When Users Pay Attention To Online Ads
eMarketer has a recent report that outlines when users are more likely to pay attention to an online advertisement. The study was conducted based on usage from UK users by Lightspeed Research and the Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK.
The key finding, “…the largest percentage of UK Internet users in all age groups said they were most likely to pay attention to an online advertisement after 6 in the evening.” Although this may not be news to many, it may justify what many have long inferred.
Readers interested in this will also find my post on seasonality fluctuations relevant.
Ad:tech San Francisco
Posts will be light this week as I am off to Ad:tech in San Francisco. For those attending, Warren Corpus has a great article on where to go to network as well as some general information about the show.
My flight is close to six hours and I am armed with a lot of reading. I hope to have an interesting post that comes out of the flight posted in the next day or two.
If any readers would like to meet-up during the show feel free to stop by the Epic Advertising booth (1266) – I will be there off and on during the show.
Seasonality in Online Marketing – Marketing Opportunity Through Usage Fluctuations
Seasonality plays a significant, yet underutilized role in online marketing. We all know about temperate changes in seasonality, but as online marketers, how many of us appreciate the true significance that seasonality plays on our campaigns?
Many online marketers plan their marketing campaigns around important events and holidays. Fine-tuning and tailoring messaging is critical, and it also provides lift. Through consistent messaging and well-planned campaigns, what have traditionally been viewed as “dips” can turn into opportunities. For example, a landing page tailored to the spring season, or a spring sale themed landing page. Marketers need to ensure that their PPC, email, and banner campaigns are all aligned with this messaging to obtain maximum lift. Consistency is very important and should not be overlooked.
By creating a page based on seasonality or holidays, marketers create a deeper relationship with their users. The tailored landing pages provide relevancy, which increases interaction. This interaction can be increased using open and click-through-rates (CTR’s) for email and higher CTR’s for search and banner campaigns.
Seasonality Of Online Users
Seasonality also heavily influences usage patterns online. In the winter months, users tend to spend more time online during the weekends, as well as any day of the year where the weather is poor.
During the spring, there is always a noticeable change in usage. As the climate becomes warmer, users tend to spend a lot more time outdoors and away from their computers, especially on weekends. You really start to see this during and after “spring break” and on the weekends.
As users move into the summer months, usage echoes this. The usage from weekday to weekend levels off from the large shift that occurs in the spring, but is still noticeable. Users are spending less time online during the summer, but CTR’s ironically rise. There are many different theories on why CTR’s rise. One theory is that users are doing less browsing and more tailored and focused searching. This increase in CTR’s is also evident during the weeks leading up to the winter holiday season.
There are some interesting statistics on seasonal CTR’s provided by Marketing Experiments via BizReport . Among their findings where spring shopping CTR’s were 1.98% with a conversion rate of .06%. In the summer, CTR’s rates were 2.44% with a .68% conversion rate. In the fall, CTR’s rates were 1.96% with 0.66% conversion rates. Finally, in the winter during the holidays, CTR’s were 2.26% and 1.47%.
After Labor day when the kids are back in school and the weather starts to turn, usage patterns start to shift. CTR’s begin to fall, and usage rates start to increase back to winter rates. Users again start spending more time on weekends.
During the winter as the weather becomes more difficult, usage patterns have significantly shifted. Weekend usage rates are now more pronounced, with Sundays and Mondays being stronger days for sales online.
Seasonality shifts in online usage should not be viewed as a hindrance – rather, they should be viewed as an opportunity. Here are a few ways to take advantage of seasonality with you online marketing campaigns.
- Use tailored landing pages for holidays and seasons. Ensure your messaging is consistent.
- Take advantage of multivariate testing.
- Plan out upcoming holidays well in advance and where applicable, strategically purchase media in advance.
- Ensure you partners and affiliates have messaging well in advance of the holiday. Generally you want to make sure they have at least three weeks.
- Take advantage of what users are searching for during specified holidays. For example, flowers for Mother Day or allergy medications for the spring.
- Plan special weekend promotions during shifts in usage patterns. Entice users to your site through tailored messaging.
For example a website that sells shoes could offer a weekend special with free shipping. Another great example is eHarmony’s free communication weekend. Both campaigns harness a high perception of value from the end user. Free shipping or free access for goods or a service that otherwise would cost the consumer money works very well.
Holidays (opportunities) to create specific tailored online marketing campaigns include: New Year, Valentines Day, Easter, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Memorial Day, Presidents Day, Forth of July, Veterans Day, Labor Day, Christmas. If you sell or offer goods and services in Canada, capitalize on Remembrance Day and Victoria Day.
If your site has a large demographic of specific clients or is tailored to different religions such as Passover, Hanukkah, Ramadan, etc. then keep this in mind. Also consider other countries outside of North America and the differences in seasonality and holidays.
I have not covered all the holidays, but you get the point. The key is to plan ahead and shift your though process to view “dips” as opportunities.
Segmented Acquisition Vs’ Relevant Relationship Building
There are numerous strategies that can be implemented to acquire new users online. Some organizations will choose to acquire through segmentation, which is more traditional. Others will acquire through building relevant products that consumers are interested in and therefore select.
Traditional segmentation is based on such factors as demographics, location, sex, behavior, etc. This is a highly effective way to acquire new users online and I definitely recommend it. Once you specifically segment users to specified landing pages and specific conversion funnels, it is highly affective and cost-efficient.
Relevant relationship building allows, or rather enables, consumers to target their own choices and preferences. Michael Fassnacht recently wrote a great article in AdvertisingAge called, The Death of Consumer Segmentation? In the article, Fassnacht describes how “Apple and Amazon are not masters of consumer segmentation, but experts in building relevant products that consumers choose”. Imagine building relevant products that consumers chose instead of constantly telling them what to choose. This is a very powerful way to market, yet it is highly under-utilized.
Instead of acquiring users solely through segmentation, we can build on this and offer consumers a choice. To offer consumers this choice, they of course need to be enabled to choose. Fassnacht notes examples such as Facebook, MySpace and Google who, “Are far more focused on building and communicating relevance relationships than in micro-segmenting consumers.” Facebook allows user to choose and be chosen to interact with others as friends. This consumer choice is engaging and highly relevant to the end user.
So why don’t advertisers commonly enable users to choose what they want? There are multiple reasons, but here are a few common ones:
- Advertisers want control, they fear that if too much choice is given, it will threaten their current business model – they are risk-averse.
- “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” While I sympathize with this, it never hurts to test. Imagine what you could be leaving on the table by not even trying! Weigh the pro’s and con’s, solicit feedback from your staff and trusted business associates, and go from there. Test, test, test!
- Resources are often scarce. Having to scope, implement and then test – all while supporting the current line of business can be very difficult.
- Technological limitations cannot support the proposed change. There can be a variety of reasons technically that can be exceptionally costly or simply not feasible. As marketers, we often tend to forget this.
If one of these points rings a bell, you are not alone. The challenge is to get past this, and to mature your business. Consumers want choice and clearly flock to sites that offer and enable having choices. Segmentation will always be important. Taking segmentation to the next level through relevant relationship building can be a highly affective way to build and comliment your business.
Conversions and Order Size Will Replace Clicks and Visits
Marketers are increasingly under pressure to find more actionable and accountable means to spend their budgets effectively. There is no better way to do this than through online advertising. A great article appeared today in MediaPost. The article Performance Ad Metrics Slowly Shifting by Laurie Sullivan touches on some key points:
- “Conversions and order size will replace clicks and visits ad the de facto standard to measure performance.”
- The shift in performance metrics has been greatly accelerated by the economy
- Performance through conversion and order size will become known as the traditional model
As technological advances in targeting have become more and more common, the inventory has become more and more diluted. What do I mean by this? Take for example inventory on say, CNN.com. In this fictitious example, assume inventory could only be purchased on a CPM basis. As more and more placements and sponsorships became available over the years, users became more and more ad blind; advertisers were pressed for more actionable results.
Due to this pressure (and with more inventory becoming available), competition increased and media buyers became better. Publishers began offering pricing on a CPC and CPA basis – better known as performance. Initially CPC and CPA were offered through more of a manual practice on the publishers end (highly time consuming). It was then offered through technology like Right Media.
The problem was that technology was so good and effective for the advertisers, that it actually decreased the overall net revenue for the publishers. In turn, this lowed their eCPMs having the adverse affect that publishers intended. Then came the recession that put even more pressure on inventory rates.
So why does any of this matter? It brings us to where we now are today. A place where “Conversions and Order Size Will Replace Clicks and Visits.” Marketers are, and should be, demanding more actionable results for their dollars. Online marketers are becoming more and more savvy; no longer are they content with purchasing “branding” inventory at highly inflated or unaccountable prices.
Marketers are increasingly armed with comprehensive analytics that determine the value of placements and inventory that is purchased. These analytics not only can back-out what the effective conversion cost or order size is, but can also predict what the LTV of users are, down to the acquiring source.
All this information forces all involved in the online marketing space to be accountable and to deliver results! As more and more marketers demand results, they are increasingly finding a plethora of results online. The best part about the results is that they are often in real-time. You will NOT find a more accountable way to market your product, then to do so online.
Affiliate Marketing Weekly Re-cap
Unintentionally, I seem to be on a recap craze this weekend. As my time has been increasingly limited the past few months, I have not kept up with daily news (or blog posts) at the rate I would like to. Starting next week, I hope to be able to provide a “Mega re-cap” from several experts in their respective fields.
On that note, revnews.com has a column called Cashing Out that I came across today. In this week’s edition, Amazon referral fees for transactions that occur due to paid search are discontinued; AffiliateVoice launches, Coupons.com traffic increased 192% and more.
These weekly re-caps are a great way to catch up on the past week, particularly if you travel a lot or have a demanding job.
Weekly Social Networking Digest
Jeremiah Owyang, who is an analyst with Forrrester Research has a great personal blog called, Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang. Jeremiah has a very useful weekly digest. In this weeks edition, there is a section on Facebook’s financial situation where there are links to a Forbes article that attempts to break down how Facebook could raise $100 million a year through an average cost per user and advertisers per user. Among the interesting statistics in the article is how an average of 0.05% of display ads on Facebook are clicked on, very low!
Finally, there is an equally interesting, and perhaps more relevant link to an article that appeared in BusinessWeek that asks, Does Facebook’s Business Plan Include Premium Memberships?. Since Facebook hit 200 million users this past week, it is a very relevant question to ask. “Most estimates peg Facebook’s revenue at something between $1 and $2 per user annually – assuming $300 million (an unconfirmed figure) from 200 million people – which is quite small for a site with that many regular users, even for a free Web service. Rival social network MySpace, for example, is estimated to take in between $6 and $7 in ad revenues per user. ” If Facebook does in fact make around $1-2 per user, per year, why not charge users a small nominal fee to access the site, say $9.95 a year?
Interesting Weekly Online Dating Video Wrap-up
Mark Brooks from OnlinePersonalsWatch.com has an interesting five minute weekly video summary that he recently started. Take a look at this week’s installment, his second so far.
Online Personals Watch News Summary #2, April 10, 2009 from Mark Brooks on Vimeo.
This is a great way to get caught up on last week’s online dating news. It would be really great if links could appear to the stories that Mark references while speaking. Perhaps the links could even open up in new windows.
Facebook Connect
The idea of DataPortability has always been fascinating to me. From a conversion standpoint, it is significant – allowing a user to log in once and to gain access to the resources of multiple systems is huge. Facebook Connect is perhaps the most well know use of OpenID which enables this seamless facilitation of data.
There is an interesting article that appeared this past week in Venture Beat, “How much US traffic does Facebook Connect get?” The article provides some interesting perspective regarding how much true traffic Facebook Connect may (or may not) actually be receiving.
There is no doubt OpenID will increasingly play a role in our day-to-day usage of the internet and our social lives online. From a marketing standpoint, it has the potential to significantly turbo-charge site membership.
Recession proofing your affiliate marketing
I came across an interesting article by Jonathan Miller called, Recession proofing your affiliate business. There are some interesting points for advertisers to take into consideration. There are Ten main points and they speak volumes.