Module 7
Even though the top position on a Google search attracts the most consumer attention, it actually may not be the most profitable position for an ad.
Although the click-through rate decreases with a lower position, the conversion rate may increase because consumers who click on links at lower positions implicitly express higher interest in those companies.13 Continuous testing, measurement, and analytics are key to finding the best position and optimal bid for each set of keywords.
Quality Score simply multiplies the advertiser's maximum bid amount by its quality score to capture the combined effect of both these factors.
As a result, even though advertiser Y bid only $2, compared to the $4 bid by W, Google will give Y a higher rank since it has a higher-quality score.
five topics to explore how managers can use social media to engage with consumers:
(1) listening to social conversations, (2) participating in social discussions, (3) leveraging and amplifying messages, (4) measuring social media effectiveness, and (5) managing the impact of social media.
The basic steps of video ads are the same as for search or display ads:
(1) start with the goal (e.g., enhance brand awareness, drive traffic to website, increase purchases, etc.); (2) select a target audience (by age group, geography, interests, etc.); (3) create an ad; (4) set a budget; and (5) measure and monitor results.
Most companies use both online and offline channels for marketing. This poses two key challenges for managers:
(1) understanding the interaction or potential synergy between online and offline marketing and (2) assessing the impact of online marketing on offline purchases and vice versa (also called omnichannel shopping)
attribution problem using a variety of approaches
The first five (last interaction, first interaction, linear, time decay, and position-based) are commonly used, but they are ad hoc models with no scientific grounding. The last two, regression- or model-based and experiment-based, are more rigorous approaches to evaluating ad effectiveness. Model-based evaluations use existing data on consumer interactions with each ad or search along their purchasing path to model the effect of each interaction. Experiments randomize ads to treatment and control groups; differences in response or conversion between the two groups can be attributed to exposure to ads Since search and display ads do not work in isolation, attribution models need to take their interaction into account.
Listening to Social Conversations
Understanding Customers. Unlike surveys, which use predefined questions, or focus groups, which sample only a few customers, social media provides a forum for companies to hear and understand their consumers' attitudes and behaviors at a broader and deeper level. Partnerships between companies and social media platforms open up possibilities to detect and analyze consumer needs and to tailor products, pricing, and communications appropriately. Brand Perceptions. How do consumers perceive your brand? What do they like or dislike about it? What do they associate your brand with? These are critical questions for a brand manager. To answer such questions, companies often conduct custom studies to generate perceptual maps. Yet millions of casual social conversations by consumers can also provide a window into the consumer mind. Using sentiment analysis and text-mining techniques, companies can create brand association maps in real time. Customer Satisfaction and Future Behavior. Social conversations and online reviews reveal consumers' satisfaction with a product and predict their future purchasing behavior.
DSPs (demand-side platforms)
act as brokers connecting various players in this complex landscape
In addition, there are several demand-side platforms (DSPs) and supply-side platforms (SSPs) that
act as brokers connecting various players in this complex landscape
two types of intermediaries that help connect advertisers (buyers) with publishers (suppliers):
ad networks and exchanges
contextual ads
ads that match the website topic—to improve a display ad's effectiveness
Because consumers are becoming savvier at avoiding advertising, no matter how compelling the story, M. V. Rajamannar, chief marketing officer of Mastercard,
believes that we need to shift from storytelling to story making with consumers
two types of keywords that companies can buy:
branded and generic
To achieve the first goal
companies should adopt a customer-centric view of the world, finding ways to solve a consumer's problem regardless of any immediate, direct connection to product sales. In the process, even if the consumer eventually buys from a competitor, the company has improved its relationship with the consumer and has also increased awareness of and need for the product
Google uses this quality score to balance the goals of three parties:
consumer, advertiser, and Google. By using a quality score, Google ensures that a large company with a big ad budget does not show irrelevant ads that will only annoy and alienate consumers.
five of these issues in outbound marketing
correlation versus causation; attribution; dynamics; online-offline interaction; and customer lifetime value
To achieve the second goal
creating original content that encourages other websites to provide links to it—the content should contribute to a company's brand reputation. For example, Whole Foods writes blog posts not just about groceries and recipes but also about organic and sustainable living.
Display Ads Industry
display ads are part of a fragmented industry comprising many different players in a variety of roles along the value chain. Large corporations typically hire advertising agencies to help manage their campaign creative and purchasing processes, while small businesses can use online tools available through Google Ads and similar services.
Getting Found
how Google works: First, it indexes web pages on the internet, just like a catalog in a library. Second, it ranks web pages on the bases of relevance and importance to consumers' search queries. The process of gaining ranks in search results is called search engine optimization. Google's ranking is based on two key factors—relevance and authority. Therefore, inbound marketing requires two key actions. First, the company must ensure that its website has the content, keywords, and meta tags that improve its relevance to a particular search query—thereby achieving a high rank in an organic search engine results listing. To do this, it needs to anticipate the keywords and search queries consumers may be using. Second, the firm needs to find ways to garner inbound links from other websites to build its authority. It can do this by savvy content creation.
Inbound marketing is a way to engage consumers by creating content
including blogs, podcasts, white papers, and search engine optimization (SEO), so that a company—its brand, products, and services—is found when consumers search for information
Click-through rate (clicks divided by impressions)
is a measure of a consumer's revealed preference—users won't click an ad unless they find it helpful.
Relevance
is determined by the match between the keywords used by a consumer while searching and the content of the ad.
cost-per-click (CPC) bid
is the amount a firm bids on a particular keyword. A company's bid amount depends on competition, its search budget, the expected click-through, and the conversion rate (the percentage of clicks by visitors that results in a product sale or desired action, such as membership registration)
While some video ads may have a specific call to action that may warrant a click from a user
most video ads are designed to build awareness and brand. Therefore, metrics such as click-through rates, which are useful for search ads, are not the most appropriate metrics for video ads. Instead, impressions are typically used, much like the metrics used for TV campaigns, where ads are bought based on CPM
Quality
of the landing page is measured by the bounce rate, or how quickly consumers leave the advertiser's website after landing there. This factor is included to prevent an advertiser from baiting a consumer to click on an ad and land on a website that is completely inconsistent with the ad and irrelevant to the consumer.
Impressions
or the number of times a search ad is seen by consumers, show the reach of an ad. But because simple exposure does not indicate whether consumers were influenced by or even noticed an ad, search engines do not charge companies for impressions. Better metrics of advertising effectiveness are the click-through rate (CTR), or the number of clicks per impression, and the conversion rate. The CTR of most search ads is in the low single digits.
Google returns different search results:
organic links: (links to websites based on relevance or user popularity, for which companies do not pay anything) paid links: (also called sponsored links or search ads, for which companies pay). These paid links typically appear above organic links, or in a column alongside them
Rather than seeking potential customers through advertising, inbound marketing
positions the company as a target consumers search for While outbound marketing seeks to achieve the best ad placement on the search results page, the focus of inbound marketing is to ensure that, in keyword searches by search engines, organic links for a firm rank higher than competing links.
Morphing display ads
represent a newer approach to improving display ad performance. Unlike print ads, which are static, these display ads vary for different individuals visiting the same web page. They are algorithmically selected from a portfolio of potential ads on the basis of known consumer attributes (e.g., websites visited and demographics). In a field test, matching display ads to inferred cognitive style (how the person processes information), based on which pages people chose to look at, almost doubled click-through rates. The increase in effectiveness was attributed to the fact that some people are persuaded by facts and numbers, whereas others understand concepts through graphics. In another test with an automobile website, matching ads to cognitive style, buying stage, and preference for auto-body type resulted in a more than tripling of CTR, as well as significant lifts in brand consideration and purchase intent.
In digital channels, outbound marketing takes the form of
search, display, and video ads
Content publishers
sell space to advertisers on their websites. These range from large online publishers like the New York Times to small websites or personal blogs. The advertising rate each site commands depends on various factors such as its traffic, its prestige, and the demographic of customers it draws.
Ad networks
such as AdSense by Google, aggregate the supply of advertising space from a variety of publishers and match it with the advertiser's demand. In addition to buying and selling ad space, ad networks develop proprietary algorithms to help their clients optimally place ads on various websites.
Eighty percent of all online sessions on PCs and laptops start with a search of some kind. Thus, search engines
such as Google, along with Yahoo! Search, Baidu (China), and Yandex (Russia), have become the gateway of the Internet
Ad exchanges
such as Rubicon, automate the matching between advertisers and publishers, often called programmatic buying, which uses a real-time bidding (RTB) process. Like stock exchanges, which price company shares according to supply and demand, ad exchanges decide the placement and pricing of advertisements by using the supply and demand of the ads. By 2017, almost 72% of all US digital display ad spending was done by programmatic buying through ad exchanges.14 Real-time bidding and placement of ads happens in a fraction of a second.
Companies can bid on individual words,
such as resort and vacations, as well as multiword phrases (resort vacations), and consumer searches using different combinations of keywords will turn up different results.
heat map
that plots the time people spend viewing different parts of a search website. The red and yellow fields indicate that the top left side of the page receives the most attention, making it the most valuable advertising position and consequently, the most expensive. This region is called the golden triangle by marketers. For the ads that appear on the right-hand side, the top positions attract the most attention.
Google determines the ad ranks based on two factors:
the cost-per-click bid amount and the quality score of the ad
Two forces drive the increasing importance of inbound marketing:
the diminished influence of advertising and the rise of consumer search
Advertisers do not know the algorithms behind this quality score
they are kept secret by Google
test-control methodology
to measure the impact of display ads on brand metrics such as brand awareness, favorability, and purchase intent. found that compared to a control group, digital display ads increased unaided brand awareness up to 12%, improved brand perceptions by 2%, and increased purchase intentions by 3% If the goal of display ads is to generate clicks and conversion, their effectiveness can be measured using the same metrics used for search ads, such as CTR and conversion rate.
highly visible ad
usually a pop-up or an auto-play. Although consumers often find them annoying, highvisibility media are effective in grabbing consumer attention. However, they do not contribute incrementally toward ad effectiveness if an ad is already contextual.
Google uses the "generalized second-price auction,"
where the highest bidder gets the first ad position but pays the bid amount of the second highest bidder, who in turn gets the second position but pays the bid amount of the third-highest bidder, and so on. Research shows that this mechanism leads to "truth telling," whereby advertisers bid the maximum amount on the basis of their own willingness to pay.
Google suggests moment-based marketing,
whereby the advertiser can wait for the right moment before sending the right message to a consumer.
There are also many data management platforms (DMPs)
which collect, interpret, and sell customer browsing and other information that may help advertisers more effectively target their ads. These, along with specialists in areas such as privacy, tag management, and analytics, round out the roles in this sprawling landscape.
The second factor that determines the rank or position of an ad on a search page is the quality score of the ad
which is assigned by the search engine (e.g., Google).
Ad Rank indicates the ad placement position for each advertiser
which is based on its Quality Score.
The number of key words can proliferate for the following reasons:
• A single product may require variations on the same theme. For example, a consumer looking for hotels in Los Angeles could search for "Los Angeles hotel," "Hollywood hotel," "room in LA," or "three star hotel in Los Angeles." Each modifier expands the number of key words associated with a single search idea. • Keywords in different languages reach customers with different demographics. • Misspellings and typos are common, so firms may buy common misspellings of keywords (though this is becoming less prevalent as search engines incorporate autocorrect and spelling suggestions). • Negative keywords may be needed to prevent ads from appearing in some searches. For example, a beauty company may be interested in a consumer searching for "skin treatment" but not "skin cancer treatment." By ruling out "cancer," the company avoids wasting money on searches that are unlikely to result in a conversion.
While display ads come in various formats, the most commonly used are:
• Banner ads: These are one of the oldest and most traditional forms of display ads, and they usually appear at the top of a web page. • Interstitial ads: These ads appear as full web pages before users are directed to the original page they requested. These ads capture greater user attention but are also likely to be more intrusive to users. • Expandable banner ads: These banner ads automatically expand to a large portion of the user screen. In terms of size and impact, they fall somewhere between banner and interstitial ads. • Overlay: These are similar to interstitial ads, but with a transparent background so that a user can still see the original web page. • Rich media: These ads include interactive components such as video, audio, or hyperlinks to click. • 360-degree ads: These ads are specially designed for mobile phones and provide a 360-degree view to the user as she moves her phone around.
To manage this delicate balance, the quality score is based on three factors:
• Potential click-through rate (CTR) of an ad • Its relevance to consumers • The quality of the landing page (the page on the advertiser's website where a consumer lands when she clicks on the ad)
many formats of video ads, these are the most common formats used on YouTube:
• Skippable in-stream ad: A video ad that plays before, during, or after the main video and can be skipped by the user after a few seconds • Non-skippable in-stream ad: A 15- to 20-second ad that cannot be skipped by the user • Bumper ad: Non-skippable video ads of less than 6 seconds
A few things to note
• The CPC for Y is less than its bid amount of $2. This is always true— Google ensures that advertisers never pay more than their maximum bid amount, and usually they pay less. • A higher-quality score for an ad reduces the CPC for an advertiser. This is the way Google encourages advertisers to create relevant ads for consumers instead of simply bidding more to get their attention. • The actual CPC for an advertiser also depends on the bid and quality of its competitors. Since competition for each keyword is different and can change over time, and is often unknown to advertisers, it is impossible for an advertiser to know the exact amount of money it will end up spending on a search ad. All the advertiser knows is that this amount will be not more than the budgeted amount.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) To create search advertisements, companies generally follow a four-step process
1 First, the firm must answer three key questions regarding keywords: • For which keywords should it bid? • How much should it bid per keyword? Search engines do not charge a fixed price for search ads; instead, they use a generalized second-price auction,6 which charges advertisers for each click-through. The higher the bid, the more likely the ad is to appear in a more visible spot. • What is the total available budget for search ads? This decision is based on the effectiveness and profitability of search ads. 2 After choosing the keywords, the firm's creative team designs search ads that would appear on the search results pages they link to. Typically, keywords also appear in the text of the search ad to improve the visual placement and relevance of the ad to consumers. 3 Now the ad campaign is launched. Whenever a consumer searches for keywords that the company has bid on, the ad may be displayed to the consumer if it ranks high enough to appear on the search results page. The search engine decides which ads to show on the basis of the size of a company's bid, as well as the "quality" of its ads (a topic that we will discuss later). If the ad is displayed, it costs the advertiser nothing at this point; it is only when a consumer actually clicks on an ad that the advertiser incurs a cost, which, at most, is equal to the bid amount (the exact cost that a company pays will be discussed later). If 1,000 consumers click on the ad and the bid amount is $0.10 per click, then the company incurs a maximum cost of 1,000 x $0.10 = $100. 4 The firm also prepares a number of web pages designed specifically for consumers to land on after they click on one of its ads. These landing pages (typically not the homepage) show content that is most relevant for that particular product or service search.
Optimizing Online and Offline Marketing Resources Advertising Allocation Analysis
1. Explore: The company started by exploring the internally and externally sourced data, and found a correlation between TV commercial spending and online search volume 2. Analyse: Investigating the issue further, analysts found that paid search accounted for a small proportion of the company's budget but a sizeable portion of its sales. 3. Optimize: As a consequence, it rebalanced the budget to reflect the value of each channel in converting consumers 4. Test and refine: with the new allocation, the company increased revenue by 9% while keeping marketing spend constant. Companies should test new budgets with test and control budgets with test and control markets or switch different aspects of the allocation on and off across weeks to refine a budget allocation.
Google defines these as micro moments and classifies them into four groups:
: "I want to know," "I want to go," "I want to do," and "I want to buy."
Correlation versus Causation
A large-scale field experiment conducted on eBay challenges the measurement of search ad effectiveness using traditional methods.22 The study found that measurements of online clicks and sales do not necessarily prove that online advertising caused an increase in sales. traditional methods simply correlate clicks and sales, whereas only an experimental study can uncover causality.
Attribution
Before making an online purchase, a consumer may engage with a brand through many different media channels. For example, she may become aware of it through television or print advertising, be influenced by online display ads, and end up making the purchase by clicking on a search ad. A commonly used measure of effectiveness, last-click attribution, gives all the credit for the sale to the search ad—even though other media channels helped move the consumer along in the buying-decision journey
Some channels (e.g., Facebook) offer the option to buy display ads by CPM or CPC. (Cost per click)
CPC display ad profit = impressions × click-through rate × [(conversion rate × margin) - cost per click]
The profitability of display ads that are priced as cost per thousand impressions (CPM - Cost per minute) can be calculated as follows:
CPM display ad profit = impressions × [(click-through rate × conversion rate × margin) - cost per thousand impressions or CPM ∕ 1,000]
How.
Can you make your content go viral and, if so, how? There is a strong debate in both academia and industry on this topic. While proponents, such as Mekanism, a San Francisco-based social media company, guarantees that it "can engineer virality,"60 others disagree. There is a distinction between virality and amplification. The notion of virality comes from epidemiology, where a single person infected with a disease, such as Ebola, can spread it to the entire population. However, most studies find that the diffusion rate for social media content is far less than one. This distinction has a strong implication for how to amplify social media content. Social media influencers with a large number of followers who command large fees are sought after by many brands.
Leveraging Social Media and Amplifying the Message
Companies can leverage social media to amplify their message and create brand advocates. Creativity and humor tend to amplify social content. To amplify their messages through social media and create brand advocates, managers need to understand three things: (1) why consumers share content, (2) what content consumers share, and (3) how consumers share content.
Apps, Not Ads
Companies need to create apps that provide unique value to consumers.
Branded Keywords
Companies sometimes buy their own branded keywords. a competitor might bid for a search ad spot that is higher on the search page than Harvard's organic link, and which could siphon away potential participants Bidding on one's own brand helps defend against this possibility—and also improves organic performance. A study showed that search ads helped increase click-through rates of organic links of the same company by 25%.9 Thus, from both a defensive and offensive point of view, bidding on branded keywords may make sense.
Why.
Consumers share information for both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons. Intrinsic motivations include intangible customer rewards such as social status. Extrinsic motivations include tangible incentives such as monetary rewards or free products.
Creating Content
Content creation for digital marketing has two main goals. The first is to answer customers' questions and needs beyond basic product information. The second is to create trustworthy, original, and interesting content that improves its authority by encouraging other websites from other organizations or individuals to link to the website.
Customer Lifetime Value
Digital channels may look effective because of CTR or CPI (cost per install), but that may not be the optimal approach if they don't attract the long-term paying customers. As a result, the gaming industry now focuses on CLV in evalauting the effectiveness of its digital campaigns. A shift from CPC to CLV may also change the budget allocation to various advertising channels. For example, a bank may find that it is cheaper to acquire new customers through online channels than through traditional channels, which may encourage the bank to shift marketing resources. But it is also possible that the customers acquired through online channels are more price sensitive, since they like to shop around. In other words, customers acquired through online channels may have lower retention rates, and consequently lower lifetime value, than those acquired through offline channels.
Why is mobile so different from desktop or laptop use? Is it simply the smaller screen size? Or does the technology change the way consumers behave and therefore have an impact on how brands engage users?
First, screen size matters. With smaller screens, people are less inclined to read for long periods. Second, mobile phones provide valuable location information about consumers that companies can use to refine targeted marketing messages. Third, mobile offers consumers easy access to information about competitive prices and customer reviews about a product while they are shopping in an offline store. Fourth, unlike desktops or laptops, where most consumer time is spent surfing the web, 90% of the time consumers spend on smartphones is devoted to using apps, not browsing the internet.71 Thus, display or search ads that worked well on desktops or laptops will reach a smartphone user only 10% of the time. This requires a shift in mobile digital strategy.
Dynamics (Delayed Impact of Advertising)
For many expensive or complicated products and services (e.g., automobiles, brokerage accounts), a consumer's purchase may not occur immediately upon seeing an ad. Instead, consumers often spend several weeks or months iteratively using multiple online and offline information sources, including review websites, to look for and decide between alternatives, which leads to a phenomenon that Google has dubbed the "Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)." But measurement of long-term effects is especially difficult, unless a model carefully controls for all other factors that may have changed over time. This study also found that the dynamic effect was much stronger for search ads than for display ads, which suggests that the bank should shift a greater share of its online ad budget to search ads, even after accounting for the attribution effect of display ads.
Optimizing Landing Pages
Getting the consumer to click on an organic link is half the battle; the other half is deciding what content should appear on the landing page to convert the consumer into a customer. At this point, user experience is paramount. Using consumer focus groups to test website design (including the use of colors, button shapes, position, wording, fonts, images, and logos, as well as usability and performance) can show a company which style choices would resonate most effectively with target customers.
three main questions for marketing managers:
How do consumers find me? What content should I create to attract potential customers? and How do I optimize my website for engagement?
Managing Social Media
How do you manage customers in such an environment? Perhaps the best advice for managing social media disasters comes from those who manage forest fires. They abide by two simple rules: make sure your forest is not dry because you don't know where lightning may strike; and if a forest catches fire, act quickly. The same two principles are suitable for managing a company's social media crises. The first principle suggests that if a consumer complaint catches the attention of thousands or millions of people on social media, it is an indication of a "dry forest," or an inherent problem with the company's product or service. We live in a transparent world where companies cannot hide from consumers. So it is the responsibility of the managers to avoid such disasters before they happen. The second principle suggests that in case of social media crisis (or forest fire), you have to act quickly before the damage spreads.
Participating in Social Discussions
Instead of simply listening to what consumers say on social media, companies can also actively participate and shape the conversation. Participating in social media also creates opportunities for potent real-time marketing. When a blackout brought the Super Bowl to a halt in 2013, agile companies took advantage of the situation and connected with consumers on social media. Walgreens tweeted, "We do carry candles," and Oreo posted "Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark."
Generic Keywords
It is also useful for companies to bid on generic or category keywords. For example, Hilton may bid on Bangkok hotels. This plays two roles. First, the consumer may not be looking for Hilton specifically, or even have Hilton in her consideration set, but the ad could influence her to click through to explore Hilton. Second, even if the consumer does not click on the ad, she may become aware that there is a Hilton in Bangkok and look for more information later.
Across both branded and generic keywords, a company needs to monitor its portfolio
Sophisticated companies use scripts (programmed computer code that executes tasks automatically) to do this, although manual monitoring is required to assess the popularity of search terms, adapt to changes in linguistics, or reposition keywords to respond to competitors' tactics. Most search engines offer services to help companies choose keywords.
Measuring Social Media
It is hard to measure the impact of social media on sales, so most firms use metrics such as number of followers, fans, shares, "likes," etc., as surrogates for the success of their social media campaigns. Companies often convert these metrics into the amount of money they would have to spend to expose an equivalent number of customers to their message—a measure of so-called earned media. challenges: Self-selection: heavy consumers of Coca-Cola (who like the brand and consume it more) may click the "Like" button on Coke's Facebook page more than light Coke drinkers. In other words, it is quite possible that "liking" Coke on Facebook does not cause a consumer to increase her purchase of Coke. In fact, the causality may go the other way around. homophily: which means that people with similar preferences tend to belong to the same social community or group—"birds of a feather flock together." Did your friend buy that album because of you (social effect), or did he buy it because you have similar taste in music (homophily effect)? It is hard to separate these two effects.
Omnichannel Shopping
Just as consumers are exposed to advertising from different media channels, they are also comfortable buying from different distribution channels. For example, a consumer may see a retailer's online ad and decide to visit that retailer's physical store to buy the product. In this case, the simple metrics of CTR and conversion rates significantly underestimate the effectiveness of online ads. Measuring offline conversions, Michael Kors concluded that Facebook ads accounted for a 31% increase in its in-store transactions.3
This minimum price must satisfy the following equation:
P1*Q1 = B2*Q2 or P1 = B2*Q2/Q1 These are based on the ad ranks ex. PriceY = Bidx*Qualityx/Qualityy, or 3*3/6 = $1.50
While display ads are static image ads on websites or apps, video ads show more dynamic images.
Some companies group them together under the heading of display ads because of similarities in the advertising objective and measurement of these two formats. For example, if you advertise on the Google Ads platform, you can target the same audience with display ads (on Google's Display Network) and video ads (on YouTube). Facebook and Instagram also allow videos as well as static images. Digital video ads are not limited only to digital platforms like YouTube or Facebook. The emergence of smart TV and streaming services such as Roku, Hulu, Sling TV, and DirecTV is allowing brands to target television audiences in the same way they reach audiences through digital platforms.
Display ads can be bought in two ways, depending on their goal.
The first is on the basis of impressions, commonly using the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) metric. Every time a consumer sees a display ad, the company incurs a cost, whether or not a consumer clicks through. An advertiser may choose CPM pricing if its goal is to build brand awareness or brand image. However, it's more likely to choose the second pricing system, based on clicks, if it's running a direct-response campaign with the goal of maximizing clicks and conversion rates.
Paying for Keywords
The next decision is how much to bid for each keyword selected. Eye-tracking studies, which track how people view a search page, found a change in people's viewing habits within a decade.
While search ads are designed for immediate action or sale, display ads can have two objectives.
They can be designed like search ads for immediate action or like TV or print ads with the goal of increasing brand awareness. Consumers see a search ad only when they are hunting a specific keyword, but display ads can appear on a website that the brand may consider relevant for its target audience.
The results of a 2014 study11 show that eyes still first go to the upper left of the Google search result page. However, now people scan the entire page very quickly, that is, a quick vertical scan and less horizontal scanning.
This is attributed to two factors: the increasing use of smartphones, where people scroll down quickly, and the shift in Google's approach to serving ads on desktops because of users' mobile use behavior. The implication of this new study is that since people are scanning the top three or four results on a page, it is not as critical for a company to capture the very top search result.
The CPC calculation is based on the minimum amount a bidder would have to pay to keep its ad rank, given the quality scores assigned to all advertisers.
This means that if the second-ranked advertiser, with a quality score of Q2, bid an amount B2, this determines the first-ranked advertiser's minimum price, P1, with quality score Q1
What.
To stimulate intrinsic motivations for sharing, the content must connect emotionally with viewers. Research on viral video ads found that following a time-tested advertising strategy generated the most shares: open the advertisement with a joyous tone to grab viewers instantly; build an emotional roller coaster to hold viewers' attention; surprise the viewer to encourage sharing (but don't shock—shocking videos may be interesting, but viewers are less likely to share them); and, finally, target customers who are likely to share.
Synergy between Online and Offline Marketing.
an offline experience at a retail store was ranked as most influential for consumer purchase decisions where personal fit was important (e.g., clothing, footwear, personal care products, and beauty products) and where real-life experience was especially valuable (e.g., automobiles, over-the-counter health-care products, home goods, and groceries).29 A study for an auto company found strong interactions between online and offline marketing channels. When the company took both channels into account, it found that the optimal offline marketing spend should be lower by 12% and that online channels spend should increase by 7%. Collectively, these studies suggest that companies may be underperforming if they plan online and offline advertising budgets separately. Successful integration of online and traditional venues requires creativity.
Retargeting ads
are display ads shown to consumers who have previously visited a company's website. For example, if a consumer looked at a pair of Skechers shoes at Skechers.com, that visit created a cookie. If this consumer later shops for books or reads the news, a retargeting ad based on that cookie may appear to remind the consumer about Skechers. Retargeting ads work best when the consumer is actively searching in the product category.17 Overenthusiastic retargeting ads, however, can be perceived as stalking and create adverse feelings toward the brand.
SSPs (supply-side platforms)
are the connection between ad networks and publishers. SSPs are the content suppliers' or publishers' brokers, and they help publishers get the best prices for their ad space inventory from various buyers.
