Display Advertising: It's Really All About Relevance

Ad Age posted a story today titled "What to Measure? Only 16% of the Web is Clicking on Display Ads" which just screamed to have a blog written from Zig. ComScore and media agency Starcom reported in the recent "Natural Born Clickers" Study that only 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks, AND clickers only represent 16% of U.S. internet users.

What's the big Ah Ha?....Targeting Relevance in Display Advertising!

At Zig we don't buy mass reach sites, we buy relevance, and actually we buy contextually relevant pages on contextually relevant sites. Selling paint?... why not be in the painting and decorating section of a DIY/Home Improvement site. Get in front of people who are the closest to making a purchase decision about your product(s) as possible! This type of targeting has helped us increase purchase intent for many of our clients at the conclusion of their digital campaigns.

It is also important to note that display ads may often lead to increases in search engine traffic on sites like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (Microsoft). All the more reason to have a truly integrated digital campaign, using multiple strategies such as display ads, emails, search, social media and more.

Marketing Ah-Ha...Web Placement Matters!

Great research was just released on MarketingVox done by Conde Nast stating that Ads that run on websites with related content are 61% more likely to be recalled than ads running on sites with unrelated content. Can't say that is much of a shock, but good to know that the way we have been planning media at the agency follows the research. We have seen success in our analytics (2-3x's better) for the ads we have placed that were either contextually or behaviorally.

Many publishers and ad networks try to sell on reach and low CPM's, and believe that media planners only want low CPM's, with less emphasis on placement, trying to make it a numbers game (i.e. if the average CTR is .1%, I would need to buy 4 million impressions to get the 4000 clicks to make the campaign successful). We believe that the placement is most important, reaching that potential customer as close to a decision making process as possible. We do not believe in playing a numbers game because we believe that "Content is King" and it has played out well for us in our digital campaigns for our clients, as well as in the Conde Nast research.

Banner Advertising Ah-Ha..... People More Likely to Click Ads that are Relevant

Found a great article today on Marketingcharts.com today involving what makes people (Ages 18-24 & 45-54) more likely to pay more attention to an ad they see online.  The two times people pay the most attention to an ad they see online:

1). When the ads are relevant to me (50%)

2). When it is useful to me (43%)

Other influencing factors that make people pay attention are:

3). If it gives me money off 

• 40% - 18-24 yr. olds
• 32% - 45-54

4). If it is entertaining

• 26% - 18-24
• 14% - 45-54

5). If it gives me new and/or exclusive information

• 20% - 18-54
• 16% - 45-54

Not a surprise that consumers would prefer ads that had some relevance in their life.  Is your marketing team serving your ads in relevant areas, on contextually relevant sites or are they just buying impression numbers to make the ads entertaining?  There is probably a reason that only 14% of adults 45-54 click on entertaining ads, but more than double that (32%) click on ads when they are relevant.  Give them what they want, what they can use, what they are asking for.