Here’s What People Don’t Get About Digital AdvertisingThat’s really not a clickbait title.
The vast majority of businesses we speak to tend to think about digital advertising in terms of reach, clicks and a plethora of metrics that measure the performance of the ads.
There are two things that digital advertising enables that often flies under the radar, and these are potentially the most important parts of maximizing outcomes from digital advertising campaigns:
The kind and amount of control that digital advertising gives you
And
The impact that digital advertising has on your organic traffic.
Control – The Unsung Differentiator
Thinking of digital advertising as simply segments, audiences and inventory is like flying an aircraft with just the throttle (reach) and yoke (traffic).
Think of the hundreds of other controls pilots have – and need – around them. Digital advertising is just like that.
People don’t understand the depth to which you can select audiences for running ads – from using keywords in an article to the relative performance of ads placed on the top right vs the top left of a screen to pulling together data from multiple platforms to create insights that would astound you.
As an example, take a look at this case study, where we drove 3K+ game day orders for a pizza chain via an ad campaign targeted at NFL fans. We brought together 3rd party audience segments, identified specific news programs and channels with very specific content types, retargeted CTV users with messages as well as search ads to drive high-intent audiences.
So it’s not just about reach and traffic – it’s about targeted awareness and including nuanced bottom-of-funnel strategies in your advertising.
Good digital advertising isn’t just yoke and throttle – it’s a modern aircraft..
Organic traffic from paid ads? Yes.
Buying journeys – as much as marketers would like to believe – are not linear. They are complex, multi-channel quests that would put Jason and the Argonauts to shame.
Paid ads do much more than drive clicks. They plant unnoticed seeds in people’s minds. Seeds that sprout at the most unexpected times. And when they sprout, people tend to Google what they remembered.
“Hmmm, I remember seeing an ad for 10% off airline tickets. I think it was from Brand X. Let me look it up.”
Activity of this sort gets missed in all but the most comprehensive multi-step attribution models.
Don’t write off your ads with ‘Oh, that campaign generated no conversions, it was a flop.’. Unless you are measuring it correctly, you have no idea how much organic traffic it is generating (and it’s nothing to do with SEO).
What this means for you
If you are a business or agency running digital ads, ask yourself difficult questions like:
-Is there more data we should be using for this campaign?
-Are we getting as granular in our targeting as we can?
-Can we combine data sources to create brand new segments and behaviors?
-Why is there an uptick in my organic traffic a few weeks after my campaign ended?
-Is my campaign attribution on point? Am I allocating budgets correctly?
None of these are easy questions to answer. But the best digital advertising looks to get these answers.
Or at the very least, understands that there’s far more to it than a simple spray-and-pray approach.
