Programmatic on Adbeat

Analyzing American Express’s $167M Display Ad Strategy

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 18:21:24 +0000

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.

With 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.

Ad Testing 101: Create Effective Ads That Drive Results

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 20:33:53 +0000

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).

The 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.

But how do brands know these ads will work? By testing them on various groups of people! In other words: ad testing.

How Shopify, Squarespace & Wix use display ads to fight for ecommerce supremacy

Wed, 03 Jul 2024 18:47:13 +0000

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:

Of 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.

While 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:

How flower delivery brands use display ads to boost Mother’s Day sales

Thu, 09 May 2024 18:51:32 +0000

There are two classic ways to show your mom how much you love her on Mother’s Day.

One 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.

Most 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.

The battle of Tax Day: Analyzing TurboTax, H&R Block and TaxAct’s display ad strategies

Wed, 10 Apr 2024 16:00:00 +0000

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.

Per 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.

Crafting Powerful Testimonial Ads That Convert

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 18:00:00 +0000

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?

As 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.

Netflix vs Amazon: The display ad battle for our streaming bucks

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 19:40:47 +0000

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).

But it hasn’t always been this way.

Netflix 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.

Inside Samsung’s $150M+ display ad strategy: Can it overtake Apple?

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 23:06:00 +0000

Founded in 1938, Samsung is a South Korean conglomerate with affiliates selling everything from life insurance to engineering services to oil tankers.

But, 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…

…and it’s also a major player in countless other consumer electronics niches, including smart TVs, refrigerators, and laptops.

Marketing to Millennials: 5 Strategies To Increase Your ROI

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 16:00:00 +0000

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.

Having 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.

2023’s top-spending display advertisers: Who they are & what they did

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 17:43:39 +0000

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.

But who’s spending all that money, and how are they spending it?

To 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.

Reimagine Home: How Zillow's using their $15.8M ad spend to dominate online real estate and fuel business growth.

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 09:45:58 +0000

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 “Make Me Move” 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’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’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.

Breaking down HostGator's $919.2K ad spend: How the web-hosting provider is using strategically-crafted campaigns to stand out from their competitors.

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 09:08:12 +0000

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).

Understanding Programmatic Native Advertising — and Why It's Important For Brands

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 15:08:09 +0000

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’ expectations and maximizes their ability to monetize.Here’s when native advertising comes in.

Programmatic Ads vs. Direct Buying: Which to choose?

Wed, 03 Oct 2018 21:43:31 +0000

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.

Things 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:

Programmatic advertising vs Google Display Network: Which one should you choose?

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 21:30:54 +0000

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.

Now, programmatic advertising accounts for 82.5% of total digital as spend.

What is Programmatic Advertising: The Beginner's Guide

Wed, 19 Sep 2018 21:17:44 +0000

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:

It accounts for 82.5% of total digital display ad spending right now and this number will only increase. So how did it all start?

When 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.