Video ads are memorable, engaging, shareable and have incredible ROI. Learn how you can implement programmatic video ads for your next campaign.

How will you incorporate video into your digital advertising strategy this year?

For a long time, broadcast and cable TV advertising were the most prestigious form of advertising. It connected with the audience at a deep emotional level and also a limited number of slots were available during primetime. As a result, it was also pricey. Only the largest brands and agencies could afford it.

But with the growth of video streaming, cable-cutting, and audience targeting technologies, brands of any size can develop a campaign that yields ROI and partake in the exciting video advertising medium.

Video ads are a growing piece of the digital advertising pie. Although they originally only played a small part of campaigns, video ads now play an increasingly critical role in engaging potential customers. With increasing personalization through OTT, creative formats like cinemagraphs, and the fact that by 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic, video is slowing down for no one.

The increase of focus on video is directly connected to the fact that people prefer it. A report by Wyzowl found that 66% of people said they’d prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service and that people are 2x as likely to share video content with friends over other content formats. Why? Because people have reduced attention spans and video is the perfect way to get a memorable message in front of people in the shortest amount of time.

The Growing Dominance and Key Trends of Video Advertising

With ad spending in the Video Advertising segment projected to reach $26 billion in 2020 and $35 billion by 2024, and marketers reporting an increase for digital video budgets by 25%, the video ad landscape is quickly evolving and rapidly growing.

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Here are the key trends and developments worth noting in video advertising.

Video vs. Static Display Ads

A study by MediaMind analyzed over three billion ad impressions globally over a six month period. Their results revealed that prospects are 27.4 times more likely to click-through online video ads than standard banners.

While image or text display ads rely on compelling copy and images, video ads easily catch user attention, thanks to using both movement and sound. These features help efficiently convey a message and connect with the viewer in an easily consumable way, helping lead to increased engagement.

Native video ads also do well since they don’t disrupt the user experience. Sharethrough and Nielsen conducted a joint study to compare the two, and the results are clear: of the five campaigns studied, every campaign resulted in higher brand lift when using native video ads versus pre-roll.

One campaign even saw an 82% brand lift amongst users exposed to the ads as compared to just 2.1% for users exposed to the campaign’s pre-roll ads.

Consumer Preference and ROI

In research by Wyzowl, 84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. In addition, two-thirds of people (66%) said they’d prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service.

As for ROI, the same study found that 95% of video marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service, and 80% of video marketers say video has directly helped increase sales and generate leads.

Mobile

With smartphones becoming ubiquitous, marketers know that consumers use their phones for news, shopping, entertainment and information. As a result, many brands have worked to make their websites, advertisements and services mobile-friendly.

The increase in mobile has impacted how video ads are prepared. Most videos recorded on mobile devices today are shot in an upright format known as vertical video. By creating video ads in this format, marketers can reach audiences on Instagram Stories, Facebook and others.

In addition, new formats such as live broadcasting, 360° panoramas, or virtual reality videos will likely be delivered and enjoyed on mobile over desktop. Because there aren’t disruptive technological innovations on the rise in the desktop market, it will struggle to keep up with mobile and will likely stagnate.

With more than 40% of transactions happening through mobile, designing for an intuitive mobile experience is critical.

Cinemagraphs

Cinemagraphs are photo and video hybrids that contain a subtle motion. By playing on a loop, the visual seems like a simple video or animation. For example, a candle flickering, water hitting the shore, or rain are a few examples of how cinemagraphs can imitate motion. Cinemagraphs spark more interest than photos but have the benefit of not requiring extensive video editing.

Programmatic & OTT

Within video ads, there are a variety of trends worth noting. OTT content providers are increasingly focused on video-on-demand (VOD) models, including subscription VOD, transactional VOD and ad-supported VOD. By combining programmatic capabilities with OTT, marketers can utilize targeting and advanced analytics to reach specific audiences with highly personalized ads.

59% of ad buyers plan to increase their advanced TV spend within the next 12 months, with half also reporting increases in OTT. Buyers report that half of digital video budgets will be spent through programmatic buys. Why? Because programmatic advertising uses behavioral data to find your audience and display the perfect video ad in the right place at the right time, making it far more effective.

Video Ad Formats and Platforms to Capitalize On

If video feels like it’s everywhere, that’s because it is. There are many types of video ad formats and platforms to choose from. Here are the key ones to watch for:

YouTube

YouTube has three main video ad formats available:

• Skippable video ads allow viewers to skip ads after 5 seconds. They are inserted before, during, or after the main video. Skippable video plays in the video player and can be placed on desktop, mobile devices, connected TV and game consoles.
• Non-skippable video ads must be watched in-full before your video can be viewed. They can appear before, during, or after the main video. Non-skippable video is played in the video player and runs on desktop and mobile devices. They’re typically 15 or 20 seconds in length, depending on regional standards.
• Bumper Ads are non-skippable video ads of up to 6 seconds. With this option, you may see a combination of skippable and bumper ads play back to back. Bumper ads are placed on desktop and mobile devices in the video player.

You can choose one or many styles of YouTube ads for your video marketing and test to see which one performs best.

Instream Social Media Ads

Instream ads can also appear on Social Media. The Facebook in-stream video ad placement lets you show mid-roll video ads to viewers who are watching video content from select publishers (such as ESPN, The New York Times, CNN, etc.). The ads are unskippable and can be up to 5-15 seconds in length.

Facebook offers six main formats for video ads.

• Slideshow video ads: These allow advertisers to incorporate images and sound to create video-like ads that can narrate products and services on both desktop and mobile devices.
• Stories: These video ads are vertical, visual advertisements placed in the Stories feed on mobile devices.
• Carousel ads: This format allows you to showcase up to ten images or videos within a single ad. Each carousel card can have its own link. Because you can have so many cards, there’s more room for creativity in how you highlight different products or offers.
• Collection ads: This ad format helps your prospects transition from discovery to purchase. Collection ads feature a primary video that can be used to spark interest and awareness. With four smaller accompanying images organized in a grid, consumers can learn more about their options and product details.
• Playable ads: With playable ads, advertisers give users an interactive preview of an app before they download them. The ad starts with an intro video of the app and then offers an option to interact. It’s a great way to engage consumers and offer a preview without committing to downloading.
• Instant Experiences: Facebook Instant Experiences are designed to capture the complete attention of your audience on mobile. Facebook claims that they can load up to fifteen times faster than standard mobile web ads. All in one ad, customers can watch engaging videos and photos, tilt to pan, swipe through carousels and explore and shop images with tagged products.

Instagram also offers instream video ads. In a report by Wibbitz, 31% of survey respondents said they had purchased a product directly after watching a video on the platform. LinkedIn also offers video ads, and members spend nearly 3x more time watching video ads compared to static Sponsored Content.

OTT/Connected TV

Connected TV advertising is one of the most effective ways to reach your audience. CTV ads are more targeted, cost-friendly, measurable and on-trend with consumer behavior than typical traditional ads. By taking advantage of connected TV, marketers can reach consumers across the open internet and on popular streaming services like Hulu, VUDU and others.

For connected TV video ads, there are three key formats to be aware of:

• In-stream video ads are unskippable 15- to 30-second long ads that play before or during the program. They are a clever and cost-effective way to reuse your existing television ads for connected TV.
• Interactive Pre-Roll ads are like in-stream video ads, except they encourage the viewer to click through to a landing page. For example, if you’re advertising an online conference, this type of ad could bring the viewer to a page where they could reserve their spot.
• Home Screen Placement ads are ads that live on the home screen. They’re typically a short video or image and can feature a call to action like ‘sign up’.

With CTV, not only can you control and glean in-depth insights into the profile of the audience who is viewing your ads, but you can also buy ads in packages and serve them via powerful ad formats. In doing so, you can address each stage of the buyer journey in a trackable way.

Out-stream Ads

Out-stream video ads are ads you see in the middle of online articles. It is an engaging, non-disruptive ad experience in which the video plays only when the ad is in view.

And thanks to programmatic capabilities, out-stream ads can leverage the open internet and help you reach your audience wherever they are and create more options for ad placements.

Instream Ads on Premium Content

Connected TV can also reach consumers as they watch premium content. Three video on demand (VOD) formats that can host video ads include:

• Subscription video on demand (SVOD). These include subscription streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video. They either don’t run ads or only run them on an unpaid subscription model.
• Advertising-based video on demand(AVOD). AVODs are free streaming services that operate based on ad revenue. Examples of AVOD include Tubi, Crackle and Vudu.
• Multichannel video programming distributors(vMVPDs). These are streaming service providers that have paid-TV programming. Some examples include AT&T Now, Sling and YouTube TV.

When Choosing Between Video Ad Options – Programmatic is the Clear Choice

Today, roughly 75% of video ads are programmatic. Because programmatic advertising relies on data, it allows us to reach across channels and serve targeted ads on mobile, desktop and TV sets.

Because programmatic covers all publishers (like Bloomberg, CNN, BBC, Disney, Twitch and small publishers like video games or apps), and also offers a variety of formats including out-stream, pre-roll, mid and post-roll, virtually all the users on the internet can be reached.

With YouTube video ads limited to YouTube.com, instream and out-stream video allow for advertisers to engage with users across the internet with the same video asset they have running on YouTube.

In many head-to-head case studies of YouTube video against instream and out-stream, YouTube consistently costs more across a variety of key metrics, including a higher cost-per-action, higher CPM and lower overall efficiency when compared to instream or out-stream video.

Overall, when running video on the internet, we recommend testing both YouTube and the open internet (.coms, apps and more) video inventory and optimizing accordingly.

Applying Video Ads to the Customer Journey

Video ads can be applied to the traditional marketing funnel at all stages. Fusing video marketing into your marketing strategy can help achieve common marketing goals like lead generation, product education and sales.

Top of the Funnel

Top of the funnel video is great for brand awareness and lead generation. It’s recommended to put 20%–40% of your ad budget into top-of-funnel video.

Video communicates a lot of information in a short amount of time. Therefore, once someone has either watched 10%–20% of the top-of-funnel video and/or visited your website, they’re considered in the funnel. The precise percent of the video should be based on the timestamp of when the brand is introduced.

Basic spokesperson videos are simple to create and effective at delivering key brand messages.

Middle of the Funnel

The difference between mid-level and low-level funnel content is in how direct the sales message is delivered. In the middle of the funnel, the goal is still to entertain and educate while also overcoming concerns and objections.

To leverage programmatic capability, you can then begin dynamic retargeting of people within the funnel. Depending on your campaign, it can be based on which pages of the website were visited, whether someone abandoned their cart, signed up on a landing page and so on.

By using dynamic creative optimization (DCO), marketers can create personalized retargeted ads based on viewer data at the moment of ad serving. Because the creative is highly relevant, tested and optimized, dynamic ads typically outperform their static counterparts.

Note: DCO’s targeting capabilities are so advanced that we also recommend using it for prospecting. DCO enables you to prospect with tailored ads based on any user’s past browsing data, even before they enter your retargeting pool! For instance, you could geo-target audiences of a certain income-level who are in-market for a family van with DCO. The ads would be able to show specific models, price, and more.

Depending on the action taken, they’ll be served a new video that puts them into a sequence of customer testimonials, videos that help them overcome concerns, discount offers, before-and-after videos, product demos, explainer videos and others.

Bottom of the Funnel

At the bottom of a video funnel, content tends to be straightforward and promotional. It’s typically short-form and has the goal of keeping top-of-mind and converting to sales.

Depending on the price of the product and the typical time it takes for a customer to decide (i.e., bigger purchases have longer decision periods), discounts will be dripped out over shorter or longer periods of time.

Acquisio Case Study with NHL

A great example of how video advertising can boost your in-funnel audience is the campaign that Acquisio Trading Desk ran for an NHL hockey team. The goal was to sell more tickets by broadening the retargeting pool with upper funnel prospecting.

We ensured prospecting was effective by targeting fans of hockey or specific hockey teams using third-party audience data. Additionally, CTV video was an untapped format for this team and thus guaranteed we would be reaching a new group.

A retargeting pool of interested audiences was identified based on high engagement with the CTV ads (those who view more than 50% of an ad).

85% of viewers met our engagement criteria, highlighting the attractiveness of video advertising. That pool became the target for a display campaign with the conversion goal of ticket purchase.

In the end this programmatic campaign yielded a 327% return on ad spend (ROAS).

Video Advertising KPIs and Results

Video key performance indicators (KPI) can vary depending on the goal of your campaign. Here are some sample KPIs depending on if your goal was to boost awareness, increase consideration, or inspire conversions.

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Cost Per Viewable Impression (CPVI or VCPM/VCPV)

With this pricing model, an advertiser only pays for video ad impressions that are considered viewable based upon The Media Ratings Council (MRC) and IAB viewability guidelines. They are typically sold per every 1000 impressions.

Video Completion Rates (VCR)

This KPI represents the percentage of all video ads that play through their entire duration to completion.

On the whole, VCR has continued to rise. Extreme Reach’s figures show that video ads were viewed to completion 89% of the time last year, up from 83% in 2018 and 70% in 2017. Connected TV (CTV) continues to have the highest VCR of all device types. With a consistent rate of about 96% throughout 2019, CTV stands apart from all other devices.

Video-Ad-Viewable-Completion-Rates-2015-2018-Mar2019

Viewability

According to IAB’s definition of viewability, an ad is viewable if at least 50% of the video ad is in view for 2 consecutive seconds. For both desktop video and mobile video, the required time is not necessarily the first two seconds of the video ad; any unduplicated content of the ad comprising two continuous seconds qualifies in this regard.

When assessing video ad results, it’s important to differentiate between viewability and video viewing. By this definition, viewability means the video ad is shown, but it does not necessarily mean the video was watched in full from beginning to end.

In conjunction with the IAB, the MRC has compiled a list of viewable impression ad measurement guidelines to help advertisers decipher and understand viewability. DSPs, Exchanges and 3rd-party data providers are also accountable for providing information where possible.

The task you need to prioritize is finding out how each publisher defines viewable inventory, and how much of it is available to you. Based on this, you can make strategic decisions to overcome the difficulty with viewability in programmatic. Here are some examples:

• Consider Your Placements. If you can carefully select your ad placements, you can increase your chances of bidding on viewable impressions, without the extra cost.
• Stick to Performance-Based Bids. Buying impressions on performance-based models such as Cost per Click and Cost per Completed View can help limit the chances of bidding on non-viewable impressions. After all, a user must see an ad to click it, so by using performance-based bids your campaign will have scale potential and guaranteed results.
• Opt for Private Deals. Private deals are a great way to increase your likelihood to buy viewable inventory since publishers will specifically package viewable ad placements. The only downside is that these will likely come at much higher CPMs.

Three Memorable Video Advertising Examples

Now that you’ve seen the different ways that video ads can be applied, let’s review some memorable video campaigns that generated massive results.

Turner Sports Generated Interest and Engagement Through Video Ads

With programmatic advertising, Turner Sports wanted to help support the National Basketball Association (NBA) Season Tip-Off 2016 events, which aired on TNT. Their goal was to generate more interest and engagement for the event.

Turner Sports approached its goal with a programmatic video advertising campaign that reached six million unique viewers in the U.S. These ads used advanced targeting and featured real-time videos from tip-off events across the country.

As a result of their campaign, they were able to drive engagement, increase awareness and generate a 7% lift in brand awareness.

O2 Repurposed TV Ads into Programmatic & Highly-Targeted Videos

Tele-communications company O2 wanted to repurpose its TV ads and make them more interesting for mobile users. By leveraging their user data, O2 created programmatic video ads based on people’s mobile usage, including which device they use, the best offer on an upgrade.

More than 1,000 versions of the ad were made, allowing a personalized ad to be served to each user. As a result, these targeted and personalized ads generated a 128% better click-through rate.

Air Asia Used Programmatic Social Media to Boost Trust and Bookings

AirAsia used programmatic advertising to recover its reputation and increase bookings after a tragic accident in 2014.

The airline launched a series of display ads and video ads that targeted three specific sets of AirAsia clients: those who had flown before, those who booked after the crash and those who are considered regular customers. With the ad campaign, AirAsia earned a 30X return on ad spend and 17-point lift in ad-recall.

Wrapping Up

With video being more memorable, shareable and engaging than other formats, it’s quickly becoming the top choice for marketing campaigns. Combined with programmatic abilities like personalization, location targeting and reaching consumers across the open internet, video ads are a force to be reckoned with.

Overall, there’s never been a better time to dedicate more time and resources to learning how video ads can work for you.

Images:

Head image: Ethan Hu / Unsplash

Image 1: Statista

Image 2: Google

Image 3: Marketing Charts

Image (Video) 4: Turner Sports

The post How to Engage & Expand Your Audience with Video Advertising appeared first on Acquisio Blog.

Programmatic DOOH can help turn offline impressions into online conversions. Read how to use DOOH to create omnipresent advertising.

The methods by which marketers can reach their target audience continues to rapidly evolve. Thanks to the internet and programmatic capabilities, advertisers have a world of opportunities to create increasingly personal and relevant marketing.

By combining Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) marketing with programmatic capabilities, programmatic advertisers can reach people online and then retarget them offline, and vice versa. In this way, DOOH is a powerful tool for taking a truly omnichannel approach.

With the global DOOH market projected to reach 8.3 billion by 2023, there’s never been a better time to leverage DOOH for your marketing efforts.

What is DOOH?

DOOH advertising uses digital screens in high-traffic areas to deliver media and content to people. It’s a form of outdoor advertising that can help reach target personas wherever they are.

There are four main types of DOOH formats.

Large Formats are designed and elevated for clear viewing. They’re typically more than 50 feet tall and are placed in high traffic commercial areas, major metropolitan areas, industrial areas and highways. These large format digital billboards create high impact exposure and are available in a wide range of markets.

Spectaculars, like large formats, are high-visibility, high-impact units with full motion. They often target pedestrians in dense foot traffic areas. Spectaculars are often known for their iconic locations, such as Times Square, Sunset Strip, and Piccadilly Circus.

Venue Based and Public Spaces focus on targeting pedestrian traffic. They’re normally placed at street level or within a venue. Common placements include health clubs, train stations, airports, office buildings, taxi cabs, and others. Don’t underestimate these smaller but mighty screens! They allow for more granular targeting and a more intimate viewing experience.

Custom Formats can appear in a variety of large and small DOOH networks. They’re best for creating unique opportunities to reach people such as during events or pop-up installations. Custom format DOOH can take the form of digital projections, digital mobile billboards/buses, or create interactive digital experiences using gesture and touchscreen technologies.

The Advantages of DOOH Over Standard Out-of-Home Advertising & Online Marketing

DOOH has a few key advantages over static forms of out-of-home advertising.

Lower Management Costs: Traditional billboards require printing and installation costs for each new ad. Displaying fresh content on digital billboards can be automated and requires only a few moments to update.

Added Variety: Because digital allows for a variety of content to be displayed, it keeps the content dynamic and interesting for passing pedestrians. With static billboards, the same image might stay for weeks, whereas a DOOH ad can alternate between media every 15 seconds. Being able to change what appears helps keep viewers intrigued and more receptive to messaging.

Increased Opportunities for Campaign Relevancy: When added to programmatic, DOOH can become even more impressive and engaging. By combining creativity and context, marketers can create memorable campaigns that are highly relevant. These types of dynamic ads simply aren’t possible with static displays.

Detailed Reporting: The software used to run DOOH displays produces useful reports that include key metrics such as proof-of-play and incident reports. These analytics enable both marketers and network operators to ensure that ad content is being displayed when it is supposed to and to respond to any issues promptly. In addition, DOOH campaigns can also generate useful viewership analytics.

Fewer Distractions: When running ads on personal devices and web browsers, marketers face frequent obstacles such as ad-blockers, below-the-fold positions, or the user switching between apps or tabs. With DOOH ads, people are more likely to see the digital display if it’s in view.

Marketing Opportunities for DOOH and Programmatic

Although the general advantages of DOOH are persuasive, DOOH becomes even more compelling once you add programmatic advertising capabilities.

Programmatic DOOH Enriches Campaigns with Data

Programmatic DOOH is more personalized, relevant and engaging thanks to data that enriches the campaign. Adding programmatic to DOOH creates a boundless opportunity to use data to trigger content.

A simple example would be delivering different creatives based on time of day. Marketers could also distribute creatives based on advanced data such as weather, market performance, results of a sporting event, and others. With multiple triggers in place, marketers can get specific with who they target and when.

Key data sources for triggering programmatic DOOH are:

• Mobile location data: Mobile data providers have historical and real-time views of audience demographics and movement around their displays. By integrating with DOOH networks, marketers can take advantage of this data for optimizing displays.
• Visual sensors: Certain Ad platforms can let DOOH networks use camera sensors that can detect things like audience demographics, dwell times, engagement, and more.

These data sources can be used in real-time to display appropriate advertising, depending on who’s currently present in the screen’s viewing area. These sources create opportunities for detailed targeting and can track how many people are viewing a DOOH ad at a given time.

Programmatic DOOH Leverages the Open Internet

Marketers that use programmatic aren’t limited by walled gardens such as YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, and Google Ads.

In fact, consumers are most likely to find ads that are relevant to them on the open web. By leveraging the open internet, advertisers can display ads in relevant locations without compromising on transparency or control over when and how the ad is displayed.

Programmatic DOOH is Fast and Flexible

Programmatic data can help refresh DOOH in real-time based on relevant data. With this speed and efficiency, marketers can quickly deliver relevant messaging without making repeated direct buys. Programmatic DOOH ensures that you’re delivering the right message to the right screen at the right time.

Programmatic DOOH Campaigns are Simple to Execute

Integrating DOOH with programmatic efforts creates simplicity in two main ways.

First, programmatic DOOH allows you to buy across multiple publishers simultaneously. It’s easier to build a programmatic campaign that targets screens across a variety of networks than it is to reach out to individual businesses to coordinate your purchase. As more DSPs support programmatic DOOH as a mainstream media buy, it’s becoming increasingly easier to incorporate DOOH media into their campaigns.

Second, you likely already have the creatives you need to start using DOOH. At the end of the day, a DOOH is still a screen. Whether you’re using images, video content, or interactive content, all types of digital creatives can be placed on DOOH displays. Although it may need some tweaking, the bulk of your creative can likely be adapted to DOOH.

Designing an Effective DOOH Marketing Strategy

As with any advertising campaign, DOOH campaigns take some planning and strategy. Here’s our step-by-step guide to designing an effective DOOH marketing strategy.

Choose Key Campaign Objective

DOOH is mainly an impression-based and time-based medium and each DOOH campaign should ideally have one key objective.

When impression-based, the results will be the cost per action (CPA), whereas time-based pricing is largely dependent on impressions and/or share of voice (SOV). Location can also be used to buy inventory in proximity to a specific point of interest, like advertising screens in a subway station, for example.

Although DOOH is great on its own, it can (and should) also support other marketing goals. For example, DOOH is particularly effective at growing online and social media channels, increasing web traffic, promoting online or in-store offers, and supporting retargeting efforts.

Define Target Persona

Once you’ve chosen your key campaign objective, next, choose which target persona to market to and which aspect of the problem you’d like to address.

Here are the four key layers of persona targeting.

• Geo-behavioral Traits: How often the target persona walks by a certain DOOH ad space
• Recency Traits: How recently they walked by
• Loyalty Traits: How much interest they have in the seller’s offering
• Seasonality Traits: How much interest the buyer has based on the season (i.e. summer break, New Years, Halloween, etc.)

In addition, there are three main types of behavioral data (provided through mobile devices).

• Visitation-based behavior: Audiences who have visited a place of interest
• Web-based behavior: Audiences who visited a website or category of websites
• TV viewing behavior: Audiences who viewed a TV show or category of shows

By using mobile device data, these activities can be mapped to a specific audience, which can then inform which DOOH media units to buy. Using this data can help buyers better understand who their ads will reach and allows for highly targeted marketing.

Select Relevant Screens

Once you have established a target persona, you can begin locating DOOH screens which index highly to your audience.

For example, let’s say you are trying to reach high-income adventure travelers. By matching persona data with relevant screens, you might decide to target a specific billboard in an affluent neighborhood, in close proximity to certain sports outfitter stores, or DOOH displays near the airport.

Design Creatives

Now that you have specific goals, target persona, and relevant screens it’s time to choose which creatives to display.

Branded videos are engaging and memorable, but they can also be quite expensive to produce. However, to see the best results with DOOH, branded videos are recommended.

As you design your creative, keep the DOOH format in mind.

Remember to:

• Keep text simple;
• Have a clear call-to-action, and;
• Choose bold visuals that are memorable and easy to understand at a quick glance.

Launch Campaign

At this stage, everything is ready to go. Choose your budget, select your marketing schedule, upload your creatives and launch.

Capture DOOH Campaign Data for Retargeting

Using DOOH campaign data for retargeting is a great way to turn offline impressions into online conversions. Mobile’s GPS, mapping apps, sensors and beacons have allowed mobile retargeting to flourish when used in collaboration with out-of-home advertising campaigns.

By using the mobile data to track who passed your DOOH ads, you can build an audience to retarget online.

Four Programmatic + DOOH Trends

Let’s examine four popular DOOH powered by programmatic trends.

Omnichannel with DOOH

With programmatic DOOH, there’s no need to be restricted to one campaign for mobile, desktop, and OOH. By coordinating efforts across channels, marketing can be delivered both on and offline and become omnipresent.

For example, the marketing team for Jurassic World covered London’s Waterloo Station in advertisements and placed dinosaurs in the middle of the station to create an immersive experience.

They did this in tandem with social, mobile and desktop campaigns to create a truly omnipresent push for their movie. Of course, their budget is out of this world (just like their ad campaign), but it’s a relevant example of an omnichannel DOOH and programmatic approach.

Dynamic Creative and DOOH

Research commissioned by Clear Channel, JCDecaux UK and Posterscope revealed that consumer response was 18% higher when stimulated by relevant content in DOOH campaigns, which leads to a 17% increase in ad recall which in turn delivers a 16% sales uplift.

Despite this compelling research, marketers across the globe often forget to leverage relevance in DOOH campaigns. As programmatic DOOH gains speed, we can expect to see creativity and relevancy when it comes to designing engaging displays.

In-store Digital Signage

In-store DOOH is often overlooked since advertisers focus on getting people in the door. However, in-store DOOH can help close the ‘last mile’ between browsing in-store and the purchase counter.

Clicks, a health and beauty retail chain in South Africa, used digital signage to inform customers as they walked through their stores.

They displayed promotions, campaigns and supplier advertising to capture the attention of whoever was walking by. The digital signage helped to boost dwell times (the time a person looks at the ad) and sales.

In-store digital signage is a great way of notifying potential customers of sales and discounts and directing traffic to secure that final sale. By combining in-store digital signage with beacons and geofencing, brick and mortar stores can generate powerful results.

Improved Analytics

In the past, marketers avoided DOOH due to its limited measurable results. But with programmatic, it’s now possible to measure who consumed the content, when, and even for how long.

Programmatic DOOH makes it easy to collect data that helps target the right audience and display relevant ads to your target persona.

Three Examples of Memorable DOOH Campaigns

DOOH technology can create opportunities for a targeted and engaging display experience. Here are three examples of marketers who created memorable DOOH campaigns.

GMC’s Highly Interactive DOOH Campaign

In this GMC campaign, they aimed to promote their newest vehicle, the Acadia SUV. GMC’s DOOH used facial analytics technology, dynamic content, proximity-based marketing, and digital signage to attract and engage their audience.

A strategically placed camera was used to anonymously detect audience demographics (e.g., age and gender) and behavior. The campaign then used artificial intelligence to display one of over 30 prepackaged videos to the audience.

The result was a memorable display that had people laughing, smiling, and excited to engage with the campaign.

Spotify’s Wrapped Celebrating Playlists

Spotify’s DOOH campaign was based on user-generated data, making it dynamic, clever and relatable. Through their user-generated data, they created a localized story to each country and delivered it to DOOH screens around the world.

It got people interested in their own personal playlists and likely sparked people to visit the app and review their own music listening statistics.

Douwe Egberts Coffee: One Yawn Earns One Coffee

Douwe Egberts designed a clever DOOH campaign for their coffee. They recognized that airports are one of the prime places people crave a caffeinated boost. But given how ad-heavy airports can be, they knew they had to create a memorable campaign that could cut through the noise.

Their solution was to develop a facial analytics campaign that created a fresh cup of coffee if a tired traveler yawned in front of the display.

As shown in the video, not only did consumers appreciate the cozy cup of coffee, but they were also entertained and intrigued by the kiosk and many left the display with a smile.

Conclusion

Programmatic DOOH helps scale the benefits of traditional OOH and non-programmatic DOOH even further. By enriching campaigns with target persona data, programmatic DOOH allows marketers to create engaging, immersive, and memorable campaigns that resonate.

Pairing DOOH with programmatic abilities is key to staying ahead of the curve and seeing even more ROI from DOOH campaigns.

If you have questions on how DOOH can help your agency clients, our strategists are available for free strategic consultations. We’d be happy to support you in creating a breakthrough programmatic DOOH campaign.

Images:

Header image: Aleksas Stan on Unsplash

Image 1: YouTube

Image 2: Digital Signage Today

Video 1: YouTube

Video 2: Vimeo

Video 3: YouTube

The post How to Use DOOH for Omnipresent Advertising appeared first on Acquisio Blog.

Geofencing can help marketers reach highly targeted audiences based on their location. Read our guide to creating highly-effective local ads.

Location-based marketing creates a unique opportunity for advertisers and marketers to reach consumers based on specific places they visit. With geofencing, advertisers can create and target audiences through custom targeting shapes with remarkable precision.

When you’re able to target your audience based on their physical location, unique opportunities arise. From creating specialized push notifications to collecting better campaign analytics, there are a variety of ways to leverage these virtual boundaries.

In this article, we’ll walk you through what geofencing is, a few of its key benefits, and how marketers can begin to leverage this technology in new and innovative ways.

What is Geofencing?

Geofencing marketing is location-based marketing that lets you connect with smartphone users in a designated geographic area. Because it’s location-based, geofencing relies on a mix of GPS, Wi-Fi, radio-frequency identification (RFID) and Bluetooth.

Geofences work in three simple steps. First, a virtual boundary is created around a physical location. Next, a user (and their mobile device) will pass into the geofenced location. Once they do, it will trigger an ad to be served from your campaign to their phone.

According to a BIA/Kelsey study, location-based mobile advertising is predicted to increase to $38.7 billion by 2022. Because consumers are increasingly likely to have their smartphones by their side, an abundance of opportunity is possible for reaching your audience and creating conversions at the perfect time and place.

Geofencing vs. Geotargeting

Although geotargeting is a common term, it’s distinct from geofencing. Geotargeting is focused on a specific set of users who are in the vicinity of a geolocation area, whereas geofencing sets up a boundary that triggers certain ads to display when users cross in and out of the fenced area.

Because geotargeting is focused on the area instead of movement in and out of the fenced area, it’s limited to bottom-of-the-funnel campaigns. In contrast, geofencing has a variety of programmatic capabilities that allow for targeted prospecting, retargeting, and overall allows marketers to address all parts of the buyer’s journey.

Key Benefits and Features of Geofencing

As mentioned above, geofencing is ripe with targeting opportunities. Let’s explore a few more benefits in detail.

Measuring Results Through Conversion Zones

Geofencing with conversion zones allows for better data on tracking and measuring online-to-offline conversions.

A conversion zone works by creating a virtual boundary around your business. If a prospect goes on to visit your conversion zone after having been served an ad associated with the campaign, that user will be counted as a conversion.

It is important to interpret and use this data properly. Especially if you are a business for whom some store visits are much more profitable than others. But on the whole, it is incredibly valuable to be able to tie offline conversions to digital campaigns in this way. 

Competitive Conquesting Campaigns

Geofencing also enables you to target prospects who have visited your competitor’s locations. For example, as a new health food restaurant, you may choose to target people who live in your city and have visited one of the vegetarian establishments in your area.  

Programmatic Retargeting Across Time

Marketers can also use geo-fencing to retarget audiences who were in a certain place in the past with astonishing precision. For example, if sports fans attended a team game in the past, you could target them for future ticket sales—even up to 30 days after the event.

Double Up on Precision with Beacon Technology

You can think of geofencing as targeting a “macro-location” of up to 50 meters, and beacons as a “micro-location”—such as offering location-based services indoors. Although beacon technology is separate from geofencing, they’re often used together to create high-converting results. 

For example, let’s say there is a store in the local mall that uses geofencing marketing. The store could trigger a promotional notification when a user walks near the mall. But, beacons could be used to help direct the user to the store once they’re inside.

Addressable Geofencing

Addressable geofencing allows marketers to target individual households and businesses with precision. By creating a geofence around each address, marketers can target users associated with those locations across multiple devices.

By using addressable geofencing, marketers can reach users with digitals ads on their computers, smartphones, video, display and over-the-top or connected TV. Addressable geofencing can be used as a standalone campaign, or to complement existing campaigns such as mail, programmatic TV ads and other marketing efforts.

Geofencing Use Cases

Geofencing creates a variety of opportunities to leverage location-based marketing. Here are a few key examples of geofencing use cases. 

Layer Geofencing Data with Other Programmatic Audience Data

Combining geofencing capabilities with third-party audience data available in programmatic display is a great way to get efficient CPMs and CPAs on local leads. 

For instance, you can target a cross-section of prospects with an interest in health and wellness (as demonstrated by their browsing and search query history) and within a certain radius from your business. You can go a step further with contextual targeting of local media groups. 

Combine Geofencing with Local Ads to Increase Foot Traffic

Google local service ads can increase foot traffic to brick and mortar locations. Up to 75% of local searches turn into in-store visits within 24 hours. By using paid search (especially Google Ads) and geofences that target the sites relevant to your business, you can reach your audience in a place that best suits your campaign and encourage in-person visits.

From reaching moms on a neighborhood playground to targeting professionals who visit the gas station, there’s a variety of ways to leverage location to reach your ideal audience.

Target Competitor Locations to Reach ‘Ready-to-Buy’ Customers

A simple and straightforward way to find your ideal customer is to geofence your competitors. By serving highly targeted ads to users you know are in the market for your products or services, you’ll have the chance to convince consumers to make the switch to your business over another.

The best way to use this capability is in two steps. First, create a geofence around your competitor’s locations to reach shoppers who recently visited those sites. Then, create a conversion zone around your location so you can track and measure who visited the competitor, saw the ad and then went on to visit your business.

Some use cases for this could include price matching your competitors, creating timely offers, and crafting promotions based on past purchasing behavior.

Leverage Time and Date to Retarget Ideal Customers

Event targeting uses location data to know which users visited a geofenced area during a specific time and date window. With the ability to target customers down to the hour, marketers can reach potential customers who attended a specific event, recently visited a competitor and more.

For example, a construction company could target a conference of city planners and advertise to them with highly targeted messages after the conference. Another example could be retargeting people who passed by a local business during a festival and encouraging them to make a visit.

Increase Customer Loyalty Through Retargeting

Outside of bringing in new clients, geofencing can also be used to increase opportunities for customer loyalty. By targeting individuals who have visited your business in the past, marketers can offer special promotions, loyalty coupons and more. Geofencing can also be used to retarget shoppers within a few days or weeks after their purchase.

For example, a clothing store chain could geofence their locations to retarget fashion enthusiasts and promote new seasonal trends. With programmatic abilities, the clothing store could also only target people during high foot-traffic periods of the day.

5 Steps to Running a Successful Geofenced Campaign

Let’s take a deep dive into some actionable advice for each successive element of the geofencing process.  

Step 1: Creating Geofences

Once you’ve chosen your target audience and where you’d like to reach them, it’s time to create your geofence.

There are two main ways to design your geofence: around a point location or around a predefined set of boundaries. As an example, a point location geofence might be the half-mile around a bus station. A predefined set of boundaries might be a school zone, neighborhood, or shopping mall.

When you’re using geofencing to encourage in-person visits, the rule of thumb is to ensure that your customer is only a five-minute walk away from your store. This way they’re more likely to take action on your ad, and you’ll see a better return on ad spend (ROAS).

Step 2: Using “Enter” and “Exit” Conditions

For each geofence, you can request entrance and exit events. You can also specify a duration within the geofenced area to wait, or dwell before triggering a campaign or event.

Someone entering your geofence is the best time to inspire action. For example, a store could send a push notification when a user has entered within 200 meters of a participating store. By including a discount or special promotion, you can inspire a user to make a quick visit.

As someone exits your geofence, it’s recommended to add them to your retargeting efforts so that they can become eligible to receive ads for up to 30 days afterward.

Step 3: Blending Geofences with Behavioral Targeting

Triggering notifications based on location isn’t particularly new. However, by using programmatic capabilities to add a layer of behavioral data, marketers can create highly targeted campaigns based on time, date, location, and special insights such as demographic information, buying habits, interests, online browsing behavior, past purchases and more.

By also using behavioral data, marketers can create highly specific campaigns that add extra value to the user by being relevant to their interests and past purchases. For example, a luxury store in a mall can choose to target a certain age and income to ensure they’re reaching those who are most likely to become customers.

Step 4: Design Geofencing Ad Creative

As you create your geofence ad creatives, it’s important to consider your audience. Test static ads, GIFs and video content to catch your customer’s attention.

Be sure to use copy that is highly relevant and speaks directly to your audience. By using engaging phrasing such as, “You’re in the neighborhood!” or “Come on in”, you can help the user know they’re nearby and increase foot traffic.

Your copy should also include a call-to-action that makes the value clear. For example, “50% off today only” or “10% off when you show this notification” clearly states the benefit of following through with the ad.

Step 5: Analyze & Optimize Campaign Based on Data

Although geofencing has excellent ROI, like any marketing tool, its campaigns can be refined and optimized. Skipping out on reviewing geofenced ad performance can mean missing opportunities to reach more leads and inspire more conversions.

Key metrics to analyze for geofenced campaigns include cost per visit (CPV), view through visits, total visit rate (TVR) and click-through visits. Note that you’ll need to interpret the metrics based on your business’s needs. For example, if your campaign aims to increase the purchase of expensive items, strictly looking at an increase specific to in-store visits won’t reflect if you’re achieving that goal.

Through strategic A/B testing, you can pick and choose which elements to change. Run these tests consistently to create a better geofencing campaign and generate more valuable results for your business.

Four Memorable Geofencing Advertising Campaigns

As you can imagine, the combination of time and location creates opportunities for highly relevant and impactful advertising. Here are a few examples of memorable geofencing advertising campaigns.

Increasing Customer Loyalty: Sephora “Store Companion”

Sephora’s mobile app (called the ‘store companion’) kicks in as soon as the customer walks into the store. The app pulls up past purchases, product recommendations, reviews, limited-edition offers and information on their wish-list item availability. Sephora also notifies their users if they have an unspent gift card once they enter a geofenced zone close to Sephora.

By using geofence technology, the Sephora app increases customer satisfaction and loyalty by creating a fun, functional and seamless customer experience.

Boosting Foot Traffic: Ice Cream Brand Van Leuween

Van Leuween, an artisan ice cream store in New York, encouraged users to use mobile payment options through the PayPal app. Since they could now track the location of the user, they leveraged geofencing to detect when a consumer was near a Van Leuween store.

Van Leuween then enticed users to visit in person by offering special promotions and deals. The combination of mobile payment convenience and a discount proved to be just as irresistible as their gourmet ice cream.

Attracting Talent: Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital used geofencing marketing to reach talent for open positions. By using geofencing, the hospital was able to target people who lived or worked nearby.

The hospital created targeted social media ads that appeared in qualified users’ news feeds to advertise open job opportunities. In this instance, they targeted people who had specialized experience in pediatrics.

Whether it was a Facebook or LinkedIn profile, Johns Hopkins used their information to show ads to potential candidates. It was a creative use of geofencing marketing and helped them reach valuable and qualified candidates.

Geoconquesting: Burger King Targeted Customers Near McDonald’s

Burger King’s “Whopper Detour,” involved creating a 600-ft geofence around McDonald’s restaurants. Burger King told their customers to go to McDonald’s, with the catch that as soon as they entered the virtual boundary, they could unlock a deal for a one-cent Whopper burger on the Burger King app. The risky and unique promotion earned Burger King 1.5 million app downloads and 3.3 billion impressions. 

Conclusion

Personalized marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience. And as 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences, it’s time to ensure that your campaign is reaching the right people, at the right time and the right place.

Take your programmatic advertising to the next level, promote your brand and drive revenue to your clients with geofencing advertising.

Image Source

Image 1: Android Developers

Image 2: Sephora

Image 3: Van Leuween

Image 4: Burger King

The post How to Create Highly-Effective Local Ads with Geofencing appeared first on Acquisio Blog.

Digital marketers today have seen the rise and fall of different advertising trends and technologies. So they know well that nothing is truly a silver bullet solution that will change the advertising game.

But once in a while, a marketing innovation comes along that comes close. You guessed it, we’re talking about dynamic inventory advertising for car dealerships.

Being able to automatically generate targeted ads that highlight the exact cars and offers available at the dealership is indeed a game-changer. And the technology around inventory-based advertising has advanced rapidly in the past few years.

Now, it is possible to streamline and automate the creation of dynamic campaigns across Search, Social, and Display. There are new hassle-free ways to generate inventory feeds. And campaign managers have more and more consumer behavior signals at their disposal to squeeze out efficient CPMs, CPCs, and CPAs.

Think your agency can benefit from the efficiency and scalability of dynamic inventory campaigns? We outline everything you need to know below.

What Are Dynamic Inventory Campaigns?

Let’s start with basic definitions. Dynamic inventory ads are generated automatically based on data contained in inventory feeds like car model, year, make, pre-owned/new, price, VIN number, and more. These variables are dynamically updated for individual viewers and contexts in search and display ads.

To determine which models from a dealer’s inventory show up in ads, algorithms factor in signals such as a user’s location, search history, browsing history, and VDP visits. And of course, ads will not be shown for any cars that are no longer in stock.

Once the setup is done for a dynamic inventory campaign, all of the above happens automatically at the auction-level. Campaign managers only need to track the results and optimize as needed.

Imagine the work required to do all of the above manually –it would simply not be feasible. Dynamic inventory campaign technology really does open up new possibilities for automotive marketers looking to scale!

How Do Dynamic Campaigns Influence the Car-Buyer Journey?

By now all dealers know that vehicle buying trends are shifting towards more time spent on online research and less time spent inside dealerships. But many are still constantly refining their recipe of online touchpoints to maximize sales. 

Dynamic campaigns are a great addition to any dealership promotion strategy. Why? The targeted and hyper-relevant nature of inventory-based advertising essentially creates a “virtual car lot”. Users are shown the actual cars available at the dealer before ever setting foot in the showroom. 

Nowadays, dynamic inventory ads aren’t restricted to search campaigns either. Technology now exists to streamline setup from beginning to end for social and display channels as well. 

Take the example of a car-buyer named Catherine. She might begin her journey by deciding what type of car she wants. She might be searching for terms like “best electric minivan” or “best family compact SUV.” 

At this point, it is too soon to show her search ads with copy like “2019 Honda Odyssey, $37,000”, but she might be more responsive to an ad featuring an image of the Honda minivan. 

Of course, that search ad will be essential lower in the funnel. When Catherine has decided what model of Honda she wants, maybe she’ll even have visited your dealership’s VDP, you want to make sure to stay top of mind with dynamic search ads and retargeting. 

The point is that you want to cover all these different aspects of the car-buyer journey. And dynamic campaign ads across different channels are a great way to achieve that goal.

5 Steps to Set Up Dynamic Inventory Campaigns

There are five main steps to generating dynamic inventory campaigns and there are certain considerations to keep in mind for maximum efficiency at each step. Let’s go over them together!

1. Generate an Inventory Feed

Of course, it all starts with getting a hold of your dealership’s inventory feed. That is the foundation for your campaign. The accuracy and timeliness of this inventory feed is essential to your success!

There are multiple solutions available on the market and they can be broadly categorized into two: internal-based feeds and external-based feeds. 

Internal-based feeds are built from the dealership’s DMS data. Generally this requires the agency to coordinate between the dealer and their vendors. Oftentimes the dealer will need to be guided through the requirements of an inventory feed for the purpose of dynamic campaigns. 

Details that need to be ironed out include FTP logins, data formatting, and update schedules. Inconsistent spelling of vehicle models in internal files can generate issues with the ads (for example spelling “sedan” as “sdn.”) Traditionally, internal-based feeds were the norm and it continues to be commonly used. 

External-based feeds are a more recent development. The primary difference is that rather than using internal DMS data, inventory information is indexed from consumer-facing collateral to create a feed. This has the advantage of ensuring that all data is standardized and public-ready. In addition, external-based feeds do not require lengthy discussions with the dealership and their vendors. 

Here at Acquisio, we generate inventory feeds using this second approach because it enables our clients to reduce time spent on logistical issues. 

2. Define Your Targeting Strategy

Targeting options will vary depending on which channel(s) you create dynamic campaigns for. But in all cases, geographic targeting will be essential. 

In our recent Digital Dealer webinar, Jim Flint, CEO & Founder of prominent automotive agency, Local Search Group, emphasized the importance of ZIP code profitability. You can take that a step further in the programmatic display channel because of an enhanced ability to target across devices within a given household. 

Another aspect of targeting that’s unavoidable is search query-based. This type is obviously essential to automating the creation of search ads that match a user’s past searches. But it’s also used to inform dynamic display ads. 

Further, audience data can be harnessed for targeting specifically when it comes to programmatic display dynamic campaigns. DSPs enable campaign managers to leverage data such as visits to car-related websites and browsing of branded vehicle content. Programmatic display also has the added bonus of enabling contextual targeting on car-buying sites. 

Finally, a favourite targeting strategy is, of course, retargeting. This enables dealers to show timely and relevant ads to users that have landed on your dealership’s VDPs without making a purchase.  

Needless to say the best approach is to layer multiple types of targeting to achieve maximum efficiency. 

3. Generate Creatives

Ad creatives are generated automatically based on the inventory feed, thanks to ad templates that plug in the relevant values. This includes information like make, model, year, and more.

A quick note on dynamic creative optimization (DCO), which is frequently brought up in the same breath as dynamic inventory campaigns: they are not the same thing! DCO goes a step further in creative customization when compared to standard dynamic campaigns. 

New creative is generated in real-time for each user and instance.  Even the messaging and offer can be switched up based on AI-powered creative optimization. 

DCO is a favourite tactic for agencies serving multi-location dealerships. While this topic is not within the scope of this blog post, our strategists are happy to answer any further questions you may have!

4. Set up & Launch Campaigns

Depending on the technology you use, the process for launching your campaigns can vary.

You can launch directly from within each publisher as long as you are armed with the correct link to your inventory feed. Here at Acquisio, we try to make that easier for you by generating feeds suitable for Google Search, Bing, Facebook, Google Display Network, and Programmatic Display, all from one place. 

If you’re looking to streamline your process further, you can launch search, social, and programmatic display all through Acquisio Dynamic Campaigns. 

5. Optimize & Expand

Be aware of what you are optimizing towards. One common mistake is optimizing towards KPIs that are not clearly valuable for the dealership. 

Impressions are great, but clicks are better, and scheduled appointments are better still. So just make sure conversion tracking is set up properly to reflect these realities. 

Also, we can’t recommend enough the use of AI-powered bidding to optimize your ad budget. Machine learning consumes data around the clock to make smart decisions at a much higher rate and capacity than human campaign managers can. 

The only thing to remember is to give the campaign enough time to assemble some baseline data and begin optimizing! Algorithms need time to learn from the auction.

Designing an Effective Dynamic Campaigns Strategy for Agencies

It used to be that dynamic inventory campaigns were a Search phenomenon. And search-based dynamic campaigns are still a tremendous driver for ROI. That’s because you are capturing users when they are at the end of their buying consideration cycle. You can expect to see more direct results.

However, the latest innovations in dynamic campaigns mean that you can capture those potential buyers much earlier in the research process. Social and display channels are critical to seizing more mental real estate from prospective car buyers. 

Display

The power of display compared to Search is of course the visual component. After all, that’s why car brands invest so much in design. What’s more, display inventory will allow you to get in front of car buyers before they’ve done the bulk of their research. 

Nowadays, display, especially done programmatically, is a powerful means of layering in third-party audience data that captures signals from the “open internet” (i.e. outside of the walled gardens of Big Tech) to build rich audience profiles. 

That’s why programmatic display is a great way to expand services for agency clients who already have a robust search strategy in place. When you start committing budget to expanding audiences higher up in the funnel, we’ve been able to see trackable lifts in Search results as well.

Social

The social channel is more about getting your dealership and your vehicles in front of buyer eyeballs and less about generating displays. The emphasis will be on CPMs rather than CPCs. It’s essential that the dealer understand this! 

Facebook has recently revamped their automotive offering so now’s a great time to try it out. Facebook is inherently community-based which is great for local marketing efforts. 

The challenge with Facebook dynamic campaigns is that all the targeting can only happen within their closed ecosystem. So while it may be a very useful component of your dynamic campaigns strategy, it should probably not be the only part!

Search

As mentioned earlier, Search is the first channel people turn to and will yield the most direct results. For dealerships who have not tried out inventory-based advertising yet, starting with Search is a sure way to impress. 

In Conclusion

While many automotive agencies have adopted inventory-based automation to launch lucrative dynamic campaigns, the truth is that it still has not reached full adoption. That means there’s still an opportunity for you to seize an unfair advantage.

Dynamic inventory campaigns are truly groundbreaking due to the possibility of generating relevant and targeted campaigns with minimal effort on the part of the campaign manager. That means better profits and scalability for high-growth automotive agencies. 

When technological innovation gathers feed generation and the ability to launch across multiple channels all under one roof, there’s really no reason not to add it to your agency’s toolbox.

Image sources:

Header image: Saumya Rastogi / Unsplash

Image 1: Acquisio

Image 2: Acquisio

Image 3: Acquisio

Image 4: Acquisio

The post The Essential Guide to Automotive Dynamic Inventory Advertising appeared first on Acquisio Blog.

Increase enrollment numbers with our guide to higher education advertising strategy. Reach ambitious students with a targeted and programmatic approach.

Choosing which college or university to enroll in is often an emotional and stressful time. Students are faced with tons of choices and must research vigorously to understand the benefits and drawbacks of their options.

They understand that their final pick can shape the next few years of their lives and beyond, further adding pressure to the process. 

Therefore, it’s no surprise that students are looking for information to help them define their future.

Colleges would do well to ensure that students have the most relevant and comprehensive information they need to make a confident, well-informed decision about where to attend a higher-education institution.

Students often do research by using the internet, social media and other apps. By going digital, you can reach new audiences, increase lead generation, and ultimately increase applications, campus visits and enrolment. This guide will show you how.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Student Enrollment

COVID-19 has resulted in many students thinking about deferring their first or next semester to avoid starting college remotely.

A report by McKinsey found that if higher education institutions plan to use remote learning in the fall, 32% of students report that they’ll prioritize schools with better online capabilities, 29% would look for lower tuition and attendance fees and 25% would prefer institutions with helpful job-placement resources.

McKinsey’s research also suggests that if there is a remote fall semester, there may be up to a 15% drop for domestic first-year undergraduate enrollment.

That decrease, paired with a modest 5% drop in domestic non-first-year undergraduates, could lead to almost $7 billion in lost tuition and revenues for four-year higher education institutions in the United States. Understandably, 86% of college presidents are prioritizing enrollment numbers in response to stressors due to COVID-19.

Universities should use these coming months to understand and address students’ concerns, as well as explore their options for promoting their institution. The uncertain future will require colleges and universities to become adaptable and resilient in their approach to drive enrollment.

Digital marketing is a valuable way to make real-time, data-driven marketing decisions. This ability to change and pivot will be critical as the situation continues to evolve.  

Developing a Full-Funnel Strategy

A full-funnel marketing strategy is the best way to nurture students through their journey from awareness to decision-making. 

Here are the key stages you’ll need to include in your strategy to have a full-funnel approach to digital marketing. 

Decide on Customer Personas and Targeting Options 

Although it’s tempting to try to attract all students with every ad, it’s more effective to target one narrow, specific audience at a time. By targeting students who are among the most likely to enroll at your school, your campaigns can generate more high-quality leads per dollar spent.

To figure out who to target, you should define your ideal customer avatar or buyer persona. By creating a composite sketch of your target audience, you can identify patterns in their age, gender, location, personal interests, online search habits and more.

Using this information, you can create a good guess at what kind of ad might catch their attention as they browse websites and social media online. You can also research what search terms they lean towards as they browse universities. For example, “student clubs” or “science program” are search terms that a student might use. 

Bring New Leads into Your Funnel with Programmatic Ads

With programmatic, you’ll be able to capture new leads in a targeted way. By using advanced audience targeting, you can expand your pool of new audiences and target lookalike audiences as well.

In this Acquisio case study, we worked with a client to aim for a target cost per acquisition (CPA) of $100. The goal was to target 18-24-year-old high school graduates with low- to moderate-income and an interest in education.

Thanks to programmatic, we could determine ad relevance by both day and time of the week. This allowed us to reduce unnecessary ad spend and optimize bids for higher conversions. The campaign resulted in cost savings of 41% below the target CPA, and our prospecting strategies yielded direct conversions.

Reaching Potential Registrants with Social Media

With social media advertising, schools can create highly targeted ads to increase organic reach. Unlike web page ads, social media ads are not targeted based on keywords, but instead on rich demographic and psychographic data collected about social media users.

Having detailed buyer personas is especially helpful for social media ads. Many social media platforms allow you to target users based on age, location, personal interests, education level, field of study, job title and a variety of other traits and characteristics.

Nearly 95% of adults aged between 18 and 34 follow brands through social networks. Therefore, placing ads on social media can bring students and their families into the school’s orbit. By targeting on social media, colleges can encourage prospective students to join related groups, forums or email lists where they can be nurtured further.

Close the Enrollment Loop with Paid Media

Strategically placed paid media can seal the deal with prospective students. By placing ads throughout key milestones during the college search process and designing creatives based on search intent, colleges and universities can position themselves at the perfect time and place.

Programmatic retargeting is an effective lower funnel strategy for prospective students. By placing a pixel on your site or landing page, you can follow site visitors to other places they visit across the web and systematically remind them to come back and enroll (or take another desired action). Programmatic retargeting is a great way to stay top-of-mind during important decision-making points for the student.

Paid search can place your website at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This allows you to reach prospects who are already looking for educational programs. By targeting keywords that are towards the bottom of funnel (BOFU), you can reach students who are close to making a final decision. 

Pairing paid search with programmatic retargeting is an effective way to both get in front of prospective students and stay top of mind. 

Increasing Enrollment Numbers

To increase enrollment numbers, it’s important to target students at the right time and place. Here are the key ways to target students at important decision points to increase their likelihood of enrolling at your university. 

Inquiries and Campus Visits

Programmatic ads are known for their unique ability to target specific audiences at the right time and place. For instance, you can combine contextual, keyword, location and other layers of programmatic data to bring new potential candidates into your funnel.

In this Acquisio case study, we worked with a client to drive cost-efficient registration conversions from across 14 U.S. cities for a variety of trade school programs. By using sophisticated programmatic tools like geofencing prospecting, bid adjustments, and programmatic ad formats, we were able to earn direct conversions all below the budgeted CPA.

Programmatic retargeting can help increase inquiries and campus visits by adjusting call-to-actions in real-time. For example, the primary CTA for a previous site visitor can be updated to promote campus visits, info sessions or application submission.

Undergraduate Lead Generation

Many prospective students like to interact and learn about colleges online. Because attending college is an inherently social activity, showing up on social platforms is a great way for universities to showcase their campus life, culture and activities. 

Social media has a variety of options for ad promotion. Video and banner ads work well on Facebook and YouTube. Custom Instagram filters and stories are a great way to encourage user-generated content. 

Here’s an example from Dartmouth College’s Instagram story that calls for user engagement.

Student Applications

Programmatic retargeting is often leveraged to close the loop between viewing the application page and taking action. 

With programmatic retargeting, you can see how a potential student interacts with the site, identify their intent and then use programmatic ad buying to respond to it in real-time. Overall, it gives marketers unparalleled audience targeting at scale.

Programmatic retargeting tools take full advantage of buyer intent data. This ability lets you customize the ads served to prospects based on the way they’ve interacted with your website. Remarketing can be used to reach all previous site visitors in the past few months with programmatic ads.

For example, if a student visits the application page to apply, but doesn’t complete the form, you can retarget them across the web with a display ad that reminds them of the upcoming application deadline.

Pulling it all together – Scheduling Out Your Campaign

These are the key marketing strategy milestones that you’ll want to target as prospective students move through their journey of choosing the right institution for them.

Previous Summer: May-August

By starting 12 months in advance, you can get on their list early and become a ‘benchmark’ against which other colleges and universities will be compared. Getting in front of prospective students early can help influence decision making.

At this stage, we’d recommend focusing on generating interest and awareness. For example, you could create video content that shares information about student life, study options and extracurriculars. 

The priority should be collecting personal information that you can then use to contact them in the future as the process moves along. Email is ideal, but encouraging students to follow your school on social media is another good option.

Previous Fall: September – November

At this stage, focus on reaching applicants in a variety of locations. College students fall into three main categories: local, national and international.

Differentiate these categories based on your quotas, and design special creatives and unique messaging to set your campaign budget accordingly.

Winter and Spring: December – March

Leverage your first-party data collected from the summer to retarget visitors from your site. Take advantage of programmatic geotargeting to promote open houses and other student recruitment events.

Now is the time to shift your messaging to direct action. Use engaging ad copy and CTAs to call for applications, remind students of key deadlines and make a final call for campus visits and inquiries. Programmatic retargeting is key to closing the loop and securing applications.

Benefits of Each Potential Ad Platform

Each ad platform has its own advantages and drawbacks, and sometimes the best platform is no ‘platform’ at all.

Google Ads

With Google owning 92% of the search engine market share, running successful ads here has increasing your potential to reach your target audience. 

Google Ads are often preferred for their high ROI, which they claim typically generates $8 for every $1 spent. Using Google is great for running programmatic display ads since you can also leverage YouTube, Google Maps, Google My Business, Gmail, and others.

higher-education-marketing-google-ppc-ad.png

Overall, because Google Ads is a competitive space, you’ll need to target long-tail keywords. This is recommended anyway so that you can reach targeted audiences.

Facebook

If you’re considering social media advertising, Facebook is the best place to start. With Statista estimating 2.6 billion monthly active users in Q1 2020, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide. 

Part of what makes the platform so appealing to advertisers is the rich data Facebook has on its users. Facebook ads can be targeted by location, demographics, behavior, interests and Facebook friend connections. It also offers ads that target ‘lookalike audiences’, which are potential customers that share similar characteristics to your best existing customers.

Facebook ads can take a variety of formats including images, video and text. They can also appear in a variety of Facebook locations such as the news feed, marketplace, messenger, and stories.

Instagram

If you plan to run Facebook ads, Instagram could be easily added to your strategy. Because Instagram is owned by Facebook, marketers can use Facebook’s comprehensive ad manager to create Instagram ad campaigns and craft a multi-channel advertising strategy.

Instagram ads typically show up on the user’s feed or in stories, but you’ll have a variety of creatives to choose from. Instagram ads can be an image, video or a carousel post.

Instagram ads often see more engagement than Facebook Ads. A social media engagement study reported that brands earn a median engagement rate of 0.09% per Facebook post, whereas on Instagram they receive a 1.60% median engagement rate per post.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the platform where people go to make professional connections, learn about career opportunities and share their personal success stories. Overall, it’s a great platform to focus on when trying to appeal to diligent and motivated students.  

LinkedIn ads typically come in standard social media formats. A unique feature for LinkedIn is its Sponsored InMail option. InMail is LinkedIn’s version of messaging and a sponsored InMail is a message from a LinkedIn advertiser. 

For example, when Duke University ran a LinkedIn advertising campaign, their Sponsored InMails earned an impressive 68% open rate and increased the closure of their sales pipeline by 300%.

Many business schools and universities have found this type of ad highly effective. 

The Open Internet

When we get caught up in using Google and social media, it’s easy to forget that the internet is a big place. There are many other opportunities for marketing outside of these channels. The open internet can be leveraged to run PPC and other ads wherever your audience spends time online.

A variety of websites, apps, and other platforms can host programmatic ads as well. By leveraging programmatic and the open internet, you can tweak campaigns in real-time, run cross-device campaigns, improve your ROI and reach your audience at the right time and place to optimize for conversions.

Three Examples of Successful Higher Education Marketing

Higher education advertising campaigns can be impactful and memorable when done right. Here are three examples of successful higher ed marketing campaigns done by universities across the US.

West Virginia University Students Share Their Daily College Life

West Virginia University (WVU) runs a vlog series on YouTube called “My WVU Life” that offers a peek at daily life at WVU. Current WVU students film their everyday college experiences. They share behind-the-scenes footage of campus dorms, WVU football games, and class experiences. They also offer fun commentary that helps prospective students feel like they’re getting a personal tour.

Video content is an easily digestible and shareable medium that is popular with today’s younger audiences. Creating a video series that communicates a key message and offers a snapshot of campus life allows you to make a meaningful and memorable connection with prospective students. 

Augusta University Inspires Students to Feel Boundless

By creating targeted blogs, social media posts and videos, Augusta University aimed to inspire students with their #BeBoundless campaign.

In the campaign, Augusta University shared helpful tips on ways students can get involved in and out of the classroom, recommended popular hang-out spots in Augusta, and shared their take on what it means to “Be Boundless”.

The multichannel campaign both inspired prospective students and shared the key information they need to know about Augusta University. By reaching students on a variety of platforms, Augusta University increased its brand awareness and created an inviting and inspiring message for students to consider.

Appalachian State University Shows Off Their Beautiful Location and Campus Culture

Appalachian State University managed to highlight their beautiful location, student diversity, and engaging professors all in a 1-minute video ad.

By using an emotionally compelling mountain metaphor, the university shows that they help to create and attract capable, driven and confident students.

The ad captures the spirit and culture of the school while still staying specific about what it has to offer as an institution.

Conclusion

Overall, universities and marketers need to be conscious of the student journey. The college search is a stressful and life-changing time period with many key milestones along the way. The goal should be to target students with informative, timely and heart-felt campaigns that inform and support their research.

Programmatic marketing is uniquely suited to help you reach your target audience at the right time and place. By leveraging special capabilities like geofencing, real-time bid adjustments and the open internet, you can position your institution as a friendly guide that will help them achieve their full potential.

Ready to take your higher education campaign to new heights? Get in touch for a free Acquisio custom strategy session.

Image sources:

Header image: NESA / Unsplash

Image 1: McKinsey

Image 2: Dartmouth University

Image 3: London Metropolitan University

Image 4: Fremont University

Image 5: Case Western Reserve University

Image 6: University of Rhode Island

Image 7: Duke University

Image 8: Acquisio

The post Higher Education Advertising Strategy: How to Increase Enrollment Numbers appeared first on Acquisio Blog.

Performance marketing is an online ad strategy where marketers pay for trackable results; allowing for simpler ad planning, increased ROI and highly targeted messaging.

Performance marketing is all about getting measurable results on your ad spend. For a long time, soft results like impressions were acceptable ad campaign outcomes. Now, marketers are focusing on quantifiable performance-based results. 

As the spotlight on performance marketing picks up, the most interesting results are appearing in highly trackable mediums like PPC and programmatic display.

The ability to cross-reference data and layer campaign analysis makes programmatic and PPC an exciting results-driven option for performance marketing.

Making and managing this change is difficult, especially for brands and well-established businesses with rigid ad systems. In this guide, you’ll learn about how performance marketing works, the types of performance marketing channels, several benefits of performance marketing as well as specific ways to incorporate performance marketing into your campaigns.

What is performance marketing?

Put simply, performance marketing is marketing based on performance. This means that advertisers and marketing companies only get paid when a specific action is completed. The action needs to be connected to concrete performance, such as a sale, lead or click, in order to qualify.

Performance marketing is a broad term, so it’s often applied to a variety of uses and contexts. The main takeaway is that performance marketing places its emphasis on trackable results.

Many people treat affiliate marketing and performance marketing as interchangeable—but they aren’t the same. Affiliate marketing falls under the performance marketing umbrella, yet can only truly become performance marketing when done at scale.

As technology and customer journey data continue to improve, performance marketing goes well beyond affiliate marketing. For example, performance marketing can also include native advertising, sponsored content, social media marketing, search engine marketing and more.

Overall, our perception of performance marketing is consistently evolving as tracking capabilities continue to improve. By incorporating programmatic tools and methods, performance marketing can help to both drive concrete results and create results-driven brand campaigns.

Emarketer projects that programmatic advertising will account for 83.5% of total digital display ad spending in 2019 and estimates that it’ll grow to $80 billion by 2021. With programmatic continuing to grow, it’s a great time for agencies to get on board and use it in tandem with performance marketing.

Who uses performance marketing?

There are four key players in performance marketing:

Retailers and merchants are the businesses that look to promote their products and services through affiliate partners and ad publishers. 

Publishers are considered marketing partners in the performance marketing space. They’re the ones who host the ads and help drive conversions.

Affiliate networks and third-party tracking platforms who help manage the merchant and publisher relationship by providing the tools that make performance marketing possible. This includes banners, display ads, links, promotions and corresponding payouts. These networks and platforms are a way for both the publisher and merchant to keep track of campaign results and conversions.

Agencies and OPMs (Outsourced Program Management Companies) can be brought on to manage the program or to support the in-house team. OPMs have specialized expertise and can help brands and merchants scale their performance marketing programs more efficiently and with a faster and higher ROI.

Benefits of Performance Marketing to Agencies and Marketers

Paying based on performance in advertising is a relatively new option. Thanks to improved tracking abilities and the expansion of digital marketing, marketers can now pointedly track, optimize and pinpoint the source of campaign results. 

Through programmatic advertising, they can then use these results to market to an even more targeted audience and reach them in the right place at the right time. We’ll discuss this in detail in a later section.

Marketers who are unsure about the benefits of performance marketing should consider the variety of benefits it has to offer.

Simpler Budgeting and Planning

Performance marketing campaigns are easier to budget for than traditional marketing efforts. Why? Because with performance marketing, marketers need to identify goals and provide an ideal cost per action at the outset of the campaign. 

From there, it’s simple to find the proper budget based on the required outcomes. For example, a marketer can decide on a $2,500 budget because they estimated it will cost $0.25 per click and have a goal of 5,000 website visits. 

Performance marketing lets you work backward from your goal to come up with a clear budget and planned campaign spend.

Only Pay for Results

One of the main benefits of performance marketing campaigns is that you pay strictly for results.  This way, there’s no room for any undefined overhead. This aspect is key for marketers who are seeking specific actions like leads or conversions and don’t want to pay for outcomes unaligned with predefined goals.

Because performance marketing is results-oriented, it’s important for marketers to choose a goal and stick with it. Once you create a campaign that is optimized for clicks, you shouldn’t reuse the same campaign for a different KPI. Make sure your team designs creatives and crafts budgets based on the specific campaign goal.

Monitor Performance and Optimize Real-Time

Since performance marketing is largely digital, marketers can monitor campaign performance in real-time. This includes the ad spend and the number of impressions, clicks and conversions.

Optimizing in real-time is most effective when marketers combine performance marketing with programmatic display and PPC. Programmatic ads can help increase ROI whilst reaching consumers at scale and deliver performance for marketers according to the KPIs they set.

By having real-time metrics on hand, marketers and agencies can tweak and pivot campaigns if they see something is working particularly well, such as a certain headline or call-to-action. Marketers can monitor the campaign in real-time and subsequently reassign budgets if the campaign isn’t on track to meet expectations. 

How Performance Marketing Works

There are a few key steps brands and advertisers should follow when getting started with performance marketing.

Understanding Performance Marketing Outcomes

Because performance marketing is based on metrics, it’s important to get familiar with the different conversion types. Here are the main types of outcomes that performance marketing can generate:

• Cost per Impressions (CPM): Cost per thousand impressions (“cost per mille”) denotes the price of 1,000 advertisement impressions. For example, if a website publisher charges $4.00 CPM, that means an advertiser must pay $4.00 for every 1,000 impressions of its ad. CPM is common for social media, programmatic displays and native advertising.
  

• Cost per Click (CPC): Cost per click is when an advertiser pays a cost to a publisher for every click on an ad. CPC is often used for paid search engine results.
  
• Cost per Lead (CPL): Cost per lead is a pricing model in which the advertiser pays a pre-established price for each lead generated. A lead is considered generated when contact information is exchanged—like signing up for a free webinar or email list.
  
• Cost per Acquisition (CPA): Cost per acquisition is when you pay for every acquisition, like a sale or form submission, that a publisher’s advertisement campaign generates. Because you define what counts as an acquisition ahead of time, you only pay when that specific action occurs.
  
• Cost per Sales (CPS): Cost per sales is the amount the advertiser must pay once a sale is generated from an ad or campaign. 

How to Reach Your Target Audience & Distribute Ads

No single platform will show your ad campaign every time. Here are some things to consider when choosing which platform to run your campaign on:

Target audience and segmentation. Each ad platform provides ways for you to reach your target audience through segmentation. Depending on the platform, segments can include age, sex, location, past buyer behavior and other helpful insights. For example, Facebook offers audience segmentation that can go deeper by taking into account audience interests, popular time slots and Facebook groups in which they participate.

Bidding. Many ad platforms use programmatic capabilities to determine how and when to show your ad to your chosen target audience. Bidding can be helpful when you have a hard upper limit on your ad spend, or you want to set a daily ad spend limit so your campaign can last for a certain amount of time.

Ad quality and relevance. Although your chosen platform promises to show your ad, it will limit its reach if the analytics show that it’s not performing well. Each ad platform has its own algorithm that determines how your ad is performing. If it underperforms, ad platforms may pull back your ad to protect their reputation for showing relevant and high-performing ads.

Conversion. Regardless of which conversion you choose, performance marketing is based on consumers taking action. When the required action doesn’t take place, the publisher won’t get paid. Networks and publishers are incentivized to ensure that your ad converts and will display it more often if it performs well.

How to Craft a Performance Marketing Plan

Your performance marketing strategy should be based on your specific goals. To formulate a plan, you’ll want to consider your target audience, your ideal ad spend and the specific conversion you hope to achieve.

Once you have that outlined, you can begin to research performance marketing opportunities. Whether it’s through content marketing, affiliate marketing or a social media platform, look for companies that specialize in your preferred conversion type.

When ready, run the campaign. Have someone on your team monitor the campaign’s progress. Performance marketing programmatic ads can often be altered and optimized in real-time to ensure you get the most out of your ad spend.

Finally, make time in your schedule to debrief about the campaign. Look for the parts of the campaign that worked and also which parts underperformed. Have a central place to keep track of analytics and metrics to determine which sources of traffic are performing best. Next time you run a campaign, refer to your action points and then reallocate ad funds accordingly.

By continuously using your insights to improve your campaigns, performance marketing can grow sales and increase your return on investment.

Types of performance marketing channels (with examples)

There are various types of performance marketing channels and each has a unique purpose. Let’s dive in.

Native Advertising

Native advertising is a form of paid media that follows the form and function of the site on which it’s placed. Unlike display ads or banner ads, they appear to be a natural part of the site and are often placed dynamically based on each user. Native advertising is common on news and social media sites and is commonly paid through CPM or CPC. 

For example, this article in National Geographic is partner content with the Ministry of Communications and Information in Singapore. The article hopes to show the vibrant food and hawker culture of Singapore and inspire people to travel there. It’s a great native ad since it’s well-aligned with National Geographic’s focus on society, culture, and travel. 

Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is a dedicated post or article that is created to promote a brand or specific product in return for some form of compensation. Social media influencers and content sites commonly use sponsored content.  

Compensation for sponsored content is typically paid out based on CPM, CPA or CPC. 

In this example, Cancer Research UK sponsored an article in Buzzfeed on sunbathing. In this list, Cancer Research UK appealed to Buzzfeed’s audience through fun and relatable content, while also educating on the importance of sunscreen and other tips to avoid skin cancer. Buzzfeed also allows their sponsors to embed links to their Facebook, Twitter feed and other related content. 

Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising uses social media platforms to gain traffic or brand awareness, such as posting content on Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram. The metrics that are measured for social media-based performance marketing are usually centered around engagement, likes, clicks and sales.

Social media advertising is especially good for brand awareness campaigns. Although ‘awareness’ isn’t typically seen as a performance result, marketers can run performance marketing campaigns with programmatic ads to better track campaign metrics and success.  

Programmatic ads allow for granular tracking and detailed insights that can make brand awareness campaigns a success. 

This Facebook Ad by Slack is a great example of taking advantage of the medium in which you’re marketing. Because this ad was placed on Facebook, Slack chose a playful meme-style ad that aligned similarly with the content around it. It appeals to people personally and makes a communication tool seem fun and exciting to use. 

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing works through two main methods: paid and organic. Some advertisers will use both to increase the likelihood of conversions.

Paid search marketing is when an advertiser pays for clicks to ads on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Organic search is when advertisers rely on applying search engine optimization (SEO) best-practices to use the engine’s algorithm to rank in the top results for certain search terms. This is usually paid out by CPC. Search engine marketing with Google is especially great for ROI, with the average being $8 for every $1 spent.

Search engine marketing results can be measured either on a performance basis, or some pay commissions to SEM companies and campaigns based on results.

This Google search results image highlights how paid search results typically appear towards the top of the page or on the side. They’re denoted by the yellow ‘Ad’ symbol. 

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the process by which a marketing partner (or “affiliate”) earns a commission for promoting another person’s or company’s products. The affiliate searches for a product they’d like to promote and then markets that product.

If somebody takes action with the affiliate’s promotion, the affiliate will earn a portion of the profits. Online affiliate marketing is often tracked through unique links that are used to track the origin of the sale.

Affiliate marketing is often paid out via a free product or service (which is often in-turn used to promote it), and/or based on CPM, CPA or CPC.

For example, food blog The Kitchn embeds affiliate links to relevant products throughout their recipes. Amazon is often the go-to choice for affiliate links since they have such a large product marketplace.

The Case for Programmatic Advertising as the Ultimate Performance Marketing Channel

Pairing performance marketing with programmatic advertising is a powerful way to reach specific audiences and drive conversions.

Programmatic advertising is effective at reaching the most relevant customers at the right time, place, and with the right message. By combining this capability with performance marketing, agencies can drive efficiencies whilst reaching consumers at scale and deliver KPI-driven results.

One commonly cited concern with using programmatic tools for performance marketing is the risk of fraud. Although fraud will never go away, the industry is consistently improving on its ability to detect and avoid fraud in the marketplace.

By using curated private marketplaces instead of open exchanges, advertisers can know exactly where their ads will be placed, which provides a higher level of confidence that the inventory is legitimate. Private marketplaces are invite-only, which allows them to screen advertisers and maintain transparent practices.

In addition, the IAB created the ads.txt standard as a way to decrease inventory fraud in mobile apps, OTT and other programmatic ad services. The requirement of ads.txt has yet to be enforced, so to take advantage of this security, choose trading desks, publishers and demand-side platforms (DSPs) that comply with ads.txt to significantly reduce the likelihood of fraud.

In the right hands, programmatic and performance can be a powerful duo. By partnering with a trusted and transparent trading desk, agencies can get ahead and take advantage of highly contextual targeting, data-driven strategies, personalization at scale and more. 

Tips to improve your performance marketing strategies

No matter how successful your performance marketing strategy is, there is always room for improvement. Here are some essential tips to improve your performance marketing strategies for future campaigns.

Improve Your Landing Page and Offer

Done right, landing pages can have a big impact on conversions. Having a clear landing page with a compelling offer key to seeing success from performance marketing campaigns.  

To optimize your landing page, make sure to test the entire user experience from the moment a user lands on your page  to the conversion.

Here are some helpful tips to ensure you’ve created a high-converting landing page:

• Use a relevant and contextual hero image
• Only use one call-to-action
• Use your header and subheader to clearly state your value proposition
• Lead with the benefits, then detail key features
• Include testimonials, reviews and other relevant social proof 

A/B Test and Optimize for KPI’s

A/B testing (also called split testing) is essential to consistently and reliably improve your creatives, copy and campaign results. When it comes to performance marketing, try different techniques and strategies to optimize conversions and click-through rates.

Common aspects of your page that can be optimized with split testing include: 

• Test different copy: headlines, call-to-actions
• Try different images
• Rearrange key information on the page
• Change the offer (free shipping, pricing, coupon codes)
• Reframe the value and benefits
• Reduce the number of steps in the checkout process (if possible)

Tracking and Monitoring

Monitoring your performance marketing campaigns will help you uncover valuable insights that you can use to improve future campaigns. Without consistently analyzing, evaluating and adjusting your campaign, the results will stagnate or slow with time.

Here are a few examples of key indicators to track and monitor for performance marketing:

• Your key performance metric (CPC, CPA, CPL, etc.)
• Return on investment for ad spend (ROAS)
• Change in social media audience
• Brand awareness rates
• Change in organic traffic
• Sales revenue

Performance marketing trends to watch for in 2020

As performance marketing continues to improve and evolve there are a few trends to watch for:

AI & Machine Learning

With machine learning, performance marketing campaigns are increasingly automated processes. As AI becomes more capable of taking on bigger and more complex roles, the role of the performance marketer will also change.

Marketers will need to become proficient in these new technologies. It’s crucial to understand not just the ways in which they work, but also know the optimal ways to use them. The good news is that with this helping hand, marketers can instead focus their talents on strategies, implementation and content.

Increased Audience Segmentation

The data companies are able to collect is becoming richer every season. Most advertisers now have valuable insights into customer journeys and can understand cross-channel digital marketing performance, segment messaging and much more.

This higher specialization is great for both the consumer and the industry. Better segmentation leads to improved trust and helps deliver better services and efficiencies for client and consumer needs across the board.

Conclusion

Performance marketing has a range of potential benefits for marketers and agencies. By simplifying planning and avoiding unnecessary overhead, performance marketing is a low-risk, high return on investment activity. 

When you combine these benefits with programmatic, you can reach niche audiences, boost brand awareness within targeted crowds, experience real-time insights and optimization opportunities, achieve fast ROI and drive new efficiencies.

Although some may have concerns about ad fraud and other setbacks, the industry recognizes programmatic and performance as a powerful pair and is working hard to mitigate any downsides. Innovations continue to decrease fraud, improve ad visibility and more. 

Partnering with the right trading desk or agency partner will keep you ahead of the curve and help you take advantage of the latest frontier in paid media advertising. 

Images:

Image 1: via National Geographic

Image 2: via Buzzfeed

Image 3: via Hootsuite

Image 4: via Zee Creatives

Image 5: via The Kicthn

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