AdOn Blog

Where did my conversions go? – 5 Helpful Tips to Take the “T” out of Stale and Make it a Winning Sale!

There is one phrase that every ad network customer service rep is familiar with: “Where did my conversions go?” and “I was converting great a few months ago; Why isn’t my ad converting now?” Do these sound familiar?

Too often advertisers forget the most important aspect of marketing to a consumer: keep it fresh, keep it simple and always be engaging.

Before we get to my 5 helpful hints to freshen up those stale conversions, ask yourself the following questions:

• How long do you see Coca-Cola run the same TV commercial?
• How often does that billboard change on the freeway on the way into work?
• If you saw or heard the same advertisement over and over again - how long would it take before you no longer noticed it?
• What is your favorite commercial?

Tip 1: Don’t be Afraid to Change Your Creative - Treat your online consumer like you would in any other advertising medium (magazines, newspaper, billboard, radio, etc). Overexposure to a single ad can cause the consumer to become numb to your message, so freshen it up! Changing your creative can be as simple as using new colors or fonts.  Remember that any online source you use to get in front of consumers will typically give you a high percentage of repeat users, so change at least once every month to help get them to notice your ad again.

Tip 2: Engage Your Consumer! – Online ads that not only show a product or service, but must engage their consumer and include a call-to-action intended to bring the consumer to your website. Simple lures of “Click here”, “Limited Time Offer”, “Find Out More” help drive the consumer to move from just looking at your online ad to being engaged on your site.

Tip 3: Leverage Your Resources – Many networks have resources within their account management section that enable you to fine-tune your campaigns and improve your results (i.e. traffic source selection, frequency caps, time and date ranges, targeting options). Small changes can produce big returns. If you feel you are overexposing your campaign to the same user base and losing  effectiveness, simply use some of these tools at your disposal and create a winning recipe for success!

Tip 4: Track Your Success – Make sure you are not only tracking results through your own tracking system or a third party system like Google or Omniture, but utilize any tracking tools the ad networks offer as well. From ROI tracking pixels to tracking codes you can include in your URL, I recommend using every tool at your disposal to help make more informed decisions. Keep in mind that each traffic measurement system is unique in how they track and measure results so they will not all provide the same data. You can, however, compare the data to create a clear picture of your results.

Tip 5: Communication is Key – If the ad network you work with has Sales or Account Representatives at your disposal, take advantage of them! Leverage their in-depth knowledge of their ad management system to get the most out of your campaigns. If conversions are declining, ask your sales or account rep to offer suggestions or to try different tactics.

by Geoff Gieron, VP of Operations - Advertiser Services

AdOn Network Launches "AdOn Safeguard"

Harmful, malicious and/or inappropriate ads are a serious threat for all of us in the online advertising industry. At AdOn Network we are continuously working to find and develop better solutions to fight this problem to protect our publishers and their end users. With that in mind, we recently launched AdOn Safeguard designed to assist in detecting and preventing the appearance of malicious and inappropriate ads within our ad network.

The AdOn Safeguard service uses a proprietary technology solution to review the contents of ads that are hosted on external ad servers outside of the AdOn Network environment. AdOn Safeguard can detect Malware (software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system), ActiveX (or other executable software downloads) and Exit Pops (the launch of a secondary ad or browser window when the user leaves a website).

Once a harmful ad is detected, the system automatically shuts down the ad campaign associated with that ad and alerts an AdOn Network account representative for further investigation.

For more information about the AdOn Safeguard service, contact our Client Services Team.

The Urge to Merge

In the movie “You’ve Got Mail,” Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) is an executive with the fictional FoxBooks bookstore chain. Its mission is to dominate the market and make the local neighborhood bookstore — in this case, The Shop Around the Corner, owned by Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) — obsolete.

Aside from the sappy love story (OK, who didn’t smile when Joe’s dog came running over the bridge in the last scene and you knew they would finally get together?), one of the side plots involved the battle between the mom-and pop-stores vs. corporate America. Depending on your perspective, there were pros and cons to both business models. (For the record, I tried to come up with an analogy from a more testosterone-driven movie like “Gladiators” or “Braveheart,” but it was just too much of stretch — even for someone in marketing who should be able to put a spin on anything).

Kathleen’s Shop Around the Corner provided a personal touch, a trusted relationship and a depth of knowledge on children’s books that can’t be matched by the 19-year-old clerk with the logo’d polo and khaki pants over at FoxBooks. But the larger store offered a much larger selection of books, a wider variety of products, a nicer locale and really comfy chairs.
This storyline is certainly not a new one, and it plays itself out in every line of business as companies compete for market share. Whether the method is driving competitors out of business or acquiring them, the result is the same: less competition.

Over the past year, we’ve been watching a similar storyline playing out in the online ad network space. During that time, we have seen a number of small to medium-sized networks gobbled in the rush to gain market share and dominance in the lucrative online advertising world.
Here’s a brief list of some of the more notable acquisitions:

• Tacoda purchased by AOL
• BlueLithium aquired by Yahoo
• aQuantive swallowed up by Microsoft
• DoubleClick assimilated into the mother ship (Google)
• Adify under the new ownership of Cox

With the skyrocketing purchase prices and hyper-competitive nature of this industry, it would seem that the acquisition frenzy would continue into the foreseeable future. In fact, investment bank Petsky Prunier reports over 193 M&A transaction totaling $11.4 billion for the Marketing, Advertising and Digital Media Industries in the first quarter 2008 alone. To further the point, a recent article from The New York Times looks at the next wave of consolidations that may be on the horizon.

This leads us to the big question: Is all of this consolidation good for the industry - and, more specifically, for publishers?

Let’s examine some of the pros and cons of ad network consolidation, as well as the rise of the ad network giants.

Pros:

• With a smaller universe of networks to work with, it is easier to evaluate the competitive landscape and understand the strengths, weaknesses, capabilities and specialties of each of the larger networks.
• Larger networks provide broader reach for advertisers and offer publishers access to a greater selection of advertisers.
• The combined technologies/services from consolidated networks offer more one-stop solutions for publishers (i.e. the behavioral targeting technology that BlueLithium brought to Yahoo)
• If the solutions and greater reach offered by large networks make it easier for advertisers to set up their campaigns, publishers ultimately benefit because they have a larger pool of advertisers to run on their sites, which can target their specific audience.

Cons:

• Too few players in the ad network space can have a negative effect on the overall competitive climate of the industry.
• Larger networks typically dictate the rules by which we all have to abide. Their business models are built on the efficiency of scale, not necessarily the ability to meet the needs of a wide variety of clients with unique needs and requests.
• While large networks cater to the needs of larger clients, small- and medium-sized businesses can be forced into a self-service model that lacks the one-to-one customer service, and even handholding, that many of them need to be successful online.
• Potential conflicts of interest exist as larger media companies acquire ad networks. If you operate a Web site for a Comcast property, for example, would you want an ad network owned by Cox to control your online advertising?
• Fewer choices and decreased competition can lead to less innovation and unfavorable business terms for advertisers and publishers, particularly small and medium-sized business with little market leverage.

Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on this issue, I think we would all agree that there is obviously a need for both large and small networks to meet the wide range of needs from a vast array of publishers and advertisers. Even in this climate of consolidation, we continue to see new networks sprout up as quickly as others are gobbled up, so there seems to be no need to fear that the innovation and competition spurred by the entrepreneurial spirit is in danger of fading away… yet.

I’d like to hear from you on this subject. How do you feel about ad network consolidation? Is it good for the industry as a whole, or is it just good for the investors who are cashing in on the land rush?

by Kory Kredit -- Published May 9, 2008 on MediaPost's Online Publishing Insider