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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, “Weird Al” 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’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 “Interrupted” 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 “x” out of these ads because they’re part of Vimeo’s whole promo to illustrate that intrusive ads are just pesky distractions that ruin the overall user experience. ...

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&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. ...

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’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. “It’s so easy and quick. You do it, you PayPal it, and you’re done,” 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." “There’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,” Anuj Nayar, PayPal’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.“ 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’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. ...

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, “…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. ...

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. ...

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’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: ...

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? ...

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. ...

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&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. ...

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. ...