CCT356: Online Advertising and Marketing Class 2: Fundamentals of Online Advertising

Administration Wiki signup Anyone do articles yet? Any ideas on first assignment (online ad critique?)

Online Advertising Advertising vs. marketing? Early history – the commercial web is less than 20 years old – why? Objectives – a) building brand awareness b) creating and satisfying demand c) driving sales Online – better tracking and analysis of results vis-à-vis traditional media

Online Advertising… Advantages Many similarities with traditional media (e.g., banner ads) Potential for interactivity and multimedia engagement Data, data, data Challenges Multiple platforms, channels, browser, plug-ins, connection speed issues Ad blockers Fatigue

Types of Display Ads Interstitial Popup/under Floating/Mouseover Wallpaper Banners Contextual (e.g., data driven based on search)

Online Ad Design Standards E.g., banner ad standard sizes (see p. 205) –depends in part on site, but basic sizes exist for a reason If designing a site to accept advertisements, good to reserve spaces in standard sizes to be compatible with ad networks (which will force your decision anyway) and to minimize need for content creation Creating ads – read carefully limitations imposed

Ad Networks/Exchanges Rarely do sites negotiate advertisement on case-by- case basis Use of networks to feed ads more common – why? Central ad servers and tracking major reasons

Ad Networks Services Frequency capping – limiting overexposure Sequencing – users may see ads in particular order Exclusivity – banning competitors from your site Roadblocking – allowing 100% coverage on site Geo-targeting – tied to location based on IP or GPS Contextual/behavior info – e.g., based on search, profiles, etc.

Example: Google Adwords Various formats – text, mobile-friendly, static image, animated GIF/Flash, video, etc. Limits imposed on all formats (e.g., small text ad = 25 character title, 70 character text, 35 character displayed URL; click-to-play video, 300x250 or 336x280 size, 50k intro image, 75MB video.) Content control for SafeSearch filter, adult sites, internationalization

Example: Facebook Ads Similar rules, but with much more personal information (as can be expected…) And a series of interesting rules…! Is this too much?

Payment Methods Impression (usually by thousand – so CPM) Per-click (CPC) Per-acquisition (CPA) Flat-rate/Sponsorship Interaction (CPI) Publishers love CPM, advertisement buyers love CPA – why?

CPC Bidding A complex dance between money and relevance Generally speaking – higher bid = better placement But quality and relevance make a difference – e.g., broad, phrase, exact and negative search references (examples?) – long tail searching as a qualifying factor QS score in Google Adwords – not just search relevance but historical value of advert/client Helps prevent well-financed spam

Conversion/Clickthrough Impression to click to conversion Are impressions enough? Sometimes they are – examples? Clicking – what does that entail? What is defined as conversion?

Tracking and Budgeting Ad networks offer statistical information to gauge performance Many also give budget targets – advertise up to a certain $ amount per day/week/month

Advertising and Landing Pages Sometimes need to advertise not whole entity/site but a subset Often handy to track awareness – e.g. “phone this extension” or URLs with arbitrary info (e.g., May require multiple pages and fluid integration into main, but better than dumping people onto main and forcing them to find the course of direct action

Strategy Do your homework – what’s the demo? Business need? Competitive environment? What’s the point? Sales? Awareness? Action? Define budget and CPA Keywords – when people are trying to find you, how are they doing that? (including misspellings and exclusionary terms like free/cheap) Execution – design, pay and track results Evaluate and iterate

Gaming the System Click fraud – especially common in CPC (and sometimes bot-driven) – must keep track of data to ensure reasonable CPA Bidding wars for keywords – e.g., potential solution for Santorum’s SEO “Google Problem?”

Next week Marketing Investigate MailChimp resources (