CCT356: Online Advertising and

MarketingClass 2:

Fundamentals of Online Advertising

AdministrationWiki signup

Anyone do articles yet?

Any ideas on first assignment (online ad critique?)

Online AdvertisingAdvertising 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 AdsInterstitial

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/ExchangesRarely 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 ServicesFrequency 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 Adwordshttps://support.google.com/adwords/?hl=en

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 http://www.facebook.com/help/ads

Similar rules, but with much more personal information (as can be expected…)

And a series of interesting rules…! Is this too much?

Payment MethodsImpression (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/ClickthroughImpression to click to conversion

Are impressions enough? Sometimes they are – examples?

Clicking – what does that entail?

What is defined as conversion?

Tracking and BudgetingAd 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., http://www.xyz.com/TV12)

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

StrategyDo 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 SystemClick 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 weekEmail Marketing

Investigate MailChimp resources (http://mailchimp.com/resources/)