The building blocks to a great display campaign

Online advertising and branding are crucial components of the success of any modern business. There are a number of ways to establish your brand in the marketplace, and there are also several ways to directly track the interactions, conversions, and other important metrics of your advertising investment. One of the most common and efficient means of strengthening a brand online now is through display advertising. Display ads contain graphics such as your logo, copy, and sometimes even video and/or audio components. Think of them as the digital version of the eye-catching ads found in newspapers and magazines, only more precise and targeted to individuals who are likely to click on the ad (at least) and hopefully convert into a customer.

Read on to learn the basics of display advertising. (more…)

With the holiday season fast approaching and Black Friday right around the corner, holiday shopping is already starting to creep to the front of our minds. Now more than ever, since everyone is dealing with busy schedules, people are turning to online shopping to get their stressful holiday shopping out of the way.  Although most people don’t like being distracted by miscellaneous ads, when presented at the right time to the right person, targeted online ads can help us save money, research new products and update us on our favorite brands. The holiday season is so hectic that we’re sure everyone can use all the help that they can get!

To make sure that you take advantage of all that banner ads have to offer this holiday season, we’ve summarized some great tips to keep in mind when combatting banner blindness from Daniel Yomtobian’s recent article in MediaPost:

1. Timing and Placement Are Key: Banner ads need to be delivered at a time when the reader is compelled to take action, and in a location that will catch the readers’ eye.

2. Surprise the Consumer: A great tool to catch the reader’s attention is Flash, which gives you the ability to have animation that engages the consumer while keeping the file size low.

3. Take Advantage of Remarketing: Use banner space to target past visitors who are already familiar with your brand. This will become increasingly important as the holidays near to help put a stop to shopping cart abandonment.

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With the unstoppable advancement of digital technology, it is no surprise that advertisers will continue to find innovative ways to connect with and engage consumers. One of the best ways to achieve this goal is through display advertising. Although it has been said that display advertising is one of the most popular forms of digital advertising, there are many critics who still question its effectiveness. However, rather than discounting the display channel all together, we should be challenging the advertisements themselves.

According to a recent article in ADOTAS, to ensure banner ads are set up for success, advertisers should scrutinize their approach with questions such as:

• What will the ads say?
• How will the ads look?
• Where will the ads be placed?
• How will the ads be communicated?
• How many times will the ads be seen?
• What channels will accompany the ads?

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Hey, remember that TV ad? Well then according to Nielsen and Google, you probably watched it across multiple screens. Nielsen and Google’s new study revealed that viewing an ad on multiple media platforms substantially increased consumers’ ability to remember an ad campaign compared to viewing the ad on TV alone. Nearly 75% of consumers remembered an ad when viewed across multiple media platforms, but just 50% remembered the ad when it ran only on television. (more…)

The story about Facebook ads getting half the clicks of network banners caught our attention earlier this week. A snippet from the ClickZ piece:

Facebook’s average click-through rate was 0.051 percent in 2010, down from 0.063 percent the year before. So for two straight years, the platform has come in below the industry standard of 0.1 percent for banner click-throughs. Cost per click was $0.27 (2009) and $0.49 (2010) for those years, according to Webtrends.

Why aren’t Facebook ads as successful as banners?  A couple of insights:

• Catching people on a social network is different. They have a different mindset. People aren’t searching for products as they are on search engines.
• Banner ads, if targeted correctly, are connecting with type of content people are searching. That user is very engaged. For example, someone on Auto.com gets a Toyota ad. It’s more likely they’d click on it than if that same person were on Facebook talking with friends.
• Banners provide more “real estate” than Facebook ads. Banners have a huge leg up because they can be bigger, more eye-catching, even animated, and offer more room to tell the story.

We’ll be curious to see how the newly-launched “Sponsored Stories” ads perform. Stay tuned…

–The Advertise.com team