"3 Secrets of Mack Weldon's Display Campaigns That All Apparel Advertisers Should Know"},{"content":"What would you do if you had to immediately run a display ad campaign?\nYou know what your specific budget is; it’s also likely that you know which ad networks or publishers you intend on using to distribute your ads.\nAmong other things, you\u0026rsquo;ll need to assign the task of banner ad creation to your web designer.\nTo do this, you will have to choose the sizes of these banners.\nThis is an important decision because different sizes have different Impression Shares and fit into a diverse number of ad networks.\nImpression shares influence how many people will see your banner and determines the effectiveness of its advertising potential.\nKnowing this, how do you swiftly choose what size banner to use so that you receive positive results quickly and don\u0026rsquo;t lose money in the process?\nUsing Adbeat software and Excel, we performed the research and figured out which banner sizes work better.\nAdbeat is a tool that allows you to monitor advertisers and study their display campaigns in detail. With its help, you can find a wealth of useful information about your competitors’ ads. Try it for free right now .\nWe analyzed more than 40,000 banners with a total budget of over 6 billion dollars. We looked at advertisers with an estimated spend of at least $3000 on each of these banners over the last two years.\n4000 banners of each popular banner size and a smaller number of other not-so-popular sizes were included in the analysis.\nWe learned what size banners have the largest Impression Shares and what size banners are most suitable for use on the largest number of advertising networks.\nMoreover, we learned what size banners advertisers consider the most effective.\nNext, we considered how much spend advertisers were able to achieve on specific sizes, and how many days on average each size ran.\nAfter this, we chose the most effective sizes relying on the comparison of parameters such as days seen and ad spending.\nThree different categories of advertisers were considered: those with an estimated spend of $3,000 to $20,000, those with a spend in the range of $20,000 to $100,000, andthose with a spend of more than $100,000.\nAfter categorizing the advertisers, we looked at each category and looked at how this spend was allocated across all banner sizes.\nIn this article, utilizing our research, we will provide a number of tips for choosing the most effective banner sizes to quickly start a display ad campaign.\nUse These Must-Have Banner Sizes Before we delve deep into the analysis of banner size, we can say that two sizes are unsurpassed when quickly starting a successful display ad campaign.\nAdbeat and Google statistics confirm this.\nThese sizes are 300x250 and 728x90.\n[300x250 banner example]\n[Typical 728x90 banner]\nTo begin, Google says that these banner sizes have the largest Impression Share:\n[Source: ppc.news]\nThis means that many publishers are currently ready to place banners of this size, and as a result, there are more places available for consumers to see your ads.\nHere is another article where Google states that, if positioned well, these “ a d sizes can increase your earnings significant ly.\u0026quot;\nAccording to our data, in the last two years, banner sizes 300x250 and 728x90 were used for an average of 167 and 158 days respectively.\nThe data imply that these ads are effective and advertisers continue to use them.\nWe took all banner sizes for two years and found out for how many days on average these banners were used.\nUsing Excel, we relied on such parameters as Days Seen on average and Size.\n[This shows how many days on average advertisers used banners of different sizes over the past two years. We see that sizes 300x250 and 728x90 ran for a long period of time .]\nThus, sizes 300x250 and 728x90 are a must-have for any advertiser who wants to run a display campaign as quickly as possible and wants to start with the most effective sizes possible with high reach.\nExperiment With Different Banner Sizes Within Your Budget Another element can help you with quickly choosing an appropriate banner size—your advertising campaign budget.\nFirst, we analyzed ads of those advertisers who had an ad spend from $3,000 to $20,000.\nSecond, we reviewed all ads of those advertisers who had an ad spend from $20,000 to $100,000.\nFinally, we studied the most high-budget ads, namely the banners of those who had an ad spend of more than $100,000.\nWe only looked at what sizes of banners are used more in each of these three categories.\nOf course, companies from the “richest” category may unconsciously spend a large budget on these sizes.\nFor example, a network has more sites with certain banner sizes. So it simply allocates more of advertisers’ budgets for these sizes.\nThus, advertisers themselves may not have the opportunity, or intention, to distribute the budget between different banner sizes.\nThese are our results:\nAdvertisers with $3K-$20K budgets spend it mostly on sizes such as 336x280, 250x250, and 480x60. [$3K - $20K ad spend]\nOn the left are the banner sizes. They are located from top to bottom in order of decreasing popularity. Each bar indicates (in thousands) the average amount of money that advertisers from this category spend on banners of that size.\nAdvertisers with budgets from $20K-$100K spend it mostly on sizes such as 336x280, 160x600, and 250x250. [$20K - $100K ad spend]\nAdvertisers who spend more than $100K spend it mostly on sizes 300x250, 300x600, and 728x90. [$100K+ ad spend]\nSo what advice can we give based on these results?\nThe first piece of advice is rather simple and straightforward. If you want to have the potential to scale up your campaigns to higher ad spends, then there are only certain banner sizes that have the potential to get you there.\nThese are the banners with the most publisher inventory available, and where your campaign will get the most reach. Sizes such as 300x250, 300x600, 336x280, 728x90, 160x600, 468x60, 125x125, and 250x250 are popular sizes on desktop.\nFor mobile, 300x100, 300x50, and 320x50 are good choices for scale.\nFinally, if you want your creative assets to work across many different networks there are certain sizes that are best for that as well.\nUse Banner Sizes That Fit Multiple Networks Another approach to choosing the size of a banner is its convenience.\nAfter all, if you choose a banner that fits many ad networks, you can use it in a large-scale display campaign without having to re-do it every time.\nFor your convenience and saving time, we created two charts with banner sizes that are suitable for many networks.\nThe charts can assist you with choosing a banner that will be universal, and that will not need to be redone for every individual ad network.\nThe first chart shows the banner sizes that fit most ad networks:\n[Across the bottom, we noted the size of the banner. On the left is the number of networks that fit this size.]\nYou will note that sizes 160x600, 728x90 and 300x250 are the most convenient for usage.\nIn the second chart we showed what ad networks fit these sizes of banners:\n[Across the top are the sizes of the banners, and on the left are advertising networks. Choose one of the three sizes of banners and see which networks fit it better.]\nIf you instruct your web designer to utilize these sizes, you will be able to quickly use banners with these formats in almost 30 networks without needing any rework. These 3 sizes are a great place to start, then build out other sizes for testing depending on how the campaign is performing with these core sizes.\nWhat About Native Ads? An attentive reader may have noticed that we didn\u0026rsquo;t use native ads in our research and had not even mentioned it in the article yet.\nThe rise of native advertising formats is undeniable. According to Business Insider, native advertisements are on track to rise up to 74% of total US display ad revenue.\n[Source: businessinsider.com]\nMost native ad formats are responsive with text copy and an image provided, so size is not the most important metric when it comes to native advertising. These ads display on each page differently, depending on the layout and widgets, so we didn\u0026rsquo;t focus on their sizes.\nFor instance, Native Ad Express, an AdMob built-in interface (for the time being), offered several template sizes with a range of height and width values rather than making users choose a fixed size.\nThis is why we did not include native ads in the research that was done for this article.\nConclusions When you\u0026rsquo;re first planning out the launch of a new display ad campaign, there\u0026rsquo;s a lot of decisions to make.\nIn addition to such things as determining the budget or choosing a strategy, you\u0026rsquo;ll need to decide which banner sizes to use for your display campaign.\nTo start with the highest chances for success and to begin as quickly as possible, there are some banner sizes that are better than others.\nAfter analyzing the data from Adbeat, here\u0026rsquo;s what we can advise you to do when in need of quickly starting a display ad campaign:\nDon\u0026rsquo;t forget to use banner sizes 300x250, 728x90, and 160x600. They are a must-have since they work great on many ad networks and you will not have to repeatedly redesign the banner for each new ad network. Experiment with different banner sizes only after getting some data on the sizes listed above. If you\u0026rsquo;re getting good results already, and you have an additional budget to spend now is the time to increase scale with additional sizes. Don’t start out with dozens of sizes, especially if you have a limited budget. Most of the sizes are unlikely to work well and you might run out of a budget that could have been spent first on more effective ad formats. How have you handled choosing banner sizes to kick off a display ad campaign previously?\nHave you noticed that some sizes work better or worse?\nWhat advice would you give to those who need to quickly decide on the size of their ad banner?\nPlease, share your experience in the comments!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/banner-sizes/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat would you do if you had to immediately run a display ad campaign?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou know what your specific budget is; it’s also likely that you know which ad networks or publishers you intend on using to distribute your ads.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmong other things, you\u0026rsquo;ll need to assign the task of banner ad creation to your web designer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo do this, you will have to choose the sizes of these banners.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Must-Have Banner Sizes for a Quick Start of a Display Campaign (Based On 40K+ Banner Analysis)"},{"content":"Quick: What\u0026rsquo;s the most annoying display ad you\u0026rsquo;ve seen recently?\nWas it an auto-play video? A page take-over? An interstitial that forced you to wait 20 seconds before you could see the content you came for? Take your pick\u0026hellip; it\u0026rsquo;s easy to find dozens of examples.\n[Image Source: flickr. com]\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re constantly annoyed by these intrusive ads, you\u0026rsquo;re not alone. These types of experiences have been driving the growth of ad blocking for quite a while now. Even unsophisticated users have discovered that by taking 1 minute to install a browser extension, they can wave goodbye to display ads for good.\nThis is obviously an issue for both advertisers and publishers as it deprives them of both audience and revenue \u0026ndash; and it hasn\u0026rsquo;t gone unnoticed. There\u0026rsquo;s now a constant buzz in digital media circles about ad-blockers posing a bigger and bigger threat to digital advertising every year.\nThe fact is, by the end of 2017 some 30% of users are expected to be using these tools to screen out ads. That means that nearly one in three users will never see display ads, under any circumstances. Just How Big is the Ad Blocking Threat? AdBlock (created by Henrik Aasted Sorensen) was the first ad-blocking browser extension that went viral. When it was first released, it was pretty basic. It would simply hide ads from appearing in a user\u0026rsquo;s browser. That\u0026rsquo;s it.\nYet even with that simple functionality, Sorensen and his creation are likely responsible for disrupting publishers from earning millions of dollars in revenue. Curiously, Sorensen himself didn\u0026rsquo;t make a dime from AdBlock. Instead, he distributed the code free-of-charge.\nIn 2006, Wladimir Palant (future founder of AdBlock Plus), picked up the code and rewrote it. When he was finished, the software didn\u0026rsquo;t simply hide ads from being seen; now ads wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be downloaded to the browser at all. That\u0026rsquo;s how AdBlock Plus was created, and Palant still works in the company as CTO.\nAccording to a 2017 report by PageFair, AdBlock is now installed on 615 million devices. Clearly, the large number of installs proves that it\u0026rsquo;s a real and emerging threat to online advertising. And if that\u0026rsquo;s not enough for you, stats from as recent as 2016 indicate that AdBlock usage is growing at 30% globally every year.\nAccording to Juniper Research, unless something drastically changes, digital publishers are going to suffer losses of $27 billion by 2020.\nAs if colossal potential losses on the horizon weren\u0026rsquo;t enough, there\u0026rsquo;s an additional wrinkle to contend with: Google has announced they\u0026rsquo;ll be adding their own ad block functionality to Chrome.\nGoogle\u0026rsquo;s Ad Blocking Play Google has recently started a few initiatives that we should talk about. First, Google confirmed an ad blocker will be added to Google Chrome in the first months of 2018. They also joined the Coalition for Better Ads, a group dedicated to improving online ads. And finally, they issued the Better Ads Standards guidelines to make online ads less intrusive/disruptive. Essentially, it\u0026rsquo;s a \u0026ldquo;best practices\u0026rdquo; to reduce bad user experience from ad formats that have just gotten out of hand.\nBut wait just a minute. How can adding a built-in ad blocking extension to Chrome (the world\u0026rsquo;s most popular browser) be a good thing? To find out we turned to Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce at Google, who wrote: \u0026ldquo;Online ads should be compelling, useful, and engaging—ones that people actually want to see and interact with.”\nHe also posted this on his blog:\n“Chrome has always focused on giving you the best possible experience browsing the web. We believe these changes will ensure all content creators, big and small, can continue to have a sustainable way to fund their work with online advertising.”\nSo I guess we can sum up Google\u0026rsquo;s position like this: Google recognizes that there are a lot of unsavory players and intrusive ad formats giving digital advertising a bad name. It makes sense to embrace some kind of ad blocking to thwart the bad players and encourage the industry to use ad formats that don\u0026rsquo;t create a bad user experience.\nBut, What Do Users Really Think About Online Ads? To find our answer, we turned to research conducted by two well-respected companies: PageFair(IAB with C3Research), and Hubspot (with AdBlock Plus involved).\nPageFair has a technology for reinserting display ads (replacing non-formatted display ads with the ones that would be whitelisted by AdBlock Plus) and has the expertise to draw solid conclusions from the data in its statistical reports.\nHubspot, is known for exceptional insights in its surveys. For this particular research, they partnered up with AdBlock Plus, the biggest ad blocking company to date.\nYou may be tempted to assume that users would have close to zero tolerance for online advertising, but you\u0026rsquo;d be wrong\nTo begin with, take a look at the reasons people gave for installing ad-blocking software in the first place\u0026hellip;\n[Image Source: hubspot.com]\nSure, the top two reasons are what you might expect: People think ads are annoying and ads are disruptive. But when you look at 3rd and 4th place, things get more interesting. 39% of respondents cite security concerns about viruses and malware. 36% cite concerns about ads increasing page load time and interfering with bandwidth/performance.\nThe good news is, users didn\u0026rsquo;t reject online advertising completely. They realize that advertising is the source of income that keeps their favorite websites operating; so, they’re open to at least some ads.\nIn fact, 68% of Hubspot survey respondents said they were fine with seeing ads, as long as they weren’t annoying. As for ad tolerance, according to PageFair, static banner ads are the most acceptable form of online advertising. Scoring at the very bottom of ads users are willing to tolerate were non-skippable video ads. Native advertising fell right in the middle, which may help explain the continued growth and effectiveness of native ad formats.\nYou are able to let this majority of internet users see your display ads. If you don\u0026rsquo;t have a clue how, to begin with it, start with monitoring what your competitors do. Adbeat is a tool that allows you to monitor advertisers and study the details of their display campaigns. Try it for free right now .\nSo, Is Beating AdBlock Even Possible? It\u0026rsquo;s an uphill battle, but we’ve come up with several approaches that may help.\nFind a Loophole\nCertain technologies allow bypassing ad-blocking extensions. The most notable are PageFair and SourcePoint. PageFair’s technology serves ads in a way that limits an ad blocker’s effectiveness. One of the ways it does this is by automatically rendering ads according to Better Ads Standards guidelines and re-inserting them.\nWhile this is a viable option for websites that want to keep ads visible to as much of their audience as possible, it’s not a silver bullet. If a user turns off all of the ads with AdBlock Plus even PageFair ads won’t make it through. As of this writing, one out of four AdBlock Plus users have the software set to block out all ads. So even on a good day, only about 75% of AdBlock Plus users would see ads processed by PageFair.\nIf You Can\u0026rsquo;t Beat \u0026rsquo;em, Join \u0026rsquo;em\nYou can always pay to play. Eyeo, the company that owns Adblock Plus, charges huge companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft for including their ads on a list of so-called \u0026ldquo;Acceptable Ads\u0026rdquo;.\nThe creator of the original code believes that whitelisting techniques have \u0026ldquo;a fine line to walk\u0026rdquo;. AdBlock Plus doesn’t take money from small websites to be included in those whitelists. It charges only major players, but the earnings from those major players reportedly reach into the millions of dollars.\nThere may be a chance you can find placements for your ads on whitelisted websites. It also wouldn’t hurt to double check that the publisher sites you’re planning on running on are included in the Acceptable Ads program. These publishers would offer the most chance for users to see your ads, even if they did have AdBlock Plus turned on.\nThe Real Solution? Go Mobile! AdBlock Plus may be popular with desktop users, but can the same be said for mobile users?\nTake a look at this report from PageFair:\n“Mobile AdBlock usage grew by 108 million to reach 380 million device s. Desktop AdBlock usage grew by 34 million to reach 236 million devices. AdBlock usage is now mainstream across all ages.”\nAt first glance, PageFair’s report doesn’t seem to offer us much hope. However, things get interesting when you dig deeper. Take a look at this:\n[Image Source: pagefair.com]\nNotice anything interesting? The chart shows that the vast majority of mobile users who are using ad block technology are from China and India. This makes perfect sense if you also know that the UC browser (with built-in ad blocker) is immensely popular in China and India. The UC browser is actually installed by default on many of the devices manufactured for Asian users.\nThe good news is: there are only 52 million mobile devices with AdBlock in the United States (out of an estimated 224.3 million total in 2017); and the growth of AdBlock usage is almost nonexistent (less than 1% year).\nLooking at the stats and speed of mobile ad-blocking growth, it\u0026rsquo;s likely that it\u0026rsquo;ll be quite some time before ad blocking becomes as problematic for mobile advertisers as it currently is now for desktop advertisers. So it\u0026rsquo;s safe to say, there are still a lot of opportunities when it comes to mobile display in countries outside of Asia.\nTakeaways While there\u0026rsquo;s no universal way of beating ad blocking software entirely, here\u0026rsquo;s what advertisers and publishers can do right now so it has less of an impact:\nAs a publisher, use PageFair or SourcePoint software to reinsert the non-formatted ads so they\u0026rsquo;re visible to more users. As a publisher, apply for the Accepted Ads program. As an advertiser, make sure your ads are running on sites that are included in the Accepted Ads program. As an advertiser, focus more resources on mobile advertising. Compared to desktop ads, mobile ads are far less likely to be blocked. For now, the industry will be watching closely to see how the Google-led initiatives end up working. Once the new Chrome with ad block is rolled out, and the most intrusive ad formats are blocked by default, users may not feel the need to install additional more aggressive 3rd party ad blocking extensions. That will be a good thing for the industry as a whole. And ultimately it will be good for users; publishers will stop hemorrhaging revenue and be able to keep publishing high-quality content that users have come to expect.\nDo you have an opinion or tips on dealing with ad blockers? Please drop us a comment!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-to-get-over-adblock/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQuick: What\u0026rsquo;s the most annoying display ad you\u0026rsquo;ve seen recently?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWas it an auto-play video? A page take-over? An interstitial that forced you to wait 20 seconds before you could see the content you came for? Take your pick\u0026hellip; it\u0026rsquo;s easy to find dozens of examples.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/pasted-image-0-4.png\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e[Image Source: flickr.\u003c/em\u003e \u003cem\u003ecom]\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;re constantly annoyed by these intrusive ads, you\u0026rsquo;re not alone. These types of experiences have been driving the growth of ad blocking for quite a while now. Even unsophisticated users have discovered that by taking 1 minute to install a browser extension, they can wave goodbye to display ads for good.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Escaping Advertiser Hell: How to Get Over the AdBlock Hurdle [with Infographic]"},{"content":"Our crack engineers have been hard at work since the beginning of the year and we’re pleased to announce two new updates.\nNew Coverage for India For the record, when it comes to spending on digital advertising, India is no slouch. In fact, according to eMarketer, India is on track to surpass $1 billion in digital ad spend this year. So if you’re already an Adbeat customer, by all means, start digging in!\nFinding data for India is easy…. Just click on the country dropdown anywhere in Adeat and select India.\nSmart Alerts Will Change Your Life Adbeat’s Alerts have been a customer favorite since we released them over two years ago. In case you aren’t familiar with Alerts, they work like this:\nYou select any advertiser and then tell Adbeat to notify you when the advertiser releases a new ad, is seen on a new publisher, or starts running on a new ad network.\nCool right? A lot of our customers love Alerts because they help them keep tabs on their competitors. But we knew we could do even better\u0026ndash; so we beefed up Alerts and made them even smarter. In fact, Alerts may just be smarter than all of us now.\nA picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s what the Smart Alert settings screen looks like:\nSmart Alerts Support Trigger Values for Ad Spend and Days Seen! So you can say things like:\nAlert me when Jet.com spends more than $5,000 on a New Ad Alert me when Buzzfeed runs a New Ad for more than 20 days. Alert me when Dollar Shave Club runs a New Campaign for more than 30 days and spends more than $60,000. Are you getting the picture?\nSmart Alerts let you to set your own, precise criteria that must be met before an Alert will be fired. This means you can dial down the noise and focus on the most important events that are of the most value to you and your business.\nThink of it this way:\nStandard Alerts can tell you when your main competitor releases a New Ad. Useful? For sure.\nSmart Alerts can tell you when your main competitor has been spending consistently on a New Ad over time. Now I\u0026rsquo;ve got your attention, haven\u0026rsquo;t I? (Hint: when an advertiser has spent a significant amount of money on an ad and run it for a long time, you can bet it\u0026rsquo;s converting well for them.)\nSmart Alerts give our Enterprise customers an entirely new level of competitive advantage\u0026ndash; and Smart Alerts are only available from Adbeat.\nIf you’re an Adbeat Enterprise customer you can start using Smart Alerts right now.\nNot an Adbeat Enterprise customer? Don’t get left behind\u0026hellip;\nTo get access to Smart Alerts (and tons of other amazing features). Send an email to our sales team at sales at adbeat.com or sign-up below to get a Live Demo of Adbeat Enterprise:\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/new-feature-smart-alerts-india-data-is-live/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOur crack engineers have been hard at work since the beginning of the year and we’re pleased to announce two new updates.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"new-coverage-for-india\"\u003eNew Coverage for India\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor the record, when it comes to spending on digital advertising, India is no slouch.  In fact, \u003ca href=\"https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Digital-Ad-Spending-India-Surpass-1-Billion-Next-Year/1013800\"\u003eaccording to eMarketer\u003c/a\u003e,  India is on track to surpass $1 billion in digital ad spend this year.  So if you’re already an Adbeat customer, by all means, start digging in!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"New Feature: Smart Alerts + India Data is Live"},{"content":"Jeff Cordeiro is the COO of MUNDOmedia Ltd. MUNDOmedia is a large digital agency that helps app developers get more users and engagement through paid traffic and other sources. Jeff graciously gave us the chance to tell us about current trends in the mobile advertising landscape, what games are working, and why PokemonGo and augmented reality is the future of mobile games.\nBradley Nickel: Tell us a bit about MundoMedia and what you guys do.\nJeff Cordeiro: MundoMedia is a data-driven app network and digital agency. Most of our business is done through CPIs for mobile games and utilities. We deal with a lot of branded advertisers, both in the game and utility space. We connect advertisers with unique publishers so we can drive quality traffic.\nBN: In your experience, what are the common hurdles faced by app marketers?\nJC: By far? Monetization. Ultimately, an app is built to generate income. Developers want to make sure that when they acquire traffic that they achieve a positive ROI or that it will at least benefit them by increasing their ranking in the AppStore or on Google Play.\nWe talk to developers to a lot about what distribution channels they should be using. That includes if they want to be local to the US or international (we\u0026rsquo;re about 50-50 US vs. international right now). A lot of the games are agnostic to the country as long as there is demand from the user community to play it and keep playing it for an extended period of time.\nAnother thing we consult with companies about is the quality of their users.\nThere are many ways to buy users. There are many different places to \u0026ldquo;purchase\u0026rdquo; them. If an app developer has more than one app, then there is the opportunity for cross promotion within both apps. We help advertisers identify pockets of users that would be beneficial for them. Of course, things like demographics and geo-targeting are very important.\nBut we also do a lot of time-parting. We look at the time that the user might be using the app/game by app type. Then we try to target those users with different advertising campaigns.\nBN: How do you help developers structure their game to have the best chance of going viral, seeing success on Display, etc.\nJC: It depends on the type of game. One type of game is the \u0026ldquo;casual\u0026rdquo; game like CandyCrush or Bejeweled. These are fairly mindless. People play them just to pass the time. Then you have strategic games like Clash of Kings where you play against other players.\nThen you have something that is completely new, like PokemonGo. Who knew that would take off like it did?\nThe type of game is important because that is important to determining whether or not your game will be free or paid.\nIf it\u0026rsquo;s a free game, then how are you going to monetize it? Is it through in-app purchases? Do you show ads?\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll give them insights based on the type of game it is and whether or not it should be paid or free.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll also work with them on the payment structure for buying new users. The two models we work with are CPI (cost-per-install) or a CPE (cost-per-engagement). CPE requires that someone do something in the app for the publisher would get paid. That means that if it\u0026rsquo;s a game, someone would have to reach level 2, or make the first purchase.\nBN: What sorts of trends are you seeing in games and apps?\nJC: Strategic battle games are big right now.\nGames like Clash of Kings are very popular, especially among between the 16 and 30 age group.\nOther than PokemonGo, I haven\u0026rsquo;t seen anything really new recently. But I do think that augmented reality is going to be huge.There is a lot of money being spent on the development of hardware. I think that the technology is going to start scaling within the next 12-18 months.\nI see augmented reality being important not just for games, but also utility apps.\nFor example, there was one app I recently saw that you can make a request to see what it\u0026rsquo;s like in Crete. Someone would take a picture or a video and you would see it in real-time like you were in Crete. Or a restaurant app where you can actually see the menu.\nI think that apps that are going to be most successful are those that engage with multiple users.\nBN: Are there any specific ad networks that you\u0026rsquo;ve seen work particularly well for most games?\nJC: It really depends what the game or app is.\nThat being said, Facebook Ads and Google AdWords are still big. However, it\u0026rsquo;s become more difficult for startups to shoulder into the marketplace just by buying traffic. There has to be a ground roots kind of growth. Most games have to go viral first before paid traffic pays off. So, social is a huge part of that.\nThat being said, it\u0026rsquo;s interesting that Twitter hasn\u0026rsquo;t really scaled. It\u0026rsquo;s still difficult to use Twitter for installs of apps and games. However, we are currently looking at working with Twitter on several different campaigns, so maybe that will change in the future.\nBN: What about Native networks?\nJC: Actually, one thing we\u0026rsquo;re trying to do internally is build a Native ad platform. The platform would be able to showcase some of the new games where you can sort of preview the game.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s a new ad format out now where you can actually play a short part of a game. You will then be transferred over to the full version once you are engaged. You can actually feel what the gameplay is like through the \u0026ldquo;banner ad\u0026rdquo; before you download the game.\nI think these new ad formats are pretty interesting and will probably go somewhere.\nBN: Last question \u0026ndash; what do you use Adbeat for?\nJC: We use it as a prospecting and sales tool. The first thing we do is we identify who is out there. If there is a new game or app that\u0026rsquo;s getting distribution, we\u0026rsquo;ll look on Adbeat to see if anyone is running traffic to it right now. If they are and they are doing it internally we\u0026rsquo;ll reach out to them. We\u0026rsquo;ll also do an analysis on competitors. It helps us create a better presentation when we pitch them on allowing us to drive traffic for them.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/interview-jeff-cordeiro/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"jeff-cordeiro\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/jeff-cordeiro.jpg\"\u003eJeff Cordeiro is the COO of MUNDOmedia Ltd. MUNDOmedia is a large digital agency that helps app developers get more users and engagement through paid traffic and other sources. Jeff graciously gave us the chance to tell us about current trends in the mobile advertising landscape, what games are working, and why PokemonGo and augmented reality is the future of mobile games.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBradley Nickel:\u003c/strong\u003e Tell us a bit about MundoMedia and what you guys do.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Expert Interview: Jeff Cordeiro Talks Mobile Game Monetization \u0026 Display Advertising"},{"content":"There I was, reading about the Westworld finale on Variety (don’t worry, no spoilers), when I’m offered six more articles to read. They all look pretty interesting, but only two actually have to do with TV, while the others are about fashion and celebrity.\nSo, how did an ad for a Macy’s sale end up in my article about an HBO show about robots?\nThe power of native advertising.\nEvidently, native ads are doing something right. According to eMarketer, native ad spending is expected to reach $8.8 billion by 2018—a jump from $5.7 billion in 2016.\nAnd fashion retailers are some of the biggest benefactors of this native ad boom.\nIn fact, by digging into Adbeat’s data, we were able to pinpoint the most successful fashion retail marketers out there, and figure out five key tactics that they’re all using.\nLet’s take a look.\nImages: Showcase One Product With a Simple Background Keep it simple, silly. It’s an old adage for a reason, and it holds true for native ad creative.\nJust look at the image above. If you’re launching a native ad, you’re not only competing with five or six other native ads, but also with other display or video ads, the actual content on the site, and probably a comments section.\nSo, how do you grab your reader’s attention in just a few seconds or less? Pare down your catalogue and focus on just one product.\nTake SlideBelts, a leather belt retailer that redefined the accessory. Instead of featuring a whole closet of belts, they stuck to showing a single product with a white or gray background.\nThis is easier for the reader to digest, since it only asks them to process one simple visual at a time.\nAthletic wear retailer, Fabletics, took a similar approach. While their third biggest native ad features several different products, their first and second only feature one—a pair of leggings.\nThat single product image even outperformed a picture of celebrity co-founder Kate Hudson herself.\nSure, this image can be effective. (Lust is one of the seven deadly sins of native advertising.) But, among their top four native ads, Fabletics spent $37.5k on ones with the leggings and only $10k on the others, which should speak for itself.\nHeadlines: Answer the \u0026ldquo;Why?\u0026rdquo; Why should people care about your brand? Why should they click on your link instead of the next guy’s?\nWhen it comes to native ads, that’s the question you have to ask—and answer.\nJust look at Proper Cloth, a custom shirt retailer. They love the “Why” so much that they use this headline—“Why This Shirt Company Is Causing so Many Guys to Switch”—on each of their top four native ads. (Also, there’s that single product image again.)\nMVMT Watches similarly this tactic, too, with its headline, \u0026ldquo;See Why MVMT Is The Hottest Selling New Watch Brand.\u0026rdquo;\nIn fact, look back up at the SlideBelts and Fabletics ads above. Notice anything similar about their best-performing copies? That’s right. They all start with \u0026ldquo;Why.\u0026rdquo;\nThey\u0026rsquo;re not just telling readers, \u0026ldquo;We’re awesome\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;You need to check out our product.\u0026rdquo; Instead, they’re saying, \u0026ldquo;We want to show you why you’ll love us. Click here and find out,\u0026rdquo; which can be much more effective.\nLanding Pages: The Art of the Soft Sell Following up on that “Why” question, brands aren’t exactly using native ads to say “Buy this now!!” Rather, they’re inviting customers to get a feel for the company and start looking around a bit.\nThat’s why their ads don’t go straight to product pages for a specific new coat or handbag. Many are redirected to content-filled pages with text and visuals about the company. And if there is a call-to-action there, it’s not a buy button; it’s an invitation for the visitor to find or build the right product for them.\nFor instance, one of Warby Parker\u0026rsquo;s top ads says, \u0026ldquo;Glasses Shouldn\u0026rsquo;t Cost More Than an iPhone. That\u0026rsquo;s Why We Did Something About It.\u0026rdquo; If someone clicks through, they’re taken to a full-blown article about the founders. Only at the end are they presented with a call-to-action to check out the product.\nBombfell, which sends clothes picked by a stylist right to your door, even takes visitors right to the homepage.\nAbove the fold is a big \u0026ldquo;Get started\u0026rdquo; button. But below is an in-depth look at the company, including sections about how the service works, what to expect, and customer testimonials.\nBombfell could’ve sent people to the “Threads” page, which includes pretty pictures of some of its clothes. Instead, the company went for a softer sell, making an effort to get customers on the site, and then let them look around for themselves.\nSurrounding Content: It Doesn’t Have to Match the Ad After I read that Westworld article this morning, I jumped to a \u0026ldquo;Huffington Post\u0026rdquo; piece about Donald Trump being named TIME’s Person of the Year.\nBelow the text, I saw six more native ads. And this time, none of them had to do with the content I’d just read.\nDo you see any mention of politics in here? Me neither.\nThe point is, native ads don’t always have to match the topic of the surrounding article. They don’t even have to match the content of the publication.\nAfter all, just because I’m reading about Trump, that doesn’t mean I need to only read about news and politics. Or just because I’m on “SB Nation,” that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a non-sports-related article or an ad about a cool new product.\nTake Gilt, a retail site with deals on top-name brands. Its most successful native ad placements are on Yahoo, Ranker, Mental Floss, and Daily Dot.\nSure, some of these sites might host fashion content, but they’re not purely fashion publications like Vogue or Elle.\nJewelry brand, Alex and Ani, also launches ads on a variety of websites, from ZAP2it.com and Weather.com to CBS.com and FoodNetwork.com.\nThis may seem strange, but it’s evidently working.\nThink about it: If each brand limited their distribution pool to only publications related to their industry, they’d be severely cutting themselves short, and they’d lose out on exposure to millions of potential customers.\nConclusion Native ads aren’t just for clickbait headlines from celebrity gossip sites (though, that does work extremely well). They’re also a powerful strategy for fashion retail brands that want to grab the attention of new customers.\nStill, as the native ad space heats up within the next few years, competition is going to get fierce. In order to be ahead of the curve, you’ll have stay on the latest trends and research the competition. And you can start now by using some of these winning tactics from top fashion retailers.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/4-winning-native-ad-tactics-from-top-fashion-retail-marketers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere I was, reading about the \u003cem\u003eWestworld\u003c/em\u003e finale on \u003cem\u003eVariety\u003c/em\u003e (don’t worry, no spoilers), when I’m offered six more articles to read. They all look pretty interesting, but only two actually have to do with TV, while the others are about fashion and celebrity.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"image05\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/image05.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, how did an ad for a Macy’s sale end up in my article about an HBO show about robots?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe power of native advertising.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"4 Winning Native Ad Tactics From Top Fashion Retail Marketers"},{"content":"2016 is officially over - happy 2017!\nLet\u0026rsquo;s take a peek at who spent the most in Q4 2016.\n#1: jet.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $54.7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Casale Top 3 Publishers: shareably.net, tumblr.com, wikihow.com Top Ad: #2: sling.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $36.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: pcworld.com, techhive.com, macworld.com Top Ad: #3: amazon.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $36M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Conversant Top 3 Publishers: imdb.com, wikia.com, dpreview.com Top Ad: #4: fidelity.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $30.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Yahoo Gemini, Google Top 3 Publishers: yahoo.com, huffingtonpost.com, bankrate.com Top Ad: #5: edx.org Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $27.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Rubicon, Direct Buy, OpenX Top 3 Publishers: yahoo.com, dailymotion.com, go.com Top Ad: #6: bestbuy.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $25.7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Tapad Top 3 Publishers: wikia.com, yahoo.com, forbes.com Top Ad: #7: google.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $24.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Casale Top 3 Publishers: chowhound.com, theverge.com, vox.com Top Ad: #8: westernunion.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $24.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: MediaMath, Direct Buy, Outbrain Top 3 Publishers: answers.com, wikia.com, urbandictionary.com Top Ad: #9: walmart.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $23.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Sharethrough Top 3 Publishers: babycenter.com, foodnetwork.com, usmagazine.com Top Ad: #10: dyson.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $16.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Rubicon Top 3 Publishers: nypost.com, usnews.com, yahoo.com Top Ad: #11: americanexpress.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $16.7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, RocketFuel Top 3 Publishers: ebay.com, forbes.com, msnbc.com Top Ad: #12: microsoft.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $15.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Taboola Top 3 Publishers: forbes.com, stackexchange.org, stackoverflow.com Top Ad: #13: att.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $14M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: huffingtonpost.com, gottabemobile.com, tvguide.com Top Ad: #14: paypal.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $13.7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Conversant, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: forbes.com, imgur.com, bbc.com Top Ad: #15: aarp.org Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $12.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Outbrain, Google, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: go.com, clevelandclinic.com, foodnetwork.com Top Ad: #16: retailmenot.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $12.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, TheTradeDesk, Taboola Top 3 Publishers: roasted.com, shareably.com, imgur.com Top Ad: #17: vanguard.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $12.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Rubicon Top 3 Publishers: yahoo.com, thestreet.com, fool.com Top Ad: #18: zulily.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $12.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, MsnDisplay Top 3 Publishers: tumblr.com, accuweather.com, nypost.com Top Ad: #19: lowermybills.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $12M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Taboola, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: huffingtonpost.com, photobucket.com, cbnsnews.com Top Ad: #20: chevrolet.com Estimated Q4 Ad Spend: $11.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: huffingtonpost.com, kbb.com, caranddriver.com Top Ad: ","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-top-20-advertisers-of-q4-2016/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e2016 is officially over - happy 2017!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLet\u0026rsquo;s take a peek at who spent the most in Q4 2016.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"1jetcom\"\u003e#1: jet.com\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimated Q4 Ad Spend\u003c/strong\u003e: $54.7M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Traffic Sources\u003c/strong\u003e: Google, Direct Buy, Casale\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Publishers\u003c/strong\u003e: shareably.net, tumblr.com, wikihow.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"topad\"\u003eTop Ad:\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"jet.com-d402499ab99c437e052e6f9945994fd0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jet.com-d402499ab99c437e052e6f9945994fd0.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"2-slingcom\"\u003e#2: sling.com\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimated Q4 Ad Spend\u003c/strong\u003e: $36.9M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Traffic Sources\u003c/strong\u003e: Google, Direct Buy, TribalFusion\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Publishers\u003c/strong\u003e: pcworld.com, techhive.com, macworld.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"top-ad\"\u003eTop Ad:\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"sling.com-538190e31f3980c14d2fd5860f540ab7\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/sling.com-538190e31f3980c14d2fd5860f540ab7.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"3-amazoncom\"\u003e#3: amazon.com\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimated Q4 Ad Spend\u003c/strong\u003e: $36M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Traffic Sources\u003c/strong\u003e: Direct Buy, Google, Conversant\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Publishers\u003c/strong\u003e: imdb.com, wikia.com, dpreview.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"top-ad-1\"\u003eTop Ad:\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"amazon.com-960c8ad6ecfc6655026427fc65619231\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/amazon.com-960c8ad6ecfc6655026427fc65619231.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Top 20 Advertisers of Q4 2016"},{"content":"The 2016 Presidential Campaign was littered by fake news stories.They gained steam on social platforms before being erroneously reported left-and-right by the real news media who didn’t want to miss a scoop.When in reality, this nonstop media frenzy was being fueled by people with zero political ties (many times, from outside US borders), who were just looking to make a quick buck.It got so bad that Google said they’d ban these websites, and Zuckerberg himself shared options Facebook was working on to flag and report them too.\nBut none of this is new.\nIn fact, it’s been going on for years.And most of the ‘fake news’ stories you’ve probably read have only introduced the tip of the iceberg.While the random, one-off teenagers have gotten the press, other more serious organizations have been hard at work building up ‘fake news’ media empires.Here’s how the business behind ‘fake news’ works (and how much is at stake).\nThe Business Behind ‘Fake News’ “I don’t call it fake news; I call it satire,” 22-year old Beqa Latsabidze of Georgia told the New York Times.“Nobody really believes that Mexico is going to close its border. This is crazy.” The ‘Mexico border closing’ story Latsabidze is referring to reportedly brought in $6,000. Most of his articles however, bring in far less. (image source)\nThese clickbait-esque articles feature sensational, hyperbolic headlines that wouldn’t be out of place on BuzzFeed. The only difference being the truthfulness of the content.Making ‘fake news’ work start with a kernel of truth. Find those trending ideas or topics and distort or exaggerate to reach the widest audience possible.The Times points out that “ Dying Hillary Says She Just Wants To Curl Up And Never Leave Her House Again After Defeat” does resemble the fact that Clinton reportedly say she wanted to curl up with a book after the election (except, you know, the whole “dying” part).“I did not invent anything. It has all been done before.” he told the New York Times reporters. In fact, ‘yellow journalism’ dates back to the 1800s, originally referring to a yellow cartoon strip that relied more on sensationalism than fact-based research.Some fake news sites like Latsabidze’s also haven’t technically broken any laws (as long as they’re not infringing on other’s copyrights by copying and pasting their fake stories, which does happen a lot). Sites like The Onion are not fake news, because they are satirical in nature. However, most fake news site are illegal, and we don’t condone these activities either. It’s not an honest business model. Fake news site neither provide value nor are the best way to build a solid business over the long term.Some fake news websites are easy to spot, with blatant misspellings, poor grammar, or ugly design. These are the ones you’ve seen reported that get taken down almost immediately after getting ‘outed’.However, others are going to great lengths to blend in and actually compete with major, existing media outlets.For example, The Washington Post points out that abcnews.com.co is a complete ripoff of the real ABC News. (Image Source)\nTurns out this investment in quality pays off, to the tune of $500,000+\u0026hellip; for fake news.You can see from their Publisher Profile that mobile ads from Google’s network dominated the majority of that spend.And when you dive deeper into the top advertisers buying inventory from them, you can see largely two article placements that have had their biggest success:\nFox Sues Snopes for $20 Million Over Story Calling Them Fake News Breaking News: Mitt Romney announces he will enter Presidential race But it almost doesn’t matter how obviously fake some of these news stories are. It doesn’t really matter if you return or if you read the entire article.The only thing that matters is if you click and visit their site.Here’s why.\nHow Fake News Monetize Content “These people make money similarly to how we in the mainstream media make money,” according to Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey.The most common source is Google’s own AdSense, which gives these publishers a few cents each time someone clicks and views an ad on their site.One Facebook fake news writer told The Washington Post that they make around $10,000 a month. While BuzzFeed also reported on some Macedonian teenagers who successfully make around $5,000 each month.The key is to create content that has the potential to go viral.Sometimes, you can do that organically.Latsabidze from the New York Times piece reportedly created fake Facebook pages (which coincidentally featured beautiful women as their avatar). The best strategy that paid off though, was to get real people – like Trump fanatics or even the real media – to latch on to the stories and spread them to their own networks. Many times these people only relied on the headlines and didn’t even read the content, Latsabidze believes.Otherwise, there’s always arbitrage.Currency arbitrage is a popular way to generate a “riskless profit” in financial markets. Your goal is to exploit price differences from one market to another.For example, Australian Dollars are exchanged for Japanese Yen which are then exchanged for American Dollars. At the end of the day you make a few cents on the dollar. But applied at scale it all starts to add up.This is no different than advertising arbitrage from different networks, where it costs $X to bring in traffic from Facebook and make $X+1 from Google’s AdSense. We originally wrote about the ad arbitrage model in part 2 of our Business of Display series, Viral Quiz Sites and Click Arbitrage. The only difference is that the websites featured in that post are running a completely legal business. Because sometimes though for fake news sites, AdSense might eventually catch on and shut their account down. Often they\u0026rsquo;ll employ multiple ad networks until one (or all) get shut down. As we mentioned before, this is NOT a good long-term business model. But since some of these sites are so blatantly breaking the rules, you might wonder: How do these sites fly under the radar for so long? Many make their sites appear legitimate. This is how these sites stick around and keep their revenue stream taps from getting shut off. Many of the savvier operators use a variety of techniques, including clear disclosure pages and mixing in real stories or gossip. At the end of the day, however, most of these sites fade away as ad networks and the FTC improve their detection mechanisms.\nConclusion Fake news made waves this Presidential Campaign because of how it would find it’s way to national or international broadcasts.As a result, some of the most popular platforms like Google’s AdSense and Facebook are trying to crack down.It takes less than a couple hours to get a brand new site up-and-running, it doesn’t technically break any laws, and these fake news proprietors can often ‘fly under the radar’ by focusing on building evidence of credibility to net a few thousands bucks a month.But this trend is anything but new. And if history has taught us anything, it won’t probably won’t go away anytime soon either.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/fake-news/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe 2016 Presidential Campaign was littered by fake news stories.They gained steam on social platforms before being erroneously reported left-and-right by the real news media who didn’t want to miss a scoop.When in reality, this nonstop media frenzy was being fueled by people with zero political ties (many times, from outside US borders), who were just looking to make a quick buck.It got so bad that Google said they’d \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/technology/google-will-ban-websites-that-host-fake-news-from-using-its-ad-service.html\"\u003eban these websites\u003c/a\u003e, and Zuckerberg himself \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/facebook-considering-ways-to-combat-fake-news-mark-zuckerberg-says.html\"\u003eshared options\u003c/a\u003e Facebook was working on to flag and report them too.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Dark Side of Display: How \"Fake News\" Sites Monetize their Content"},{"content":"We\u0026rsquo;ll admit it: selling Enterprise software on display can be tricky.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s such a difficult task simply because common strategies that work in markets like weight loss, finance, and ecommerce will often not get you the results that you\u0026rsquo;re looking for.\nA high-priced product on display can be tough to sell. However, there is a way to do it. Many large SaaS web apps are even amazing results with Display advertising.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s the trick?\nIn today\u0026rsquo;s post, we\u0026rsquo;ll reveal the display strategies behind five of 2016\u0026rsquo;s most talked-about SaaS apps, including the data analysis giant Tableau and the classic Adobe.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s some really cool stuff going on in the SaaS space on display. So if you\u0026rsquo;re tired of trying to emulate the strategies of the \u0026ldquo;one weird trick to shed belly fat\u0026rdquo; companies, then this blog post is for you.\nTableau Ad Spend \u0026amp; Networks Tableau is a Seattle-based software company that sells data visualization and analysis software.\nTableau has spent an estimated $5,061,632 on display (desktop spend only) over the past six months. The ad network strategies for most of the advertisers in this post are fairly similar. Most choose the Google Display Network and Direct Buys as their primary traffic sources. Tableau is no exception.\nTableau\u0026rsquo;s Publishers As I mentioned before, finding enterprise level customers on display can be tricky for some advertisers. Publisher selection is one of the main difficulties. Enterprise level software customer publishers must be very specific. They have to have a very sophisticated target audience with the money to purchase the product. This is why so many B2B SaaS companies run Direct Buys.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see below that Tableau\u0026rsquo;s publishers cater to a business audience (with the exception of news sites like Chron.com and Nytimes.com).\nThe most interesting publisher on the list is Flowingdata.com.\nFlowing Data offers step-by-step courses and tutorials on data visualization. The content is designed for data scientists and researchers. In other words, its courses go beyond what we learned in high school statistics.\nWhat does this mean?\nFlowing Data\u0026rsquo;s audience is REALLY into data. This is the perfect selection for a company that sells data visualization and analysis software.\nThe moral of the story?\nFind sites where the \u0026ldquo;nerds\u0026rdquo; of your industry hang out. You may not be able to access their ad inventory through a network or exchange, but many sites are open to direct buys, especially if other advertisers in your same vertical are already buying directly on that publisher.\nAs you\u0026rsquo;ll see in the ad creatives section, Tableau rarely tries to directly sell the software itself. Instead, it chooses to give away cool white papers and eBooks about data trends and the best practices.\nTableau\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Tableau does an amazing job at testing different ad creatives that all contain different lead magnets:\nAn enterprise software company has a longer sales cycle than most other businesses. Purchasing enterprise software is a big deal. The prospect will likely need to get permission from superiors, sign a contract, and probably spend a lot of money relative to other purchases.\nWhile opt-ins may not be the choice for most B2C companies, we\u0026rsquo;re still seeing a lot of the big B2B and enterprise software companies using them on display.\nThe good news is that it\u0026rsquo;s fairly easy to test multiple lead magnets (at least from a development standpoint).\nIn the next section, you\u0026rsquo;ll see how Tableau conquers this challenge by using landing page templates.\nTableau\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Almost all of Tableau\u0026rsquo;s lead generation landing pages follow the same formula: Given the amount that Tableau spends on these pages, it\u0026rsquo;s quite likely that this template works.\nHere are two other landing pages that follow this exact same layout and formula. Again, this is great news for companies that test a lot of different opt-in offers.\nIt means that they only have to create one basic template and then replace each section with text that is relevant to the whitepaper or eBook.\nCheck these out:\nAdvertiser #2: SaS Ad Spend \u0026amp; Networks Here we have a BIG spender on Direct Buys. SaS has spent an estimated $1,363,200 on desktop display ads over the past six months. The largest chunk of its spending has been allocated to Direct Buys. This comes as little surprise given that it\u0026rsquo;s an enterprise software company that sells big ticket items.\nSaS\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Here\u0026rsquo;s another good example of a B2B software company allocating the majority of its spending to a mainstream business website with a diverse audience. Tableau spends the most on Forbes.com, whileSaS spends the most on a Forbes competitor, Businessinsider.com:\nAd Creatives SaS uses very professionally styled ad creatives that test out pictures of people of both genders and multiple races. SaS is also testing out more free trial creatives in addition to whitepapers.\nWhich ad creative has it spent the most on?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s actually the ad creatives that doesn\u0026rsquo;t include a photo of a person at all.\nThe ad creative that SaS has spent the most on simply has an image of a tablet with a chart:\nDespite all of its A/B testing, the ad that wins doesn\u0026rsquo;t have to do with a human connection to a certain type of person, but rather a cool picture of a tablet with interesting graphs on it.\nSaS\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages SaS is A/B testing three different types of landing pages.\nThe first is a long form page that touts the benefits of its software:\nThe second landing page is a simple 14-day trial sign-up page:\nAnd the third landing page is a whitepaper opt-in page:\nDesk.com Desk is Salesforce\u0026rsquo;s offering to the online help desk space.\nIt has spent an estimated $959,104 on desktop display for the Desk.com domain over the past six months. Salesforce is one of the few enterprise software companies that runs traffic on native networks like Taboola and Outbrain. However, it allocates most of its ad spend to direct buys.\nAd Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Publishers Salesforce is running big direct buys on the major tech news sites. They buy directly from the big three: Venturebeat.com, Thenextweb.com, and Techcrunch.com.\nDesk.com\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Standard We\u0026rsquo;ve seen that all of the companies featured in this post mostly use ad creative and landing page templates. Salesforce follows the same pattern.\nIttests the same banner template and only changes the headline and the person featured in the ad We don\u0026rsquo;t see any ads with screenshots of the actual app itself, but rather pictures of someone who might use the software (young professionals between the ages of 25-35):\nAll of the headlines also follow a template. They all start with the word \u0026ldquo;imagine\u0026rdquo; and then offer a big benefit for those in customer service (e.g. no more spreadsheets, more time, better tracking, etc.).\nNative Salesforce has spent much less on native, but it\u0026rsquo;s still worth taking note of its strategy.\nThe general idea of its native ads is somewhat similar to that of its standard ads. They all have pictures of the avatar or person that will be using the software combined with a very basic headline focused on the prospect signing up for a trial:\nDesk.com\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Desk.com is split testing two different pages. The first page is a trial sign-up page. It\u0026rsquo;s pretty sparse. There\u0026rsquo;s not much explanation of what the product does and it seems as if it\u0026rsquo;s using the Salesforce brand name to get people into free trials.\nThe second Desk.com page being split tested against the one above is a longer form page. This page does include information and videos on what the product does. Again, the goal of the page is to lure the prospect into a free trial.\nIf we take a look in Adbeat, we see that Salesforce has spent the majority of its ad spending sending traffic to page #2, the long-form page. We can assume that this page works better, which is not too surprising given the trial sign-up page has almost no information.\nBMC BMC\u0026rsquo;s Ad Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend BMC is an enterprise software company that sells various pieces of software to large businesses, such as cloud management tools, mainframe management systems, security, and many more. It is a billion dollar company with over 6,500 employees. BMC also claims that 82% of fortune 500 companies use its software, as you\u0026rsquo;ll see in the ads below.\nBMC has spent an estimated $530,816 on desktop display over the previous six months.\nBMC\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Like Salesforce, BMC is spending heavily on tech news and hardware sites:\nBMC\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives BMC also uses the same template and size for most of their ad creatives. The only differences are the image and the headline, with each separate ad creative taking them prospect to a different landing page.\nBMC\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Some big companies get lazy and send all traffic to one or two generic landing pages.\nNot BMC. BMC has a dedicated landing page for each product it advertises on display. As you\u0026rsquo;ll see below, all of these pages are long-form, detailed, and quite cleanly designed.\nThe first page advertises their BladeLogic security software:\nThe second page advertises their Discovery automation software:\nThe last page that we\u0026rsquo;ll feature in this post is a very unique page. This page does not map to any specific software product. Rather, it\u0026rsquo;s a massive list of logos and case studies of many of BMC\u0026rsquo;s clients. This is very useful as a piece of social proof:\nAll in all, BMC is doing a much better job than most software companies at testing different landing pages and ad creatives. It also goes an extra step by making the landing pages long-form. The extra details can often help with conversions (as you\u0026rsquo;ve seen above), but, obviously, it\u0026rsquo;s good to test long vs. short.\nAdobe.com Adobe\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Adobe has spent an estimated $9,703,424 on desktop display over the past six months. Adobe\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Adobe buys most of their traffic on design sites (Thisiscolossal.com) and other video, tech, and general publishers:\nAdobe\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Adobe\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives all advertise their Creative Cloud suite of software apps. Their main marketing message is that the software allows your team to \u0026ldquo;create in sync.\u0026rdquo;\nAdobe\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Adobe includes a longer form page that explains how its \u0026ldquo;teams\u0026rdquo; system works and how it makes it easier for teams to work together with Adobe products. This is a long-form page with all different types of media that explain the benefits of Adobe and its products:\nAdobe is also testing another much simpler landing page with many ad creatives. This page is simply its pricing page. There is little to no marketing copy besides the explanation of why a specific package is better/worse than the other version:\nI would not recommend the strategy of sending users to a pricing page (perhaps off of a retargeting ad, but even then\u0026hellip;) for most companies. As we\u0026rsquo;ve seen before, many of the other Enterprise software companies A/B test very different landing pages that are often either free trials or long-form. Adobe can probably get away with this due to their brand name (everyone knows what Photoshop is) and a large, branding-style marketing budget.\nConclusion Selling Enterprise products through display is not as straightforward as selling B2C products. However, it can be done and it can be very effective for garnering new leads. The key is in your landing page targeting and offers. If you can put compelling whitepaper offers in front of the right audience, there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt that your efforts on display will pay off.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-to-sell-enterprise-software-with-display-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ll admit it: selling Enterprise software on display can be tricky.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s such a difficult task simply because common strategies that work in markets like weight loss, finance, and ecommerce will often not get you the results that you\u0026rsquo;re looking for.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA high-priced product on display can be tough to sell. However, there is a way to do it. Many large SaaS web apps are even amazing results with Display advertising.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How To Sell Enterprise Software With Display Advertising"},{"content":"Back in the Stone Age before the internet, it was much harder to reach customers. Google AdWords didn\u0026rsquo;t exist, Native Ads only existed in print newspapers and magazines, and people actually had to (*gasp*) speak to others on the phone or take a money order in the mail.\nLuckily, someone (maybe Al Gore?) invented the internet. The internet has made lead generation and customer communication easier than ever, at least from a technical standpoint.\nThis has been both a blessing and a curse.\nOn one hand, you\u0026rsquo;re able to send out a \u0026ldquo;free\u0026rdquo; email at the drop of a hat. You can slap up a landing page and send traffic to it immediately (not to mention that you can quickly cut off or fix unprofitable ad campaigns). It\u0026rsquo;s all amazing, and we have it easier than ever before. However, the low entry barriers have allowed people to get sloppy.. .Especially when it comes to writing copy.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s cheap to fail. Therefore, most folks put in zero effort to begin with.\nNow, there\u0026rsquo;s a time and a place to \u0026ldquo;move fast and break things.\u0026rdquo; It\u0026rsquo;s better to launch something with mediocre copy than to never launch to at all.\nHowever, the copy you\u0026rsquo;ll often see isn\u0026rsquo;t mediocre. It\u0026rsquo;s downright terrible.\nDespite all of the shiny objects people love to blog about - the hacks, tips, tricks, etc. - good copy is still one of the main drivers behind any ad campaign\u0026rsquo;s success.\nThese aren\u0026rsquo;t just words on a page. This is your sales pitch. You\u0026rsquo;ve got to take it seriously.\nThe bad news is that great copywriters are hard to come by. The good news is that YOU can write great copy, simply because copywriting is not creative writing .\nAlbert Lasker (considered to be the father of modern advertising) once said that copywriting is \u0026ldquo;salesmanship in print.\u0026rdquo;\nJust as there are structures and formulas for in-person sales pitches, there are tried and true methods to write a good ad creative and landing page. And much like the best way to run a better Display campaign is to use other peoples\u0026rsquo; success as inspiration, the best way to write copy is to use good copy as an inspiration.\nMost great copy is \u0026ldquo;old school.\u0026rdquo; This is stuff that most people scoff at, but they shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be so quick to judge.\nThe specific words and phrases may have changed over time, but the general theory behind what works and what doesn\u0026rsquo;t work is the same.\nIn this post, you\u0026rsquo;ll see 6 of my favorite contemporary and historic tools that will help you to write copy that converts for any product.\n#1: Magazines Some of the best copywriters on the planet write for print magazines like Cosmopolitan, Maxim, and Men\u0026rsquo;s Health.\nThe headlines you see on the cover are designed to pull people\u0026rsquo;s attention away from their cell phones when they are standing in line at the supermarket. This is VERY HARD to do. The cover headlines need to be good.\nLuckily, these copywriters know what sort of language jolts people out of the haze.\nIn fact, they have been testing and writing the same basic headlines for decades.\nFor example, here\u0026rsquo;s the cover of the May 1979 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine vs. the cover of the February 2016 issue:\nLook very closely.\nThere is a difference in the language (for example, \u0026ldquo;#TBT\u0026rdquo; wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have made sense in 1979).\nAnd the 2016 headlines are a bit shorter, probably due to the general public\u0026rsquo;s shortened attention span. However, the essence of the copy is the same.\nYou could tweak the 1979 headlines and use them today.\n#2: Print Ads The rise in popularity of Native Advertising has brought the advertorial to the internet. An advertorial is a sales page that\u0026rsquo;s designed to look like an organic news article or blog post.\nLooking at Adbeat data, we see a lot of advertisers in the personal finance and alternative health spaces using advertorials. However, you can use them for just about any market.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an example of an advertorial landing page for LowerMyBills.com:\nHowever, advertorials are not at all new. They have been used in newspapers and magazines for decades.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a classic newspaper advertorial by David Ogilvy:\nAnd this ad by Gary Halbert:\nWhether or not you\u0026rsquo;re interested in testing out advertorials, I highly suggest you take a look at current and old school print ads. Some great copywriters to look to for inspiration include Gary Halbert, Gary Benvicenga, Bud Weckresser, and Mel Martin.\nHere are my two favorite websites for print ads:\nInfo Marketing Blog Hard to Find Ads #3: Direct Mail Sales Letters Many a fortune has been made through direct mail. All of the top direct response companies like Agora, Boardroom, and Rodale built their empires by sending sales pitches through snail mail. Some of these companies continue to use direct mail today.\nDirect mail was essentially email before the internet existed. Great copywriting was really the only tool they had to convince you to buy.\nThe letter went in the trash if it didn\u0026rsquo;t catch your attention immediately. Stamps, envelopes, paper, time, etc. was all costly. Sending out a bad piece of copy could mean utter financial disaster. This meant thatdirect mailers had to jump through a lot of hoops to ensure campaign success.\nFor example, a piece of direct mail often contained multiple \u0026ldquo;headlines.\u0026rdquo;\nThe first headline was typically put on the outside of the envelope to get someone to actually open it.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a great example from Jay Abraham\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Mr. X\u0026rdquo; letter:\nWhat business owner wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be curious enough to open this letter?\nAnd of course, the sales letter always had its own headline:\nSidenote: One of the advantages of analyzing direct mail pieces and older advertising in general is that there was a built-in delay to purchase the product. It required a lot more work. You had to call a number, get out your wallet, recite your credit card number, or maybe even mail in a check or money order.\nThe prospect had more excuses to put off purchase. Advertisers needed to have a very compelling sales pitch that would yank the prospect from whatever he was doing at that moment and drive him to take immediate action.\nWhat direct mail pieces should you study?\nThe masters at it are Agora, Boardroom, and Rodale. You can find swipes of their stuff here:\nSwiped.co Hard to Find Ads Ultimate Swipe File (paid, but worth it if you write a lot of sales copy) #4: BuzzSumo BuzzSumo is one of the only modern tools you\u0026rsquo;ll find on this list. BuzzSumo is like Adbeat for content marketers. It lets you search for and browse top pieces of content sorted by the number of social shares. It also shows which pieces of content are the most popular.\nFor example, if you type in \u0026ldquo;big data,\u0026rdquo; you\u0026rsquo;ll see all of the top articles that contain this specific phrase:\nYou can use some of these pieces as inspiration if you want to write a blog post on big data. Since you know what people have liked and shared in the past, your article is much more likely to be successful.\nBuzzSumo can help you come up with new blog topics, headlines, or help you keep tabs on your competitors. BuzzSumo is a paid platform, but there are a few free options that will help you get started.\n#5: Amazon Reviews Reading reviews of similar products in your market is also an excellent way to find the exact language used by costumers to describe either the pros or cons of the problem you have a solution for.\nFor example, if you\u0026rsquo;re selling a fish oil supplement, you can search Amazon for all current fish oil supplements. Then you can look at both the positive and negative reviews.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll want to specifically take note of the language that the customers use in their reviews.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the positive with the benefits highlighted:\nAnd now for the negative with the negative aspects highlighted:\nThis fish oil causes gas, \u0026ldquo;fish burps,\u0026rdquo; and has a fishy aftertaste. If your fish oil does not cause any of these nasty effects, you can use this in your copy, since this is a problem that people want to avoid.\nNow you can combine the positive language with the negative. You\u0026rsquo;ll then have a product that can \u0026ldquo;enhance your mood, relieve stress, think more clearly, and relieve pain WITHOUT the nasty fish burps, fishy aftertaste, or horrible gas.\u0026rdquo;\nWriting how your prospects talk - down to their very language - is so important.\nAmazon Reviews, by definition, are written in your prospect\u0026rsquo;s language.\nUse them.\nConclusion The key to never staring at a blank page again is all about preparation. When you front-load the work by doing your research, you\u0026rsquo;ll be able to crank out usable copy much faster. The tips in this article should get you most of the way there. Don\u0026rsquo;t shun the old school just because it seems outdated.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/5-unconventional-tools-to-write-better-copy-for-landing-page-and-ad-creatives/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBack in the Stone Age before the internet, it was much harder to reach customers. Google AdWords didn\u0026rsquo;t exist, Native Ads only existed in print newspapers and magazines, and people actually had to (*gasp*) speak to others on the phone or take a money order in the mail.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLuckily, someone (maybe Al Gore?) invented the internet. The internet has made lead generation and customer communication easier than ever, at least from a technical standpoint.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"5 Unconventional Tools For Writing Higher Converting Landing Pages \u0026 Ad Creatives"},{"content":"In 2012, Matt Salzberg, Ilia Papas, and Matt Wadiak founded Blue Apron, a cost-effective way for people to easily prepare meals without needing to scour the aisles of their supermarket looking for every single ingredient in a complex recipe.\nThey began beta testing the product by sending their pre-assembled meal kits to friends.\nThat was then.\nThis is now:\nBlue Apron ships an estimated 8 million meal kits a month.\nIt has also raised over $193.8M in venture capital and is currently valued at over $2B dollars.\nNow, Blue Apron might be one of the most successful meal kit services, but they certainly aren\u0026rsquo;t alone.\nThere are many other players in the meal-kit delivery game.\nThey all differ in the way they market themselves. However, they do have one thing in common:\nThey spend millions on display advertising to promote their services.\nAdmittedly, the meal delivery market might not be the sexiest business out there. But these advertisers certainly know what they are doing, especially when it comes to advertising on native ad networks. They are a great example on how advertisers outside of direct-response and ad arbitrage markets can effectively use native ads to drive sales\nIn today\u0026rsquo;s blog post, you\u0026rsquo;re going to see the display strategies for four of the largest meal delivery services.\nAnd it all starts with the \u0026ldquo;grand daddy\u0026rdquo; of them all\u0026hellip;\nBlue Apron Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Blue Apron has spent an estimated $464,192 on desktop and an estimated $629,632 on mobile (tablets \u0026amp; phones) ads over the past six months. Blue Apron allocates the majority of its desktop spend to Taboola and the majority of its mobile spend to the Google Display Network.\nPublishers BlueApron uses contextual targeting to select publishers dedicated to food recipes. BlueApron also targets placements related to food on large publishers like Answers.com:\nIt might seem strange that BlueApron buys inventory on Answers.com. However, it makes perfect sense if you look at the specific pages where its ads are shown:\nAd Creatives Standard As the saying goes, \u0026ldquo;we eat with our eyes.\u0026rdquo; Food presentation has a lot to do with how we perceive the food that we eat. All of Blue Apron\u0026rsquo;s standard ad creatives include images of delicious meals. It\u0026rsquo;s almost impossible for a hungry person not to click on one of these ads:\nAs we\u0026rsquo;ve written before, bold and bright colors work really well in ad creatives. Most of the meal kit advertisers understand and take advantage of this concept.\nNative Blue Apron\u0026rsquo;s native ads also have pictures of food, but they are less \u0026ldquo;succulent.\u0026rdquo; Instead, they\u0026rsquo;re designed to look somewhat strange in order to catch your eye:\nDoes the ad headline ring a bell?\nThe headline is a toned down version of the \u0026ldquo;you won\u0026rsquo;t believe what happened next\u0026rdquo; style of ads that were popular on Facebook a few years ago. \u0026ldquo;Clickbait\u0026rdquo; headlines work really well on native ads.\nLanding Pages Standard Blue Apron\u0026rsquo;s standard ads send most traffic to this long-form page:\nNative Blue Apron is split testing a variety of different advertorials on native. Not only are they testing copy, but they are testing different landing page designs with the same copy.\nHere is the first set of landing pages all based on the concept\u0026quot;the one thing you need to cook a perfect dinner\u0026quot;:\nBlue Apron also tests the two landing page designs above with a different copy angle, \u0026ldquo;How This DIY Meal Kit Changed My Life\u0026rdquo;: Blue Apron has also started testing new ads and landing pages that focus on the amount of money customers can save when they buy a meal through Blue Apron instead of all of the ingredients at their supermarket:\nThe other advertisers featured in this post also use the \u0026ldquo;save money\u0026rdquo; angle. You\u0026rsquo;ll probably see Blue Apron ramping up their spend for these campaigns in the near future.\nHelloFresh HelloFresh was founded in December 2011 by Thomas Griesel, Dominik Richter and Jessica Nilsson. It has raised an estimated $275.5M in venture capital.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend It is the third biggest advertiser in this blog post. It has spent an estimated $2,301,440 on desktop ads and $372,032 on mobile ads over the past six months. Most of its ad spend has been allocated to Taboola and Outbrain:\nPublishers HelloFresh\u0026rsquo;s publisher selection is fairly straightforward. It spends the most on publishers that are related to food and recipes:\nAd Creatives Standard HelloFresh\u0026rsquo;s standard display ads show boxes with a bunch of ingredients. Many of these other advertisers in this post use this type of imagery as well. It also uses a \u0026ldquo;Get $35 Off\u0026rdquo; coupon pitch as a call-to-action.\nNative HelloFresh uses geo-targeted ad copy for its native campaigns. Again, their ad creatives show boxes of ingredients:\nThe headline \u0026ldquo;changing the way people cook at home\u0026rdquo; is also similar to headlines that have been used by other native advertisers like Harry\u0026rsquo;s.\nLanding Pages Standard HelloFresh also uses a long-form landing page with a lot of bright, bold images and an explanation of how the service works. They also use authority in the form of Jamie Oliver, a famous chef that has prepared many of the recipes that HelloFresh sends to customers:\nHelloFresh is also testing out a shorter page:\nYou can think of this page as a \u0026ldquo;product page.\u0026rdquo; This is the type of landing page that many eCommerce advertisers send traffic to.\nNative HelloFresh uses mostly native advertorial/blogvertorial style articles for their Taboola campaigns.\nThe first native landing page is a mini-story about a working mother named Nicole who was having issues paying her grocery bills. The article goes on to explain how HelloFresh made her life easier and made shopping for her family more affordable.\nThe moral of the story is that people love stories, and even a simple story like the one below can and does work on native:\nThe second native landing page HelloFresh uses is a list of three reasons why you\u0026rsquo;ll love them:\nThe third style of landing page is an even longer list (9 instead of 3) of reasons why someone should use HelloFresh:\nHelloFresh not only does a great job testing out different pages depending on the ad network (standard vs. native), it also does a great job testing different angles in its native campaigns.\nHome Chef Home Chef was founded in 2013 by Bryon Finke and Pat Vihtelic. It has raised an estimated $57M in venture capital.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Home Chef has spent an estimated $2,075,392 on desktop advertising and has spent roughly double that on mobile advertising for an estimated $4,004,352. Home Chef allocates the majority of their ad spend to the \u0026ldquo;big 3\u0026rdquo; native networks: Taboola, Outbrain, and Revcontent. They have significantly ramped up their spending as of the middle of September 2016, especially for ads being shown on mobile devices:\nPublishers Home Chef allocates most of their ad spend to fairly general publishers that have nothing to do with food. As they have ramped up their spend exponentially since September, they are likely going after more general sites that get a ton of traffic:\nAd Creatives Standard Home Chef is using a mixture of different images in their standard ad creatives. This includes boxes that contain foods, nice pictures of food on plates, and even someone chopping a tomato. It also uses a call-to-action coupon:\nNative Home Chef also uses a box with food imagery in its native ads. It also uses geo-targeted ad copy to call out to the specific areas. This is a strategy that we\u0026rsquo;ve seen other advertisers use in the credit card and finance space. You should be testing geo-targeted ad copy in your ads, as well.\nLanding Pages Standard Home Chef uses a landing page that gives a three-point summary of how the service works. This list up is followed up with a call-to-action to get started. It\u0026rsquo;s fairly simple.\nNative Home Chef was featured during an ABC7 news segment. It uses this as social proof and authority on many of its pages:\nMany people trust and even feel a bond with their local news anchors. Therefore a local news celebrity reviewing Home Chef and proving that it can be cheaper than your grocery store is 10x more powerful than Home Chef making the claim.\nHome Chef\u0026rsquo;s second native page is a slightly different version of the first page. This page doesn\u0026rsquo;t contain the video or the three-point bullet list. It is formatted as an article with specific charts and graphs that list the actual costs for the ingredients that are found in the Home Chef kit vs. buying each ingredient separately at your grocery store:\nGreenChef GreenChef was founded in 2014 by Ling Xiao, Michael Joseph, and Dan Yue. It has raised an estimated $15.5M in venture capital. GreenChef is a bit different than the other advertisers in this post. Its marketing strategy focuses on the fact that all ingredients in its meal kits are organic.\nAd Network \u0026amp; Ad Spend GreenChef has spent an estimated $32,792 on desktop advertising and $23,668 on mobile advertising. The majority of its ad spend is allocated to Lockerdome (native) and Google.\nPublishers GreenChef spends the most on Mindbodygreen.com, ahealth and wellness blog. Ithas also bought inventory directly from 247sports.com, a professional sports news website.\nAd Creatives Standard Ads GreenChef uses an interesting headline/tagline in its ads: \u0026ldquo;Eat like a grown-up again.\u0026rdquo;\nIt\u0026rsquo;s tough to tell if that angle is working for them on display.\nThe ad doesn\u0026rsquo;t say much about the service works, but rather tells people to stop eating like children.\nOne very interesting aspect is its use of logos in ads, specifically the \u0026ldquo;USDA Organic\u0026rdquo; logo. This provides authority.\nNative Ads GreenChef uses Lockerdome\u0026rsquo;s interactive ads for the majority of its campaigns. The ads allow users to select the type of diet food that they are looking for - vegan, vegetarian, paleo, etc. Most of the ads are focused on the most fashionable diets currently in the USA:\n(Note: One interesting thing to test would be to place ads for a specific diet type [paleo, for example] on publishers/placements that are related to the paleo diet. But we\u0026rsquo;ve yet to see any of these advertisers test this strategy.)\nLanding Page Standard GreenChef uses a long-form page that is similar to the style of landing page that Blue Apron and HelloFresh are using:\nNative GreenChef has just launched a few new campaigns on native that drive traffic to two blog post (\u0026ldquo;blogvertorial\u0026rdquo;) style ads.\nThe first introduces potential customers to their produce buyer, Brittany:\nThe second landing page is a YouTube video that promotes GreenFresh\u0026rsquo;s vegan meal options: Conclusion The food and meal kit delivery industry has definitely been booming as of late. It seems like most of the larger advertisers have been- and will continue to use - display advertising as one of their main marketing channels. The one thing that you should take away from this post is that native advertising can work for almost any business, even if it seems like yours isn\u0026rsquo;t related to many of the advertisers that pop-up in typical native feeds. Give it a shot, and use the advertisers we talked about today as inspiration.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/meal-kit-delivery/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn 2012, Matt Salzberg, Ilia Papas, and Matt Wadiak founded Blue Apron, a cost-effective way for people to easily prepare meals without needing to scour the aisles of their supermarket looking for every single ingredient in a complex recipe.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey began beta testing the product by sending their pre-assembled meal kits to friends.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat was then.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is now:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBlue Apron ships an estimated \u003cem\u003e8 million meal kits a month\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Advertising Strategies from the Billion Dollar Business of Meal Kit Delivery"},{"content":"If you want to look at America\u0026rsquo;s addictions, look at some of the biggest spenders on Display.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re addicted to celebrity gossip. We\u0026rsquo;re addicted to sports and political news. We\u0026rsquo;re addicted to weight loss and beauty.\nAnd most of all:\nWe\u0026rsquo;re addicted to credit.\nWe received pre-approved credit card offers the day we turned 18. There are stories of dead dogs receiving credit cards and toddlers receiving cards with limits higher than those of their parents.\nSoon we discovered that these seemingly magic cards could be one of our greatest financial tools\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;or the shovel that helps us dig our own financial grave.\nThe credit card industry is huge. According to the Federal Reserve Consumer Credit Card Report, American consumers approached one trillion in credit card debt in mid-2016. The average American has between 2 and 3 credit cards. Many have 4+ credit cards.\nPlus, all of the reward programs, points, benefits, and free travel incentivize us to keep swiping wherever we go.\nThe credit card companies know this. They are in constant competition to one-up each other and offer consumers the \u0026ldquo;best\u0026rdquo; credit card, and Display advertising is one of the many channels they use to get their message out.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not just the banks and credit card companies that use Display advertising, however. Affiliate marketers capitalize on society\u0026rsquo;s obsession with credit. These affiliates aren\u0026rsquo;t a bunch of teenagers getting started. These are savvy, massive companies who are skilled at acquiring millions of dollars in commission through online advertising.\nToday we\u0026rsquo;re going to show you exactly how these affiliates make huge commission off of advertising credit cards and other financial products through Display.\nHow It Works The nuts and bolts of the credit card affiliate business model are simple.\n#1: First, an advertiser sends traffic to either an \u0026ldquo;affiliate review\u0026rdquo; page or a page that reviews a specific credit card:\n#2: All links are tagged with an affiliate code.\nHowever, affiliates do not place the cards in random order. Some cards offer larger commissions. Affiliates give these cards \u0026ldquo;star treatment\u0026quot;by featuring them higher up on the page. This is completely legal as long as they disclose it.\n#3: The prospect clicks through to the affiliate link and signs up for the credit card. The credit card company pays the affiliate if the prospect is approved.\nHow much is the commission?\nThe commission depends on the card. Most of the \u0026ldquo;good\u0026rdquo; cards will offer commission of between $100-$150+ per approved customer. The high commission is one of the reasons why credit cards are a great way for affiliates to make money on Display.\nHowever, this isn\u0026rsquo;t an easy affiliate model to get up and running.\nKeepin\u0026rsquo; it Legal The finance industry is ripe with scammers and shysters. Some of the most popular cards will require advertisers to jump through hoops before approving them as an affiliate.\nIn addition, your landing pages, ads, and copy must be compliant with the FTC and each specific ad network\u0026rsquo;s terms and conditions. This is harder than it sounds, since the FTC and most networks are stricter when it comes to financial products.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll even see that all of the advertisers in today\u0026rsquo;s case study have an \u0026ldquo;Advertiser Disclosure\u0026rdquo; link at the very top of each page:\nHowever, the legal side goes beyond the scope of this post. You\u0026rsquo;ll have to do your own research on this. It will take a bit of grunt work, but it is quite doable if you\u0026rsquo;re serious about making this business model work.\nOkay, enough of the boring stuff.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s see how these companies are spending on Display.\nCreditCards.com CreditCards.com\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend CreditCards.com has spent an estimated $2,535,936 over the past 6 months. The majority of their ad spend has been allocated to the Google Display Network and Yahoo! Gemini.\nCreditCards.com\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives CreditCards.com spends the most on standard banner ads, particularly on balance transfer cards and 0% APR cards:\nCreditCards.com\u0026rsquo;s Publishers CreditCards.com\u0026rsquo;s main publishers are Forbes.com and Yahoo.com:\nAgain, very general sites seem to be working well for credit card affiliate offers.\nCreditCards.com\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages CreditCards.com uses affiliate review style pages targeted towards different types of credit cards.\nFor example, here is their cash back card landing page:\nAnd here is their balance transfer card landing page:\nBoth pages are very similar. The only difference is the cards shown on each page.\nHowever, CreditCards.com is not using any advertorial style pages. This is probably because they are not testing out Native ad networks.\nCompare Cards Compare Cards\u0026rsquo; Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Compare Cards has spent an estimated $1,158,912 over the past 6 months. Compare Cards allocates almost all of their entire display budget across four different Native ad networks.\nCompare Cards\u0026rsquo; Publishers Since the main ad network they\u0026rsquo;re spending with is Yahoo! Gemini, most of Compare Cards\u0026rsquo; ad spending is allocated to Yahoo.com and other sites that serve ads from Yahoo! Gemini, including Photobucket.com and Myspace.com.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s interesting is that all of the credit card advertisers so far seem to succeed with very general pages. With some tiny exceptions, there are very few advertisers that are running ads on sites that are directly related to finance or credit cards. These \u0026ldquo;general\u0026rdquo; sites likely work because almost everyone in the USA has a credit card these days, and many people have problems with credit card debt.\nThis makes targeting easier since the majority of people will probably find these ads relevant to their specific life situation. Therefore, these general, mass-market sites work.\nAnother way to get an even better look at how your competitors are targeting their specific demographics is to look at the UTM parameters in the URL. Advertisers will often give a general description of their targeting bucket in the URL parameters.\nFor example, Compare Cards\u0026rsquo; destination URL for one of their Yahoo! Gemini ads contains the parameter: \u0026quot; utm_campaign=broad_female_18-24.\u0026rdquo; Therefore, if you\u0026rsquo;re running traffic to some sort of credit card or finance offer, then you know you can probably start testing out offers to females who are between the ages of 18 and 24.\nThis won\u0026rsquo;t always be the case, but it\u0026rsquo;s good to check the destination parameters that advertisers put in their ad creatives.\nCompare Cards\u0026rsquo; Ad Creatives Compare Cards packs all of the bells and whistles that come with each credit card into their ad copy. They also run a few \u0026ldquo;targeted\u0026rdquo; ads towards seniors. The only real difference is that they put \u0026ldquo;Seniors\u0026rdquo; in the headline.\nIdeally, the landing page should include a senior citizen inclusive copy (and perhaps pictures), but the quick and dirty way to personalize an ad is to just bluntly say who the ad is for.\nCompare Cards\u0026rsquo; Landing Pages Compare Cards runs affiliate review style landing pages for each type of card they advertise.\nThey have a general page that shows the current best credit card offers (September is the example on this page):\nThey are also sending a lot of traffic to a page that shows consumers all of the zero-interest credit card offers (Chase Slate tends to be the one that most of the advertisers in this post prefer. Compare Cards is no exception):\nNerdWallet NerdWallet spends much less on Display than the other companies featured in this post. They have spent an estimated $272,448 over the past six months. Most of their ad spend has been allocated to native ad networks like Taboola.\nNerdWallet\u0026rsquo;s Publishers While NerdWallet is spending significantly less than the other advertisers featured in this post, you\u0026rsquo;ll notice that they follow more or less the same strategy. All of their ad spending is spread out over very general publishers. You\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that they recently started buying inventory on Cnn.com through one of the growing Native networks, Dianomi.\nNerdWallet\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives NerdWallet uses a mix of ad creatives that contain photos of credit cards or ad creatives with photos of women holding credit cards. Their most seen ad creatives all focus on no interest/balance transfer credit cards.\nNerdWallet\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages NerdWallet is one of the few advertisers that does not rely on the affiliate review style page. NerdWallet uses advertorial style blog posts that contain a list of the different types of credit cards and offers.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that NerdWallet runs a lot of ads and landing pages related to paying off debt. What is the product that they are promoting?\nYou guessed it: balance transfer credit cards. Here is the main page that they are using. This page contains affiliate links to various credit cards.\nHowever, they are also sending traffic to a page that is dedicated to the Chase Slate card (a popular balance transfer card):\nOverview of the Strategy All of this competitive data is interesting, but it\u0026rsquo;s nothing unless you know how to break it down and put it to use. Let\u0026rsquo;s pretend we want to start own credit card affiliate site and advertise on standard and Native display networks.\nNetworks\nThe first place we want to start with is the ad network. Credit card affiliates tend to mainly use Native ad networks and the Google Display Network. I would start first on Native (Taboola and Outbrain), and then test out some creatives on Google Display. You might find it easier to get your creatives and landing pages approved on Native.\nPublishers\nAs far as publishers go, most of the advertisers choose contextually targeted articles and sites. This means that you\u0026rsquo;ll want your ads to show on pages related to personal finance and debt. You can also test pages and sections on larger publishers and online magazines like Business Insider, Huffington Post, and Yahoo! Finance.\nAd Creatives\nMost of the ad creatives you\u0026rsquo;ll see advertisers using are very similar. All of the large credit card affiliates use these two styles of Native ads:\nSomeone (usually an attractive woman) holding a credit card:\nOr stock photos of physical credit cards:\nThese are the two styles of ads that I would start with.\nAs far as copy goes, I\u0026rsquo;d use copy that is similar to the copy from the ads above. You\u0026rsquo;d want to test a couple of different angles, including lists and specific cards for a specific purpose (balance transfer, rewards, travel points, etc.).\nLanding Pages\nThere are three main landing page styles that credit card affiliates are using:\n#1: Affiliate Review List\nMost of the advertisers above allocate the majority of their ad spend to these affiliate lists of credit cards:\nThis is probably where you want to start.\nThe next types of pages you\u0026rsquo;ll want to test are different styles of advertorials.\n#2: Advertorials\nThis is a mix of a blog post, advertorial, and affiliate review page. The only advertiser we\u0026rsquo;ve seen using these pages heavily is NerdWallet. The rest of the advertisers seem to send most of their traffic to an affiliate review page.\nConclusion Admittedly, this is one of the harder business models to get working on pretty much any medium, advertising or otherwise. However, once you get the strategy dialed in, you can create an extremely lucrative business model that eventually expands to other financial markets like mortgage refinancing.\nThe question remains: is the juice worth the squeeze?\nOnly by giving it a shot and looking at all of the numbers can you figure out if this is the right business model for yourself.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/business-of-display-credit-card-affiliates/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you want to look at America\u0026rsquo;s addictions, look at some of the biggest spenders on Display.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re addicted to celebrity gossip. We\u0026rsquo;re addicted to sports and political news. We\u0026rsquo;re addicted to weight loss and beauty.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd most of all:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re addicted to credit.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe received pre-approved credit card offers the day we turned 18. There are stories of dead dogs receiving credit cards and toddlers receiving cards with limits higher than those of their parents.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Business of Display Part 8: Credit Card Affiliate Offers"},{"content":"In October 2000, Google launched a month-long beta with about 350 advertisers for its new Google AdWords advertising platform. The tiny test would go on to become the biggest online advertising platform and lead to over $100 million in revenue per day.\nWhile it started simple, Google came out with new add-ons to the original product. One of the biggest was the 2003 release of Google AdSense. This allowed publishers to monetize their traffic with ads served through the Google Display platform.\nBanners were obviously one of the main ways that publishers monetized their content.\nHowever, the ugly text ad would end up being one of the biggest ad types on the Google Display Network, despite the fact that it has recently become somewhat forgotten. HTML5 ads, flash ads, interactive ads, and all other fancy ads became standard fare for most advertisers.\nThat makes sense, doesn\u0026rsquo;t it?\nA larger ad with a nice design and colors is likely to perform better than just a few lines of text, right?\nMaybe, maybe not.\nThe data tells us that text ads still work. Sometimes they work even better than banner ads. In fact, some of the world\u0026rsquo;s most successful advertisers are spending millions of dollars a month on text ads alone.\nWhy \u0026ldquo;Ugly\u0026rdquo; Text Ads? Every year a new ad type comes out that\u0026rsquo;s more animated and more eye-catching than the rest.\nThis begs the question: Why do some still use text ads on Display?\nFirst, text ads can outperform banner ads. Sometimes it\u0026rsquo;s better for an ad to blend in to the content on a publisher. Text ads relevant to publisher content often look like organic content. This gives the ad more credibility. You\u0026rsquo;ll often see text ads being used heavily on publishers like Yahoo! Answers and Ask.com, which are sites that have a lot of text on them and few images.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a great example of targeting a popular answer on Yahoo! Answers about dog barking with a relevant text ad:\nText ads are also a great place to start your A/B tests because of their simplicity.\nBanner ads have many different elements, and every single element can affect the ad\u0026rsquo;s performance. You often won\u0026rsquo;t know which one is helping and which one is hurting. Text ads, on the other hand, are just text.\nA high-performing text ad also has an amazing copy. I highly recommend that you nail down the copy first before worrying about banner design. Text ads are also great for dialing in the copy that works for your market before you send it off to a designer.\nPeople often get bogged down in the details. We forget about the basics of good copywriting and psychology \u0026ldquo;tricks\u0026rdquo; that have worked for decades. The simplicity of text ads helps us return to those tried and true principles.\nWhich Types of Text Ads Work? Now that you know why you should give text ads a second look, here are the current top 25 most seen Google Display Network text ads over the past 6 months. These ads have a combined total estimated spending of $5,671,300.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s not pocket change.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve provided an analysis regarding why we think the advertiser has been able to spend so much on the particular ad and why it has been working for it. Many of the text ads you\u0026rsquo;ll see below can be used as templates, so I highly recommend bookmarking this post and coming back to it when you need to start testing some new ads.\n#25: Sherpa Prep GMAT 9 Week GMAT Course - $899 Small classes. Extensive math review. Comprehensive preparation. sherpagmat.com\nNumbers work well in any ad. This advertiser sticks a bunch of numbers smack dab in the headline and then provides a few main benefits directly in the body copy. One thing to notice is that it likely has its prospect\u0026rsquo;s worries included.\nProspects don\u0026rsquo;t want large classes under the assumption that they will not receive the type of attention they want. Therefore the advertisers adds \u0026ldquo;small classes\u0026rdquo; in the copy. Most people are bad at math, so they add \u0026ldquo;extensive math review\u0026rdquo; to the copy. Directly addressing a prospect\u0026rsquo;s worries in your copy is a great strategy.\n#24: Active Campaign Email Marketing = Results Find out how 100k businesses have grown using email + automation. activecampaign.com\nActive Campaign (an email software provider) starts off with a very simple headline that captures your attention through the use of the \u0026ldquo;=\u0026rdquo;. Symbols also work well in text ads. The headline also provides a direct benefit, even if the benefit is vague. The rest of the copy is based on social proof.\n#23: Active Campaign Automated Email Marketing Intelligence driven email marketing \u0026amp; marketing automation. Try it now. activecampaign.com\nThis ad by Active Campaign tests another angle. It explains the features of the service and has a call-to-action that directs the user to try the product.\n#22: Weekly Marks Work at Home Jobs (2016) $47/hr Part-Time Job Openings. Requirements: Must Have Computer. weeklymarks.com\nThis features a very direct headline that addresses something that many people want. The advertiser probably uses \u0026ldquo;(2016)\u0026rdquo; in the headline because it makes the ad seem like it\u0026rsquo;s up-to-date (and it allows it to stick a few numbers in the headline).\nThe body copy contains the hourly wage of the jobs. Most people would be happy with $47/hr working from home since most jobs pay much less. The \u0026ldquo;requirements\u0026rdquo; are pretty basic. If you\u0026rsquo;re seeing this ad then that means you have access to a computer.\nHowever, the idea behind this piece of copy is to tell prospects that they don\u0026rsquo;t need to have any specific skills in order to get the job.\n#21: Compare Top Schools $5,775 Grants for College See If You Qualify for a $5,775 Grant to Help Pay for College. collegegrants.comparetopschools.com\nAgain, there are more numbers in the headline and in the body copy. Also notice that the body copy DOES NOT say \u0026ldquo;You can get up to $5,775 in grants to help pay for college.\u0026rdquo; It says, \u0026ldquo;See If You Quality.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s important! It makes people curious to see if they qualify and adds credibility to the ad.\n#20: Inmate Call Solutions GlobalTel Lnk Jail Call Unlimited Inmate Calls $7.25/Month #1 Inmate Call Servc 5 Yrs Running! global.tel.inmatecallsolutions.com\nThe headline for this ad for an inmate call service could be beefed up since it just uses the name of the company. However, the body copy does a good job fitting in two quick benefits \u0026ndash; unlimited calls that are cheap \u0026ndash; and some social proof at the end: \u0026ldquo;#1 Inmate Call Servc 5 Yrs Running!\u0026rdquo;\n#19: BioTrust 1 Tip of a flat belly : Cut down a bit of your belly every day by using this 1 weird old tip. superfatburningfats.com\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve all seen this ad.\nThis is a classic \u0026ldquo;weird tip\u0026rdquo; weight loss ad. These ads have been around for years. Numerous advertisers continue to use them. And yes, they continue to work in both text and banner ad format.\nAlthough it seems simple, there is a lot going on in the \u0026ldquo;one weird tip.\u0026rdquo;\nFirst, it\u0026rsquo;s just one tip. It\u0026rsquo;s not 10 tips, it\u0026rsquo;s one. This makes it seem simpler.\nSecond, \u0026ldquo;cut down a bit of your belly every day\u0026rdquo; is a benefit that people want, AND it gives them the mental picture of their belly actually shrinking.\nThird, the word \u0026ldquo;weird\u0026rdquo; was not often seen in the weight loss business (until everyone started using it in their ads). This means that the ad caught peoples\u0026rsquo; attention because they were not used to seeing the word \u0026ldquo;weird\u0026rdquo; alongside weight loss ads. Plus, it makes them wonder what is weird about the tip.\nAgain, curiosity is a powerful lever to use in your marketing materials.\n#18: The Sovereign Investor DOW to Drop 80% in 2016 80% Stock Market Crash to Strike in 2016, Economist Warns. thesovereigninvestor.com\nPop quiz:\nWhat is the main emotional driver behind this ad?\nFEAR.\nFear and anxiety are common emotions used in ad creatives and sales letters for financial products. They might be the two most powerful emotions in copywriting (yet not always the most appropriate).\nThe headline is meant to scare the heck out of the prospect.\nPlus, it\u0026rsquo;s combined symbols (% sign), numbers (80%), and the date. This gives the prospect a reason to click today.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that the body copy is a longer version of the headline. The only difference is the authority added at the end by mentioning that it\u0026rsquo;s an \u0026ldquo;economist\u0026rdquo; making this prediction.\n#17: Disk Doctors\nData Recovery Hard Drives, Raid Servers, NAS/SAN, Serving Since 1991, Fast \u0026amp; Secure diskdoctors.com\nThe copy in this creative is pretty straight forward. It mentions what the service is in the headline. Then it provides a quick list of the types of hard drives that the company fixes. There\u0026rsquo;s a bit of social proof/authority at the end by telling the prospect how long the company has been in business for.\n#16: Dropant Games Top30 Online Games Online Games - Free Play Top30 Online Game 2016 dropant.com\nThis is a more \u0026ldquo;spam-like\u0026rdquo; ad creative for a free online game site. It includes a bunch of keywords as many times as possible, especially \u0026ldquo;games.\u0026rdquo;\n#15: The Oxford Club 3 Stocks to Buy Right Now These 3 stocks are hitting urgent buy signals. Access our free report investmentu.com/TechnicalAnalysis\nThis is similar to the \u0026ldquo;1 weird trick\u0026rdquo; ad in that it contains a specific number of stocks. Simply saying \u0026ldquo;stocks to buy right now\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t as powerful. \u0026ldquo;3 Stocks to Buy Right Now,\u0026rdquo; however, is a big idea. Plus, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to understand. People can understand that there are three \u0026ldquo;hot\u0026rdquo; stocks right now and that they should buy them.\n#14: Google Get Google Chrome One browser for all your devices. Fast, free \u0026amp; installs in seconds! google.com/chrome\nThe body copy of the ad addresses the three things that people want in any product or service:\nPeople want things to be fast. People want things to be cheap. People want things to be easy. #13: The Blood Pressure Solution 1 Veg That Kills High BP Learn the 1 Odd Grocery Store Item That Lowers High Blood Pressure bloodpressuresolution.com\nHere\u0026rsquo;s another variation of the \u0026ldquo;1 weird trick\u0026rdquo; ad. Again, being specific (\u0026ldquo;1 veg\u0026rdquo;) and the big idea that there is ONE veggie that can \u0026ldquo;kill\u0026rdquo; (a great word to use in copy) blood pressure is both powerful and simple to understand.\n#12: DriverUpdate Start Download Update Windows® 10 Drivers from DriverUpdate™ driverupdate.net\nVarious software products choose to use the headline \u0026ldquo;Start Download,\u0026rdquo; or another variation of this. We\u0026rsquo;ve seen this being used in multiple ads, so it\u0026rsquo;s likely that this headline call-to-action works well for software products.\n#11: EMSL ANALYTICAL Inc. Particle Size Testing Lab We Identify Particles - Fast Result XRD, SEM, XRF, FTIR, GC/MS \u0026amp; More materialstestinglab.com/\nAnalysis:\nThis is a very niche, market-specific ad. I don’t personally understand what all of the acronyms stand for, but we assume that these make sense to the target audience and provide the tests that they are looking for.\n#10: AdvisorWorld 8% Annual Annuity Return Get guaranteed lifetime income and reduced risks to retirees all here. advisorworld.com/CompareAnnuities\nThis ad for financial services provides a big benefit combined with a number directly in the headline.\n#9: Aviation Institute of Maintenance Aircraft Repair Training Campus in Chesapeake \u0026amp; Connected With Employers Across The Country! fixjets.com\nThis creative contains a VERY important benefit that other job and university ads don\u0026rsquo;t usually have: \u0026ldquo;Connected With Employers Across The Country.\u0026rdquo; Sure, people want education, but what they need is a job. They might even believe that the institute is good, but they might not believe that they will be able to easily find a job afterwards. This ad addresses that worry.\n#8: AJP Personal Training On-site personal training Lose weight. Gain muscle. We offer 1-on-1 training in Loudoun County ajptraining.com\nPunchy, basic benefits are the crux of this ad. People want to lose weight and gain muscle, period.\n#7: HowToSimplified Start Download Search Videos w/ HowToSimplified™ On How to Do it Yourself - Free! howtosimplified.com\nHere we have another example that puts a call-to-action right in the headline. It also uses the trademark symbol (symbols catch your eye).\n#6: Apache Village RV Apache Village RV: STL Local RV Dealer Focused on You. Serving St. Louis since 1975 apachevillagerv.com\nThis creative uses authority by letting the prospect know that the company has been in business since 1975. Older demographics tend to value longevity than younger generations. Since the average RV owner is 50+, this is an important piece of copy to have in the creative.\n#5: fromDOCtoPDF Start Download Now Convert From Doc to PDF, PDF to Doc Simply With The Free On-line App! fromdoctopdf.com\nAgain, the \u0026ldquo;Start Download Now\u0026rdquo; call-to-action is stuck right in the headline. Then it gives a simple description of what the software does, followed by that magic marketing word: \u0026ldquo;free.\u0026rdquo;\n#4: Aviation Institute of Maintenance Aviation Maintenance Acquire Proper Knowledge \u0026amp; Skill Levels To Get An A \u0026amp; P Mechanic Job! fixjets.com\nThis is a fairly simple ad that contains many of the elements of the other ads in this list.\n#3: Palm Beach Research Group I Hate Social Security Born before 1969? You can get an extra $4,098 monthly with this palmbeachgroup.com\nComing in at third is a variation of a very successful ad from the Palm Beach Research Group, a highly successful Agora subsidiary. This is definitely one company you should check out if you want to see amazing copies and creatives. The headline is SUPER eye catching. The word \u0026ldquo;hate\u0026rdquo; is very powerful. We\u0026rsquo;ll look at this ad in more detail later in the #1 winning variation.\n#2: Comcast Comcast Business Services Get Business Internet, Phone \u0026amp; TV. Help Your Business Grow w/ Comcast! business.comcast.com\nThis ad creative is more of a branding ad. The headline is just the company name, which isn\u0026rsquo;t a compelling hook. The body copy lists what the service entails. However, the last line, \u0026ldquo;Help Your Business Grow w/ Comcast!\u0026rdquo; does provide a direct benefit. That being said, most advertisers should avoid using this style of creative.\n#1: Palm Beach Research Group Social Security Shutdown Born before 1969? You can get an extra $4,098 monthly with this palmbeachgroup.com\nFinally, we\u0026rsquo;ve arrived at number one.\nFirst, the headline \u0026ldquo;Social Security Shutdown\u0026rdquo; is eye-catching.\nWhy is social security shutting down? What\u0026rsquo;s going to happen?\nThere are elements of fear and curiosity. Social Security is a huge part of society in the United States. We all pay into it. It\u0026rsquo;s one of the government\u0026rsquo;s biggest expenditures. Most people rely on it when they retire. A headline that states that social security is shutting down is alarming.\nThe second line is what is called an inclusion-question. An inclusion-question uses borrowed trust. Most people will be skeptical of the second statement (\u0026ldquo;You can get an extra $4,098 monthly with this\u0026rdquo;). However, adding the inclusion question \u0026ldquo;born before 1969?\u0026rdquo; gives it a bit more credibility because it implies that the second statement now applies only to people born before 1969, not everyone.\nConclusion There\u0026rsquo;s so much that can be done with text ads. It\u0026rsquo;s often worth the extra effort to write a bunch of text ads, test them out, and then move on to nicer banner ads. You might be surprised; your text ads just might outperform the banner ads.\nHave you tested text ads on the Google Display Network? What was your experience like? Comment below and let us know!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/google-text-ads/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn October 2000, Google launched a month-long beta with about 350 advertisers for its new Google AdWords advertising platform. The tiny test would go on to become the \u003cstrong\u003ebiggest online advertising platform and lead to over $100 million in revenue \u003cem\u003eper day\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile it started simple, Google came out with new add-ons to the original product. One of the biggest was the 2003 release of Google AdSense. This allowed publishers to monetize their traffic with ads served through the Google Display platform.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"$5,671,300 Reasons Why You Should Test Google Text Ads"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s our report for the biggest Display advertisers during Q3 2016.\n(Note: The estimated ad spend data below is only for desktop only. Adbeat subscribers can login to see mobile and pre-roll ad spend data for all advertisers.)\n#1: expedia.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $14.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Rubicon Top 3 Publishers: dailymotion.com, yahoo.com, businessinsider.com Top Ad: #2: outrigger.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $9.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: TheTradeDesk, Casale, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: yahoo.com, weather.com, about.com Top Ad: #3: jet.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $8.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Advertising.com, Taboola Top 3 Publishers: wikia.com, imgur.com, littlethings.com Top Ad: #4: paypal.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $8.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Conversant, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: wikia.com, imgur.com, slate.com Top Ad: #5: squarespace.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $7.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: glassdoor.com, petapixel.com, imgur.com Top Ad: #6: amazon.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $6.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Outbrain Top 3 Publishers: imdb.com, wikia.com, dpreview.com Top Ad: #7: vanguard.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $5.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources:Direct Buy, Google, TheTradeDesk Top 3 Publishers: fool.com, (money) about.com, about.com Top Ad: #8: westernunion.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $5.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: MediaMath, Google, AppNexus Top 3 Publishers: ask.com, urbandictionary.com, imgur.com Top Ad: #9: stylewe.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $5.2M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, BingAds Top 3 Publishers: theguardian.com, ibtimes.com, merriam-webster.com Top Ad: #10: zulily.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, MSNDisplay Top 3 Publishers: imgur.com, yahoo.com, littlethings.com Top Ad: #11: edx.org Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $4.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Rubicon, Direct Buy, OpenX Top 3 Publishers: dailymotion.com, go.com, dailymail.co.uk Top Ad: #12: bestbuy.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $4.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: wikia.com, huffingtonpost.com, cnet.com Top Ad: #13: hillaryclinton.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $4.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Advertising.com, Google Top 3 Publishers: politico.com, nytimes.org, washingtonpost.com Top Ad: #14: adobe.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $4.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: vimeo.com, about.com, instructables.com Top Ad: #15: aarp.org Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $4.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Outbrain, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: nbcnews.com, washingtonpost.com, food.com Top Ad: #16: ibm.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $3.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Taboola Top 3 Publishers: forbes.com, businessinsider.com, time.com Top Ad: #17: hp.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $3.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Outbrain Top 3 Publishers: wikia.com, flickr.com, yahoo.com Top Ad: #18: dyson.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $3.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Rubicon Top 3 Publishers: wikia.com, usnews.com, weather.com Top Ad: #19: aliexpress.com Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $3.2M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: yahoo.com, flickr.com, businessinsider.com Top Ad: #20: battle.net Estimated Q3 Ad Spend: $3.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, CPM Star Top 3 Publishers: wikia.com, lifehacker.com, gamefaqs.com Top Ad: ","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-top-20-display-advertisers-of-q3-2016/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s our report for the biggest Display advertisers during Q3 2016.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e(Note: The estimated ad spend data below is only for \u003cstrong\u003edesktop\u003c/strong\u003e only. Adbeat subscribers can login to see \u003ca href=\"http://info.adbeat.com/livedemo\"\u003emobile and pre-roll ad spend data\u003c/a\u003e for all advertisers.)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"1expediacom\"\u003e#1: expedia.com\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimated Q3 Ad Spend\u003c/strong\u003e: $14.8M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Traffic Sources\u003c/strong\u003e: Google, Direct Buy, Rubicon\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Publishers\u003c/strong\u003e: dailymotion.com, yahoo.com, businessinsider.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"topad\"\u003eTop Ad:\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"expedia.com-b196f07154613f4a92249dadbde099e8\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/expedia.com-b196f07154613f4a92249dadbde099e8.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"2-outriggercom\"\u003e#2: outrigger.com\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimated Q3 Ad Spend\u003c/strong\u003e: $9.3M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Traffic Sources\u003c/strong\u003e: TheTradeDesk, Casale, TribalFusion\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Publishers\u003c/strong\u003e: yahoo.com, weather.com, about.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"top-ad\"\u003eTop Ad:\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"outrigger.com-0f2736c685233896f5678f82653fb6da\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/outrigger.com-0f2736c685233896f5678f82653fb6da.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Top 20 Display Advertisers of Q3 2016"},{"content":"New feature!\nAdbeat Enterprise subscribers can now private label any advertising report (including the Advertiser Vertical Report) with their company logo and company name. This is good news for subscribers who want to send more professional looking reports to clients without having to make manual design changes.\nHow does it work?\nFirst, Enterprise subscribers can change the logo and company name under in the \u0026ldquo;Private Labeling\u0026rdquo; tab on the \u0026ldquo;User Profile\u0026rdquo; screen:\nThe cover of any PDF or PPT report will now include your company logo\u0026hellip;\nAnd each page of the report will have your company name in the upper-right corner:\nPrivate labeling is currently available for Enterprise subscribers only.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re not an Enterprise subscriber but want access to Private labeling (and tons of other amazing features), then please send an email to our sales team at sales at adbeat.com or sign-up below to get a Live Demo of Adbeat Enterprise:\nEnjoy!\nTeam Adbeat\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/private-labeling/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNew feature!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdbeat Enterprise subscribers can now \u003cstrong\u003eprivate label\u003c/strong\u003e any advertising report (including the Advertiser Vertical Report) with their company logo and company name. This is good news for subscribers who want to send more professional looking reports to clients without having to make manual design changes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHow does it work?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, Enterprise subscribers can change the logo and company name under in the \u0026ldquo;Private Labeling\u0026rdquo; tab on the \u0026ldquo;User Profile\u0026rdquo; screen:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NEW FEATURE: Private Label Your Advertising Reports"},{"content":"Many start-up founders dream of being acquired by a massive Fortune 500 company. Well, less than 2 years after launch, Jet has been acquired by Wal-Mart for ~$3 billion.\nThis was a major power play for Wal-Mart, as it attempts to compete with eCommerce juggernaut Amazon.com.\nWal-Mart may never catch up to Amazon even after acquiring Jet (the critics are unoptimistic), but there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt that Jet must have been doing something right if it was able to get acquired by one of the biggest companies in the world just a few years after being founded.\nFirst, Jet raised an estimated $565 million in funds since 2014.\nEven more impressive, Jet hit the 1 million-customer mark just 3 months after launching.\nCertainly, Jet\u0026rsquo;s founder Marc Lore knows a thing or two about growing a company. Lore was the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Quidsi. Lore sold Quidsi to Amazon in 2010 for a $500 million in cash.\nHowever, that isn’t the only secret to Jet’s success. In addition to Lore\u0026rsquo;s business acumen, Jet was also spending millions of dollars a month on\u0026hellip;\n(You guessed it)\nDisplay advertising.\nSo, today, we want to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how one of the world\u0026rsquo;s fastest-growing companies built up its customer base so quickly. You\u0026rsquo;ll get a chance to look at all of the ad networks, publishers, ad creatives and landing pages that Jet used to get on Wal-Mart\u0026rsquo;s radar and become one of the most impressive acquisitions in recent history.\nJet\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Jet has spent an estimated $10,768,384 on display over the past six months. The majority of its ad spend has been allocated to the Google Display Network.\nWhile there was an obvious uptick around July (when the acquisition buzz started), you\u0026rsquo;ll see that Jet was already spending in the $50,000/day mark for several months before the talks hit the press. Most of that was allocated to Google Display.\nGoogle Display is the go-to network for most eCommerce companies.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve written previous blog posts about eCommerce retailers like Amazon, Wal-Mart and z ulily. The one thing they all have in common is that they all spend heavily on Google Display.\nNote: we\u0026rsquo;ve also seen many eCommerce companies dabble in native advertising. Read about native in one of our most popular blog posts titled, \u0026ldquo;How To Increase Your eCommerce Traffic and Sales With Native Advertising\u0026rdquo;.\nJet\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Jet allocates the majority of its million-dollar ad spend to entertainment and viral content sites:\nJet\u0026rsquo;s three biggest publishers are wikia.com (an entertainment news/viral content site), littlethings.com ( a viral content site) and imgur.com (a viral image/meme site).\nOne thing to keep in mind is that Jet has just received a massive inflow of cash from Wal-Mart.\nThis means that it has money to burn.\nPlus, Jet can advertise on viral sites since its product line encompasses just about everything.Advertising on very general sites can work. However, it won\u0026rsquo;t work for advertisers who have very specific products (or don\u0026rsquo;t have cash to burn testing them out) simply because the demographics are all over the place. These are the types of sites that you want to test when you\u0026rsquo;re looking to massively scale your campaigns. This is especially important because often Google (and other networks) will automatically place your ads on these sites simply because of the amount of volume they get.\nThe lesson here:keep an eye on what sites Google places your sites on if you\u0026rsquo;re using contextual or category targeting.\nJet\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives All of Jet\u0026rsquo;s most used creatives use the \u0026ldquo;save money\u0026rdquo; angle. All of these ads tout that you can save 15% off your first three orders. You\u0026rsquo;ll see that many eCommerce companies use specific savings numbers in their copy (like zulily using \u0026ldquo;70%\u0026rdquo; in the majority of its ad creatives).\nJet recently began testing ads that advertise specialty food. It appears that Jet is starting to vary its creatives, albeit quite slowly. Here are some ads that have been picked up by Adbeat over the past week or so:\nAfter being bought by Wal-Mart, there\u0026rsquo;s little doubt that you\u0026rsquo;ll start seeing them test new creative strategies on display. However, for the time being, their ad creative strategy is pretty vanilla.\nJet\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Jet\u0026rsquo;s landing pages are simple lists of the products that it sells. Jet sends most of its traffic to the page on the left. However, all of its ads that contain \u0026ldquo;prices drop as you shop\u0026rdquo; copy send traffic to the page on the right, which contains that headline at the top.\nOne thing that\u0026rsquo;s interesting is that Jet is not testing gated landing pages. Gated pages are a great way for eCommerce advertisers to capture a prospect\u0026rsquo;s email address so they can continue to maintain contact even if the prospect doesn\u0026rsquo;t buy.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a great example from zulily:\nSince Jet now has Wal-Mart money to burn, we will likely see them start testing a bunch of brand new stuff in the future. You can assume that this is just the beginning in their quest to take down Amazon as the #1 eCommerce company.\nConclusion Jet\u0026rsquo;s display advertising strategy is fairly simple at this moment in time. However, there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt that it\u0026rsquo;s been effective at helping Jet grow its customer base past that 1 million mark. Plus, there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt that the $3 BILLION acquisition will kick things up a notch. Expect to see Jet ads everywhere over the next couple of months.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/jets-display-strategy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMany start-up founders dream of being acquired by a massive Fortune 500 company.\nWell, less than 2 years after launch, Jet has been acquired by Wal-Mart for ~$3 billion.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"jet-logo\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/jet-logo.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis was a major power play for Wal-Mart, as it \u003cem\u003eattempts\u003c/em\u003e to compete with eCommerce juggernaut Amazon.com.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWal-Mart may never catch up to Amazon even after acquiring Jet (the critics are unoptimistic), but there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt that Jet must have been doing something right if it was able to get acquired by one of the biggest companies in the world just a few years after being founded.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"0 to 1 Million Customers in 3 Months: Jet's Display Strategy Revealed"},{"content":"It\u0026rsquo;s always a beautiful day when we add more networks \u0026amp; data to Adbeat :)\nAdbeat now has data for one new \u0026ldquo;standard\u0026rdquo; display network, Infolinks.\nAll Adbeat Standard subscribers (and plans above the Standard level) will have access to data for Infolinks (and 90+ other display networks).\nAdbeat also has data for the financial Native ad network, dianomi.\nAll Adbeat Advanced and Enterprise subscribers will have access to dianomi data. If you\u0026rsquo;re targeting affluent customers, or think that your offer will see success on financial publishers, then you\u0026rsquo;ll definitely want to check out dianomi\u0026rsquo;s data.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re not an Adbeat Advanced or Enterprise subscriber but want access to dianomi and data for 15+ other Native networks and 90+ standard display networks\u0026hellip;\nThen click the button below to sign-up for a Live Demo, or contact our sales team at sales (at) adbeat.com.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/data-for-infolinks-and-dianomi-now-available/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s always a beautiful day when we add more networks \u0026amp; data to Adbeat :)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdbeat now has data for one new \u0026ldquo;standard\u0026rdquo; display network, Infolinks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Infolinks_new_logo_small\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Infolinks_new_logo_small.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll Adbeat Standard subscribers (and plans above the Standard level) will have access to data for Infolinks (and 90+ other display networks).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdbeat also has data for the financial Native ad network, \u003cstrong\u003edianomi\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"dianomi logo\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/dianomi-logo.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll Adbeat Advanced and Enterprise subscribers will have access to dianomi data. If you\u0026rsquo;re targeting affluent customers, or think that your offer will see success on financial publishers, then you\u0026rsquo;ll definitely want to check out dianomi\u0026rsquo;s data.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Data For Infolinks and dianomi Now Available!"},{"content":"Note: This is Part 2 in a two-part series that reveals the two presidential candidates\u0026rsquo; Display strategies. Click here to see Part 1: Hillary Clinton.\nAs of June 2016, there were rumors that the Trump campaign was running low on funds.\nSubsequently, Trump blatantly started asking for public donations from supporters. There have been a few controversies over who he is asking and who is giving Trump these funds.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re not here to talk about those controversies.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re here to talk about one of the methods he uses to garner support and campaign cash from supporters:\nDisplay advertising.\nUp until about a month ago, Trump\u0026rsquo;s team didn\u0026rsquo;t spend a cent on digital advertising. Recently, however, the Trump team has pulled out the big guns on Display. Trump has begun to spend hard.\nHis campaign started off fairly vanilla. Trump wasn\u0026rsquo;t testing many landing pages or ad creatives. However, as he began to increase his spending, he also began to increase the number of A/B tests he\u0026rsquo;s running.\nYou can learn a lot from how Trump is running his campaign.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re interested in seeing how a presidential hopeful\u0026rsquo;s team runs a multi-million dollar ad campaign in the final months of this year\u0026rsquo;s election, keep reading.\nDonald Trump\u0026rsquo;s Top Ad Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend \u0026ldquo;The Donald\u0026rdquo; has spent an estimated $1,298,688 on Display over the past 60+ days. Trump allocates close to all of his ad spending to the Google Display Network. He allocates much smaller portions to Advertising.com and Direct Buys.\nTrump\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Trump\u0026rsquo;s publisher selection strategy is similar to that of Hillary Clinton. Trump\u0026rsquo;s team buys most of their ad inventory on general political news sites, conservative news sites, and online magazines.\nHere are Trump\u0026rsquo;s top 5 publishers:\nOne thing that caught our eye is that both candidates are good at buying traffic on specific pages and placements that are most relevant to their ads and messaging. Both candidates\u0026rsquo; media buying teams rarely make the mistake of purchasing inventory on a page that is likely to get a prospect not in their target audience (this is a mistake that too many advertisers make).\nFor example, here are Trump\u0026rsquo;s top placements on politico.com:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll notice that he buys traffic only on pages related to the presidential election. Now, it\u0026rsquo;s pretty easy for candidates to target pages related to them on a political news site. After all, they are presidential candidates.\nBut you\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that Trump\u0026rsquo;s team got a bit more creative. His media buyers also spend heavily on Forbes.com.\nWhich pages display Trump\u0026rsquo;s ads?\nTrump typically places his ads on pages related to celebrity net worth:\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s the lesson behind this?\nMany online magazines and news sites contain sections that are relevant to your offer. The entire site might not be suitable, but large publishers like the Huffington Post or Forbes will have a few high-traffic placements that can perform well for your offer. This strategy is perfect for further scaling your campaign.\nBoth Trump and Hillary do an excellent job at selecting publishers and placements.\nHowever, things start to get interesting when you dial down into Trump\u0026rsquo;s ad creative and landing page strategy.\nTrump\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Trump tests a few different styles of ad creatives. You\u0026rsquo;ll notice that most of his creatives contain pro-America messages and imagery. Hillary Clinton tends to use less of this type of imaging. For example, here are some of the first ad creatives Trump launched that contained symbols of American success, like the NASA program:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that Trump was A/B testing different calls-to-action in his earlier ad creatives. However, the A/B testing did not stop here.\nOver the past few weeks, Trump has ramped up his A/B testing on the four main elements of his Display ads: the background color, the main image, the headline, and the call-to-action.\nHere is a collection of recent ads that Trump has recently started testing:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that Trump was A/B testing different calls-to-action in his earlier ad creatives.\nHowever, the A/B testing did not stop here.\nOver the past few weeks, Trump has ramped up his A/B testing on the four main elements of his Display ads: the background color, the main image, the headline, and the call-to-action.\nHere is a collection of recent ads that Trump has started testing:\nWhich style of ad is winning?\nSince Trump\u0026rsquo;s team recently launched these A/B tests, it\u0026rsquo;s still unclear which ad is winning.\nHowever, initial Adbeat data shows that Trump has been spending the most on the \u0026ldquo;Leading the Way\u0026rdquo; creatives.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see that the messages on Trump\u0026rsquo;s creatives feeds right into the messages on his landing pages.\nTrump\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Trump used to send all traffic to this \u0026ldquo;donation funnel\u0026rdquo;:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll notice that the first page is a simple opt-in page based on the promise that he will \u0026ldquo;bring jobs back to the U.S.\u0026rdquo; The second page is a donation page that the user sees after opting in to Trump\u0026rsquo;s email list.\nTrump has recently begun to allocate more of his ad spend to send prospects directly to this donation page:\nTrump\u0026rsquo;s media buyers have spent an estimated $117k sending traffic to this new donation page.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll notice that the imagery on this landing page is in line with the imagery in his ad creatives, which shows typical Americana symbols.\nTrump\u0026rsquo;s team has also been testing another opt-in page that contains a large image of Trump and his running mate Mike Pence:\nThe difference between this page and his original opt-in page is mainly the message. The headline of the first landing page is all about bringing jobs back to the US., while the headline of the second landing page is Trump\u0026rsquo;s campaign slogan.\nConclusion If you\u0026rsquo;ve read part 1, then you\u0026rsquo;ll have noticed that there are many similarities between both Trump and Hillary\u0026rsquo;s ad campaigns. They both spend heavily on the Google Display Network, they both use very similar landing pages, and they both are ramping up spending as we get closer and closer to the election.\nAs of the publishing date of this blog post, Trump is slightly behind Hillary in the polls. Will his last effort on Display help give him the advantage he needs to win the election?\nOnly time will tell.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/trump-vs-clinton-on-display-part-2-donald-trump/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote: This is Part 2 in a two-part series that reveals the two presidential candidates\u0026rsquo; Display strategies. \u003ca href=\"/trump-vs-clinton-on-display-part-1-hillary/\"\u003eClick here to see Part 1: Hillary Clinton.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs of June 2016, there were rumors that the Trump campaign was running low on funds.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSubsequently, Trump blatantly started asking for public donations from supporters. There have been a few controversies over who he is asking and who is giving Trump these funds.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re not here to talk about those controversies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trump vs. Clinton on Display Part 2: Donald Trump"},{"content":"One of our most popular (and controversial) posts earlier this year revealed the display advertising strategies for the 2016 presidential candidates.\nWell, a lot has happened since then.\nThe primaries are over, and only two contenders are left standing in the ring:\nNow it\u0026rsquo;s time to drill down into the current Display strategies for Clinton and Trump.\nFirst, if you go back in in time and read the original post, you\u0026rsquo;d see that Trump was not running any paid traffic whatsoever (h owever, advertisers have been piggybacking off his name for months).\nHowever, Trump has finally brought his advertising campaigns to the internet\u0026hellip;\nAnd Hillary Clinton continues to scale her massive ad campaigns by spending more through Direct Buys, on Advertising.com, and on Native networks.\nAre you interested in seeing how the two candidates match up on Display?\nThen keep reading.\nHillary\u0026rsquo;s Ad Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Hillary Clinton has spent an estimated $9,211,904 on display over the past six months. Hillary continues to spend heavily on Direct Buys and Advertising.com. However, you\u0026rsquo;ll notice that she has recently ramped up her ad spend on Native networks like Taboola and Outbrain (you\u0026rsquo;ll see her full Native strategy further below \u0026ndash; it\u0026rsquo;s quite interesting):\nHillary\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Given that Hillary spends the most on Direct Buys, then it will come as no surprise that her top 5 publishers are all large publishers. Her biggest direct buy by far is CBSNews.com. All of her other publishers are also contextually targeted general interest sites, news sites, and online political magazines.\nAll of these publishers are massive sites with multiple sections.\nThis begs the question:\nOn what pages is Hillary actually purchasing her inventory?\nBelow you\u0026rsquo;ll see a sample of a few placements where she purchased inventory on CBSnews.com:\nThese placements are almost all news stories related to the election, current politics, or the Orlando tragedy. A lot of her ads were seen on pages related to the Orlando shooting because a) it was an international news story that received a lot of traffic, and b) due to her stance on gun control.\nAdvertisers will often cut campaigns short or stop advertising on large publishers because they \u0026ldquo;don\u0026rsquo;t work.\u0026rdquo; This may or may not be true.\nThe lesson to take away from Hillary is that many sections and pages on large publishers can be profitable. You just have to know which placements and channels will get you the highest ROI. The best way to do this is to test out the pages and placements where you see your competitor\u0026rsquo;s ads running.\nHillary\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Hillary promotes different ad styles across many different networks. While the majority of her spending is allocated towards static and HTML5 banner ads, she also runs many anti-Trump ads on Native.\nStandard Most of Hillary\u0026rsquo;s ads have similar messages focused on \u0026ldquo;joining Hillary. \u0026quot; This sort of copy is meant to make visitors feel like they are part of the in-group. It\u0026rsquo;s meant to make them feel like they aren\u0026rsquo;t just voting for someone, but rather joining a movement and working alongside Hillary.\nShe\u0026rsquo;s also running a few anti-Trump banner ads:\nBut that\u0026rsquo;s just the start of her anti-Trump advertising. Her Native ad creatives are where things start to get very interesting (and where the true \u0026ldquo;negative\u0026rdquo; advertising really begins).\nNative Hillary uses her Native ad campaigns to run anti-trump ads.\nThe ad on the bottom-right takes visitors to a page that allows them to create their own Trump meme that combines with their Facebook profile image (you\u0026rsquo;ll see the landing page later on).\nAlmost all of Hillary\u0026rsquo;s Native ads are variations of one of the two ads shown above.\nHillary\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Hillary\u0026rsquo;s main landing pages are opt-in pages:\nThese pages sign up visitors to her email list and send them to a campaign donation Upsell page:\nThe second set of landing pages come from Hillary\u0026rsquo;s anti-Trump campaigns.\nThere is a version of an opt-in page:\nA long form \u0026ldquo;blogvertorial\u0026rdquo; page that has Donald Trump quotes and videos:\nAnd a page that allows people to connect with their Facebook account to an app that allows them to create/share a Trump meme with their profile picture:\n(Side note: You are automatically opted-in to Hillary\u0026rsquo;s email list when you use \u0026ldquo;Trump Yourself. \u0026ldquo;Little tools and games are a great way to get opt-ins for any business).\nConclusion As we get nearer and nearer to the election, there\u0026rsquo;s no doubt that Hillary has come out with guns blazing as far as her display campaigns are concerned. Candidates tend to bring out negative advertising as election day gets closer, and it looks like Hillary is following this trend. There is a significant difference in some of her ad creatives and landing page messages from before the primaries and today.\nNow that you\u0026rsquo;ve seen Hillary\u0026rsquo;s campaign, what does \u0026ldquo;the Donald\u0026rsquo;s\u0026rdquo; campaign look like?\nYou’ll see his entire display strategy in Part 2 next week!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/trump-vs-clinton-on-display-part-1-hillary/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of our most popular (and controversial) posts earlier this year \u003ca href=\"/2016-presidential-candidate-display-advertising-strategy-revealed/\"\u003erevealed the display advertising strategies for the 2016 presidential candidates\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, a lot has happened since then.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe primaries are over, and only two contenders are left standing in the ring:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"Hillary-Clinton-VS-Donald-Trump-rack-up-additional-wins\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Hillary-Clinton-VS-Donald-Trump-rack-up-additional-wins.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow it\u0026rsquo;s time to drill down into the current Display strategies for Clinton and Trump.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst, if you go back in in time and read the original post, you\u0026rsquo;d see that Trump was not running any paid traffic whatsoever (h \u003ca href=\"/power-of-celebrity-display-advertising-donald-trump/\"\u003eowever, advertisers have been piggybacking off his name for months\u003c/a\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Trump vs. Clinton on Display Part 1: Hillary"},{"content":"(Note: this is a guest post from our good friends over at Bannersnack, an easy-to-use banner creation tool. Enjoy!)\nRunning a successful advertising campaign on any search network can be challenging.\nBut let\u0026rsquo;s face it, search advertising is much easier to understand, follow and optimize compared to display advertising. Don\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong, search campaigns can be a pain to deal with as well, but overall they are more accessible and offer a much clearer view of your progress and results.\nDisplay advertising, on the other hand, hides many secrets. Making sense of what\u0026rsquo;s actually going on can be quite difficult. Measuring the direct performance of a display campaign can be misleading because giving credit based on first or last click ignores the impact of other customer touch points during the path to conversion.\nFocusing on metrics like CTR and direct conversions can give you a false view. These metrics provide limited insights into the benefits of multi-channel marketing.\nMost people forget about other metrics. For example, \u0026ldquo;View Through Conversions\u0026rdquo; is a good metric to follow. This metric provides additional information related to the value of your display campaigns. (For those of you who don’t know what a \u0026ldquo;View Through Conversion\u0026rdquo; is, this metric refers to conversions that came from users that saw your ads but didn\u0026rsquo;t click on them.)\nMetrics like \u0026ldquo;View Through Conversions\u0026rdquo; can make measuring the return on investment (ROI) for your display campaigns easier, offering better insights that will help you optimize your campaigns based on how your users interact and respond to your display ads.\nA smart banner will get you attention. But is it enough? It’s true that the right banners can make your campaign stand out. A good design has the potential to spread your message to a large audience. If you have access to a professional designer then you are ready to go, and you might get it right from the start.\nCheaper alternatives are also available. For example, tools like Bannersnack offer a large variety of ready made banner templates for various markets. All display campaigns need to test a lot of banners. Having the ability to quickly create and modify banners is a big plus.\nA correct way of A/B testing is done by making slight variations of your banners. Testing elements like CTA, colors, images and backgrounds or value proposition against each other one by one.\nFor example, you can test 2 different CTAs, wait until you have enough data to determine the winner, implement that change to all banners, and move on to the next test.\nHaving an outstanding banner set is for sure a key element in your display campaigns, but ignoring all other aspects of the campaign can hurt you more than you think. Banner design plays a relatively small role in the setup and optimization process. A slight increase in your CTR won\u0026rsquo;t give you the necessary edge over your competitors.\nRising above your competitors won\u0026rsquo;t be an easy task. That\u0026rsquo;s why I\u0026rsquo;ve prepared a list of steps that you\u0026rsquo;ll need to pay attention to before and after launching your campaigns.\n1. Target the right audience Targeting the right audience is vital to your campaign\u0026rsquo;s success. If you are just starting with display advertising, I strongly recommend that you start with a remarketing campaign first. By doing this you can be sure that your ads will be displayed to people already interested in your product or service and the chance of converting will be much higher.\nOne of the reasons why retargeting works is because you have a much better control over your audience. You can segment them as much as you want. You might be surprised to hear that 98% of your paid ads could be a colossal waste of money. A big part of that waste is due to poor targeting.\n2. Have the right landing page Having different segments will be a big plus when setting up your landing pages. Customers interact with your site differently and expect different things. That’s why you need to customize your landing pages in a way where everyone gets exactly what they want.\nFor example, if a customer came to your site looking for running shoes but left without buying, you can create a segment to target them. Then, you can send them to a landing page that offers them running shoes (instead of hiking shoes) when they come back to your website through a remarketing ad.\n3. Create relevant banners Your banners are only as good as your landing page. As I said before, you might get it right and create an amazing ad that has all the right qualities to grab your customer\u0026rsquo;s attention - a clear and visible logo, a clever message, and a clear CTA - but if you don’t align your banners with your landing page your efforts will be in vain.\nIt needs to be clear that the ad they click accurately represents what they get once they see your landing page.\n4. Track your ad placement Keep a close eye on your ad placement reports.\nExclude placements that aren’t appropriate and are eating through your budget.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t exclude too many placements when dealing with remarketing campaigns. Remarketing isn\u0026rsquo;t as much about showing your ads showing on relevant sites, as it is for targeting based on the user\u0026rsquo;s behavior.\nHowever, if you see a site that generates a lot of impressions/clicks, but no conversions, you can exclude those and focus more on better-performing placements.\n5. Set the right schedule Running your campaigns based on the best performing hours can save you a lot of money. Identify the best performing hours and run your ads accordingly. This will further increase your chances of conversion and lower your cost-per-acquisition.\nYou can establish your best performing hours and days of the week by tracking conversions with Google Analytics.\n6. Target the right devices Even though mobile and tablet devices have a huge role when it comes to advertising, that doesn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily mean that they are right for every business. Mobile devices can generate a lot of traffic but you need to be sure that your website is mobile-friendly and can actually convert mobile visitors.\nAlthough it’s already 2016 and mobile usage has surpassed desktops and laptops for some time now, there are still many businesses that are not prepared to cope with the increasing number of visitors from mobile devices.\nNot all businesses need a strong mobile presence. Spending too much money on mobile advertising can be ineffective for certain businesses and markets.\nFor example, a B2B SaaS product that\u0026rsquo;s used mainly on desktops/laptops might not benefit as much from mobile advertising. Of course, there are exceptions. You need to test and find out if mobile advertising works for your market.\nConclusion By now it should be clear it’s not all about banners and visuals. Display advertising can be as complex as you want it to be, and you should always look for ways to improve and expand.\nThere are no shortcuts to success and getting to the desired performance can take a long time. So my piece of advice for you is to go out there and try new things. Your ads and the way they look is important, but sometimes knowing how to target and how to be relevant it’s all it takes to have a successful campaign.\nMarc Ostrofsky famously said:\n\u0026ldquo;Relevance is a search engine\u0026rsquo;s holy grail. People want results that are closely connected to their queries.\u0026rdquo;\nThis applies to ads too.\nQuestions? Comments? Let me know in the comments below!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/display-advertising-its-not-all-about-banners-and-visuals/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e(Note: this is a guest post from our good friends over at \u003ca href=\"http://bannersnack.com\"\u003eBannersnack\u003c/a\u003e, an easy-to-use banner creation tool. Enjoy!)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRunning a successful advertising campaign on any search network can be challenging.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut let\u0026rsquo;s face it, search advertising is much easier to understand, follow and optimize compared to display advertising. Don\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong, search campaigns can be a pain to deal with as well, but overall they are more accessible and offer a much clearer view of your progress and results.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Display Advertising: It's Not All About Banners and Visuals"},{"content":"Note: This is part 1 in a three-part series that covers which landing page styles are converting for direct response advertisers on the most popular Native networks. This post covers landing pages that currently work on Taboola. Part 2 (Revcontent) and part 3 (Outbrain) will be published in the upcoming weeks.\nHave you tested running traffic on Taboola?\nIf you haven\u0026rsquo;t, then you\u0026rsquo;re really missing out. Some of the largest direct response advertisers spend upwards of $100k/month on Taboola alone. Taboola reaches over one billion unique visitors monthly, and they recently acquired ConvertMedia, a native video advertising company.\nHowever, those who have tested Taboola traffic know that it works a bit differently than Google AdWords. You need to test a lot of headlines and pictures so your CTR doesn\u0026rsquo;t drop below a certain point. You also need to test a variety of landing pages that you might not think of using on \u0026ldquo;traditional\u0026rdquo; ad networks like Google AdWords.\nToday we\u0026rsquo;re going to look at the landing pages that some of these million-dollar direct response advertisers use on other advertisers with Taboola. You\u0026rsquo;ll see many of the classic styles, a few new ones, and a few takes on some of the older ones.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;ve ever thought about running traffic on Native (and especially on Taboola), then you won\u0026rsquo;t want to miss this post.\n#1: The \u0026ldquo;Blogvertorial\u0026rdquo; You\u0026rsquo;ve probably heard of the advertorial. An advertorial is a landing page that\u0026rsquo;s designed to look like an organic news story.\nThe \u0026ldquo;blogvertorial\u0026rdquo; (a made-up name) is similar, but there are two main differences:\nDifference #1: Most advertorials that are successful on Taboola are designed to look like news articles. Blogvertorials are designed to look like organic blog posts. They are also often written in a traditional blog format, such as a \u0026ldquo;listicle\u0026rdquo; (list of tips/tricks) or a testimonial review.\nDifference #2: Most Taboola advertisers host their advertorials on a domain that is separate from their main site. Almost all blogvertorials are shown on the main domain. (One thing to keep in mind is that many advertorials are affiliates doing lead generation for another company).\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a blogvertorial from Hello Fresh, a healthy food delivery service:\nAdbeat estimates that Hello Fresh has spent over $599.2K on Taboola over the previous six months. Most of that traffic was sent to blogvertorial landing pages. This likely means that this style of landing page is working well for Hello Fresh.\n#2: The Classic Advertorial The advertorial is still alive and well in 2016.\nMany Native advertisers who do lead generation for mortgage financing, credit card debt products, or auto insurance have success with advertorials on Taboola. You\u0026rsquo;ll often see that many advertisers in related markets tend to use advertorials that arequite similar.\nFor example, here are two similarly styled advertorials for mortgage refinance offers:\nBoth of these pages have a very comparable feel. They both also include a very similar \u0026ldquo;How Much Is Your Mortgage\u0026rdquo; box in the right-hand sidebar.\nInsurance advertisers also send Taboola traffic to advertorials. You\u0026rsquo;ve probably seen Native ads that look like these over the past few months:\nThese ads send traffic to lead generation advertorials. Here is one of the current best performers for this market on Taboola:\nOne thing to keep in mind is that the FTC is getting stricter about what they\u0026rsquo;ll allow advertisers to design regarding their advertorials. This means that Taboola and many other networks might change their terms of service to prohibit advertisers from using certain claims, designs, and properly label their advertorials.\nIn other words, what\u0026rsquo;s allowed today might not be allowed tomorrow.\n#3: The Classic Pre-Sell Page Back around 2013-2014, the word \u0026ldquo;pre-sell\u0026rdquo; found its way back to the internet marketing lexicon. It became quite popular to send traffic to pages that pre-sold a prospect to click through a longer sales page.\nFor example, back in 2014, ForceFactor sent traffic to a pre-sell page for their testosterone booster:\nThat was in 2014.\nNow it\u0026rsquo;s August, 2016.\nAnd guess what?\nPre-sell pages that look like the one above are less prevalent but are still around on Taboola.They even work for advertisers in the same markets.\nFor example, Adbeat shows that Nugenix (another testosterone boosting supplement) is running Taboola traffic to this landing page:\nBoth of these pages send prospects to a long form sales letter.\nOther companies like The Motley Fool (an advertiser that sells newsletter subscriptions) have tested pre-sell landing pages on Taboola:\nThe pre-sell page, advertorial, and blogvertorial are all very similar in style and function. They work so well because they all pre-sell the message while triggering fewer \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m-Being-Sold-To\u0026rdquo; alarms.\n#4: The Video Sales Letter The video sales letter (VSL) is about as classic of a landing page as you can get.\nHowever, we\u0026rsquo;re seeing fewer and fewer large advertisers using VSLs on Taboola. Some of the larger direct response advertisers like The Motley Fool, large supplement companies, and Agora subsidiaries are still seeing amazing results with them, though.\nHere is a screenshot of a VSL that The Motley Fool is currently running:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll notice that most successful VSLs on Taboola use a combination of live action video and PowerPoint slides. It seems like having a 100% PowerPoint slide VSL is less effective on Display than it has been in the past.\nHere is a VSL for an energy supplement that starts right out the gate with a live-action video in the style of a TV news story:\nSomething else that\u0026rsquo;s pretty smart\u0026ndash;but very few advertisers are testing\u0026ndash;is the pre-sell VSL. This is simply a short video on a pre-sell page with text that tries to convince the user to click through and watch an even longer VSL.\nHere is an example: This direct response advertiser sends traffic to a pre-sell VSL. There are links on the page that lead that traffic to an even longer VSL.\n#5: The Sponsored Blogvertorial The Sponsored Blogvertorial is the exact same thing as the traditional blogvertorial, only the advertiser has placed it on a third party website.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s the real difference?\nThis provides even more credibility.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an excellent example of a sponsored blogvertorial on BusinessInsider from FundRise, a platform for crowdfunded real estate investments:\nHere\u0026rsquo;s another blogvertorial that\u0026rsquo;s appeared on BusinessInsider. This blogvertorial is about hoodies from the American Giant clothing startup:\nHere\u0026rsquo;s another example for the BlueApron food delivery service:\nThe downside to these third party pages is that the content and ads might distract the prospect from the content in the blogvertorial. However, it may be worth the trade-off for the credibility it lends to the offer.\n#6: The Action Opt-in Page Have you noticed anything missing from this post?\nSqueeze pages.\nVery few advertisers run traffic to squeeze pages on Display.\nWhy is this?\nThe reason is unclear.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s likely that they aren\u0026rsquo;t profitable on Native or that most networks have changed their policies and no longer allow squeeze pages.\nHowever, the good news is that there is something similar and even more effective. I refer to them as \u0026ldquo;action opt-in\u0026rdquo; pages.\nAn action opt-in page is simply a page where users must actually do something instead of just clicking through or entering their email address.\nFor example, users might be asked to take a quiz. Quiz pages can be considered the latest \u0026ldquo;fad\u0026rdquo; in landing pages. However, many advertisers have begun using quizzes for a good reason: they work.\nQuiz pages allow you to tailor your sales funnel to the specific needs of your prospects. This increases the chances of conversion. Plus, they\u0026rsquo;ve invested time in taking the quiz or completing an action. This makes it easier for them to tell themselves that they should continue since they\u0026rsquo;ve already gone so far.\nAnother action opt-in is a \u0026ldquo;tool\u0026rdquo; page.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a great example from InstantCheckmate:\nInstantCheckmate has been using variations of this landing page for years on display.\nIt works because it immediately gives people something to do.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll also see that Ancestry.com uses a similar landing page:\nAnother example is just about any site for online games. Pladium\u0026ndash;currently the biggest spender on Taboola\u0026ndash;sends traffic to this very simple page that lets users create their user immediately:\n#7: The Affiliate Review Page \u0026ldquo;Top 10\u0026rdquo; affiliate review pages have been around forever. Some advertisers continue to use variations of them on Taboola. Almost all affiliate review pages are for credit card offers.\nHere is an example of a LendingTree affiliate review page:\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a more \u0026ldquo;old school\u0026rdquo; affiliate page for dating websites:\nAffiliate review pages continue to work on Taboola. However, you must have a compelling enough page, and the commission must be high enough to cover advertising costs. This is probably why almost all $1m+ affiliates promote personal finance products on Native. Credit card offers and mortgage lead generation offers usually have excellent payouts.\nConclusion Today, we took a look at the various Taboola landing page styles.\nNext week, we\u0026rsquo;ll be revealing the top landing page styles on Outbrain.\nIn the meantime, have you ever run traffic on Taboola? Have you tested out any of these landing page styles? How was your experience?\nLet us know in the comments!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/7-landing-page-styles-that-convert-on-native-part-1-taboola/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote: This is part 1 in a three-part series that covers which landing page styles are converting for direct response advertisers on the most popular Native networks. This post covers landing pages that currently work on Taboola. Part 2 (Revcontent) and part 3 (Outbrain) will be published in the upcoming weeks.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHave you tested running traffic on Taboola?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you haven\u0026rsquo;t, then you\u0026rsquo;re really missing out. Some of the largest direct response advertisers spend upwards of $100k/month on Taboola alone. Taboola reaches over one billion unique visitors monthly, and they recently acquired ConvertMedia, a native video advertising company.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"7 Landing Page Styles That Convert on Native Part 1: Taboola"},{"content":"Is it possible to make money on display by giving away coupon codes?\nCoupon sites are one of those “sexy” internet business models because they only require a little overhead to set up. You don’t have to create a physical or digital product. In fact, there are no deliverables whatsoever.\nPlus, it’s pretty easy to build goodwill with your visitors because you’re not selling anything. In fact, you’re giving them deals on stuff they already want to buy.\nThis seems like a dream business model, right?\nHowever, like most “sexy” business models, turning a profit on a coupon site is a lot harder than most people assume. Coupon sites make 99% of their money off of advertising revenue and affiliate commissions. A coupon site needs A LOT of traffic to be profitable.\nSo how exactly are sites like Coupons.com and RetailMeNot making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year?\nIt all comes down to display advertising.\nCoupon Sites: How They Work Whether you\u0026rsquo;re watching TV or surfing the web, you don\u0026rsquo;t have to look very far to find a coupon site. They\u0026rsquo;re everywhere. From groceries to tech gadgets and accessories, there\u0026rsquo;s a coupon site for just about every industry. And people love them. Thirty-three percent of shoppers say that they frequently use coupons for their purchases, while 38% of shoppers are always on the lookout for coupons. That\u0026rsquo;s 71% of shoppers using coupons consistently.\nWith customers\u0026rsquo; obsession with coupons in full effect, it makes sense that coupon sites would want to get in on this. Gone are the days of shoppers collecting stacks of weekly flyers and clipping coupons. Now shoppers log onto one of the many sites available to quickly find what they need. Coupon sites have emerged to become a profitable internet business because they\u0026rsquo;ve found a need and filled it.\nAnd that\u0026rsquo;s not all; these sites don\u0026rsquo;t just offer a discount code for products; coupon sites come in different formats. For example, you can consider:\nPrintable coupons from sites like Coupons.com and RetailMeNot. While you might still find the odd coupon in newspapers and flyers, these sites have mostly replaced these options. Now all shoppers have to do is print and scan coupons or scan them from a mobile device. Coupon referral sites like FreeDailySamples, which aggregate deals across a wide selection of industries. When users click on a coupon, they\u0026rsquo;re taken to a third-party website to purchase their coupons. Group-buying sites like LivingSocial, where coupon offers are based on sales volume. These platforms partner with merchants who offer deep discounts on their products and services. Only after a minimum sales volume has been reached does a deal activate and take effect. Cashback sites that give users money back for shopping online at places they normally shop at. Users get a discount coupon and a cashback offer of up to 15%. The great thing about these sites is they cover a wide range of products and services. Depending on what people are searching for, chances are there\u0026rsquo;s a coupon site out there for them.\nAn emergent extension of coupon sites are sites that also offer browser extensions as another way to make money. These sites advertise the extension and try to get installs to generate additional revenue. Two great examples here are Honey and Wikibuy.\nHoney Honey is a browser extension that finds coupons online and automatically applies them to shoppers\u0026rsquo; purchases. This way, shoppers don\u0026rsquo;t have to scour the web looking for deals; the deals come to them.\nOnce shoppers download the extension, they browse stores like Walmart, Home Depot and Best Buy and add items to their cart the way they normally would. At checkout, Honey searches the web for coupon codes and automatically applies the best code to the purchase.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s say a shopper is in the market for a new camera. They like to shop at Target and don\u0026rsquo;t have the patience to find applicable coupons for the type of camera they want. They simply install the Honey extension, head over to Target\u0026rsquo;s online store and search.\nWhen they find the camera they want, they add it to their cart. Honey shows an applicable coupon, the shopper applies it to their cart, pays, and they\u0026rsquo;re done.\nKeep in mind that Honey offers more than just coupons. The browser extension also looks for promo codes and deals. The whole point of the extension is to find offers that save the shopper the most money.\n[ Source]\nIt\u0026rsquo;s free to download the extension so how does Honey make money? When shoppers apply a coupon or promo code to their purchase or earn Honey Gold points, Honey gets a small commission from the retail. So in our example above, Honey would have received a commission from Target when the shopper applied the coupon and bought the camera.\nThe better Honey is at finding deals online, the higher its earning potential. It\u0026rsquo;s a great concept especially because people want to save but don\u0026rsquo;t have the time to search for coupons. If Honey can consistently find the best deals for shoppers, the revenue potential is enormous.\nWikibuy Wikibuy is an iPhone and Chrome extension that works with Amazon. For shoppers who rely on Amazon to make their purchases, Wikibuy compares products from stores like Walmart and Target to find an exact match. If the products are lower at these stores, the savings are automatically applied to the Amazon purchase.\nIf shoppers like the offer, they apply the code Wikibuy provides at checkout and save on their purchase.\n[ Source]\nThe extension is the whole product, so to get shoppers to take action, the deals Wikibuy finds are time sensitive. Shoppers have a limited amount of time to decide if they\u0026rsquo;ll use the coupon, apply it and buy.\nJust like with Honey, Wikibuy gets a small commission every time a shopper makes a purchase using the coupon offers Wikibuy finds. Their retail partners pay this commission.\nWith both of these options, shoppers save with coupons they normally wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have known about. The browser extensions take the hassle out of savings for shoppers and help the platforms make a tidy profit at the same time. It\u0026rsquo;s a win-win situation for everyone involved.\nIt doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter what format these sites take; coupon sites are a good business model because they serve a wide audience. There\u0026rsquo;s no shortage of people eager to save money and coupon sites cater directly to this need.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s look at the different ways these sites make money and examples of sites that have made a profit with this business model.\nHow Exactly Do Coupon Sites Make Money? Most large coupon sites spend millions of dollars a year on paid traffic. This begs the question:\nHow in the heck are they making money?!\nEach of the advertisers you’ll read about here has its own unique strategy. Plus, these sites definitely have behind-the-scenes revenue streams that aren’t obvious or immediately visible. Keep in mind most coupon site revenue is generated in three ways:\n1. Affiliate Commissions Coupon sites will either use affiliate links or affiliate discount codes. The site will then receive a small commission whenever someone buys a product through their link or with their specific coupon.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s how it works:\nLet\u0026rsquo;s look at an example using Free Daily Samples\u0026rsquo; process:\n[ Source] An example of sponsored ads on FreeDailySamples. [ Source] Users are taken to a product page to choose their coupon. [ Source] Shoppers are taken to the brand\u0026rsquo;s product page to buy what they need and save.\nLater, we’ll see how Offers.com sends traffic to landing pages with long lists of affiliate links.\n2. Direct Media Buys A direct media buy is when an advertiser purchases ad space directly from a publisher. The advertiser can purchase a creative or–as you’ll see is the case for Crest and Coupons.com — they can purchase an entire page.\nHow it works:\nAn advertiser, let\u0026rsquo;s say Crest, has to be clear on who their target audience is and know where they spend time online. Crest\u0026rsquo;s recent ads target two main groups of women: those concerned with gum disease and those trying to whiten their teeth. With this information, Crest can approach publishers like NBC News and The Hollywood Reporter to buy ad space on their website. The main advantage of this option is that there\u0026rsquo;s no middleman for the advertiser to work with. As a result, if their targeting and placement are right, they stand to make a bigger profit than they would have otherwise.\n3. Ad Arbitrage Ad arbitrage is the process of buying and selling ad impressions on ad exchanges and networks and making money on the margin. It’s basically a cheap way to buy traffic. The site can earn money by monetizing with Google AdSense or another network that gives a nice payout.\nHow it works: An advertiser buys cheap clicks and then sells them for more to make a profit.\nFor example, Coupons.com has brought in an estimated $1.6M in publisher revenue over the past six months through Google AdSense and direct buys:\nThere are probably other ways that some of these sites are monetizing, but these are the basic methods.\nCotter Cunningham of WhaleShark Media — owner of RetailMeNot — on how they make money:\n“We make money two ways. We make money off advertising — it’s a very valuable consumer. You’ve held up your hand and said you’re going to buy something today. That in-market consumer has enormous value and advertisers are willing to pay for that. For about 10% of the merchants on our site, we have a small commission. Commission is actually a bit bigger in revenue, it’s funny because when I originally got in the business I thought advertising would be bigger. Maybe over time, that’ll change.”\nNow let’s take a look at how these sites are running and optimizing their Display campaigns.\nCase study #1 - BeFrugal.com BeFrugal’s Ad Spend BeFrugal.com has spent an estimated $22Mover the past six months. BeFrugal allocates most of their ad spend to the Google Display Network.\nAd Creatives BeFrugal only advertises coupons for restaurants.\nTheir ad creative formula is pretty simple:\nFirst, they start with an image of a tasty looking dish. Then, they add the restaurant’s name followed by “FREE COUPONS!” Next, they include the same call-to-action on every ad, which is simply, “Get Coupons.” Here are a few creatives that BeFrugal has recently run:\nPublishers The first publisher you’ll notice is mlb.com which comes before allrecipes.com. The spend on these two publishers could be to get wide exposure of their niche audience.\nYou’ll also notice that BeFrugal buys inventory on weather.com and espn.com. However, they don’t buy ads on random pages on these sites. They also target placements that are related to food or food deals. Here are a few of their placements on weather.com: As we’ve mentioned before, sites like mlb.com, espn.com and weather.com can be fantastic sources of traffic if you buy ads on pages and channels that are relevant to your offer.\nLanding Pages BeFrugal uses templated landing pages. Every one of their landing pages has the same basic design. The only differences are the headline, the logo next to the headline, and the picture of food to the right of the opt-in form.\nCase Study #2 - ShopAtHome.com Ad Spend ShopAtHome has spent an estimated $75.5K over the past six months on Google Display Networks. They have also spent approximately $7.2Kon Bing Ads Content.\nAd Creatives Unlike BeFrugal, ShopAtHome runs ad creatives for various types of deals. Their most recent coupons include auto parts, aquariums, and movies.\nYou’ll also notice that each ad creative has a dotted border to give it that “Sunday newspaper coupon” look. It’s worth mentioning that the CTR of an ad creative can be affected by simply adding or removing a border.\nA dotted border with scissors might not be appropriate for your market, but you should test ad creatives with borders vs. ad creatives without borders.\nPublishers Vegas.com and Yahoo.com appear before a site like couponmom.com which is geared towards coupons. Again, this is done to make sure there\u0026rsquo;s adequate exposure to their target audience.\nShopAtHome matches the ad creative’s content with the publisher’s content. For example, they run Las Vegas coupon ads on Vegas.com, food coupons and Food Network and general coupons on general sites like Coupon Mom.\nLanding Pages ShopAtHome.com also uses templated landing pages:\nYou’ll notice that the landing page is the same for all ad creatives except for the tiny coupon box at the top, and to the left of the opt-in box.\nCase Study #3- RetailMeNot.com Ad Spend RetailMeNot.com has spent an estimated $3.1M over the past six months on the Google Display Network.\nAd Creatives RetailMeNot has fairly general creatives. Their most recent ad creatives are focused on how quick and easy it is to save on their platform. Their ad creatives are somewhat less compelling than those of the other advertisers in this post.\nPublishers If you look at the trend lines to the right of each publisher, it appears that RetailMeNot’s most successful publishers — the longest running — were How Stuff Works and Wikia. These ads focus on getting people to add the RetailMeNot Chrome extension so they can save on their purchases.\nLanding Pages RetailMeNot’s landing pages are these two web 2.0-style landing pages. The first page is a general page that just lists many of their deals. The second page is for RetailMeNot’s latest venture, the RetailMeNot Genie Chrome extension.\nCase Study #4 - Coupons.com Coupons.com — aka Quotient Technology — is the big kahuna of coupon sites.\nCoupons.com has spent an estimated $1.6Mover the past six months on Google Display Network and Direct Buys.\nAd Creatives All of Coupons.com’s ad creatives are for specific products:\nPublishers Coupons.com matches the product shown in the ad creative to the publisher’s content and audience. For example, they advertise cold medication on WebMD, supplements on Very Well and food coupons on Cooking Panda. Landing Pages Coupons.com uses two different styles of landing pages. The first is a general page that shows a list of coupons for various brands and products. The second page appears to be an advertorial page. It lists foods that are in line with specific coupon offers.\nCase Study #5 - Offers.com Offers.com has spent an estimated $540K over the past six months on Google Display Networks and Google Native Ads. It is one of the few coupon sites that is testing out Native ad networks like Taboola.\nAd Creatives Offers.com is running traffic on both standard ad networks — like the Google Display Network — and Native ads on Taboola. You’ll see that they’re using different strategies for both types of networks.\nStandard Ads Offers.com’s standard ad creatives are all text ads on the Google Display Network. These ads send traffic to a landing page with a large list of different coupons, offers, and deals. You’ll see what those exact landing pages look like in the “Landing Pages” section, but here are what their text ads look like:\nNative Ads All of Offer.com’s Native ads are related to credit cards and Amazon promo codes. After the prospects click on the ad, they are taken to an advertorial-style landing page with affiliate links for various credit card offers.\nPublishers Offers.com buys ads on a variety of different publishers related to the products being advertised on their ad creatives.\nLanding Pages Here is an example of one of Offers.com’s main landing pages. It looks like a review page with product specs and ratings. After a few seconds, viewers are presented with a discount offer via a pop-up overlay:\nNative Landing Pages Here are the landing pages for all of Offers.com’s native ad traffic — for credit cards and for Amazon promo codes:\nThe first landing page is for many different credit cards. It’s written like a review you’d find on a personal finance blog. There’s no doubt that Offers.com receives an excellent affiliate commission if someone applies and is accepted for one of these credit cards. The second landing page is for different Amazon promotions.\nGet Creative With Your Site Coupon sites are a viable business model if you’ve got the time, money and resources to invest. However, it’s not one of the easiest business models to make work. On the other hand, there will always be a demand for resources that help consumers get products they want at a discount. If you’re interested in creating this sort of business model, then it might be worth it in the long run.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/business-of-display-making-money-coupon-sites/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIs it possible to make money on display by giving away \u003ca href=\"https://adespresso.com/blog/should-you-offer-a-coupon-code-in-your-facebook-ads/\"\u003ecoupon codes\u003c/a\u003e?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoupon sites are one of those “sexy” internet business models because they only require a little overhead to set up. You don’t have to create a physical or digital product. In fact, there are no deliverables whatsoever.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePlus, it’s pretty easy to build goodwill with your visitors because you’re not selling anything. In fact, you’re giving them deals on stuff they already want to buy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Business of Display Part 7: Making Money With Coupons"},{"content":"We live in a very judgmental society, especially when it comes to proper grammar and spelling. Many people are quick to assume that someone is incompetent or lazy if they spot a grammar or spelling mistake.\nWe hate these people.\nThere is even a derogatory term for them:\n\u0026ldquo;Grammar Nazis\u0026rdquo;\nThe fact of the matter is that poor writing and grammar is an epidemic. The vast majority of our population has atrocious grammar. Even highly intelligent people may use \u0026ldquo;your\u0026rdquo; when they should have used \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;re.\u0026rdquo; You see it all the time, and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem like things are getting any better.\nHowever, there is one company that is attempting to cure the poor grammar epidemic.\nGrammarly was founded in 2009 by Alex Shevchenko and Max Lytvyn. Grammarly is a freemium \u0026ldquo;writing enhancement\u0026rdquo; tool. It offers a free Chrome extension and desktop app that corrects as you write. It works just like Microsoft Word\u0026rsquo;s spelling and grammar checker. However, Grammarly says its software can find up to 10 times more errors than Microsoft Word.\nGrammar might be boring, but Grammarly\u0026rsquo;s growth is not.\nGrammarly says it has over 3 million registered users, 50 employees, and partnerships with over 600 universities.\nDisplay advertising has helped fuel this growth.\nToday we\u0026rsquo;re going to look at how Grammarly spends millions on display to help drive subscriber growth. Grammarly has a very sound display strategy that encompasses standard banner ads, native ads, and even pre-roll video ads. If you\u0026rsquo;re at all interested in seeing a very sound display strategy, you\u0026rsquo;ll definitely want to keep reading.\nAd Spend Grammarly has spent an estimated $2,274,816 on display over the past six months.\nThey have allocated the majority of their ad spending on Google Display and Taboola.\nAd Creatives Grammarly is A/B testing creatives on both standard and native display networks.\nStandard Grammarly is testing these banner ads on the Google Display Network:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll notice that Grammarly uses a lot of social proof and testimonials in their ad creatives. Some of their ad creatives are just one big testimonial and a call to action.\nCheck out this post to see more copy elements that work in banner ads: Copy These 6 Ad Creatives \u0026amp; Make More Sales\nNative Quick quiz:\nWhich of these ads do you think is Grammarly\u0026rsquo;s current control (most-used ad):\nBoth of these creatives are similar.\nThe only difference is a slight change in the copy.\n\u0026ldquo;99% of Students Get Better Grades Using This Grammar App\u0026rdquo;\nvs.\n\u0026ldquo;99% of Students Surveyed Report Getting Better Grades With This Writing App\u0026rdquo;\nWhich one do you think is the \u0026ldquo;winner?\u0026rdquo;\nAs of the publication date of this post, Ad B is the current control. You\u0026rsquo;ll see Adbeat Trend data beneath each ad below:\nWhy might creative B be working better than creative A?\nHere are possible two reasons:\nThe phrase \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip; surveyed report\u0026rdquo; adds authority. It gives context behind the \u0026ldquo;99%\u0026rdquo; number, even if it does not mention the specifics behind the survey. Even more subtle (but equally important) is changing \u0026quot; Grammar App\u0026quot; to \u0026quot; Writing App.\u0026quot; Think about this:\nWhat image pops into your mind when you hear the word \u0026ldquo;grammar?\u0026rdquo;\nYou probably think of high school English. And if you\u0026rsquo;re like me, you probably paid little attention to grammar. Grammar is boring. Therefore, the word \u0026ldquo;grammar\u0026rdquo; has a negative connotation to it. Conversely, the word \u0026ldquo;writing\u0026rdquo; has a nice connotation to it.\nWriting is creative, fun, and cool. Grammar is dry, boring, and evil.\nTherefore \u0026quot; writing app\u0026quot; sounds more appealing than \u0026quot; grammar app.\u0026quot;\nMore Native Ads Here are a few more native ads that Grammarly is testing on Taboola:\nBONUS: Video Ads Note: the following data was taken from the freshly launched pre-roll video ads feature now available for certain Adbeat subscribers. Read more about it here: Lights, Camera, Action: Pre-Roll Video Ads Now Available)\nGrammarly also runs massive amounts of pre-roll ads on YouTube.\nIt is currently running three different videos targeted at three different audiences.\nThe first audience is students. The following video ran in the months leading up to final exams:\nThis video was seen on the following channels (the number on the right is how many times the video was seen on that specific channel by the Adbeat Crawler):You\u0026rsquo;ll notice that these channels are related to topics that a college student might be interested in. This includes tutorial videos, science and math videos, TED talks, and other educational channels. For example, CrashCourse is a channel that offers various tutorials on topics like physics, history, math, and more.The second is for job hunters. Grammarly is touted as the perfect app to spell-check your resume and cover letter or fix typos in business reports:\nHere are the channels this ad was seen on:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see that these channels are a bit more general. They are targeted at a different audience, which is likely slightly older and no longer in college.\nFinally there is this more general ad that covers every single situation that someone might want to use Grammarly for:\nThis is a relatively new video, so there is little data. However, here is a small sample of the channels where the Adbeat Crawler has seen this video:\nPublishers: Grammarly uses a mixture of contextual targeting (placing ads on sites directly related to the product) and demographic/psychographic targeting (placing ads on sites to target specific demographics/psychographics).\nContextually targeted publishers include:\nGrammarbook.com Synonym.com Reference.com Grammar-related placements on wikihow.com The best example of demographic/psychographic targeting here would be businessinsider.com. Business Insider\u0026rsquo;s content has nothing to do with writing or grammar. However, Grammarly could be useful to many of its readers.\nFor example, Grammarly places ads on this article:\nWe can assume that the people reading this article are probably parents, high school students, or grad students looking at colleges. What do you need to do when you apply to college? Write essays! And what happens if your essay is full of errors? You don\u0026rsquo;t get accepted!\nLanding Pages The copy and design of Grammarly\u0026rsquo;s main landing page \u0026ndash; its home page \u0026ndash; is quite good.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s break it down, piece by piece.\nFirst, the headline and subheadline are quite simple.\n\u0026ldquo;Your writing, at its best. Grammarly makes you a better writer by finding and correcting up to 10 times more mistakes than your word processor.\u0026rdquo;\nThe subheadline contains a direct benefit (it makes you a better writer).\nSecond, \u0026quot; it finds 10 times more mistakes than your word processor.\u0026quot; This is an important piece of copy because it adds a slight element of fear. Many people blindly trust programs like Microsoft Word to fix all of their mistakes, and now Grammarly is telling them that those programs are missing their errors.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that it includes a big, red call-to-action button to add the extension to Chrome. And the first section above the fold includes a short blurb from Forbes (authority).\nNext\u0026hellip;\nThe middle of the landing page contains little blurbs with direct benefits. These pieces of copy cover pretty much anything that any one person could ever need when it comes to a grammar correction service.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that Grammarly includes testimonials from \u0026ldquo;authority figures\u0026rdquo;:\nNeither of these people are famous. Yet, the fact that one of them is a journalist and the other is a \u0026ldquo;writer\u0026rdquo; is good enough.\nThe next section is this simple graphic:\nGrammarly has transformed a grammar app into a community. You\u0026rsquo;re not just downloading an app; you\u0026rsquo;re joining a community.\nPlus, they include another big, red call-to-action at the end. Many people forget that their users will scroll down to the end and then wait to be told to do something. Tell them what to do.\nConclusion There\u0026rsquo;s a lot that a display advertiser can learn from Grammarly. They have a sound strategy that includes a very good landing page and a fair amount of A/B testing of different ads, publishers, and placements.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/an-uncensored-peek-inside-grammarlys-2-2m-display-strategy/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe live in a very judgmental society, especially when it comes to proper grammar and spelling. Many people are quick to assume that someone is incompetent or lazy if they spot a grammar or spelling mistake.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe hate these people.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is even a derogatory term for them:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Grammar Nazis\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe fact of the matter is that poor writing and grammar is an \u003cem\u003eepidemic.\u003c/em\u003e The vast majority of our population has atrocious grammar. Even highly intelligent people may use \u0026ldquo;your\u0026rdquo; when they should have used \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;re.\u0026rdquo; You see it all the time, and it doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem like things are getting any better.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An Uncensored Peek Inside Grammarly's $2.2M Display Strategy"},{"content":"HUGE RELEASE!\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll now be able to see competitive data for pre-roll video advertisements within Adbeat.\nThis is one of our biggest releases this year. We\u0026rsquo;re super excited to show it to you.\nCheck out this short video to see how to get your hands on video data:\nWe\u0026rsquo;re currently only showing data for pre-roll video ads on YouTube. However, we\u0026rsquo;ll be adding more publishers and ad types in the near future..\nAlso, video ads are only available to Adbeat Enterprise subscribers. If you\u0026rsquo;re not an Enterprise subscriber but would like access to Adbeat (and tons of other great features), either contact our sales team at sales (at) adbeat (dot) com or sign-up for a Live Demo by clicking the button below:\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/pre-roll-video-ads/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHUGE RELEASE!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;ll now be able to see competitive data for pre-roll video advertisements within Adbeat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is one of our biggest releases this year. We\u0026rsquo;re super excited to show it to you.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCheck out this short video to see how to get your hands on video data:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re currently only showing data for pre-roll video ads on YouTube. However, we\u0026rsquo;ll be adding more publishers and ad types in the near future..\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Lights, Camera, Action: Pre-Roll Video Ads Now Available"},{"content":"More new networks added!\nAll Adbeat Advanced and Enterprise subscribers will now have data for the newsmax native network. All plan levels with the exception of \u0026ldquo;Google Only\u0026rdquo; will have data for Millenial Media.\nWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Advanced or Enterprise Subscriber? Current Adbeat customers can upgrade by clicking this link to login and upgrade their account.\nYou can switch immediately to the Adbeat Advanced plan on that screen, or you can send our sales team an email at sales@adbeat.com to schedule a demo for an Adbeat Enterprise plan.\nWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Customer? If you\u0026rsquo;re not an Adbeat customer, but want to see competitive data for 13 Native Ad networks (and over 80+ other networks), click below to see what our Adbeat Advanced and Adbeat Enterprise plans have to offer.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/new-networks-newsmax-millenial-media/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMore new networks added!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"newsmax-millenial-media\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/newsmax-millenial-media.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll Adbeat Advanced and Enterprise subscribers will now have data for the \u003cstrong\u003enewsmax\u003c/strong\u003e native network. All plan levels with the exception of \u0026ldquo;Google Only\u0026rdquo; will have data for \u003cstrong\u003eMillenial Media\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"want-native-ad-data-but-not-an-adbeat-advanced-or-enterprise-subscriber\"\u003eWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Advanced or Enterprise Subscriber?\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCurrent Adbeat customers can upgrade by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://www.adbeat.com/user-profile/upgrade\"\u003ethis link to login and upgrade their account\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou can switch immediately to the Adbeat Advanced plan on that screen, or you can send our sales team an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:sales@adbeat.com\"\u003esales@adbeat.com\u003c/a\u003e to schedule a demo for an Adbeat Enterprise plan.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NEW Networks: Newsmax \u0026 Millenial Media"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s our report for the biggest Display advertisers during Q2 2016.\n#1: Paypal.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $12.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Conversant, Google, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: slate.com, go.com, thesaurus.com Top Ad: #2: Amazon.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $9.2M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, MediaMath Top 3 Publishers: imdb.com, dpreview.com, babycenter.com Top Ad: #3: LowerMyBills.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $8.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Advertising.com, Taboola Top 3 Publishers: wow.com, huffingtonpost.com, dailyfinance.com Top Ad: #4: StyleWe.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $8.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, PulsePoint Top 3 Publishers: yahoo.com, nytimes.com, wikihow.com Top Ad: #5: Zulily.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $7.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, Yahoo Gemini Top 3 Publishers: wow.com, flickr.com, yahoo.com Top Ad: #6: ViewLorium.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $7.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Rubicon Top 3 Publishers: wikia.com, buzzlie.com, thesaurus.com Top Ad: #7: IBM.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Taboola Top 3 Publishers: time.com, cnbc.com, forbes.com Top Ad: #8: Coupons.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $6.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Yahoo Gemini Top 3 Publishers: cosmopolitan.com, yahoo.com, mayoclinic.org Top Ad: #9: Adobe.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $5.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Conversant, Direct Buy, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: sitepoint.com, thisiscolossal.com, vimeo.com Top Ad: #10: Vanguard.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $5.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, TheTradeDesk, Google Top 3 Publishers: about.com, huffingtonpost.org, fool.com Top Ad: #11: Weebly.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $5.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, TribalFusion, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: wikihow.com, wedmd.com, vimeo.com Top Ad: #12: FI.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $5.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: forbes.com, yahoo.com, thestreet.com Top Ad: #13: HillaryClinton.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $5.2M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Advertising.com, Google, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: cbsnews.com, nytimes.com, thinkprogress.org Top Ad: #14: Toyota.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $4.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: popularmechanics.com, vice.com, imdb.com Top Ad: #15: AmericanExpress.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $4.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Conversant Top 3 Publishers: ebay.com, boardingarea.com, theguardian.com Top Ad: #16: Apus.edu Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $4.2M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Casale Top 3 Publishers: sparknotes.com, go.com, wikihow.com Top Ad: #17: HomeDepot.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $4.2M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, MediaMath Top 3 Publishers: doityourself.com, howstuffworks.com, thesaurus.com Top Ad: #18: Honda.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $3.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Taboola Top 3 Publishers: edmunds.com, nfl.com, caranddriver.com Top Ad: #19: Fidelity.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $3.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Yahoo Gemini, Google Top 3 Publishers: go.com, huffingtonpost.com, forbes.com Top Ad: #20: Chevrolet.com Estimated Q2 Ad Spend: $3.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: internetautoguide.com, motortrend.com, cargurus.com Top Ad: ","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-top-20-display-advertisers-of-q2-2016/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s our report for the biggest Display advertisers during Q2 2016.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"1-paypalcom\"\u003e#1: Paypal.com\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimated Q2 Ad Spend\u003c/strong\u003e: $12.4M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Traffic Sources\u003c/strong\u003e: Conversant, Google, Advertising.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Publishers\u003c/strong\u003e: slate.com, go.com, thesaurus.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"topad\"\u003eTop Ad:\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"paypal.com-9ccb40d1b9909a5e3b0849b21d835a57\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/paypal.com-9ccb40d1b9909a5e3b0849b21d835a57.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"2-amazoncom\"\u003e#2: Amazon.com\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimated Q2 Ad Spend\u003c/strong\u003e: $9.2M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Traffic Sources\u003c/strong\u003e: Direct Buy, Google, MediaMath\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Publishers\u003c/strong\u003e: imdb.com, dpreview.com, babycenter.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"top-ad\"\u003eTop Ad:\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"amazon.com-1293eb506c2c10dab3a378e49f1b8ae1\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/amazon.com-1293eb506c2c10dab3a378e49f1b8ae1.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"3-lowermybillscom\"\u003e#3: LowerMyBills.com\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimated Q2 Ad Spend\u003c/strong\u003e: $8.8M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Traffic Sources\u003c/strong\u003e: Direct Buy, Advertising.com, Taboola\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Publishers\u003c/strong\u003e: wow.com, huffingtonpost.com, dailyfinance.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"top-ad-1\"\u003eTop Ad:\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"lowermybills.com-73a7a66c0b5151a93e51ca15fea7bde7\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/lowermybills.com-73a7a66c0b5151a93e51ca15fea7bde7.gif\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Top 20 Display Advertisers of Q2 2016"},{"content":"Do you binge-watch Netflix?\nA recent Deloitte survey found that 70% of respondents reported binge-watching TV shows on Netflix and other streaming video services.That comes out to an average of five episodes in one sitting.\nThe annual Netflix report claims that subscribers watch an average of 1 hour and 33 minutes of programming per day.\nNeedless to say\u0026hellip; we\u0026rsquo;re watching A LOT of Netflix.\nThe fact is that fewer and fewer people watch \u0026ldquo;normal\u0026rdquo; television. Many of us prefer to consume media through streaming video services.\nAlthough Netflix seems to be the current king (they have an estimated 72 million subscribers), there are multiple other streaming video services who want to compete for our time and money. Many of these services are using Display advertising to drive subscriber growth.\nIn this blog post we\u0026rsquo;re going to look at the Display advertising strategies for four of the largest online streaming video services:\nNetflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Instant, and Sling TV.\nAmazon Prime Video Amazon Prime Video\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend Amazon has spent an estimated $17,541,120 on Display over the past 6 months. Approximately $4 million of that total spend has been allocated their Amazon Prime Video campaigns (Campaign data shown below has been gathered with Adbeat\u0026rsquo;s new Campaigns feature).\nAmazon Prime Video\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Amazon runs general ads that advertise their video service, and also ads that promote their original programming.\nThe ads all follow your typical 300x250 banner ad layout. All ads have a clear headline, the Amazon logo, and a green call-to-action that offers a free trial.\nAmazon Prime Video\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Amazon allocates almost all of their ad spend to buying traffic on Internet Movie Database (IMDB).\nAmazon Prime Video Landing Pages Amazon sends almost all traffic to this very simple landing page:\nThey also send traffic to similar pages shown below. You\u0026rsquo;ll notice that the only difference is that these landing pages include a tiny picture and a description of the TV show below the call-to-action button.\nNetflix Netflix\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend Netflix has spent an estimated $829,056 on Display advertising over the previous 6 months. Most of that spend has been allocated to Direct Buys (directly buying inventory from a publisher).\nNetflix\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Unlike Amazon, Netflix uses very few branding-style ads. Almost all of their ad creatives promote their original movies and series.\nNetflix\u0026rsquo;s Publishers The majority of Netflix\u0026rsquo;s ad spend goes towards Direct Buys on nytimes.com, ew.com, and imdb.com. Netflix\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Netflix sends all of their traffic to landing pages that promote their original programming.\nHere are two examples:\nHulu Hulu\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend Hulu has spent an estimated $1,213,184 over the past 6 months. Most of Hulu\u0026rsquo;s ad spend is allocated towards Direct Buys. Hulu is also buying traffic on some lesser known networks like Radium One (a programmatic media buying service) and Mode Media.\nHulu\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Hulu\u0026rsquo;s ad creative strategy is similar to that of Netflix and Amazon. Almost all of their ads promote \u0026ldquo;Hulu Original\u0026rdquo; TV shows.\nHulu\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Hulu\u0026rsquo;s Direct Buys are a but more unorthodox than Amazon. You\u0026rsquo;ll see below that they buy traffic directly on Wikia.com, SomeECards.com, and Variety.com.\nHulu\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Hulu\u0026rsquo;s landing pages all promote their original programming, especially 11.22.63 and Fear of the Walking Dead.\nSling TV Sling TV\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend Sling TV has spent an estimated $1,839, 360 6 months. Most of that spend was allocated to the Google Display Network and Direct Buys.\nSling TV\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Sling TV is slightly different than the other advertisers featured in this post in that they focus mostly on live television and sports. Sling TV has many ad creatives that promote the free streaming sticks or deal on a Roku when you sign-up for a three month plan. They also run many ad creatives that promote specific sporting events and television networks.\nSling TV\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Sling TV allocates most of their ad spend to Direct Buys on Yidio. Yidio is a movie/TV search engine that crawls all of the streaming video services. Sling TV\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Sling TV uses long-form landing pages. You\u0026rsquo;ll see that all pages have large \u0026ldquo;hero\u0026rdquo; shots at the top, information and charts, and comparisons of their various options. Sling TV\u0026rsquo;s landing pages are much more detailed compared to Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu\u0026rsquo;s landing pages.\nConclusion So far, it seems that Amazon is investing the most in their Display campaigns. This is most likely an effort to overthrow Netflix for the top spot. However, Hulu and Sling TV are not far behind. We\u0026rsquo;ll likely see an increased spend from all of these companies as things start to heat up over the 2nd half of 2016.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-battle-of-streaming-video-on-display-netflix-vs-hulu-vs-amazon/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDo you binge-watch Netflix?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA recent Deloitte survey found that 70% of respondents reported binge-watching TV shows on Netflix and other streaming video services.That comes out to an average of five episodes in one sitting.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe annual Netflix report claims that subscribers watch an average of 1 hour and 33 minutes of programming \u003cem\u003eper day.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNeedless to say\u0026hellip; we\u0026rsquo;re watching A LOT of Netflix.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe fact is that fewer and fewer people watch \u0026ldquo;normal\u0026rdquo; television. Many of us prefer to consume media through streaming video services.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Battle of Streaming Video on Display: Netflix vs. Hulu vs. Amazon vs. Sling TV"},{"content":"Charlo Barbosa is the Founder, President \u0026amp; COO of Native Ads.\nBarbosa has been doing business online since 1997. He\u0026rsquo;s founded a few different startups and was the CEO of AdManage, a PPC XML search platform.\nIn 2014, Charlo founded Native Ads, a Native ad network and suite of tools for advertisers and publishers.\nCharlo graciously agreed to share some insider insights on what content and ad creatives are currently working on Native. Anyone looking to improve their Native campaigns (or get started off on the right foot) should pay attention to what Charlo has to say.\nAnyone looking to improve their Native campaigns (or get started off on the right foot) should pay attention to what Charlo has to say.\n(Disclosure: Charlo is an Adbeat subscriber) Brad Nickel: Let\u0026rsquo;s talk about what content works on Native. Are there any specific themes that advertisers should test?\nCharlo Barbosa: You\u0026rsquo;ll notice that ESPN is one of the largest publishers on Outbrain. This isn\u0026rsquo;t a coincidence. Sports articles work very well on Native. But you need to promote the right sports article. For example, we\u0026rsquo;ve noticed that NFL articles do about 50% better than basketball or baseball articles. This makes sense because the NFL is the most popular sport in the United States.\nBN: Okay, so sports content does well. What about ads? Do you have any specific copywriting tips? CB: The best ads for sports articles usually contain pictures and copy related to the most popular athletes of the moment. For example, Steph Curry is very popular right now, so ads related to Steph Curry do very well.\nAlso, ad creatives with famous but retired athletes like Michael Jordan and Derek Jeter also do well.\nBN: Are there any specific content themes or ad creative styles that do not work? CB: Racy content and creatives are becoming less common. This isn\u0026rsquo;t because racy content doesn\u0026rsquo;t work. It works extremely well. However, networks like Outbrain are starting to clean-up. They are becoming stricter with the type of content and ad creatives they will allow advertisers to run. You might be able to get away with sexually suggestive stuff on other networks, but most networks are moving away from racy ads for a variety of reasons.\nBN: What sort of offers work on Native? CB: It depends on the network. Diet and skin care offers do well on Revcontent. Outbrain tends to frown on those offers. We\u0026rsquo;re also seeing a lot of auto insurance stuff on Revcontent. You\u0026rsquo;ve probably seen the ads with the girl in handcuffs.\nThese ads are run by advertisers doing lead generation for auto insurance companies.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re also seeing a lot of advertorials for CPA offers for credit repair, credit cards, and mortgage refinancing. The performance of those offers is also network dependent. For example, an advertiser like LendingTree might have a credit card offer that works well on Revcontent. However, their mortgage refinancing offer might work better on Outbrain. It all depends on what publishers a network has.\nBN: What about viral sites? Are they still as popular as they once were? CB: Viral sites are still very popular. However, it\u0026rsquo;s a very competitive space. You\u0026rsquo;ve got thousands of viral sites competing for ads in such a tiny space on the page. It\u0026rsquo;s essential to promote an article that\u0026rsquo;s fresh and compelling, or else your CTR will plummet. Running a profitable viral site isn\u0026rsquo;t as easy as people think.\nBN: Any tips on creating viral content that gets a high CTR? CB: Many viral guys get ideas from Reddit, YouTube, and Imgur. Those are all good places to look for ideas. Like I said before, different ads work better on different networks. You\u0026rsquo;ll need to test a bunch of different ideas on various networks to see what sticks.\nBN: Let\u0026rsquo;s bring out the crystal ball. What do you see in the future as far as Native Advertising goes? CB: Well, most of the top ad arbitrage guys monetize their sites with Google AdSense. However, I predict that Google is eventually going to put the hammer down and will not want to work with viral sites anymore. This means that viral site owners that rely heavily on Google AdSense will have a tough time surviving.\nIn fact, there are already many large sites that have had their AdSense accounts banned. These sites had to redo their entire strategy to try to regain access to AdSense and the DoubleClick AdExchange.\nAnother thing is something that I mentioned before: sexually suggestive ads. Many publishers bring in a lot of ad revenue from racy ads because they tend to have high CTRs. However, DoubleClick AdExchange has told us that Google counts ads on a publisher\u0026rsquo;s page as content. Therefore, Google considers racy ads to be adult content. Google doesn\u0026rsquo;t care if it\u0026rsquo;s your ad or if it\u0026rsquo;s someone else\u0026rsquo;s ads. They are starting to ban AdSense accounts of publishers who monetize their sites (either knowingly or unknowingly) with racy ads.\nIn addition, Google started removing the \u0026ldquo;Nessie\u0026rdquo; arrows (the blue arrows next to ads) from ads if the creative isn\u0026rsquo;t a specific distance away from the \u0026ldquo;next\u0026rdquo; button on those slideshow articles. Why? Because advertisers were complaining that people couldn\u0026rsquo;t tell the difference between the arrow in the ad and the \u0026ldquo;next\u0026rdquo; button. Removing the arrow caused CTRs to drop, and publishers took a massive hit.\nAnother issue is the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). The FTC will likely make some of these viral sites their guinea pigs. The FTC now requires that advertorials have links, footnotes, studies, etc. in the footer.\nThe FTC also continues to get even stricter.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a great example: The FTC is now saying that advertisers can\u0026rsquo;t put the \u0026ldquo;Advertorial\u0026rdquo; label in the top-right corner of the page.\nWhy?\nBecause people read from left to right. Someone might not notice the \u0026ldquo;Advertorial\u0026rdquo; text and won\u0026rsquo;t realize they are reading an advertisement.\nBN: Tell us a bit more about your company Native Ads. What does Native Ads offer that is different from everyone else? CB: Originally, what we wanted to do was create a system that allows publishers of all sizes to quickly add widgets and immediately start monetizing their content.\nHowever, this was more difficult than we thought.\nPeople loved the system, but no one would keep the widgets up for more than a couple of days. This was because we didn\u0026rsquo;t have as many advertisers as Outbrain or Taboola, and they wanted to keep all of their advertisers to themselves.\nThings have changed and we now have a very large base of advertisers and publishers.\nBut we initially changed our focus and partnered with Outbrain and Revcontent. We did that by building a platform that sits on top of their platform.\nThis platform enhances their offering by giving advertisers and publishers a few unique tools:\nAn analytics tool that helps publishers keep track of widget performance and earnings. An ad creation system that allows advertisers to create 100+ ad variations in just a few minutes. Many native networks require advertisers to upload each ad one-by-one. This is very time-consuming if you\u0026rsquo;re testing a lot of ads. We also give advertisers an optimization pixel that allows them to set the number of minimum page views they\u0026rsquo;d like to achieve per article. You just set the number of minimum clicks to start the activation of tracking, and then it starts to block the underperforming ads and sources. We also have CPA/CPL optimizer. Other platforms don’t really have anything like that. Most involve praying that you get conversions, then try to manually block sources that are underperforming. This optimizer does everything automatically based on your CPA/CPL goal. We\u0026rsquo;re also building out an RPC (revenue-per-click) optimizer. This will allow content arbitragers to connect their Google Analytics account with their Google AdSense account and pull RPCs into that. Then they can enter non-Google revenue and calculate total RPC. BN: Tell Adbeat readers where they can find out more about Native Ads.\nCB: Stop by www.NativeAds.com. If you want to get a taste of our traffic, we only require a $100 initial deposit, which is lower than what most Native networks require.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/expert-interview-charlo-barbosa-founder-of-native-ads/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCharlo Barbosa is the Founder, President \u0026amp; COO of Native Ads.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/charlo-barbosa.jpg\"\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"charlo-barbosa\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/charlo-barbosa.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBarbosa has been doing business online since 1997. He\u0026rsquo;s founded a few different startups and was the CEO of AdManage, a PPC XML search platform.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2014, Charlo founded Native Ads, a Native ad network and suite of tools for advertisers and publishers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCharlo graciously agreed to share some insider insights on what content and ad creatives are currently working on Native. Anyone looking to improve their Native campaigns (or get started off on the right foot) should pay attention to what Charlo has to say.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Charlo Barbosa's Secrets On How To See Better Results With Native Advertising"},{"content":"Imagine that you\u0026rsquo;re a personal trainer and you want to make the most money possible.\nYou\u0026rsquo;re given the choice between:\na) a photo of you training Britney Spears, or b) a degree in nutrition/training from the top university in the United States\nWhich would you choose?\nMe?\nI\u0026rsquo;m taking the picture of Britney Spears any day of the week.\nWhy?\nBecause it\u0026rsquo;s going to lead to more clients! Most people would rather be trained by the guru trainer to the stars than Joe Schmoe with a bunch of letters after his name.\nWe grossly underestimate the raw marketing power that celebrities have.\nFor years, companies like Weight Watchers, Guthy-Renker (Proactiv), and Bowflex have understood the influence that celebrities have over the general public\u0026rsquo;s buying decisions.\nAll of these companies blatantly use celebrities\u0026hellip;\nAnd you should, too.\nHowever, not everyone has the luck (or pocketbook) to attain a celebrity endorsement.\n(Guthy-Renker pays an estimated $15 million/year to all of their celebrities.)\nHowever, there\u0026rsquo;s a simpler, more cost-effective way to piggyback off of celebrities.\nEven better, you can use this strategy to write better ad creatives, landing pages, and overall marketing messages for your Display campaigns.\nIn this blog series, we\u0026rsquo;re going to show you how some of the savviest advertisers are using celebrities to drive more clicks, leads, and sales in their Display campaigns.\nAnd in today\u0026rsquo;s post, we\u0026rsquo;ll start off with who might be the most controversial celebrity-turned-politician at the moment\u0026hellip;\nDonald Trump.\nWhy Donald Trump?\nThe 2016 election might go down as the most controversial in US history.\nThe funny thing is that it has nothing to do with politics\nYou can\u0026rsquo;t turn on the TV without hearing another Trump soundbite, o can\u0026rsquo;t watch Fox News without hearing about the latest news in the Hillary Clinton email controversy\nHowever, very few people are talking about Hillary Clinton. It\u0026rsquo;s all Donald.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s all Donald.\nLove him or hate him, most people find him more entertaining to read about than Hillary. And that fact holds true if you look at the number of advertisers who use Trump in their ads.\nWe searched all of the ad creatives in the Adbeat database for the keyword \u0026ldquo;Trump\u0026rdquo; and also for the keyword \u0026ldquo;hillary\u0026rdquo; (we could use \u0026ldquo;clinton\u0026rdquo; but she\u0026rsquo;s almost always referred to as \u0026ldquo;Hillary\u0026rdquo; in the media). What we found was astounding.\nTake a look at just a small sample of the results: The results above are the number of ad creatives Adbeat has counted with the word \u0026ldquo;trump\u0026rdquo; in them vs. the number of ad creatives with the word \u0026ldquo;hillary\u0026rdquo; in them.\nThere is a MASSIVE difference.\nMoreover, while most of the advertisers you\u0026rsquo;ll see on each list are new sites, there are advertisers from multiple markets and niches that found a way to fit Trump into their Display strategy.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s see how they are doing it.\n\u0026ldquo;Who Would YOU Vote For?\u0026rdquo; We\u0026rsquo;re written before about why people love polls and quizzes.\nNewsmax (a conservative news publisher) is driving a large amount of traffic to their site with these ad creatives:\nOnce a prospect submits, they are sent to a page that shows the results of the poll. Then, they\u0026rsquo;ll start to see news and offers from Newsmax pop up in their email inbox. These emails may or may not be Trump-related, but Trump has already done his job of getting them to opt-in.\nNotice that Newsmax did not run ads featuring Ted Cruz or John Kasich.\nWhy?\nPolitical views aside, Ted Cruz and John Kasich are just not as newsworthy as Trump. They don\u0026rsquo;t have his celebrity power.\nBut Newsmax isn\u0026rsquo;t the only advertiser running poll/quiz ads.\nSound Money Defense League The Sound Money Defense League is an organization focused on \u0026ldquo;restoring gold and silver to its historic role as America\u0026rsquo;s constitutional money\u0026rdquo;. In a nutshell, they want the USA to return to the gold standard.\nThe Sound Money Defense League uses runs ads similar to those used by Newsmax:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll notice that all of these ads and their corresponding landing pages are geo-targeted (\u0026ldquo;Urgent OR Conservative Voter Poll\u0026rdquo;):\nAfter you submit your email, you\u0026rsquo;re shown a pop-up with the results of the poll:\nAnd then you are invited to become a \u0026ldquo;founding member\u0026rdquo; of the Sound Money Defense League:\nThis is a very clever way of using celebrity to fit the psychographics and political views of your prospects.\nTrump For Mortgage Lead Generation But that\u0026rsquo;s not all.\nLead generation advertisers are also using Trump in their ads by picking out a few relevant soundbites and using them in their landing page copy.\nFor example, check out these two Donald Trump ads\u0026hellip;\nBoth of these ads drive traffic to this advertorial:\nThis advertorial includes a quote from an interview Trump did with Bloomberg TV, where he said, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m just saying that at some point they\u0026rsquo;ll have to raise interest rates\u0026rdquo;. This is a very clever way of using celebrity \u0026ldquo;advice\u0026rdquo; in your marketing materials.\n\u0026ldquo;The Donald\u0026rdquo; Goes Viral Trump was a celebrity long before he became a presidential candidate. While he was never as famous as Justin Bieber (at least not yet), most people knew about him from the TV show celebrity apprentice, his numerous wives, children, and interesting personal life.\nAll of this can be used for fodder for viral articles, especially now that he\u0026rsquo;s a celebrity politician.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ve probably seen the ads below. Many of them are all over the place. There are numerous viral content sites who are promoting articles related to Trump, his children, his wives, ex-wives, and all of the crazy stuff he owns.\nHere are just a few of them:\nAlos, as you saw earlier, not just viral sites promote Trump-related content. Many mainstream news sources like CNN, The New York Times, and Fox News use Trump in their ads:\nConclusion There\u0026rsquo;s no doubt that Trump is one of the most talked about celebs at the moment. Using the strategies above as inspiration, you can use his likeness (or another celebrity more relevant to your market) to see better results with your Display campaigns. Over the next few weeks, we\u0026rsquo;ll be publishing a few more blog posts that show advertisers using other celebrities as a way to drive more traffic. Stay tuned.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/power-of-celebrity-display-advertising-donald-trump/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eImagine that you\u0026rsquo;re a personal trainer and you want to make the most money possible.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou\u0026rsquo;re given the choice between:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea) a photo of you training Britney Spears, or\nb) a degree in nutrition/training from the top university in the United States\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhich would you choose?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMe?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m taking the picture of Britney Spears any day of the week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBecause it\u0026rsquo;s going to lead to more clients! Most people would rather be trained by the guru trainer to the stars than Joe Schmoe with a bunch of letters after his name.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Power of Celebrity in Display Advertising Part 1: Donald Trump"},{"content":"How long will it take until people are sick of reading articles about Kim Kardashian\u0026rsquo;s weight fluctuations?\nOr articles that list the \u0026ldquo;10 Signs You Know You\u0026rsquo;re a Millennial\u0026rdquo;?\nOr the once-loved-but-now-hated, \u0026ldquo;She Walked Her Dog. You\u0026rsquo;ll Be Shocked At What Happened Next\u0026rdquo;?\nA really long time, apparently.\nOne of our most popular blog posts ever was The Business of Display Part 2: Viral Quiz Sites and Click Arbitrage. That post showed how advertisers were making money through ad arbitrage and viral quiz sites. That article was written almost two years ago when viral content seemed like a passing fad.\nYet, viral content has only grown in popularity.\nIf you look inside Adbeat, you\u0026rsquo;ll see that many of the top spenders on Display are not big brands.\nThey are viral sites promoting their content through Native networks like Taboola, Outbrain, and Revcontent.\nSo, it seems like viral content is here to stay.\nHowever, running a profitable viral site is not as easy as some folks think. The competition is insane. Thousands of advertisers compete for clicks in those tiny ad widgets you see at the bottom of news sites like CNN.\nThis means you can\u0026rsquo;t just slap together a viral article with a clickbaity headline and expect success.\nReaders now expect unique viral content. They expect something different than what they\u0026rsquo;ve seen for the past couple of years.\nThis has led to many digital publishers niching down, and moving away from general viral content like celebrity gossip. Many sites now promote content that is specific to a certain category you likely haven\u0026rsquo;t seen before.\nAnd is it working?\nNo doubt. Many of these sites are doing extremely well.\nAnd in today\u0026rsquo;s blog post, we\u0026rsquo;re going to cover the Display advertising strategies of three niche viral sites. Some of these sites are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on Native advertising ads.\nIn other words: pay attention.\n(And if you\u0026rsquo;re even remotely interested to see how a viral site is built from the ground up, then be sure you check out site #3 in this post)\n#1: DigitalTrends DigitalTrends publishes and promotes content related to gadgets, tech, and unique homes \u0026amp; vehicles.\nAd Spend: DigitalTrends has spent an estimated $5,161,984 on Display over the past 180 days. Most of their ad spend has been allocated to Taboola, Outbrain, and Gravity.\nAd Creatives DigitalTrends\u0026rsquo; most seen ad creative over the past six months is this creative about underrated Netflix movies:\n(Sidenote: Netflix is a great topic since it has become a huge part of American culture, e.g. \u0026ldquo;Netflix n\u0026rsquo; Chill\u0026rdquo;.)\nDigitalTrends also has ads that send visitors to content with pictures of unique homes, cars, and boats. These ads are superb because the images do a great job at catching your eye.\nDigitalTrends has ran these tech gift idea ads around the holidays:\nPublishers The publishers that DigitalTrends\u0026rsquo; spent the most with were IJ Review, Daily Mail, and EMGN.com (another viral content site).\nLanding Pages DigitalTrends sets itself apart from most other other viral sites by going the extra mile to make their content more engaging.\nFor example, in this article \u0026ldquo;8 Criminally Underrated Netflix Movies You Owe It To Yourself To Watch\u0026rdquo;, they include the list of underrated Netflix movies in text and video format:\nThe video makes the content more valuable, simply because most viral sites don\u0026rsquo;t include videos in their articles. This also allows the reader to choose their preferred way of consuming the content. Many companies don\u0026rsquo;t include videos because it takes more time and effort. However, this is a an excellent strategy.\n#2: InsideGov.com InsideGov is a database of statistics for everything related to politics and money. Some examples include government spending numbers, campaign contributions, and political advertising. They also write about other topics related to the current election and past presidents.\nAd Spend \u0026amp; Networks InsideGov has spent an estimated $946,816 over the past 6 months. They have tested a few different Native networks, but they allocate the majority of their ad spend to Outbrain and Taboola.\nInsideGov\u0026rsquo;s Top Publishers InsideGov\u0026rsquo;s ads are shown on many of the main news publishers like CNN.com and Go.com sites.\nHowever, one thing to note of is that InsideGov has spent an estimated $28,300 advertising on Verizon.com.\nAnd o, Verizon is not trying to make a few bucks off of ad revenue for people who want to buy new cell phones. Verizon has actually launched their own viral content site called Fios Trending.\nInsideGov\u0026rsquo;s Top Ads InsideGov\u0026rsquo;s most seen ads focus on two key areas: intellect and money.\nPeople want an intelligent president. an intelligent president is obviously important. However, ask 10 people whether or not they think a specific president was/is smart, and you\u0026rsquo;re going to see a massive divide.\nThese ads are great because they leave the conclusion up to the reader. Whatever political position you choose, basically fits into the mold of the ad. Like Obama? Then you assume that Obama must be one of the most intelligent. Hate Obama? Then you assume that he was ranked as one of the dumber presidents. Either way, you\u0026rsquo;re curious to see where a specific president is on the list.\nInsideGov also promoted a few pieces of content related to the current election:\nIMPORTANT: With the exception of the Trump/Cruz ads, all of the content that InsideGov promotes is evergreen. They can likely advertise these same articles for years. They\u0026rsquo;ll just have to make changes to the ad creatives to keep CTR high. You want to create and promote evergreen content as well.\nInsideGov\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages InsideGov sends traffic to the standard slideshow landing page that most viral content sites use. This page includes a large image at the top that grabs your attention, a short intro below that image, and then the \u0026ldquo;next\u0026rdquo; buttons that move the visitor from page-to-page.\n#3: HistoryFanatic.com History Fanatic is a fairly new viral site with content is loosely based on world history. HistoryFanatic is a great example for anyone who wants to see how a digital publisher grows from the start.\nHistoryFanatic\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks History Fanatic has spent an estimated $898,688 with Taboola and Outbrain since they began advertising at the end of February 2016.\nHistoryFanatic\u0026rsquo;s Top Publishers HistoryFanatic\u0026rsquo;s top publishers include Go.com sites, DailyMail, and Mashable.\nHistoryFanatic\u0026rsquo;s Top Ads All of HistoryFanatic\u0026rsquo;s ads are tied to historical events. You\u0026rsquo;ll notice that all of their creatives contain the \u0026ldquo;will leave you speechless\u0026rdquo; piece of copy that is common to many viral sites.\nHistoryFanatic\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages HistoryFanatic also uses the slideshow landing page with Facebook comments at the bottom:\nConclusion The demand for more and more content is growing alongside Native Advertising. However, content creators will need to constantly come up with new, innovative ideas to stand out from the crowd. Creating one of these sites is a very tough endeavor, and people who want to throw their hat in the ring have their work cut out for them.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-business-of-display-reloaded-niche-viral-sites/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHow long will it take until people are sick of reading articles about Kim Kardashian\u0026rsquo;s weight fluctuations?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOr articles that list the \u0026ldquo;10 Signs You Know You\u0026rsquo;re a Millennial\u0026rdquo;?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOr the once-loved-but-now-hated, \u0026ldquo;She Walked Her Dog. You\u0026rsquo;ll Be Shocked At What Happened Next\u0026rdquo;?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA really long time, apparently.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of our most popular blog posts ever was \u003ca href=\"/the-business-of-display-part-2-viral-quiz-sites-and-click-arbitrage/\"\u003eThe Business of Display Part 2: Viral Quiz Sites and Click Arbitrage\u003c/a\u003e. That post showed how advertisers were making money through ad arbitrage and viral quiz sites. That article was written almost two years ago when viral content seemed like a passing fad.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Business of Display Reloaded: Niche Viral Sites"},{"content":"Now live\u0026hellip;\nAdbeat Advanced and Enterprise subscribers will now see LockerDome and TripleLift data throughout the platform and under our list of networks.\nThis brings our total coverage of Native to 13 different networks(Adblade, Outbrain, Taboola, Yahoo Gemini Native, nRelate, rev:content, ContentAd, Nativo, Disqus, mgid, Gravity, Lockerdome and TripleLift)\nWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Advanced or Enterprise Subscriber? Current Adbeat customers can upgrade by clicking this link to login and upgrade their account.\nYou can switch immediately to the Adbeat Advanced plan on that screen, or you can send our sales team an email at sales@adbeat.com to schedule a demo for an Adbeat Enterprise plan.\nWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Customer? If you\u0026rsquo;re not an Adbeat customer, but want to see competitive data for 13 Native Ad networks (and over 80+ other networks), click below to see what our Adbeat Advanced and Adbeat Enterprise plans have to offer.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/new-native-networks-lockerdome-and-triplelift/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNow live\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"lockerdome-triplelift\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/lockerdome-triplelift.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdbeat Advanced and Enterprise subscribers will now see LockerDome and TripleLift data throughout the platform and under our list of networks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis brings our total coverage of Native to \u003cstrong\u003e13 different networks\u003c/strong\u003e(Adblade, Outbrain, Taboola, Yahoo Gemini Native, nRelate, rev:content, ContentAd, Nativo, Disqus, mgid, Gravity, Lockerdome and TripleLift)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"want-native-ad-data-but-not-an-adbeat-advanced-or-enterprise-subscriber\"\u003eWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Advanced or Enterprise Subscriber?\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCurrent Adbeat customers can upgrade by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://www.adbeat.com/user-profile/upgrade\"\u003ethis link to login and upgrade their account\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NEW Native Networks: LockerDome and TripleLift"},{"content":"Adbeat in itself is an amazing source of aggregate data for all of the competitive data that helps you get a leg up on the competition.\nNow we\u0026rsquo;ve taken things a step further.\nIntroducing\u0026hellip; Campaigns.\nCampaigns take all of the aggregate data we collect for an advertiser and group it into specific marketing campaigns. Campaigns allow you to see all of the ad creatives, landing pages, publishers and networks your top competitor uses for their different marketing initiatives.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an example from Zulily, an e-commerce clothing company:\nThe bottom line is that Campaigns give you an even more granular look at your biggest competitor\u0026rsquo;s overall advertising strategy.\nWant to see more information on how Campaigns work?\nWatch this short video here:\nAt the moment, Campaigns are only available to Adbeat Enterprise subscribers. If you\u0026rsquo;re not an Enterprise subscriber, then please contact our sales team at sales@adbeat.com to be upgraded.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re not an Adbeat customer but want access to Campaigns and all of the other competitive data that Adbeat gives the industry\u0026rsquo;s best advertisers, publishers, and ad networks the upper-hand over the competition, then please click the button below to learn how Adbeat can help your business:\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/campaigns/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAdbeat in itself is an amazing source of aggregate data for all of the competitive data that helps you get a leg up on the competition.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow we\u0026rsquo;ve taken things a step further.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIntroducing\u0026hellip; \u003cstrong\u003eCampaigns\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCampaigns take all of the aggregate data we collect for an advertiser and group it into specific marketing campaigns. Campaigns allow you to see all of the ad creatives, landing pages, publishers and networks your top competitor uses for their different marketing initiatives.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NOW LIVE: See All Of Your Competitor's Marketing Campaigns"},{"content":"In 1901, King C. Gillette had a revelation that would change the way products are sold forever.\nGillette was a salesman at the Crown Cork and Seal Company (CCK). CCK sold the first disposable bottle cap; the \u0026ldquo;crown\u0026rdquo; style cap you find on most glass bottles. After seeing the success of the crown cap, Gillette realized there was potential for other disposable products.\nHe specifically saw an opportunity in the razor blade market.\nWhy?\nBecause back in the olden days, men needed to sharpen the blade with a leather strap every day. This was tedious and time-consuming.\nSo, Gillette created the first disposable safety razor in 1901.\nThe rest is history.\nDisposable razors became a hit. Gillette went on to rule the industry.\nGillette was acquired by Proctor and Gamble in 2005 and has a net value of ~$20B dollars. According to Forbes.com, Procter \u0026amp; Gamble controls ~70% of the global razor market, mostly through the Gillette brand.\nFor years, Gillette was the 800-lb gorilla in the room that couldn\u0026rsquo;t be stopped.\nLawsuits, Subscriptions, and Holiday Parties Let\u0026rsquo;s fast-forward to 2011.\nMark Levine and Michael Dubin meet at a holiday party. They start chatting about the outrageous costs of razor blade cartridges. And just like King C. Gillette had an idea that would change the razor blade industry, so did these two men.\n\u0026ldquo;What if someone started a subscription service that offers razor blades for an affordable price?\u0026rdquo;\nAnd in July of 2011, Dollar Shave Club was born.\nDollar Shave Club charges ~$1/month for 5 razor cartridges. This price is much lower than what Gillette and other brands typically charge.\nDollar Shave Club had some initial success. They even secured a seed round of $1M.\nBut the business didn\u0026rsquo;t really take off until their \u0026ldquo;Our Blades Are F***ing Great\u0026rdquo; video went viral:\nThis video has led to a massive growth spurt over the past few years.\nIn 2015, they raised $75M at a valuation of $615M dollars. Not too shabby for an idea developed during a holiday party.\nOnline razor blade sales have skyrocketed over the past few years, and other subscription services have popped up. The most well-known is Harry\u0026rsquo;s (who raised $122.5M and bought a German factory after only being in business for 10-months). A few others include 800razors.com, wetshaveclub.com, and Gillette\u0026rsquo;s subscription service, Gillette Shave Club.\nAlternative marketing strategies like clever TV spots, YouTube videos, and Display advertising have made razor blade startups a serious threat for razor giants like Gillette and Schick.\nAll of this begs the question:\nIs it possible to knock-off a billion dollar company with the help of Display advertising?\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll find out in today\u0026rsquo;s blog post.\nGillette vs. Harry\u0026rsquo;s vs. Dollar Shave Club First, let\u0026rsquo;s take a look at all three companies\u0026rsquo; strategies side by side.\nThe graph below shows each company\u0026rsquo;s ad spend over time:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see that both Harry\u0026rsquo;s and DSC have spent heavily on Display over the past year.\nYet, both companies began to taper their spend around the beginning of 2016.\nCould this be because of the lawsuit? A change in marketing strategy? It\u0026rsquo;s hard to know for sure.\nHowever, both companies continue to outspend Gillette.\nWhich brings us to the next point: how much does Gillette spend?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not 100% clear on that graph.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s because Gillette\u0026rsquo;s sends very little traffic to their Gillette Shave Club web site. They do, however, spend more on ads that send traffic to their main site (Gillette.com) and their Gillette Venus\u0026quot; line of razors for women. But it seems like they haven\u0026rsquo;t yet ramped up their spend on Display for the Gillette Shave Club, despite the heavy competition.\nSo, now that you know how each advertiser spends, let\u0026rsquo;s see what they have in common.\nWell, one of the best ways for any advertiser to optimize their campaigns is to uncover where their competitor spends their ad dollars.\nNow, the target audience for Gillette, Harry\u0026rsquo;s, and Dollar Shave Club is pretty much the same. This means that all three companies could benefit by placing ads on similar publishers.\nHere are what these advertisers have in common in regards to ad networks, publisher categories, channels, and publisher sites:\nAll three brands tend to favor Native ad networks like Taboola and Outbrain. They all choose to allocate their spend to news, technology, and sports publishers. Gillette, which has yet to ramp up their spend, could probably benefit by buying more traffic on publishers that Harry\u0026rsquo;s and Dollar Shave Club allocate large portions of their spend.\nNow let\u0026rsquo;s take go one level deeper, and check out each company\u0026rsquo;s strategy on the individual level.\nHarry\u0026rsquo;s Harry\u0026rsquo;s was founded in 2011 by Jeffrey Raider and Andy Katz-Mayfield.\nHarry\u0026rsquo;s has raised a total of $287.1M in funding.\nTheir overall marketing message centers around \u0026ldquo;German quality\u0026rdquo; and their low prices.\nIn 2014, Harry\u0026rsquo;s purchased a German factory. This allows Harry\u0026rsquo;s to keep prices low/use a unique marketing angle. Many consumers associate Germany with quality and luxury, due to the reputation of German-made cars like Mercedes-Benz and BMW.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll often see Harry\u0026rsquo;s use phrases like \u0026ldquo;German engineered\u0026rdquo; in their ad creatives and landing page copy (along with Gillette\u0026rsquo;s rebuttel in their ad copy).\nHarry\u0026rsquo;s Ad Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Harry\u0026rsquo;s has spent an estimated $5,368,832M on Display over the past 6 months. Harry\u0026rsquo;s allocates most of their ad budget to the Google Display Network, Taboola, and Advertising.com.\nHarry\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Harry buys the most inventory on large news publishers like Independent Journal Review, Huffington Post, and Business Insider:\nHarry\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Harry\u0026rsquo;s does a great job at split testing different ad creatives. They test many different variables, including the razor images, colors, sub-headlines, calls-to-action, and call-to-action button colors.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll also notice the \u0026ldquo;German Blades\u0026rdquo; copy shows up in many of their ads.\nHarry\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Just like their ad creatives, Harry\u0026rsquo;s tests many landing pages across all ad networks.\nHere is just a small sample of the landing pages Harry\u0026rsquo;s is currently testing:\nGillette Gillette advertises on Display through multiple domains:\nGillette\u0026rsquo;s main domain (Gillette.com) is used to advertise the razors and blades you\u0026rsquo;ve probably seen on TV (Fusion, ProGlide, and Mach3). Gillette Venus (Gillette\u0026rsquo;s female razor) And their relatively new subscription service, \u0026ldquo;Gillette Shave Club\u0026rdquo;. This blog post will only focus on their Gillette Shave Club strategy, since we\u0026rsquo;re only focusing on subscription blade companies.\nGillette\u0026rsquo;s Ad Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Gillette has spent an estimated $80,304 over the past 6 months.\nMost of that ad spend has been allocated to Outbrain and Direct Buys:\nGillette\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Gillette\u0026rsquo;s main publishers include go.com, movie sites like Fandango \u0026amp; Rotten Tomatoes (as part of their Spectre movie promotion) and mademan.com, an online men\u0026rsquo;s portal.\nGillette\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Gillette uses a variety of ad styles common among big brands.\nThey have ads for their promotion with Spectre (the latest James Bond movie, now a few months old) and a simple 300x250 ad with a shot of the blades and a bit of copy talking about the monthly service.\nYet, their most interesting ad creatives are their Native ads.\nHarry\u0026rsquo;s bought a factory in Germany and thus uses the \u0026ldquo;German Engineered\u0026rdquo; angle.\nGillette is using the \u0026ldquo;South Boston\u0026rdquo; angle, which we\u0026rsquo;ll talk more about in the next section.\nGillette\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Gillette is only split testing their Gillette Shave Cub homepage and a long-form page about the South Boston factory.\nThe South Boston Factory\nThe bottom line is this: it\u0026rsquo;s going to be hard for Gillette to compete on price with startups.\nHowever, Gillette does have the upper-hand in one category: their history. Gillette has been a household name for over a century. Not to mention that they manufacture the majority of their products in a South Boston factory, aka \u0026ldquo;Gillette World Shaving Headquarters\u0026rdquo;.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s the big deal about this?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s no secret that many large companies have moved their factories overseas. Many Americans believe that overseas manufacturing has taken jobs away from American workers.\n\u0026ldquo;Made in the USA\u0026rdquo; is now a selling point for many companies, as many people assume \u0026ldquo;Made in the USA\u0026rdquo; products help support the American worker, and provide a higher quality product. One survey shows that 78% of consumers prefer to buy products made in the USA.\nGillette uses this YouTube video to help market the Gillette Shave Club:\nGillette\u0026rsquo;s marketing might not be as clever as that of the Dollar Shave Club, but they do know how to tug at America\u0026rsquo;s heart strings.\nDollar Shave Club Dollar Shave Club was founded by Mark Levine and Michael Dubin in July 2011.\nDollar Shave Club has raised a total of $163.5M in funding.\nDollar Shave Club\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Creatives Dollar Shave Club (\u0026ldquo;DSC\u0026rdquo;) has spent an estimated $5,575,680 over the previous 6 months.\nMost of their ad spend is allocated to Outbrain and Taboola. Direct Buys (buying inventory directly from a publisher) come in a distant third.\nDollar Shave Club\u0026rsquo;s Top Ad Creatives Dollar Shave Club has a unique ad copy strategy. The ad copy reminds us of the type of copy used by direct response companies. One man disrupting an industry, or angering \u0026ldquo;the powers that be\u0026rdquo; is a common angle used by direct response marketers in the health or finance spaces. Dollar Shave Club uses a similar angle in their Native Ads:\nDollar Shave Club\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Dollar Shave Club tests three different landing pages:\nAll three of these landing pages are in longer-form article format. There are a few diagrams and pictures of the founder, but the overall design of the page is made to look like an organic blog article.\nConclusion Is it possible that these startups could take down a billion dollar giant with the help of Display advertising?\nGillette still has the majority of the control of the industry, so the answer is: probably not any time soon. However, Display Advertising combined with their other marketing efforts has definitely had an impact in helping these razor blade companies take a bite out of Gillette\u0026rsquo;s cake.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-razor-war/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1901, King C. Gillette had a revelation that would change the way products are sold forever.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGillette was a salesman at the Crown Cork and Seal Company (CCK). CCK sold the first disposable bottle cap; the \u0026ldquo;crown\u0026rdquo; style cap you find on most glass bottles. After seeing the success of the crown cap, Gillette realized there was potential for other disposable products.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHe specifically saw an opportunity in the \u003cem\u003erazor\u003c/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eblade\u003c/em\u003e market.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Razor War on Display Advertising (Gillette vs. Dollar Shave Club vs. Harry's)"},{"content":"What do babies, unisex bathrooms, and sausage egg casserole all have in common?\nThey all have to do with the Display Advertising strategies of the four businesses featured in today\u0026rsquo;s blog post.\nToday, we\u0026rsquo;ll be looking at how some of the \u0026ldquo;Big-box\u0026rdquo; retail and grocery stores use Display Advertising to drive more foot traffic and online sales.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s a Big-box store?\nWikipedia defines a Big-box stores as being \u0026ldquo;a physically large retail establishment, usually part of a chain.\u0026rdquo;\nThese are stores like Walmart, Target, Sam\u0026rsquo;s Club or Whole Foods.\nMost people know that Big-box stores spend big through your traditional advertising channels \u0026ndash; billboards, TV, radio print advertising, etc.\nYet, how are these massive businesses spending on Display?\nAre they even spending on Display?\nTime to find out.\nToday\u0026rsquo;s blog post features the Display advertising strategies of four different Big-box stores:\nTarget Walmart Kroger Whole Foods Let\u0026rsquo;s dive in.\nTarget.com Target\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Over the past 6 months, Target has spent an estimated $7,853,056 on Display.\nNearly 2/3 of their ad spend has been allocated to Direct Buys.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see that many Big-box stores prefer Direct Buys. This could be because Direct Buys on large sites often lead to a more consistent flow of traffic. This is great for big companies who focus on branding. Direct Buys will often allow them to get their ads in front of as many eyeballs as possible.\nTarget\u0026rsquo;s Top Ads Back in 2012, Target came under fire after Forbes published an article titled, \u0026ldquo;How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did.\u0026rdquo; The article tells how Target sent coupons for baby products to a young girl\u0026rsquo;s house based on her consumption patterns at Target.\nLow and behold\u0026hellip; she was pregnant! However, her father did not know until he saw all of these Target coupons for baby products in the mail.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll notice below that Target\u0026rsquo;s most seen ads are related to baby products and baby registries. It appears that Target plans their ad creatives strategy around certain time periods. This specific time period being when many women are pregnant.\nTarget\u0026rsquo;s Top Publishers In line with what we looked at in the Top Ads section, Target.com purchased the most traffic directly from babycenter.com.\nTarget\u0026rsquo;s Top Landing Pages Target\u0026rsquo;s landing pages are directly tied to the product being shown in the ad.\nHere we have a landing page for mobile devices:\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the landing pages for the baby registry:\nAnd here\u0026rsquo;s a landing page for Mucinex:\nWalmart.com Walmart\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Walmart has spent an estimated $3,608,064 on Display over the past six months. Walmart allocates the majority of their ad spend to the Google Display Network. Walmart also buys significant inventory through Direct Buys. They are also one of the few Big-box stores testing out Native Ads on Outbrain. Walmart\u0026rsquo;s Top Ads Walmart\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives all focus on specific products or promotions.\nTheir Native Ad creatives (shown in the lower right of the graphic below) send traffic to articles with recipes and cooking techniques. Walmart\u0026rsquo;s Top Publishers Like Target, Walmart also buys a large amount of inventory directly on babycenter.com.\nWalmart\u0026rsquo;s Top Landing Pages Walmart\u0026rsquo;s most seen ad creatives send traffic to landing pages related to the product advertised in the ad.\nThere are two examples in the graphic below. The first landing page promotes their selection of Star Wars products. The second page promotes Pampers and other baby products.\nYou also saw that Walmart is testing ads on Outbrain.\nHere are the two pages they are testing:\nKroger.com Kroger\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Kroger is a North American supermarket chain founded in 1883, and is currently the largest supermarket chain by revenue.\nDespite being one of the larger chains, Kroger does not allocate much of their marketing budget to Display advertising.\nKroger\u0026rsquo;s Top Ads Kroger mainly uses branding style ads. And unlike the other stores in this post, they don\u0026rsquo;t advertise specific products unless the product is part of a short-term sale.\nIn fact, some of their ads are quite plain. One ad creative is simply their logo.\nKroger\u0026rsquo;s Top Publishers Kroger buys traffic on news sites, news station affiliates, and general interest sites like wunderground.com (a weather site).\nKroger\u0026rsquo;s Top Landing Pages Kroger is split testing three different landing pages.\nThe first landing page (on the left) is a store locator. The second landing page (middle) is simply their homepage. The third landing page (right) promotes their gift cards.\nMeijer.com Meijer is a smaller chain of Big-box stores located in the midwest of the United States.\nMeijer\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Meijer is the lowest spending advertiser featured in this blog post. They\u0026rsquo;ve spent an estimated $19,596 over the past 6 months.\nMeijer\u0026rsquo;s Top Ads Meijer\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives all focus on saving money and signing up for their coupons/rewards program.\nMeijer\u0026rsquo;s Top Publishers Meijer buys traffic on local news affiliates sites, websites for specific sports teams, and other sports related sites. Given their publisher selection and their ad creative content, it appears that Meijer is using Display to target a male audience.\nMeijer\u0026rsquo;s Top Landing Pages Meijer is split testing two different landing pages.\nTheir first landing page is simply their home page:\nThe second page is designed to get customers to sign-up for their \u0026ldquo;mPerks\u0026rdquo; rewards program: WholeFoodsMarket.com Whole Foods\u0026rsquo; Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks When most Americans think of \u0026ldquo;healthy food,\u0026rdquo; they think of Whole Foods. Whole Foods is a large supermarket chain that sells food and products that are free of chemicals, preservatives, and artificial ingredients.\nWhole Foods has spent an estimated $1,180,928 over the past 6 months. They allocate most of their ad spend to the Google Display Network.\nWhole Foods\u0026rsquo; Top Ads Whole Foods\u0026rsquo; ad creative strategy centers around their different sales and promotions.\nOne example is their \u0026ldquo;Customer Appreciation Month\u0026rdquo; promotion seen in the ad creatives below:\nWhole Foods\u0026rsquo; Top Publishers Whole Foods has spent significantly on dnainfo.com, a blog for large cities like New York and Chicago.\nWhole Foods\u0026rsquo; Top Landing Pages Even though they advertise different products in their ad creatives, all traffic ends up at this page: Conclusion The main strategy for most of these big-box stores centers around the Google Display Network and Direct Buys. Many Display advertisers tend to forget that Direct Buys can be an amazing source of traffic. However, it takes a little bit of effort to contact, negotiate and set-up the Direct Buy. This causes many advertisers to shy away from testing them. Take a page from the playbook of big-box stores and try out some Direct Buys out in your own campaigns.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-walmart-and-target-use-display-advertising-the-big-box-blog-post/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat do babies, unisex bathrooms, and sausage egg casserole all have in common?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey all have to do with the Display Advertising strategies of the four businesses featured in today\u0026rsquo;s blog post.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, we\u0026rsquo;ll be looking at how some of the \u0026ldquo;Big-box\u0026rdquo; retail and grocery stores use Display Advertising to drive more foot traffic and online sales.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s a Big-box store?\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWikipedia defines a Big-box stores as being \u0026ldquo;a physically large retail establishment, usually part of a chain.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Walmart and Target Use Display Advertising (The \"Big-box\" Blog Post)"},{"content":"Since 2014, we\u0026rsquo;ve seen a massive rise in the number of advertisers testing out Native Ads.\nLooking inside Adbeat, the majority of Native advertisers fit into a few categories:\nDirect Response (information products and supplements) Digital publishers (viral news and celebrity gossip sites) Big brands However, we\u0026rsquo;re seeing more eCommerce sites throw their hats into the ring.\neCommerce sites tend to stick with tried and true networks, like Google AdWords. This continues to be the trend.\nYet, there are a handful of eCommerce companies who have begun to allocate more of their ad budget to Native Ad networks like Taboola, Outbrain, and Adblade.\nIn this blog post, you\u0026rsquo;ll see the Native Advertising strategies for four online retailers:\nDollar Shave Club Crutchfield Wayfair GlassesUSA Dollar Shave Club The Dollar Shave Club is a mail order razor blade company that\u0026rsquo;s become quite popular over the past few years, as is one of the fastest growing advertisers according to Adbeat data.\nDollar Shave Club\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Creatives The majority of DSC\u0026rsquo;s ad spend is allocated towards Taboola, with Outbrain in a distant second.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve started to ramp down their spend over the past couple of months, but they had a big push at the beginning of Q4 2015.\nDollar Shave Club\u0026rsquo;s Top Native Ads Dollar Shave Club\u0026rsquo;s most seen ads focus on the \u0026ldquo;Disrupting a $13 Billion Razor Industry\u0026rdquo; angle.\nThis style of copy is similar to something a Direct Response advertiser might use. You see this style of copy a lot in the finance space, because it\u0026rsquo;s quite useful at grabbing attention.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll also see a testimonial-style ad in the lower-right (\u0026ldquo;Here\u0026rsquo;s What Happened When I Tried Dollar Shave Club.\u0026rdquo; This ad sends traffic to an article written by a customer who recounts his experience with the product.\nDollar Shave Club\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Dollar Shave Club is testing three different landing pages.\nAll three pages include a large picture of a razor, the blades, and the packaging. All three landing pages also include a picture of Michael Dubin, one of the founders.\nThe main copy on each page is also very similar, if not exactly the same.\nThe only big differences you\u0026rsquo;ll see are the background image (the wooden background in LP #1) and the \u0026ldquo;It couldn\u0026rsquo;t be simpler\u0026rdquo; diagram seen at the bottom of landing pages #2 and #3.\nGlassesUSA GlassesUSA is an online retailer that offers prescription eyeglasses at discount prices.\nGlassesUSA\u0026rsquo;s Native Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks GlassesUSA allocates the majority of their ad spend to Taboola \u0026ndash; an estimated 4.1M over the past 6 months. You\u0026rsquo;ll also see that they\u0026rsquo;ve spent ~$160k with Outbrain over the past 6 months.\nGlassesUSA\u0026rsquo;s Top Native Publishers The majority of GlassesUSA\u0026rsquo;s ads are seen on news sites, viral content sites, and political commentary sites.\nGlassesUSA\u0026rsquo;s Top Native Ads GlassesUSA\u0026rsquo;s ads all focus on the price of the glasses, and why you should buy online. They probably chose this angle because a) anything that promises lower prices is tantilizing, and b) most people assume purchasing glasses is the best option. It\u0026rsquo;s simply easier to browse and try on different pairs in person to find the one you like. Online glasses shopping is a bit different. You can\u0026rsquo;t try them on right then and there. However, GlassesUSA and other online retailers have made this process a bit more friendly.\nGlassesUSA\u0026rsquo;s Top Native Landing Pages GlassesUSA is split testing two similar landing pages:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll notice that both pages use many of the same images, calls-to-action, and even some of the same copy.\nThe differences between the two landing pages include image placement, some different images used, changes in body copy, and the headline, which changes depending on the copy in the ad.\nCrutchfield.com Crutchfield is a retailer that specializes in car stereos, speakers, TV sets, and other electronic devices. Crutchfield was founded in 1974. This makes them, by far, the oldest company that is featured in this blog post.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not too often that you see an \u0026ldquo;old school\u0026rdquo; business using Native Advertising, so sure to pay close attention to Crutchfield\u0026rsquo;s strategy.\nCrutchfield\u0026rsquo;s Ad Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend The other advertisers in this post allocate the majority of their Native ad budgets to Taboola and Outbrain.\nCrutchfield also spends significantly with both of these networks.\nHowever, they currently spend the most with Adblade.\nCrutchfield\u0026rsquo;s Top Native Publishers Crutchfield sends most of their traffic to fanboyreport.com, a site that publishes tech \u0026amp; gadget news for nerds. The audience that reads fanboyreport.com is right on target for Crutchfield\u0026rsquo;s products. They also spend significantly on walmart.com placements related to electronics:\nCrutchfield\u0026rsquo;s Top Native Ads Crutchfield uses this \u0026ldquo;article-style\u0026rdquo; copy in their ads. Consequently, each ad creative sends traffic to an article related to the product advertised. Crutchfield\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Crutchfield simply uses informative articles related to the product advertised in the corresponding Native ad. However, they don\u0026rsquo;t forget to sell. The articles include links to potential products a visitor can buy. Some articles include multiple products, and some articles focus on one specific product. Crutchfield opts for a softer kind of selling.\nWayfair.com Wayfair is a furniture and home decor retailer. Long time Adbeat blog readers will recognize Wayfar.com from previous blog posts. Wayfair has consistently been one of the highest spending Display advertisers across all ad networks. They\u0026rsquo;ve recently scaled their campaigns to Native networks.\nWayfair\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks You\u0026rsquo;ll notice that Wayfair still allocates the majority of their ad spend to the Google Display Network.\nYet, we\u0026rsquo;ve recently seen them start to allocate more ad spend to Native networks, specifically Taboola, Yahoo Gemini, and Outbrain.\nWayfair\u0026rsquo;s Top Native Publishers Wayfair\u0026rsquo;s Top Native Ads Wayfair uses curiosity building ad copy in their Native ads. Their strategy is similar to that of Dollar Shave Club. Wayfair and Dollar Shave Club are not necessarily new. Furniture are not usually thought of as controversial. Therefore, when you see a headline like, \u0026ldquo;See The Online Furniture Store That Has Retailers Worried\u0026rdquo; will catch your attention. As we harp on again and again here at Adbeat, the best ways to see better results with paid traffic is by analyzing what other advertisers are doing successfully, and using their strategy as inspiration.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a Native ad by the watch company MVMT that mashes the Dollar Shave Club and Wayfair\u0026rsquo;s copy together:\nThis style of ad copy is working very well for a various advertisers across different markets.\nDo you think this style of ad copy could get you more clicks and sales, too?\nWayfair\u0026rsquo;s Top Native Landing Pages Wayfair is not currently split testing any landing pages.\nThey send all traffic to this gated landing page:\nGated landing pages are quite common for eCommerce Display advertisers.\nWhy?\nSimply because being able to utilize email marketing to keep selling your products, informing customers of special deals, and reminding customers that you exist, is extremely powerful.\nConclusion Many companies wonder if Native ads are right for them.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re used to seeing Direct Response, large viral style publishers and big brands using Native.\nThere are fewer eCommerce sites, yet the ones you\u0026rsquo;ve seen in this blog post seem to be doing really well.\nWhat does this mean for you?\nWell, if you have an eCommerce site that appeals to a large audience, then Native ads can work VERY well for your company.\nYou can use the strategies above as inspiration.\nAll you have to do is start testing.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/ecommerce-native-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSince 2014, we\u0026rsquo;ve seen a massive rise in the number of advertisers testing out Native Ads.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLooking inside Adbeat, the majority of Native advertisers fit into a few categories:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDirect Response (information products and supplements)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDigital publishers (viral news and celebrity gossip sites)\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBig brands\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, we\u0026rsquo;re seeing more eCommerce sites throw their hats into the ring.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eeCommerce sites tend to stick with tried and true networks, like Google AdWords. This continues to be the trend.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How To Increase Your eCommerce Traffic \u0026 Sales With Native Advertising"},{"content":" \u0026ldquo;On the internet, every headache becomes a brain tumor in four clicks or less.\u0026rdquo; - Ron Gutman\nAccording to the Pew Research Center, 72% of people looked online for health information within the past year.\nBad for doctors (because the internet diagnosis is almost always some form of cancer).\nGood for the sites who provide this information and make millions in ad revenue every year.\nHealth publishers like WedMD, Lifescript and Healthline are booming. These sites bring in millions of ad revenue and sponsor money every month. Health publishers tend to have amazing SEO, and many have begun to advertise on Native networks like Taboola and Outbrain.\nHow much traffic do they get?\nWebMD reports an average of 206 million unique users per month, and over 400 billion page views per quarter.\nHow exactly do these publishers monetize their billions of pageviews?\nIn today\u0026rsquo;s blog post, we\u0026rsquo;re going to dive into the monetization strategies for five health publishers. You\u0026rsquo;ll see which networks these use, which advertisers buy inventory directly from them, and what style of ad creatives bring in the most bucks.\n1) Lifescript LifeScript\u0026rsquo;s Ad Revenue \u0026amp; Networks Lifescript is a large women\u0026rsquo;s health publisher.\nLifescript has brought in an estimated $4,418,560 in ad revenue over the past six months.\nLifescript brings in the most ad revenue through Direct Buys (when an advertiser buys inventory directly from a publisher).\nTop Ads on Lifescript Advertisers on Lifescript use a combination of Direct Reponse ads (the Oprah ad), ads for prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicine ads, and (yum) Pillsbury Crescent Rolls.\nLifescript\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Four of the five top-spending advertisers on Lifescript in the past six months are all pharmaceutical drug companies. Restasis, Colace Capsules, Enbrel and brintellix are all prescription drugs. Many prescription drug companies buy inventory directly from Lifescript and the other publishers you\u0026rsquo;ll see in this blog post.\nWedMD WebMD\u0026rsquo;s Ad Revenue \u0026amp; Networks WebMD is the most well-known publisher. As of this post\u0026rsquo;s publication date, WebMD reports an average of 206 million unique users per month, and over 400 billion page views per quarter.\nAdbeat estimates that WedMD has made $10,977,280 in ad revenue over the past six months. Most of their ad revenue comes from direct deals.\nLike Lifescript, the majority of WedMD\u0026rsquo;s ad revenue comes from Direct Buys.\nTop Ads on WedMD The most seen creatives on WebMD are for over-the-counter medicines. There are also a few public service announcement style ads from drug companies and foundations.\nWebMD\u0026rsquo;s Top Advertisers WedMD\u0026rsquo;s top advertisers are companies who sell OTC medicine.\nHealthCentral HealthCentral\u0026rsquo;s Ad Revenue \u0026amp; Ad Networks HealthCentral has brought in an estimated $1,386,240 in ad revenue over the past six months. Again, HealthCentral monetizes most of their traffic through Direct Buys.\nTop Ads on HealthCentral HealthCentral has advertisers from a few different markets. The one that sticks out the most is Stanley Steemer. We haven\u0026rsquo;t seen any other publishers in this blog post monetizing their traffic with home appliances or cleaning products. However, notice that even though Stanley Steemer does not sell prescription drugs, they still choose an ad creative that focuses on th efact that their products are allergy friendly.\nHealthCentral\u0026rsquo;s Top Advertisers Prescriptio and over-the-counter drug companies are the biggest advertisers on HealthCentral. As you saw in the previous section, Stanley Steemer directly bought inventory from HealthCentral for a short period. Could health publishers be a good source of traffic for companies that sell products for the home? Maybe, maybe not.\neMedTV eMedTV\u0026rsquo;s Ad Revenue \u0026amp; Ad Networks eMedTV brings in significantly less ad revenue than the other publishers featured in this post, but I wanted to give you an idea of how a smaller publisher monetizes their traffic.\neMedTV has still brought in an estimated $194,272 over the past six months.\nTop Ads on eMedTV The most seen ads on eMedTV advertise prescription drugs.\neMedTV\u0026rsquo;s Top Advertisers eMedTV has also managed to secure many Direct Buys with large pharmaceutical advertisers like Cialis and Strattera. This proves they have the potential to grow in this space.\nHealthline Heathline\u0026rsquo;s Ad Revenue \u0026amp; Ad Networks HealthLine has made an estimated $7,025,664 in ad revenue over the past six months. Their strategy is similar to Lifescript\u0026rsquo;s strategy. HealthLine makes most of their revenue through Direct Buys, but has also made a good amount on Taboola (Lifescript monetizes Native traffic through Outbrain).\nTop Ads on Healthline The top ads on Healthline are all for prescription drugs.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see most of the same drugs being advertised across various publishers.\nHeathline\u0026rsquo;s Top Advertisers This is the first sighting of a big box (Target) that we\u0026rsquo;ve seen in a publisher\u0026rsquo;s top five advertiser list.\nConclusion Direct Buys are the name of the game when it comes to monetizing traffic from sites related to health and wellness. A prescription drug company is a publisher\u0026rsquo;s dream. Drug companies tend to have lots of cash to spend on advertising, a desire for large amounts of traffic, and getting permission to advertise prescription drugs on Google and other ad networks can be difficult.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/medical-publishers-monetization/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;On the internet, every headache \u003cem\u003ebecomes a brain tumor in four clicks or less.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\n\u003cem\u003e- Ron Gutman\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to the Pew Research Center, 72% of people looked online for health information within the past year.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBad for doctors (because the internet diagnosis is almost always some form of cancer).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGood for the sites who provide this information and make millions in ad revenue every year.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHealth publishers like WedMD, Lifescript and Healthline are \u003cem\u003ebooming\u003c/em\u003e.  These sites bring in millions of ad revenue and sponsor money every month. Health publishers tend to have amazing SEO, and many have begun to advertise on Native networks like Taboola and Outbrain.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How WebMD (and Others) Use Display Ads to Make $10m+ in Ad Revenue"},{"content":"We\u0026rsquo;re just a few months away from what might be the most controversial presidential election in US history.\nMany candidates are using Display advertising as a way of raising awareness, collecting money and even bashing their opponent:\nNote: Hillary only ran this ad for a brief period of time. Too controversial to be shown on a mass scale? Didn\u0026rsquo;t work? Who knows. But you can\u0026rsquo;t hide from Adbeat :)\nThere is a lot of interesting stuff to be learned about positioning and landing page design from political candidates.\nFirst, let\u0026rsquo;s take a look at basic \u0026ldquo;funnel\u0026rdquo; each candidate is using.\nThe Political Funnel The classic sales funnel usually looks something like this:\nAll candidates also have their own version of a sales funnel. Except instead of selling eBooks, software or courses, they are \u0026ldquo;selling\u0026rdquo; supporters the chance to donate to their campaign. The \u0026ldquo;Donation Funnel\u0026rdquo; has fewer moving parts, but a similar structure.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll use Hillary Clinton as an example.\nTraffic is sent to this page where you can opt-in to her email list:\nAfter you opt-in, you\u0026rsquo;re shown a page similar to one that a business would use to offer an OTO (one-time-offer):\nThen, over time, you\u0026rsquo;re hit with a few emails a week that continue to try to get you to donate more money to Hillary\u0026rsquo;s campaign:\nThat\u0026rsquo;s the basic structure of what I call the \u0026ldquo;Donation Funnel.\u0026rdquo;\nNow, let\u0026rsquo;s dive into the specifics of each candidate\u0026rsquo;s Display advertising campaign.\nHillary Clinton Hillary has, by far, the most robust display strategy at the moment. She spends hundreds of thousands on multiple ad networks, including direct buys. At the time of this post, she\u0026rsquo;s significantly outspending all other competitors.\nAd Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Hillary has spent an estimated $1,170,176 over the past year.\nShe was pretty quiet for most of 2015, but came out of the gate hard at the beginning of 2016, just in time for the primaries. Her choice of networks is interesting. She spends, by far, the most with Advertising.com. Yet, she\u0026rsquo;s also spending quite a bit with two of the biggest Native networks, Outbrain, and Taboola.\nPublishers Hillary chooses mainly publishers like the Huffington Post (where she accesses the inventory through both Advertising.com and with a Direct Buy), plus other large news and business sites like AOL.com and Business Insider.\nAd Creatives Hillary Clinton is like the Wal-Mart, McDonalds or Ford of politicians. She\u0026rsquo;s been in the public spotlight for almost 30 years. People know who she is and where she stands on various issues.\nYou can think of Hillary as a \u0026ldquo;Big Brand\u0026rdquo;.\nTherefore, her ads focus less on her political views and more on how you need to \u0026ldquo;join\u0026rdquo; her. She also throws in a few anti-Trump ads for good measure.\nLanding Pages Hillary uses the same template and concept on all landing pages:\nDonation Page Hillary also sends you to a donation page when you opt-in to her list.\nBernie Sanders Ad Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Bernie had a big push near the end of December.\nI\u0026rsquo;m assuming this was to boost his presence right before the primaries.\nInterestingly enough, he backed down for most of January.\nEven though he and Hillary are neck-and-neck in the race, Bernie spends far less than Hillary. He also relies on Direct Buys and Google as his primary traffic sources.\nPublishers Bernie chooses mainly Democrat-friendly news sites or online magazines:\nAd Creatives Sanders\u0026rsquo; ad copy is quite different than Hillary\u0026rsquo;s ad copy.\nBernie is primarily known for his ideas on social change and reform. He refers to his campaign as a \u0026ldquo;political revolution\u0026rdquo; in his Display ads.\nAlso, notice that there is an ad where he\u0026rsquo;s wearing a baseball cap and has his sleeves rolled up. This gives off the appearance of him just being your \u0026ldquo;average Joe\u0026rdquo; and not a Wall Street fat cat, which he frequently speaks out against.\nHis ads also include a tiny little piece of text at the bottom that says \u0026ldquo;Paid for by Bernie 2016 (not the billionaires)\u0026rdquo; which continues the theme of being a President for the people, and not for the big corporations.\nLanding Pages Sanders\u0026rsquo; first landing page is a simple \u0026ldquo;Support Bernie\u0026rdquo; page that\u0026rsquo;s similar to what the other candidates use:\nThe second landing page that Bernie is testing is a petition page to support women\u0026rsquo;s rights. Donation Page Of course, Bernie has his own donation page. The only difference is that Bernie offers the option for supporters to make an automatic monthly donation. This is similar to a recurring subscription for a consumer product or service.\nBen Carson Ad Spend \u0026amp; Networks Ben Carson is not a favorite to win the Republican nomination. However, he is the highest spending Presidential candidate by far.\nCarson has spent an estimated $6,444,032 on Display over the past year. 95% of that spend has gone towards the Google Display Network.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll notice that, as of February, he has turned off all Display campaigns.\nPublishers Ben chose right-wing news and online magazines as publishers.\nAd Creatives Carson used a combination of ads that offered a free bumper sticker (his \u0026ldquo;ethical bribe\u0026rdquo;), and ads that promoted his stance on abortion.\nIt appears he was the only candidate who offered an ethical bribe in exchange for signing up for his newsletter.\nLanding Pages Carson used two differently landing pages.\nThe first landing page was an opt-in page tied to the free bumper sticker:\nThe second is was a landing page that asked for an immediate donation without having to opt-in.\nTed Cruz Ad Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Despite being a front-runner to win the Republican nomination, Ted Cruz\u0026rsquo;s Display campaign is nearly non-existant.\nPublishers Ted doesn\u0026rsquo;t lean towards any specific theme or publisher category. Most are either conservative news sites or general interest sites.\nAd Creatives Ted Cruz\u0026rsquo;s creatives focus on the issues he supports; the right to bear arms, pro-life and border security. This is a common theme among candidates who aren\u0026rsquo;t as well-known. Hillary can use branding ads because she\u0026rsquo;s been in the spotlight for decades. Compared to Hillary, Ted Cruz is relatively unknown.\nLanding Pages Cruz uses a variety of landing pages that focus on signing petitions for specific causes he supports.\nOne interesting thing to note is the imagery he uses on his pages.\nFor example, take a look at the gun control page.\nHe uses feelings of nostalgia to move his supporters. The landing page shows an image of children hunting, and has the phrase, \u0026ldquo;fight for that memory.\u0026rdquo;\nThe idea is to make supporters remember their first experience with hunting and guns, which tends to be hunting with someone in their family.\nDonation Page And of course, Cruz also has a donation page:\nBut What About Donald Trump, Martin O\u0026rsquo;Malley, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, etc? Despite how close this year\u0026rsquo;s race is, most candidates still choose not to go with Display advertising as one of their main advertising channels.\nWill this change once the nominees have been chosen?\nMost likely.\nOnly time will tell.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/2016-presidential-candidate-display-advertising-strategy-revealed/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;re just a few months away from what might be the most controversial presidential election in US history.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMany candidates are using Display advertising as a way of raising awareness, collecting money and even bashing their opponent:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"hillaryclinton.com-ce3a360c39511bcd577c9ea37f92c1f5 (2)\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/hillaryclinton.com-ce3a360c39511bcd577c9ea37f92c1f5-2.jpg\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNote: Hillary only ran this ad for a brief period of time. Too controversial to be shown on a mass scale? Didn\u0026rsquo;t work? Who knows. But you can\u0026rsquo;t hide from Adbeat :)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2016 Presidential Candidate Display Advertising Strategies Revealed"},{"content":"For the past year or so we\u0026rsquo;ve been on our own little personal mission to become the top blog out there for information on Display advertising and paid traffic.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve published close to one post every week.\nSome were loved:\nThe content that @adbeat_com is putting up it\u0026rsquo;s amazing \u0026ndash; The 7 landing pages that ACTUALLY work in 2015 http://t.co/OOWmFKYYXr\n— Juan Martitegui (@juanmartitegui) February 7, 2015\nAnd some people still think we\u0026rsquo;re a Filipino beat boxer named \u0026ldquo;Ad B eat\u0026rdquo;:\nNevertheless, we\u0026rsquo;ve done our best to provide people with the most in-depth information on Display Advertising out there.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a list of our Greatest Hits:\n1. 7 Landing Page Styles That Work With Paid Advertising A lot of people still focus on VSL and opt-in pages for paid traffic. These pages still work (and you\u0026rsquo;ll see a few great examples in this post), but we wanted to show you some alternatives that also do well on Display, and are often easier to get up and running.\n2. The #1 Traffic Source You\u0026rsquo;re NOT Using: Content Discovery Networks Content Discovery Networks (or \u0026ldquo;Native Ad Networks\u0026rdquo;) have grown in popularity over the past year or so. Everyone from viral sites to nutraceutical marketers to Big Brands are using networks like Taboola, Outbrain, rev:content and more to see amazing results. This is a must-read if you still haven\u0026rsquo;t branched out your campaigns to these amazing networks.\n3. The 6 Elements of Landing Page Persuasion Have you read Robert Cialdini\u0026rsquo;s Influence? It\u0026rsquo;s one of the top recommended marketing books out there. In his books he lists 6 key ways that persuasion works. This post takes his insights and applies them to your landing pages.\n4. The Key To Paid Traffic? Knowing Your Customer\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Awareness Level\u0026rdquo; The style and tone of how you write in your ads and landing pages can determine the success of your entire marketing campaign. Your results will be sub-par if you write to the wrong \u0026ldquo;awareness level\u0026rdquo; your results will be sub-par. This post should be read by anyone who is not familiar with awareness levels.\n5. Write Higher Converting Display Ads With These 8 Formulas Writing a new ad creative from scratch can be difficult. I prefer to use templates and formulas as inspiration. This post gives you a list of 8 formulas and concepts that work well with Display ads. You can use this blog post as a cheat sheet when you need to come up with new ad creatives.\n6. 76 Traffic Sources That Aren\u0026rsquo;t Google Adwords The Big G reigns supreme when it comes to sheer volume and quality of traffic. But what if you want to expand beyond Google AdWords (or they don\u0026rsquo;t allow your offer)? This post contains a list of 76 alternative traffic sources you can test out.\n7. [VIDEO] Quiz Landing Pages: Best For Cold Traffic? The quiz landing page has been somewhat of a fad recently. However, it\u0026rsquo;s a fad that really works. This video blog posts shows you three different types of quiz pages from three different advertisers. If you\u0026rsquo;re on the fence about whether or not it\u0026rsquo;s worth the time to put together a \u0026ldquo;quiz funnel,\u0026rdquo; you definitely need to check out this video blog post.\n8. How 7 Pro Advertisers Split Test Ad Creatives One of the pillars of paid traffic success is split testing. We harp over and over again that cold traffic can be finicky and you never know what people will respond to. The only way to figure this out is to constantly split test your landing pages and ad creatives. This post shows you the split tests of 7 different advertisers who spend significant cash on Display. This is a great post for anyone looking for inspiration for ad creative split tests.\n9. [VIDEO] Sales Funnel Breakdown: LifeLock LifeLock is a B2C SaaS company that provides identity protection tools. LifeLock is HUGE and has a large ad budget for Display. Their ads and landing pages are dialed in. Not to mention they are masters at split testing different angles. This video blog post reveals their strategy and Display sales funnel.\n10. The Business of Display Part 2: Viral Quiz Sites and Click Arbitrage You\u0026rsquo;ve seen them. Those personality and celebrity quizzes that people constantly share. But do these sites actually make money? And if they do, how is it done? This post breaks down a few of the most popular quiz sites and shows you how they work.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/adbeat-popular-blog-posts/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor the past year or so we\u0026rsquo;ve been on our own little personal mission to become the top blog out there for information on Display advertising and paid traffic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve published close to one post every week.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome were loved:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"comments\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/comments.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe content that \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/adbeat_com\"\u003e@adbeat_com\u003c/a\u003e is putting up it\u0026rsquo;s amazing \u0026ndash; The 7 landing pages that ACTUALLY work in 2015 \u003ca href=\"http://t.co/OOWmFKYYXr\"\u003ehttp://t.co/OOWmFKYYXr\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e— Juan Martitegui (@juanmartitegui) \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/juanmartitegui/status/564069593246105600\"\u003eFebruary 7, 2015\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd some people still think we\u0026rsquo;re a Filipino beat boxer named \u0026ldquo;Ad \u003cstrong\u003eB\u003c/strong\u003e eat\u0026rdquo;:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Adbeat's Greatest Hits: Our Top 10 Most Popular Blog Posts Of All Time"},{"content":"What\u0026rsquo;s an even better source of leads than paid traffic, social media, SEO or anything else online?\nTalking to people in person (*gasp*) at marketing conferences.\nBut I’m not just talking about buying a day pass, schmoozing and collecting swag bags.\nI’m talking about exhibiting. Making the investment to rent a space, set up a booth and show off your wares.\nNow, most companies shy away from exhibiting. They claim it’s too expensive and not worth. While it can be expensive (sometimes $5000+ for a tiny space), it’s definitely worth it.\nWhy?\nConference attendees tend to be pre-qualified as customers. Example: Your company sells SaaS software that helps advertisers improve their ad campaigns. Someone who attends an online advertising conference is in your target market. Attendees have money to spend. Most conference passes cost $1000+. Someone who has that kind of money to pay for a conference ticket can probably afford your product. Your leads are already warm. There’s no better way to heat up a lead up than by shaking their hand and meeting them in the flesh. People are more likely to answer emails from people they met in person. Higher life-time value. In our experience, theLTV of people we meet at a conferences tends to be higher than customers found through other channels. People who we met at conferences years ago are still customers to this day. Quite simply: they\u0026rsquo;re fun. A lot of us spend way too much time behind a glowing screen (guilty as charged). Conferences are the perfect reason to venture out into the real world and meet other folks who have that same passion for business. There’s not a shadow of a doubt that exhibiting at conferences is a great way to increase revenue.\nHowever, there is good news and bad news about exhibiting at conferences.\nThe bad news: A lot of businesses exhibit in a way that\u0026rsquo;s NOT conducive to making sales. They end up wasting all that money to exhibit and proclaim that \u0026ldquo;conferences suck and are a waste of money.\u0026rdquo;\n(Or worse, they continue to pay for conferences and continue to see poor results.)\nThe good news:\nMost of these errors are easy to fix.\nThis blog post will show you 5 key things all exhibitors must do in order to see success on the showroom floor.\nSome of these might sound a bit simple (because they are).\nBut you’d be surprised just how many exhibitors get it wrong.\nTip #1: Have a Compelling \u0026ldquo;Headline\u0026rdquo; on Your Booth. There are sometimes hundreds of booths depending on the conference.\nAttendees are rushed.\nBetween key note speeches, sessions and schmoozing, they can\u0026rsquo;t stop by every single booth.\nTherefore, they choose the ones that appear to be the most interesting. This means you need to make your booth stand out and attract attention.\nNow, I\u0026rsquo;m not saying you should construct some flashy booth with plasma screens, \u0026ldquo;booth babes\u0026rdquo; and blinking lights. You don\u0026rsquo;t want your booth to look like a miniature version of the set of The Price is Right.\nIn fact, simpler is often better. Our booth tends to be quite minimal, yet we get a lot of people that come out to our booth.\nWhy?\nBecause we took the time to think about the text that goes on our booth.\nMost exhibitors have their logo with some sort of buzzwordy tagline below it.\nSomething like, \u0026ldquo;Acme Corp: The Innovative, Turn-Key Solution That Fits Your Business\u0026rsquo; Needs.\u0026rdquo;\nTaglines like these mean absolutely nothing. No one will understand what your business does because it\u0026rsquo;s just a mashup of marketing lingo.\nWhat should you do instead?\nThink of the text on your booth like the headline of your landing page.\nWhat happens to visitors when your headline is boring, confusing or unclear? They leave. The same goes for your booth.\nGet attendees\u0026rsquo; attention by telling them in one succinct phrase what your business does and how it can help them. It should attract attention and get your prospect emotionally excited to hear more about your product, just like the headline on your landing page.\nHeck, you can even use the same headline from your landing page and use it on your booth. We use \u0026ldquo;Instantly Uncover Any Advertiser\u0026rsquo;s Online Strategy\u0026rdquo; and it works really well. We get a lot of people coming up to the booth just from that line alone.\nIf your headline on your landing page gets people excited to learn more about your product, then it’s quite likely the same headline on your conference booth will evoke the same reaction.\nTip #2: Stand Up and Give a Crap That\u0026rsquo;s right. Stand up.\nInnovative suggestion, right?\nWell, you\u0026rsquo;d be amazed at the number of people who just sit at their booth, lean back in a director\u0026rsquo;s chair and kick their feet up on the table.\nPeople will assume you\u0026rsquo;ve got nothing interesting to show them if you don\u0026rsquo;t look interested yourself.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll often pay $5,000\u0026hellip; $10,000\u0026hellip; or even $15,000+ to exhibit at a conference.\nThe very LEAST you can do is stand up and look like you want to talk to people.\nTip #3: Engage People Who Stop and Stare\nPeople should show interest in your booth if you follow tip #1 (“have a compelling headline”).\nHowever, not everyone will take the initiative to walk up and ask about your product.\nHere’s what usually happens:\nPeople walk by and are intrigued by your headline. They stand 10 feet away from your booth and stare at you. 10 seconds later they walk away\u0026hellip; IF you don’t engage them. So what do you do?\nGet out from behind your booth and go talk to them.\nYou don\u0026rsquo;t need to schmooze them like some manic used car salesman.\nI recommend a more simple approach: say hello and ask them about their business.\nYou can even steal our script:\n\u0026ldquo;Hey, how\u0026rsquo;s it going? Do you do anything [related to your product]?\u0026rdquo;\nGet them talking about their problems. Figure out how your product can help their business.\nSimple but effective.\nYet, do you know what\u0026rsquo;s even better than telling people about your product/service?\nShowing them.\nTip #4: Have a Few Big Screens People don’t want to read a flyer or hear you gab about your product.\nThere are two key things people respond to MUCH better:\nSeeing your product in action. Interacting with your product.\nYou can satisfy these two desires with one simple item: a computer screen.\nWe notice a difference in engagement between booths that have computer screens and those that don\u0026rsquo;t.\nNow, some of the bigger booths with have these 100 inch plasma screens set-up in the background.\nThis can work, but people seem to really prefer to interact with your product.\nYou’re showing off your product, but they’re unable to interact with it.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s what I’d recommend instead:\nSet up 1 or 2 computer monitors on a table in front of your booth. (We use 27” iMacs, but you can use whatever you have. Many conferences even rent out monitors.)\nHave a keyboard and mouse set up so your customers can come up and try out your product.\nLet them click around your software, browse your product catalog, or just play around with with your product.\nNow, maybe your product isn\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;sexy\u0026rdquo;. Maybe you sell payment processing software or a physical product.\nYou should still have a monitor or two set-up.\nYou can show off the backend, show any extra features your software has that your competitors don\u0026rsquo;t, show how you can export data, let them browse a catalog of all your physical items, etc.\nThe point is to get your prospects involved.\nScreens tend to be the best at getting the job done.\nTip #5: Forget About Swag Bags and Stress Balls I\u0026rsquo;m a bit hesitant to give this tip out.\nWhy?\nBecause I LOVE to walk around and collect the useless junk people give out.\nHowever, I\u0026rsquo;m not the target customer for 99% of these businesses. The same goes for just about everyone else who grabs a swag bag.\nEvery time I take another stress ball or swag bag, another dollar of theirs goes down the toilet. They know this. I know this. Yet, people continue to give out swag bags.\nThe bottom line is this junk attracts the wrong people. Most people just like taking free stuff.\nNow, perhaps your business is flush with cash and giving out this junk isn\u0026rsquo;t a big deal.\n\u0026ldquo;Eh\u0026hellip; what can it hurt? Stress balls for everyone!\u0026rdquo;\nHowever, what\u0026rsquo;s even worse than wasting your money?\nWasting your time.\nBecause here\u0026rsquo;s what happens:\nMary Marketing comes up to your booth.\nMary says \u0026lsquo;hi\u0026rsquo; and takes one of your stress balls. Mary says ‘thanks’ and goes on her merry way. No harm no foul.\nHowever, Sammy Software is more polite.\nSammy takes a stress ball and starts asking you questions about your product even though he could care less.\n\u0026ldquo;Uhh\u0026hellip; so what do you guys do?!\u0026rdquo;\nSammy feels obligated to listen to your spiel because he took one of your stress balls.\nYou start telling Sammy how wonderful your product is and how it can help him.\nYet, in about 10 seconds, you notice Sammy’s eyes start to glaze over.\nSammy doesn’t want to listen to you. Sammy doesn’t want your product. He just doesn’t want to seem like a rude freeloader.\nMoral of the story?\nYou don\u0026rsquo;t want to waste time talking to people who have zero interest in your business.\nThis tends to be a lot of people who walk around grabbing swag bags.\nMy advice?\nSpend more time \u0026amp; money outfitting your booth and less on swag bags.\nConclusion There’s no better place than a conference to meet and chat up current and potential customers. Follow the tips above and make your exhibiting worth your time and money. Most of all \u0026ndash; have fun! That’s what conferences are all about.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-to-get-6-figure-leads-by-exhibiting-at-marketing-conferences/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat\u0026rsquo;s an even better source of leads than paid traffic, social media, SEO or anything else online?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTalking to people in person (*gasp*) at marketing conferences.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut I’m not just talking about buying a day pass, schmoozing and collecting swag bags.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI’m talking about exhibiting. Making the investment to rent a space, set up a booth and show off your wares.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, most companies shy away from exhibiting. They claim it’s too expensive and not worth. While it can be expensive (sometimes $5000+ for a tiny space), it’s definitely worth it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How To Get 6-Figure Leads By Exhibiting At Marketing Conferences"},{"content":"Coverage for two more Native networks has been added to Adbeat!\nAdbeat Advanced or Enterprise customers will now see Sharethrough and NTENT data throughout the platform and under our list of networks.\nThis brings our total coverage of Native to 13 different networks(with more on the way very soon) \u0026ndash; Adblade, Outbrain, Taboola, Yahoo Gemini Native, nRelate, rev:content, ContentAd, Nativo, Disqus, mgid, Gravity, Sharethrough and NTENT.\nWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Advanced or Enterprise Subscriber? Current Adbeat customers can upgrade by clicking this link to login and upgrade their account.\nYou can switch immediately to the Adbeat Advanced plan on that screen, or you can shoot Jared an email at jared@adbeat.com to schedule a demo for an Adbeat Enterprise plan.\nWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Customer? If you\u0026rsquo;re not an Adbeat customer, but want to see competitive data for 13 Native Ad networks (and over 80+ other networks), click below to see what our Adbeat Advanced and Adbeat Enterprise plans have to offer.\nMore new features and networks are on the way, so stay tuned!\n- Team Adbeat PS- Questions or comments? Please comment below!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/new-native-networks-sharethrough-and-ntent/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCoverage for two more Native networks has been added to Adbeat!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"sharethrough-ntent\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/sharethrough-ntent.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdbeat Advanced or Enterprise customers will now see Sharethrough and NTENT data throughout the platform and under our list of networks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis brings our total coverage of Native to \u003cstrong\u003e13 different networks\u003c/strong\u003e(with more on the way very soon) \u0026ndash; Adblade, Outbrain, Taboola, Yahoo Gemini Native, nRelate, rev:content, ContentAd, Nativo, Disqus, mgid, Gravity, Sharethrough and NTENT.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"want-native-ad-data-but-not-an-adbeat-advanced-or-enterprise-subscriber\"\u003eWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Advanced or Enterprise Subscriber?\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCurrent Adbeat customers can upgrade by clicking \u003ca href=\"https://www.adbeat.com/user-profile/upgrade\"\u003ethis link to login and upgrade their account\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NEW Native Networks: Sharethrough and NTENT"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s our report for the biggest Display advertisers in Q4 2015. You\u0026rsquo;ll notice there are more viral sites in this list than in previous reports.\n#1: Weebly Background: Weebly.com is a web-hosting service that offers a drag-and-drop website builder.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $15.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: littlethings.com, practicallyviral.com, buzzlie.com Top Ad: #2: Western Union Background: Western Union is a money transfer service.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $29.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: MediaMath, Direct Buy, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: ranker.com, answers.com, americannews.com Top Ad: #3: PayPal Background: PayPal is an online money transfer service.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $18.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Conversant, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: littlethings.com, womanfreebies.com, answers.com Top Ad: #4: Target Background: Target operates online and large retail stores across North America that offer a variety of goods.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $17.7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, MediaMath, Google Top 3 Publishers: babycenter.com, healthline.com, usmagazine.com Top Ad: #5: Pop Hitz Background: Pop Hitz is a viral entertainment site focused on celebrity news and gossip.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $16.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Taboola, rev:content, Adblade Top 3 Publishers: diply.com, anchorfree.com, chacha.com Top Ad: #6: Amazon Background: Amazon is the world\u0026rsquo;s largest online retailer. They sell everything.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $14.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, TheTradeDesk Top 3 Publishers: rawstory.com, goodreads.com, bustle.com Top Ad: #7: Verizon Wireless Background: Verizon Wireless is one of the largest wireless companies in the United States.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $14.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Advertising.com, Direct Buy, Google Top 3 Publishers: msn.com, dallasblack.com, answers.com Top Ad: #8: Your Daily Dish Background: Your Daily Dish is a viral entertainment/news site.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $13.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Taboola, Outbrain, rev:content Top 3 Publishers: diply.com, ijreview.com, littlethings.com Top Ad: #9: Google Background: Does Google need an explanation? Probably not.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $12.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Turn Top 3 Publishers: playbuzz.com, answers.com, littlethings.com Top Ad: #10: Smarter Lifestyles Background: Smarter Lifestyles is an affiliate advertorial \u0026ldquo;portal.\u0026rdquo;\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $10.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Adblade, Criteo Top 3 Publishers: anchorfree.us, bridaltune.com, chacha.com Top Ad: #11: Little Budha Background: Little Budha is a viral entertainment/news site.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $10.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Taboola, rev:content, ContentAd Top 3 Publishers: liftbump.com, dose.com, omgfacts.com Top Ad: #12: Dollar Shave Club Background: Dollar Shave Club is a razor/razor blade subscription service.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $9.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Taboola, Outbrain, Google Top 3 Publishers: ijview.com, theblaze.com, thepoliticalinsider.com Top Ad: #13: Answers.com Background: Answers.com is a crowdsourced Q\u0026amp;A platform.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $8.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Taboola, Outbrain, rev:content Top 3 Publishers: diply.com, playbuzz.com, lifebuzz.com Top Ad: #14: American Express Background: American Express sells financial services (mainly credit cards and debit cards).\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $8.7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: ebay.com, weather.com, answers.com Top Ad: #15: Squarespace Background: Squarespace is an web app that makes it easy to build a website.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $8.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: littlethings.com, playbuzz.com, buzzlie.com Top Ad: #16: zulily Background: zulily is a daily deals clothing site targeted mainly at women\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $7.7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: aol.com, pch.com, theblaze.com Top Ad: #17: DirecTV Background: DirecTV is an satellite service provider and broadcaster.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $7.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Yahoo Gemini Top 3 Publishers: littlethings.com, conservativetribune.com, uproxx.com Top Ad: #18: LowerMyBills Background: LowerMyBills is a lead generation advertiser focused on mortgage refinance, auto insurance and life insurance.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $7.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, Taboola Top 3 Publishers: americannews.com, urbandictionary.com, allenbwest.com Top Ad: #19: Full Sail University Background: Full Sail University is a for-profit university in Winter Park, Florida.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $7.2M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Adblade, rev:content Top 3 Publishers: goodreads.com, ultimate-guitar.com, nofilmschool.com Top Ad: #20: HealthCentral Background: HealthCentral is a large online publisher with information similar to that of WebMD.\nEstimated Q4 Ad Spend: $6.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Taboola, Outbrain, Google Top 3 Publishers: ijreview.com, qpolitical.com, mensfitness.com Top Ad: ","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-top-20-advertisers-of-q4-2015/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s our report for the biggest Display advertisers in Q4 2015. You\u0026rsquo;ll notice there are more viral sites in this list than in previous reports.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"1-weebly\"\u003e#1: Weebly\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBackground\u003c/strong\u003e: Weebly.com is a web-hosting service that offers a drag-and-drop website builder.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimated Q4 Ad Spend\u003c/strong\u003e: $15.8M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Traffic Sources\u003c/strong\u003e: Google, Direct Buy, TribalFusion\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Publishers\u003c/strong\u003e: littlethings.com, practicallyviral.com, buzzlie.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"topad\"\u003eTop Ad:\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"weebly.com-640c2cb7f2653d4cd212943424b367e6\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/weebly.com-640c2cb7f2653d4cd212943424b367e6.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"2-western-union\"\u003e#2: Western Union\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBackground\u003c/strong\u003e: Western Union is a money transfer service.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Top 20 Biggest Display Advertisers of Q4 2015"},{"content":"Uber and Lyft are two of the fastest growing businesses in the world.\nBut what do their Display strategies look like?\nCombined, Uber and Lyft have spent an estimated $2M+ on Display advertising in the past 6 months. This is a drop in the bucket compared to what both companies are valued at ($41B and $4B respectively), but both companies appear to be making a big push at the end of the year/beginning of 2016 to use Display to recruit more drivers.\nInterested in seeing how two of the world\u0026rsquo;s most talked about companies run their paid traffic campaigns?\nLet\u0026rsquo;s take a look.\nUber Uber needs no introduction, as I would wager that most people reading this post have either taken an Uber before or have at least heard of them. It would be strange if you haven\u0026rsquo;t, because Uber is considered one of the fastest growing companies in the world. Uber has raised ~$8.21B in venture capital and is currently valued at over $41B.\nThey currently spend millions a year on display advertising, doing lead generation to get more drivers for their service.\nUber\u0026rsquo;s Ad Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Uber has spent an estimated $1,371,392 in the past 180 days. Most of their ad spend has been allocated to MediaMath, Google Display and Advertising.com. It looks like they are making a big end-of-the-year push as their spend in December has spiked a few times.\nUber\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Uber chooses mainly large publishers that appeal to a general audience. However, if you drill down to a few of the placements on these sites, you\u0026rsquo;ll notice they show their ads on pages related to jobs and careers. This makes sense, as you\u0026rsquo;ll see that almost all of their ad creatives are focused around hiring more drivers as opposed to getting more passengers to download and use the app.\nUber\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Uber\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives are slick, modern and pleasant to look at. All of their most seen ad creatives cater to potential Uber drivers. They test a few different angles, including the chance to earn more money, lease a car for just $250 and become an \u0026ldquo;Uber Partner.\u0026rdquo; Uber also uses a combination of text ads and banner ads, almost seeming to prefer text ads over banner ads. Uber\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Uber is split testing two similar pages with different headlines, sub-headlines and slight differences in the order of the icons and copy below the lead generation form:\nThe first headline and sub-headline combination focuses on how you get to become an Uber partner, help people, work on your own time and be your own boss:\nThe second headline + sub-headline combination is all about money, money, money:\nThe other page Uber uses is for their Uber Xchange car lease program. One of the keys to Uber\u0026rsquo;s continued growth is in hiring as many drivers as possible.\nBut what happens if you want to drive but don\u0026rsquo;t have or can\u0026rsquo;t afford your own car at the moment?\nUber Xchange program will help you out with the leasing.\nLyft Lyft is currently Uber\u0026rsquo;s biggest competitor. Lyft has raised $1.01B and is currently raising $500M at a $4B valuation. Although they are far behind Uber, $4B is nothing to scoff at.\nThey recently cut a deal with Uber\u0026rsquo;s biggest competitor in China, Didi Kuaidi, that allow the two services to share riders across continents.\nSimilar to Uber, Lyft uses Display advertising to attract more drivers.\nLyft\u0026rsquo;s Ad Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Lyft has spent an estimated $914,816 in the past 6 months. Lyft opts to use Google Display over all other networks. They\u0026rsquo;ve allocated approximately 75% of their ad spend to Google.\nLyft\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Lyft chooses publishers that are primarily large job boards and job sites.\nIt might look strange that Lyft\u0026rsquo;s top spending publisher is About.com. However, About.com has many different channels about different topics.\nIf we dig deeper, we can see that Lyft mainly buys ads on the \u0026ldquo;Careers\u0026rdquo; section of About.com:\nLyft\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Lyft tests a few different parts of their ad creatives. One major difference is that they use specific locations in their ads (\u0026ldquo;Drive Lyft in DC\u0026rdquo;). They also test different amounts of money and time periods to see which works the best ($35/hour vs. $1400/week vs. $1,500/week). Lyft\u0026rsquo;s ads are more cartoonish than Uber\u0026rsquo;s ads, and they only focus on the amount of money a driver can potentially make.\nLyft\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Lyft sends most traffic to their homepage. This might not be the best option since the page is designed for both passengers and drivers, whereas the ads are focused on hiring drivers.\nHowever, Lyft does have a landing page similar to the driver lead generation page Uber uses:\nConclusion Uber is still far ahead of Lyft when it comes to revenue, riders, drivers and number of cities covered. Yet, Lyft is making a big push on Display. Will they catch Uber? Maybe, maybe not. However, their Display strategy looks fairly sound and is something that even Uber could learn from.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/uber-lyft/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUber and Lyft are two of the fastest growing businesses in the world.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut what do their Display strategies look like?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCombined, Uber and Lyft have spent an estimated $2M+ on Display advertising in the past 6 months. This is a drop in the bucket compared to what both companies are valued at ($41B and $4B respectively), but both companies appear to be making a big push at the end of the year/beginning of 2016 to use Display to recruit more drivers.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Uber and Lyft Run Their Paid Traffic Campaigns"},{"content":"The new wave of fashion startups is revolutionizing the entire industry, and investors are taking notice.\nMillions of dollars in venture capital are being funneled into fashion businesses that sell everything from underwear (Mack Weldon), to fully custom suits and shirts (Indochino and Blank Label), and even trendy \u0026ldquo;try-before-you-buy\u0026rdquo; prescription eyeglasses (Warby Parker).\nCB Insights reports that fashion startup brands have gone from $25M in funding in 2010, to $235M in 2015.\nAnd as you might know, where there\u0026rsquo;s an influx of cash, there\u0026rsquo;s Display advertising.\nToday\u0026rsquo;s post breaks down the Display advertising strategies of 11 of the most talked about fashion startups out there.\n1) Frank \u0026amp; Oak Frank \u0026amp; Oak is a menswear brand that was founded in 2012. Their \u0026ldquo;Hunt Club\u0026rdquo; allows customer to choose a box of clothes every month and only keep the ones that they like. Frank \u0026amp; Oak has grown leaps and bounds over the past couple of years and has raised ~$20M in funding as of this post\u0026rsquo;s publication date.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Publishers Frank \u0026amp; Oak\u0026rsquo;s publishers of choice include Dappered.com (a popular men\u0026rsquo;s fashion blog), as well political news sites like Alternet.org, America\u0026rsquo;s Blog, and Freep.com (Detroit News).\nHowever, look closely at the trend lines next to each publisher. Dappered is the only site where\u0026rsquo;s they\u0026rsquo;ve spent consistently.\nDid the news sites not give them the results they were looking for? More than likely.\nAd Creatives Frank \u0026amp; Oak\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives are designed with really nice colors; pleasant greens, baby blues and light grey colors.These ads are great because the colors make them very fun to look at. The ads look clean and friendly, which makes you want to click.\nFrank \u0026amp; Oak\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives feature images of their clothes or a male model wearing them. The ad copy highlights either the affordability of their products (\u0026ldquo;Up to 65% off\u0026rdquo;) or their subscription model (\u0026ldquo;Refreshed Monthly\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;The Hunt Club\u0026rdquo;).\nLanding Pages Like most eCommerce sites, Frank \u0026amp; Oak uses gated landing pages.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s a gated landing page?\nA gated landing page \u0026ldquo;locks down\u0026rdquo; the content until the user signs in with either their Facebook account, Google account, or gives up their email address.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see that the majority of eCommerce retailers opt for this style of landing page. While it\u0026rsquo;s annoying to users, it makes sure that the brand is able to keep in constant communication with the user, increasing the chances of repeated purchases.\nFrank \u0026amp; Oak change their landing pages based on the current season, seasonal trends or any special sale they might be having.\nMost of their landing pages are quite similar, and they often just have a few different pieces of copy above the login buttons and with a different background.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s example #1 for a landing page for their summer sale:\nHere\u0026rsquo;s example #2 for a landing page for their summer sale:\nNotice that the only difference between the two is the background image.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a more general landing page that doesn\u0026rsquo;t advertise any particular collection or sale, but instead gives a brief explanation of their service and the benefits the prospect will get if they sign up:\n2) Mack Weldon Can you raise $5.9M just by selling socks, underwear and undershirts?\nNew York based fashion company Mack Weldon did.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Mack Weldon and most fashion brands allocate the majority of their ad spend to Google. Mack Weldon and many others are dipping their toes in the \u0026ldquo;Native Ad waters\u0026rdquo; by running small campaigns on Outbrain and Taboola, but few have taken the plunge.\nPublishers Mack Weldon\u0026rsquo;s publishers are all over the place. Given that they\u0026rsquo;re selling socks and underwear, their offers likely work on a variety of different sites as long as they have a predominantly male demographic.\nAd Creatives Mack Weldon\u0026rsquo;s most seen creatives include photos of their boxers and boxer-briefs.\nAgain, like Frank \u0026amp; Oak, the colors in the ads (the underwear) are pleasant and nice to look at.\nThe ad copy focuses on the benefit of paying for premium, nice underwear and includes the copy:\n\u0026ldquo;Fabric Matters. You\u0026rsquo;ve never felt anything like this before.\u0026rdquo;\nThe \u0026ldquo;Love it or your first pair is on us\u0026rdquo; is simple guarantee copy that offers a prospect the ability to try it completely risk-free. Landing Pages Mack Weldon\u0026rsquo;s landing pages are simple, long-form pages that contain pictures of the product itself, details about the fabric (how they set themselves apart from competitors), and the company\u0026rsquo;s values. The pages are very clean, and all the photos look extremely professional.\n3) Indochino Indochino creates custom suits, shirts and accessories for men.\nIndochino has raised ~$17.25M in funding.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Indochino is one of the few fashion companies that you\u0026rsquo;ll see that allocates a decent amount of spend to Native Ad networks like Outbrain and Taboola.\nPublishers Indochino\u0026rsquo;s publishers of choice are mainly men\u0026rsquo;s fashion sites like styleforum.net, dappered.com (also a favorite of Frank \u0026amp; Oak) and articlesofstyle.com.\nAd Creatives Indochino\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives focus on the affordability of their suits.\nMost of their ads include price in the copy.\nHowever, you\u0026rsquo;ll also notice that one ad uses the headline, \u0026ldquo;Buys a custom suit. Gets promoted.\u0026rdquo;\nThis angle is a bit different as it doesn\u0026rsquo;t focus on the price, but rather the implied benefit of what could happen if you start wearing a custom suit, which is that you\u0026rsquo;ll be more successful.\nLanding Pages Indochino uses slick, clean long-form landing pages with lots of stylish photos of suits, male models in suits, and information about why their suits are so awesome.\n4) Warby Parker Warby Parker is a trendy brand of prescription eyeglasses and sunglasses. They are currently valued at $1.2B after raising $100M from T. Rowe Price and other investors. Warby Parker is currently moving into brick-and-mortar stores after seeing massive success online.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Warby Parker has begun to ramp up their spend on Display within the past couple of months. This likely has to do with the fact that they just raised another $100M a few months back.\nSo far, they have spent the most with Outbrain, one of the most popular Native Ad networks.\nYou can probably expect to see their ad spend skyrocket in the next couple of months as they put all that VC money to good use.\nPublishers Most of Warby Parker\u0026rsquo;s publishers are fashion (glamour.com) or celebrity gossip (people.com) sites:\nAd Creatives Warby Parker\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives are very cool, clean and modern looking.\nThey don\u0026rsquo;t use many images or bold colors.\nThey let the style of the glasses and the brand speak for themselves.\nLanding Pages Warby Parker uses long-form, clean landing pages (notice any patterns here?) that highlight the style and benefits of their product. Plus, they also let you know that part of your purchase goes to non-profits that help people who can\u0026rsquo;t afford eyeglasses. Pretty cool.\n5) ModCloth ModCloth is an online vintage and indie clothing store. ModCloth has raised ~$78.74M in funding over the past 7 years.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend ModCloth is one of the highest spenders in this list on Display advertising, mainly spending on the Google Display Network. However, this increase in spend is rather new. It looks like they had a huge push in November for their fall collection but have reduced their spend to more even levels.\nPublishers ModCloth uses a different strategy for selecting publishers.\nInstead of going for fashion blogs and large gossip mags like People, they mostly buy ads on viral content and quiz sites like PlayBuzz, Ranker and PressroomVIP.\nAd Creatives ModCloth\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives are bold, bright and pleasant to look at. Like most female clothing brands, they prefer to advertise specific clothing items (fall shoes) or collections (clothes for plus sized women). Shoes seem to\nLanding Pages Unlike many other advertisers, ModCloth does not send traffic to long-form pages with information on the company, product and persuasive copy. Instead, they send traffic to landing pages that focus on specific products (depending on the ad creatives). This is more a traditional eCommerce product page that most people are used to seeing.\n6) Gilt Groupe Gilt Groupe calls themselves \u0026ldquo;an online shopping website that provides instant insider access to top designer labels.\u0026rdquo; They\u0026rsquo;ve raised ~$286M in funding and in 2011 acquired interior design company Decorati.com.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Gilt Groupe is one of the few fashion brands that has diversified their traffic sources. They are spending equally on the Google Display Network and Conversant, spending significantly on Direct Buys, and even testing out other networks like Advertising.com and TribalFusion.\nPublishers Gilt Groupe\u0026rsquo;s publishers are all over the place. Considering the top publishers they spent on but that they\u0026rsquo;re no longer spending with, it\u0026rsquo;s likely these were not very good choices. It also looks like their Direct Buy with People.com did not work very well.\nAd Creatives All of Gilt Groupe\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives contain a specific amount that they are discounting their clothing. They also like to use the angle \u0026ldquo;Investment-worthy designer brands,\u0026rdquo; which is an interesting way to frame the fact that they are selling higher priced clothing\nLanding Pages Gilt also uses the traditional gated landing page for both their men\u0026rsquo;s and women\u0026rsquo;s collections.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the gate landing page for women\u0026rsquo;s clothing:\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the landing page for men\u0026rsquo;s clothing:\n7) Just Fab Just Fab is a California based fashion retailer that gives customers personalized recommendations based on their style and fashion preferences $254M in funding. They also acquired ShoeDazzle, The Fab Shoes and Fabkids.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Just Fab spends a lot on Google. One interesting thing to note is that Just Fab also spends a fair amount on Adblade. We haven’t seen many eCommerce companies make use of Adblade yet.\nPublishers Just Fab focuses on larger publishers like MSN.com, Go.com (Disney), and sites targeted at women like World Lifestyle (celebrity gossip/viral content) and Woman Freebies (coupons).\nAd Creatives Although Just Fab sells all sorts of women\u0026rsquo;s clothing, their ad creatives mostly contain boots and shoes. Their ad creatives also contain lots of bright colors, similar to the other female fashion retailers, as well as highlighting the deals and money people can save if they shop with Just Fab.\nLanding Pages Just Fab primarily uses two different styles of landing pages.\nTheir more general ads send traffic straight to their homepage, which is just a long page that explains how they work, shows a few product images and ultimately tries to get the visitor to click and start seeing more products.\nJust Fab uses entire landing pages for seasonal sales.\nFor example, the page on the left below is for their Black Friday sale. The page on the right is for Just Fab\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Bootsgiving\u0026rdquo; Thanksgiving sale.\n8) Jack Erwin Jack Erwin is a New York based shoe company. They describe themselves as retailers of \u0026ldquo;well-crafted, honestly priced men\u0026rsquo;s dress shoes.\u0026rdquo; Since 2013, Jack Erwin has raised $11.75M in funding.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Jack Erwin buys most of their ads on Outbrain and Taboola, two of the largest Native networks.\nPublishers Most of Jack Erwin\u0026rsquo;s publishers are news sites, as those tend to be the publishers who monetize with Native Ad networks.\nAd Creatives Jack Erwin uses the same copy with different images for their ads on Native networks. You can see that they use the \u0026ldquo;secret\u0026rdquo; angle commonly used by direct response marketers in markets like weight loss, finance and dating.\nLanding Pages Jack Erwin\u0026rsquo;s landing pages focus on the quality and crafting of their shoes. They set themselves apart from their competitors by trying to reiterate that although the shoes are affordable, they go through a very delicate process of being handcrafted.\n9) zulily zulily was launched in 2010 by Darrell Cavens and Mark Vadon. They sell clothes, home decor, gifts and toys. In 2015, they were acquired by Liberty Interactive Corporation (QVC shopping network) by $2.4B in cash and stock. Much of their massive growth was propelled by Display advertising.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Zulily is BY FAR the biggest Display advertiser in the fashion and home decor space. Adbeat estimates that they\u0026rsquo;ve spent $25,815,040 over the past 6 months. Most of their ad spend has been allocated to Google, but they\u0026rsquo;ve tested pretty much every network under the sun.\nPublishers zulily buys lots of traffic on very general sites catering to broad demographics. Examples include Weather.com, AOL.com and a Direct Buy on pch.com (Publishers Clearing House).\nAd Creatives Zulily\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives tend to focus solely on one single product: dresses/tops.\nThey\u0026rsquo;re testing out a variety different dresses, color schemes and copy, albeit the common theme seems to be the \u0026ldquo;70% off\u0026rdquo; that is mentioned in each ad creative.\nLanding Pages zulily also uses gated landing pages similar to what you\u0026rsquo;ve already seen from the previous companies:\n10) Nasty Gal Nasty Gal is an online fashion retailer that specializes in vintage clothing, shoes and accessories. Nasty Gal is considered to be one of the fastest-growing online retailers in the USA. Since 2012, Nasty Gal has raised $65M in funding.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Despite their massive growth and influx of venture capital, Nasty Gal has not used Display as one of their main channels for customer acquisition. It appears they had a short period of high spending around August, but have not spent much since.\nPublishers Nasty Gal\u0026rsquo;s publisher selection tends to be focused around viral content/entertainment sites (justjared.com and cracked.com) and beauty/fashion sites (totalbeauty.com and fashionstyle.com).\nAd Creatives Landing Pages Nasty Gal is similar to other eCommerce fashion companies in that they tend to use three different landing pages.\nLanding page #1 is their landing page for a promotion Nasty Gal did with For Love \u0026amp; Lemons.\nLanding page #2 is tied to the product shown in the ad creative. In this case, an ad creative that advertises their dresses sends traffic to a landing page with all their dresses.\nLanding page #3 is their \u0026ldquo;what\u0026rsquo;s new\u0026rdquo; page. This landing page highlights all of their new products.\n11) Chloe and Isabel Chloe and Isabel is a bit different from the other advertisers in this round up, as they are not a pure online fashion retailer. Instead, they call themselves “a social commerce jewelry brand with a proprietary technology platform that powers sellers’ personal e-commerce experience.” However, they have raised $32.45M in funding since 2011.\nAd Networks \u0026amp; Ad Spend Google, Google, Google.\n(And a tiny bit of Bing)\nPublishers Some interesting publisher choices. It looks like they had a brief period \u0026ndash; one day to be exact \u0026ndash; where they spent a non-trivial amount on nydailynews.com but quickly cut it off.\nAd Creatives Chloe and Isabel’s ad creatives vacillate between the money making aspect of the service and the originality of their jewelry. Instead of opting for showing the pieces by themselves, they only show pictures of attractive models wearing their jewelry.\nLanding Pages Landing page #1 is simply Chloe and Isabel\u0026rsquo;s homepage:\nLanding page #2 is a page that gives more detailed information on how customers can become a part of Chloe and Isabel and start selling their jewelry:\nOther Brands To Watch Out For The companies featured in this blog post aren\u0026rsquo;t the only ones that have received a nice injection of VC money. Here are seven more companies that are making waves online but haven\u0026rsquo;t tested (or scaled) their Display advertising…yet.\nBuck Mason Trunk Club Bonobos Poshmark Cuyana Stance Ministry of Supply ","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/ecommerce-fashion/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe new wave of fashion startups is revolutionizing the entire industry, and investors are taking notice.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMillions of dollars in venture capital are being funneled into fashion businesses that sell everything from underwear (Mack Weldon), to fully custom suits and shirts (Indochino and Blank Label), and even trendy \u0026ldquo;try-before-you-buy\u0026rdquo; prescription eyeglasses (Warby Parker).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCB Insights reports that fashion startup brands have gone from $25M in funding in 2010, to $235M in 2015.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Revealed: Display Advertising Strategies of 11 Fashion Startups"},{"content":"What if you could see, in one view, all competitors in your market\u0026hellip; or in ANY other market\u0026hellip; or find new niches to enter?\nWith the all-new Adbeat Categories update, you can.\nAdbeat Categories allow you to filter the top Display advertisers by their specific category and/or sub-category.\nThis will allow you to:\nSee all advertisers in your market in one place\u0026hellip; Uncover new markets and niches\u0026hellip; And a whole lot more! Check out the video below to learn more:\nWho has access to Categories? Categories will only be available to Adbeat Enterprise subscribers.\nWant access to Categories but not an Enterprise subscriber?\nFill out this form to schedule a demo or contact our sales team at sales@adbeat.com.\nIn addition to Categories, you\u0026rsquo;ll also get other great features like Ad Spend data, the Advertiser Vertical Report Tool, and you\u0026rsquo;ll also have first dibs on all new features released to Adbeat in the upcoming months.\nInterested in becoming an Adbeat subscriber? If you\u0026rsquo;re not an Adbeat customer but want access to amazing tools like Categories, the Advertiser Vertical Report tool, and competitive data for 10 Native Ad networks and over 80+ Display networks, click the button below to see what Adbeat has to offer:\nMore new features, tools and networks are on the way\u0026hellip; so stay tuned!\n- Team Adbeat PS- Questions or comments? Please comment below!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/adbeat-categories/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhat if you could see, in one view, all competitors in your market\u0026hellip; or in ANY other market\u0026hellip; or find new niches to enter?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the all-new Adbeat Categories update, you can.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdbeat Categories allow you to filter the top Display advertisers by their specific category and/or sub-category.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis will allow you to:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSee all advertisers in your market in one place\u0026hellip;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUncover new markets and niches\u0026hellip;\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAnd a whole lot more!\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCheck out the video below to learn more:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"NEW FEATURE: Find New Competitors \u0026 Prospects With Adbeat Categories"},{"content":"Will you be in New York on November 4th and 5th for ad:tech?\nMark, Jared and Brad from Team Adbeat will be exhibiting at ad:tech New York at booth #727.\nWe\u0026rsquo;d love to show you how you can use Adbeat to improve your Display campaigns, as well as new features like the Advertiser Vertical Report tool.\nPlease take time out of your busy pen, stress ball and swag bag collecting schedule to stop by booth #727 and demo Adbeat (and maybe get a hug from Jared).\nIf you want to schedule a more formal demo, just send an email to jared at adbeat.com and he\u0026rsquo;ll set you up.\nSee you there!\nBrad\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/adbeat-adtech-new-york/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWill you be in New York on November 4th and 5th for ad:tech?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMark, Jared and Brad from Team Adbeat will be exhibiting at ad:tech New York \u003cstrong\u003eat booth #727.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;d love to show you how you can use Adbeat to improve your Display campaigns, as well as new features like the \u003ca href=\"/advertiser-vertical-report-tool/\"\u003eAdvertiser Vertical Report tool\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePlease take time out of your busy pen, stress ball and swag bag collecting schedule to stop by \u003cstrong\u003ebooth #727\u003c/strong\u003e and demo Adbeat (and maybe get a hug from Jared).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Meet Adbeat @ ad:tech New York!"},{"content":"As Aristotle said, \u0026ldquo;We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.\u0026rdquo;\nOne of the keys to success with Display advertising is not what you do once or twice, but rather what you do on a regular basis—specifically, constantly creating, testing and optimizing ad creatives.\nHowever, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to get lazy. It can be hard to come up with ideas for ad creatives on a regular basis. Or you might become content with decent performance instead of going for that slight boost in CTR or conversion rate.\nYet, there’s a simple way to conquer this laziness.\nHow? By standardizing the process and having a workflow you can use every week to create new ads that are more likely to convert.\nEveryone has their own method, but what you’re about to see is a specific workflow that’s worked for Team Adbeat for a number of years.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a simple process that anyone can replicate and start seeing better results with their Display ads.\nStep #1: Do Your Due Diligence Most of the concepts we’ve used for our most successful ad creatives did not appear out of thin air.\nJust sitting down with a cup of coffee and brainstorming new concepts can work, but it’s not the quickest or the most effective way. The best way to come up with new ideas is to do your competitive intelligence. In other words, see what concepts work for other advertisers and use them as inspiration.\nCreate a Swipe File The first step is to find ads being used by competitors within your industry. You can find these ads by going to publishers relevant to that specific industry, and looking at sites read by people in your target audience.\nFor example, if If you run an eCommerce site for women\u0026rsquo;s clothing, you can go to sites that other advertisers like Zulily might be advertising on:\nTake screenshots of your competitor\u0026rsquo;s ads and put them in a folder. This will be the start of your swipe file (a collection of proven ads and sales pages).\nNext, you\u0026rsquo;ll want to take The next type of ads you\u0026rsquo;ll want to do your competitive intelligence on are ads from common direct response markets. Examples of these markets include weight loss, relationships, beauty, and finance/make money.\nWhy ads from these markets?\nThe first reasons is because offers from these markets work well on Display. Second, these markets are extremely competitive. Mass market advertisers know what works currently on Display because they\u0026rsquo;re constantly testing different ad concepts, landing pages and funnels. Something that works for a direct response advertiser can usually be ported over to any market with a bit of modification.\nSince these offers appeal to a general audience, you\u0026rsquo;ll find a lot of ads from mass market advertisers on large news and entertainment publishers, like the Huffington Post, PlayBuzz and POPSUGAR.\nSidenote: Want to make this step easier? Use Adbeat. Adbeat allows you to see competitive data for any advertiser or publisher. You’ll be able to drill down to see their exact creatives, landing pages and even how much they\u0026rsquo;re spending.\nStep #2: Jot Down Ideas Now it\u0026rsquo;s time to start the actual brainstorming process.\nGet all your ad creatives together.\nLook over everything you have.\nNotice the kind of copy, images and concepts they’re using.\nAsk yourself\u0026hellip;\nWhat kind of emotion does the copy convey? Is it moving towards (positive)? Or moving away (negative)?\nWrite down all your ideas down on a sheet of paper, in an Excel spreadsheet, Google Doc, wherever.\nWrite down as many ideas as possible. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter how stupid, sketchy or lame you might think they are. If you\u0026rsquo;re like most people, then the majority of your ideas will be bad. But don\u0026rsquo;t fret. You only need 2-3 good ideas to start with.\nStep #3: Start Writing Ads Finally!\nLet\u0026rsquo;s get writing.\nTake all the ideas from step #2 and start formulating actual ad copy.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s my process for writing ads:\nOpen up an Excel file or Google Sheet and create three columns: headline, body copy and call-to-action. These are the 3 main parts of any banner ad. The Display URL itself will appear in text ads on the Google Display Network, but don\u0026rsquo;t worry about that for now. The Display URL is one of the last components you\u0026rsquo;ll want to test.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re just testing text ads (which I recommend to start out with), headline and body copy is all you\u0026rsquo;ll have space for.\nNow, go ahead and start writing ads based on the concepts and ideas you put together in steps one and two. You’ll want to write between 15-20 ads, and plan on testing 4-8 of them to start.\nWait\u0026hellip; 15-20? Why so many?\nHere\u0026rsquo;s why:\nEveryone knows they should test a bunch of ads.\nHowever, people tend to make the mistake of writing 2-3 ads and testing those. While that\u0026rsquo;s better than nothing, it’s far from ideal. If you only write 2-3 ads, it\u0026rsquo;s very unlikely you\u0026rsquo;re going to write your best 2-3 ads, no matter how amazing a copywriter you are.\nThink of writing ad copy like playing basketball. No NBA player jumps into a game without taking warm-up shots first. These warm up shots are usually pretty bad, until they get into a groove. Just like an NBA player, you\u0026rsquo;ll need to warm up your ad-writing muscles by writing a series of so-so ads. You’ll eventually get into a creative flow around ad #10.\nThis means by the time you write 15-20 ads, you’ll have 5-10 good ads you can start testing out.\nAlthough writing 15-20 ads might seem excessive \u0026ndash; don\u0026rsquo;t skip it. This is one of the most important parts of the process.\nStep #4: Feel The Rhythm Most people subvocalize.\nSubvocalization is hearing the words in your head while you read.\nSomething that looks good on paper doesn’t always sound good, either out loud or in the head of the reader. If your prospects read an ad that sounds strange, confusing, or doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to flow, they won\u0026rsquo;t click it.\nYou can\u0026rsquo;t confuse someone into buying your product.\nTherefore, step #4 is to read each ad out loud and feel the rhythm of the copy.\nWhat does it feel like?\nDoes it feel like you’re being pulled smoothly through the copy?\nOr does it feel like you’re being dragged through the mud?\nDoes it seem confusing when you hear it out loud?\nGood ads feel smooth when read aloud. Bad ads feel unnatural and choppy. Even if you\u0026rsquo;re not an expert copywriter, you can instinctively tell when an ad doesn’t flow.\nCut these ads out, or fix them until they flow.\nStep #4: Copy First, Then Images Most advertisers start by testing out a bunch of banner ads with different pictures, copy, designs, etc.\nYou can do this, but I highly suggest you start with text ads.\nWhy?\nThere are so many different factors that can make the difference between a good banner and a bad banner. You’re only testing the copy when you test a text ad. You’ll know which pieces of copy work, instead of trying to guess if it was the design, the call-to-action, the copy, etc. in a banner ad.\nOnce you’ve found the winning text ad, you can now put that copy (or a variation) into a banner ad and start testing different images.\nNow, you’ll be testing your best copy with different images and discovering which images work best with your highest converting copy.\nStep #5: Rinse and Repeat Testing ads is an ongoing process.\nEven the best ads will eventually burn out and people will stop clicking.\nKeep doing your research and keep testing out new ideas.\nConclusion Success with Display advertising has little to do with unknown traffic sources, advanced settings or \u0026ldquo;sexy\u0026rdquo; tips and tricks. It’s all about going back the boring old basics. One of those boring but effective basics is having a testing workflow that is sustainable and leads to consistent improvements in campaign performance.\nDo you have a specific strategy for testing your ad creatives? Let us know in the comments below!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/ab-testing-workflow/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs Aristotle said, \u0026ldquo;We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"aristotle-resize\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/aristotle-resize.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the keys to success with Display advertising is not what you do once or twice, but rather what you do on a regular basis—specifically, constantly creating, testing and optimizing ad creatives.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to get lazy. It can be hard to come up with ideas for ad creatives on a regular basis. Or you might become content with decent performance instead of going for that slight boost in CTR or conversion rate.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"5 Simple Stupid Steps To Testing Ads More Effectively (And Increasing Conversion Rates in the Process)"},{"content":"One of the most requested features by customers is a way to make client/internal reporting faster, easier and more useful.\nToday, we\u0026rsquo;re proud to announce the release of the Advertiser Vertical Report tool.\nThe AVR tool lets you create a beautiful, high-quality PDF report that compares and contrasts three different advertisers in the same vertical\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;in about 20 seconds.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s pretty amazing.\nCheck out this short two minute video to see how it works:\nWho has access to the Advertiser Vertical Report tool? The AVP tool is only available to Adbeat Enterprise subscribers. If you\u0026rsquo;re not an Enterprise subscriber, you can fill out this form to schedule a demo or you can contact Jared at jared@adbeat.com\nInterested in Becoming an Adbeat Customer? If you\u0026rsquo;re not an Adbeat customer but want access to amazing tools like the Advertiser Vertical Report tool (as well as competitive data for 10 Native Ad networks and over 80+ other Display networks), click the button below to see what Adbeat has to offer:\nMore new features, tools and networks are on the way\u0026hellip; so stay tuned!\n- Team Adbeat PS- Questions or comments? Please comment below!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/advertiser-vertical-report-tool/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the most requested features by customers is a way to make client/internal reporting faster, easier and more useful.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, we\u0026rsquo;re proud to announce the release of the \u003cstrong\u003eAdvertiser Vertical Report\u003c/strong\u003e tool.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cem\u003eAVR\u003c/em\u003e tool lets you create a beautiful, high-quality PDF report that compares and contrasts three different advertisers in the same vertical\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026hellip;in about 20 seconds.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s pretty amazing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCheck out this short two minute video to see how it works:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Brand New Feature: Advertiser Vertical Report Tool"},{"content":"Are the days of fast-talking investment advisors in $3000 Armani suits, $150 haircuts and golden orange spray tans over?\nMaybe. Maybe not.\nWhat we do know is that more and more people are choosing to go with computers for their investment advice instead of living, breathing human beings.\nSpecifically\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;Robo-advisors.\u0026rdquo;\nWhat the heck\u0026rsquo;s a robo-advisor?\nRobo-advisors are automated investment services. You fill out a questionnaire about your income, investment goals and comfort with risk taking. Sophisticated computer algorithms then run through market data and optimize your account.\nThe jury is still out as far as how well they work, if they can retain their clients in the long-term, and what happens when the market takes a turn for the worst or heads into recession, although robo-advisors claim to provide solid returns during good times and protection during the bad times.\nAre they true to their word? Investors seem to think so. CB Insights reports that robo-advisors raised over $290 million in VC funding last year. The A.T. Kearney consulting firm estimates that robo-advisors will soon manage $2 trillion in the USA alone.\nBut what does the growth of robo-advisors and other \u0026lsquo;FinTech\u0026rsquo; companies have to do with you and Display advertising?\nWell, where there\u0026rsquo;s massive growth and lots of VC money being doled out\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;there are Display ads.\nToday’s post takes a look at the Display strategies of four of the largest robo-advisors (in no particular order):\nWealthfront Betterment FutureAdvisor Personal Capital It will also give you a sneak peek at three other robo-advisors who are growing quickly and who, no doubt, will soon be testing out Display advertising as a channel for customer acquisition.\n1) Betterment Betterment was launched in 2010 by Jon Stein and Eli Broverman. As of November 2015, Betterment manages $3 billion in assets. As of October 2015, they\u0026rsquo;ve received approximately $105 million in venture capital.\nBetterment runs a fairly conservative Display campaign, built around traditional targeting tactics, ad networks and ad creatives.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s check out what they\u0026rsquo;re doing.\nBetterment\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Betterment is all Google:\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see that Betterment also spends far less than their main competitor, Wealthfront.\nCould they scale their campaigns and see better results?\nQuite likely.\nEspecially if they start testing out ads on Native Ad networks like Outbrain and Taboola. You\u0026rsquo;ll see that many of other robo-advisors have made Native Ads a large part of their Display strategy.\nBetterment\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Betterment follows a traditional contextual targeting strategy (choosing publishers with content relevant to their offer). Betterment advertises mostly on investment sites, news sites and specific pages related to investing on Q\u0026amp;A sites.\nHere are Betterment\u0026rsquo;s top 5 publishers:\nIf you look at the trend lines, it seems Betterment has yet to find a publisher that gives them consistent traffic that converts. They\u0026rsquo;ve even cut a few (CNN.com, for example) out of their strategy entirely. However, they\u0026rsquo;ve recently started to scale on Zacks.com, a stock investment site. Yet, they have yet to spend significantly with any large publisher, instead choosing to spend a few thousand with each.\nBetterment\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Betterment\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives are more conservative, \u0026ldquo;Big Bank\u0026rdquo; style ads:\nThe copy does not give any information on how their service works. Very few of the ads list benefits or create curiosity. I think Betterment could do a better job at testing different angles and images. Most of the ads above are pretty much the same.\nBetterment\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Betterment\u0026rsquo;s first landing page highlights the differences between Schwab and Betterment. Betterment has obviously identified Schwab as their main competitor. This is interesting, considering that many people compare Betterment and Wealthfront as competitors. Yet, the traditional personal finance investment services are still the main competitors for any robo-advisor.\nBetterment could do a better job with their landing pages. The language on both pages is not very customer-centric.\n\u0026quot; We are the largest automated investing service.\u0026quot; \u0026quot; We help people manage and grow their wealth\u0026hellip;\u0026quot;\nAlthough they\u0026rsquo;re doing amazingly well, they could probably improve their results with Display just by testing a few new ads and a few different messages on their landing pages.\n2) Wealthfront Wealthfront was founded in 2011 by Dan Carroll and Andy Rachleff. Wealthfront has received ~$129.5M in venture capital and claims to have $2.6B in assets managed. Wealthfront and Betterment are currently the most well-known robo-advisors.\nWealthfront\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Betterment is all Google. Wealthfront is all Native.\nWealthfront also spends significantly more than Betterment. Adbeat estimates that Wealthfront has spent ~$693,632 over the past 6 months, compared to Betterment\u0026rsquo;s ~$78,032.\nWealthfront\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Wealthfront advertises on large news sites, business sites and general interest sites through Native Ad networks.\nHere are Wealthfront\u0026rsquo;s top 5 publishers by ad spend:\nWealthfront\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Wealthfront uses social proof and authority by designing ad creatives that link to articles about investing on 3rd party news sites, instead of sending traffic to a blog post or landing page on their own site.\nThese ads do a great job of drumming up curiosity in their target demographic, which is mostly composed of millennials.\nWealthfront\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Wealthfront sends most Display traffic to reputable sites that have written about their service. This is much different from what most advertisers do, which is to send traffic to a page on their own site. Why does Wealthfront do this? It\u0026rsquo;s probably due to the fact that robo-advisors are new.\nPeople aren\u0026rsquo;t sure how to feel about them yet. Giving your money to someone to invest is a big decision, and Wealthfront probably has a longer buy cycle. These articles from reputable sources talk about how awesome Wealthfront is.\nAgain, this is great social proof and authority.\nhttp://money.cnn.com/2014/02/27/investing/young-tech-millionaire-investors/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/automated-investment-services-company-wealthfront-now-manages-over-538m-in-assets-up-450-percent-over-past-year/\n3) FutureAdvisor FutureAdvisor was founded in 2010 by Jon Xu, Clyde Law, Jared McFarland and Bo Lu. According to Forbes.com, they currently manage approximately $600 million in assets. FutureAdvisor recently made headlines when they were acquired by BlackRock, the world\u0026rsquo;s largest investment manager.\nFutureAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks FutureAdvsior focuses on native and direct buys. Typical strategy of focusing on contextual ads. Ads being placed on sites about managing money, business or anywhere where someone who has money to invest might be browsing.\nFutureAdvisor was spending more on Display in the months leading up to their acquisition.\nHowever, lately they\u0026rsquo;ve lowered their ad spend to close to zero.\nWill they ramp it up again now that they\u0026rsquo;ve been acquired by one of the world\u0026rsquo;s largest investment managers?\nFutureAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s Publishers FutureAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s publisher selection matches their network selection. They advertise mainly on news sites through Outbrain.\nThey spend a significant amount on bankrate.com, which continues to be a stable source of traffic for them. FutureAdvisor also briefly bought inventory directly from kiplinger.com.\nFutureAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives FutureAdvisor does a great job of testing different angles and styles of ad creatives.\nNote that they use more emotional copy in their ads, specifically, fear (\u0026ldquo;Is your portfolio prepared for a bear market?\u0026rdquo;).\nFutureAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages FutureAdvisor sends their Outbrain traffic to this super-short article on how to properly diversify your 401k:\nThey send Direct Buy traffic to landing pages that have a logo from the publisher they buy inventory from:\nAnd almost all other traffic goes right to their homepage:\n4) Personal Capital Personal Capital was founded in 2009 by Bill Harris, a former CEO of Intuit Corp. Personal Capital has raised ~$102.3M in funding.\nPersonal Capital\u0026rsquo;s Ad Spend \u0026amp; Networks Personal Capital has yet to scale their campaigns. They spent a fair amount around June, but quickly backed down on the amount they spent after that.\nMost of their ad spend is allocated to Direct Buys and Taboola Native Ads.\nPersonal Capital\u0026rsquo;s Publishers Personal Capital spends the most with bankrate.com by buying inventory directly. It appears they also tested a brief Direct Buy on kiplinger.com, but quickly shut it off after spending $2.9k. Their other publishers are news sites which are within the network of publishers for the Outbrain native ad network.\nPersonal Capital\u0026rsquo;s Ad Creatives Personal Capital does a good job of testing various angles in their ad creatives.\nAll of their ads \u0026ndash; with the exception of the Native Ads at the bottom \u0026ndash; hit a different angle.\nPersonal Capital\u0026rsquo;s Landing Pages Personal Capital is testing three different landing pages.\nLanding page #1 is an article on their blog:\nThis is the landing page for the Outbrain ads shown above (\u0026ldquo;Sharing Bank Accounts: What Works?\u0026rdquo;).\nThe second landing page focuses on how Personal Capital is the \u0026ldquo;modern way to manage your wealth\u0026rdquo;, complete with a mockup of the app on an iPhone:\nThis is a more traditional opt-in/sign-up page.\nPersonal Capital\u0026rsquo;s third landing page focuses only on their retirement planner:\nOther Robo-advisors to Watch Out For Despite all the venture capital, very few robo-advisors are currently spending on Display. However, it\u0026rsquo;s quite likely that the continuing influx of venture capital as well as popularity will drive more robo-advisor start-ups to test out Display.\nHere are three robo-advisors to keep an eye on over the next couple of months:\nHedgable Hedgeable is a New York City based start-up founded by twin brothers Matthew and Michael Kane. Hedgable calls themselves \u0026ldquo;The Private Bank For Millennials.\u0026rdquo; Hedgeable has raised $1.85M in funding. As of July, 2015, Hegable has over $35M in assets under management.\nSigFig SigFig is a San Francisco based start-up founded in 2011 by Mike Sha and Michael Conrad. SigFig raised $15M in 2013. SigFig does not disclose their amount of assets under management.\nWiseBanyan WiseBanyan was founded in 2013 by Herbert Moore and Vicki Zhou. They call themselves \u0026ldquo;the world\u0026rsquo;s first free online financial advisor.\u0026rdquo; WiseBanyan raised an undisclosed amount in 2014. WiseBanyan has ~$22M assets under management.\nConclusion Despite the influx of venture capital, robo-advisors have yet to turn a profit. It takes billions upon billions of dollars for one company to become profitable. This means that customer acquisition is the main priority. As Display is one of the main channels for customer acquisition, I imagine you\u0026rsquo;ll being seeing more and more Display ads for the companies listed above as well as any new players who enter the market.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/robo-advisors/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAre the days of fast-talking investment advisors in $3000 Armani suits, $150 haircuts and golden orange spray tans over?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMaybe. Maybe not.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat we do know is that more and more people are choosing to go with computers for their investment advice instead of living, breathing human beings.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpecifically\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Robo-advisors.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat the heck\u0026rsquo;s a robo-advisor?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRobo-advisors are automated investment services. You fill out a questionnaire about your income, investment goals and comfort with risk taking. Sophisticated computer algorithms then run through market data and optimize your account.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What Wealthfront and Betterment Can Teach You About Display Advertising"},{"content":"Looking for ways to drive more traffic and bring in more ad revenue?\nLook no further than Answers.com for inspiration.\nAnswers.com is a large Q\u0026amp;A community that was created back in 1999. Originally called \u0026ldquo;GuruNet\u0026rdquo;, the company went public in 2004 and later changed their name to Answers.com.\nAlthough they\u0026rsquo;ve been around for close to two decades, much of their recent growth has been fueled by content promotion through Native Ad networks.\nAnswers.com is one of the largest spenders across all Native Ad networks. Their strategy is one that any advertiser or publisher should look at if they want to see better success with Native Advertising.\nIn today\u0026rsquo;s blog post, we\u0026rsquo;re going to look at Answers.com from both sides:\nAs an advertiser \u0026ndash; how they use Native Ad networks like Outbrain and Taboola to drive traffic to their content and increase their audience size. As a publisher \u0026ndash; how they use Google Adsense and other ad networks to monetize traffic seeded from Native Ad networks. Answers.com as an Advertiser Ad Spend \u0026amp; Ad Networks Adbeat estimates that Answers.com has spent $8,256,512 on content promotion through Display advertising in the past 180 days. The majority of Answers.com’s ad spend goes towards Native ad networks like Outbrain, Taboola, ContentAd, Yahoo Gemini and rev:content:\nAnswers.com also tested Google Display, but cut the campaigns after just a few months:\nIt seems that Native Ad networks are the way to go for content promotion, as most large publishers prefer Native Ad networks for driving traffic than traditional banner ad networks like Google Display, Bing or Advertising.com.\nOutbrain and Taboola continue to be the chosen networks for many native advertisers. However, newer players in the Native Ad space \u0026ndash; like rev:content, Gravity and ContentAd \u0026ndash; continue to bite off a larger piece of the pie.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see that Answers.com has significantly scaled their spend on rev:content within the past two quarters.\nI highly suggest you test out some of these other Native networks if you haven\u0026rsquo;t.\nSide note*: Adbeat has competitive data for 10 Native Ad ad networks: Outbrain, Taboola, rev:content, Gravity, mgid, Yahoo Gemini, Disqus, Nativo, ContentAd and nRelate.\nAd Creatives Answers.com is known primarily as a crowdsourced Q\u0026amp;A site.\nAnswers.com can tell you whether or not Fido will croak if he eats cinnamon:\nHowever, they do not use Q\u0026amp;A pages to drive traffic.\nInstead they advertise pages about celebrities, athletes and viral themes (“You won’t believe these 20 crazy wedding pictures”).\nWhy?\nSimple: this content gets clicks.\nWe live in an entertainment based society obsessed with celebrity gossip, and fun, viral articles. Answers.com (and most other large publishers) use celebrity or viral content to get large amounts of cheap clicks.\nHere are some of Answers.com\u0026rsquo;s most seen ad creatives over the past 180 days:\nAnd some of the most recent ad creatives they\u0026rsquo;ve launched:\nNotice that Answers.com has started advertising viral content.\nDoes this mean that viral content works better at getting clicks than celebrity?\nNot necessarily.\nBut advertisers and publishers need to constantly keep on the pulse of the ever changing Native content landscape. The best way to do that is to monitor what kinds of content large sites like Answers.com promote.\nPublishers Here are the top 5 publishers for Answers.com:\nIt appears that Answers.com has started moving away from publishers on Outbrain, and started scaling on Yahoo Gemini and rev:content. This is probably why they\u0026rsquo;ve begun advertising more viral content. Ad networks like rev:content seem to have more viral content publishers than Outbrain or Taboola.\nLanding Pages Answers.com uses slideshow pages. This means the user must go to multiple pages to see all parts of the article. This boosts page interaction, page views and increases the likelihood that the visitor will click on an ad or read another piece of content.\nThe slideshow landing page has become standard for most publishers.\nOther publishers who a similar layout include\u0026hellip;\nThe Daily Dish:\nAnd Cheat Sheet:\nSpeaking of ad revenue, let’s take a look at Answers.com from the Publisher side. What networks, advertisers, placements and specific ad creatives bring in the most revenue?\nAnswers.com as a Publisher As far as this author knows, Answers.com makes the majority of its revenue through selling advertising. The sole purpose of advertising their content through native ad networks is to build up a larger audience and make money through ad arbitrage.\nIs this investment worth it?\nFind out in the next section as we analyze the other side of the coin: Answers.com as a publisher.\nAd Revenue \u0026amp; Networks Adbeat estimates that Answers.com has made $26,200,064 in ad revenue from 32,162,423 unique visits in the past 180 days.\nTheir network of choice for monetization is Google Adsense, with Advertising.com in a distant second:\nNotice that Answers.com does not make as much money through Direct Buys (buying inventory directly from a site) compared to as much as they make from 3rd party networks. They are potentially missing out on large slices of traffic at higher CPMs from brands and big advertisers.\nWe’ll talk about that in the next section.\nWho Advertises on Answers.com? The sites who advertise on Answers.com are mostly large brands or mass market direct response advertisers (e.g. weight loss supplements and programs).\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a list of their top 5 advertisers:\nMass market and large brands are good prospects for large news/viral content publishers. Viral sites tend to have a wider demographic (if they do not specifically cater to one single niche, e.g. celebrity gossip), and big brands and mass market advertisers like broad audiences.\nHowever, as mentioned earlier, these advertisers come in through 3rd party networks.\nThere is a potential for Answers.com to make even more ad revenue.\nHow Can Answers.com Increase Ad Revenue? 1. Sign advertisers who buy remnant inventory to direct deals. For example, Verizon Wireless has bought ~$500k of Answers.com inventory through Advertising.com over the past 6 months.\nLarge brands like Verizon are often interested in buying inventory directly. Direct Buys give them more impressions. Big brands are usually less concerned with performance and usually want as many impressions as possible.\nTake a look at Verizon\u0026rsquo;s display strategy:\nNotice that Verizon has spent approximately $7.4MM on Direct Buys in the past 180 days. This means that Verizon will likely be open to signing a direct deal with Answers.com. Answers.com\u0026rsquo;s sales team can now go after Verizon with confidence, since they already know they directly buy inventory from similar publishers.\n2. Hunt for other advertisers similar to the highest spenders. Verizon\u0026rsquo;s presence on Answers.com is proof that traffic from Answers.com can work for wireless companies. Answers.com could go after other companies in this industry and use Verizon as a case study.\nThis means that other companies in the same industry \u0026ndash; like ATT or T-Mobile \u0026ndash; would likely see similar results:\nSigning any one of these large brands to a direct advertising deal would substantially increase ad revenue.\nConclusion There are a million and one ways a publisher can increase ad revenue.\nThe best strategy is often the strategy that\u0026rsquo;s worked for someone else. Answers.com\u0026rsquo;s robust native advertising strategy is something that any business can ethically copy and use to boost their own revenue streams.\nAll the pieces of the puzzle are there. It\u0026rsquo;s up to you to put them together.\nHave you tried native advertising? What have your results been like?\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/case-study-answers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLooking for ways to drive more traffic and bring in more ad revenue?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLook no further than Answers.com for inspiration.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnswers.com is a large Q\u0026amp;A community that was created back in 1999. Originally called \u0026ldquo;GuruNet\u0026rdquo;, the company went public in 2004 and later changed their name to Answers.com.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlthough they\u0026rsquo;ve been around for close to two decades, much of their recent growth has been fueled by content promotion through Native Ad networks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How Answers.com Uses Native Advertising To Make Millions in Ad Revenue"},{"content":"Although cable TV might have you believe otherwise, the world\u0026rsquo;s best marketers are NOT drinking whiskey and flirting with secretaries in Manhattan.\nWell, they might be drinking whiskey and flirting with secretaries.\nBut they\u0026rsquo;re not in Manhattan. They\u0026rsquo;re in Washington.\nThe world\u0026rsquo;s best marketers are politicians. Every year, billions of dollars are pumped into campaign research, marketing and lobbying. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent a combined total of $1.2 billion in 2012 \u0026ndash; and that doesn\u0026rsquo;t count money from outside groups or parties\nAll this money and research means politicians and consultants have become masters in human psychology.\nThe good news is that a few political advisors have chosen to share what it takes to get someone elected.\nTwo of my favorite books on the topic are:\nThe ALL NEW Don\u0026rsquo;t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff Words That Work: It\u0026rsquo;s Not What You Say, It\u0026rsquo;s What People Hear by Frank Lutz These books are filled to the brim with golden nuggets on how a political race is won. These same tactics can also be used to improve your marketing campaigns, no matter what you\u0026rsquo;re selling.\nThe best part is you don\u0026rsquo;t even need to read either book (although I highly recommend it).\nI\u0026rsquo;ve done the work for you and hand-selected a few golden nuggets from each book.\nIn today\u0026rsquo;s blog post, you\u0026rsquo;ll learn how each nugget translates to selling any kind of product or service, and how you can implement it in your Display campaigns and marketing strategy to see better results.\nAppeal To Your Prospect\u0026rsquo;s Identity, Not Their Self-Interest \u0026ldquo;People do not necessarily vote in their self-interest. They vote their identity. They vote their values. They vote for who they identify with. They may identify with their self-interest. That can happen. It is not that people never care about their self-interest. But they vote their identity. And if their identity fits their self-interest, they will vote for that.\u0026rdquo;\nVia The ALL NEW Don\u0026rsquo;t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate:\nInterpretation: Your prospect will not necessarily buy your product based on how it can directly improve their everyday life. People do not always buy products based solely on utilitarian factors. In fact, how useful a certain product is often has little to do with why they buy it.\nMore often than not, people will buy a product that either a) coincides with their identity, or b) coincides with the identity they want to portray.\nThe classic example is a luxury sports car. No one buys a Ferrari because it gets good gas mileage (their cars average between 11mpg and 13mpg). Nobody buys a Lamborghini solely because it makes their morning commute more pleasant. An Aston Martin isn\u0026rsquo;t a \u0026ldquo;point A to point B\u0026rdquo; type car.\nPeople buy a luxury car because of way it makes them feel. They buy a nice car because it elevates their social status. It sends a message to the world: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m successful.\u0026rdquo;\nA Kia serves the same basic purpose of a Ferrari. The commute in a Kia is the same. Sure, a Ferrari is able to accelerate much faster and reach a higher top speed, but how often do you even have the opportunity to drive 200mph down the freeway? However, a Kia doesn\u0026rsquo;t allow you to identify with who you want to be.\nAnd further along the lines of identity\u0026hellip;\nPaint a Picture of a Brighter Future \u0026ldquo;It is claimed that about a third of the populace thinks that they are, or someday will be, in the top 1 percent, and that for this reason they vote on the basis of a hoped-for future self-interest.\u0026rdquo;\nVia The ALL NEW Don\u0026rsquo;t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate:\nInterpretation: Everyone assumes their big break is on its way. The top 1% in this quote refers specifically to money, but it can really be anything; fame, fortune, that beautiful partner, or that 6-pack of abs. Even though few people have all this, we tend to assume that all this stuff is on its way.\nPlus, social media makes it seem like success is easier and more attainable than ever. People constantly post on Instagram and Facebook the results of their success, yet rarely ever pictures of the struggle on their way to the top.\nThese folks seem relatively normal. This makes people think, \u0026ldquo;Well, if HE can do it\u0026hellip; why can\u0026rsquo;t I?\u0026rdquo;\nWhat does this mean for you? This goes back to people buying a product in hopes of gaining a new identity for themselves in the future.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an example of an ad from financial newsletter publisher Money Morning:\nYou see a guy drinking out of a coconut on a yacht with a beautiful woman. You\u0026rsquo;ll want to click and read the story about how he achieved his success. People see this ad and start to imagine themselves as this guy.\nAnother classic example is in the health and fitness industry. They sell the concept of the new you. Future pacing \u0026ndash; \u0026ldquo;Imagine how you\u0026rsquo;ll feel when you have that six-pack of abs!” \u0026ndash; is huge in the fitness industry. It\u0026rsquo;s a very intoxicating feeling to sit there and daydream how it might feel when you can finally slip back into those skinny jeans.\nThis interstitial ad found on Women\u0026rsquo;s Health Magazine from Lift to Get Lean is a great example:\nSelf-Reliance and Entrepreneurship \u0026ldquo;To work for a small company—or, even better, to work for yourself, be your own boss, create your own life (or lifestyle)—this is what so many of us still hold up as the ideal. We may no longer be a nation of family farmers and shopkeepers, but we still appreciate—and venerate—those who are.\u0026rdquo;\nVia Words That Work: It\u0026rsquo;s Not What You Say, It\u0026rsquo;s What People Hear:\nInterpretation: The underlying theme of this particular passage is self-reliance. No one likes having someone else tell them how to live their life. We look up to the folks who start their own businesses, like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. This is especially powerful for folks selling financial products or \u0026ldquo;biz ops\u0026rdquo;. But this messaging of being able to be your own person can pervade all marketing for all offers, as everyone has someone above them in most parts of their life.\nThis is especially powerful for folks selling financial products or \u0026ldquo;biz ops\u0026rdquo;. But this messaging of being able to be your own person can pervade all marketing for all offers, as everyone has someone above them in most parts of their life.\nOne advertiser who does this very well is Uber. They\u0026rsquo;ve spent millions in the past year on ad creatives focused around being your own boss and setting your own schedule.\nNot everyone necessarily wants to take the steps to work for themselves, but we do love it when we see people giving a cranky boss either the literal or proverbial finger.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s quite easy to find an enemy or someone who is trying in some way, shape or form to control your life. We desire to be autonomous, even though most people are content with working for a paycheck and driving home.\nSpeak America\u0026rsquo;s Language \u0026ldquo;I learn the language of America. In fact, what you eventually hear either from your elected representatives or in ads for the products and services you use is often spoken first by you and then translated by me.\u0026rdquo;\nVia Words That Work: It\u0026rsquo;s Not What You Say, It\u0026rsquo;s What People Hear:\nInterpretation: If you do any copywriting, you\u0026rsquo;ve probably heard about how you should write in a conversational tone, and how you should write to your prospect as if you\u0026rsquo;re talking to a friend. Great advice. Yet, I\u0026rsquo;d make one tiny modification: go one level deeper. Discover the specific words and phrases used by your market. The words and phrases a 17-year-old high school student living in Miami uses are much different from those a retired 67-year-old woman living in Phoenix uses.\nOne company that\u0026rsquo;s doing this is Lynda, an online education company.\nWhile \u0026ldquo;drop beats like a boss\u0026rdquo; might be a bit over the top, the idea is to use colloquial language someone in your target demographic might use.\nHow do you find that language?\nGo to the specific media they read, listen to and watch.\nFor example, if my target market is a woman who is 40-65 years old with kids, the first place I\u0026rsquo;ll look is at magazines meant for women in this target demographic. These would be magazines like Women\u0026rsquo;s Health. Then you look at the headlines. You read the articles. You make note of the specific words they use. What type of language do you see popping up over and over again?\nAnother great resource is Facebook. You can use the Facebook Audience Insights tool to find out where your target demographic hangs out. Just type in a few interests related to your product (like \u0026ldquo;software as a service\u0026rdquo;) and the Facebook Audience Insights tool will spit out similar interests and communities.\nAll of this boils down to one thing: do your research.\nRepetition Is Key, Even If YOU Are Sick of It \u0026ldquo;Remember, you may be making yourself sick by saying the exact same thing for the umpteenth time, but many in your audience will be hearing it for the first time. \u0026ldquo;Message consistency builds customer loyalty.\u0026rdquo;\nVia Words That Work: It\u0026rsquo;s Not What You Say, It\u0026rsquo;s What People Hear:\nInterpretation: When you find a message that works, it should pervade all your marketing \u0026ndash; display ads, landing pages, emails, webinars, everything.\nInside the internet marketing world, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to see the same style of emails from the same company over and over again. The same companies continually hit the same angles and messages time and time again. As marketers, we often find this annoying.\nHowever, remember that the average person is not a marketer. They don\u0026rsquo;t pay attention like we do. Therefore, they\u0026rsquo;ll often need to hear the same message over and over before it sinks in.\n$10 Words Imply An Ulterior Motive \u0026ldquo;In fact, using a long word when a short one would suffice tends to raise suspicions: “What is this guy trying to sell me? Does he have an ulterior motive?\u0026rdquo;\nVia Words That Work: It\u0026rsquo;s Not What You Say, It\u0026rsquo;s What People Hear:\nInterpretation: Political analysts say one of the main reasons why John Kerry lost in 2004 was because he used language that made him seem like he was trying to talk above the average person. It made him seem conceited. It made it seem like he was trying to confuse people into voting for him. People couldn\u0026rsquo;t identify with Kerry and therefore didn\u0026rsquo;t vote for him.\nKeep your word choice as simple as possible. The average person, even someone extremely intelligent, does not use $10 words in their everyday vocabulary.\nPeople abhor reading bloated, presumptuous copy, because there\u0026rsquo;s no reason to say abhor when you can just say hate.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s Not a Problem\u0026hellip; It\u0026rsquo;s a Challenge! \u0026ldquo;Now every \u0026ldquo;problem\u0026rdquo;—or, God forbid, \u0026ldquo;threat\u0026rdquo;—is spun positively as a \u0026ldquo;challenge.\u0026rdquo; Redefining \u0026ldquo;problems\u0026rdquo; as \u0026ldquo;challenges\u0026rdquo; is a profoundly American approach; a \u0026ldquo;challenge\u0026rdquo; is something to be surmounted—quite literally, in fact, like climbing a mountain. \u0026ldquo;Challenge\u0026rdquo; implies competition. It means the gauntlet has been thrown down and it’s up to us to pick it up.\u0026rdquo;\nVia Words That Work: It\u0026rsquo;s Not What You Say, It\u0026rsquo;s What People Hear:\nInterpretation: Everyone has problems. Everyone at some point in their life feels like they have a problem they can\u0026rsquo;t solve. Everyone at some point in time feels hopeless. However, you can help them reinterpret their problem. Reframing specific life situations can spur people into action.\nHow?\nSimply reframe a problem as a challenge. A challenge is like a game. It\u0026rsquo;s something that can be overcome. What happens when you live up to a challenge and conquer it? You attain a sense of pride.\nHumans need a bit of drama and strife in their lives. However, turning that drama from something impossible to possible is the key.\nConclusion These passages just touch the surface of all the amazing insight contained in each of these two books. I highly suggest you read and take notes on both of them.\nWhat other persuasion tricks have you seen politicians use?\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/7-political-persuasion-tips-for-online-marketers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAlthough cable TV might have you believe otherwise, the world\u0026rsquo;s best marketers are NOT drinking whiskey and flirting with secretaries in Manhattan.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWell, they might be drinking whiskey and flirting with secretaries.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut they\u0026rsquo;re not in Manhattan. They\u0026rsquo;re in \u003cem\u003eWashington\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe world\u0026rsquo;s best marketers are politicians. Every year, billions of dollars are pumped into campaign research, marketing and lobbying. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent a combined total of $1.2 billion in 2012 \u0026ndash; and that doesn\u0026rsquo;t count money from outside groups or parties\u003c/p\u003e","title":"7 Political Persuasion Tips For Online Marketers"},{"content":"Two weeks ago we announced that you can now access data for Disqus and Nativo Native Ad networks inside of Adbeat.\nToday, we\u0026rsquo;re super happy to announce that we\u0026rsquo;ve launched competitive data for two more Native Ad networks: Gravity and mgid.\nAdbeat Advanced or Enterprise customers will now see Gravity and mgid data throughout the platform and under the network list.\nThis brings our total coverage of Native to 10 networks \u0026ndash; Outbrain, Taboola, Yahoo Gemini Native, nRelate, rev:content, ContentAd, Nativo, Disqus, mgid and Gravity.\nWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Advanced or Enterprise Subscriber? Current Adbeat customers can upgrade by clicking this link to login and upgrade their account.\nYou can switch immediately to the Adbeat Advanced plan on that screen, or you can shoot Jared an email at jared@adbeat.com to schedule a demo for an Adbeat Enterprise plan.\nWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Customer? If you\u0026rsquo;re not an Adbeat customer, but want to see competitive data for 10 Native Ad networks (and over 80+ other networks), click below to see what our Adbeat Advanced and Adbeat Enterprise plans have to offer.\nMore new features and networks are on the way, so stay tuned!\n- Team Adbeat PS- Questions or comments? Please comment below!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/update-gravity-and-mgid-now-live/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTwo weeks ago we \u003ca href=\"/announcing-new-native-ad-networks-adbeat/\"\u003eannounced that you can now access data for Disqus and Nativo\u003c/a\u003e Native Ad networks inside of Adbeat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, we\u0026rsquo;re super happy to announce that we\u0026rsquo;ve launched competitive data for two more Native Ad networks: \u003ca href=\"http://gravity.com\"\u003eGravity\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://mgid.com/\"\u003emgid\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"gravity-mgid\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/gravity-mgid.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdbeat Advanced or Enterprise customers will now see Gravity and mgid data throughout the platform and under the network list.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"gravity-mgid-networks\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/gravity-mgid-networks.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis brings our total coverage of Native to \u003cstrong\u003e10\u003c/strong\u003e networks \u0026ndash; Outbrain, Taboola, Yahoo Gemini Native, nRelate, rev:content, ContentAd, Nativo, Disqus, mgid and Gravity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Update: Data For Gravity and mgid Native Ad Networks Now Live"},{"content":"According to Statista.com, Native advertising spend is expected to reach nearly nine billion U.S. dollars by 2018.\nWho\u0026rsquo;s spending all this money?\nYou might be surprised when you find out.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not the big brands. It\u0026rsquo;s not the direct response advertisers. Although both continue to direct more ad spend toward native.)\nSome of the top spenders on networks like Outbrain and Taboola are ad arbitrage sites. These are the viral content, celebrity gossip, and sports news sites that make money off of advertising \u0026ndash; specifically, using Native Ads to bring in cheap traffic in the hopes that those people will click on ads that offer a higher payout.\nCheck out this blog post all about ad arbitrage on viral quiz sites:\nNow, monetizing these sites can be a tricky endeavor.\nYou need a lot of traffic at a cheap price.\nYou need to optimize your site to get maximum ad clicks.\nAnd you need a lot of content created on a daily basis.\nBut not just any old content. You need content that a general audience will be interested in and will not be able to help themselves from clicking on.\nThis blog post outlines some of that content.\nThe Sins of Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus If you look inside Adbeat, you\u0026rsquo;ll see most articles promoted on Native Ad networks involve celebrities.\nWe love our celebrities here in the USA. In fact, society tends to be more interested in Kim\u0026rsquo;s baby, Lindsay\u0026rsquo;s drug problem and Kanye\u0026rsquo;s ego than in their own lives. You see this obsession reflected on TV, in the supermarket tabloids and now with Native Advertising.\nYet, celebrities alone aren\u0026rsquo;t enough to drive the type of clicks traffic you need to run a successful viral site. There must be another emotional driver, some sort of emotion or dramatic event the average person can relate to.\nAfter analyzing the themes on Native Ads, we realized a lot of themes used with Native content fit into the model of \u0026ldquo;The 7 Deadly Sins\u0026rdquo;. The 7 Deadly Sins are considered to be humanity\u0026rsquo;s vices. These are the vices that run society and are the main drivers behind why we do what we do. Marketers capitalize off these \u0026ldquo;sins\u0026rdquo; every single day, and they\u0026rsquo;re an important piece of the machine that drives Native Ads.\nIn this blog post, you\u0026rsquo;ll see examples of the 7 deadly sins \u0026ndash; lust, gluttony, greed, wrath, sloth, envy and pride \u0026ndash; and how they tie into a successful Native Advertising campaign.\nSin #1: Lust Humans are innately sexual beings. One study from Ohio State University estimates that the average man has a sexual thought at least once per hour. This same study shows the average woman thinks about sex approximately 10 times per day.\nAdvertisers are aware of this and have capitalized on it for years. Using sexual images in advertising is one of the oldest tricks in the book. This means, of course, that it works with Native Ads.\nBut lust doesn\u0026rsquo;t just sell perfume, clothes or male enhancement pills. It works in many different verticals, including ones that are completely unsexy.\nFor example, take a look at these three ads:\nWhat product or service do you think they\u0026rsquo;re advertising?\nAny clue?\nWell, all three ads send traffic to an advertorial lead generation page for auto insurance.\nThis begs the question:\nWhy does lust work for even the unsexiest of industries?\nIt has to do with the way our brain reacts when we see an attractive person.\nResearchers at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College in London discovered that our ventral striatum lights up when we see a picture of an attractive face. The ventral striatum is our brain\u0026rsquo;s reward center. Your brain activates your \u0026ldquo;feel good\u0026rdquo; chemicals whenever it sees someone you\u0026rsquo;re attracted to.\nOur body and brain crave these chemicals. Therefore, we want to keep looking at and reacting to images of attractive people.\nHowever, some advertisers are a bit more blatant.\nLarge sports publishers tend to use sex appeal, as well. Many sports publishers send prospects to slideshows with lists of the most attractive sports stars.\nFor example, this ad from BlueLionSports.com:\nEven AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) mixes nostalgia with sex appeal in this Native article:\nThe fact of the matter is that sex still sells. It\u0026rsquo;s one of the main drivers behind human behavior and always will be. Society might change, the world might change, but humans will always be humans.\nSin #2: Gluttony Gluttony, or overconsumption, is typically associated with someone scarfing down large amounts of food.\nHow does this translate to advertising?\nTake a look at headlines on the supermarket tabloids.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll often see stories of celebrities who used to be fit but gained a few pounds for one reason or another.\nThis is commonly referred to as \u0026ldquo;fat shaming\u0026rdquo;.\nTabloids use it when a specific celebrity is pregnant, or after she\u0026rsquo;s given birth yet still holds her \u0026ldquo;baby weight\u0026rdquo;.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s one example of Kim Kardashian from Star Magazine:\nThe copywriters and marketers who work for tabloids are some of the best in the world. They know what types of stories grab attention. Many of the news stories and headlines you\u0026rsquo;ll see at the supermarket will also work online.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s one example:\nBut weight gain is not the only form of gluttony. Another form of gluttony is the overconsumption of products.\nIn other words, the ads show people using their riches to buy exorbitant cars, homes or jewelry.\nIn the sports and celebrity world, success and excess tend to go hand-in-hand.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an ad for a slideshow that lists the 20 dumbest things athletes have bought (Spoiler: Scottie bought a $4.3 million Gulfstream jet that couldn\u0026rsquo;t fly.):\nPeople tend to have mixed feelings about celebrity overconsumption.\nOn one hand, it\u0026rsquo;s appalling. We say, \u0026ldquo;Who needs all that stuff?\u0026rdquo;\nOn the other hand, we\u0026rsquo;re strangely impressed at their incredible wealth and ability to blow millions on whatever they want.\nThis drives many people to seek the same level of wealth.\nWhich brings us to sin #3\u0026hellip;\nSin #3: Greed If gluttony is the overconsumption of goods, then greed is the desire to reach a level of wealth where overconsumption is possible.\nBut, more often than not, it seems that people are more interested in the greed of others.\nAgain, we go back to celebrities.\nForbes.com runs a few different ads that show off the world\u0026rsquo;s wealthiest sports stars:\nHowever, it\u0026rsquo;s not just limited to the most famous sports stars or celebs. Here\u0026rsquo;s another group of ads from various advertisers that list the wealthiest people from various industries/countries who might be less famous:\nAgain, combining celebrity with money is a big draw. People love to see others living large.\nSin #4: Sloth\nWe want it all. Yet, we want it all while doing as little work as possible.\nSloth is one of the main sins present in the diet and fitness industry. Eat this pill, herb or vitamin and lose fat while eating that Big Mac combo:\nWant to lose weight but hate going to the gym?\nHere we have an ad that literally uses the word \u0026ldquo;lazy\u0026rdquo;:\nBut sloth isn\u0026rsquo;t just limited to health and fitness.\nSloth is also one of the main emotional drivers behind the finance/make money market. Everyone wants to be rich, but most people don\u0026rsquo;t want to do the work desired to achieve millionaire status. \u0026ldquo;Get rich quick\u0026rdquo; schemes and shady \u0026ldquo;Biz Op\u0026rdquo; opportunities have been using sloth for years.\nAnd when you combine greed with sloth?\nYou\u0026rsquo;ve got some really compelling ads:\nOur society praises people who get rich off the stock market. Every day, a new story pops up about the latest \u0026ldquo;hot stock\u0026rdquo; that can make you rich, or some unknown company about to go public that will bring you massive amounts of wealth. A lot of this comes from the \u0026ldquo;penny stock\u0026rdquo; market—cheap stocks that people think might be the next Google or Microsoft.\nThese stories give the impression that making money on the stock market is easy. All you have to do is pick a few hot stocks and watch your net worth soar overnight. That\u0026rsquo;s not how it works, and most people know this. However, that doesn\u0026rsquo;t make these ads less tempting to click on.\nSin #5: Wrath Revenge\u0026hellip;how sweet it is.\nWrath combined with curiosity was the fuel behind a lot of recent clickbait headlines based off of this old John Caples ad from 1926:\nWrath literally helped grow all these viral sites, like ViralNova, which was recently sold and could be worth as much as $100 million.\nOne trending theme based around wrath is this ad for a female anti-aging product:\nAs of the writing of this post, this ad is all over the place.\nWhy?\nThe thought of losing beauty as we age is something many people have issues dealing with. There\u0026rsquo;s the common Hollywood story of powerful, rich men leaving their lifelong partners for someone much younger. This concept combined with a clickbait headline is one of the main reasons why these types of ads work so well.\nSin #6: Envy Many of the ads you\u0026rsquo;ve already seen could be classified under envy. Most of us are envious when we hear just how much wealth another person has. However, this is a more subtle use of envy.\nAnother more direct use of envy is an ad like this:\nMany people dislike their boss or authority in general.\nOften, someone above us in the hierarchy has something that we want, in this case, expensive cars.\nIn continuing with the fact that we live in a culture of voyeurs, often reading about the envy of others is more interesting than our own envious feelings:\nThe tabloids and Entertainment Tonight-type TV shows are filled with stories of jealous, envious celebs.\nSin #7: Pride One of the common sports clichés you hear the announcers say before a game is \u0026ldquo;pride is on the line.\u0026rdquo;\nIt only makes sense that sports publishers would promote content related to specific players being better than others, especially the big players.\nMichael Jordan, Sidney Crosby and LeBron James.\nThe pride of being the best \u0026ndash; being the \u0026ldquo;top dog\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; is ever-present in sports. People feel pride for their sports teams and communities. Many people live vicariously through their sports team. They feel the same pride and passion (maybe even more) than the players themselves.\nConclusion Finding a good piece of content that works on Native can be a bit of a challenge. Seeing what works for other advertisers and publishers is one of the easiest ways to come up with fresh ideas for content that people love to read and click on. You can\u0026rsquo;t go wrong by combining celebrities with the 7 Deadly Sins.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-native-content/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAccording to Statista.com, Native advertising spend is expected to reach \u003ca href=\"http://www.statista.com/statistics/369886/native-ad-spend-usa/\"\u003enearly nine billion U.S. dollars by 2018\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWho\u0026rsquo;s spending all this money?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou might be surprised when you find out.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s not the big brands. It\u0026rsquo;s not the direct response advertisers. Although both continue to direct more ad spend toward native.)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome of the top spenders on networks like Outbrain and Taboola are ad arbitrage sites. These are the viral content, celebrity gossip, and sports news sites that make money off of advertising \u0026ndash; specifically, using Native Ads to bring in cheap traffic in the hopes that those people will click on ads that offer a higher payout.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Seven Deadly Sins of Native Content"},{"content":"One reason why our customers love Adbeat is because of the sheer amount of data (over 80+ ad networks and hundreds of thousands of publishers). Today, we\u0026rsquo;re increasing our coverage for Native Ads by adding new Native ad networks \u0026ndash; Nativo and Disqus.\nAdbeat Advanced or Enterprise customers will now see data from Nativo and Disqus throughout the platform and under the list of networks.\nThis brings our total coverage of Native to 8 networks \u0026ndash;Outbrain, Taboola, Yahoo Gemini Native, nRelate, rev:content, ContentAd, Nativo and Disqus \u0026ndash; with more on the way.\nWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Advanced or Enterprise Subscriber? Current Adbeat customers can upgrade by clicking this link to login and upgrade their account.\nYou can switch immediately to the Adbeat Advanced plan on that screen, or you can shoot Jared an email at jared@adbeat.com to schedule a demo for an Adbeat Enterprise plan.\nWant Native Ad Data But Not an Adbeat Customer? If you\u0026rsquo;re not an Adbeat customer, but want to see data for Native Ad networks (and over 80+ other networks), click below to see what our Adbeat Advanced and Adbeat Enterprise plans have to offer.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re super excited to bring data from these two networks. Again, this is just the beginning. More networks and data are coming very soon, along with a bunch of amazing new features.\nStay tuned!\n- Team Adbeat PS- Questions or comments? Please comment below!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/announcing-new-native-ad-networks-adbeat/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne reason why our customers love Adbeat is because of the sheer amount of data (over 80+ ad networks and hundreds of thousands of publishers). Today, we\u0026rsquo;re increasing our coverage for Native Ads by adding new Native ad networks \u0026ndash;  \u003ca href=\"http://www.nativo.net/\"\u003eNativo\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"http://disqus.com\"\u003eDisqus\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"nativo-disqus\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/nativo-disqus.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdbeat Advanced or Enterprise customers will now see data from Nativo and Disqus throughout the platform and under the list of networks.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"new-native-ad-networks\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/new-native-ad-networks.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis brings our total coverage of Native to 8 networks \u0026ndash;Outbrain, Taboola, Yahoo Gemini Native, nRelate, rev:content, ContentAd, Nativo and Disqus \u0026ndash; with more on the way.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Announcing: Data for Nativo and Disqus Native Ad Networks Now Live"},{"content":"Looking to scale your display campaigns or just see better results in general?\nThere are three basic types of targeting strategies when it comes to scaling your campaigns and picking new publishers and placements:\nContextual Demographic Psychographic All three should be part of your media planning strategy.\nToday\u0026rsquo;s post covers these targeting methods in detail.\nPlus, you\u0026rsquo;ll see examples of advertisers who know their stuff when it comes to using one or a combination of these methods to scale their campaigns.\nMethod #1: Contextual Targeting Contextual advertising is when the content of the ad is related to the content of the publisher that the user is browsing.\nExamples:\nAdvertising your golf products on a golf news site. Advertising your weight loss supplement on a fitness and wellness site. Advertising your designer jacket shop on a major fashion blog. Pretty straightforward, right?\nThere are a couple of ways to do this.\nThe first way \u0026ndash; the way most people do it \u0026ndash; is by using targeting capabilities in Google Adwords or other ad networks. An example would be adding contextual keywords in a campaign related to the product (e.g. golf equipment, golf instruction, golf news, etc.).\nGoogle runs these keywords through their algorithm and puts your ads on relevant pages.\nThis can work.\nHowever, Google’s algorithm is not perfect. You\u0026rsquo;ll often see your ads placed on pages irrelevant to the content of the keywords you selected.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll often see your ads placed on pages irrelevant to the content of your keywords.\nThe other way \u0026ndash; and the way many big brands do it \u0026ndash; is to buy inventory directly from a publisher. This is known as a direct buy. A direct buy involves contacting a publisher and negotiating a rate. This is the way many Big Brands advertise online.\nIf we look inside Adbeat, we see that Ford directly buys inventory on sites related to cars.\nHere is one of their ads on cars.com:\nAnother example is KB Home, a homebuilding company. They buy inventory directly from Trulia.com, a large residential real estate listing site.\nAnother example\u0026hellip;\nFidelity Investments buys inventory directly on BankRate.com\u0026rsquo;s Roth IRA calculator page, for \u0026ndash; you guessed it \u0026ndash; their Fidelity Rollover IRA:\nWhy You Should Use Contextual Targeting. Contextual targeting works because your prospect is browsing a site with content related to your product. They are more likely to click on your ads since your product fits \u0026rsquo;the conversation already going on in their mind\u0026rsquo;.\nMost beginner display advertisers run their campaigns solely with contextual specific targeting. However, there\u0026rsquo;s one problem with this: contextual targeting by itself can be hard to scale. There are only so few golf sites out there that have inventory for purchase.\nYet, there\u0026rsquo;s a way expert display advertisers scale their campaigns through content specific targeting while still keeping their ads in line with the thoughts going through the prospect\u0026rsquo;s mind.\nExpand To Larger Publishers While Keeping The Content Relevant You don\u0026rsquo;t have to choose a site 100% dedicated to content related to your product in order to keep your ads relevant. There are ways to scale your campaigns to larger publishers and keep your ads related to the content.\nHow?\nBy purchasing ads on specific pages/placements on Q\u0026amp;A sites like Yahoo! Answers, Answers.com, or on \u0026ldquo;content farms\u0026rdquo; like LIVESTRONG, WikiHow and eHow.\nOne great example is Instaflex, a health company that sells a supplement to relieve joint pain.\nInstaflex buys inventory on articles and pages related to joint pain and health.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an example of their ad on an article on meniscus tears on WikiHow:\nSomeone reading an article on how to heal a meniscus tear (a common and very painful knee injury) is on target for a supplement that helps improve knee health.\nThese sites get millions, if not billions, of page views per month. They get so much traffic because they tend to have amazing SEO. You may find yourself getting more impressions, clicks, and conversions from a single placement of one high traffic article on one of these major publishers than on an entire site dedicated to a specific niche.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s another example of a company called \u0026ldquo;The Dog Training Secret.\u0026rdquo;\nThey sell an info product for dog training.\nHere is one of their ads on a on a Yahoo! Answers question page:\nA prospect who wants their dog to stop barking is on target for an ad about stopping their dog from barking.\nThe \u0026ldquo;Stop Dog Barking\u0026rdquo; ad is also a great example of really dialing in the copy of the ad to the content of the article. Notice that this isn\u0026rsquo;t just a general \u0026ldquo;train-your-dog\u0026rdquo; style ad. It\u0026rsquo;s not about house training your dog. It\u0026rsquo;s specifically about how to stop your dog from barking, which is the exact question on this Yahoo! Answers page.\nAnother place to look for these types of placements is on the specific channels of large publishers like MSN, About.com and the Huffington Post. These sites have different subdomains for specific topics. For example, About.com has the subdomain coins.about.com. This section contains information all about coin collecting, values of precious metals and investing in precious metals.\nLear Capital \u0026ndash; a company that sells products and services related to investing in precious metals \u0026ndash; buys inventory directly on coins.about.com:\nEast \u0026amp; Cost Effective\u0026hellip; But Hard to Scale As we said before, this type of targeting can be hard to scale once you reach a certain point.\nThere are only so many sites dedicated to a specific niche, and these niche sites tend to get less traffic than larger news publishers like Huffington Post, The New York Times or PlayBuzz.\nThese larger publishers provide advertisers with a nearly unlimited amount of traffic.\nHowever, it\u0026rsquo;s harder to get the targeting right on a big news publisher.\nDo it incorrectly, and your ads will end up in front of the wrong demographic.\nThis is where many display advertisers fail and one of the reasons why people say claim display advertising doesn\u0026rsquo;t work. Their ads get placed in front of the wrong pair of eyes, they get charged for irrelevant impressions and clicks, and the critics claim banner advertising is the devil.\nSo how do you scale your campaigns without blowing your budget on useless traffic?\nWith demographic and psychographic targeting.\nMethod #2: Demographic Targeting Demographic targeting is when you show an ad to someone based on their age, sex, economic status, or any other factual based piece of information about them.\nExamples:\nAge Ethnicity Marital Status Gender Employment Status Education The best way to do this?\nCreate a \u0026ldquo;persona\u0026rdquo; of your ideal customer based on the characteristics above.\nThen, ask yourself where this particular person tends to hang out online. Or \u0026ndash; even better \u0026ndash; look where other advertisers who cater to this demographic are advertising and test out those networks/placements.\nOne great example of demographic targeting comes from Zulily, an eCommerce site for women\u0026rsquo;s clothing.\nZulily buys ads on GardeningKnowHow.com.\nNow, gardening has nothing to do with fashion.\nHowever, Zulily sells mostly female clothing and gardening tends to be a predominantly female hobby.\nIn fact, if we enter GardeningKnowHow.com in Alexa.com \u0026ndash; a great, mostly free, source of demographic data \u0026ndash; we\u0026rsquo;ll see that Alexa\u0026rsquo;s data supports our hypothesis that GardeningKnowHow.com\u0026rsquo;s audience is mostly female.\nZulily no longer has to limit themselves to just clothing sites. They can scale their campaigns to publishers with an audience that fits this demographic.\nAnother example comes from Calvin Klein.\nHere, we see them advertising their new male fragrance on Men\u0026rsquo;s Health:\nOr Olay advertising their skin care products on Women\u0026rsquo;s Health.\nThis Olay ad is also a great example of combining two different kids of targeting, specifically contextual and demographic targeting. This article is contextually related \u0026ndash; make-up and skin care products \u0026ndash; and the audience who reads Women\u0026rsquo;s Health fits the demographic of people that would be interested in female skin care products.\nDo you see how these targeting methods can be combined?\nLet\u0026rsquo;s go even deeper.\nMethod #3: Psychographic Targeting Psychographic targeting is choosing a publisher based on their audience\u0026rsquo;s specific values, attitudes, personality, or beliefs.\nExamples:\nPolitical views (Progressive vs. Conservative) Values Hobbies Attitudes Prejudices Demographics can often be a window into the psychographics of your target market (and vice-versa). For example, studies show that wealthier, older folks tend to vote Republican.\nHow would I target based on this information?\nWell, let\u0026rsquo;s take a look at the top advertisers on Newsmax.com, a conservative news site.\nThe top 3 advertisers on Newsmax are:\nGet Test X \u0026ndash; a natural testosterone booster. The Clever Owl \u0026ndash; a native landing page for the \u0026ldquo;Peak Life Prostate\u0026rdquo; supplement. Crown Atlantic \u0026ndash; a retirement planning service. What do all three of these products have in common?\nThey\u0026rsquo;re meant for an older, wealthier audience.\nAnd since older generations tend to be more conservative (according to the political research firm Gallup), then Newsmax.com is likely a very good publisher for these sorts of products/services.\nGet Test X on NewsMax\nIn fact, let\u0026rsquo;s take a look in Adbeat again.\nWe see that Instaflex (a joint health supplement from part 1) has bought ads on LeanRightAmerica.com, another conservative news site similar to Newsmax.\nAnd on the other end of the political spectrum.\nAdvanced Bio Diesel buys ads on MotherJones.com, a large progressive news publisher.\nProgressive policies tend to focus on renewable energy. Biodiesel is one source of renewable energy.\nThis type of targeting can open up completely new sources of traffic that many advertisers don\u0026rsquo;t ever think about.\nLarge publishers like the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, NBC affiliates, etc.\nThese are publishers that can double or even triple your traffic levels overnight.\nYou\u0026rsquo;re going to see amazing results when you can match up the demographics and psychographics of your target market to these larger publishers.\nConclusion You\u0026rsquo;ve seen three types of targeting in today\u0026rsquo;s post. Neither is inherently better than the other, but all three have their place in your display strategy. Anyone who wants to run the most profitable display campaign possible should be testing out variations and combinations of all three targeting strategies.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-to-choose-publishers-advertising-campaigns/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLooking to scale your display campaigns or just see better results in general?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are three basic types of targeting strategies when it comes to scaling your campaigns and picking new publishers and placements:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eContextual\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDemographic\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePsychographic\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll three should be part of your media planning strategy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s post covers these targeting methods in detail.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePlus, you\u0026rsquo;ll see examples of advertisers who know their stuff when it comes to using one or a combination of these methods to scale their campaigns.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How To Choose Profitable Publishers For Your Display Campaigns"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Follow your passion and the money will come.\u0026rdquo;\nEver heard this little tidbit of advice?\nIt\u0026rsquo;s practically become Generation Y\u0026rsquo;s mantra.\nHeck, the media even has a name for it:\n\u0026ldquo;Passion problem\u0026rdquo;.\nWhy is it a problem?\nBecause for every NY Times best selling author, rock star or noveau fashion designer, there are a million others who end up dead broke by following their passion.\nHowever, the internet has made it possible for people to follow their passion in a different way:\nTeaching.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s near impossible to become the next Lebron James or headline Madison Square Garden. It\u0026rsquo;s much easier to teach thousands (maybe even millions) of people how to play the solo from Stairway to Heaven\u0026hellip;\n\u0026hellip;and then sell them $197 online course.\nAs the saying goes, \u0026ldquo;those who can\u0026rsquo;t, teach.\u0026rdquo;\nHow?\nWith info products and Display advertising.\nCan My Passion Really Make Me Money Online? Most info products fit into the \u0026ldquo;Big 3\u0026rdquo; markets:\nLose weight (health) Make money (wealth) Get more sex/meet the person of your dreams (relationships) Read more about info products in our previous post: The Business of Display Part 4: Information Products.\nThis makes sense. Why?\nBecause health, wealth and relationships are the three pillars to living a happy life.\nHowever, what if your passion doesn\u0026rsquo;t fall into one of these categories?\nFear not.\nIn today\u0026rsquo;s post you\u0026rsquo;ll see three businesses in three markets that have zero to do with with money, health or getting it on.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll even see one biblical product you might think would never make one single dollar, yet is likely doing in the high five to six-figures in revenue.\nHow?\nWith a little help from Display advertising.\nCase Study #1: The Dog Training Secret Do you love dogs?\nDo you have experience training a dog\u0026hellip; even if it\u0026rsquo;s your own?\nNow you can share your insights with the world.\nThis is what the folks over at TheDogTrainingSecret.com do. They have a info product called the \u0026ldquo;Hands Off Dog Training System\u0026rdquo;.\nIt appears this product is making them a pretty penny.\nHow do we know this?\nBecause they\u0026rsquo;ve spent over ~$180k on display in the past 6 months:\nThe Funnel Now, this guy isn\u0026rsquo;t Cesar Milan. He\u0026rsquo;s not on Animal Planet. He\u0026rsquo;s not a celeb in any right. He\u0026rsquo;s just a normal guy who happens to know a thing or two about training dogs.\nSo, he can\u0026rsquo;t make sales based on his name or reputation.\nYet, he\u0026rsquo;s seeing success because he\u0026rsquo;s set-up a traditional direct response sales funnel in a relatively uncrowded market.\nFunnel Part #1: Opt-in Page The funnel starts with a simple Leadpages opt-in page. Nothing fancy. Just a video, a bit of information and an opt-in button.\nThis video is very casual. It comes off like he\u0026rsquo;s having a conversation with a friend. There are no special effects. It\u0026rsquo;s not exactly HD quality. It simply explains his method and why you should opt-in.\nThis is a video anyone could make with their iPhone.\nMore importantly, this \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m just like you\u0026rdquo; style is principle #1 of the 6 elements of landing page persuasion. People buy from people they like, and people like folks who are just like them.\nFunnel Part #2: The VSL Once the prospect opts-in, they immediately see an \u0026ldquo;ugly\u0026rdquo; VSL on the next page.\nThe VSL sells their flagship product for $37.\nNow, only a handful of people will buy at this point.\nA good conversion rate from cold traffic tends to hover around 5%.\nYet, remember the part where the prospect opted-in?\nThey can now communicate with them through email. Most of their prospects will buy off the backend.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s the secret behind this sales funnel?\nHonestly, there isn\u0026rsquo;t one.\nThis is your typical sales funnel that most info products business run on cold traffic.\nTheDogTrainingSecret.com didn\u0026rsquo;t reinvent the wheel.\nThis is a sales funnel that is easy for just about anyone to set-up.\nAdvertiser #2: Blues Guitar Unleashed Can you play an instrument?\nHave you ever given private lessons?\nWell, the average price of a private guitar lesson is somewhere between $20 and $40.\nHowever, BluesGuitarUnleashed.com has a suite of digital products that run as high as $197.\nWhat does this mean?\nYou could put together a simple version of a digital product on learning guitar in the time it takes you to give a handful of lessons.\nThe price of one person buying one copy of a $197 would be more than you might make giving 4-5 hours of private lessons.\nThis is precisely what Griff Hamlin \u0026ndash; owner of BluesGuitarUnleashed.com \u0026ndash; does.\nGriff has scaled to the point where he spends ~$3-4k+ per month on Display.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve noticed he\u0026rsquo;s begun to scale his campaigns even further within the past couple of weeks.\nThe Funnel BGU.com uses a funnel very similar to the funnel The Dog Training Secret uses.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s one simple difference, and it has to do with the fact that their flagship product is almost 5x the price.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see what they do instead.\nFunnel Part #1: Opt-in Page Seen this before?\nThat\u0026rsquo;s right \u0026ndash; a simple opt-in page using a Leadpages template.\nHowever, after opt-in you\u0026rsquo;re you\u0026rsquo;re sent to a simple \u0026ldquo;check your email\u0026rdquo; thank you page instead of a sales page. BGU does not go for the immediate sale.\nWhy?\nMy instinct is that a product in the $37 - $47 range could be an impulse purchase.\nSomething that\u0026rsquo;s $97+ might require a more trust building .\nSo, what\u0026rsquo;s next?\nYou guessed it \u0026ndash; Email.\nEmail Marketing + Sales Page Griff sends you a ton of great content.\nFree videos, lessons, the whole shebang.\nHe provides a lot of value upfront and you get to know him as a teacher. You\u0026rsquo;re able to decide if his style is right for you.\nAgain, his emails come off very personal.\nHe includes pictures of himself, his band and gives you a window into his life. This not only builds credibility as it shows he actually performs professionally, but it builds rapport.\nHe shares intimate parts of his life with you. This makes him seem like a real human being as opposed to some sleazy marketer trying to suck another dollar from your wallet.\nHe eventually sends you a link to a long form sales page for his flagship product.\nAgain, there is nothing innovative about this sales funnel.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s simple and easy to set-up \u0026ndash; no point in reinventing the wheel.\nJust take what other info product advertisers are seeing success with and use it as inspiration for your own business.\nAdvertiser #3: Teach Sunday School That\u0026rsquo;s right.\nSunday School meets Display advertising.\nTeachSundaySchool.com sells an info product with games, lesson plans, etc., for Sunday school teachers.\nThis advertiser spends much less than the other advertisers featured in this post.\nHowever, $2,000 - $3,000 per month is a decent spend considering the Sunday School teacher market is much smaller.\nThe lesson here?\nCatering to a tiny audience can work quite well.\nSomeone who is interested in this product will be VERY interested. It will be extremely on-target.\nHowever, it might be harder to scale over the long run as the market is so small.\nThe Funnel Again, similar to The Dog Training Secret and Blues Guitar Unleashed.\nSee a pattern?\nThis simple funnel just plain works.\nFunnel Step #1: Opt-in A simple opt-in form made with \u0026ndash; you guessed it \u0026ndash; Leadpages.\nThese opt-in pages follow a similar formula.\nGive value up front in the form of free emails, videos and/or eBooks and then make the sale.\nFunnel Step #2: Sales Page TSS\u0026rsquo;s product is also priced in the $47 dollar range.\nTherefore, they choose to hit the prospect with a sales page immediately after they opt-in.\nHowever, instead of a VSL, they chose to use a long form sales page.\nCopywriting Lesson: It\u0026rsquo;s Okay To Be Cheesy A lot of copywriting resources talk about writing your copy as if you were talking to someone. What they don\u0026rsquo;t always cover is word choice.\nWhat sort of words, phrases and idioms do Sunday School teachers respond to?\nLet\u0026rsquo;s take a look at the first email you receive when opt-in to TeachSundaySchool.com\u0026rsquo;s list.\n\u0026ndash; Hi Great to meet you! Moments ago, we \u0026ldquo;met\u0026rdquo; when you were searching the web for some Sunday School Bible Games. I want to be certain you found what you were looking for. Below you\u0026rsquo;ll find my online collection of 94 Bible Games: http://www.teachsundayschool.com/biblegames-sl.html I think you\u0026rsquo;ll like them (\u0026amp; so will the kids!) God Bless, Mary-Kate :-) PS- I thought I\u0026rsquo;d take a moment and introduce myself\u0026hellip; My name is Mary-Kate Warner, and I\u0026rsquo;ve spent the last decade figuring out how to be a more effective, creative and de-stressed (lol) Sunday School Teacher. These days, I share my \u0026ldquo;Greatest Hits\u0026rdquo; for making the Bible come alive for kids via my email newsletter. If you are looking for any specific Bible teaching tool, be sure to check out my full resource list here: http://teachsundayschool.com/i/resources/\n\u0026ndash; Notice the language. It\u0026rsquo;s campy. It\u0026rsquo;s cheesy.\nThe copywriter included phrases like \u0026ldquo;we met\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;lol\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;God Bless\u0026rdquo; and a smily at the end.\nThese little details amp up the credibility to your emails.\nWhy? Because corporations don\u0026rsquo;t talk this way.\nPeople do.\nAlso, this the prospects in this demographic are likely female, a bit older and might find this type of language amusing.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t be afraid to use cheesy language in your copy if it\u0026rsquo;s appropriate.\nConclusion Teaching your passion to other folks IS possible. It\u0026rsquo;s not that hard when you follow a proven formula, like these 3 businesses have. Follow their lead and you\u0026rsquo;ll be well on your way to success.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/turn-your-passion-into-a-business-with-display-advertising-3-case-studies/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"passion-meme\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/passion-meme.jpg\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Follow your passion and the money will come.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEver heard this little tidbit of advice?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s practically become Generation Y\u0026rsquo;s mantra.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHeck, the media even has a name for it:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Passion problem\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhy is it a problem?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBecause for every NY Times best selling author, rock star or noveau fashion designer, there are a million others who end up dead broke by following their passion.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, the internet has made it possible for people to follow their passion in a different way:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Turn Your Passion Into an Online Business With Display Advertising (3 Case Studies)"},{"content":"Anyone who runs a SaaS business knows Display advertising can be a tough nut to crack.\nHowever, it can and does work.\nAdbeat founder Mike Colella will show you how.\nWe recently published a guest post on the Kissmetrics blog all about how SaaS advertisers can use Display advertising to drive more revenue and lower churn.\nCheck it out here:\nHow B2B SaaS Companies Can Drive Sales With Display Advertising\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/guest-post-on-kissmetrics-blog-how-b2b-saas-companies-can-drive-sales-with-display-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnyone who runs a SaaS business knows Display advertising can be a tough nut to crack.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, it can and does work.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdbeat founder Mike Colella will show you how.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe recently published a guest post on the Kissmetrics blog all about how SaaS advertisers can use Display advertising to drive more revenue and lower churn.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCheck it out here:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://blog.kissmetrics.com/sales-with-display-advertising/\"\u003eHow B2B SaaS Companies Can Drive Sales With Display Advertising\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Guest Post On Kissmetrics Blog: How B2B SaaS Companies Can Drive Sales With Display Advertising"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s our report for the biggest Display advertisers in Q2 2015. (see Q1 here)\n#1: Zulily.com Background:Zulily is a daily deals clothing site targeted mainly at women. Zulily hit $1.2B in sales in 2014 and shows no signs of slowing down.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $15.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Taboola, Casale Top 3 Publishers: playbuzz.com, blogspot.com, simplyrecipes.com Top Ad: #2: Fidelity.com Background: Fidelity is one of the largest mutual fund and financial service providers in the world.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $10.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, 24/7 Media Top 3 Publishers: msn.com, kiplinger.com, fool.com Top Ad: #3: VerizonWireless.com Background: Verizon Wireless is one of the largest wireless companies in the United States. They advertise on Display with multiple domains. This particular domain sends traffic to landing pages advertising their wireless phone service for small businesses.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $8.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Google, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: moviefone.com, huffingtonpost.com, answers.com Top Ad: #4: HP.com Background: Hewlett-Packard manufactures computers, laptops and other electronic devices/software.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $8.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Turn Top 3 Publishers: wimp.com, reshareworthy.com, ehow.com Top Ad: #5: Chevrolet.com Background: Chevrolet is an American car manufacturer.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $7.2M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Advertising.com, Direct Buy, Google Top 3 Publishers: ehow.com, msn.com, huffingtonpost.com Top Ad: #6: Weebly.com Background: Weebly.com is a web-hosting service that offers a drag-and-drop website builder.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $7.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: survley.com, monster.com, salon.com Top Ad: #7: Lifelock.com Background: Lifelock is an online identity protection service. We covered their Display advertising strategy in detail in a previous blog post.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $3.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: chacha.com, reshareworthy.com, guff.com Top Ad: #8: Amazon.com Background: Amazon.com is the largest eCommerce site in the world.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $3.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, BingAds Top 3 Publishers: yidio.com, goodreads.com, answers.com Top Ad: #9: Norton.com Background: Norton has been one of the biggest distributors and creators of anti-virus software since the beginning of time.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $6.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Conversant, Direct Buy, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: discovery.com, survley.com Top Ad: #10: LowerMyBills.com Background: LowerMyBills is a lead generation advertiser focused on mortgage refinance, auto insurance and life insurance.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $3.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, AOL Sponsored Listings, Outbrain Top 3 Publishers: zimbio.com, leanrightamerica.org, wedmd.com Top Ad: #11: Google.com Background: Google needs no explanation.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, TribalFusion Top 3 Publishers: answers.com, chacha.com, androidcentral.com Top Ad: #12: Answers.com Background: Answers.com is a crowdsourced Q\u0026amp;A platform. It appears they\u0026rsquo;re running large scale ad arbitrage campaigns through Native Ad Networks.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $3.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Outbrain, Taboola, Yahoo Gemini Native Top 3 Publishers: bleacherreport.com, ew.com, radio.com Top Ad: #13: Verizon.com Background: Verizon.com is another domain Verizon uses to advertise their products. This particular domain sends traffic to pages selling their Verizon FiOS internet service.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $5.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Advertising.com, Google, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: aol.com, huffingtonpost.com, yahoo.com Top Ad: #14: BestBuy.com Background: Best Buy is one of the largest online + brick \u0026amp; mortar electronics retailers in the United States.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $5.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: bizrate.com, macrumors.com, petapixel.com Top Ad: #15: TheCrux.com Background: TheCrux.com is a financial news publisher similar to The Motley Fool.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Taboola, Google, Yahoo Gemini Native Top 3 Publishers: yahoo.com, weather.com, go.com Top Ad: #16: AmericanExpress.com Background: American Express sells financial services, specifically credit cards and debit cards.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $4.8M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: msn.com, ebay.com, bankrate.com Top Ad: #17: MLB.com Background: MLB.com is the official site of Major League Baseball.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $4.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Pulsepoint Top 3 Publishers: go.com, livesoccertv.com, yardbarker.com Top Ad: #18: Target.com Background: Target is a large department store and online eCommerce shop.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $4.6M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, MediaMath, Google Top 3 Publishers: babycenter.com, weather.com, cafemom.com Top Ad: #19: LiveCellResearch.com Background: Live Cell Research is a nutraceutical company that specializes in anti-aging supplements. Their two main products are \u0026ldquo;Niagan\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Krill Oil\u0026rdquo;.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $4.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Adblade, rev:content Top 3 Publishers: zimbio.com, tickld.com, answers.com Top Ad: #20: Fool.com Background: Fool.com is the official site of The Motley Fool, a financial news site.\nEstimated Q2 Ad Spend: $4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Taboola, Outbrain, Google Top 3 Publishers: yahoo.com, weather.com, go.com Top Ad: ","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-20-biggest-display-advertisers-of-q2-2015/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s our report for the biggest Display advertisers in Q2 2015. (\u003ca href=\"/top-20-advertisers-of-q1-2015/\" title=\"The 20 Biggest Display Advertisers of Q1 2015\"\u003esee Q1 here\u003c/a\u003e)\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"1-zulilycom\"\u003e#1: Zulily.com\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBackground\u003c/strong\u003e:Zulily is a daily deals clothing site targeted mainly at women. Zulily hit $1.2B in sales in 2014 and shows no signs of slowing down.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimated Q2 Ad Spend\u003c/strong\u003e: $15.8M\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Traffic Sources\u003c/strong\u003e: Google, Taboola, Casale\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTop 3 Publishers\u003c/strong\u003e: playbuzz.com, blogspot.com, simplyrecipes.com\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"topad\"\u003eTop Ad:\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"zulily.com-d46a0041bab76eee4930dc2264c2190e (1)\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/zulily.com-d46a0041bab76eee4930dc2264c2190e-1.jpg\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The 20 Biggest Display Advertisers of Q2 2015"},{"content":" “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” - Charles Caleb Colton\nThe best way to see higher conversions and sales with paid advertising is NOT by using a new, novel approach\u0026hellip;\nIt\u0026rsquo;s to be a copycat.\nSpecifically, look and see which style of ad creatives your competitors and large advertisers outside of your industry use.\nYou’ll notice that most successful advertisers use similar formulas. This can refer to ad copy, colors or even just where they put the image, the copy and the call-to-action.\nNone of this is by chance. Savvy advertisers consistently test different elements until they find one that works.\nYou can piggyback on their efforts by taking what they’ve already discovered to work and using it in your own ads.\nHere are 6 ad creatives that have garnered millions of impressions.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll show you what they did right and wrong.\nPlus, how you can ethically steal their ideas and implement them into your own advertising campaigns.\nAd #1: Zulily Zulily is an eCommerce clothing store and were one of the highest spending Display advertisers in 2014.\nThe Breakdown Green Jacket on the Left Side -- Seasonality aside, they didn’t just randomly pick a jacket to put on their ad creative. They’ve probably tested a few different items/images and discovered the jacket is what leads to the highest CTR/sales. Short Copy on the Right Side -- The copy is short, but to the point. Plus, specific numbers also tend to work well. Using \u0026ldquo;up to 70% off\u0026rdquo;, is more effective than \u0026ldquo;huge discounts\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;great deals\u0026rdquo;. Specificity and numbers are powerful in ad copy. CTA in the bottom right-hand corner -- The green arrow in the right-hand corner does not call out, but it does make you want to click it. They could have added some text or made it stand out a bit more, but this seems to work for Zulily. Brand Logo Above Copy -- The image also contains their logo with a bit of branding, but it\u0026rsquo;s at the very top. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t catch your eye. You might not even notice it once you get into the copy. Bright Green -- The green color of the jacket against the grey background catches your eye. It’s a shade of green that’s pleasing to the eye. It’s nice to look at. Takeaways Test Out Different Items -- If you’re in eCommerce (or selling anything) you’ll want to test out various items. Maybe a jacket works, maybe pants work, maybe a leopard print thong works… who knows? Test out different items and see which one resonates the most with your prospects. Bold colors -- Try to include bright, bold, “happy” colors in your ad creatives. These are the beautiful greens, oranges, blues, purples and reds. Find colors that are pleasant to look at. People like looking and nice colors and like clicking on ads that contain them. Image on the left side -- This isn’t by chance. No doubt Zulily tested placing the product image in different spots. You’ll see later in this post other advertisers are doing the same thing. Test putting the image and copy on the left and right sides. Use Numbers -- It’s tempting to click any ad that says “70% off”. People love deals. But the real power behind this statement is the number. It’s specific. Specificity tends to work better than generality when it comes to copywriting. Ad #2: Western Union The same service your grandfather used to send love telegrams to your grandmother is STILL in business. Only no one sends telegrams anymore \u0026ndash; they send money. Western Union is now one of the biggest online money transfer services.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll notice the structure of Western Union’s ad is similar to the Zulily ad, even though they\u0026rsquo;re in completely different industries.\nThe Breakdown Computer (presumably sending money) on the left side -- Same format as Zulily.Benefit driven copy to the right of the image \u0026ndash; Again, similar to what you saw in Zulily (notice a pattern here?). CTA in the bottom right hand corner -- Again, same as Zulily! The only difference is they chose to use a button with a call-to-action. “Send money now \u0026raquo;” is a great call-to-action. It tells them exactly what they should do on the next page. It’s not a general CTA, like “Get Started Now”, which most companies use. Social proof (4 stars) -- The 4 stars provide social proof. They make you trust the service more. Your eyes gloss over the part about their app being rated 4 stars. Most people will assume the 4 stars refer to Western Union as a whole. Bright Background -- Zulily made the jacket stand out with the pleasant green. Western Union makes the entire ad stand out with a bright yellow background. Takeaways Test Out Proven Formulas -- Zulily and Western Union are advertisers in opposite niches. BUT, they have the exact same ad layout. The reason why? It works! Test it out yourself. Add Social Proof -- The 4 stars add credibility. What kind of social proof can you add to your ad creatives? Maybe you have a testimonial, rating, certification, etc. Social proof is extremely powerful. You should add it in whenever you can. Benefit Driven Copy -- The biggest mistake people make with ad copy is attempting to be clever or cute. Clever and cute ad copy wins advertising awards, but usually doesn’t make many sales. It’s not clear enough and prospects might not understand it. You want to aim for clarity.However, adding a bit of personality isn’t bad. Western Union was able to do this with just the simple headline \u0026ldquo;Send money quick as a click\u0026rdquo;. It rhymes. It’s clever but clear. Advertiser #3: Instant Checkmate One of the many benefits of the internet is the ability to dig up dirt on anyone. Got arrested at one point in your life and would love to forget it? Well, the internet doesn’t forget. One of the best sites to dig up dirt on someone is Instant Checkmate. Instant Checkmate is a background checking service.\nThey spend over $1M/year on display. There must be a lot of digging going on.\nInstant Checkmate is a great example of how to effectively use Google text ads.\nThe Breakdown Powerful Headline -- \u0026ldquo;Arrest Records: 2 Secrets\u0026rdquo;. \u0026ldquo;Arrest\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Secret\u0026rdquo; are powerful words. You’re going to wonder what is going on whenever you see these two words together in a sentence. Who was arrested? What are the two secrets? Symbols \u0026amp; Numbers -- The parentheses and “1)” and “2)” catch your eye. They also make it seem like an easy, two-step process. It tells the user exactly what to do once they click on the ad. It also makes it seem less like an advertisement. Takeaways Power Words -- “Arrest” and “Secret” are both powerful words. They evoke strong emotions in your prospects. “Arrest” and “secret” might not work for most businesses, but each market has its own power words. For example, “glowing skin” is a power word phrase for someone who sells a health and beauty product.. Find the power words for your market and use them in your ad copy. Eye Catching Symbols -- Symbols (even something as simple as parentheses) grab attention. Money signs, ampersands, copyright symbols and numbers work well in display ads. Give Them “Directions” -- Instant Checkmate gives the two step process for using their service. It makes everything seem simpler and acts like a big call-to-action.Can you give directions in your own ad? For example, if you have a SaaS software cloud product, you could test out: “1) Access Your Free Account 2) Back-up Your Precious Data Instantly.” Advertiser #4: Newsmax Media Newsmax is a conservative news media organization. The ad below leads to a lead generation survey regarding Obama’s performance. This is a simple, but powerful ad.\nThe Breakdown Large picture of Obama -- We live in a culture that loves celebrities and the famous. Famous figures can work very well in ads if there is some tie in to the product or landing page. This ad in particular uses the image of a famous figure who is also very controversial for their specific audience. Facial Expression -- The real reason why this ad catches your attention is because of Obama\u0026rsquo;s facial expression. Pursed lips is a sign of distress. Strong facial expressions like anger, sadness, surprise and distress catch your eyes. People will see Obama’s face in this ad and wonder what he’s distressed about. It involves the prospect -- People love to give their opinion. The “Rate Obama” implies they’ll be able to hop up on their own personal soap box and get involved. Republican Red -- Red is not just a bright, attention grabbing color. It’s also the color associated with conservatives and the Republican party. You don’t usually see red and Obama combined. This is more subtle way to grab attention. Takeaways Test Out People -- They don’t need to be famous like Obama, but try testing people vs. objects. Test Out Different Emotions -- Test out different facial expressions. Maybe anger works well. Maybe someone looking really happy works well. Maybe surprise works well. We can’t help but be curious when we see someone displaying some extreme emotion. Involve Your Prospects -- Is there any way you can get your customers to interact with something on your page? They’re more likely to click if there is the implication they’ll be able to get involved in some way. A quiz, survey or game can work very well here. Advertiser #5: LowerMyBills LowerMyBills.com is a lead generator for mortgages, mortgage refinancing, car loans, auto insurance, life insurance and other financial products.\nCrabs and Anchors -- These are strange images that have nothing to do with the product or the copy. They simply catch your attention. People do not associate these objects with loans and mortgage refinance, so they’re going to be curious when they see an ad like this. Selectors -- Selectors are the age ranges shown next to the lobster. These are little “buttons” that allow people to put themselves into a group. It gives them more places to click and gives the appearance that the page they’ll see after is tailored to their age range. Takeaways Test Strange Images -- The crab, anchors and ship wheels follow a nautical theme\u0026hellip; yet LMB has nothing to do with boats! The point of these symbols and images is to get your attention. It might not have to do with your industry… but try it out! You have to be careful with this approach. People don’t like feeling duped – seeing one thing on the ad creative and then seeing another on the landing page might give them that feeling. Test Selectors -- “Tap Your Age”. The whole add with these selectors is like one big CTA. This gives the ad a personalized feel, even though the landing page itself will not be personalized. How can your prospects “group” themselves? Age? Gender? Demographic? A personalized experience is key when it comes to display advertising. Advertiser #6: UTI.edu Universal Technical Institute is a university for people who want to become auto, boat or motorcycle technicians.\nThe Breakdown Woman On The Right-Hand Side -- Attractive women tend to lead to a higher CTR. There is also a connection between biker culture and attractive women. The magazines, the photoshoots, the common belief that women find men on motorcycles attractive, etc. Basic Copy on the Left-Hand Side -- There’s no ‘body copy’ in the ad. It’s just a headline that states exactly what UTI is. No cuteness. No cleverness. Not even an attempt at a \u0026ldquo;creative\u0026rdquo; headline. As famous copywriter Gary Halbert once said, \u0026ldquo;Sometimes you just need to sell the damn thing.\u0026rdquo; Logo in the lower left-hand corner -- Logos tend to build credibility, even when it\u0026rsquo;s for the advertiser themselves. This is a better idea than just having a little bit of text. You look at it and it screams \u0026ldquo;credibility\u0026rdquo;. Although this has to do with the design of the logo, UTI’s logo has the appearance of some sort of certification. Large CTA Button in the right-hand corner -- Again, a large CTA button in the lower right-hand corner. Many other ads use this same exact positioning Takeaways Test out attractive people -- Men. Women. Cute dogs. Whatever applies to your niche. Ads with attractive women tend to work better EVEN if your target audience is women. Men imagine being with the woman, women trust other women. “Just sell it” -- Test out very simple copy. State explicitly what your service is or the benefit the prospect will receive. Test with and without a logo -- Logos (even your own!) can add credibility. UTI’s looks particularly authoritative \u0026ndash; like it could be the “seal of approval” or some sort of Motorcycle Technician University Authority. It’s okay if you have a more modern logo that doesn’t look as authoritative. Still, try testing it in certain positions. Conclusion “You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back.”\nThe best way to see results is not to reinvent the wheel or be a pioneer. You’ll see a lot better results when you use proven formulas. You already know they’re more likely to work for you because it’s worked for someone else, even if it’s outside your industry.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/copy-these-6-ad-creatives-make-more-sales/","summary":"\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”\n- Charles Caleb Colton\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe best way to see higher conversions and sales with paid advertising is NOT by using a new, novel approach\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s to be a copycat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpecifically, look and see which style of ad creatives your competitors and large advertisers outside of your industry use.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou’ll notice that most successful advertisers use similar formulas. This can refer to ad copy, colors or even just where they put the image, the copy and the call-to-action.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Copy These 6 Ad Creatives \u0026 Make More Sales"},{"content":"Everyone knows that there are a few books that are staples in every marketer’s library.\nSome of the more popular books are \u0026quot; Influence\u0026quot; by Cialdini, \u0026quot; The Lean Startup\u0026quot; by Eric, Ries, and various books by Seth Godin.\nThese are all amazing books. You should read each of them multiple times and take notes.\nBut there are a ton of other great books out there that aren\u0026rsquo;t necessarily marketed as business books, or aren\u0026rsquo;t as well-known as \u0026quot; Influence\u0026quot;.\nHere are 7 of our favorite books that you\u0026rsquo;re not going to see on most peoples\u0026rsquo; top 10 lists.\n#1: Meet Your Happy Chemicals: Dopamine, Endorphin, Oxytocin, Serotonin by Loretta Graziano Breuning Your brain is on drugs every second of every day. Those drugs are dopamine, endorphin, oxytocin and serotonin. These are your brain\u0026rsquo;s happy drugs that lead to pleasure, pain reduction and feelings of belonging and self-worth.\nThe search to create more of these drugs is the reason why humans do what they do and buy what they buy. When you understand how these chemicals work, you can start to tailor your marketing strategy towards fulfilling your brain\u0026rsquo;s desire to create more.\n\u0026ldquo;Meet Your Happy Chemicals\u0026rdquo; is a quick read and gives a great overview of how these chemicals work. After you read this you might have some ideas on how to trigger these brain chemicals within your sales funnel.\n#2: Words That Work by Frank Luntz \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s not what you say, it\u0026rsquo;s what people hear.\u0026rdquo;\nWhen you can change the language your prospects use, you change the dialog. You get them on your side. On your level. They become easier to influence. But it\u0026rsquo;s not all about what you say, it\u0026rsquo;s about what they hear and how they interpret it.\nAuthor Frank Lutz was a master speechwriter and advisor for some of the biggest political campaigns of the past 30 years. He helped presidents win elections just by changing a few key words and phrases.\nFrank\u0026rsquo;s book gives great examples that are very specific on how you can change your dialog with your customers to make your marketing campaigns and everyday interactions more effective.\nIf changing a few words can persuade millions of people to vote differently \u0026hellip; what do you think it can do for your marketing campaigns?\n#3: The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do by Clotaire Rapaille \u0026ldquo;When asked direct questions about their interests and preferences, people tend to give answers they believe the questioner wants to hear.\u0026rdquo;\nWhy do Americans associate cheese with DEATH? Why do the French associate cheese with LIFE? Why do Americans overwork themselves? Why are we obsessed with \u0026ldquo;keeping up with the Jones\u0026rsquo;?\u0026rdquo;\nAll of these things that make us all slightly different are due to the \u0026quot; silent codes\u0026quot; present in all cultures. These codes influence what we buy, why we buy it, and how we make daily decisions.\nKnowing the codes and why we do what we do is important behind any marketing strategy.\n#4: The System Club Letters - 57 Big Ideas to Transform Your Business and Your Life by Ken McCarthy Ken McCarthy is considered one of the first internet marketers, dating all the way back to 1995. This book is a compilation of 57 business and marketing lessons that were originally sent as private letters to his \u0026ldquo;System Club\u0026rdquo;.\nSome of these letters are a bit dated, but the techniques and concepts explained still apply today. It\u0026rsquo;s a short, fun read that most people would get some use out of.\n#5: Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson “The most we can hope for is to create the best possible conditions for success, then let go of the outcome. The ride is a lot more fun that way.”\nPhil Jackson is a retired NBA coach who has won 13 NBA championships (11 when this book was published) in multiple cities. He coached Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O\u0026rsquo;Neil and dozens of other NBA stars with massive egos.\nUnlike many NBA coaches, Phil wasn\u0026rsquo;t an aggressive, overbearing control-freak. He led by giving up control. He encouraged others to take on their own leadership role within the organization.This allowed him to take a more \u0026ldquo;hands off\u0026rdquo; coaching approach while still building championship teams.\nHe explains the strategy behind his success in Eleven Rings. Being an NBA coach is a lot like being a manager, entrepreneur or business owner. This is a great book for anyone looking for a better way to manage employee and personal relationships.\n#6: Great Leads: The Six Easiest Ways to Start Any Sales Message by Michael Masterson \u0026amp; John Forde This one copywriting book is quickly moving from the known to the unknown, but it\u0026rsquo;s a goody. Much of a previous blog post on customer awareness was based off the lessons learned in this book. The main idea is that the opening of your content is THE MOST important part of your sales message.\nGreat Leads focuses on your customer\u0026rsquo;s awareness level. If you\u0026rsquo;re not tailoring your message to the stage your customer is in, there\u0026rsquo;s little chance you\u0026rsquo;ll make the sale. The lessons learned from this 90 page book might change the way you think about copywriting and marketing in general.\n#7: The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation by Drew Westen Political analysts and advisors are masters of persuasion, image, branding and creating a candidate that wins elections. One of the key takeaways is that people don\u0026rsquo;t vote on issues, they vote on values. This book is an amazing look at the reason why people vote a certain way even when it\u0026rsquo;s not in their best interest.\nWarning: This book is not bipartisan. However, there are a ton of golden nuggets in it if you can keep an open mind.\nConclusion Got any favorites? Write them in the comments below!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/7-sales-marketing-strategy-books-youve-probably-never-read/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEveryone knows that there are a few books that are staples in every marketer’s library.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome of the more popular books are \u0026quot; \u003cem\u003eInfluence\u003c/em\u003e\u0026quot; by Cialdini, \u0026quot; \u003cem\u003eThe Lean Startup\u003c/em\u003e\u0026quot; by Eric, Ries, and various books by Seth Godin.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese are all amazing books. You should read each of them multiple times and take notes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut there are a ton of other great books out there that aren\u0026rsquo;t necessarily marketed as business books, or aren\u0026rsquo;t as well-known as \u0026quot; \u003cem\u003eInfluence\u0026quot;\u003c/em\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"7 \"Sales \u0026amp; Marketing\" Strategy Books You've Probably Never Read"},{"content":"We’ve written in the past about Native Ad Networks (also known as “ Content Discovery Networks“) and how large advertisers are allocating portions of their ad spend to networks like Taboola and Outbrain.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve also written about how they\u0026rsquo;ve been switching over to pre sell pages from traditional sales letter, VSL and opt-in pages.\nOne of the benefits to using a landing page in this style is that you don\u0026rsquo;t have to be an expert copywriter to put together an effective page. That\u0026rsquo;s why we want to go a little more in-depth into the specific copy being shown on these landing pages.\nIn today\u0026rsquo;s post you\u0026rsquo;ll find breakdowns for 3 different landing pages from different advertisers.\nEach page is broken down into 4 separate sections:\nThe Headline - Get their attention. The Lead - Get them interested enough to read the body copy. The Body - Make them desire what you\u0026rsquo;re offering. The Close - Close it out and get them to take the next step. Advertiser #1: DermStore DermStore is an eCommerce store that sells women\u0026rsquo;s makeup and skin care products.\nTheir top ad is a simple picture of a nice looking eyebrow with a tiny bit of text.\nThe “Ditch The Pencil And Try This” part of the copy is powerful because many women use a pencil to style their eyebrows. This makes them curious to find out why they should ditch their pencil and what they should use instead.\nThe landing page looks like a traditional blog post with beauty tips.\nThe goal of the page is to get the user to click through to DermStore\u0026rsquo;s shop and purchase Smartbrow, \u0026ldquo;a tinted, semi-permanent brow gel with hair-like fibers\u0026rdquo;.\nThe Headline Anti-Aging Tips for Thinning Eyebrows\nThe headline is written as if it was the headline of a normal blog post. The \u0026ldquo;tips\u0026rdquo; in the headline make it appear less like a pre sell page.\nThe baby boomer generation has created a large demand for anti aging products and supplements. Any articles with tips on how to slow down the aging process will be quite compelling.\nThe Lead When we think about aging, the first thing that comes to mind is wrinkles. But there’s another issue that we often ignore, one that adds years to our age even way before our first wrinkle appears: thinning eyebrows.\nThis lead addresses a different issue that most people aren\u0026rsquo;t necessarily thinking about when it comes to aging: eyebrows. Pointing out that your eyebrows \u0026ldquo;age you\u0026rdquo; faster than wrinkles is huge. This one statement makes you want to read the rest of the article and learn what to do about it.\nThe Body The body copy gives three specific tips:\n\u0026ldquo;1. Put the Tweezers Down\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;2. Shape Accordingly\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;3. Forget Pencils and Shadows\u0026rdquo;.\nThese tips follow through on the promise made in the headline.\nYet, they\u0026rsquo;re written in a way that you can\u0026rsquo;t solve your eyebrow issues just by reading these tips alone. These tips don\u0026rsquo;t give specific how-to information. It tells you what you should NOT be doing, yet they don\u0026rsquo;t say exactly what you should do. The body copy\u0026rsquo;s goal is to convince the prospect that tweezers, shaping and pencils are not important. The REAL solution is the product.\nThe Close The final call-to-action has a simple line that says \u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;it\u0026rsquo;s the most economical solution to thinning eyebrows that we\u0026rsquo;re aware of.\u0026rdquo;\nThe \u0026ldquo;that we\u0026rsquo;re aware of\u0026rdquo; part tones down the close a bit. News stories and blog articles are not written in a hard selling style. Blog posts like these are usually written as a recommendation, not the \u0026ldquo;BUY THIS NOW!\u0026rdquo; style.\nAdvertiser #2: QuiBids QuiBids.com is one of the largest penny auction websites operating in the United States.\nWhat is a \u0026ldquo;penny auction\u0026rdquo;? Participants pay a non-refundable fee to place each bid. You can usually only bid a penny at a time. The fee to place the penny bid is higher than a penny (usually around $1.00). The auction ends quickly and the last person to bid wins the product and pays the final price. The price might be lower than the retail price of the product \u0026ndash; it might not be. QuiBids makes money by collecting fees for the bids and receiving the payment for the winning product. Both will usually total more than the price QuiBids paid for the product.\nAlthough QuiBids auctions off a wide variety of items, they use golf products in their ads.\nLesson here?\nAny online store that sells various products should test different items in their ads + landing pages to determine which product gets the highest response. QuiBids probably tests multiple items and then runs ads with the products that resonate best with their prospects.\nThis native ad was featured on a website called Lifefactopia. This site is like an \u0026ldquo;advertorial portal\u0026rdquo;. It\u0026rsquo;s designed to look like an organic blog, but it contains mostly advertorials. This builds trust since the information appears to be coming from a third party.\nThe Headline Pay Just Pennies For Brand-New Products\nThis is a simple \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rsquo;re going to save a lot of money\u0026rdquo; headline. Yet, it\u0026rsquo;s a bit different. \u0026ldquo;Pay Just Pennies\u0026rdquo; works well because it\u0026rsquo;s specific. It creates imagery in your mind. Specificity is very powerful. That\u0026rsquo;s why you see numbers and phrases in ads.\nA headline like, \u0026quot; Save Big on Brand-New Products\u0026quot; might not be as effective. \u0026ldquo;Save big\u0026rdquo; isn\u0026rsquo;t specific. \u0026ldquo;Pay Just Pennies\u0026rdquo; is. You can almost imagine yourself paying for an iPad with a handful of pennies.\nThe Lead While every online shop tries to offer thrilling deals that will save you money, very few can actually make good on their claims, and even fewer can guarantee that you\u0026rsquo;ll have fun doing it.\nThis first line builds curiosity and makes the prospect agree with you. Everyone knows a lot of \u0026ldquo;deals\u0026rdquo; online are actually not deals at all. It makes the prospect assume they\u0026rsquo;re about to read about a site that will actually give them great bargains.\nWell, the deals are still out there, and many are scooping them up from a new online auction website called QuiBids that’s figured out how to sell all the must-have products for prices that are so jaw dropping, you\u0026rsquo;ll find them hard to believe.\nThis copy is pretty hypey. The use of words like \u0026ldquo;jaw dropping\u0026rdquo; might start to amp up the doubts in the prospect\u0026rsquo;s mind.\nThe Body Copy When you make bold claims in the copy you\u0026rsquo;ll either need to show evidence/studies or add in specific copy that brings it down to earth. One of the best ways to do that is to address that you\u0026rsquo;ve made big claims in the copy. For example, this line\u0026hellip;\nWith such great prices, it’s natural to be skeptical – so we did some research to learn exactly how they do it\u0026quot;\n\u0026hellip;admits what they previously mentioned is difficult to believe. This helps the prospect place more faith in what they\u0026rsquo;re saying since they address one glaring point. This, combined with the third-party news story, makes it more believable.\nThen they go on to explain how it works. This is basically giving the prospect directions on how to use the service.\nThe Close Another way to bring the hypey claims back down to Earth:\n\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;ll typically pay more than what you bid, but not by much\u0026rdquo;.\nThey don\u0026rsquo;t tell you that you\u0026rsquo;ll get the best deal you\u0026rsquo;ve ever seen. They amp up the believability factor by mentioning that the deal won\u0026rsquo;t be as good as it might appear, but you\u0026rsquo;ll still save 75% off retail. Most people would be okay with 75% off.\nHowever, their final close makes much bolder claims:\nSo, if you want a clever way to save up to 95% on products such as a Samsung Smart LED HDTV for $19.90, a New iPhone 6 for $61.31 or a TaylorMade AeroBurner Fairway Woods for $10.41, check out QuiBids today.\nClick here to see what products are selling on QuiBids right now.\nNo one would complain about getting an LCD TV for just $20 bucks. It\u0026rsquo;s a bold claim, and all the copy leading up to this has to be very convincing.\nAdvertiser #3: NewRetirement.com NewRetirement.com gives information on how to manage and stretch your finances after retirement.\nThis offer focuses on their reverse mortgage lead generation service.\nThe ads are very simple, \u0026ldquo;AARP\u0026rdquo; style ads with images of older women who have aged well. The most seen ad on the right has a simple \u0026quot; The Downsides of a Reverse Mortgage\u0026quot; headline. The other less seen ad asks a question in the headline.\nReverse mortgages tend to be quite popular for cash-strapped seniors. This \u0026ldquo;article\u0026rdquo; outlines the pros ad cons.\nThe landing page is longer than the other pages in this blog post. It\u0026rsquo;s almost like a long-form sales letter in some ways. They\u0026rsquo;re probably using a longer landing page because the prospect needs more information in order to make an informed decision. Getting a reverse mortgage is a huge financial decision that has many potential repercussions.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s not like buying a set of golf clubs or grooming your eyebrows.\nThe Headline Straight forward \u0026ldquo;Pros and Cons\u0026rdquo; style blog article headline.\nReverse Mortgage Disadvantages and Advantages Your Guide to Reverse Mortgage Pros and Cons\nEven though they do lead generation for reverse mortgages and make money when people do so, they tell you why you shouldn\u0026rsquo;t get a mortgage.\nThis is a great strategy no matter what product you\u0026rsquo;re selling. Your copy instantly becomes more credible when you admit its shortcomings. People are more likely to trust someone when they admit their faults as opposed to when they focus on the good.\nThe Lead The beginning paragraphs describe the pitfalls most people don\u0026rsquo;t consider when it comes to getting a reverse mortgage. This provides credibility to the service because they don\u0026rsquo;t say this is the best, safest mortgage out there. In fact, they say the opposite.\nFor many people, a Reverse Home Mortgage is a good way to increase their financial profile in retirement - positively affecting their quality of life. And while there are numerous benefits to the product, there are also some drawbacks.\nReverse Mortgages are providing improved financial security, a better lifestyle and real financial relief to thousands of older Americans. However, there are some disadvantages.\nThen they go on to list 3 disadvantages of getting a reverse mortgage. Again, this is to build up credibility by admitting that they do have their shortcomings.\nThe Body Yet, later on in the copy they mention:\nMany experts shunned the product early on thinking that it was a bad deal for seniors – but as they have learned about the details of Reverse Mortgages, experts are now embracing it as a valuable financial planning tool.\nThis is almost like a complete turnaround from what they originally said. They admitted the disadvantages, but now the \u0026ldquo;experts\u0026rdquo; have changed their opinion on the reverse mortgage.\nThe prospect is presented with a laundry list of reasons why reverse mortgages are beneficial for seniors. This is almost like the \u0026ldquo;bullets\u0026rdquo; of a long-form sales letter. They write one main benefit and bold it. Then they follow-up with a more detailed explanation of each bullet.\nThe bolding of the main benefit is important because people don\u0026rsquo;t read \u0026ndash; they scan. Using bullets is a great way to make sure they see the main benefits.\nThe Close They include another section to eliminate people who are not right for a reverse mortgages. This adds further credibility to the article.\nAnd one last push\u0026hellip;\nStudies indicate that more than 90 percent of all households who have secured a Reverse Mortgage are extremely happy that they got the loan. People say that they have less stress and feel freer to live the life they want.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s great to add specific numbers, studies and proof to back up your claims. Yet, they didn\u0026rsquo;t really do this here. They could amp up the believability even more if they wrote something like, \u0026ldquo;A study in The Journal Of Senior Finance shows that 90% of households who have secured a Reverse Mortgage are extremely happy they got the loan\u0026rdquo;.\nExtras NewRetirement has placed a floating box where prospects can enter their phone number and a NewRetirement representative will call them. Very, very smart.\nWhy?\nOlder people often prefer to talk things out over the phone.\nThey\u0026rsquo;re making it easier for the people in their target demographic to \u0026ldquo;opt-in\u0026rdquo;.\nConclusion Native Ad landing pages are an easy way to test out a new style of landing page that is working very well. The insights in this post should get you well on your way.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-to-write-a-native-ad-landing-page-3-case-studies/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe’ve written in the past about Native Ad Networks (also known as “ \u003ca href=\"/the-1-traffic-source-youre-not-using-content-discovery-networks/\" title=\"The #1 Traffic Source You’re NOT Using: Content Discovery Networks\"\u003eContent Discovery Networks\u003c/a\u003e“) and how large advertisers are allocating portions of their ad spend to networks like Taboola and Outbrain.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve also written about how they\u0026rsquo;ve been switching over to \u003ca href=\"/pre-sell-landing-pages/\" title=\"[VIDEO] Convert More Paid Traffic With a “Pre Sell” Landing Page\"\u003epre sell pages\u003c/a\u003e from traditional sales letter, VSL and opt-in pages.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How To Write a Native Ad Landing Page (3 Case Studies)"},{"content":"The least effective way to A/B test ad creatives \u0026ndash; and how most people do it \u0026ndash; is by guessing.\nThey change a color here, switch a picture there, try out a new tagline\u0026hellip; but it\u0026rsquo;s all done randomly and with little direction.\nThe better way to test is to see what your competitors and other large advertisers are doing. What colors, layouts, elements and copy are they testing? Which ads have been seen more often? Which ads have they stopped running due to being ineffective?\nThis is where competitive intelligence comes in.\nIn this blog post, we\u0026rsquo;ve taken ads from 7 different advertisers and broken down 3-4 different ad creatives they\u0026rsquo;ve been testing. At the end of each section, the \u0026ldquo;winning\u0026rdquo; ad will be revealed.\nYou can use these tests below as inspiration for designing your own split tests.\nHow We Determine Winners Most major display advertisers are hesitant about sharing results or strategies when it comes to display. That\u0026rsquo;s why we created Adbeat.\nUsing Adbeat, we determined winners by choosing the ad with the highest ad spend and two other important factors: whether or not the ad had a stable or rising trend line and how long the ad has been seen. (When you start to see an ad trending downward, that\u0026rsquo;s a good indication that this specific ad has started to burn out.)\nAdbeat lets us see all of this data easily. Here\u0026rsquo;s what that looks like:\nHarry\u0026rsquo;s The color scheme of an ad can make a big difference when it comes to performance.\nHarry\u0026rsquo;s is a mail order razor blade company. They\u0026rsquo;ve tested a couple of different pieces of copy, but it seems like the headline \u0026ldquo;Should an 8-pack of quality blades really cost $32?\u0026rdquo; is working the best.\nThey tested this tagline with various color schemes.\nWhich color scheme do you think worked the best?\nWinner(s): A and B!\nHarry\u0026rsquo;s stopped running ads C and D a few months back.\nYet, the white, tiled background and the orange background are still being run. Probably because they are a bit cleaner and are more pleasing to look at. Bright, pleasant colors tend to work well in ads.\nNice to look at = nice to click on.\nITT Tech Text display ads are still effective, especially on the Google Display Network.\nITT Tech chooses to only use their brand name in the headline.\nHowever, they use 3 different angles in the body copy.\nAngle #1: \u0026ldquo;Education for the future\u0026rdquo; Angle #2: Lists the specific types of degrees and has a call to action Angle #3: Touts the number of locations and has a call-to-action to get a free brochure. Most people always say things like you must have a call-to-action to see the best results.\nBut is this true?\n2 of the top 3 ITT tech ads have calls-to-action and one of them doesn\u0026rsquo;t.\nWhich one has been their best performer?\nThe Winner: A!\n\u0026ldquo;Tech Oriented Degree Programs. Education For The Future\u0026rdquo;.\nThe ad without the call-to-action has been their most seen ad. This specific ad might work because it\u0026rsquo;s very simple and specific. They say exactly what they offer, which are \u0026ldquo;Tech Oriented Degree Programs\u0026rdquo;. The other most seen ad that lists the degrees is also very specific, but it just says \u0026ldquo;degrees\u0026rdquo; not \u0026ldquo;tech degrees\u0026rdquo;.\nNotice that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a call-to-action at the end.\nYou should test out ads that have CTAs and ads that don\u0026rsquo;t have CTAs. You might be surprised to find out that one of them works better than the other. Sometimes one of the best A/B tests is to break the copywriting rules.\nGCU Occasionally the best strategy is to just try a bunch of different layouts, pieces of copy, images, and call-to-action buttons.\nGrand Canyon University is testing 4 very different looking ads with different positioning, images, and call-to-action placements.\nAll of them are actually doing pretty well, but which one do you think is getting the most impressions?\nThe Winner: B!\nPictures of people \u0026ndash; especially women \u0026ndash; tend to work well in ads.\nAd creative C also has a picture of a woman, but there\u0026rsquo;s a few reasons why it might not be working as well.\nThe font, background, and design on ad creative D is a bit more sleek. It also has the call-to-action button in the right hand corner. When you look at the ad, you first see the women, then you read the copy, then your eyes end on the yellow call-to-action in the right hand corner. Since you\u0026rsquo;ve read the copy, you now need \u0026ldquo;something to do\u0026rdquo;, which is click through to the landing page. This is one reason why many advertisers choose to place their calls-to-action in this bottom right hand position.\nForbes Forbes is making great use of traffic from Native Ad Networks like Taboola and Outbrain to drive ad revenue and page views.\nThese four ads link to the same article that lists the top 20 highest-paid athletes in the world. Each ad is being tested with a picture of a different athlete and with a different headline.\nFloyd Mayweather appears twice, but did he win this ad competition?\nThe Winner: A!\nAd creative A likely won because Floyd Mayweather has been in the news lately due to his recent fight against Manny Pacquiao. He\u0026rsquo;s someone who is on the general public\u0026rsquo;s mind.\nFloyd\u0026rsquo;s case is also special because many people know he received an absurd amount of money for the Pacquiao fight. It\u0026rsquo;s highly relevant to the article and photo, which is why the headline that specifically mentioned Floyd likely works the best.\nCarbonite Carbonite is a cloud backup solution who is also testing out different color schemes.\nNote that the ads are very simple. There\u0026rsquo;s just a bit of text that offers a bonus, Carbonite\u0026rsquo;s logo, and the \u0026ldquo;Buy Now!\u0026rdquo; button.\nYour ads don\u0026rsquo;t need to be complicated for them to work.\nSo which creative won?\nThe Winner: B!\nThis one I\u0026rsquo;m not too sure about.\nI would have guessed the first ad would win because the color scheme looks a bit nicer. The icon on the left-hand side also adds a nice touch.\nOn the other had, black and white might not work on some websites since it tends to get lost among the content.\nI think ad B won over ad C because the green is a bit ugly. The purple is a bit more pleasant to look at.\nNorton Norton has been in business for as long as I can remember and they are still releasing software. They just launched a new piece of software called Norton Security.\nThe first two ads are very similar.\nThe only difference is one has a guarantee logo and the other has an icon of a computer, tablet and phone.\nAds C and D are more \u0026ldquo;branding\u0026rdquo; style and focus on Norton\u0026rsquo;s reputation\nDoes branding beat benefits?\nThe Winner: A! (But B was close behind).\nBoth of these ads were run much longer than ads C \u0026amp; D. My instinct is the benefit driven headline (\u0026ldquo;Your Digital Life Secured. Guaranteed\u0026rdquo;) is more compelling and clearer than the headlines on the bottom two ads. People don\u0026rsquo;t care about Norton\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;promises\u0026rdquo;. They care about protecting their data.\nAd creative A likely beat out ad creative B due to the guarantee symbol. This is a much better use of space than an icon with various devices, which your eyes completely gloss over.\nThe guarantee logo in ad creative A looks like a seal of approval.\nIt builds trust, which is important when you sell software to protect peoples\u0026rsquo; precious data.\nNRA Any time you\u0026rsquo;re giving something away for free \u0026ndash; whether that\u0026rsquo;s a bonus for joining, for giving up their email or anything else \u0026ndash; different \u0026ldquo;bribes\u0026rdquo; are going to work better.\nNRA has tested a few free gifts.\nTwo of these ads are doing amazing. Two have been retired.\nWhich one is it?\nThe Winner: B!\nThe duffel bag and the knife have been the most successful free offers for the NRA. The items themselves are more compelling and the images catch your eye a bit more. They\u0026rsquo;ve also tested an ad with a black duffel bag:\nBut that doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem to be working as well as the camo duffel bag ad. The lesson here is to test a bunch of different bribes, then test different versions of the most successful bribe.\nConclusion There\u0026rsquo;s a ton of stuff that can be tested, but it\u0026rsquo;s best to not reinvent the wheel. See what other advertisers are testing and design your tests based off of their insights. It\u0026rsquo;s the easier, quicker. more economical way to test your ad creatives and see better results with paid traffic.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-7-pro-advertisers-split-test-ad-creatives/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe least effective way to A/B test ad creatives \u0026ndash; and how most people do it \u0026ndash; is by guessing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey change a color here, switch a picture there, try out a new tagline\u0026hellip; but it\u0026rsquo;s all done randomly and with little direction.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe better way to test is to see what your competitors and other large advertisers are doing. What colors, layouts, elements and copy are they testing? Which ads have been seen more often? Which ads have they stopped running due to being ineffective?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How 7 Pro Advertisers Split Test Ad Creatives"},{"content":"People ask us what other traffic sources are out there besides Google Adwords.\nBelow you\u0026rsquo;ll find a list of 76 of them.\nThe list spans various network types, from Native Ad Networks (like Taboola and Outbrain) to mobile networks (MoPub). It also includes a few niche networks that target the wealthy, prospects interested in fashion, female bloggers, etc.\nThis list is perfect for anyone in any niche who wants to scale their campaigns beyond Google.\nBingAds http://bingads.com\nContentAd https://www.content.ad/\nOutbrain http://outbrain.com\nrev:content https://www.revcontent.com/\nTaboola http://taboola.com\nYahoo Gemini Native https://gemini.yahoo.com/advertiser/home\n24/7 Media http://www.247media.fr/en-us/\nAccuen Media OMG http://www.accuenmedia.com/\nAd4Game http://www.ad4game.com/\nAdblade http://adblade.com\nAdhere https://ppc.adhere.marchex.com/\nAdition http://www.adition.com/en/\nAdJuggler http://www.adjuggler.com/\nAdMeld http://www.admeld.com/\nAdMeta http://www.admeta.com/\nAdRiver http://www.adriver.ru/\nAdRoll http://adroll.com\nAdtegrity https://www.adtegrity.com/\nAdvertisingCom http://advertising.com\namobee http://www.amobee.com/\nAppNexus http://appnexus.com\nBanner Connect http://www.bannerconnect.net/\nBidvertiser http://www.bidvertiser.com/\nBimlocal Ad Network http://www.bimlocal.com/\nBlogAds http://web.blogads.com/\nBlogher http://www.blogher.com/marketplace/opportunities/publishing-network\nBurst Media http://www.burstmedia.com/\nBuySellAds http://buysellads.com\nCasale http://www.casalemedia.com/\nChitika https://www.chitika.com/\nClicksor http://www.clicksor.com/\nCollective http://collective.com\nCJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction) http://cj.com\nConversant http://www.conversantmedia.com/\nCoxDigital http://www.coxmedia.com/products-and-services/online/cox-digital-ad-network-solutions.aspx\nCPM Star https://www.cpmstar.com/\nCPXi http://www.cpxi.com/\nCriteo http://www.criteo.com/\nDSNR Media Group http://dsnrmg.com/\nEngageBDR http://engagebdr.com/\nFederatedMedia http://www.federatedmedia.net/\nInPowered http://www.inpwrd.com/\nLigatus http://www.ligatus.com/\nLucidMedia http://areyoulucid.com/\nMartini Network http://martinimediainc.com/ Matomy Media http://www.matomy.com/\nMedia Innovation Group http://www.themig.com/en-us/\nMediaMath http://www.mediamath.com/\nMediaNet http://www.mndigital.com/\nMode Media http://www.modemediacorp.com/\nMoPub http://mopub.com\nNewstogram http://www.newstogram.com/\nNexage http://www.nexage.com/\nOpenX http://openx.com/\nProject Wonderful https://www.projectwonderful.com/\nPubmatic Pulse 360 http://www.pulse360.com/\nPulsePoint http://www.pulsepoint.com/\nRadium One https://radiumone.com/\nRakuten LinkShare http://marketing.rakuten.com/affiliate-marketing\nRocketFuel http://rocketfuel.com/\nRubicon Simplifi https://www.simpli.fi/\nSiteScout http://www.sitescout.com/\nSmartAdserver http://smartadserver.es/\nsovrn http://www.sovrn.com/\nSpecific Media http://specificmedia.com/\nAOL Sponsored Listings http://www.sl.advertising.com/\nTapad http://tapad.com\nTechnorati http://technorati.com/\nTheTradeDesk http://www.thetradedesk.com/\nTradedoubler http://www.tradedoubler.com/\nTribalFusion https://www.tribalfusion.com/SmartAdvertisers/\nTurn http://www.turn.com/\nUndertone http://www.undertone.com/\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/76-traffic-sources-that-arent-google/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePeople ask us what other traffic sources are out there besides Google Adwords.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBelow you\u0026rsquo;ll find a list of 76 of them.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe list spans various network types, from Native Ad Networks (like Taboola and Outbrain) to mobile networks (MoPub). It also includes a few niche networks that target the wealthy, prospects interested in fashion, female bloggers, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis list is perfect for anyone in any niche who wants to scale their campaigns beyond Google.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"76 Traffic Sources That Aren't Google Adwords"},{"content":"Interested in seeing how a $10M+/year B2C SaaS company drives leads and sales on Display?\nCheck out today\u0026rsquo;s Sales Funnel Breakdown on identity theft protection software LifeLock.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/lifelock/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eInterested in seeing how a $10M+/year B2C SaaS company drives leads and sales on Display?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCheck out today\u0026rsquo;s Sales Funnel Breakdown on identity theft protection software \u003ca href=\"http://lifelock.com\"\u003eLifeLock\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n      \u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/dkifl3L3u5I?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n    \u003c/div\u003e","title":"[VIDEO] Sales Funnel Breakdown: LifeLock"},{"content":"A bunch of people have wrote in asking for a breakdown of the sales funnels for advertisers in what is probably THE MOST competitive niche out there\u0026hellip;\nWeight loss.\nAsk and ye shall receive.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve recorded a quick 9 minute video that breaks down the advertising strategies for 3 different advertisers.\nOne advertiser is a nutracetical targeted at an older generation\u0026hellip; another is a community targeted at women in the 30-50 age range\u0026hellip; and the last is another nutraceutical company that uses fear of the \u0026ldquo;american parasite\u0026rdquo; to convince prospects to buy.\nThere are a lot of great tips/tricks you can apply to your campaigns\u0026hellip; even if you\u0026rsquo;re not in weight loss or think their tactics are \u0026ldquo;scammy\u0026rdquo;.\nCheck it out:\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/video-weight-loss-advertisers/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA bunch of people have wrote in asking for a breakdown of the sales funnels for advertisers in what is probably THE MOST competitive niche out there\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWeight loss.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAsk and ye shall receive.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ve recorded a quick 9 minute video that breaks down the advertising strategies for 3 different advertisers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne advertiser is a nutracetical targeted at an older generation\u0026hellip; another is a community targeted at women in the 30-50 age range\u0026hellip; and the last is another nutraceutical company that uses \u003cstrong\u003efear of the \u0026ldquo;american parasite\u0026rdquo;\u003c/strong\u003e to convince prospects to buy.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"[VIDEO] Sales Funnel Breakdown: Weight Loss Advertisers"},{"content":"Quiz Landing Pages were one of the biggest trends in 2014 and have continued strong so far this year. From personal experience, they tend to work very well. Anyone interested in testing out a new type of landing page should definitely check out the video below.\nToday\u0026rsquo;s video shows you how these pages work, why they work, plus gives you a few great examples of Display advertisers who use them.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/video-quiz-landing-pages/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQuiz Landing Pages were one of the biggest trends in 2014 and have continued strong so far this year. From personal experience, they tend to work very well. Anyone interested in testing out a new type of landing page should definitely check out the video below.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s video shows you how these pages work, why they work, plus gives you a few great examples of Display advertisers who use them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"[VIDEO] Quiz Landing Pages: Best For Cold Traffic?"},{"content":"Tired of hearing how important mobile is?\n\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;ve got to have a mobile strategy!\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re missing out if you\u0026rsquo;re not \u0026ldquo;on\u0026rdquo; mobile!\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Mobile advertising spend increased by 123% in 2014 and is rapidly rising!\u0026rdquo;\nMobile is becoming more and more important, especially with paid traffic. You might be missing out on some amazing traffic if you haven\u0026rsquo;t expanded your advertising campaigns out to mobile devices.\nNow, perhaps you already have a mobile strategy. However, you might not be taking advantage of the true power of Display on mobile. Having a mobile strategy and a mobile strategy that\u0026rsquo;s already proven to work are two very different things.\nIn today\u0026rsquo;s post\u0026hellip;\nWe\u0026rsquo;ll reveal the mobile strategies of 3 different Display advertisers in 3 different niches. You\u0026rsquo;ll see their best ad networks, publishers, ad creatives, landing pages and more.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll see how they\u0026rsquo;re using mobile Display traffic to grow past the $1M+ dollar mark. Plus, you\u0026rsquo;ll see how you can take their insights and implement them in your own campaigns.\nAdvertiser #1: PressroomVIP.com PressroomVIP is a celebrity gossip ad arbitrage site. They buy cheap traffic and make money off of ad clicks. They\u0026rsquo;re one of the largest mobile ad arbitrage advertisers at the moment, so they\u0026rsquo;re worth paying attention to.\nWant to learn more about ad arbitrage on Display advertising? Check out our previous blog post: The Business of Display Part 2: Viral Quiz Sites and Click Arbitrage\nAd Spend/Networks Ad arbitrage is all about buying low and selling high. Most sites like PressroomVIP buy ads on Native Ad networks (Outbrain, Taboola, ContentAd, etc.) and place ads from networks with large payouts like Google Adsense.\nThe graph above shows PressroomVIP follows this strategy to a T. They buy 90% of their traffic from Native Ad networks. Taboola, Outbrain, rev:content, ContentAd and Yahoo Gemini are all native ad networks.\nAd Creatives PressroomVIP has tested over 5,000 different ad creatives in the past 90 days.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve spent the most on these two:\nAd #1: Celebrity + Curiosity This ad has a picture of a celebrity that most people would assume is not black. Yet, the headline states the opposite, piquing their curiosity. This ad might also be doing well because the topic of race in general is something that appears quite a bit in the news and is on everyone\u0026rsquo;s mind. The use of recent trends in your ad copy, blog posts and landing pages is a great way to get people\u0026rsquo;s attention. You\u0026rsquo;re \u0026ldquo;entering the conversation already going on inside their mind\u0026rdquo;.\nAd #2: From Innocent to Wild The US public obsesses over celebrities who were once \u0026ldquo;innocent\u0026rdquo; but have now grown up and turned \u0026ldquo;bad\u0026rdquo;. News outlets and gossip rags are always judging former Disney stars. How many times do you see Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Selena Gomez or Lindsay Lohan criticized in the news?\nDisney movies and TV shows target kids. People (falsely) assume the actors will act kid appropriate for the rest of their lives. This makes it \u0026ldquo;shocking\u0026rdquo; when a former Disney star is no longer innocent.\nPublishers PressroomVIP\u0026rsquo;s publishers fit into these two categories:\n1. Other magazines and celebrity gossip sites \u0026ndash; EW and US Magazine. All content focuses on celebrities. It only makes sense for them to target similar audiences.\n2. Viral news sites \u0026ndash; PressroomVIP spends the most on FaithIt.com. FaithIt.com is a viral news/video site like ViralNova. Any site where people go to waste time is good for advertisers promoting content related to pop culture or celebrities.\nLanding Pages The most common landing page style for ad arbitrage is the slide show; having one large picture combined with text on each page. This forces the user to click \u0026ldquo;next\u0026rdquo; to see the next item on the list. This increases page views. The more ads they see, the more likely they are to click. They\u0026rsquo;ll also make ad revenue off of the cost of each ad impression (CPM).\nAll pink arrows above point to an ad. This particular page includes ads from Google Adsense and Content.Ad (The \u0026ldquo;Sponsored Stories\u0026rdquo; at the bottom below the \u0026ldquo;Start Slideshow\u0026rdquo; button).\nOther viral sites use similar positions and sizes for their ads. This likely means these specific positions lead to increased ad revenue. Specifically, Adsense banners surrounding the main image and Native ads at the bottom.\nAdvertiser #2: LMB Insurance LMBInsurance.com is a domain owned by lead generation advertiser. LowerMyBills.com. They use this domain for their life/auto insurance Mobile Display campaigns.\nAd Spend/Networks LMB \u0026ndash; like most mobile and desktop advertisers \u0026ndash; relies mostly on Google traffic. Some of the other advertisers they use for mobile are Advertising.com, Direct Buys and Casale.\nLMB allocates most of their spend to iPads. iPads work well on display due to the larger screen size and the fact that many people use iPads like a desktop computer. Another thing to keep in mind, is that iPads are luxury goods. People who can afford to buy iPads are more likely to have enough disposable income to buy what you\u0026rsquo;re selling.\nAd Creatives LMB\u0026rsquo;s ads are a great example of mobile ads that are a bit \u0026ldquo;out there\u0026rdquo; but still Google compliant. These are great examples of ads that use selectors combined with strange, eye-catching images.\nThe hand with the fingernails growing out doesn\u0026rsquo;t have anything to do with auto or life insurance. It\u0026rsquo;s just a weird image that catches your attention and directs your eye to the selectors.\nLanding Pages LMB uses simple survey style pages. They\u0026rsquo;re easy to use on mobile and unassuming. They don\u0026rsquo;t appear to be lead generation forms.\nThe font, colors and picture of the woman holding the baby at the bottom make it seem friendly and fun. This lightens things up a bit as people do not associate \u0026ldquo;friendly and fun\u0026rdquo; with insurance companies.\nPublishers Top 3 Publishers:\nebaumsworld.com guff.com playbuzz.com The publishers LMB uses are general entertainment sites with lots of traffic. Many of these publishers won\u0026rsquo;t work well for most advertisers because they\u0026rsquo;re too general. They work well for LMB because they have a large ad budget and their offer appeals to the mass market. Most advertisers will not have offers that appeal to the mass market.\nAudible.com Audible sells and produces audio books and other spoken word material. Amazon acquired them in 2008 for $300 million. They\u0026rsquo;ve grown exponentially since. They\u0026rsquo;re an excellent example of an advertiser who offers a product ideal for mobile devices. Most people listen to audio on their phones while they\u0026rsquo;re on the go.\nAd Spend/Networks Audible allocates more of their ad spend to mobile devices than desktop.\nIf we compare their spend for desktop\u0026hellip;\nVersus their mobile spend\u0026hellip;\nYou see they spend almost 3-4x more on mobile than desktop.\nAudible relies on Google, but you\u0026rsquo;ll notice they spend a non-trivial amount with Advertising.com. LMB also spent a large amount on Advertising.com. This likely means Advertising.com\u0026rsquo;s publishers are good for advertisers who want high-quality mobile traffic.\nAd Creatives Unlike the other two advertisers in this post, Audible is using text ads in place of visual banner ads:\nOne reason they\u0026rsquo;re likely seeing success with these ads is the liberal use of the word \u0026ldquo;Free\u0026rdquo; and the fact that they highlight you can use their service with your tablet or smart phone, the very device the user is using to see the ad.\nThe takeaway from this is that no matter what business you\u0026rsquo;re in, you can test out ads that mention the ease of use on a mobile device.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re advertising for a piece of SaaS software that looks good on mobile devices, you could highlight this fact in your ad. If you sell weight loss information, you could offer a free diet as an ethical bribe. Your prospect can download the diet right to their smart phone for easy access when they\u0026rsquo;re at the grocery store.\nLanding Pages Audible uses different landing pages depending on the device.\nTablet (iPad and Android) landing page:\nThis is a simple, no nonsense landing page. There is no clever copy (besides the \u0026ldquo;lucky you\u0026rdquo;). They just state what the user can get, the 3 steps and a large orange CTA button. Sometimes the best copy is the simplest copy.\nThis page is also very simple, however, they\u0026rsquo;ve added a few things to make it more iPhone friendly.\nThey\u0026rsquo;ve shortened the headline even more, taking out the \u0026ldquo;Lucky you\u0026rdquo; copy. The pictures are simpler \u0026ndash; just the front covers of a few books. There\u0026rsquo;s less copy and social proof in general. You\u0026rsquo;re hit with the download button very quickly and it\u0026rsquo;s very tempting to tap if you\u0026rsquo;re looking at it on a mobile phone. You always want to optimize user experience based on device type. Not just the size of the screen on the device, but also the mindset of the prospect as they use it.\nPublishers Top 3 Publishers:\nranker.com gradesaver.com howstuffworks.com My instinct is that people who are the most interested in Audible are readers. People who like howstuffworks.com like to learn about different topics. They\u0026rsquo;re more likely to be a voracious reader, as opposed to someone who browses TMZ.com.\nGradesaver is interesting. They provide study guides and book summaries for college students (like SparkNotes). Audible might work for their audience because many students don\u0026rsquo;t want to read books. They want a summary, or in the case of Audible, to just listen to it on tape.\nConclusion There\u0026rsquo;s no doubt that if you don\u0026rsquo;t have a dedicated mobile Display strategy you\u0026rsquo;re missing out on valuable traffic. There are times when mobile traffic will convert better than desktop traffic, so be sure to test out both. The strategies above should give you an idea of what\u0026rsquo;s currently working for mobile advertisers.\nQuestions? Comments? Write them below \u0026ndash; we\u0026rsquo;d love to hear them!\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/case-study-how-three-large-advertisers-buy-display-traffic-on-mobile/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTired of hearing how important mobile is?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;ve got to have a mobile strategy!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;re missing out if you\u0026rsquo;re not \u0026ldquo;on\u0026rdquo; mobile!\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Mobile advertising spend increased by 123% in 2014 and is rapidly rising!\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMobile is becoming more and more important, especially with paid traffic. You might be missing out on some amazing traffic if you haven\u0026rsquo;t expanded your advertising campaigns out to mobile devices.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, perhaps you already have a mobile strategy. However, you might not be taking advantage of the true power of Display on mobile. Having a mobile strategy and a mobile strategy that\u0026rsquo;s already proven to work are two very different things.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"[CASE STUDY] How To Buy Display Traffic on Mobile: 3 Advertisers, 3 Strategies"},{"content":"Many advertisers are seeing amazing results with cold traffic by using what\u0026rsquo;s called a \u0026ldquo;pre sell\u0026rdquo; page. A pre sell page is a landing page that sets your prospect up to buy by providing valuable information in a non \u0026ldquo;salesy\u0026rdquo; way.\nToday\u0026rsquo;s video shows you how it works, why it works, and offers a few great examples of Display advertisers who are using these pages very well.\nWatch it:\nLinks:\nGet Test X Old School New Body Glucosil native ad ","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/pre-sell-landing-pages/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMany advertisers are seeing amazing results with cold traffic by using what\u0026rsquo;s called a \u0026ldquo;pre sell\u0026rdquo; page. A pre sell page is a landing page that sets your prospect up to buy by providing valuable information in a non \u0026ldquo;salesy\u0026rdquo; way.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s video shows you how it works, \u003cem\u003ewhy\u003c/em\u003e it works, and offers a few great examples of Display advertisers who are using these pages \u003cem\u003every well.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWatch it:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n      \u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/gWOKdHW5a4Q?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n    \u003c/div\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLinks:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"[VIDEO] Convert More Paid Traffic With a \"Pre Sell\" Landing Page"},{"content":"Q1 of 2015 is officially over!\nThis post outlines the 20 highest spending advertisers on Display.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s an interesting mix of business models inside the top 20. Some of these are going to come as no surprise \u0026ndash; massive wireless companies, car manufacturers, TV/internet providers \u0026ndash; but there are a few advertisers on here your probably have never heard of.\nWithout further ado\u0026hellip;\n#1: Verizon.com Background: Anyone who lives in the USA probably knows who Verizon is. They have ~34% of the market share for all wireless companies in the United States. They\u0026rsquo;re subsequently also the largest media buyer in the United States. Verizon uses the Verizon.com domain to advertise their \u0026ldquo;FiOs\u0026rdquo; internet/TV/phone package.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $13.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buys, Yahoo Gemini Native Top 3 Publishers: AOL.com, HuffingtonPost.com, Ask.com Top Ad: #2: VerizonWireless.com Background: VerizonWireless.com is the domain Verizon uses to advertise their mobile phone plans.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $11M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Advertising.com Top 3 Publishers: Mapquest.com, Ask.com, Answers.com Top Ad: #3: Zulily.com Background: Zulily is a daily deals clothing site targeted mainly at women. They were one of the largest advertisers in 2014 and have continued to spend strongly in 2015.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $9.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Casale, CPXi Top 3 Publishers: playbuzz.com, blogspot.com, urbandictionary.com Top Ad: #4: Beverly-HillsMD.com Background: Beverly Hills MD is a direct response advertiser that sells a product meant to help remove dark spots caused by aging. They call it the \u0026ldquo;Beverly Hills MD Dark Spot Corrector\u0026rdquo;.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $9.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Adblade, Clickbooth Top 3 Publishers: Blogspot.com, WedMD.com, Drugs.com Top Ad: #5: Comcast.com Background: Comcast is one of the largest cable TV and internet providers in the USA.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $8.7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: Amazon.com, HuffingtonPost.com, Today.com Top Ad: #6: Amazon.com Background: Amazon.com is the largest eCommerce site in the world. In Q1 they used Display to advertise a selection of various products, specifically a recycling bin, a 3D printer and wholesale glasses for restaurants, catererers, large parties, etc.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $7.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, BingAds Top 3 Publishers: Lifehacker.com, Yidio.com, Blogspot.com Top Ad: #7: LowerMyBills.com Background: LowerMyBills is a lead generation site for mortgage refinancing and life/car insurance.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $7.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: mapquest.com, urbandictionary.com, bankrate.com Top Ad: #8: Chevrolet.com Background: Chevrolet is an American car manufacturer.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $5.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Advertising.com, Google, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: huffingtonpost.com, answers.com, ask.com Top Ad: #9: Lifelock.com Background: LifeLock is a SaaS product that offers protection against identity theft.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $5.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, AOL Sponsored Listings, Outbrain Top 3 Publishers: legacy.com, aol.com, wayfair.com Top Ad: #10: Keystone-XL.com Background: The Keystone Pipeline is a pipeline that runs through parts of Canada and the United States. There are 4 phases of the Pipeline. Three have already been built and the 4th (\u0026ldquo;Keystone XL\u0026rdquo;) is still awaiting approval from the US governement. The pipeline has come under fire from environmentalists and in 2012, Obama rejected a bill to expand the pipeline back. Their advertising campaign is centered around building public awareness about why the pipeline is safe.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $5.5M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy (only using 2 traffic sources) Top 3 Publishers: Ask.com, Glassdoor.com, Reference.com Top Ad: #11: Google.com Background: No introduction needed. Everyone knows who Google is and what they do. They use Display for advertising services like Gmail, Google Play and Google Adwords\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $5.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Undertone Top 3 Publishers: Blogspot.com, Answers.com, Mapquest.com Top Ad: Top Ad: #12: Wayfair.com Background: Wayfair is an eCommerce store specializing in home furniture and objects.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $4.7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Yahoo Gemini Native, Outbrain Top 3 Publishers: wunderground.com, blogspot.com, dailydot.com Top Ad: #13: WesternUnion.com Background: Western Union is the largest money transfer service in the world. They use Display to advertise their online and mobile transfer services.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $4.7M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Advertising.com, Direct Buy Top 3 Publishers: Examiner.com, Blogspot.com, Topix.com Top Ad: #14: Smallbizready.com Background: Verizon (again) promoting their internet services for small businesses.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $4.4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Casale Top 3 Publishers: theepochtimes.com, Survley.com, click2houston.com Top Ad: #15: Target.com Background: Target is a large department store and online eCommerce shop.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $4.3M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, MediaMath, Google Top 3 Publishers: Yahoo.com, BabyCenter.com, Go.com Top Ad: #16: FullSail.edu Background: Full Sail is a for-profit university located in Orange Country, Florida. They offer online and in-person classes. Their advertising campaigns focus on their film and music production courses.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $4.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, CPXi Top 3 Publishers: FullReads.com, HotNewHipHop.com, Angelfire.com Top Ad: #17: myrbetriq.com Background: Myrbetriq is a prescription medicine used to treat overactive bladder.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $4.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Direct Buy, Burst Media Top 3 Publishers: Drugs.com, Wildtanget.com, Blogspot.com Top Ad: #18: Ally.com Background: Ally is an online bank.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $4.1M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Direct Buy, Rubicon, Casale Top 3 Publishers: Salon.com, Bankrate.com, Kiplinger.com Top Ad: #19: LiveCellResearch.com Background: Live Cell Research is a nutraceutical company that specializes in anti-aging supplements. Their two main products are \u0026ldquo;Niagan\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Krill Oil\u0026rdquo;.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $4M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Google, Adblade, Clickbooth Top 3 Publishers: bleacherreport.com, yardbarker.com, zimbio.com Top Ad: #20: NextAdvisor.com Background: NextAdvisor is an affiliate review site focused mainly on financial services.\nEstimated Q1 Ad Spend: $3.9M Top 3 Traffic Sources: Taboola, Outbrain, Sponsored Listings Top 3 Publishers: mytopfreegames.com, retroogames.com, go.com Top Ad: ","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/top-20-advertisers-of-q1-2015/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eQ1 of 2015 is officially over!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis post outlines the 20 highest spending advertisers on Display.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s an interesting mix of business models inside the top 20. Some of these are going to come as no surprise \u0026ndash; massive wireless companies, car manufacturers, TV/internet providers \u0026ndash; but there are a few advertisers on here your probably have never heard of.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWithout further ado\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"1-verizoncom\"\u003e#1: Verizon.com\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBackground\u003c/strong\u003e: Anyone who lives in the USA probably knows who Verizon is. They have ~34% of the market share for all wireless companies in the United States. They\u0026rsquo;re subsequently also the largest media buyer in the United States. Verizon uses the Verizon.com domain to advertise their \u0026ldquo;FiOs\u0026rdquo; internet/TV/phone package.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The 20 Biggest Display Advertisers of Q1 2015"},{"content":"Our post called \u0026ldquo;7 Landing Page Styles That Work With Paid Advertising\u0026rdquo; was very popular and we got a lot of great feedback from it.\nToday\u0026rsquo;s video post shows you 7 MORE landing page styles that work with paid traffic. Some of these are a bit more advanced and might seem a bit \u0026ldquo;alternative\u0026rdquo;, but trust me when I tell you that these advertisers are sending a lot of traffic to these pages.\nLanding pages seen in video:\nSurvival Life (Physical Lander) LasikPlus (Qualification Quiz) Newsmax (Survey Lander) Lifelock (Recent News Lander) Next Advisor (The Affiliate Blog Lander) Western Union (The Sweepstakes Lander) Instant Checkmate ","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/7-more-landing-pages-that-work-with-paid-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOur post called \u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"/7-landing-page-styles-that-work-with-paid-advertising/\" title=\"7 Landing Page Styles That Work With Paid Advertising\"\u003e7 Landing Page Styles That Work With Paid Advertising\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo; was very popular and we got a lot of great feedback from it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday\u0026rsquo;s video post shows you 7 MORE landing page styles that work with paid traffic. Some of these are a bit more advanced and might seem a bit \u0026ldquo;alternative\u0026rdquo;, but trust me when I tell you that these advertisers are sending a lot of traffic to these pages.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"[VIDEO] 7 MORE Landing Pages That Work With Paid Advertising"},{"content":"In The Next 90 seconds\u0026hellip; Discover How The New Adbeat Can Help You Buy Media More Efficiently: Interested in learning more? Check out our plans and prices: [button link=\u0026ldquo;https://www.adbeat.com/pricing\u0026quot;] Check Out Our Plans And Pricing![/button]\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/new-adbeat-in-90-seconds/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"in-the-next-90-seconds-discover-how-the-new-adbeat-can-help-you-buy-media-more-efficiently\"\u003eIn The Next 90 seconds\u0026hellip; Discover How The New Adbeat Can Help You Buy Media More Efficiently:\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;\"\u003e\n      \u003ciframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share; fullscreen\" loading=\"eager\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" src=\"https://www.youtube.com/embed/g4I8oiFHPGc?autoplay=0\u0026amp;controls=1\u0026amp;end=0\u0026amp;loop=0\u0026amp;mute=0\u0026amp;start=0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;\" title=\"YouTube video\"\u003e\u003c/iframe\u003e\n    \u003c/div\u003e\n\n\u003ch2 id=\"interested-in-learning-more\"\u003eInterested in learning more?\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"check-out-our-plans-and-prices\"\u003eCheck out our plans and prices:\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[button link=\u0026ldquo;\u003ca href=\"https://www.adbeat.com/pricing%22\"\u003ehttps://www.adbeat.com/pricing\u0026quot;\u003c/a\u003e] Check Out Our Plans And Pricing![/button]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The New Adbeat in 90 Seconds"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s one HUGE mistake many marketers make when creating the ad copy and landing pages they\u0026rsquo;re sending traffic to.\nThe problem is they present the same message to everyone. They use the same copy that works on their email list \u0026ndash; people who are familiar with them and their product \u0026ndash; as they use on their cold traffic landing pages and display ads \u0026ndash; people who are NOT familiar with their company or product.\nSomeone on your email list already knows what you are about. They\u0026rsquo;re familiar with you, your views and your products.\nHowever, someone coming from cold traffic is a complete stranger. They have no reason to trust you. You need to build trust in your ads and landing pages. This goes beyond adding authority and social proof. You need to structure your copy based on the \u0026ldquo;Awareness level\u0026rdquo; of your product in the market.\nSo, how do you structure your copy differently for the perfect stranger, differently for the person who\u0026rsquo;s been on your list for one week, and differently for the person who\u0026rsquo;s been on your list for one year?\nEugene Schwartz and The 5 Levels Of Customer Awareness In comes the King of Copywriting\u0026hellip;\nEugene Schwartz.\nSchwartz wrote the bible of copywriting, Breakthrough Advertising. Although it was published back in 1952 (when people still thought you could \u0026ldquo;burn off fat\u0026rdquo;) the lessons still apply today.\nIn chapter 3, Schwartz outlines a concept that he calls the 5 States of Awareness. This is how aware the people in your target market are of the products and solutions that exist in your specific niche.\nThis awareness affects EVERYTHING\u0026hellip; and it should permeate throughout all your marketing channels.\nYou can use it on social media.\nYou can use it in your email list.\nAnd you can apply it to your display ads and landing pages.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s how it works:\nThe 5 States There are 5 States of Awareness that change how you present your sales message.\nThey are:\nMost-aware Product Aware Solution Aware Problem Aware Unaware Awareness Level #1: Most Aware In the \u0026ldquo;Most Aware\u0026rdquo; stage, your prospect is familiar with your product and whether or not they want to buy it. At this stage your prospect only needs to know the bare minimum.\nWriting copy for prospects at this level is the easiest of all. They just want to know what the \u0026ldquo;deal\u0026rdquo; is and where they can buy one. Prospects who are Most Aware don\u0026rsquo;t need to know the back story of your company, they require little social proof (if any) and they don\u0026rsquo;t need to be educated on the benefits of your product.\nThe iPad is a great example. Apple doesn\u0026rsquo;t use persuasive copy to explain why someone should buy the iPad. People already know what the iPad is and whether or not they want it. Apple only markets the iPad based on price and new features (the \u0026ldquo;deal\u0026rdquo; as mentioned above).\nExamples:\nApple (Macbook Air) There\u0026rsquo;s no explanation behind what a MacBook Air is or why they should buy it. The price itself is enough to make the sale.\nAwareness Level #2: Product-Aware Prospects in the \u0026ldquo;Product-Aware\u0026rdquo; state are familiar with your product and its features, but are not sure if it\u0026rsquo;s right for them. Prospects in this stage are usually looking for specific features/benefits that make your product better than your competition\u0026rsquo;s.\nExamples:\nAmerican Express Everyone knows American Express offers credit cards. But how do they know if an American Express card is right for them and right for their spending habits? How do they know the American Express Platinum Card is better than anything Visa or Mastercard offers?\nAmerican Express differentiates itself by giving better perks (miles, no fees for the first year, rewards, etc.)\nCialis Most people who have the problem that Cialis solves has already heard about Cialis and what it can do. Therefore Cialis does not state the benefits or even what the pill does in their advertising. They assume prospects already know and understand. They\u0026rsquo;re simply trying to convince their prospects to buy THEM instead of Viagra (or any other competitor) by offering a 30-day trial.\nAwareness Level #3: Solution Aware Your prospect knows the results they want and they know that solutions exist, but they\u0026rsquo;re not aware your specific solution exists.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s use the weight loss market as as example\u0026hellip;\nSomeone\u0026rsquo;s overweight and they want to lose 10 lbs. They know there are LOTS of solutions out there. Fad diets, pills, \u0026ldquo;Stairmasters\u0026rdquo;, belly vibrating machines, etc. They\u0026rsquo;ve got a problem, they\u0026rsquo;re aware there are many potential solutions, but they don\u0026rsquo;t know which solution is right for them.\nThese customers just need to be convinced that your solution is the best for them. The best way to do this is to use proven claims and social proof: case studies, badges, testimonials, highlighting the unique \u0026ldquo;mechanism\u0026rdquo; that differentiates your product, etc.\nThe landing page above shows Jillian Michaels, a celebrity personal trainer from The Biggest Loser. Celebrity social proof/authority is super powerful. A lot of people have seen the show she\u0026rsquo;s on and the results she\u0026rsquo;s helped her clients achieve. Her celebrity status is enough that they don\u0026rsquo;t even have to give a whole lot more information on her methods.\nAwareness Level #4: Problem-Aware At Awareness Level #4, your prospect knows they have a problem, but they aren\u0026rsquo;t aware any solution exists. In other words, the prospect recognizes they have a need, but not that there is a product that can fulfull that need.\nMany new products fall into this awareness level.\nThe key to selling to prospects at this awareness level is to let them know you feel their pain. The headline and copy will contain some sort of anxiety or pain that the prospect might be going through. This is used a lot in the dating and health markets.\nCapture Him Capture Him is a product that teaches women how to \u0026ldquo;catch\u0026rdquo; the man of their dreams. The assumption behind this ad is that some women have issues with finding a partner that will not stray from them. A lot of women might not have an issue with finding someone, but they might have a problem with getting him to stick around for the long-term. There are a lot of dating sites/information on how to MEET people\u0026hellip; but there is little known advice or products that teach people how to hold on to the people they meet.\nNotice how the ad here reflects on the pain of of women not being able to \u0026ldquo;hold on\u0026rdquo; to a man. It reflects that the advertiser has empathy for the prospect and understands their situation. This empathy creates a bond between the prospect and the advertiser.\nAwareness Level #5: Completely Unaware At Awareness Level #5, the prospect has no knowledge of anything except their own identity, beliefs or opinions.\nAt this level, your prospect\u0026hellip;\nDoes not know about your product. Does not know there is a \u0026ldquo;solution\u0026rdquo; And might not even know (or hasn\u0026rsquo;t identified) they have a problem. This is the most difficult but most scaleable level of customer awareness. The unaware market is the mass market. And since it’s a mass market\u0026hellip; they sky\u0026rsquo;s the limit\nYou must tell them what problem they have they\u0026rsquo;re not aware of and how your product can solve it, but in a way that doesn\u0026rsquo;t make it completely obvious you\u0026rsquo;re about to pitch them an offer. You must create the demand by using stories and parables.\nThis is often done with a long-form sales letter or (more comonly) a video sales letter. The key is not to scare the prospect away. You make no pitches or promises out of the gate. Instead, you echo an emotion, an attitude, or some dissatisfaction that plucks people out from the crowd and pulls them together.\nMany nutraceutical companies and newsletters use cold traffic very well at this level of awareness.\nFor example, Keybiotic:\nThis ad leads to VSL that sells a Probiotic supplement. The story behind the ad is there exists a parasite that is infecting the American public (possibly YOU) and causing all sorts of health issues.\nA lot of advertisers in this space use fear as the main driver. Whether or not you agree this is ethical or not, fear is one of the most powerful human emotions. It can create a demand where there no longer was one.\nWhile someone might wake up, look in the mirror and think, \u0026ldquo;I need to lose 10lbs\u0026rdquo;, they\u0026rsquo;re probably never going to wake up and think, \u0026ldquo;Today\u0026rsquo;s the day I buy a Probiotic. The story of the \u0026ldquo;American Parasite\u0026rdquo; sells them the benefits of a product they never thought they\u0026rsquo;d need through a story surrounding something that scares most people.\nConclusion Knowing the awareness level of your market is one of the fundamental components of running a successful paid advertising campaign. All your ad copy, landing pages and follow-up sequences must be based on what Awareness Level your prospects live in.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/5-levels-customer-awareness/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s one HUGE mistake many marketers make when creating the ad copy and landing pages they\u0026rsquo;re sending traffic to.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe problem is they present the same message to everyone. They use the same copy that works on their email list \u0026ndash; people who are familiar with them and their product \u0026ndash; as they use on their cold traffic landing pages and display ads \u0026ndash; people who are NOT familiar with their company or product.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Key To Paid Traffic? Knowing Your Customer's \"Awareness Level\""},{"content":"One of your best traffic sources could be something that you\u0026rsquo;re completely ignoring, even though it\u0026rsquo;s right under your nose. Businesses always want to know where the next best traffic source is coming from, and, although that\u0026rsquo;s going to vary somewhat from field to field, one stands out as a pretty powerful traffic driver that\u0026rsquo;s overlooked.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s Content Discovery Networks. These are something that everyone is familiar with but many people haven\u0026rsquo;t considered using as a business tool.\nCombined with the recent surge of advertisers using “Native Ads” (presell landing pages disguised as news articles/blog posts), many advertisers have begun to move away from standard ad networks (Google AdWords, Bing, Facebook, etc.) and have started allocating more ad spend to ad networks like Outbrain and Taboola.\nAny time there is a massive shift in allocation… you should be paying close attention.\nThis post explains what Content Discovery Networks are, how they work and at the end you’ll get case studies for advertisers like Uber that are seeing success with these networks.\nWhat Are Content Discovery Networks? Content Discovery Networks, sometimes called Content Recommendation Engines, are ad networks that place ads in the “Around the Web” and “Recommended Stories” sections commonly found on large publishers and news sites.\nThe idea behind them is to serve ads that look like they’re a natural part of the page. Publishers and advertisers love them because they don’t look or feel like advertising.\nThey work extremely well at driving traffic and sales when they’re paired with the right landing page. Since many ads placed on Content Discovery Networks are headlines, their landing pages are commonly a “native ad” or an article lander that appears like a new story.\nIn addition, their CPCs and CPMs tend to be a bit lower than “premium” ad networks like Google AdWords. They also tend to have more lenient policies regarding what kinds of images and wording advertisers can use in their ad copy and landing pages.\nWho Uses Content Discovery Networks? Content Discovery Networks can work for pretty much any business in any niche. The key, as with all advertisements, is to use the right strategy and the right ad for your specific offer and business. However, there are three use cases that seem to have really cracked Content Discovery Networks as a highly effective ad platform: lead generation, SaaS software and click arbitrage.\n1. Lead Generation and Direct Response Direct response and lead generation companies use Content Discovery Networks to send traffic to VSLs, native ads and presell pages. They like these networks because they tend to be a bit cheaper and allow them to “get away” with certain ad images, copy and landing pages that might not fly on Google.\nPlus, the “newsy” feel of the ads is the perfect segue to a video sales letter, presell page or advertorial, particularly if it uses the angle of a recent news story.\nSome of the biggest direct response/lead generation advertisers on Content Discovery Networks include LowerMyBills.com, The Motley Fool (case study below) and nutrition/supplement companies like Force Factor.\n2. B2B/B2C SaaS Software Large SaaS advertisers like LifeLock and Salesforce use Content Discovery Networks to drive traffic to their content marketing — blog posts or whitepaper downloads that address some specific issue their prospect might be having.\nIf they\u0026rsquo;re also going after lead generation, they\u0026rsquo;ll litter the page with opt-in links and lead magnets in order to capture an email address. Going for the email is a more effective strategy since their products tend to have a higher price point and a longer sales cycle.\nHere’s an example of an ad from Salesforce:\n3. Click Arbitrage (viral news and quiz sites) Viral news and quiz sites are far and away the biggest advertisers on Content Discovery Networks. They love native ad networks because they often offer two rates: one rate for advertisers sending traffic to sales pages (direct response) and a lower rate for advertisers sending traffic to pure content (news and quiz sites). Therefore they can buy lots of lower-priced traffic, fill their sites with ads from networks with high payouts (like Google AdSense) and make money through click arbitrage.\nAnd again, Content Discovery Networks appear to be more lenient with what they’ll allow you to get away with on your landing pages. Many of these viral sites are optimized to make as much ad revenue as possible, meaning they’re often jam-packed with ads. While many ad networks disapprove of advertisers sending traffic to landing pages filled with ads, Content Discovery Networks don\u0026rsquo;t seem to have such strict standards.\n5 Big Content Discovery Networks There are a lot of Content Discovery Networks out there to choose from, but five of the biggest are:\nTaboola: Some of Taboola’s advertisers include NextAdvisor, The Motley Fool (case study below) and Ancestry.com. Yahoo Gemini Native: Ads on this network are shown alongside teasers for actual Yahoo news stories, meaning their appearance is slightly different than the “Recommendations” sections shown on other publishers. Some of their top advertisers include Verizon, LifestyleJournal.com and LendingTree. Revcontent: Claiming to power 250 billion content recommendations per month, Revcontent bills itself as a quality-driven platform for ads. Outbrain: Some of the top advertisers using Outbrain include People.com, Refinery29 and Bills.com Content.ad: They claim to serve more than 30-million clicks per month. Some of Content.ad’s top advertisers include HowLifeWorks.com, Answers.com and Instant Checkmate. How Can You Use Content Discovery Networks for Your Business? So, now that you’re aware of the benefits of Content Discovery Networks, you\u0026rsquo;re probably wondering what it looks like to actually use one. This is where competitive intelligence comes in. The best way to design a campaign optimized for traffic from these networks is to analyze what other people have already successfully done.\nIn the next section you’ll find six case studies that demonstrate different ways to effectively use a Content Discovery Network. You’ll get an in-depth look at how to use Content Discovery Networks and replicate this success in your own campaigns.\nCase Study: The Motley Fool — Lead Generation The Motley Fool is a financial news publisher focused on giving investment tips/advice. They offer free and premium information and currently send traffic to pages designed to sell their premium investment newsletter/community, Stock Advisor. Networks and Spend While most large direct response advertisers continue to rely heavily on Google, The Motley Fool has allocated huge portions of their ad budget to Taboola and Outbrain (with Yahoo Gemini being just behind Google).\nAd Creative\nAd creatives on Content Discovery Networks are generally very simple — all you need is an eye-catching image and/or a compelling headline.\nMany advertisers use images of celebrities or headlines with celebrities in them because people love them and are drawn into what they have to say. That\u0026rsquo;s why Kim Kardashian West has 59 million followers on Twitter.\nOne of The Motley Fool’s most seen ad used Stephen Hawking\u0026rsquo;s name to pique interest:\nStephen Hawking was perhaps the most well-known scientist of our age. Pretty much everyone knows how absolutely brilliant he was. So if he was predicting the biggest event in the history of civilization, you were probably going to want to pay attention.\nAnyone interested in investing or finance will be curious because markets are largely influenced by “random” events, and if you can predict those events better than other people, you\u0026rsquo;re going to profit. (Think The Big Short.) If there was something that Hawking was predicting would be a major event that would shift the way society functioned, you would probably want to know what it was.\nWhile we don\u0026rsquo;t necessarily recommend slapping random celebrity names all over your ads, the point is that you want to pick the juiciest, most controversial detail you can out of your company or content. When people see something that\u0026rsquo;s controversial or connected to major figures, they\u0026rsquo;re tempted to click.\nLanding Pages\nHere’s where things get interesting. Direct Response publishers in the finance niche often tie real-life events and people into their ad copy, even if the product itself has little to do with that specific person/event. The Motley Fool does this same exact thing on their “presell” page.\nThe headline builds on the curiosity started with the ad. What was Hawking’s prediction? How can I use it to my advantage? The only way for them to get this information is to opt-in.\nAfter opting-in they’re immediately shown a video sales letter that plays more buildup. Viewers are then pitched a subscription to the “Motley Fool Stock Advisor” newsletter and community and the end of the video:\nAnd remember: they had to opt-in to see the video, so even if they don’t buy The Motley Fool can follow up with them and send more offers.\nWhy This Technique W orks\nThe Motley Fool is able to generate leads because they follow a pretty tight three-step system:\nPique a reader\u0026rsquo;s interest with a bold ad claim. Offer the reader value (in this case, investment advice) on their landing page. Force the reader to produce an email to get that value. This works because it nags at that part of our monkey brain that really wants to know what the answer to something is once we see the question — which means becoming a lead. “What is that huge event Hawking predicts?” is the catalyst to the click and “How can it earn me money?” is the prompt for the email. Although it seems simple, we all know how well these type of clickbait-y ads can work because we are tempted by them and headlines like them every day.\nCase Study: Quicken Loans — Lead Generation Another company that\u0026rsquo;s using Content Discovery Networks is QuickenLoans. Specifically, they\u0026rsquo;re using native ad networks to advertise their services around refinancing mortgages. This is a great topic for a native ad because it\u0026rsquo;s a broad topic that can apply to a variety of people across different websites — it\u0026rsquo;s not a hyper-specific interest. If someone\u0026rsquo;s a homeowner, chances are they have a mortgage.\nNetworks and Spend QuickenLoans spends a lot on Google search, but they\u0026rsquo;re also spending $7,000,000 on Outbrain and Taboola alone. Clearly, native ad networks are part of their ad strategy. Any ad budget — especially an ad budget that can accommodate millions of dollars — should be spread across channels. Lumping all your spend onto Google or Facebook is a surefire way to inject a little instability into your ad efforts.\nAd Creative\nQuickenLoans has several different versions of ads on Content Discovery Networks that encourage people to rethink their mortgage. Some of them feature a person looking towards the camera. This is an easy ad to replicate and update — the picture can be swapped out for any other photo of a person, which gives this “one” ad more run for its money: They also have text-only versions of the ad. But we like the ones with people looking straight at the reader. The bold colors of this (blue contrasting with yellow) and the confidence of this man catch the eye, even in a sea of other faces. QuickenLoans uses their short title to plant an idea in the reader\u0026rsquo;s head: rethinking their 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. This is that same enticing nugget as The Motley Fool\u0026rsquo;s Stephen Hawking claim.\nLanding Pages\nQuickenLoans is pretty clever about how they capture you as a lead once you click on their ads. Their landing page looks like it\u0026rsquo;s a short quiz, and they start you off by asking a few questions from dropdown menus:\nThe reassurance that there\u0026rsquo;s no registration or login required makes the viewer more likely to continue with the quiz. If you do, you\u0026rsquo;re plunged into several rounds of more intense series of questions that ends with a prompt for your email:\nNotice how, again, they reassure the viewer that they\u0026rsquo;re trustworthy? They have those customer satisfaction awards and the “we respect your privacy” copy next to the email field. This is priming the reader to enter their email by building trust. Obviously, when a reader puts their email in, they\u0026rsquo;re being turned into a lead, so building that trust is important for QuickenLoans\u0026rsquo; success.\nWhy This Technique Works\nWhat QuickenLoans is doing well on their landing page is asking people to put effort in. If someone\u0026rsquo;s willing to spend the time to answer a couple of pages of survey questions, they\u0026rsquo;re going to want their results. Because of this, they\u0026rsquo;re likely going to put in their email — after all, they did the hard work and they want to reap the rewards.\nThey also build that trust throughout, from the man in the business suit to the customer service awards. This impresses upon their potential leads that QuickenLoans can be trusted with something as important as the mortgage to your house. If your company is asking for something or trying to convince someone of something high stakes, building up this early relationship is important.\nCase Study: Likesharetweet — Click Arbitrage LikeShareTweet is a viral content site that came out of nowhere in the middle of 2014. They now have millions of visitors/month. What makes them interesting to study is that they appear to offer no products or services so they likely make 100% of revenue through advertising.\nIn this case that means they\u0026rsquo;re likely making most if not all profit from click arbitrage fueled by traffic from Content Discovery Networks. They place their own, low-cost ad on a native ad network. Then, when someone clicks on their ad, they take them to a landing page that\u0026rsquo;s crawling with ads. When someone clicks on any ad on that page, LikeShareTweet makes more money from that click than they spent to get it.\nNetworks and Spend Top network by far: Taboola.\nAd Creative\nThere are two types of ads that LikeShareTweet uses…\nType #1: Sex Appeal A simple picture of an attractive woman tied into a list post — effective and not rocket science. People are drawn to attractive people and they love list posts, especially posts about celebrities and money. This ad ties everything together.\nType #2: The Weird and Bizarre Weird and bizarre images work really well at getting click-throughs. People see them and wonder what the heck is going on? What\u0026rsquo;s the story behind that image? Is it even real? Both ads above are truly bizarre and almost impossible not to click.\nAgain, these are more extreme examples of good concepts. You probably can\u0026rsquo;t — and probably shouldn\u0026rsquo;t — just stick a photo of a hot guy or girl or some really strange is that photoshopped?! image on the top of your ad and call it a day. But you can think about what is eye-catching and what speaks to the lowest common denominator of your audience and use those things to build wide-reaching campaigns. Although if you have strange images, by all means, use them!\nLanding Pages\nLikeShareTweet is very aggressive with the number of ads they use on their landing pages. They’re using ads in a few key places we’ve seen other large viral news sites use — specifically, a bar of ads from Taboola at the top above the article and a Google AdSense ad just above the photo.\nThey also show pop-ups with Taboola ads:\nThese are pretty classic methods of gaining ad revenue but, again, LikeShareTweet is just doing a more extreme version than what we normally see.\nWhy This Technique Works\nPart of what makes this technique work so well is playing into your audience\u0026rsquo;s hands. The ads are specifically designed around things that we know interest people — celebs, beautiful people, rich people, weird bodies — and they\u0026rsquo;re really tempting to that part of us that whispers you can take five more minutes out of work to read this! It looks crazy!\nThe other reason it works so well is that LikeShareTweet has their own audience nailed. The person that clicks on a LikeShareTweet article is probably going to click through to another ad article, so LikeShareTweet takes advantage of that. It\u0026rsquo;s a classic lesson in how to use your ad space: know your audience and charge a premium for others to cater to them.\nCase Study: Intuit — Content Marketing Perhaps you’ve never heard of Intuit, but you’ve no doubt heard of — or maybe even used — their suite of products. They’ve developed a couple of the biggest pieces of finance software in the past 20 years, including QuickBooks and TurboTax.\nNetworks and Spend Although they still buy most traffic through Google, they also spend on Taboola and Yahoo Gemini. Although they\u0026rsquo;re not pouring millions into native ads, we\u0026rsquo;d bet that Intuit is continuously reusing other content for their ads on these networks in an extremely cost-effective manner because of their approach to landing pages.\nAd Creative\nThe copy of Intuit\u0026rsquo;s ads is very similar to any other non-ad article you would see at the bottom of a website or news article. It\u0026rsquo;s got an attractive header photo and a clear, simple title: What works really well here is that they\u0026rsquo;re asking a question that a lot of people have — who counts as a dependent on my taxes, anyway? And if you had never thought of trying to claim your partner as a dependent, we bet you\u0026rsquo;re thinking about it now.\nThis is clearly geared to young, unmarried people — the copy and the 20-somethings in the photo make that clear. And young people, who might not have an accountant and are probably not tax experts, are a great target for this ad, this question and TurboTax software. We\u0026rsquo;d bet that this is a play straight out of Intuit\u0026rsquo;s buyer persona playbook.\nLanding Pages\nThe landing pages that Intuit uses for these sorts of ads are blog posts. This particular ad takes you to exactly what you\u0026rsquo;d expect: a post that answers the question they posed.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s one reason we suspect it\u0026rsquo;s so easy for Intuit to make these ads. They\u0026rsquo;re already writing the blog posts, they already have this content in the world and now they\u0026rsquo;re marketing themselves with it using ads on Content Discovery Networks. If you have a blog filled with articles that are genuinely helpful to your userbase, this can be a cheap and easy approach to getting some traffic — or maybe even leads.\nAlthough this is definitely a content marketing-based ad for TurboTax, they also have a “Start for Free” button and a “Subscribe Now” field for their email list. If someone enjoyed this article, especially if they learned something about their taxes from it, they might turn into a lead by signing up for more.\nWhy This Technique Works\nIntuit\u0026rsquo;s content marketing ads work for two main reasons. The first is cost, as we just discussed. If you\u0026rsquo;re a company with a good cache of online content, repurposing that at a low cost using native ad networks can be a great option. Of course, TurboTax is software that has a huge potential userbase. So the key here is to pick articles that are broadly applicable. Save the hypertargeting for social ads.\nThe other reason it works is that they\u0026rsquo;ve really nailed their audience in the ad. The young interracial couple, the question that piques an inexperienced tax filer\u0026rsquo;s interest and the sunny Instagram vibes of the photo are all great ways to target a millennial audience. We\u0026rsquo;d guess this ad would be much less successful if it were targeted to retirees.\nCase Study: Babbel — Generate Signups Babbel is a language-learning program that has some stiff competition. Alright, we\u0026rsquo;ll say it, it\u0026rsquo;s Duolingo. When competing with such a well-known company, you\u0026rsquo;ve got to use every trick in the book to capture attention. Besides the heavy hitters like Duolingo and paid counterpart Rosetta Stone, there is a ton of language software out there to compete with. Let\u0026rsquo;s see how Babbel uses Content Discovery Networks to their advantage.\nNetworks and Spend Obviously, Babbel is using Content Discovery Networks to fuel their growth. They\u0026rsquo;ve got almost no money in Google and more than 15 million between Taboola and Outbrain. This is pretty consistent over time, and they\u0026rsquo;ve increased spend in the last few months, pushing even more heavily into the native ad market.\nAd Creative\nBabbel has a pretty eye-catching ad, using some techniques we\u0026rsquo;ve seen before. They use a face looking right at the camera and a high-contrast background, which is a good strategy for gaining attention. But they painted the face in the colors of the Spanish flag, immediately signaling something to do with Spain or Spanish. Their copy, “This App Can Teach You Spanish In Just 3 Weeks,” sounds a little clickbait-y, but it speaks to a direct frustration of all language users: the time it takes to learn a new tongue. The claim is a little unbelievable, but not so outlandish that it seems outright false. This is the perfect balance to get people to click away.\nLanding Pages\nTurns out, the claim isn\u0026rsquo;t false — at least according to Babbel\u0026rsquo;s landing page. This is a great example of how to get people to sign up for your product. At the top, and on the side, they have different flags that signal what languages you can learn, giving you intuitive information about the product\u0026rsquo;s value.\nThen, they give you a scientific study that proves their product works. If that didn\u0026rsquo;t convince you, you can click on a BuzzFeed-style video challenge where different people are learning Spanish in three weeks:\nThe video is enticing to click on and delivers in entertainment value. You can see what seems like people “instantly” learning Spanish — just like you could with Babbel\u0026rsquo;s app. Then, at the end there\u0026rsquo;s a signup button: That leads directly to a page of languages you can learn and, from there, to your first lesson. At the end, they ask for your email.\nWhy This Technique Works\nThis technique works because their landing page is so convincing. Anyone who had an interest in quickly learning a language would be immediately sucked in by Babbel\u0026rsquo;s language offerings, their fun video and their scientific studies that prove their products worked.\nPlus, getting people started on a lesson before requiring signup is a great way to ensure that they\u0026rsquo;re invested in the app and want to continue. This means people are signing up as users, not as leads. If you\u0026rsquo;ve got a product with a free trial or demo, you should absolutely link that in your landing page to get people invested in your product, rather than taking them straight to pricing or signup.\nCase Study: Uber — Geotargeting One thing we haven\u0026rsquo;t really seen in our Content Discovery Networks yet is geotargeting. We had interest and age targeting in our ads, but Uber is using native ads to focus on specific metro regions. This makes sense for their product and for their ad spend.\nNetworks and Spend Uber is really going in on Yahoo Gemini Native in their ad spend. They\u0026rsquo;re spending nearly double what they spend on Google! They\u0026rsquo;ve also got a good chunk of change in Outbrain as well. Clearly, native ads are part of their long-term strategy.\nAd Creative\nOne ad that Uber has recently been running is targeting the Austin metro region. It\u0026rsquo;s a limited-time offer geared towards getting new drivers:\nUber doesn\u0026rsquo;t need to build trust with a consumer because a lot of people already know who they are. This is why such a simple ad is effective. They make a promise: at least $1600 for your first 200 trips as a driver. And that\u0026rsquo;s it. But for someone sitting at their computer thinking about driving for Uber, this seems pretty good. Say they average 20 trips a day for 10 days. That\u0026rsquo;s $1600 for two normal work weeks, which is $3200 a month — and that\u0026rsquo;s a pretty good paycheck.\nLanding Pages\nTheir landing page is perhaps the simplest of all the case studies we\u0026rsquo;ve been over today. It\u0026rsquo;s a simple signup form with a cheery picture of a driver.\nThis is appropriate for the ad because it\u0026rsquo;s an employment offer. When people are clicking, they\u0026rsquo;re expecting something serious and professional. And if they want to sign up, view the terms and get driving, then they\u0026rsquo;ve got to put in their information.\nWhy This Technique Works\nUber has three main things happening here:\nGeotargeting works because this ad is providing a specific offer to a specific set of users. This can lower ad spend and make ads more effective. Concrete numbers help the ad come alive. It\u0026rsquo;s a company guarantee, so they\u0026rsquo;re free to put the numbers in, but if you don\u0026rsquo;t have some sort of guarantee, any solid numbers on how your product or service helps people earn money or achieve their goals is good to put in. Professional landing page signals that Uber is serious and legitimizes the ad as an offer of employment. Even if you aren\u0026rsquo;t posting job ads on a Content Discovery Network, you can still take each of these lessons back to your own ads, especially if you are a professional product or service.\nDon\u0026rsquo;t Sleep on Content Discovery Networks Over the past year or two there has been significant traffic growth on Content Discovery Networks. My feeling is that we’re just seeing the beginning of a whole new brand of advertising. Anyone who is looking for another great traffic source should really consider testing out a few campaigns on these networks.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-1-traffic-source-youre-not-using-content-discovery-networks/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of your best traffic sources could be something that you\u0026rsquo;re completely ignoring, even though it\u0026rsquo;s right under your nose. Businesses always want to know where the next best traffic source is coming from, and, although that\u0026rsquo;s going to vary somewhat from field to field, one stands out as a pretty powerful traffic driver that\u0026rsquo;s overlooked.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s Content Discovery Networks. These are something that everyone is familiar with but many people haven\u0026rsquo;t considered using as a business tool.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The #1 Traffic Source You're NOT Using: Content Discovery Networks"},{"content":"[one_half]If there is one book you\u0026rsquo;re probably sick and tired hearing about\u0026hellip; it\u0026rsquo;s probably Robert Cialdini’s \u0026ldquo;Influence\u0026rdquo;.\nThis book has become a sort of bible for marketers and everyone under the sun recommends that you read it. The reason being it\u0026rsquo;s very good at explaining the psychological principles of why people do things in a way that\u0026rsquo;s easy for the layman to understand. The cool thing about these principles is you can also apply them to your paid advertising strategy, specifically your landing pages.\nIn Influence, Robert outlines 6 different persuasion principles that marketers, salesmen, and even con men use to get people to do what they want.\nThose 6 principles are:\nReciprocity Commitment (and Consistency) Social Proof Liking Authority Scarcity These 6 principles can be used on your landing pages to see better results.\nRead more below.\n[/one_half]\n[one_half_last][/one_half_last]\nPersuasion Principle #1: Liking It goes without saying that people are more likely to do business with someone they like.\nSo ask yourself\u0026hellip;\nDo your prospects like you? Do they like your brand?\nNow, face-to-face, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to know whether or not we like someone. Based on their body language, tone of voice and the overall vibe we get from them, we develop instant judgements with whether or not we want to associate with this person or buy their product.\nHowever, how can you get someone to like you if you\u0026rsquo;ve never met them in person and are selling through the internet, not face to face?\nHere are two ways to take that face to face interaction and integrate it with your online marketing:\n#1: Entertainment Give people an entertaining/funny video or something fun to read.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll put them in a good mood and they\u0026rsquo;ll lower their defenses.\nExample: DollarShaveClub.com\nThe Dollar Shave Club sells a monthly subscription for razor blades They had a funny sales video go viral a few years back\u0026hellip;\nAnd they\u0026rsquo;re still using that same video on their landing page to this day.\nYou can\u0026rsquo;t watch the video and help but laugh. The video shows that they\u0026rsquo;re a cool, fun company who also offers great service for a great price. You want to buy razor blades from them because you enjoy their marketing.\n#2: Bring it down to Earth. Drop the corporate speak and chat with your prospects like you would with your closest friend.\nBeing informal and being \u0026ldquo;just like them\u0026rdquo; is a very powerful strategy. It shows you\u0026rsquo;re not some big CEO trying to extract a few dollars from their wallet, but rather a real person who wants to help them.\nExample: ILovePanicAttacks.com\nThe video on this page very casual, like he\u0026rsquo;s there talking to you in person. It\u0026rsquo;s not particularly high quality and the guy is dressed kind of frumpy. Yet, this lends even more credibility because it feels like it\u0026rsquo;s just some guy in his living room recording a video that helps people with their panic attacks.\nPeople trust and like this guy because he understands what it\u0026rsquo;s like to be in their shoes.\n\u0026ldquo;I want to help you because I remember what it was like to suffer.\u0026rdquo;\nPersuasion Principle #2: Authority [one_half]People are more likely to trust a product or service that\u0026rsquo;s already been approved or used by an authority. This is why lists of certifications, awards, media mentions, etc. should be displayed prominently on your landing page.[/one_half]\n[one_half_last][/one_half_last]\nPersuasion Principle #3: Scarcity \u0026ldquo;Because what’s worse than knowing you want something, besides knowing you can never have it?\u0026rdquo;- James Patterson\nIn life, love and business\u0026hellip; people always want what they can\u0026rsquo;t have and will often go to extremes to get it.\nScarcity in your marketing can be VERY powerful if you use it the right way\nThe wrong way to use it (how most marketers do) is to create false scarcity by claiming the offer is for a limited time only when it\u0026rsquo;s really not.\nHowever, if you have a REAL limited time offer, gift, or piece of content that you\u0026rsquo;ll actually take down\u0026hellip; people will want it even more since they know they won\u0026rsquo;t be able to get it in the future.\n[caption id=\u0026quot;\u0026quot; width=\u0026ldquo;400\u0026rdquo; align=\u0026ldquo;aligncenter\u0026rdquo; caption=\u0026quot; Scarcity bar at the top of the checkout page for Neil Patel\u0026rsquo;s Quicksprout traffic course\u0026quot;][/caption]\nThe entire daily deals business model is based on scarcity. Sites like Groupon, AppSumo and Living Social get tons of sales every day because they have great deals that only last for a few days.\n[caption id=\u0026quot;\u0026quot; width=\u0026ldquo;600\u0026rdquo; align=\u0026ldquo;aligncenter\u0026rdquo; caption=\u0026quot; Get a great deal on this delicious sandwich while you still can.\u0026quot;][/caption]\nPersuasion Principle #4: Consistency/Commitment If you can get someone to perform a small action \u0026ndash; like filling out a quiz, offering up a piece of information, or doing you a \u0026ldquo;favor\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; they\u0026rsquo;re more likely to perform an even BIGGER action later; an email opt-in, sale or pay more attention to your content.\nThis is because your brain hates loose ends. Once you\u0026rsquo;ve committed to something, your brain needs to see it through to the end, no matter how small or large the commitment is.\nLittle actions are often called \u0026ldquo;micro-commitments\u0026rdquo;. Get someone to perform a \u0026ldquo;micro-commitment\u0026rdquo; now \u0026ndash; email opt-in for a free gift, take a quiz, etc. \u0026ndash; and they\u0026rsquo;ll be more likely to follow through till the end and buy your product/service.\nPersuasion Principle #5: Reciprocity In Persuasion Cialdini recounts an experiment done at an art museum.\nA confederate starts chatting up a stranger, building a bit of rapport. He excuses himself, leaves to buy a Coke, comes back, and then asks the stranger if they\u0026rsquo;d like to buy raffle tickets.\nSituation A: The confederate comes back with just a Coke for himself and asks the stranger if he will buy raffle tickets.\nSituation B: The confederate comes back with a Coke for himself plus one for the stranger and then asks if he\u0026rsquo;ll buy a few raffle tickets.\nIn which situation did the confederate sell more raffle tickets?\nThe stranger was more likely to buy raffle tickets when the confederate came back with not only a Coke for himself, but also one for the stranger as well.\nWhy?\nBecause the stranger has received something for free and now wants to return the good will. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t even matter that the price of the Coke is less than the price of the tickets. It\u0026rsquo;s the principle of the matter.\nYou\u0026rsquo;re more likely to reciprocate if someone has already done something for you. You innately feel the need to return the favor.\nMany expert marketers (Ramit Sethi and Derek Halpern are great examples) make millions of dollars by giving away high-quality content in the form of free eBooks, blog posts, and mini-courses. Since Ramit\u0026rsquo;s courses are so expensive (some up to $10,000) there needs to be a very strong relationship built with the customer before they\u0026rsquo;ll buy.\nOnce people have read enough of his stuff, taken action, and seen results with the free stuff, they\u0026rsquo;re more likely to want to keep reading his material and maybe buy a course. They might even feel obligated to purchase something since they\u0026rsquo;ve gotten so much value from his free material.\nPersuasion Principle #6: Social Proof What\u0026rsquo;s your initial impression of \u0026ldquo;that guy\u0026rdquo; at a bar, club, or conference that\u0026rsquo;s always surrounded by beautiful women and/or powerful people?\nIf you\u0026rsquo;re like most people you think, \u0026ldquo;Wow. This guy must be really great if he\u0026rsquo;s been able to attract the attention of all these gorgeous women/influential people\u0026rdquo;\nYet you\u0026rsquo;ve probably never even spoke to this person. You have no idea what he\u0026rsquo;s like. He could be a complete idiot for all you know.\nSo, why would anyone assume something about someone they\u0026rsquo;ve never even spoken to?\nThey assume because another group of people vouch for him by giving him their attention.\nThis is called \u0026ldquo;social proof\u0026rdquo; and is something you should use EVERYWHERE in your marketing.\n[caption id=\u0026quot;\u0026quot; width=\u0026ldquo;438\u0026rdquo; align=\u0026ldquo;aligncenter\u0026rdquo; caption=\u0026quot; McDonalds figured out social proof before it was cool.\u0026quot;][/caption]\nPeople are going to buy if they see that other people have already bought and have seen results. People want to do what other people are doing.\nA few ways you can highlight that you\u0026rsquo;re in demand is by showing off things like:\nFacebook likes Twitter Followers Customer brand logos Customer testimonials Number of installations Number of email subscribers Celebrity Endorsements The key to selling anything is by building trust and social proof is the ultimate trust builder.\nConclusion All 6 of these principles should be used throughout your marketing and your landing pages. You\u0026rsquo;re much more likely to see success with cold traffic when you start to focus more on what happens after they click, as opposed to before the click.\nPosted with Blogsy\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-6-elements-of-landing-page-persuasion/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e[one_half]If there is one book you\u0026rsquo;re probably sick and tired hearing about\u0026hellip; it\u0026rsquo;s probably Robert Cialdini’s \u0026ldquo;Influence\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis book has become a sort of bible for marketers and everyone under the sun recommends that you read it. The reason being it\u0026rsquo;s very good at explaining the psychological principles of why people do things in a way that\u0026rsquo;s easy for the layman to understand. The cool thing about these principles is you can also apply them to your paid advertising strategy, specifically your landing pages.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The 6 Elements of Landing Page Persuasion"},{"content":"Your ad copy is extremely important not only in getting your prospects to click your ad, but to prime their brains to receive the sales message on your landing page making them more likely to convert.\nThe good news is you don\u0026rsquo;t have to be an expert copywriter to write great copy.\nThere is so much bad copy out there that you don\u0026rsquo;t have to be the best \u0026ndash; you just need to be better than the rest.\nThis post maes things even easier.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve uncovered several copy \u0026ldquo;formulas\u0026rdquo; being used by the top direct response companies and big brands.\nHere are our 8 favorites below.\nCopy Formula #1: Tell Your Story or \u0026ldquo;How I lost 20 lbs\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; Copy The key to capturing anyone\u0026rsquo;s attention is with stories, especially about people who are or were once in our position.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s why we love books, movies, and especially reality TV. People are voyeurs. They love to peek inside the lives of others and bear witness to their most embarrassing moments, deepest struggles, biggest wins and how they rose up and triumphed in the face of adversity.\nThere isn\u0026rsquo;t enough space in a display ad for you to write an entire memoir. However, you can give your prospects a teaser of the story you\u0026rsquo;ll tell them once they click your ad.\n[one_half]\nThe teaser in this ad is how a stay-at-home mother is able to make $13,475/month from home. Given that single mothers have time constraints and traditionally can\u0026rsquo;t work from home, you\u0026rsquo;re going to wonder how she\u0026rsquo;s able to make 6+ figures a year. You want to hear her story.\nA personal story about how you (or someone else) suffered from the same problem your audience has (weight loss, money problems, business issues, broke up with significant other) and then found a solution is a very effective sales tool.\n[/one_half]\n[one_half_last][/one_half_last]\nCopy Formula #2: \u0026ldquo;How-To\u0026rdquo; Copy \u0026amp; Benefits [one_half][/one_half]\n[one_half_last]\nThe \u0026ldquo;How-To\u0026rdquo; headline is the most classic copy formula. You simply state what problem your prospect will discover how to solve when they click through.\nExamples:\n\u0026ldquo;How To Lose 20lbs in 20 Days\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;How To Remove Dark Spots\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;How To Lower Your Churn By Focusing On These 3 Metrics\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;How To Become Your Client\u0026rsquo;s Trusted Media Advisor\u0026rdquo; [/one_half_last]\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an example from a site that sells blues guitar instruction:\nYou can also use the \u0026ldquo;how to\u0026rdquo; hook inside of your body copy as well, like in this text ad from a law firm that helps people get out of their Timeshare contracts:\nThe \u0026ldquo;How To\u0026rdquo; hook is a great place to start. It might not always be the perfect hook, but it will get you started.\nCopy Formula #3: State Benefits, Not Features People aren\u0026rsquo;t interested in how many modules your course is, how many pages your book is or how fast your servers are. They want to know how your product will improve their lives.\nThis means you don\u0026rsquo;t want to waste precious ad space listing nitty gritty technical details.\nAvoid copy like\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;100 page eBook that explains…\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;A 6 module course\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Built with the latest AMD 2X Computer Chip\u0026rdquo; \u0026hellip;and focus on the benefits of your product instead.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an ad that does it the wrong way and focuses on features instead of benefits:\nNow let\u0026rsquo;s look at an ad from the same company that focuses on the cost effectiveness of the solution (a benefit) instead of inundating the prospect with features.\n[one_half]\nThe emphasis that it\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;cost-effective\u0026rdquo; and highlighting the price (\u0026ldquo;starting from $26\u0026rdquo;) makes this ad much more compelling. Listing technical features is important in certain industries, however it\u0026rsquo;s better to do this somewhere on your landing page as opposed to in your ad copy.\n[/one_half]\n[one_half_last]\n[/one_half_last]\nCopy Formula #4: Hit Them With Emotionally Charged Words Word choice is very important in copywriting. Changing just one word can transform the emotions of your prospects.\nYou\u0026rsquo;ll want to use \u0026ldquo;power words\u0026rdquo;. These are words like humiliated, embarrassed, kill and shocking. Power Words are visceral words that grab your prospect\u0026rsquo;s attention and trigger past memories and experiences in their lives. When someone sees the word \u0026ldquo;embarrassed\u0026rdquo; they\u0026rsquo;ll remember a time when they felt embarrassed. They\u0026rsquo;ll be curious to know what happened to the person in your copy that made them feel this way\n[one_half]\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an ad from an info-product company that helps people overcome their spouse\u0026rsquo;s infidelity.\nNotice how it lists the emotions that most people feel when they find out their spouse has been unfaithful. When you read these words you literally feel the same emotions that someone feels when they discover their partner has been unfaithful.\n[/one_half]\n[one_half_last][/one_half_last]\nOne thing to keep in mind: Each market has its own set of power words. \u0026ldquo;Embarrassed\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;enraged\u0026rdquo; might be too much if you\u0026rsquo;re selling female beauty creams. However, \u0026ldquo;glowing\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;youthful\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;supple\u0026rdquo; might be perfect words. When you find out which words your prospects use to describe their own problems and desires, THOSE are your power words.\nUse a Swipe File To Write Better Banner Ads Instantly The key to consistently writing great banner ads is not to reinvent the wheel. Most copywriters don\u0026rsquo;t come up with great copy out of thin air. Any copywriter worth his salt has a swipe file that they use as inspiration to write great copy.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s a Swipe File? A swipe file is a collection of ads, headlines, body copy, calls-to-action, etc. from other businesses in your niche. When a copywriter gets stuck or need a bit of inspiration, they take a look at ads that are already proven to work and use them as inspiration. Bad copywriters directly copy ads word-for-word. Good copywriters discover why the copy works and tailor it to their product or service.\nCreate Your Own Swipe File You\u0026rsquo;ll need your own swipe file even if you\u0026rsquo;re not planning on becoming an expert copywriter. There are a few different ways to create one.\nBrowse publishers where your competitors buy traffic. Find their ads, take screenshots and file them away. Browse publishers where the BIG advertisers take out ads. These are going to be mass market advertisers in niches like weight loss, making money, and dating. Take screenshots of ads that you consistently see and save them in a folder. Large direct response companies are masters and A/B testing banner ads. They know what works. Use software (like Adbeat) to search for your competitors and mass market advertisers. Copy Formula #5: Use Numbers To Increase CTR [one_half][/one_half]\n[one_half_last] Ads that contain numbers in the copy tend to have a higher CTR than those that don\u0026rsquo;t. People\u0026rsquo;s eyes are just drawn to numbers.\nThis is why you see a lot of blog and ad headlines like\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;3 Weird Weight Loss Tricks\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;8 Copywriting Tips From a Banner Ad Expert\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;How To Lower Your Churn To Under 2%\u0026rdquo; [/one_half_last]\nCopy Formula #6: Use Social Proof Social proof might be the most powerful element of all 8.\nWhy?\nBecause your prospect doesn\u0026rsquo;t want to be the guinea pig. They want to know your product has already worked for other people. Social proof should permeate through ALL of your marketing, not just your banner ads.\n\u0026ldquo;As seen on TV\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;As featured on CNN\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Dr. Recommended\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Used in over 40 different countries\u0026rdquo;, etc. Pretty much anything that says \u0026ldquo;A lot of people have used our product/service and loved it\u0026rdquo; will influence your prospect\u0026rsquo;s purchasing decision.\n[one_half]\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an ad for a protein supplement that combines authority and social proof very well.\n\u0026ldquo;5-star Rated Taste\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Recommended At America\u0026rsquo;s Top Rated Hospitals\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;UNJURY is recommended by both doctors and patients\u0026hellip;\u0026rdquo; And to top it all off: a picture of a group of doctors [/one_half]\n[one_half_last][/one_half_last]\nHere are two text ads that combine numbers with social proof:\nCopy Formula #7: Use Special Characters Special characters like \u0026ldquo;\u0026amp;\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;%\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;+\u0026rdquo; stand out and can catch your prospect\u0026rsquo;s eye. These work well anytime you have a character limit.\nHere are a few examples:\nCopyright symbols can also be very effective if your brand is well-known and you have a trademark on the name.\nExample \u0026ndash; Rosetta Stone language learning software:\nCopy Formula #8: Speak To Your Audience, Not About Them \u0026ldquo;Talk to someone about themselves and they\u0026rsquo;ll listen for hours.\u0026rdquo; ― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People\nGeneral copy advice is to use \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;your\u0026rdquo; as much as possible. You want to speak to someone, not about something. Using \u0026ldquo;you\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;your\u0026rdquo; in your copy can help strengthen the relationship you have with your prospect and make it seem more personal. No one cares about your product or service. They only care about the benefits it provides them and the problems it solves.\n\u0026ldquo;Do You Have These?\u0026rdquo;\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an ad from John Hancock, a company that sells financial instruments.\nThey don\u0026rsquo;t talk about how great their solutions are. They address how their solutions will help you prepare for \u0026ldquo;what\u0026rsquo;s ahead\u0026rdquo;.\nConclusion Combine a couple of these copywriting tricks together and write a few different styles of ads. Each market responds to a different type of copy and emotion. You won\u0026rsquo;t know which style of copy works for your market until you test a few out.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/write-higher-converting-display-ads-with-these-8-formulas/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYour ad copy is extremely important not only in getting your prospects to click your ad, but to prime their brains to receive the sales message on your landing page making them more likely to convert.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe good news is you don\u0026rsquo;t have to be an expert copywriter to write great copy.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere is so much bad copy out there that you don\u0026rsquo;t have to be the best \u0026ndash; you just need to be better than the rest.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Write Higher Converting Display Ads With These 8 Formulas"},{"content":"There are a couple of basic elements you always need to get right when it comes to designing an ad creative that converts\u0026hellip;\nA compelling headline\u0026hellip; Persuasive body copy\u0026hellip; An eye-catching image\u0026hellip; A great call-to-action\u0026hellip; etc.\nHowever, after analyzing the top ads from a few major brands and direct response companies, we pinpointed a few unique design \u0026ldquo;tricks\u0026rdquo; that go beyond the basics of headlines and CTAs. These tricks can give you a 2-3x lift in CTR when implemented correctly.\nThis post outlines 3 of our favorites.\nCheck \u0026rsquo;em out.\nCTR Trick #1: Selectors The standard call-to-action practice is to have a \u0026ldquo;button\u0026rdquo; with a compelling phrase. The psychology being that people are used to seeing and clicking on buttons. The mere fact that they see a button makes them want to click it even more. This is sound advice and can work very well.\nHowever, if you want to test something different (or in addition to) a button CTA, why not test selectors to your ad creative.\nSelectors are small buttons/phrases that your prospect can click to \u0026ldquo;identify\u0026rdquo; themselves based on their demographic or some personal trait.\nStuff like\u0026hellip; their age, sex, income, astrological sign, etc.\nOne advertiser that uses selectors really well is LowerMyBills.com, a site that helps consumers get quotes on insurance, loans, mortgages, help with debt consolidation, etc. Selectors are pertinent for their market since insurance rates, mortgage rates and debt consolidation laws often vary depending on your age, income and location.\nHere are an example of an ad for a mortgage refinance offer:\nThis ad works for a few reasons:\nIt references recent news \u0026ndash; \u0026ldquo;Obama Waves Refi Requirement\u0026rdquo; It claims the prospect can save money (\u0026ldquo;You\u0026rsquo;ll be shocked when you see how much you can save\u0026rdquo;) There are multiple calls to action. The selectors \u0026ndash; \u0026ldquo;Tap Your Age\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; as well as the \u0026ldquo;Calculate New Payment\u0026rdquo; text. LowerMyBills uses selectors in almost all of their ads. Here are two more examples:\nBesides mortgages, there are a couple of other niches that love using selectors.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an ad from Astrology Answers:\nAnyone interested in astrology will be curious to see their \u0026ldquo;shocking\u0026rdquo; horoscope. Being able to click on their actual sign is going to tempt them even more, since the information they\u0026rsquo;ll eventually receive is tailored just for them.\nBesides astrology, any sort of advice site or site where you pay to talk to an expert tends to use them.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s an ad from HealthCareMagic.com, a site where you can consult an online doctor.\nSelectors tend to work well because they\u0026rsquo;re unique. Not many advertisers are using them. Anything that stands out and isn\u0026rsquo;t traditionally used will catch your prospect\u0026rsquo;s eye. There\u0026rsquo;s probably some way you can use them in your ad creative strategy even if you\u0026rsquo;re not in the mortgage refinancing, medicine or astrology market.\nCTR Trick #2: Emotional Faces Research by behavioral psychologist and body language expert Paul Ekman has uncovered that there are a few universal facial expressions that we all share, regardless of culture, racial background or location. These expressions are related to the emotions of disgust, fear, anger, happiness, sadness.\nFaces that show extreme versions of these 5 emotions can work very well in your ad creative. When someone sees a face showing a universally recognized expression related to a powerful emotion they are going to be curious. They\u0026rsquo;ll want to click the ad to discover what is making this person feel this way.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s one example of a display ad from a company that sells an info-product for people who want to naturally improve their vision:\nIn addition to her expression of shock and surprise, her eyes are staring right at you. Having eyes that stare out at you can also help improve CTR. Think about this: what is your natural reaction when you see someone out of the corner of your eye staring at you? If you\u0026rsquo;re like most people, you\u0026rsquo;re going to look at them and wonder why they\u0026rsquo;re staring at you. This concept holds for display ads.\nAlthough extreme emotions tend to work best, you can also test out faces that show more subtle emotions.\nTake this ad from Full Sail University:\nThe girl in the picture is looking straight at you with a devious smirk. It\u0026rsquo;s going to get your attention anytime someone looks like they\u0026rsquo;re \u0026ldquo;up to no good\u0026rdquo;, knows something you don\u0026rsquo;t or is hiding a secret from you. You\u0026rsquo;ll want to know what they know that you don\u0026rsquo;t.\nCTR Trick #3: \u0026ldquo;Hand Written\u0026rdquo; Ads People are used to seeing professionally designed ads with fancy fonts and high-quality pictures.\nYou can go the opposite route and test an \u0026ldquo;ugly\u0026rdquo; ad.\nMany display advertisers are doing well with ads that look kind of crappy and ugly, specifically using fonts that look like hand writing or using a tablet to actually hand write the copy themselves.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s one example from a very successful weight loss product:\nThis ad was not \u0026ldquo;hand written\u0026rdquo; per say, but the font and design does look closer to a hand drawing than an ad that a professional company might use.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s another ad from another weight loss product:\nNow, perhaps you\u0026rsquo;re saying..\n\u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not in the weight loss industry. I can\u0026rsquo;t get away with this. My product is \u0026ldquo;serious\u0026rdquo;, not sleazy!\u0026rdquo;\nIt\u0026rsquo;s true that you\u0026rsquo;ll see many more \u0026ldquo;less professional\u0026rdquo; ads in the weight loss market. However, this shouldn\u0026rsquo;t stop you from toning down the level of \u0026ldquo;shock\u0026rdquo; to something that\u0026rsquo;s appropriate to your market. Here\u0026rsquo;s why: the weight loss and supplement industries are two of the most competitive and most profitable markets out there. They\u0026rsquo;re very good at testing different strategies and concepts. They know what styles and images currently get peoples\u0026rsquo; attention.\nConclusion Making a few small changes to your ad\u0026rsquo;s copy/image can often give you a 2-3x lift in CTR. The specific tactics shown in this post have been proven to work for some of the best marketers and advertisers today, meaning they will likely work for your business as well. Test out a few in your own display ads and see if you can\u0026rsquo;t see better results.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/3-little-known-ways-to-increase-ads-clickthrough-rates/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere are a couple of basic elements you \u003cstrong\u003ealways\u003c/strong\u003e need to get right when it comes to designing an ad creative that converts\u0026hellip;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA compelling headline\u0026hellip;\nPersuasive body copy\u0026hellip;\nAn eye-catching image\u0026hellip;\nA great call-to-action\u0026hellip; etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, after analyzing the top ads from a few major brands and direct response companies, we pinpointed a few unique design \u0026ldquo;tricks\u0026rdquo; that go beyond the basics of headlines and CTAs. These tricks can give you a 2-3x lift in CTR when implemented correctly.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"3 Little-Known Ways to Increase Your Ads' Clickthrough Rates"},{"content":"The success of your paid advertising campaigns has less to do with the ad itself and more to with what happens after the click.\nYou can have the most persuasive ad copy, that perfect “eyeball-grabbing” image and buy the highest quality traffic… yet if your landing page is poorly designed for paid traffic, you’re going to have a really hard time achieving a positive ROI.\nWe’ve found 12 different styles of landing pages that are working very well for advertisers who drive millions of dollars worth of display traffic to their site every year.\nIn this post we’re going to cover what they are, who’s using them and why they work. You’ve probably seen some of them, but I guarantee there are one or two that will be new for most people.\nLanding Page #1: Is It a Landing Page or an Article? It’s an “Article Lander” One “new” type of landing page is the “ article lander.” This is usually a presell page that looks like a news article, scientific study, press release or a blog article. They can be multiple pages (like the “Old School New Body” sales funnel we analyzed in the “ Business of Display Part 4: Info Products” post) or they can be single page landers like the examples below.\nThese tend to work well because they don’t raise most peoples’ “Sleazy-Marketer-Wants-My-Money” flag. People have started to become blind to traditional sales letters, video sales letters or anything that indicates that someone wants them to buy something. An article lander just looks like an informational article.\nBills.com, a free resource for anyone with questions about finances, uses an article lander as a presell page for their financial services. The article lander presells the customer on the benefits of debt consolidation. Once you read the article you’re going to be more receptive to actually finding out more about what you can do to manage debt.\nThe headline “The Secret to Paying Off Credit Card Debt If You Own a Home” is written like the headline from a news article or press release. There are even links to other articles to keep customers on the site longer. The body copy is written in the style of a news article with a slight sales twist.\nMoral of the story: it doesn’t scream “advertisement.”\nArticle landers are also easy to A/B test. All you need to do is change the text on the page. A video sales letter, for example, requires you to re-record the audio, re-record the video, reformat the video, upload the new video, etc.\nIn addition, it’s easy to find the bottleneck in your funnel if you’re using a multiple page article lander. You can easily uncover which page causes the highest number of users to exit the page. For example, if you notice that a lot of people drop off on page 3 of 5 in the article sequence, you now know there is an issue with page 3 and can start to brainstorm ways to improve that specific page and NOT the entire sequence.\nLanding Page #2: From Print to Digital — The Advertorial Advertorials (also known as “Native Advertising”) were the hottest new landing page in 2014. They were even featured in an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.\nThese are the internet version of ads direct response marketers have been using for years in newspapers and magazines.\nOne of the best old-school marketers who commonly used these ads was Gary Halbert. In one issue of his “Gary Halbert Letter” he writes:\nMake Your Ad Look Like A News Story Here is how to “think” about your newspaper ads. Think about what could be the best possible piece of luck you could have. Think about a reporter who heard a rumor about your product or service and decided to check it out. And then, he fell in love with it. In fact, he loved it so much, he went back to his typewriter and wrote a full-page rave article about what you are selling.\nHere’s an example of an old-school advertorial selling a new fishing lure:\nAdvertorials are very similar to article landers. The small difference is that Advertorials are always made to look like news stories and are written in a more “newsy” style. Article landers can be written in this style, but it’s not a hard-and-fast rule. Article landers also tend to be hosted on the company’s domain. Advertorials are often found on “Advertorial Portals” like Health Headlines, How Life Works and First to Know. These sites buy display traffic and send it to advertorial content that contains an affiliate link.\nHere’s a great example of an advertorial for a probiotic health supplement on How Life Works:\nHere’s another example from LowerMyBills:\nBoth advertorials educate the consumer the way a news article would BEFORE they pitch the product. The probiotic advertorial explains what a probiotic is and why it’s beneficial. The LowerMyBills advertorial teaches you about a new government program called “HARP,” which was created to help homeowners refinance their mortgages and save money.\nAdvertorials can work very well at building trust as a presell page in just about any market.\nLanding Page #3: Tell Me About Me — The Quiz/Survey Landing Page Over the past couple of years more and more marketers have been using quiz and survey landing pages. They’re a bit more complex to set up, but they work very well with cold traffic (we’ve seen the results firsthand).\nBasically, an advertiser sends traffic to a landing page where the prospect uses a quiz to figure something out about themselves.\nWhy they can’t lose weight… The acidity level of their body based on the foods they eat… The problem with their golf swing… There are three reasons why these work:\nAgain, it’s not obvious it leads to a sales pitch. If done right, the information that you’ll receive is tailored to your specific needs. It’s not a pre-packaged solution meant for everyone under the sun. It’s for YOU. People crave to know more about themselves and why they suffer from certain problems. This is why Cosmo quizzes, BuzzFeed quizzes and the daily horoscope are so popular. Here’s a great example from Alkaline Foods, a site that sells products related to the Alkaline diet (a diet based on the premise that the cause of many health issues is due to high acidity levels in your body).\nThe landing page is very simple and just has a call-to-action to take the quiz.\nYou then take a six-question survey. Like a multi-page article lander, you can see where people drop off and fix that specific question. Sometimes people will exit the page if they find the question too “difficult.” The theory being that they’d rather quit the survey than answer the question wrong (even if there are no wrong answers).\nThey eventually ask you for your name and email so they can send you the link to your report (getting you to opt-in to their list in the process).\nThen you’re given the report on the next page (without having to check your email).\nAt the bottom there’s a link to a video “The 5 Super Foods” which is a VSL for “Energize Greens,” a natural greens supplement.\nEven though they eventually try to sell you a product, they’ve already built trust with the quiz + report on your body’s acidity levels. You’re more likely to trust them AND buy their product as they’ve already given you valuable information that can help with your health.\nLanding Page #4: WARNING… It’s the Video Sales Letter The video sales letter (or “VSL”) was created/made popular by marketer Jon Benson. He created the first “ugly” video sales letter for his diet book, “The Every Other Day Diet.”\nOver the years they’ve gotten more and more advanced with some people spending thousands of dollars on copywriting and production, but the majority of people still do it the “ugly” way: words on a PowerPoint being read out loud.\nThe advantage to using a VSL is that prospects don’t have to read. We live in an entertainment-based society and most people prefer to watch videos than read text. Plus, the video format forces them to listen to your sales message. They can’t scroll down and look at the price of the product like a traditional sales page. They have to wait until they get to the end of your video, after you’ve already had time to sell them on the benefits of your product. When you do a good job, the price becomes irrelevant.\nOne of my favorite VSLs at the moment comes from Perfect Origins, a nutraceuticals company that specializes in weight loss and probiotic supplements:\nLanding Page #5: The Lead Generation Page Lead magnets are a great source of traffic for advertisers doing lead generation. A lead magnet is an incentive that you offer users in exchange for their email address. It can be anything from an infographic to an eBook to access to a bonus webinar. The point is to offer something of value to increase the number of leads you get.\nZoom, a video conferencing platform, uses a lead magnet on their landing page to grow their email list.\nUsers can enter their contact information to get the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions report.\nGiven that they’re reinforcing their brand compared to their competitors, you know that the information is going to also be useful to users. Once the form\u0026rsquo;s submitted, the report\u0026rsquo;s emailed to the user for review.\nVery simple, very effective landing page style.\nLanding Page #6: Just Give It to Me — The Simple Sign-up/Opt-in Page The more straightforward your offer is, the more simple your landing page can be.\nFor example, Slack is a leader in virtual team communication. Their sign-up landing page simply explains what they offer and the benefits users get. There\u0026rsquo;s an offer asking new users to sign up for free and use the free plan for as long as they need.\nLanding Page #7: Thou Shall Not Enter — The Gated Landing Page Everyone knows the importance of building up an email list. But building up a list is doubly important if you’re running an eCommerce store.\nWhen a user comes from a display ad to an eCommerce store, they’re likely going to get caught up browsing the products. If they end up NOT buying something, they’re probably just going to exit the page, not bother to opt-in in the small section on the right and then completely forget about your eCommerce store.\nOne way that eCommerce stores have solved this is by creating a “gated” landing page. This means that the prospect is required to enter their email address before they’re able to browse the products.\nHere’s an example from zulily, a huge eCommerce store that sells discounted clothing and items for your house.\nThere’s definitely going to be a percentage of people who get angry and just exit the page.\nHowever, the “Daily Deals Up to 70% Off!” copy is pretty tempting and most people are going to be willing to opt-in just based on that.\nAnother eCommerce that uses a gated landing page is Frank \u0026amp; Oak, an online menswear store.\nThey’ve chosen to go the “premium” route and make it feel like an exclusive club, as opposed to zulily’s strategy of offering great deals. Plus, all the logos at the bottom are great social proof. Most people are going to see these and trust them enough to enter their email.\nLanding Page #8: All Are Welcome - The Ungated Landing Page The more laid-back cousin of a gated landing page is an un gated landing page. These landing pages have content that\u0026rsquo;s freely available for anyone to see and use. So unlike gated landing pages, when users get to an ungated landing page, they don\u0026rsquo;t have to enter an email address to access your content.\nUngated landing pages build brand awareness and reduce friction. Think about it. If someone is online researching for their business but only gets partial information, think about how excited they\u0026rsquo;ll be when they click on your paid ad, arrive on your landing page and find full, free access to your content. Chances are they\u0026rsquo;ll willingly give you their email address just so you can send them more information.\nThese users are qualified leads because they\u0026rsquo;ve shown an interest in you. Chances are good they\u0026rsquo;ll keep coming back and eventually buy something from you.\nClearbit, a data enrichment tool, uses ungated landing pages to offer users access to their data-driven marketing eBook.\nWhen users click on the “see all chapters” link below the email form, they\u0026rsquo;re taken to the section of the landing page where they can link to any of the available 12 chapters.\nUsers have the option to enter their email address if they want the book emailed to them but this isn\u0026rsquo;t required.\nLanding Page #9: Say It Again - The Repeat Offer Page Motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar put it best when he said, “Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.” By having a landing page designed to repeat your ad\u0026rsquo;s message, you encourage users to take action. It\u0026rsquo;s clear to them what they get now vs. waiting to buy later on.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s say you have a special offer, a new product feature or something else that gives users lots of value: use this landing page style to reinforce the message.\nOn GoToMeeting\u0026rsquo;s landing page they\u0026rsquo;ve included a special offer callout message. It\u0026rsquo;s right at the top of the page and in green, which stands out from everything else on the page and reminds visitors to buy the annual plan and save 20%.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s great here is that the offer\u0026rsquo;s repeated again just below the orange “Start My 14-Day Trial” button. Users can either start a trial or pay up front and save.\nLanding Page #10: The Soft Touch Video Page With attention spans getting shorter by the year, videos work to get users to stop scrolling and listen to what you have to say. This page style works when videos are less about making a sale and more about showing off the culture within your company.\nFor example, depending on your user base, use a little humor in the video to come off as less stiff and formal. It makes you relatable, and the more users can relate to you and your product, the more likely they\u0026rsquo;ll be to want to use it and pay for it.\nWistia, a platform that helps businesses create, manage and share videos, uses a video on its paid advertising landing page to set the tone for the kind of experience visitors can expect.\nWistia is a fun and lighthearted company and their landing page video speaks to that. The video in this particular example is only 59 seconds long but it packs in a ton of information about how to use the tool and when to use it — all with a little humor added in. There\u0026rsquo;s some animation and shots of teams having fun interacting with each other. It\u0026rsquo;s informative and not at all pushy.\nPlus, the lead generation form right next to the video makes for a smooth enrollment process for users. The video gets them excited about the product and the form closes the deal.\nLanding Page #11: Get Moving! - The Countdown Page Fear of Missing Out or FOMO is the idea that the thought of missing out on an event or experience causes some people anxiety. When it comes to marketing, you can use FOMO to emphasize time-sensitive opportunities to get users to do buy something.\nWhether you\u0026rsquo;re promoting an event like a webinar series or a new product launch, use a countdown to get people excited and to emphasize registering or buying sooner rather than later. Set the time to track for a week or two. You can set it for longer but it\u0026rsquo;s more impactful and gives a sense of urgency the closer to the deadline it is. The whole point of the timer is to create FOMO. Give leads too much time and they might store the information thinking they have time to take action but don\u0026rsquo;t come back to do anything.\nMarketing Summit used this idea to promote their marketing conference. To get visitors to sign up for the event, Marketing Summit included three design elements on their landing page:\nA tagline that gives insight into the value people get from attending A countdown clock showing how much time\u0026rsquo;s left to register A large, bright CTA button to drive leads to take action Landing Page #12: The Testimonial Page Social proof is a powerful way to grow your email list because it uses feedback from current users to influence new users. Anand Iyer, the former Head of Product at Threadflip, frames the power of social proof this way:\nUltimately, marketplaces are social businesses. They depend on relationships and network effect. That’s why you can drastically lower the barrier to entry for new users and increase conversion by leveraging social proof — basically promoting that many other people are using and loving your product.\nWhen new users see testimonials from current users they see the product as more valuable. Social proof also helps you grow trust with new users who are still getting to know you. A landing page dedicated to users\u0026rsquo; testimonials does just that.\nInfusionsoft is an email marketing and sales platform for small businesses. For example, users can build automated campaigns that help them manage their email marketing more efficiently.\nWhen users click on an ad and land on the landing page, they\u0026rsquo;re greeted with a list of real customers, their company and contact information.\nAs users scroll down the landing page they see some of the features Infusionsoft offers. What\u0026rsquo;s great here is that mixed in with theses features are testimonials backing up each one.\nAlso worth noting is the landing page includes two places for users to sign up. There\u0026rsquo;s a green CTA button at the top of the page and a form with four fields at the bottom of the page. So users have the option to sign up right away based on their initial impression or wait until they get to the bottom of the landing page and learned more about the product and features. There are only four fields so it\u0026rsquo;s a short and easy form for users to fill in and get started.\nPut your plans in motion Your landing page is one of the most important components in getting paid advertising to work. All 12 of these are proven page types that work depending on your offer and your audience.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/12-landing-page-styles-that-work-with-paid-advertising/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe success of your paid advertising campaigns has less to do with the ad itself and more to with what happens \u003cem\u003eafter\u003c/em\u003e the click.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou can have the most persuasive ad copy, that perfect “eyeball-grabbing” image and buy the highest quality traffic… yet if your landing page is poorly designed for paid traffic, you’re going to have a really hard time achieving a positive ROI.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe’ve found 12 different styles of landing pages that are working very well for advertisers who drive millions of dollars worth of display traffic to their site every year.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"12 Bold Landing Page Styles That Work With Paid Advertising"},{"content":"We\u0026rsquo;ll be the first to admit it.\nDisplay Advertising can be tricky for B2B SaaS companies.\nMany factors which include a longer time to see a positive ROI (longer sales cycle), difficulty targeting business owners (not consumers) and the constant harping of \u0026ldquo;display doesn\u0026rsquo;t work\u0026rdquo; all contribute to B2B companies shying away from display.\nHowever, with the right targeting, a good landing page and a long-term mindset, Display advertising can be a very effective channel for B2B SaaS companies.\nIn today\u0026rsquo;s post you\u0026rsquo;ll see 5 different B2B SaaS companies of varying sizes who have found a way to make Display advertising work for them. Any B2B SaaS company who\u0026rsquo;s interested in testing out paid traffic could learn a thing or two from what these advertisers are doing.\nOptimizely Optimizely is one of the latest A/B testing web apps out there. I\u0026rsquo;ve used it extensively in the past and I\u0026rsquo;ll admit that they\u0026rsquo;ve really got a great tool.\nA/B testing is super important in figuring out what works on Display and Optimizely is doing a bang up job, specifically in regards to retargeting.\nWe\u0026rsquo;re currently seeing Optimizely testing three different methods to obtain leads through Display:\nFree trial sign-up Free reports (lead generation) Free informational Webinar. Optimizely leans towards using opt-ins for receiving valuable information. Our instinct is that they\u0026rsquo;ve figured out that a lot of business owners still need to be educated on the benefits of A/B testing. They might be willing to sign-up for a free trial, but they might need a bit more time to learn how to use the tool properly and become a long-term customer.\n( Hint: One way to get an inside look as to what campaign a company is running on Display is to check their URL tags. Sometimes you\u0026rsquo;ll be able to get a hint as to the purpose of that campaign. For example, one of Optimizely\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives is tagged with: otm_campaign= G_WW_Content_Remarketing_Tofu. We have no idea what the \u0026ldquo;Tofu\u0026rdquo; part means but \u0026ldquo;Content_Remarketing\u0026rdquo; is pretty clear.)\nAs far as the rest of their strategy goes\u0026hellip;\nAd Networks Pure Google. Google is a great traffic source for B2B companies since they tend to have higher quality publishers running Google Adsense.\nPublishers Remarketing campaigns tend to show ads on any sites that support Google Adsense. This means that the publishers showing Optimizely\u0026rsquo;s ads could be a bit random.\nHowever, when you see someone spending an non-trivial amount with a specific publisher (even through remarketing) you can speculate that this publisher works for that specific vertical in general , not just for remarketing campaigns.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s take a look at the publishers that Optimizely has spent the most with:\nThe publishers are a mix of sites that show tech related content \u0026ndash; The Google System blog, Slideshare, Mashable, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, etc. \u0026ndash; and some of the more general sites that are a bit more \u0026ldquo;fun\u0026rdquo; and quite popular \u0026ndash; Playbuzz, The Onion, AV Club and Daily Dot.\nIf I were the campaign manager for a B2B SaaS company, I would test out buying traffic from tech related sites first. These sites are going to give you the most bang for your buck when you\u0026rsquo;re first getting started. The more general sites (like Playbuzz) can be a crapshoot. These sites will get you more traffic, but will be off target for any non-remarketing campaign.\nAds The ads are pretty straight forward. When you use remarketing it\u0026rsquo;s sometimes best to keep them basic. The person is already going to be familiar with your brand. You just need to remind them who you are (usually with a more \u0026ldquo;branding\u0026rdquo; style ad) and have a tempting call-to-action.\nLanding Pages Very basic landing page. No distractions \u0026ndash; just an easy way for them to test out Optimizely.\nFreshbooks Freshbooks describes themselves as:\n\u0026hellip;a cloud accounting service, FreshBooks helps service-based small business owners manage their time and expenses, send branded invoices, and collect online payments by credit card, PayPal, or eCheck. Save time, impress your clients, work anywhere and get paid faster.\nAd Networks They rely heavily on BuySellAds, which is a platform that connects advertisers directly with publishers. It\u0026rsquo;s basically a way for advertisers to do a direct media buy without all the initial contact, negotiation and payment issues. BuySellAds allows you to use their payment system to pay for ad space at a fixed CPM/CPC price.\nBuySellAds can work well, but the traffic levels tend to be a bit lower and you\u0026rsquo;re limited in which publishers you can advertise with. However, they are a great option for any advertiser interested in getting started with direct buys but who isn\u0026rsquo;t quite ready to take the \u0026ldquo;training wheels\u0026rdquo; off.\nPublishers Similar to Optimizely, they\u0026rsquo;re buying a lot of traffic from smaller sites aimed at designers, developers, start-ups and people looking for financial Excel templates.\nAds Their ads highlight a pain point that their target audience has: billing and invoicing is annoying. No one wants to do it and most people are willing to pay for a solution.\nLanding Pages Very solid landing page that aligns perfectly with the copy in their ad creative (\u0026ldquo;Make Billing Painless\u0026rdquo;).\nZendesk Zendesk describes themselves as:\n\u0026hellip;a software development firm providing a SaaS suite that offers help desk ticketing, issue tracking, and customer service support.\nZendesk might not be the best example as far as Display advertising strategy goes, mainly due to the fact that they went public in 2014. This means they probably have a large budget and can be more patient in attaining a positive ROI.\nHowever, they\u0026rsquo;re doing some interesting stuff on Display and are worth taking a look at.\nAd Networks Again, we\u0026rsquo;ve seen almost solely Google so far. Zendesk is no exception.\nPublishers The publishers they\u0026rsquo;re spending the most with are similar to the publishers being used by the other companies featured in this round up.\nTech blogs, software download sites, mobile news, the Google System blog on Blogspot, etc.\nAds Zendesk\u0026rsquo;s ad creatives tend to be a bit quirkier.\nThey just started a new campaign called \u0026ldquo;Embeddables\u0026rdquo;. You\u0026rsquo;ll find out more about this below in the landing pages section.\nLanding Pages Zendesk appears to have two different campaigns running.\nOne for direct sales to small businesses\u0026hellip;\nPlus a campaign for what they call \u0026ldquo;Embeddables\u0026rdquo;. This appears to be a new features that allows you to integrate Zendesk directly into your web and/or mobile app. It\u0026rsquo;s a more advanced feature that more tech savvy companies might be interested in.\nSprout Social Over the past couple of months I\u0026rsquo;ve been bombarded with ads from Sprout Social. I thought it would be only fair to include them here.\nSprout Social describes themselves as:\nSprout Social provides a platform for businesses to manage social media engagement, publishing and analytics.\nAd Networks Once again, Google. (Notice a trend? If you\u0026rsquo;re a SaaS company you might want to try out Google Adwords.)\nPublishers Lots of sites similar to the other advertisers showing up. Daily Dot, Slideshare, some social media news sites, etc. Sprout Share is also buying quite a bit of traffic on Iconosquare, an Instagram analytics app. Makes sense since Sprout is social media software and Instagram is one of the latest social channels that marketers are taking advantage of.\nAds Two different kinds of campaigns: A direct straight to \u0026ldquo;free trial\u0026rdquo; ad and a lead generation campaign that offers a free guide to becoming a successful social media manager.\nLanding Pages Their two landing pages coincide with the two types of campaigns that they\u0026rsquo;re running.\n1. Free trial\n2. Lead generation (Download the \u0026ldquo;Social Media Manager Guide\u0026rdquo;)\nHubspot Hubspot describes themselves as\u0026hellip;\nHubSpot develops a cloud-based Inbound marketing software that allows businesses to transform the way that they market online\nLike Zendesk, Hubspot also went public. They\u0026rsquo;re taking a different approach by focusing more on Content Discovery Networks.\nAd Networks Hubspot is taking a different approach from the other companies. They\u0026rsquo;re focusing specifically on Content Discovery Networks, specifically Outbrain, to drive traffic to their blog and focus on getting the prospect to sign-up for a lead magnet.\nThis makes sense for Hubspot because their software is very expensive. The customer courting process might be very long and could take years before it\u0026rsquo;s completed. Building a relationship through email is key.\nPublishers Again, tech related sites.\nAds Landing Pages The landing page is simply their blog post with multiple ways to opt-in and download the infographic templates:\nSince infographics are very effective (but expensive to create), someone who works at a start-up is going to at least be curious to see what they or a designer can do with these free templates. Plus, since you have to opt-in to receive them, Hubspot is probably getting a pretty good amount of qualified leads. Again, this goes back to their need to build a stronger customer relationship due to the price of their service.\nOn another note\u0026hellip; a lot of people wonder what the best way to get a bunch of traffic to their content is.\nHonestly?\nPay for it.\nYou\u0026rsquo;re guaranteed that people will see it. People will also share the content if you\u0026rsquo;ve taken the time to write or offer something of high quality. As of the writing of this post, this article on Hubspot has been shared over 2.6k times on Twitter and liked by over 3.2k people on Facebook. They\u0026rsquo;ve no doubt gotten a ton of free traffic just from shares alone. It\u0026rsquo;s worth paying for initial \u0026ldquo;seed\u0026rdquo; traffic when you know you\u0026rsquo;re going to get your money\u0026rsquo;s worth of free, organic traffic as a result.\nConclusion It can be a bit more difficult to achieve a positive ROI on display when you\u0026rsquo;re selling an expensive or complex B2B SaaS product. However, the companies above have already paved a path for future advertisers. You\u0026rsquo;ll likely see very good results if you take a few insights from their paid advertising strategies and tailor them to your company\u0026rsquo;s specific needs.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/b2b-saas-companies-on-display/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe\u0026rsquo;ll be the first to admit it.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDisplay Advertising \u003cem\u003ecan\u003c/em\u003e be tricky for B2B SaaS companies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMany factors which include a longer time to see a positive ROI (longer sales cycle), difficulty targeting business owners (not consumers) and the constant harping of \u0026ldquo;display doesn\u0026rsquo;t work\u0026rdquo; all contribute to B2B companies shying away from display.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, with the right targeting,  a good landing page and \u003cem\u003ea long-term mindset\u003c/em\u003e, Display advertising can be a very effective channel for B2B SaaS companies.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"[Case Study] B2B SaaS Paid Advertising Strategies"},{"content":"Back in 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt quoted this amazing statistic:\nWe create as much information in two days now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003\nAnd the data backs this up. In just one day, Google receives over 3.5 billion search queries, 269 billion emails are sent and over 4.75 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook.\nWhat all this boils down to is that people are hungrier than ever for more content. But let’s face it … we live in the era of fake news where every piece of content is judged for authenticity. As a result, people are becoming less trusting of internet “advice.”\nBut even though there’s a ton of information out there, lots of people are still willing to pay for great content.\nAnd the most popular way to sell this information is with an information product. This is information compiled in text, video or audio format that’s then sold at a premium.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s the most common and easiest business model to get started in because you don’t need any special skills to create an information product. Plus, most people are experts in some topic that other people are willing to pay money to learn. And since most products are digital, there are no raw material costs, no assembly costs, and no shipping costs.\nAnd of course … information products work extremely well on display advertising.\nBut before we dig deeper into the world of information products and display ads, let\u0026rsquo;s first look at how you make these products.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s an Information Product Anyway? It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter what type of content you\u0026rsquo;re creating, the path from idea to revenue is the same: What does change, however, is the form information products take. Here are a few examples of some of the most commons ones out there today.\neBooks This is the most common information product. You can throw together a 20-50 page document on just about any topic, turn it into a PDF, give it to a designer and boom — you’ve got a finished product ready to sell. The upside to an eBook is that it’s really simple to create. The downside is that most people don’t read eBooks, even when they pay for it. [ Source]\nThink about it. How many eBooks do you currently have on your computer that you’ve either paid for or gotten for free for opting into an email list? How many of those eBooks have you actually read? If you’re like most people, then not many.\nKey Takeaway: Since it’s possible someone will ask for a refund or not buy from you again if they don’t consume, make the value you offer very clear. What problem do you solve? Put that front and center and you\u0026rsquo;ll improve the chances of people reading your content.\nOnline Courses A great way to package information is as a “course,” complete with video, audio, or maybe even just text. For example, platforms like Udemy let creators offer courses as a video and text combination.\n[ Source]\nYou can turn the content that you would have written in an eBook into a course and format it into modules. Then make it available in an “online members area” on your WordPress website with a plugin like WishList.\nKey Takeaway: Dividing your content this way makes it feel more valuable and encourages people to consume it.\nNewsletters A lot of the bigger online publishers — specifically in the internet marketing and financial spaces — sell digital or physical subscription newsletters.\n[ Source]\nNewsletters are great because when you add a cost to them, you get guaranteed income from a customer every single month.\nKey takeaway: In order to get people to read your newsletter after paying for it, you need to consistently provide new and valuable information. A commitment to quality content prevents customers from canceling their subscription.\nInformation Products are Cheap to Produce and Perfect for Display Ads The marginal cost of producing and ‘shipping’ a digital product is approximately … $0.\nBusinesses that sell physical books or newsletters have some production costs, but these costs aren\u0026rsquo;t high. Books and newsletters are just sheets of paper but the margins are high because the subscription cost for these products is in the $47 – $97/month range.\nOther reasons why information products make a great business model are because:\nThey\u0026rsquo;re easy to create. When people go through some life-changing event, they want to share the experience with other people. The result is content that\u0026rsquo;s formatted in a way that teaches other people how to do what they did. The good news is you don’t have to be an expert — although it does help build credibility. For example, if you lose 50 pounds but aren’t a personal trainer or some fitness guru, it’s not a big deal. A lot of people are interested in paying to learn how “someone like them” was able to achieve their fitness goals. They\u0026rsquo;re perfect for lead generation. Although you should be building email lists and leads for any market you’re in, information products are particularly conducive and work really well with email marketing. If you’ve got a good landing page, clear value, and deliver on providing good information, it’s pretty easy to get someone to opt-in. So regardless of whether or not they buy, you can send leads valuable information, build trust, and pitch different offers. Most people are going to be curious about your premium material if you’ve been providing valuable free material that they’ve used to improve their lives in some way. A low price point = low barriers to entry. When it comes to buying big ticket items, people need more time to make a purchase decision. However, most information products sell in the $27 – $97 range. They\u0026rsquo;re easy to sell if your targeting and copy are on point. All of these benefits — combined with high margins — means that information products are the perfect fit for display ads. As I mentioned earlier, the marginal cost to produce and ship a digital product is about $0 — or very low if you’re selling a physical information product like a book or newsletter.\nThis means you can spend more to market and advertise your product. Lots of marketers are willing to spend the entire cost of the front-end core product AND all the upsells and downsells just to get one customer. Why?\nBecause the value isn’t necessarily in the revenue they’ve brought in from the first product the customer purchased. The value is having the customer on their email list. Having a customer on your list makes it much easier to build trust and have a back-and-forth relationship with previous and prospective customers.\nAs the saying goes, your best customers are the ones who\u0026rsquo;ve bought your products and gotten value out of them. They\u0026rsquo;re more likely to buy other products you offer and maybe even premium coaching, courses, masterminds, etc., that combined, offer you an even higher revenue.\nEven though you can create information products on just about anything, there are a few niches that tend to work very well with display ads. Particularly, “The Big 3”: wealth, health, and relationships.\nWealth Everyone wants more money. Whether it’s through investing, tax loopholes/strategies or just getting a better job, there\u0026rsquo;s no shortage of “make money” information products out there.\nFor example, investment training — offered in the form of a video series — from the US Tax Lien Association. Here\u0026rsquo;s the ad: and the landing page with access to the video content:\nOr this video and blog post combo from Interview Success Formula. Here\u0026rsquo;s the ad: And the landing page where users can watch video content: Health Lots of people want to be thinner, in better shape and have solutions to their health issues. The health market is a great one, especially if you’ve overcome some sort of health hurdle in your life and want to share how you succeeded.\nFor example, this free eBook from BioTrust Nutrition offers to help customers meet their health goals:\nOr this eReport from Truth About Abs that promises to help users boost their metabolism. Relationships Every single guy wants more women and to date more. Women, on the other hand, want to understand why men act the way they do.\nFor example, Marriage Max runs Google ads like this one: When people click on the ad they\u0026rsquo;re taken to a landing page where they can sign up to receive an email with answers to their questions:\nSmaller Niches Although information products in the Big 3 tend to work very well on display, you don’t have to be in one of these niches to see success. There are a lot of smaller companies who are killing it on display in unconventional niches.\nFor example, Teach Sunday School runs ads that promote the worksheets and tips they offer customers. When people click on the ad, they\u0026rsquo;re taken to a landing page where they can download a digital copy of the information they need:\nYou can really sell any product in any niche if your messaging and targeting are right. There might be a limit to how much revenue you can make — for example, the weight loss market is much bigger than the Sunday School Teaching market — but you’re not doing too badly if you’ve got two to three of these smaller businesses each making $5k/month.\nOutline of a Basic Info Product Sales Funnel Once you\u0026rsquo;re clear on your niche and decided on how you\u0026rsquo;ll share your display ads, you have to improve your sales funnel. One way to do this is to buy the products your most successful competitors are marketing and document every step in their sales funnel.\nAfter doing years of competitive research, I’ve noticed that there is a pretty basic sales funnel that works for most info products on display.\nThe diagram below outlines a very basic sales funnel that works very well for anyone looking to get started selling an info product.\nMany large companies have much more intricate sales funnels, with multiple upsells and downsells at various price points, but you can do well with a basic sales funnel, like the one outlined below.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s How it Works: At the top of the funnel is display traffic which is how you get people to see your landing page. This can be through avenues like display ads, search ads, or affiliate traffic. From here you have to decide what your leads will see when they click on your ad. You have to create a landing page that explains what your information product is.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s say you offer an online course; your landing page can also include some kind of exit pop-up — like an offer to download an eBook version of the course — or discount offer. Based on the action your leads choose to take next, you can incorporate upsells, downsells or email marketing.\nUpsells Upsells are products that are immediately pitched to the customer once they buy your core product. The idea being that since your customer has already purchased something they’ve now entered a “buying state of mind” and are likelier to buy another product.\nFor example, after customers buy a trial set at Harry\u0026rsquo;s — consisting of a Truman razor with a blade, foaming shave gel, and a travel blade cover — they get an upsell email with an offer to receive a full-size bottle of foaming shave gel and a bottle of aftershave moisturizer. It’s essential to have at least one (if not two or three) upsells for pretty much any product (info or otherwise).\nMost marketers will price their “front-end” offer very low — for example, new customers can get the Harry\u0026rsquo;s trial set for only $8 with free shipping — to make the purchase a no-brainer. However, the cost to get one customer might end up being the same price of your core product, meaning that if you have no upsells, you either end up with a profit of $0 or are in the red. Usually, the only way to achieve profitability is to have a few upsells.\nNot everyone will buy your upsells, but many will. Think about it … when people go shopping usually one of two things happen:\nThey come back from the mall with empty hands… or Five or six shopping bags that they can barely carry What happens is that once people start buying, they enter what’s called a “buying frenzy.” That first purchase sets off a chain reaction where their mind has decided that it’s “okay” to spend more money. The thought process being, “Well, it’s only $50 more and it sounds interesting, so why not?”\nDownsells The downsell is a product you pitch to someone who doesn’t buy the upsell. It’s usually a lower-priced product or a discount/installment payment plan on one of the upsells.\nFor example, people who sign up for GrubHub but haven\u0026rsquo;t made their purchase get the following email offer: It’s likely the reason someone doesn’t purchase the upsell isn’t because they’re not interested in it; it probably has to do with price.\nOffering a lower-priced downsell is a great way to get extra profit from people who are more price sensitive.\nEmail Marketing The average conversion rate for a direct buy from cold traffic is usually somewhere between 1% and 5%.\nNot very high.\nIt’s not that people don’t want your product, it’s just that they’re not ready yet and need a bit more coaxing.\nThere’s nothing more valuable than getting people who come from your cold traffic into your email funnel, both buyers and non-buyers.\nEmail is a great way to get buyers to consume the product. If you have a tailored email sequence that tells them how to consume the product, they’re much more likely to read the material, take action, and see results.\n[ Source]\nYou don’t want people to buy your products and never look at them again. When someone doesn’t consume your material, they won’t see the value in it or a chance to experience the “Aha!” moment. They’re less likely to take action, they’re less likely to buy another one of your products, and they’re more likely to refund.\nFor the non-buyers — which is going to be most people coming from paid traffic — you need a way to show authority and build trust. Email is perfect. You can create a short ten email auto-responder sequence where you share tips, do “soft-teaching,” send FAQ emails, share customer results, case studies, whatever. Most people that come to your site through cold traffic will not buy. You will get a lot of sales if you do your email marketing right.\nCase Study: Old School New Body Old School New Body (OSNB) is a very successful weight loss info product targeted at men and women aged 35+.\nWord on the street is that they’ve been making good money off of affiliate partnerships and they’ve recently taken to doing display advertising themselves. Their sales funnel is fairly simple, yet seems to be working very well for them.\nLet’s drill down and see what they’re doing.\nPart #1: Traffic Ad Networks OSNB relies heavily on direct buys. They buy impressions from publishers in their niche to get their product in front of the “right” kinds of customers.\nPublishers OSNB buys the majority of their traffic from Health Status. Since OSNB is a mass market offer for weight loss, their advertising is going to work well on websites that cater to a large, health-conscious audience, like Health Status'.\nIn the past OSNB had also done some advertising on weather.com, which is another great site for mass-market offers and NFL.com — a great mass-market site to hit a male demographic.\nAd Creative Their latest ads focus on specific pain points for men and women. For men it\u0026rsquo;s aging and for women, it\u0026rsquo;s weight gain. OSNB used simple images and basic text to speak to each audience.\nThe ad creative for men: The ad creative for women: These ads are very good and there are a couple of elements that make them very compelling.\nCuriosity — Both ads allude to mistakes people make with their healthcare of some opportunity they can\u0026rsquo;t miss out on. If someone sees an ad that says, “The #1 exercise that accelerates aging” or “Is conventional diet and exercise causing women over 35 to gain weight?” combined with matching images, that’s going to get their attention. It makes the audience wonder what they could be doing wrong. Numbers — People love numbers, period. It makes it feel like the information they’re about to receive will be easy and quick for their mind to understand. If it’s “The Complete 100 Page System With Documented Scientific Evidence”… most people are busy and don’t want to read it. But if it\u0026rsquo;s just a list of quick tips and all you have to do is STOP doing these one, two or three things to burn fat … it’s much more appealing. People like tactics and lists. Calling out the market — For some, aging or gaining weight might mean loss of beauty, loss of energy, loss of libido, etc. Most people will reach a stage of their life where they’ll yearn to feel younger and healthier and do what they can to “slow down” the aging process or stop their weight gain. The copy in these ads speaks to these desires. Part #2: Landing Page OSNB uses what’s called an “article lander.” If you read our post on the nutraceutical market, we pointed out that many health and fitness companies use the article lander.\nThe idea is to give their prospects good information that appears in an article. This makes it seem like they’re not going to be pitched another product. These work especially well on content discovery networks and Adsonar when the ad text implies that when they click they’ll receive information, not a sales pitch.\nIn this case, OSNB actually uses a five-page sequence that gives the prospect a piece of valuable information on each page, and then frames them for the actual sale on page 5 where the last paragraph says… “x, y, z.”\nOne of the advantages to using a multi-page article lander is that it’s really easy to find out where the leaks are in your funnel. For example, if you notice that a lot of people drop off on page 2, then you know that page 2 is where the problem lies. You can A/B test different text, pictures, formatting, etc. on page 2 and see if you can fix it.\nAnd while it’s really easy to change text on a sales page, it’s very hard to do it in a video sales letter. You’ll have to write the text, change the slides, record new audio, splice it into the video and then re-upload the video. Lots of work without any clue if it’s going to have an effect.\nWhen leads click on the CTA in the article lander they\u0026rsquo;re taken to the actual sales page. This is where leads find more information about the product they\u0026rsquo;re interested in and are introduced to more details about the offer.\nThe sales page is very good and contains all the important elements, like:\nA compelling headline:\nIntro stating why it’s different:\nAddressing common questions \u0026amp; concerns ( “Will it work for me if I’m a woman? If I don’t have gym equipment? If reason X, Y, Z?”)\nScarcity: A discount off the retail price: And a great guarantee: You should really read, study and analyze the entire sales page to get an idea of what’s working in the health and fitness market.\nPart 3: Email Capture + The Sale Like a lot of other information product companies, OSNB can use email marketing with a clear CTA to increase sales. For example, a customer enters their email address first and then they\u0026rsquo;re taken to the page to buy something.\nNow, it seems like this extra step might lead to fewer people converting due to extra friction and distrust since some people won’t want to enter their email, but the benefits could be worth the possible downsides.\nIf someone enters their email, you now have them in your back-end.\nSo, if new customers get the buy page and decide NOT to buy, you can still target them through email marketing.\nBut if they’re coming from cold traffic and you can’t email them, then the only way for you to target that same person is through retargeting ads. Retargeting is awesome and very effective, but email tends to work very well with info products.\nPart 4: Last Ditch Effort — The Exit Pop-Up Everybody claims to hate these… yet they work so well.\nIf a lead tries to close the tab or window when they’re on the sales pages, they’ll see a pop-up with a message urging them to stay on the page to receive a special deal.\nThis is a last-ditch effort by OSNB to capture people who are curious about the product but aren’t sure if it’s worth the $20.\nThis is the page you’re taken to if you select “Stay On This Page”:\nTry this approach this week to see how it works for you. This is a no-brainer offer for anyone who was interested in the product but was hesitant to spend $20.\nUpsells/Downsells Since OSNB only costs $20, they need a lot of sales and a lot of traffic to see a profit. Some of the CPMs and CPCs on news sites like Huffington Post are very expensive. Upsells and getting customers on their email are often the only way for these companies to reach profitability.\nHowever, your upsells and downsells should be strategic.\nThere are a couple of different ways you need to design your upsells/downsells.\nComplementary — Upsells that complement core product. Example: An upsell for a diet program could be a workout manual that helps them get six-pack abs. An upsell for a “Talk To Women” product could be a “How To Text Women” product. Solves a “new” problem — Once your customer uses your product and sees results, they’re likely going to be facing a whole new set of challenges. For example: you sell a dating product. Your customer has done so well with your product, that he has more numbers and dates lined up than he knows what to do with. You could upsell a product all about “Managing Your Relationships,” which will teach him how to successfully juggle all the women who want to go out with him. High ticket upsells— There is going to be a subsection of your market that is so passionate about solving their problem, that they’re willing to pay a premium to get someone to help them through the program and with strategies. One of your upsells could be a paid monthly mastermind, one-on-one coaching/consulting or anything that is higher priced and offers more tailored attention. Options on how to incorporate information products into OSNB\u0026rsquo;s product offering:\nPaleo Cookbooks The hardest part about losing weight is fixing your diet. No one wants to eat “healthy.” These cookbooks are an easy sell because they offer recipes that are healthy, play off the popularity of Paleo and claim to be delicious.\nSix Pack Abs Program No fitness product is complete without something aimed at the people who want those washboard abs. This is one of those upsells that is related to the problems that they’ll have once they go through the program. Okay, now you’re in shape but how about those abs?\n101 Foods Since the product is targeted at people over 35, this is a great offer because they’re going to be concerned about aging, wrinkles, and feeling more energetic. A “101 Foods” eBook is a great product because it addresses this concern in a format that people love. It’s all tactics. There is no strategy, no thinking because people love lists for this reason. You don’t have to make any great change in your life, but add a few of these foods in to help stop aging.\nMaking Money Off Their Customer Email List One of the ways that companies like OSNB make money off their previous customers is by partnering with other companies in health and fitness niches and selling their products for a commission. Here’s a screenshot from my Gmail account.\nSteve \u0026amp; Becky love to send me affiliate offers related to health and fitness. They’re probably doing pretty well off these offers, since they go hand in hand with the Old School New Body program. If you don’t have another product to sell, then partnering with other companies and selling their offers on commission is a great way to make some extra money off your list.\nNow it\u0026rsquo;s Your Turn For anyone looking to get into creating information products, this is a solid place to start. Remember, they\u0026rsquo;re easy to create, simple and fun to sell, and information products offer a great way to take advantage of display advertising.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-business-of-display-part-4-information-products/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBack in 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt quoted this amazing statistic:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe create as much information in two days now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd the data backs this up. In just one day, Google receives over \u003ca href=\"http://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/\"\u003e3.5 billion search queries\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https://www.templafy.com/blog/how-many-emails-are-sent-every-day-top-email-statistics-your-business-needs-to-know/\"\u003e269 billion emails are sent\u003c/a\u003e and over \u003ca href=\"https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/\"\u003e4.75 billion pieces of content\u003c/a\u003e are shared on Facebook.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat all this boils down to is that people are hungrier than ever for more content. But let’s face it … we live in the era of fake news where every piece of content is judged for authenticity. As a result, people are becoming less trusting of internet “advice.”\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Business of Display Part 4: Information Products"},{"content":"Not too long ago the titles that dominated news headlines included words like:\nBaby boomers, medical debt, dismantling Obamacare…\nThere’s no doubt that the increased uncertainty around healthcare costs has more people worrying about their current and future health situation. This, combined with the increasing awareness behind preventive medicine, has made people seek out alternatives.\nNutraceuticals have been around for years and people continue to turn to them as a remedy for countless ailments. Nutraceuticals are pills, powders, and liquids that fall somewhere between prescription drugs and dietary supplements.\nThey normally claim to fix some sort of health issue — like high blood pressure — or increase physical performance — like physical activity or sexual health.\nThey’re not regulated by the FDA and you don’t need to see a doctor or have a prescription to buy them.You can get them online or at any health or supplement store like GNC.\nAccording to Grand View Research, the global nutraceuticals market is expected to reach a whopping $578.23 billion by 2025. Many marketers have taken advantage of the boom and found a way to create effective ads on display.\nWe\u0026rsquo;ve taken a deep dive into this industry to show you how one nutraceutical company uses display advertising to sell millions in product per year. Plus, we\u0026rsquo;ll offer insights you can take from their campaigns and use in your own business — even if it isn\u0026rsquo;t in nutraceuticals.\nNutraceuticals Have High-Profit Potential but High Startup Costs Nutraceuticals are pretty easy to make as far as physical products go. Buy a few powders in bulk, buy a few capsules, assemble them, and put them in a jar. Some examples of their uses include:\nAthletic performance including weight loss, pre-workout, and muscle builders Sexual health and libido Joint pain relief Cleansers Anxiety Blood pressure Testosterone Skin conditions Fish oil, flax oil, and krill oil And many others! [ Source]\nAs you can see, nutraceuticals work for a wide range of conditions. The best nutraceuticals solve an issue that the majority of people will deal with at some point in their life. Almost everyone will suffer from conditions like joint pain, lower testosterone levels, high blood pressure, and loss of mental clarity. Any kind of market where there’s huge demand in a large percentage of the population tends to work well on display.\nSince nutraceuticals are made up of proprietary blends of vitamins, minerals, and herbs, you don’t need to be a licensed doctor or work at the research department at Pfizer to create one.\nPlus nutraceutical businesses have a few other distinct advantages compared to starting a SaaS business. For example:\nThey’re consumable. Unlike an eBook or online course, your customers are eventually going to use up their supply and need more. This means that there are lots of opportunities for repeat customers and purchases. The lifetime value is huge for one customer. It’s a huge advantage when you pick the right nutraceutical to sell because when you target the right people, they keep coming back as they see results. During their time as a customer a person can spend thousands of dollars. They\u0026rsquo;re easy to sell in bulk. When you have a good product that people use month after month, it’s easy to sell a larger quantity at any given time, either as an upsell at the point of purchase or as part of some special deal. It’s a no-brainer to buy in bulk if your customer knows they’re going to take your supplement every day for the next 12 months and you offer a 12-month supply at a deep discount. They\u0026rsquo;re a source of recurring revenue. Some neutraceuticals can generate between $40 – $100 per customer per month. Plus, most people like the convenience of having something automatically shipped to them. This makes for an easy customer experience that serves to keep them around longer — regardless of what the competition offers. But despite all the positives, there\u0026rsquo;s a steep learning curve when it comes to starting a business and hefty upfront investment in time and money. But since most people find that the potential profits more than make up for the extra hassle, let\u0026rsquo;s look at how to use display ads to grow your business to offset these expenses.\nHow to Use Targeting with Display Ads to Generate Revenue There are a lot of sites where it’s easy to target an older demographic without having to use fancy search keywords.\nFor example, let’s look at testosterone boosters. Studies show that testosterone levels drop by ~1% every year after you turn 30. Lower testosterone is a fact of life. A man who’s 65-years old will never have the same testosterone levels as an 18-year old. However, there’s no man on this earth who isn’t at least interested in raising his testosterone levels.\nYet, most will not actively think about it unless it gets so bad that it causes some sort of obvious health issue. Most guys are not going to suddenly decide they need a testosterone booster RIGHT NOW and head to Google to search for it.\nHowever, if someone sees an interesting display ad tied to a compelling sales page, they’ll be aware of their lower T levels and at least be open to trying it.\nThe companies that have high-quality products and sales funnels are typically going to be doing at least 5x (if not 10x) the revenue from display compared to search.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s look at a few examples of companies that focus on specific target audiences and use display ads to drive interest in their products.\nNature\u0026rsquo;s Bounty Target audience: People interested in improving their heart health Why people will buy it: It offers social proof by mentioning cardiologists prefer this product.\nJiaherb Target audience: People interested in boosting their nutrient intake Why people will buy it: Customers looking for 100% natural ingredients will be more likely to buy if the product otherwise meets their needs.\nPrinova Target: People who want to get their nutrients through nutrient-rich drinks Why people will buy it: Prinova advertises on sites like preparedfoods.com and bevindustry.com where their target audience are already looking for healthy alternatives to sugar-rich fruit juices.\nCase Study: Test x180 Ignite Testosterone Booster from Force Factor Test x180 Ignite is a natural testosterone booster sold by Force Factor, LLC. Force Factor is a large distributor that sells a few different supplements geared towards bodybuilders. They spend a lot on display across all their product lines, but they’re doing some really interesting stuff with this specific product.\nLet’s take a look at how they buy their traffic.\nAd Network Spend They use a combination of Yieldmo and direct buys to get traffic. These channels are similar with the difference being that Yieldmo focuses exclusively on mobile ad impressions. Both channels let marketers buy impressions in bulk from ad networks to make sure that their ads are seen by their target audience.\nYieldmo and direct buys are a great way to get guaranteed traffic at lower prices from a site proven to work for your offer. However, another reason why Force Factor and other nutraceutical companies rely on direct buys is related to the type of products and claims that some ad networks do and don’t allow. Buying traffic for anything related to health and wellness can sometimes be difficult on high-quality ad networks like Google AdWords.\nGoogle AdWords is very strict with what type of claims, images, and copy they’ll let you use on your ads and landing pages. Nine times out of ten you’ll have to work with a network rep to figure out how to make your pages compliant with their terms and conditions if you want to sell a nutraceutical. There are a few nutraceutical companies that do very well on the Google Display Network but be aware that it can be a long and arduous process to keep your pages compliant.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s look at an example of what I mean. Both of these ads target customers who want to increase their testosterone levels. There are a few elements that help turn these into high converting ads:\n“Boston researchers…” This is a great use of specific social proof. Most advertisers will just say “researchers,” yet by just adding the word “Boston” it immediately incites a higher level of trust. “Weird ingredient…” You’ve undoubtedly seen this type of copy before. Stuff like “1 weird trick to lose a bit of belly fat every day.” A lot of people hate this style of copy because it’s overused. However, if so many people STILL use it year after year then it must still work. Sex appeal. If you’re an older man then there’s no doubt that you want to get higher testosterone levels to feel more energetic, more youthful, and have a higher sex drive so you can get a younger woman like the one shown in the photo. Using a strange picture. The image used in the ad on the right takes advantage of the “weird ingredient.” It’s a picture of some sort of vegetable that’s not commonly sold in western grocery stores. (Note: That “weird” ingredient appears to be “ Cassava,” a vegetable popular in South America.) Publishers A big portion of their spend goes to Vox Media and CNN, sites that cater to Force Factor\u0026rsquo;s older demographic. The copy they use in their ads and landing pages coincides with this demographic (“How Older Men Are Increasing Testosterone”).\nAs a side note, news sites, in general, tend to work very well for mass market offers in the “Big 3” niches (health, wealth, and relationships). Because who reads the news? Everyone. And everyone wants to be healthier, more attractive, make more money, and attract more sexual partners.\nAdvertising In the past Force Factor used a landing page or “article lander” disguised as an informative article.\nThis ad format serves a few purposes:\nIt’s in line with what the user expects when they see the ad. They expect to see what the researchers discovered and what this “weird” trick is. They’re expecting an article — not a sales page. It pre-frames the user for the sale. They’ve already read the article and understood the benefits of the product without being blatantly sold on it. These article landers are more likely to be Google (and Facebook) compliant. The user sees what they expect to see, which is very important for higher quality ad networks. Once they click the main call-to-action — “Get a Free Sample” — the prospect is led to a more traditional sales page, complete with a lot of different elements to help conversions.\nForce Factor also uses a mixture of other ads that incorporate messaging geared towards getting interested people to buy. For example:\nThey usecompelling headlines and value propositions like this one: Ads play up the social proof with this image and the tagline “Bo Jackson Names His Favorite Test Booster”:\nAnd of course the REAL reason why men buy these supplements: Sex appeal One interesting thing you should take note of is the language they use in the headline and call-to-action button on their order form:\nThey don’t say “get a free sample.”\nThey say, “See if you qualify for a free sample.” The difference is tiny but they’ve probably tested this and seen a lift with conversions.\nWhy?\nPeople don’t value free stuff. They always want what they can’t have and want to know if they qualify or work. They’re going to value something they’ve been chosen for, not something that’s given to everyone. It makes it feel like less of a commodity. This type of language is great to A/B test for any offer in any niche of any business you’re running — not just nutraceuticals.\nGet to Know Your Audience When you operate in an industry that offers multiple niches within it, you need to get to know your specific audience before you can target them with the right ads. Nutraceuticals is a large industry but display ads let companies narrow their focus to reach the right customers.\nDepending on the ad networks you use, make sure the publishers you choose are compatible. For example, Force Factor relies heavily on Yieldmo to get mobile ad impressions. Yieldmo sells targets found on CNN and Vox Media, the places where Force Factor\u0026rsquo;s target audience spend the most time.\nMaking sure ad networks give you access to “the right” publishers increases your reach and ups the chances of you making more money in the long run.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-business-of-display-part-3-nutraceuticals/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eNot too long ago the titles that dominated news headlines included words like:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBaby boomers, medical debt, dismantling Obamacare…\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s no doubt that the increased uncertainty around healthcare costs has more people worrying about their current and future health situation. This, combined with the increasing awareness behind \u003cem\u003epreventive\u003c/em\u003e medicine, has made people seek out alternatives.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNutraceuticals have been around for years and people continue to turn to them as a remedy for countless ailments. Nutraceuticals are pills, powders, and liquids that fall somewhere between prescription drugs and dietary supplements.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Business of Display Part 3: Nutraceuticals"},{"content":"The funny thing about business models is that the ones people usually complain about and hate the most are the ones that actually work.\nAnd oftentimes you don\u0026rsquo;t have to look any further than your Facebook Newsfeed to see what people share to discover new, working business models.\nOne model that gets a bad wrap is click arbitrage — also called pay per click (PPC) arbitrage. This is when you buy cheap clicks and then sell them to make ad revenue. Basically, “ you buy at wholesale and sell at retail.”\nMost marketers scoff at this option. They call them “shady,” a waste of time, and claim that the only thing to come out of click arbitrage is low- quality traffic. But there are seriouscompanies making this business model work.\nHere we want to show you exactly how click arbitrage works and get an inside look at how you can generate quality traffic and add fuel to your ad revenue.\nThe Business of Click Arbitrage We\u0026rsquo;ve all heard the old adage, \u0026ldquo;buy low, sell high.\u0026rdquo; This thinking is what lies at the heart of arbitrage. Whether we\u0026rsquo;re talking about commodities, currencies or something else, investors can spot price inconsistencies and turn that into profits.\nIn true arbitrage, an investor looks to make this profit almost instantly. They see a currency selling for a lower price on one exchange than another. They buy on the first, sell on the second, and pocket the difference. Investors know that if they can find something of value and then sell it for a higher price to someone interested in that product, there\u0026rsquo;s profit to be made. This is how any market works.\nWith click arbitrage, an advertiser acts like an investor. You\u0026rsquo;re on the lookout for pricing gaps in the ad market that you can use to increase your ad revenue. You buy clicks low, and sell clicks high. This is how most viral content websites make money—they buy low-cost traffic from one site and then turn that traffic into positive revenue on their own site.\nTheoretically, this sounds easy, but to make click arbitrage a viable business model that you can rely on, you have to be clear on a few things:\nYou have to know where to find cheap traffic to buy to maximize the number of people seeing your ads. You need strong content that engages, entertains and targets the interests of your audience to make sure people click on your ads and eventually share, lowering your costs further. You need a way to turn this attention and engagement into high ad revenue. Let\u0026rsquo;s walk through, step-by-step, how this works and how you can personalize the process to meet your specific needs.\nThe Key to Successful Viral Content: Dirt Cheap Clicks There are a few ways to do this depending on your needs and budget. Some examples of the most common methods include Facebook ads, ad networks and content discovery networks. Let\u0026rsquo;s break these down a bit and look at how each one works.\n1. Facebook Ads One of the most powerful ways to get high-quality traffic at a low cost is with Facebook ads that appear in Newsfeeds. With almost 2 billion active users on the platform, Facebook ads have relatively high click- through rates and low PPC. Especially when you optimize for link clicks. [ Source] An example of an ad that might appear in Newsfeeds\nHere\u0026rsquo;s how click arbitrage works on Facebook:\nYou buy ads to drive traffic back to your own content. The more traffic to see your content, the lower your PPC will be. Then, you gradually build trust with your new audience. Include ads on your site for them to click on. Make a profit based on the ads people clicked on and make back more than it cost to buy the traffic. Let\u0026rsquo;s say it costs an average of $0.15 to get one person to your website. When this person shows up to your site, you expect them to click on an ad you\u0026rsquo;ve placed in your sidebar. If people follow through and you make an average of $0.20 every time someone clicks an ad, you make $0.05 in profit.\nYes, the margin\u0026rsquo;s small on its own but imagine if you get millions of visitors per month. That $0.05 per visitor adds up.\n2. Ad Networks Ad networks are sites designed to help publishers find advertisers who want to show ads on their site. These sites look for sites that want traffic, and sell the space to advertisers who then post their ads on these sites. Google Ad Sense is a popular ad network and it lets you buy traffic and earn a solid ad revenue stream. [ Source] An example of an ad that might appear on your site\nOn ad networks like this and others, the process works this way:\nSign up with an ad network like Google AdSense and make space available on your site for ads. The highest-paying ads — based on an advertiser bidding process — appear on your site. You make a profit every time an ad is clicked. If you spend as low as $0.02 to promote your ad space, sell for $0.06 per view of each ad on your site and get 5,000 views a day, you stand to make about $200. As you can see, you\u0026rsquo;d need to sell a lot to make a decent revenue. If you can sell for as high as possible, you stand a much better chance of boosting revenue through click arbitrage.\n3. Content Discovery Networks Content discovery networks like Outbrain and Taboola offer an opportunity for you to get lots of cheap clicks. At the bottom of lots of websites, you\u0026rsquo;ve likely seen a “recommended for you” or “related stories” section. This content looks like content published on the site, but this section is made up of ads.\nAn example of content discovery ads from Outbrain\nHere\u0026rsquo;s how it works:\nCreate native ads that match the look and feel of your website. Someone clicks on one of the ads and they\u0026rsquo;re taken to another page. You get a profit for every click made. This model works really well for click arbitrage because the clicks are relatively cheap. For example, Outbrain charges somewhere between $0.25–$0.35 per click. Cost per clicks (CPCs) on networks like Google, or even Bing, are going to run you at least $1, if not more.\nWe’ll cover these networks more in-depth in a later post, but one reason these ads tend to be a bit cheaper is that many of these networks don’t allow advertisers to send traffic to a landing page meant to make a sale. They’re only allowed to link to content. There are even a few networks that have one rate — usually lower — for advertisers who want to send traffic to pure content. Then there\u0026rsquo;s another rate — usually higher — for advertisers who want to send traffic to a sales page.\nOne example of a viral website testing various content discovery networks is LittleThings.\nAnother example is ViralNova, a huge viral news site that was very popular on Facebook just a few years ago.\nNotice how both of these websites rely heavily on content discovery networks for their traffic. The reason why these networks work so well for viral websites is because the design of the ads and advertiser landing pages are in line with user expectation. When a user clicks an ad that appears to link to a piece of content — not a sales page — that’s exactly what they expect to see after they click. The ad networks and viral sites fulfill these expectations and give the user what they expect to see.\nThe point of all of this is to highlight the different ways you can buy low cost clicks and turn them into revenue. Click arbitrage takes many forms and is a common practice. It\u0026rsquo;s been proven effective even though not everyone admits to using it. Choose the method that works best for you and watch your content go viral and make profit from clicks that would come to your site anyway.\nFinding Quality Low-Cost Traffic Once you\u0026rsquo;ve decided on the method you\u0026rsquo;re going to use to increase your ad revenue, you need a way to bring in low-cost traffic. Buying traffic is one way but there are others to choose from, for example, viral quizzes, referral marketing and organic search.\nAll of these options are incredibly valuable because of their potential to make content viral. Here\u0026rsquo;s a deeper dive into how each one offers low- cost traffic.\nViral Quizzes One way a lot of quiz sites get low-cost traffic is to combine their quizzes with Facebook ads or traffic from another cheap source. You start by buying enough traffic to get people to take your quiz. Doing this means:\nYou make enough money off of the initial click arbitrage to continue the campaign The initial traffic shares the quiz and when the quiz goes viral you can focus on sending traffic to another quiz You grow your audience on Facebook and get organic traffic from people clicking on stories in the Newsfeed The tactics combined pave the way for you to get more traffic in the long-term.\nOnce you\u0026rsquo;ve figured out your seeding methods you need to set up your click arbitrage. A good place to start is Facebook because it’s (comparatively) cheap and it’s easy to target demographics that will be interested in your quiz.\nLet\u0026rsquo;s look at an example of how this works.\nIf your quiz is called “Which classic WWF wrestler are you?” you can use Facebook ads to target men in their 30s and 40s who are interested in things like “WWF,” “Hulk Hogan,” and “Macho Man Randy Savage.”\nThis is what the audience details would look like in Facebook: You can be as specific as possible to make sure that you\u0026rsquo;re targeting the “right” people for your ad. For example, you can narrow down things like the country, age, gender, and interests of your target audience. With this example, there are still 540,000 people who can be reached by this ad. So the more you know about the people you want to target, the more niche your quiz can be.\nAnd guess what?\nTheir friends likely fall into the same demographic and would be interested in the quiz as well.\nAll it really takes is for one of these quizzes to go viral and all of a sudden you’ve got a good amount of free traffic coming to your site, clicking your ads and growing your revenue.\nReferral Marketing Another great way to grow traffic to your site is through referrals. How it works is you find your advocates — these are customers who know your product the best, have had positive experiences using it and are therefore more likely to want to share it with others.\nHow this ties in with click arbitrage is to give people on your site an incentive to click. Offer them a discounted service, for example, to get them to click an ad and to get them to share it with their network. What you want is for your advocates to share your ads with as many people as possible in order to drive the cost per visitor down. This ensures that even when the cost per click is high, you\u0026rsquo;re still making a decent profit.\nIn the long term, you can buy more ads or even higher cost ads to increase the amount of high-quality traffic coming to your site. The bonus here is that you still have lots of margin left over.\nBy incorporating a referral program into your click arbitrage campaign, your customers also benefit. For example, let\u0026rsquo;s say your program gives referrals 10% off of their next purchase.\nYour “reward”: If it costs you $0.05 for every click but you make a whopping $0.12 in profit every time someone clicks, you\u0026rsquo;d make $3,600 for every 30,000 clicks. Referral\u0026rsquo;s reward: If at least 20% of these 30,000 clicks turned into referrals, each new customer would save $50 if their next purchase cost $500. Total savings would be $300,000 for all converted new customers.\nOrganic Search The way some marketers used to get exposure for their content relied too much on organic content early on. The process looked something like this:\nCreate content Optimize it with SEO and hope people find it on Google Share it with friends on Facebook Hope and pray This can work, but it’s a crapshoot.\nAlmost 100% of the time, if you build it… they will NOT come. Relying initially on organic traffic is a long, hard slog that often leads nowhere.\nPlus, there’s nothing more depressing than spending eight hours writing a blog post only to log in to Google Analytics and see this:\nThere are spikes in views that match when posts are first published but then viewership drops to zero. This shows that people aren\u0026rsquo;t coming back to see your content. And if they aren\u0026rsquo;t coming back, chances are they aren\u0026rsquo;t sharing it either. You\u0026rsquo;re putting in a lot of work with absolutely no return.\nA better way to get as many eyes as possible on your content is to pay to get people to see it\u0026hellip;at least at first. Getting guaranteed eyeballs on your site exponentially increases the chances of people sharing your content.\nEven as you\u0026rsquo;re paying for people to see your content, keep working on creating high-quality content. In addition to paid traffic, high-quality content will make sure you stay high on search engine results pages (SERPs) so that you eventually get a consistent stream of organic visitors.\nIt takes time to build but when it\u0026rsquo;s done right — easy to follow, catering to specific needs — your site visitors will be high quality, your content has a higher chance of going viral, and you\u0026rsquo;ll eventually make back the initial investment you made to get traffic to your site.\nSetting up For High-Revenue Ads The more traffic and higher quality that traffic is, the more you can charge for space on your site. This pushes up your margin from the other side.\nGoing back to our example of quiz sites, they\u0026rsquo;re a model of how to get lots of relevant traffic to your site. Here are a few examples of publishers who use this approach to increase their revenues using a combination of click arbitrage tactics.\nPublisher Case Study #1: Playbuzz — From Unknown To The #2 Most Shared Site on Facebook Playbuzz recently became not only the most popular viral quiz site, but one of the most popular sites on the internet in general.\nBloomberg Business Week calls them “ The Israeli Quiz Factory That’s Outbuzzing BuzzFeed on Facebook” and they’ve received over $3.8 million in venture capital. They were recently the second most shared website on Facebook — behind The Huffington Post — with over 7.5 million shares.\nPlaybuzz describes themselves as:\n“…an open network for publishers, bloggers and brands to create and share playful content items such as quizzes, lists and polls.”\nHere are some of the networks and advertisers Playbuzz uses to generate revenue:\nNotice that Google AdSense is their main stream of income. Not a huge surprise. Google AdSense has a great payout and brings in high-quality traffic through Google AdWords.\nHowever, you’ll also notice that they’re also doing a good amount on “Direct Buys.” This is Playbuzz selling traffic directly to large advertisers instead of ad networks. Large advertisers love direct buys because they’re guaranteed to get the most impressions possible based on the terms they worked out with that publisher, instead of varying traffic levels they get when they use ad networks and exchanges.\nWho buys direct with Playbuzz? Big brands.Take a look: This is the best thing that can happen to a publisher because large companies like Verizon have enormous ad budgets. Plus, their goal is usually not direct response. It’s to get as many eyeballs as possible on their ads, meaning big brands will typically pay higher cost per thousand (CPM) rates so they can get as much traffic as possible. Signing a contract for guaranteed revenue at a high CPM rate is any publisher’s dream.\nPublisher Case Study #2: Buzztroopers - The Source for Quizzes, Brainteasers, Entertainment and IQ Tests Buzztroopers is another popular quiz platform. They have over 139,500 monthly visitors to their platform making it one of the go-to sites to grow traffic.\nBuzztroopers spends most of its advertising budget on desktop ads, advertising content like this quiz entitled \u0026ldquo;Your IQ Is Higher Than 150 If You Can Nail These 11 Questions.\u0026rdquo; The ad ran for 72 days using the following publishers: In contrast to this ad spend, they spent upwards of $864 on desktop ads that ran between one to 53 days each. One of their recent quiz ads was titled “Only people who are mentally young can pass this difficult brain test.” This difference in ad spend shows Buzztroopers\u0026rsquo; understanding of where their audience spends the most time and where to target their ads and spending. Add to that the provocative quiz titles and they\u0026rsquo;re sure to get people\u0026rsquo;s attention and get their ads clicked on.\nSome of the networks Buzztroopers uses to generate revenue include: To a lesser extent, Buzztroopers uses Outbrain. Below, some of the recent quizzes they\u0026rsquo;ve posted on their website; users will see some of the following recommended content:\nAt any time during a quiz or after, people can click on additional content that they can explore. With approximately 4,650 unique daily users, this tactic keeps people on the site longer and generating more income for Buzztroopers. The more links people click and the more content they explore, the better.\nMany of Buzztroopers\u0026rsquo; Facebook ads target millennial women. For example, this one and many others focus on personality type tests and comparisons like “which character are you?” These tests and Buzztroopers\u0026rsquo; ads work because they target a specific audience and speak to the audiences\u0026rsquo; interests. Once people get to Buzztroopers\u0026rsquo; website, they have the option to choose from different types of quizzes to try. For example, people can take an IQ and/or test their knowledge of the entertainment industry:\nWhen users choose a test to take, Buzztroopers makes them interactive with formats like GIFs or memes: This keeps people engaged and curious about what\u0026rsquo;s to come next. The tests and quizzes are all relatively short, so it helps to keep new users on the site longer. Buzztroopers has an average of 5,208 page views a day.\nPublisher Case Study #3: Quiz Factory Quiz Factory is another quiz and test platform. They have over 17,000 unique monthly visitors to the site with visitors opening an average of 13 pages per visit.\nQuiz Factory spends anywhere from a few dollars to upwards of $150,000 on ads. For example, one of their recent ads was a “country silhouette quiz. Ads had titles like “Only 43% Of Americans Can Guess All Of The Countries. Can You?,” “People in Virginia Struggle With This Quiz. Can You Pass?,” and “Quiz: Only 1 in 100 Americans Can Guess the Countries? Can You?” These ads ran for about four months on the following publishers. They are publishers that Quiz Factory bought the most ad inventory from. In addition to this, here are some of the networks Quiz Factory uses to generate revenue: As you can see, Quiz Factory uses Taboola the most with a total spend of over $90,000 to date. When people are on the Quiz Factory website, this is the type of content they can expect to see below quizzes:\nAlmost all of Quiz Factory\u0026rsquo;s social engagement is on Facebook. In addition to quizzes like the one below, Quiz Factory also posts a lot of memes on Facebook that target a younger demographic. This works for them because they know who their target audience is and what their interests are. Unlike Buzztroopers, Quiz Factory\u0026rsquo;s website categorizes quizzes by area of interest. For example, people can choose tests that focus on cars, sports, history, movies and more.\nWhen a user clicks on a quiz, they can test their knowledge on that given subject. This approach is great for social sharing because users can show their circle of friends how much they know and challenge them to do better, a powerful way to drive referrals.\nTry Your Hand at Click Arbitrage The quiz model is very hot right now and easy to set-up. If you’ve got a few spare hours and a small-ish ad budget, you can get something set up very quickly and start testing it.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-business-of-display-part-2-viral-quiz-sites-and-click-arbitrage/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe funny thing about business models is that \u003cstrong\u003ethe ones people usually complain about and hate the most are the ones that actually work.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd oftentimes you don\u0026rsquo;t have to look any further than your Facebook Newsfeed to see what people share to discover new, working business models.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne model that gets a bad wrap is click arbitrage — also called pay per click (PPC) arbitrage. This is when you buy cheap clicks and then sell them to make ad revenue. Basically, “ \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com/197990037\"\u003eyou buy at wholesale and sell at retail.\u003c/a\u003e”\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Business of Display Part 2: Viral Quiz Sites and Click Arbitrage"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;You mean those damn pop-ups that break my concentration while I’m playing internet poker?\u0026rdquo;\nThat was my uncle\u0026rsquo;s response when I told him about a new niche of sites that help service businesses \u0026ndash; contractors specifically \u0026ndash; find more customers through display advertising.\nMy uncle runs a successful heating and air conditioning business (\u0026ldquo;hvac\u0026rdquo; is the industry term) in rural Wisconsin. They do good business and find most customers through billboards, the yellow pages and word of mouth.\nHe has a website for his business and \u0026ldquo;gets\u0026rdquo; the internet.\nHowever, like many contractors he doesn\u0026rsquo;t know (or care) about how he can use \u0026ldquo;the world wide web\u0026rdquo; to grow his business.\nWhile my uncle might not be 100% convinced that the internet is for him, there are many contractors who currently \u0026ldquo;buy customers\u0026rdquo; from online businesses who specialize in finding leads specifically for contractors.\nOne of these businesses is \u0026ldquo;Craftjack\u0026rdquo;, which recently sold for a couple million dollars, so believe me when I tell you that these companies are doing very well.\nPlus, this business model works very well on display and is relatively easy to set-up.\nKeep reading and discover why it works, plus the ins and outs of the sales funnel of one of the top contractor lead gen companies.\nFirst\u0026hellip; Why Contractors? A lot of online marketers shun doing business with \u0026ldquo;traditional\u0026rdquo; companies for a variety of reasons.\n\u0026ldquo;They\u0026rsquo;re boring.\u0026rdquo; They\u0026rsquo;re stuck in the dark ages.\u0026quot; \u0026ldquo;They don’t make any money.\u0026rdquo; But think about this:\nEven as machines put more and more people out of work, there is one thing that remains true: Things are going to break and the best way to repair something that\u0026rsquo;s broken is STILL with human hands.\nIf you own a house or apartment then you know that there will always be things that need to be fixed, improvements to be made and pests to be exterminated. You also know that these jobs can cost a TON of money, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars.\nContractors who specialize in the right jobs and have a good sales process make TONS of money.\nNot to mention that once someone finds a contractor they like, they almost always recommend them to a friend or use them for future jobs. The lifetime value of a customer for a contractor can be huge.\nHowever, most contractors don\u0026rsquo;t want to be salesmen. They\u0026rsquo;d prefer to spend their time doing work than out there hustling up leads.\nIf you go to a landscaper with a list of leads and say \u0026ldquo;Hey, I have a list of people who are interested in a large scale (and expensive) landscaping job. Would you like to talk to them?\u0026rdquo;, the sale becomes quite easy.\nA contractor paying a couple hundred dollars for a lead is nothing compared to the amount of money that they\u0026rsquo;ll make and time they’ll save by not having to worry about finding more customers.\nHow Does It Work? A company (we\u0026rsquo;ll use Craftjack as an example) acts as a bridge between the customer and the contractor.\nCraftjack finds and pre-qualifies a bunch of leads for a certain type of job (like pool installation) and \u0026ldquo;matches\u0026rdquo; the leads up with local pool installers.\nIt’s a win-win situation for everyone \u0026ndash; contractors get more business, customers get their pools installed and Craftjack makes money by sell the leads to contractors.\nContractor Lead Gen Sales Funnel Broken Down You can use whatever expertise you have in finding leads, but one of the best ways is through display advertising.\nOne company that is killing it on display in this niche is HomeAdvisor.\nThey describe themselves as\u0026hellip;\n\u0026quot;\u0026hellip;a leading website and mobile app provider offering free tools and resources for home improvement, repair and maintenance projects.\u0026quot;\nAnd judging from the data we\u0026rsquo;ve seen in Adbeat\u0026hellip; they\u0026rsquo;re very good at what they do. They\u0026rsquo;ve spent close to $800,000 on display in the past 90 days alone. No one spends that type of money if they\u0026rsquo;re not seeing success.\nSo, if you still think serving \u0026ldquo;brick and mortar\u0026rdquo; businesses is a fool\u0026rsquo;s game, read on. Because we\u0026rsquo;re going to break HomeAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s funnel down, piece by piece, figure out why it works and how you can apply the same principles in your own business, even if you\u0026rsquo;re not running a lead gen business.\nThe Ads Problem: Home improvement is a HUGE market that encompasses tons of different projects.\nPest control, pool installation, window repair, yada, yada, yada.\nYet, like anything else, you can assume that there is an 80/20 behind which jobs are most requested and most profitable for contractors.\nOne way to uncover what these are is to look at which specific ads an advertiser spends the most money on.\nHere are HomeAdvisor’s top 3 highest spending ads for the past 90 days:\nNotice anything interesting here? They\u0026rsquo;re spending the most money on ads for:\nPest extermination Mold removal Plumbing My instinct is that these are the jobs that a) have the highest demand and b) very profitable for HomeAdvisor and their partners.\nThis data is super valuable if you\u0026rsquo;re a competitor or are just entering the market. You now have a good idea of which specific jobs will bring in the most leads + profit. You no longer have to waste time \u0026amp; money testing out different niches \u0026ndash; your competitors have already done the work for you.\nSide note: Notice that HomeAdvisor uses Google text ads, not pretty banner ads. We\u0026rsquo;ll get to why they\u0026rsquo;re doing this in a second. Trust me \u0026ndash; there\u0026rsquo;s a method to the madness. Next step? Let\u0026rsquo;s take a look at where they buy their traffic.\nPublishers You can assume that a publisher provides large amounts of high-quality traffic when you see a competitor spending a lot of money with them.\nSo, where does HomeAdvisor buy most of their traffic?\nAgain, if you’re a competitor (or looking to get into this market) you now have a very good idea which types of sites work well.\nIn this case they fall into three categories:\nDIY sites Local \u0026ldquo;yellow pages\u0026rdquo; sites Informational sites (About.com) If I was getting into this market, I would start by testing ads on sites in these three categories as HomeAdvisor has already proven that they work.\nNow, remember that HomeAdvisor is using mostly text ads, NOT banner ads?\nWell, let’s take a look at a specific page on one of their most successful publishers, CitySearch.com, a directory site.\nThe paid text ads blend in with the organic content. A less sophisticated user is not going to notice (or care) as long as they get what they’re looking for when they click. Often times you want your banners/ads to stand out to attract attention away from site content, but in this case having ads that blend in is working very well for HomeAdvisor.\nNext, let’s take a look at what happens when the user clicks the ad.\nLanding Pages HomeAdvisor uses a very simple lead-gen form. There\u0026rsquo;s nothing fancy about it and there is little text. They don\u0026rsquo;t need to provide a lot of explanation or social proof because they\u0026rsquo;re acting almost like a search engine. There is no money exchanged on the site, meaning the customer is not going to feel hesitant about giving up their info.\nAlso, notice that there are several steps before they ask for your personal information. This helps with conversion rates because someone has already shown some sort of commitment once they\u0026rsquo;ve gotten to this point. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t make sense for them to NOT perform one last step, which is entering their personal info.\nPros \u0026amp; Cons of Service Lead Gen Pros Demand - Contractors want more leads but the majority have zero online presence. There is a definite demand for this. High margins - There are no physical costs. You pay for advertising, acquire a lead and then sell the information to a contractor. Simple. Easy to setup and test - Sites like Craftjack and HomeAdvisor have great looking, complex systems that probably cost a lot of money to develop. However, when you break them down there are really only two components: a landing page and a contact form. You can make a “test” website with a premium Wordpress theme combined with a Wordpress contact form plugin like Gravity Forms. It’s not the ideal solution, but it would get you started. Little customer service. You\u0026rsquo;re just the matchmaker here. You don’t do the job, you don’t ship a product and you don’t have to deal with angry customers. You just match customers and contractors. Cons Finding partners - The hardest part of this whole undertaking is finding partners. You\u0026rsquo;ll need a good sales team to call or visit contractors in person. This can be a HUGE undertaking, especially since you\u0026rsquo;ll eventually need to cover large geographic areas if you want to scale. Dealing with the doubters - You\u0026rsquo;ll need a very strong sales pitch. Contractors tend to not be internet savvy and many will not see the value in your service, understand how it works or understand how it\u0026rsquo;s in their benefit to essentially pay you for customers. It can be a tough sell. Conclusion If I was going to start a new business today that I know works on display\u0026hellip; THIS is what I would get into. The profit potential is staggering, there’s little competition (at the moment) and it’s easy to get working on display.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/business-of-display-lead-generation-for-contractors/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;You mean those damn pop-ups that break my concentration while I’m playing internet poker?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat was my uncle\u0026rsquo;s response when I told him about a new niche of sites that help service businesses \u0026ndash; contractors specifically \u0026ndash; find more customers through display advertising.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy uncle runs a successful heating and air conditioning business (\u0026ldquo;hvac\u0026rdquo; is the industry term) in rural Wisconsin. They do good business and find most customers through billboards, the yellow pages and word of mouth.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Business of Display: Lead Generation For Contractors"},{"content":"Common question with no good answer:\n\u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the typical ROI of a \u0026lsquo;good\u0026rsquo; display campaign?\u0026rdquo;\nROI varies depending on so many things. Your offer, your sales funnel, your industry, your traffic sources, etc.\nHowever, what it depends on MOST\u0026hellip; is scaleability \u0026ndash; The ability for you to increase spending and still remain profitable.\nBelieve it or not, the highest scale opportunities (mass markets like weight loss, finance, relationships, etc.) often have the lowest ROI. This is because competition is fierce for the inventory because the stakes and rewards are both higher.\nHowever, a lower ROI isn\u0026rsquo;t necessarily bad for business.\nIn many cases\u0026hellip; a lower ROI is going to make you more money and you should actually accept and be happy with a lower ROI.\nWhy Should I Aim For a Lower ROI? If you\u0026rsquo;re consistently and intelligently optimizing your campaigns you\u0026rsquo;ll eventually find that \u0026ldquo;sweet spot\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; that perfect margin between spend and revenue. It\u0026rsquo;s where you\u0026rsquo;ve maxed out your current ROI.\nIt might seem that things can\u0026rsquo;t get even better, but don\u0026rsquo;t be tricked.\nYou still have room to scale.\nWhy 25% ROI is Better Than 200% Take a look at this example:\nCampaign #1: $25K/month with $50K profit (200% ROI) Campaign #2: $200K/month with $50K profit (25% ROI)\nWhich campaign would you prefer?\nWith Campaign #1 you have an amazing ROI.\nCampaign #2? Not so much.\nYet, if I\u0026rsquo;m in your shoes, I\u0026rsquo;m going for campaign #2.\nWhy?\nBecause even though you\u0026rsquo;re spending more, you\u0026rsquo;re still seeing the same level of profits, just at a much lower margin. The upside to this is that since you\u0026rsquo;ve spent 8x more, you likely have a bigger list of prospects, buyers, and more traffic for testing.\nIn the long run you\u0026rsquo;ll make more money by increasing bids, spending more and going broader with targeting. Although, you\u0026rsquo;ll push your margins down, you\u0026rsquo;ll get more traffic, which will allow you to test much faster.\nThese higher traffic levels will turn into larger profits once you further optimize your funnel based on your testing.\nBut what if I\u0026rsquo;m just starting out? If you haven\u0026rsquo;t even found that \u0026lsquo;magic spot\u0026rsquo; yet, here\u0026rsquo;s my suggestion:\nShoot for break even.\nYou should aim for not losing money before you even start thinking about making $1 in profit.\nOnce you\u0026rsquo;ve broken even you can start to look at all steps in your funnel, the front end and the back end. You will begin to see improvements as you optimize and as your campaign matures. Your break even campaign WILL become profitable. I promise :)\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-to-make-higher-profits-with-lower-roi/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCommon question with no good answer:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the typical ROI of a \u0026lsquo;good\u0026rsquo; display campaign?\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eROI varies depending on so many things. Your offer, your sales funnel, your industry, your traffic sources, etc.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, what it depends on MOST\u0026hellip; is scaleability \u0026ndash; The ability for you to \u003cstrong\u003eincrease spending and still remain profitable.\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBelieve it or not, the highest scale opportunities (mass markets like weight loss, finance, relationships, etc.) often have the lowest ROI. This is because competition is fierce for the inventory because the stakes and rewards are both higher.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How To Make Higher Profits With Lower ROI"},{"content":"Google is currently the highest quality source of traffic out there\u0026hellip; but they can be a bit picky with what type of content and products they allow advertisers to promote on the Google Display network. Yes, they frown on gambling, adult sites, shady weight loss offers, and affiliates, but over the past couple of months they\u0026rsquo;ve become stricter than ever.\nIn fact, one of our customers was running practically the exact same Google compliant landing page for the past three years\u0026hellip; until a few weeks ago when they had their account suspended by Google due to a minor change in their terms and conditions.\nSince they\u0026rsquo;re the #1 source of display traffic, you\u0026rsquo;ve got to play by their rules if you want to advertise with them.\nA Few Tips For Staying Compliant Besides some of the obvious rules (no gambling, shady offers, or \u0026ldquo;tricky\u0026rdquo; landing pages that use cloaking or malware), there are a few basic page design rules that you should abide by if you want to stay compliant.\nThere should be an actual website around the landing page. Your site should be complete \u0026ndash; not just a VSL or opt-in page. You need all the regular pages that a \u0026ldquo;legitimate\u0026rdquo; site has \u0026ndash; about us, privacy policy, contact, terms \u0026amp; conditions, etc. Your site should be well designed. The more corporate looking, the better. You don\u0026rsquo;t need to spend thousands on a fancy design, but it should be pleasing to the eye. Navigation on every page. The customer should be able to easily navigate your site. Most advertisers don\u0026rsquo;t use navigation because it distracts from the main goal \u0026ndash; a purchase or lead \u0026ndash; but Google requires it. Breadcrumb navigation where possible. Again, make it easy for people to navigate your site. Photos/bios on about us page and links to Google+ profiles when possible. This makes it obvious that you\u0026rsquo;re a real person. Putting your name out there gives transparency into who you are. Address and map of company location. Toll-free number. Real companies provide have phone support. Support desk. If a customer has an issue Google wants it to be easy for them to contact you. FAQ \u0026ldquo;Legalese\u0026rdquo; pages \u0026ndash; all standard disclaimers, privacy policies, disclosure, terms of service, etc. Privacy policy link next to every email opt-in form. Your prospects need to know that you\u0026rsquo;re not going to share their info with shady peoples. Fat footer with additional navigation detail (Notice a pattern here? Google loves navigation.) BBB, Verisign, or Trustee seals properly linked to certificates. You don\u0026rsquo;t need any of these to be on Google, but again, it\u0026rsquo;s more proof that you own a legitimate business. No unverified awards or seals. No crazy claims, like \u0026ldquo;Lose 50lbs in 5 Days\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;Make 53,232 With This Facebook Hack\u0026rdquo;. Interactive tools or search functionality (not required, but highly desirable) Conclusion The unfortunate truth is you need to read, understand, and follow everything presented here:\nhttps://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6008942?hl=en\u0026amp;rd=1\nNow, occasionally you\u0026rsquo;ll see sites advertising on the GDN that do not follow the above rules, or even some of the rules on the page linked in the previous paragraph.\nWhy are they able to do things that seem to be against Google\u0026rsquo;s policies?\nThe short answer is that it\u0026rsquo;s unclear.\nThe long answer is that you should try to stay Google compliant and forget what everyone else is doing.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/how-to-avoid-getting-banned-from-google-adwords/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eGoogle is currently the \u003cem\u003ehighest quality\u003c/em\u003e source of traffic out there\u0026hellip; but they can be a bit picky with what type of content and products they allow advertisers to promote on the Google Display network. Yes, they frown on gambling, adult sites, shady weight loss offers, and affiliates, but over the past couple of months they\u0026rsquo;ve become stricter than ever.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn fact, one of our customers was running practically the exact same Google compliant landing page for the past three years\u0026hellip; until a few weeks ago when they had their account suspended by Google due to a minor change in their terms and conditions.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How To Avoid Getting Banned From Google Adwords"},{"content":"If you’re looking for a basic way to start retargeting more effectively (not just sending ads to anyone who hits your website), there’s a basic 2-4 week sequence (depending on the length of your buy cycle \u0026ndash; see this blog post to figure out more.) Although you can get really complicated with remarketing, this is a pretty good strategy to start off with, and you’ll probably see decent results.\nWeek 1: Remind Them In this week you’re going to remind your customer of who you are, why they visited and what you can do for them. An effective strategy is to have a more “branding” style ad combined with your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Remind your customer of who you are by having your colors + logo, as well as a headline or short description that tells them what you have to offer.\nWeek 2: Show Them Picture of your product, it’s name, your logo, headline, and a call to action. If you’re an eCommerce company or selling a physical product then you can test out showing a picture of your product with a call to action that calls them to buy it.\nWeek 3: Motivate Them If the person STILL hasn’t bought, you can start to get a bit more aggressive. Have a similar banner ad with your product image, but offer a promo code/discount if they take action right away. It will lead them to a landing page that has your product with the promo coe and money they’ll save clearly identified. For businesses who can’t give out discounts (for whatever reason \u0026ndash; mabye you have a SaaS product and dont want to cheapen the image of your product) you could offer either a no-cc trial. trial, a $1 trial, or a longer trial period.\nWeek 4: Warn Them By this point you’ve already captured 75% of the people that were going to buy. Here’s where you will pick up the other 25% of the other stragglers. After 3+ weeks, it becomes even less likely that your prospect is going to purchase the product. Here’s where you can really start to get aggressive. Offer a steep discount, an extra long trial period, 2x1 deals, a free gift or some other sort of bonus, anything that will make your offer a complete no-brainer for anyone who is interested. Again, if you can’t discount your price for whatever reason, offer some sort of other benefit that no one else might do. It could be a free strategy session, a physical book with best practices, exclusive training videos, etc.\nConclusion This 4 week sequence takes a little bit more work than just sending all traffic from one ad to all segments, but you’re more likely to see better results from it, even if everything isn’t segmented out properly.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-stupid-simple-lead-gen-retargeting-sequence/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you’re looking for a basic way to start retargeting more effectively (not just sending ads to anyone who hits your website), there’s a basic 2-4 week sequence (depending on the length of your buy cycle \u0026ndash; see this blog post to figure out more.) Although you can get really complicated with remarketing, this is a pretty good strategy to start off with, and you’ll probably see decent results.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3 id=\"week-1-remind-them\"\u003eWeek 1: Remind Them\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this week you’re going to remind your customer of who you are, why they visited and what you can do for them. An effective strategy is to have a more “branding” style ad combined with your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Remind your customer of who you are by having your colors + logo, as well as a headline or short description that tells them what you have to offer.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Stupid Simple Lead Gen Retargeting Sequence"},{"content":"You may or may not have noticed\u0026hellip; but the Adbeat site got a bit of a makeover.\nAlong with an improvement in looks, we\u0026rsquo;re also launching a brand new training blog with some great content on display advertising.\nSome of the topics we\u0026rsquo;ll cover include competitive intelligence, media buying, building a profitable online business, Google display network, mobile advertising, conversion optimization and a bunch more.\nAlmost no one is writing about display advertising at an advanced level, so most of what you\u0026rsquo;ll see is completely new. They will not be rehashed blog posts about \u0026ldquo;The Differences of Search vs. Display\u0026rdquo;. This information will go much more in-depth.\n(There will also be a lot of great content for beginners, so it\u0026rsquo;s definitely worth your while to subscribe no matter your level of expertise.)\nClick the \u0026ldquo;Subscribe\u0026rdquo; link in the right hand column to sign-up and receive email updates!\nTalk Soon,\nTeam Adbeat\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-adbeat-training-blog-is-coming-your-way/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou may or may not have noticed\u0026hellip; but the Adbeat site got a bit of a makeover.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlong with an improvement in looks, we\u0026rsquo;re also launching a brand new training blog with some great content on display advertising.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSome of the topics we\u0026rsquo;ll cover include competitive intelligence, media buying, building a profitable online business, Google display network, mobile advertising, conversion optimization and a bunch more.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlmost no one is writing about display advertising at an \u003cstrong\u003eadvanced level\u003c/strong\u003e, so most of what you\u0026rsquo;ll see is completely new. They will not be rehashed blog posts about \u0026ldquo;The Differences of Search vs. Display\u0026rdquo;. This information will go much more in-depth.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Adbeat Training Blog is Coming Your Way"},{"content":"Back in 2008 when the internet was continuing to find its footing, you didn\u0026rsquo;t have to look far before you were face-to-face with ad networks full of affiliate advertising. These sites sent massive amounts of display traffic to shady landing pages or directly to the affiliate link itself.\nBut fortunately, those days are behind us.\nNetworks with high-quality traffic — like the Google Display Network — have become very volatile for affiliates. Not only have they banned things like direct linking, but they’ve made it more difficult for even legitimate affiliates to attract traffic.\nHowever, there’s still one affiliate model that’s allowed and works well with high-quality display networks. You\u0026rsquo;ve likely seen “Top 10” sites that review products like software, skin creams, dating sites, and more. As a marketer you know that these top 10 sites are basically lists of affiliate offers formatted as generic “Top 10” lists. However, what you might not know is that some of these sites do quite well financially. Mostly because they use display ads to drive traffic.\nSome sites spend over $1 million a year just on display. If they can afford to spend so much on ads, clearly this strategy is worth it when you get it right.\nIn this post we\u0026rsquo;re going to look at how these sites work, which niches work best with display and then dive deeper with two case studies that highlight companies that successfully use the affiliate review site model.\nWhy Affiliate Review Sites Work With Display With people spending more time online interacting with each other, more of them are buying online than in person. For example, 79% of U.S. adults shop online with 15% shopping online on a weekly basis. [ Source]\nWith all of this online shopping, customers have turned to review sites to help them make their purchase decisions.\nFor example, 92% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. And furthermore, a 2013 study by Dimensional Research showed that:\n“…an overwhelming 90 percent of respondents who recalled reading online reviews claimed that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions, while 86 percent said buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews.”\nYou can see that review sites have become the go-to-place for customers to make informed decisions. Especially when they\u0026rsquo;re making big purchases.\nPeople are very receptive to review sites. Think about the last time you made a purchase. You probably looked at the Amazon reviews or did a Google search to see what other people were saying.\nOne of the reasons why this business model works is that there is a demand for it and it\u0026rsquo;s a solid income generator for you:\nThere is a demand for more information that compares similar products. The average consumer isn’t interested in knowing the nitty-gritty details behind what makes one product better or worse than another one. They just want the best product for the best price. These sites provide that information. You generate revenue every time someone clicks on links on your site and buys something on the merchant\u0026rsquo;s website. For example, if you list the top 10 camera models on your review site, when someone clicks on one of the links they\u0026rsquo;re taken to the manufacturer\u0026rsquo;s landing page. If they buy something, you get a commission. Plus, the information these sites provide is pure content — there’s no obvious sales pitch. You’re not linking people to a sales page, a video sales letter (VSL) or even asking them for money on your site. You’re just offering reviews of products these people are interested in.\nPeople will be more receptive and trusting when all you appear to offer is content. Plus, when you\u0026rsquo;re clear on who your target audience is, it gets easier to show your ads alongside content that is related to your product.\nFor example, someone browsing the “Business and Accounting” section of Answers.com will be a match for the products you review if your site reviews the top 10 pieces of accounting software.\nChoose Affiliate Review Niches to Maximize Reach Pretty much any market where there are a few different products but it\u0026rsquo;s hard to differentiate between them work well as an affiliate review site.\nWe did a little digging and found examples of niches that fit this criteria and show examples of the display ads.\n1. Software Reviews With the growth of cloud computing, there\u0026rsquo;s no shortage of platforms available for users to choose from. Many of these review sites list the top 10-15 options available on the market.\nCompare Accounting is a platform designed to educate site visitors on accounting software. To drive traffic to their affiliate review site, they run ads that say things like “Download Our New Top 15 Accounting Software Report \u0026amp; Implementation Guide Today!” and “Discover Accounting Software - Review Top 15 Software Vendors.”\nThey use a combination of Google and native ads. The native ads appear as images on applicable publisher websites: Top 10 Best Website Builders compares different website building tools to help users find the one that best suits their needs.\nTheir ads look like this: 2. Web Hosting and Cloud Storage Now more than ever it\u0026rsquo;s become extremely easy for anyone — without any formal training — to build their own website. Review sites in this niche focus on listing all of the top web hosting and cloud storage solutions available to users. They\u0026rsquo;re all very similar but differ slightly in the features they offer. These affiliate review sites help users choose.\nOne example is Web Hosting Free Reviews, which compares hosting services and rates them. These are the types of ads they use to drive traffic to their site:\nThese ads focus on three main factors that do a good job of attracting traffic:\n“No design skills required.” This makes it clear that anyone can use these tools. Anyone with zero experience building a site will be intrigued by this promise. “Build your free website in minutes.” This emphasizes how easy it is to get started with the builders they\u0026rsquo;ve listed. “Compare these 10 free website builders.” This appeals to people who want to save money building their website and gets them to click the ads. 3. Debt Consolidation This is an interesting niche because almost everyone has some sort of debt. To help manage the load, people look for companies that will help them consolidate their debt and manage payments.\nOne of these companies is Debt Consolidation Reviews. They list different debt consolidation companies and rank them based on criteria like:\nProgram Variety Program Costs Industry Reputation Their display ads look like this:\n4. Health and Fitness Products This is a great niche to operate in because whether you\u0026rsquo;re reviewing the latest diets, supplements or gyms, there\u0026rsquo;s enough variety that a review site in this niche will do really well.\nDiet Pill Universe ranks the top 10 diet pills every year. Each product on the list uses a ranking system that looks at features like the following to help people make informed decisions:\nOverall Rating Power Ingredient Quality Money Back Guarantee Company Reputation Their ads look like this: 5. Online Dating With all the apps and websites available today, this niche also offers a lot of options that need to be reviewed and compared.\nTop 10 Best Dating Sites doesn\u0026rsquo;t only rank dating sites but it categorizes them as well. So depending on whether users are looking for religious dating sites or something else, sites within each category are compared against each other.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s what their ads look like: 6. Review Conglomerate Sites These sites contain a whole bunch of different categories of products. Credit cards, computers, eCommerce products and more. They are the hardest to get started with because you need a lot of content.\nHowever, these advertisers buy a lot of traffic on display and are worth mentioning.\nNextAdvisor focuses on all things credit related. Its goal is to educate consumers so that they\u0026rsquo;re more savvy with credit management. In addition to general credit information, they also rank credit cards.\nFor example, they have a direct buy ad that looks like this: Case Study #1: NextAdvisor Most everyone could benefit by having more insight into credit management. With rising rates and cost-of-living increases making headlines these days, knowledge is more important than ever.\nBut how do customers know which credit card is right for them? The market is flooded with offers.\nUnless they’re seriously into debating the details of every card, customers don\u0026rsquo;t really care what the differences are—they just want the card that best aligns with their needs. This includes extra perks the card offers—like accumulating points every time the card\u0026rsquo;s used—and a low rate.\nThere are so many credit cards to choose from that between the features, extra benefits, and rates, this presents the perfect opportunity for an affiliate site, like NextAdvisor, to inform customer decisions and make revenue at the same time.\nNextAdvisor is one of a handful of affiliate review sites that focus primarily on credit card reviews. NextAdvisor also offers reviews for products and services such as auto insurance, web-hosting platforms, and email-marketing software.\nAd Networks NextAdvisor wants to capture as much of the roughly 72 million Americans who don\u0026rsquo;t have a credit card but are searching for the best one. To make a decision, this group wants help analyzing the differences between credit cards. NextAdvisor reaches these people by offering educational content and distributing it through search and native advertising with Yahoo Gemini and through content discovery with Outbrain. In fact, NextAdvisor spends as much as $1.8 million a month to do so.\nPublishers The main publishers that NextAdvisor uses are news-related sites. This makes sense, considering the types of people browsing these sites and their affiliate cable news channels. They\u0026rsquo;re older— between 59 and 66 years of age—and looking for quality content to learn more about the issues that affect them and use that information to make more informed decisions about the products they use. Adults 50 or older make up the second-highest group of credit card owners, at 78%—compared with 83% of people age 25–34. This older audience is likely to be receptive to advertising that focuses on credit management.\nAd Creative The majority of NextAdvisor\u0026rsquo;s ads, 84%, combine image and text. For example, this is a desktop ad that ran using the Yahoo Gemini Network: On another network, AppNexus, the ads look like this: Landing Pages Each ad has a specific focus, and the corresponding landing page goes into more detail by offering a full review of the credit card—its features, fees, and more. If we look again at the desktop ad above, with copy stating, “Pay No Interest Until 2019 With This Credit Card,” this is what the landing page for that ad looks like:\nA few things to consider when you create landing pages for your ads:\nPut emphasis on one product. The BankAmericard image and link are the first things you see when you hit the landing page. This way, the proposed next steps—click and sign up for the card—are clear, and customers get all of the information they need on the product that piqued their interest. List the most important features. You should know what types of features are most important to your audience. This way, your landing page offers more value because it gives them exactly what they want to see and offers a better comparison. This landing page specifically calls out fees and APR. Include a rating system. Notice the five stars at the top of the page. This helps to build authority. This also puts emphasis on the products that you\u0026rsquo;d like people to spend more time reading about and distinguishes some products from others to boost conversions. Experiment by adding or removing the type of information you focus on to see what sends more traffic to the merchant site and boosts your commissions.\nCase Study #2: TotalBeauty This site demonstrates the importance of picking the right niche. There is a very large market for beauty and anti-aging products. But more importantly, this is a very emotional and painful issue. Today\u0026rsquo;s culture puts emphasis on youth and beauty so people are willing to pay a premium to put off the inevitable as long as possible.\nAnd according to a study from Transparency Market Research:\n“[The] Anti-Aging Market is projected to grow at 7.8% between 2013 and 2019. The anti-aging market is poised for a healthy compounded annual growth rate of 7.8% between 2013 and 2019 and is projected to be worth USD 191.7 billion by 2019.”\nMore serious people opt for more drastic solutions, like plastic surgery. However, these treatments are expensive and risky, which is why some people choose more inexpensive, safer solutions like creams and lotions.\nAnother advantage of selling beauty products, creams and lotions are that they’re consumables, similar to nutraceuticals.\nThe customer will eventually run out and need to buy more. If they’re seeing results, then they’ll keep buying it month after month. Plus some creams are very expensive. The “LifeCell” cream that you’ll soon learn about costs $189 for a 2.49 oz tube. If you can get a monthly commission off re-bills or repeat sales from your affiliate partner, the lifetime value of one customer will be very high.\nAd Networks TotalBeauty uses a few different traffic sources, but they still rely heavily on Google. When you comply with Google’s terms — like offer transparency and a great user experience — they\u0026rsquo;ll make it easy for you to send traffic to your affiliate offer.\nPublishers TotalBeauty has seen success with Momtastic, a site geared towards women with babies to teen children. Sites like this provide women with insights and ideas on how to stay healthy and practice self-care. Many women struggle with adjusting to how different their lives become after children. They\u0026rsquo;re often looking for solutions to help them put more emphasis on their needs and feeling good.\nAd Creative TotalBeauty runs a variety of ads that focus on specific needs and highlights partnerships that add to the perceived quality of their brand and product.\nLanding Pages In one campaign TotalBeauty puts more emphasis on physical activity as part of a beauty regimen. The landing page for this ad was presented as an advertorial or a sales page disguised as an informative article.\nVisitors could click on any of the products on the page to find out more information. This is a very convincing page that is probably doing very well for them. What\u0026rsquo;s next? Getting started with an affiliate review site is as simple as setting up a WordPress site, finding a template and registering a domain. Once you have that, plan your content and make sure it complies with Google\u0026rsquo;s rules so that you get lots of exposure.\nOnce you have these set up, it\u0026rsquo;s easy to get working on display when you pick the right niche and audience. Display is going to generally be a cheaper source of traffic since the cost of some of these keywords on search can be $10+ per click.\nOne thing to keep in mind is you\u0026rsquo;re going to need lots of content to make this strategy work. You’re going to need someone to write a lot of reviews. It’s not that difficult, but it can be time-consuming. It would also be wise to hire a decent copywriter to write advertorial style reviews. But with the right team you\u0026rsquo;ll be on the right path to success.\n","permalink":"https://blog-static-b59.pages.dev/the-business-of-display-part-5-affiliate-review-sites/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBack in 2008 when the internet was continuing to find its footing, you didn\u0026rsquo;t have to look far before you were face-to-face with ad networks full of affiliate advertising. These sites sent massive amounts of display traffic to shady landing pages or directly to the affiliate link itself.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut fortunately, those days are behind us.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNetworks with high-quality traffic — like the Google Display Network — have become very volatile for affiliates. Not only have they banned things like direct linking, but they’ve made it more difficult for even legitimate affiliates to attract traffic.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Business of Display Part 5: Affiliate Review Sites"}]