Month: October 2022

As advertisers look for new ways to reach their desired audience, stand out from the competition, and cut through the extremely saturated media environment, they must also consistently keep their brand reputation and safety a priority. Juggling these contrasting tasks is difficult, so finding new and effective strategies to meet these needs and achieve distinct goals is a welcome solution for many brands.

While not a new strategy, advertisers often look to premium ad buys to help alleviate advertising strain. Whether used in isolation or to support open exchange marketplace deals, there are several benefits of premium ads, including:

• Increased brand safety.Premium ad buys allow you to control exactly which sites your ads will run on. This foresight naturally lends to better placements and less likelihood of an untimely PR crisis.
• Targeted ad experiences.These ad buys can get your brand in front of a specific demographic, including one that’s unavailable in the open marketplace.

How Premium Ad Placement Buys Work

Buying premium ads happens via private marketplace (PMP) deals. The process is similar to programmatic ad buys in that premium ad buys occur on demand and in real time. However, purchasing premium ads requires a more exclusive network of buyers and sellers with invite-only access.

Here’s how the buying and selling process works: A publisher opens up premium ad space on its site. For instance, the premium ad space might include hard-to-get above-the-fold ad placements on a homepage. Advertisers who have been invited to bid can bid on placements, and if accepted, the ad is purchased and delivered.

Premium Ad Buys vs. Open Marketplace Deals

Why pay higher prices to run ads? Each brand will have a different reason for choosing premium ad buys. Some companies appreciate being able to have more dependable placements. Others want to protect their brand reputation. One slip-up can be disastrous, such as an ad running next to insensitive, violent, discriminatory, or otherwise brand-unsafe content.

Programmatic media buying is effective in removing these risks with blocklists and privacy censors. But there is always a bit of risk. It isn’t foolproof, and mistakes can still happen.

Private ad exchanges eliminate all potential occurrences of a brand reputation catastrophe. Because advertisers know exactly which list of sites or apps their ads will appear on, they can predict what type of content their advertisements will appear next to. For example, if an advertiser chose to purchase within Expedia’s PMP, the advertiser would know that all ad content would be shown only to consumers looking for hotels, flights, rental cars, etc. With premium ads, there’s no guesswork and little reason to worry.

And while they’re specific, premium ad buys are not limited. Because there is a wide variety of PMPs, you’re not limited by where to purchase premium ads. Say you want to target singles: You could buy premium ad space with Match, Plenty of Fish, OkCupid, or other matchmaking sites. Maybe you want to get in front of specific audiences based on their listening habits, generational makeup, or other attributes. Spotify’s PMP can get your audio, video, and display ads to the right eyes and ears.

Getting Results Through Premium Ad Buys

At Digilant, we’ve helped many brands gain momentum through premium ad buys. In one example, an online weather company wanted to target 25- to 54-year-old adults who owned smartphones to encourage engagement with the company’s latest storm-watching app. Instead of a broad advertising buy approach, we recommended a private marketplace deal across premium that took into account contextual strategy, behavioral data, current events, and behavioral targeting.

So where did we recommend placing ads? Because the time frame of this campaign fell during a season of political debates, we concentrated on news-related PMPs. Within two months, the company experienced more than 4,500 app installations and more than 10 million impressions at a cost per impression of $5.18. Additionally, the company was able to gather more insight into the populations that were most likely to download the app.

So how can you implement premium ad buys in your media strategy like the example above? Begin by following these four suggestions:

1.Find a trustworthy digital advertising partner.

By nature, premium ad buys are exclusive. Not every digital advertising partner has access to the same network and variety of premium publishers. Instead, you should choose a partner with established relationships in the PMP world. Don’t be afraid to ask questions about how they maintain their relationships and whether they have any exclusions or restrictions based on their existing partnerships.

2. Understand premium ad buy pricing and minimums.

Getting your ad on a premium network comes at a price — and the price will start at a minimum. Most PMPs won’t allow you to run only an ad or two. Instead, they’ll require a certain investment across their network. If you feel that premium ad buys will be important to your overall strategy, you need to know all pricing upfront. That way, you can target a particular site without abruptly shifting campaign budgets around at the last minute.

3. Know your audience well.

You need to ensure you get the most bang for your premium ad buck. Media spending will be wasted if your ad isn’t placed in front of a relevant audience. Knowing your audience will help you choose the right digital advertising partner that has relationships with the PMPs you need. Take time to drill down into your target personas. You’ll be glad you did because you’ll have more effective premium ad buys.

4. Plan for seasonal fluctuations.

Most premium ad pricing increases toward the end of the year due to an increased demand for holiday-centric advertising. However, prices can fluctuate at other times depending on the niche category of each PMP. (Consider our previous PMP deal example that was within a news network. During election cycles, the PMP will charge higher prices for ad space.) You want to acknowledge this ahead of time to plan your budget accordingly.

Ready to try premium ad buys as part of your overall strategy? Get in touch with Digilant to learn more about our extensive network of PMP inventory today.

Most advertisers know that Google is poised to remove third-party cookies. Although the removal was delayed, it remains imminent, which means your use of third-party cookies for target audience advertising will have to evolve.

As the industry actively pivots to find different solutions and technologies to target consumers, one of the key areas marketers are weary of is the future of retargeting. Without the use of third-party cookies, marketers are questioning how to set up a retargeting campaign once the change goes live.

Luckily, there is already a solution available. Marketers can use alternative forms of data such as second- and first-party data to target audiences. However, in order to successfully implement this targeting, businesses must have an effective customer relationship management (CRM) platform.

A CRM platform is a tool used to manage, organize, and share your company’s interactions, communications, and relationships with current and future customers (first-party data). Establishing a CRM that serves your company’s goals is essential when implementing this data into your strategies as an alternative to third-party data and navigating first-party vs. third-party cookies. Currently, the most popular CRMs in the U.S. are Salesforce, Oracle, Zoho, monday.com, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Freshsales.

An effective CRM platform will enable you to run retargeting campaigns with the data you gather. Ideally, if a customer abandoned their cart, signed up for a newsletter, downloaded content from your website, or requested a quote, all of this information is stored in your CRM. With this information, you can create personalized experiences based on your customers’ previous interactions with your brand. If a customer abandons their cart, you can send an email offering free shipping. If they sign up for a newsletter, send an email thanking them for subscribing.

So, what is CRM retargeting? A CRM retargeting service allows you to create custom audience segments based on the interactions stored in your CRM. You can then use this information to run ad campaigns targeting these audiences. This solution doesn’t rely on third-party cookies, while still creating a personalized experience for your consumer.

An Overview of CRM Retargeting

Before you lean on a new CRM retargeting strategy, it’s essential to understand some of the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating CRM retargeting into your digital advertising retargeting strategy. There are several advantages to using CRM retargeting, including:

• Creates a more personalized customer experience
• Provides “interest” audience segmentation to tailor your ads and differentiated retargeting strategies between consumers
• Allows you to focus on high-value prospects that have gone cold
• Implements cross-sell and up-sell strategies
• Accommodates for interaction with consumers through direct email messages

CRM retargeting yields smarter, more efficient ROI. It relies on consumers’ specific experiences with your brand to determine which ad experiences they should receive with retargeting strategies. With CRM retargeting, you are meeting consumers where they are in the sales funnel, allowing them to move down the funnel more efficiently.

And while CRM retargeting is a great strategy for any brand, it has specific benefits for B2B digital marketers because it aligns well with ABM strategies. It enables you to hone in on critical decision-makers at companies. Rather than solely communicating with them via “traditional” channels like phone, email, or text, you can reach them throughout the decision-making process with more targeted messages. CRM retargeting works in tandem with ABM to get personalized messages to specific accounts.

The disadvantages are few, but CRM retargeting does require regular maintenance and upkeep to ensure timely data. It also requires buy-in from your entire organization to confirm you are keeping up with all customer interactions.

Best Strategies for Implementing CRM Retargeting

Incorporating a new marketing strategy isn’t always easy, but the advantages of CRM retargeting are worth ample consideration as Google shifts away from third-party cookies. If your organization is new to CRM retargeting, here are a few of the best strategies for effective implementation:

1. Prioritize first-party data.

The success of a CRM retargeting strategy hinges on the quality of your data. Start investing in growing, organizing, and implementing processes that incorporate first-party data. You can begin by considering different ways to gather more first-party data and answering the following questions:

• How can you can prioritize building good first-party data?
• What content on your website should be gated to access email addresses?
• How can you gather and organize contacts you gain at events and exhibitions?
• What buy-in do you need from other teams to continue to update contact interactions and information?

Once you have these strategies in place, its essential for the data to stay up-to-date. Keeping data relevant and updated will help your team understand exactly where each contact is in the customer journey and allow for further personalized marketing experiences.

2. Define your audiences.

As these interactions get recorded by your CRM, you’ll need to use this information to categorize and segment the audience before uploading them into an ad network for targeting. This is an excellent time to look at where your current consumers are falling off in the sales funnel and prioritize this segment. After identifying priority accounts, you can then move to additional strategies to target consumers no matter where they are in the customer journey.

3. Think several steps ahead.

The key to an effective CRM retargeting campaign is to think ahead. Let’s say your campaign was successful and a CRM-retargeted lead made an online purchase. How do you continue to foster that lead and make them a regular customer? Conversely, a different lead in your CRM campaign clicked on your ad but abandoned their cart. How do you continue the interaction in these cases? Thinking about these scenarios a few steps in advance will ensure the personalized experience doesn’t stop after a respective campaign ends.

If you are new to CRM retargeting, it can be challenging to know where to start. Focus on finding ways to gather quality first-party data. Doing so will ultimately provide the foundation for better customer interactions and conversions down the line.

At Digilant, we’re here to help. Contact us here to learn more about finding a CRM solution for your business and how to implement it to meet your specific needs.