Guest Columnist: Top Tips for Optimizing Online Ad Campaigns
Optimization remains a particularly hot topic in advertising today. Technology continues to evolve to support sell-side initiatives and help publishers ensure they deliver to their advertisers' objectives, while also enabling publishers to compete more effectively and remain relevant to their clients. When thinking about optimization, I've identified five considerations publishers should be taking into account.
1.Optimization is campaign critical, not just optional…
Optimization is no longer just a campaign nicety, but rather a central requirement that is expected by advertisers—whether the campaign's goal is to bolster brand recognition or performance. Proof of this fact can be found in a survey conducted by Maxifier, which highlighted that a performance campaign is optimized an average of 11 times across its duration, while a typical brand campaign is optimized only seven times.
As campaign media plans are constantly being revised and budgets reallocated to those areas that are delivering the best results, frequent optimization is a necessity; publishers who do not optimize face the risk of being removed from media plans. In fact, our research showed approximately one in ten websites are dropped from campaigns due to underperformance. To avoid joining those dropped websites, and the subsequent impact on revenues, optimization is increasingly essential for every advertiser's campaign, not simply a proportion of them.
2. …but it's not always just about performance.
The primary task of optimization is to ensure that the overall goals of advertisers are met. Since the arrival of online advertising, the success of digital ads has been based upon metrics such as how many people actually click on an ad. Thus, the definition of a successful campaign has long been based on direct response metrics, which, although very easy to capture and measure, do not give an accurate summary of an ad's impact (how often do YOU click on a banner ad?).
