Ask anyone. Especially any of the creative teams I’ve worked with. I am slightly (no, that’s a lie - extremely) obsessive-compulsive when it comes to optimizing the interactive marketing campaigns my clients are running. I can often improve ROI by at least 100% by carefully reviewing metrics and optimizing the creative for each buy on the media plan. It’s not brain surgery, but it does require some attention (and maybe an anxiety disorder) to get an interactive campaign to produce significant results.
Unfortunately, I’m often told that banner campaigns do not work. What has generally happened in this case is… the creative was developed in a silo, with no understanding of the sites it was going to run on or the targeting that was going to be used. Also, usually only one creative execution was developed. Then the banner was sent to the sites and allowed to run for the entire length of the campaign. Then a post-campaign report was run. Shockingly, the banners underperformed the industry average (now less than 0.20%).
Face it - your banner campaign needs some love, on a regular basis to produce the results you need. To run a successful banner campaign you must:
- Make the creative relevant to the site & the targeting - this is the most important part
- Develop multiple creative executions so you can remove underperforming creative and learn what produced the best results. It’s hard not to get attached to your creative, but you need to stay objective. Sometimes the creative you like best is the one that produces the worst results.
- Track weekly (at least) so that decisions can be made about the campaign
- Track through a third-party ad server or campaign analytics tool (like DART, Atlas, Eyeblaster, Bluestreak, etc) to provide the data you need to make decisions
- Tie metrics to more than just clicks - if you are using a third-party ad server, take advantage of their post-click tracking*
All of the above can’t guarantee phenomenal results, but they will almost always improve your current campaign. If you increase your results by even 20%, you made your investment in those media buys that much more valuable. Plus, you learned a lot - all of which you can apply to your next campaign.
I’d be interested to hear how others are doing with their banner campaigns.
* Post-click Tracking involves placing a tag on specific pages of your sites (such as your resume submission confirmation/thank you page) in order to track campaigns through actions taken on the site. You can track your banner campaigns all the way down to resume submissions, instead of just relying on clicks. Sometimes a site produces a lot of clicks, but not a lot of resumes. This tagging also allows you to see something called view-throughs. View-throughs are when someone sees your banner, does not click, but visits your site later. View-throughs measure the branding effect of your ads better than click-throughs.
