It's more than increasing online adspend...
Digital. It’s not a channel box to tick, unless you work for a media buying company, it’s not TV 2.0 for your new ad creative or campaign. Though it appears for many, it still is.
Whenever I hear traditional ad spenders, most typically big brand managers or marketers, talk about investing in, or doing digital, I pause and cringe, and listen in hope. More often than not what they’re saying is - “we’re spending ad money on more ads in digital channels.” Driven by an ill-informed “cost per click.,” or worse a crude “eye-ball” metric. It’s still just advertising, and worse, using creative so often intended for TV or for billboards - neither of which translate well for online will guarantee to deliver exceptionally poor results.
What are you amplifying and measuring?
This is what jumps to mind first, for me. It’s not that digital advertising is…
How popular are meshing, stacking and responding to ads?
Millward Brown's major new ad response research project, AdReaction looks at the use, behaviour and perception to advertising of multiscreen users across 30 countries, including the UK.
What is the principle of AdReaction?
The core aim of the research is for brands to 'evaluate the multiscreen landscape by considering both the scale of screens (reach/opportunity to contact) as well as the receptivity of people to various marketing approaches, both within and across screens.'
Who was surveyed?
A survey was distributed via smartphone or tablet, to over 12,000 multi-screen users, aged 16 - 44 across 30 countries. A Multi-screen user is defined as 'people who own, or have access to, a TV and a smartphone and/or a tablet. They consume 7 hours of screen media buying during a 5 hour period.'
Key findings of the AdReaction Survey
35% of screen time involves using both the TV and a digital device. Of…
This research report from Quantcast is particularly interesting, especially given their specialist expertise in the display advertising category.
The premiss of their report is essentially
People who are on a website have different needs to those searching for one, yet digital marketers look to optimise for clicks in similar ways.
Search advertising is an understood CPC (cost per click) model, where buyers have an intent and are served advertising that they’re interested in. In short, if you’re happy with the CPC, it works.
People on a website tend to want the information on the website, not look to click a banner and leave it, there is a reason or intention to click away at the earliest opportunity - regardless of whether it’s a display ad or link.
Click conversion is better aligned to where there’s purchase intent and a desire to click. This is inevitably lower down the sales funnel.
Click measurement is not a…
Q. How effective is Facebook advertising?
I was recently asked this question by a student putting together a budget model for an online marketing campaign. I pointed them in the direction of this post on online ad clickthrough rates, but they specifically asked about Facebook, so this post is to answer the question and help others.
The best public source on Facebook advertising effectiveness I’m aware of, is the analysis of 2.2 million clicks from 4.5 billion impressions that Webtrends track as part of their analytics system which I’ll summarise here.
Well, the overall number of clicks compared to impressions above give their own story - response rates are low - around than 1 in 2000 page views results in an ad clicks. No surprise since banner clickthrough rates are low and we’re mostly online to socialise.
…
Including mobile advertising popularity
A short update looking at the variation of online advertising in Europe which I hope will be interesting for marketers working across different markets.
These chars are taken from a new report from IAB Europe on European online advertising.
Online advertising variation
This chart shows significant variation in the popularity of display advertising across Europe:
Mobile advertising popularity
This is the main reason I thought it would be worth sharing this new research - it's the first compilation I've seen of mobile advertising popularity. Despite the hype about mobile Internet usage overtaking desktop usage , mobile is still a small proportion of overall ad spend overall.
It's around 2-5% in most countries, but > 10% in Finland which perhaps gives an indication of future trends.…
Key Internet advertising options for 2011
In a recent post, I asked readers of SmartInsights to give their views on Internet advertising. Although some who completed the survey were in favour of online advertising and use it regularly, the majority have either not used it or or tried it once and not used it again since it's less effective than other techniques.
This follow-up post is to show that there are an increasing number of options to use Internet advertising. These have the option that you can reach your audience outside of the search engines. This has the clear advantages that:
A finite number of searches occur for each keyphrase each month
The cost per click in many categories often makes Adwords expensive
People won't search if their unaware of a product type or category
Your ads outside the search engine can help increase searches for your brand term or increase conversion due to…
Time to think again about display advertising?
I think it's fair to say that many don"€™t think of display advertising as the most powerful online communications technique. It consistently fairs poorly when marketers are asked to select their preferred tools and is known for low ad CTR rates. For example, see this Econsultancy research below on the most popular traffic-building techniques.
We were interested to hear your views on display advertising, this is what you replied - thanks to anyone who took a look!
Note on completing poll: In this poll display ads are any graphical, rich media or video ads excluding Google Adwords text ads or similar. Display ads may be placed through direct media buys, ad networks or through the Google Display (content) Network.
2010 preferences for different online marketing
[caption id="attachment_3793" align="alignnone" width="661" caption="Source: Variation in different digital marketing…
