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Another KnowledgeBuilder has come and gone yesterday morning with some great discussion and participation. Advertising will always be around, but the mediums are constantly changing. Now more than ever many digital ad venues are popping up left and right. What are some of the best options out there? How to pick the ad medium for you? How can you track and measure? All important topics that were covered in yesterday’s KnowledgeBuilder.
After going through some basic overview material, we get to the meat. While there are many traditional players in advertising like outdoor, theatre, print ads, TV, and radio; several new players like digital/internet and mobile advertising have shown up over the last several years. We took a long look into the newcomers and focused on
- Google AdWords: are for awareness building, able to track effectiveness, it can target audiences based on demographics, ad placement, and search terms. It is flexible, relatively low cost, and a targeted solution to battle against competition.
- Banner and Pop-up/-under ads: are good at for grabbing attention on web pages, able to track effectiveness, and target audiences based on demographics, ad placement, and network placement. It is great at tracking audience’s action after the click and its ability to be creative and utilize animation and format variations.
- Social network ads: are good at getting your audience where they live (on social networks) and are trackable. It can be targeted by demographic, by ad format, and creative accepted. Ability to create various reports for measuring effectiveness. Has the ability to animate creative and utilize different format variations.
- Mobile ads: are interactive and convenient. Ad viewers have to opt-in for direct reach of target audience. Great to use in the context of the overall media mix.
Examples for each the above ad types include:
- Google Adwords: See the sponsored links at the top of the Google search for “communications degree”
- Banner and pop-up ads: CNN.com has many different sizes of ads on its website. Most of them are on the right side of the page.
- Social networks ads: See the advertising on the right side of the Facebook page below
- Mobile ads: Clarkson University’s Clarkson gene ad. In an advertisement through the iPhone they asked an interactive question and were given downloadable games for their participation.
With so many advertising venues, with so many varying pros and cons we took the next logical step in the discussion. We explored the strategy for how to use the various ad mediums:
- Layered: use mix of traditional advertising like tv, radio, and out-of-home combined with digital web and mobile
- Unique source codes and landing pages: to track and adjust your online search words, banners, pop-ups, and mobile ads.
- Cross pollinate: combine paid exposure with unpaid options like Facebook, YouTube, and other Web pages.
- Creative: think out of the box and leverage your ad investment by thinking of broader uses.
What works and what doesn’t? With digital advertising it is often easier to test, measure, reevaluate, and redesign your advertising. We then went through the use of online advertising measurement, (all the tracking sites are all fairly similar when you get down to it) which usually include:
- Standard measurement tools: clicks, impressions, engagement etc
- Creative tracking: which sizes/executions with better results
- Action tracking: who did what when. It’s only when applicable
- Social action: Track whether ad viewers like or dislike the ad on FB
- Demographic targeting: for some digital ads you can track ad viewers by their geography, age and other content found in their profiles
- Time-tracking: what time is your ad clicked on the most
- Distinct URLs/landing pages: Which URL on your website do ad viewers click to most often
Special thanks to all our KnowledgeBuilder attendees: great questions and thoughtful discussion about your own advertising efforts and challenges!
If you missed this one, and would like a reprise or a custom presentation for your organization, just let us know.
And sign up now – before all the seats are taken – for the ever important July 16 Online KnowlegeBuilder, Integrating the Impossible: Managing Multiple Brands on Campus. We go through the details of brand architecture as well as the tips and tricks for protecting the core brand, sub-brand, endorsed brand, and more.
