Vantage Point: Ideas and advice to improve your marketing

7 Tips for Online Media Buys

Jane Hendrickson, media planner

Making decisions about how to leverage online venues for advertising is a lot like the process used to decide where to place print ads. But the similarities end once you’ve done your analysis about who (audience), what (campaign), when (frequency), where (venues, placement, size) and why (awareness vs. lead generation). With online advertising, there’s much more flexibility in measuring visibility and responding to trends. Here are some tips to remember when planning your online buys as well as how take advantage of the electronic medium of the Internet.

1) Set a goal. Whether the goal is brand awareness or lead generation, your online advertising strategy and tactical execution must reflect a clear objective. If your objective is to create awareness, run banner ads with impressions spread over longer periods of time. For lead generation, consider pay-per-click (PPC) with a deadline-driven promotional offer.

2) Segment sites and examine traffic. Analyze sites first by industry (e.g. education, manufacturing) and by audience (e.g. CIOs, architects), then by visibility and price. Determine your budget for the desired coverage (impression levels, size, placement), keeping in mind that it’s important not to spread your budget too thin—especially on larger sites like msn or cnet.

3) Identify competitors’ online strategies. Are they focused on awareness or lead generation? What are their messages? Which sites have they chosen? What should your share of voice be in order to be heard?

4) Estimate the response rate. The success of your program is measured in terms of impressions/clicks. In establishing your threshold ratio,. consider that average click-through-rates can range from 0.15% - 0.30%, depending upon the industry and site. Ask the site ad rep what typical low/high/average rates are.

5) Have a strategy for click-through destination. Where will the ads lead? If you’re using a promotional offer, make sure the click-through lands smack-dab in the promotional information. (Shouldn’t click-through opportunities be sprinkled throughout the ad? What about landing page content?)

Now you know what you need to make an intelligent online media buy that’s within your budget and prepared for click-throughs. The old adage of frequency still applies—better to have more coverage on fewer sites. However, with online advertising, you have an opportunity to ‘test’ sites and messages quickly to guide decisions on bigger commitments. So, spread your buys for a few weeks; then determine which sites and ad creative deliver desired results.

Which brings us to the final two tips:

6) Monitor, monitor, monitor. Online advertising has unparalleled flexibility when it comes to making coverage and creative decisions on-the-fly. This means you need to monitor your buys weekly at the very least. Watch delivery—negotiated impressions are guaranteed, so track by site, content area and creative unit. Is the site on pace to run all contracted impressions in the defined time period? Or did the site fall short and deliver only ½ of your impressions in the first week? It’s easy to adapt a delivery pace, but it’s up to you to keep an eye on it.

7) Have a readily available creative team. No matter how organized you are, it’s not uncommon to have to crank out one more ad size or file format at the last minute. Having a seasoned, quick and reliable creative team familiar with online formats gives you flexibility to quickly respond to traffic analyses.

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