Category: Internet Marketing

Digital Media and TV: The two pillars of any advertising budget

Posted on by Andrew

It seems that advertising is slowly turning into a two-horse race. In the days before digital media, there was a three-way split between print, radio, and TV. Now, TV and digital advertising are the only growing media channels. In a new report from Nielson, display advertising grew 26.6% during the first half of 2013. TV advertising grew at 4.2% during the same period.

While TV is admittedly a more mature market, the increase in display advertising is hard to ignore. It’s apparent the industry is turning to the two largest mediums to deliver the bulk of their advertising. The Internet and TV are far and away the biggest marketing channels available according to audience size and time spent on each medium.

We see a further consolidation of other media types when we look at some of the declines in advertising spend. Newspaper advertising is down 2% year-over-year, magazine advertising is down by 1.9%.  Even radio suffered from decreased spending during the same time period.

So how does this affect your advertising budget looking into 2014? One benefit is decreased complexity for you advertising plan. Instead of throwing dollars at newspapers and radio, you can shift your budget to TV and online display.

In 2014 it will be important to expand your digital strategy to find new customers online. More people buying digital media means more competition, so developing correct targeting techniques will be crucial.

If you’re curious about the different types of display available such as retargeting or pixel targeting, contact us and we can give you an overview of the types of targeting available for your business.

Google Leads in Display Advertising, Facebook is Gaining Ground

Posted on by Andrew

The latest numbers for total digital display advertising revenue are in, and it looks like Google remains on top.

In eMarketer’s latest report, they reported that Google remains the digital advertising king, capturing 40% of the overall market in 2012. Yahoo remains in second place with 8.6%, but the real up-and-comer is Facebook.

Facebook captured just 5.9% of the overall market in 2012, but they are set to reach 7.1% of the market in 2013. Plus, they are expected to overtake Yahoo in total revenue by 2014.

So what does this mean? It means you should start looking at doing some Facebook advertising. Facebook is set to be a major player in the digital advertising arena, and you should get on board.

Plus, with the Facebook Exchange, you have the ability to retarget your website visitors on Facebook, as well as target them with third-party data.

Go to AdsUpNow and learn more about how you can get started with a Facebook retargeting campaign.

Reaching Generation C – More Than Just Millenials

Posted on by Andrew

Google calls today’s modern digital consumer Generation C. This generation is not bound by an age demographic – instead they are bound by their use of digital media, social media, and online video (heavily Youtube of course).

Generation C mindset is characterized by its devotion to creation, curation, connection and community. They drive popular culture with photos, videos, memes and mash-ups.

Before you dismiss Generation C as an undesirable demographic to target, listen to this: they are responsible for influencing over half a trillion dollars in spending per year.

While 80% percent of millennials belong to generation C, this mindset is truly cross-generational, and includes members from Generation X and the Boomer Generation. In fact, because of this generation’s digital tendencies, they open up new advertising opportunities.

Google identifies 8 characteristics of Gen C:

Gen C is not a demographic – it’s a state of mind.

They’re the people who live digital. They spend more time online than they do watching TV.

Gen C strives for expression.

They are heavy users of social media and share photos and other content online.

Gen C is a taste-maker.
Made up of early-adopters, they set the trends that the rest of the population will soon follow. They also rely heavily on peer approval before making buying decisions.

Gen C defines the social network.

Almost 90% of Gen C has a social profile, and 65% of them update it every day.

YouTube is Gen C’s habitat for entertainment.

Gen C is twice as likely to be a YouTube viewer as the general population, and more likely to be a light TV viewer.

Gen C is constantly connected.

They eat, sleep and breathe the Internet and their smartphone. 91% of them sleep next to their smartphone.

Gen C connects on YouTube on all screens.
They watch mobile video on desktops, tablets and their smartphones

Gen C values relevance and originality.
They value conversation that aligns with their interests, and they aren’t opposed to ads that are relevant to them.

When you remove Google’s sales pitch for YouTube you’re still left with a compelling description of today’s modern digital consumers. These are the same consumers we connect with on behalf of dealerships across the country.

These consumers spend huge amounts of time on screens other than TV. They are mobile masters, using tools from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and YouTube. They may not know where their television remote is, but they definitely know where they can get online.

Their “water-cooler moment” is a link, a tweet or a tag. Instead of reaching them with a TV buy, you’re better off with pre-roll video and display advertising like retargeting or data-driven advertising like pixel targeting.

Learning to connect with Generation C will become more and more important throughout the next year and in the future. Remember, Generation C is a group of early adopters. As they go, goes the rest of the population. You want to make sure your advertising is primed to keep up.

Digital Media is Overtaking TV

Posted on by Andrew

Digital media has been growing like crazy for the past few years. And, as more people are spending time online, businesses have been shifting their advertising dollars online.

Up until now, increases in time spent on digital media have come at the expense of traditional media like radio and print advertising. However, TV has always remained in the top spot for advertisers, due to the huge amount of time people spend watching TV.

Now, it seems, TV’s reign is coming to an end. For the first time ever, time spent on digital media will surpass time spent watching TV. In a new report from eMarketer, the average adult will spend 5 hours a day online – including time spent on mobile. Daily time spent on TV will be an average of 4:31, which is nothing to sneeze at, but overall growth is down slightly, whereas time on digital is up 15.8%.

So what does this mean for you and your business? It means you need to start doing online advertising – especially on mobile. You used to buy TV because that’s where all the eyeballs were. Now, there are more online.

Dip your toe in the water and start a retargeting campaign for your business. It’s an easy way to get started with digital.

Dealers Across The Country Are Investing In Digital – Are You?

Posted on by Andrew

Everyone knows that most people do the majority of the research for their next car online. Now, it looks like dealers are chasing online customers with an increased focus into online advertising. In a new report from eMarketer, the auto industry will spend more than $5 billion in 2013 on digital advertising, up 18.9% from 2012.

The majority of this increased spend will go into search and display advertising, but mobile, video, social and local are growing as well. This increased investment into digital will make the US auto industry the second-largest spender on digital media.

If you haven’t done much digital advertising for you dealership, you’d better jump on board quick. We recommend a paid search campaign, retargeting campaign and pixel targeting campaign for most dealerships.

Digital marketing is a great way to increase traffic for your website, and can provide real, measureable results that you can track in real-time on your Analytics.

Are You Attracting The Right Crowd With Your Promotions?

Posted on by Andrew

In an attempt to drum up new business, businesses will run sales and promotions. Sometimes these efforts can be successful, but other times it can lead to the wrong kind of new business.

One area where this can be seen is with local restaurants and businesses that use Groupon. Because the discounts on Groupons are so steep, you attract a clientele that isn’t interested in doing business with you, they just want the screaming deal you’re offering for a limited time.

One of our clients experienced this firsthand. They were running a gift card promotion on their website and suddenly leads for their giftcards started pouring in. They called us wondering if we had made any changes to their campaigns, so we dug deeper to figure out what cause the spike.

It turns out their promotion somehow got picked up by a daily-deal aggregating website. We tracked the traffic inside of Google Analytics and found only six out of 30 leads were  even local, and even those six leads were probably mooches who were just interested in free stuff.

The lesson here is that not all leads are the same, and not all promotions are created equal. Even if you have an ad campaign that works well on the surface, if all the leads are garbage, then it was a waste. Always make sure that the promotions you run are focused in on the right audience. If it’s a weak offer, then no one will bite, but if the offer is too easy to get, then you’ll end up giving out a bunch of gift cards to people who have no real interest in what you want to sell. If you’re currently running a promotion, evaluate whether it’s helping you reach the right audience and giving you quality leads.

Give the people what they want – targeted ads!

Posted on by Andrew

For years now we’ve been hearing about privacy concerns related to smartphones and the Internet in general. Sometimes, those concerns have extended to the ad industry and consumers have worried about how their information is tracked. We’ve even had clients be concerned about appearing creepy by using retargeting and data targeting-based ads.

Well, fear no longer because a new survey from Zogby Analytics confirms what we’ve known all along: people prefer targeted advertising.

In the survey, which focused on Internet privacy, most adults were worried about identity theft and viruses when they were online. Furthermore, when the survey asked about advertising, 75% of users liked the ad-supported Internet model, and 70% of the users wanted to see advertising tailored for their interests.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. If I’m in support of advertising in exchange for free content on my favorite websites then I know I’m going to be seeing ads. If I’m going to be seeing ads all over the place then they might as well be for things I’m interested in.

The consumer has spoken. For all of those businesses worried about “stalking” their customers online, the truth is that they prefer it. Plus, we implement impression caps to avoid annoying your customers and having a negative impact on your sales.

If you’ve shied away from display ads before, maybe it’s time to rethink that and give a retargeting campaign a try.

How do we protect against fake website traffic and bot traffic?

Posted on by Andrew

We wanted to take a second and give a quick update in regards to the recent reports about click fraud and bot traffic. Click fraud and bot traffic have been around since the beginning of Internet advertising. Luckily, the high-tech nature of digital marketing means attempts to dupe advertisers are discovered and eradicated quickly.

At AdsUpNow, we take our jobs and your campaigns very seriously. We’ve been leaders in data targeting since our company began in 2008. We’ve bought data from multiple sources targeting against keywords, website context, user behavior and more. We’ve also developed and collected our own data targeting techniques through our proprietary website history and sitelist targeting.

The breadth of our experience gives us the ability to detect fraudulent clicks and make sure we drive only real people to your website.

One of our tactics is that we operate your campaigns with an evolving blacklist and whitelist. This means that if a certain website is delivering too many impressions for the amount of traffic it actually receives, we can blacklist that site, so your ads won’t be served on it. We also work with our providers to block sites so you always show up on sites that are brand-safe for your business.

Another way to ensure we deliver the right traffic is through Google Analytics. Our ad servers give us reports, but we like to verify the information with a third-party system to track our traffic to make sure all of the clicks we delivered actually landed on your site. Through Google Analytics we can see exactly which campaign brought the people to your site, and what they did when they got there.

We touch our advertisers’ campaigns every day to assure they are getting the best results and the highest quality clicks as possible.

Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help you. Thank you for your support and continued business.

Advertising and the Reticular Activating System

Posted on by Andrew

Have you ever learned about something for the first time and then started noticing that very same thing everywhere you went? That’s called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) and it helps your brain create connections and makes things easier to remember.

One of the most common occurrences of RAS is when you buy a new car. Once you buy that car, you start noticing more cars just like yours on the road. Does this mean that everyone went and bought the same car you did? No! It just means that your brain has forged a connection with something it never cared about before.

So where does this fit in with advertising? I’m glad you asked! Since we can’t necessarily choose what our brains remember, RAS can be used to the marketer’s advantage.

Here’s an example. Say someone sees a Toyota commercial on TV for a new RAV4. A week goes by with no further thought about the vehicle. Then, one day, she is on one of her favorite blogs and notices an ad for a RAV4. A week ago she wouldn’t have even noticed the ad, but now she does. She sees the dealership that it’s for and heads to their website. She finds the car she wants and buys it the next day.

So how should businesses use RAS to their advantage? The answer is with a variety of advertising. You need both traditional and digital advertising components to connect with every shopper. Most people who buy from you will have heard about you through multiple sources. Plus, you don’t know what will activate their RAS. It might be a banner ad, search ad, TV spot or radio ad.

Long story short, if you want to take advantage of RAS, make your advertising memorable, and use variety. You never know what people will remember later on when they are making a purchase.

It’s Time to Start Targeting

Posted on by Andrew

Targeting is the new way to reach your customers. In a new study from ValueClick, more than half of all marketers said that they thought Retargeting was one of the most important forms of targeting available.

The reason is simple: you are able to advertise and reach out to your website visitors repeatedly, giving you more opportunities to bring them back to your site and heightening brand awareness so they’ll remember you.

You already spend money bringing people to your website, so don’t you want to have multiple chances to reach out to them? Retargeting increases the ROI on all your other advertising because it brings back people who you hear about your website through all other advertising.

There are other forms of targeting such as behavioral, contextual, pixel and search retargeting. Each one offers a different way to reach your customers, and can be combined to bring you the best mix of traffic to your site.

If you currently don’t do any targeting, however, Retargeting is a great way to start. It makes use of your existing advertising and the website traffic you currently have. Retargeting is so simple that if you aren’t retargeting then you aren’t even in the game. It’s time to step up and start Retargeting your website visitors.