The First Question: Are You Building a Program or Running a Campaign?

Posted on September 1st, 2010

Well the summer hiatus is over. I know when it comes to blogging the mantra is consistency and frequency of your posts. But with summer and the kids out of school – keeping updated posts fell by the wayside. Summer is so precious when you live in a cold place like Chicago!

People and companies blog for lots of reasons and one of the reasons for this blog is to share some of the insights and conversations we have with different clients. Just like people blog for lots of reasons, companies advertise for lots of reasons. When we talk to advertisers, the first (maybe second) question is usually “What are your objectives or goals for the campaign?” It seems like an obvious place to start so you can start designing a solution to meet their goals.

However, I find myself asking a new “first” question – “Are you building a Program or Running a Campaign?” The short answer difference is a program is continuous; a campaign has a start and end. Knowing the difference greatly influences your creative and media buying strategy.

If your goal is to build a program, that means you want to use banner advertising as a continual mix of your marketing and promotion system. To be effective with online banner advertising programs you should think more about your design system, your economic model, and your creative strategy. Your approach in the first 90 days should be about discovering what mix of creative and messages work best BEFORE you start spending big money on targeted or premium ad media. You should expect to pay a little “tuition” to learn what works and what does not. You are making an investment in a system to test and find the right formula for success to build your program. With a program, you put your learning and discovery at the front end of the process.

With a campaign, your view of the world is typically shorter. You have a start and end. The campaign can be centered around an event, a promotion, a season, a new product launch, etc. Your creative strategy will be based on your best guess and you will have less time to get “creative” with your media placement. You still have an objective to achieve, and you may reach it – you may not. But your analysis and assessment of why you got the results you did typically are done post-campaign. This is useful information to help inform your decisions for your next campaign – if there is one.

I know a lot of people actually mix both of these approaches and “test” before a campaign. And that is good too. Part of the program vs campaign thinking is about execution – but also about framing you decision making process to determine how to get the best results. This is just one of the ways that your process and approach can make you a more effective with banner advertising.

Filed under Display Advertising, Metrics, Process, Workflow | No Comments »

Will Online Display Buying Look Like the Nasdaq?

Posted on July 12th, 2010

For many industry insiders in the ad inventory aggregation business, this is an old conversation. But the technology and the marketplace seems to be coming to a head on what models are going to emerge. The first evolution of adding buying efficiency to the market were Ad Networks. They were born to aggregate unsold inventory from publishers and give advertisers one place to go to reach a wide audience. The main function of the ad network was administration efficiency. The market is evolving at such a pace that this simple aggregation model is not enough and new models are evolving. Continue reading

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Moving Beyond Clicks in Display Advertising Depends on Creative

Posted on July 1st, 2010

Dwell time is a metric growing in favor for brand advertisers. But if you are not launching a blockbuster movie this summer, you might not get a 53 second engagement time, but the 38 seconds for the rest of us is better feedback is still more time than the standard TV spot – which you just fast forward through anyways. Continue reading

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Your Facebook Fans Spend More

Posted on June 23rd, 2010

The part of the Fan Measurement Study I find interesting is that they measured fan acquisition at $0.47 while they pegged total value at $136.38 for large corporate brands. That gives an ROI of around 290% – which I think most markets would be ok with. So that type of number, which cannot be accepted as indicative of everyone else’s ROI, does suggest that every marketer needs to start looking at these channels and making it part of their total strategy. Continue reading

Tags: Facebook, Fan page, Social Media, Social Metrics, Value
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Two Metrics for Capturing More Value from Display Advertising

Posted on June 21st, 2010

There is more to measuring display advertising than just clicks. Every digital marketer wants to know how their campaigns are performing and display advertising had been more difficult to measure when compared to email and paid search. Additional metrics have become thanks to advancement in technological capabilities. View Through Rate and Engagement Time are additional tools you can add to your campaigns to measure value. Continue reading

Tags: Engagement Time, Metrics, View Through Rate
Filed under Brand Engagement, Display Advertising, Metrics | No Comments »

Three Lessons the Software Industry Can Share with Display Advertising.

Posted on June 15th, 2010

AdBean is approaching its second birthday this summer. A big milestone for us and a time of reflection. When I look at the display advertising industry today it reminds me of what I saw in a prior life in the IT industry. I think there are three lessons to be learned from that market. 1.) New Delivery and Service Models Need to be created. 2.) Someone is Attacking Your Cash Cow. 3.) You Need to Care About Your Client’s Performance. Continue reading

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Good Explanation Of Real-Time Bidding In Online Display Advertising

Posted on June 7th, 2010

It can get confusing to try to stay on top of every twist and turn in the online display advertising marketplace. To help this out, whenever I spot a bit of clarity in the chaos, I like to share it. Today’s item will be of interest to those looking to buy advertising space on websites – known in the industry as media buying.

At DoubleClick’s advertiser blog

Filed under Digital Advertising, Display Advertising, Online Advertising Marketplace | No Comments »