Again it’s me, Chandler.
I am quite happy today because a couple of readers of this blog told me that the content is quite useful and comprehensive for certain topic. And because they are totally new to this industry so they also mentioned that there are concepts that i need to illustrate more or explain better.
I appreciate all of the comments and so i will try to balance out and not going too deep into complicated concepts in introductory posts.
Today is about Online Display Advertising. The reason i write about Online Display Advertising even though this blog focuses on Search Engine Marketing is because in terms of Digital Advertising solution, you simply can’t ignore Online Display Advertising as one of the channel.
The following topics will be covered:
1. What is online Display Advertising?
2. Display Advertising in Singapore
3. How to get the most out of online Display Advertising solution?
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1. Online Display Advertising: the concept
Display Advertising, in simple words, is referred to banner advertising whether it’s online or offline.
For Online Display Advertising, it simply means using online banner (static or dynamic banners) displayed on target websites to convey the message to target audience.
As you can see from the above, the key thing is whether or not the traffic is targeted. I will cover more about this part on part 3.
For online banner size, formats, it could be in one of the followings:
- Leaderboard position or Super position: 728×90 (WxH) in pixel (like Yahoo Mail)
- Skyscraper position: 120×600 (WxH) (YouTube)
- Fat or wide Skyscraper position: 160×600 (WxH) (YouTube or Yahoo Movies)
- Rectangle: 180×150 (WxH) (Yahoo Mail)
- etc…
Beside these static banners, there are dynamic banners in rich media formats, interactive formats, which are of the same size with their respective static banners but they can produce some movement and interactive with users.
On YouTube and other websites in Singapore, you can even see video ads.
As for the pricing model, normally for Online Display Ads, the media owner charges by CPM, Cost per 1 thousand ads impressions.
For Google, you can choose either pay by CPC or CPM.
Please take note here that Google doesn’t allow the display of any banner ads on its Google.com page. Banner ads are available on sites under Google content network only.
Some media owners package their display banner in such a way that instead of CPM or CPC, advertisers pay a fixed monthly fee to occupy a certain position.
Another point to take note is advertisers need to ask whether they are sharing the position with other advertisers or not, hence the concept of share of voice (SOV).
For example, if you share the ads position with two other advertisers, meaning your ads will be displayed 30% of the time, so the Share of Voice is 30%
In many cases, it’s too expensive for the banner to be displayed all the times on certain position, so advertisers can choose to display their ads 10% of the times or 20%, 30%, 40% etc…
Hence the Share of voice is 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% respectively.
2. Online Display Advertising in Singapore:
In Singapore, these are the top websites/properties that people know of: Yahoo portals, MSN Live Chat/MSN portal, ESPN SoccerNet, AsiaOne, Hardwarezone, eBay, friendster, streetdirectory,
However, it would be awfully inadequate if advertisers think that their choices are limited to a few of these sites. There are many more websites that they can use. In fact, more and more website publishers offer banner ads on their site.
Advertisers should do more research, asking more interactive agencies to have more options.
Alternatively, advertisers can come to agencies that have their own network of websites so that they can have one contact point and able to display their ads on multiple site.
This type of agency (online advertising network) is harder to find but it’s worth the effort since you don’t have to deal with multiple publishers. More importantly, they have a neutral standpoint, so they will be able to recommend a better solution for you (most of the times) compared to Yahoo sales house or AsiaOne sales house whether the sales consultant can only sell one product.
In any cases, online display ads in Singapore is growing and it’s growing quite fast. For once, the concept is easy to understand, people are very familiar with banners on website so you eliminate one big objection right there compared to keyword-targeted ads.
Also, people start to see the effectiveness of having a good combination of both offline and online campaigns.
You can refer to the article about AdRelevance in Singapore launched by Nielsen//NetRatings to understand more about the industry.
3. How to get the most out of online Display Advertising Solution:
It’s all start with advertisers’ mind set.
Instead of doing the same thing, like display your ads on Yahoo home page or MSN Live Chat window, start to think along the line of:
- What is your target audience? the demographics: age, gender, marital status, income, online behavior etc…
- Explore different websites or contact online advertising network to find out which website / group of websites have the user demographics that match your target audience.
- Take note of the sync between your online display campaign and offline (Above the line) campaign
- Define your advertising objectives clearly: what are the criteria you will use to judge the performance of the ads.
- Choose the suitable ads format
- Can you track your advertising objectives: sales, leads etc…
- In many cases, a online display campaign needs to combine with a Pay Per Click (search) campaign simply because after people see the ads they may not click on the ads right the way but remember the brand ; after a few days they may go to the search engine and do a search. So the question is how easy do you want them to find you.
- Can your tracking software differentiate online traffic between people who see the ads and click on it and buy some thing or sign up VS people who see the ads, a few days later they do a search on search engine and go to the site to buy stuff or sign up? It’s crucial to know this information if you are ROI (return on investment) focus or want to track number of leads.
The reason is simply because without the advanced tracking capability advertisers often
think that online display ads do not bring sales in as much as other medium. In fact, the potential buys may very well be exposed to the brand because of the display ads and then subsequently they make the purchase.
I have a few more points but it’s 1.44 in the morning so i guess you need to do some research on your own then.
I will leave this as such to conclude the introductory post about Online Display Advertising. The hybrid relationship between Search Engine Marketing and Online Display Ad is explained briefly above. More in dept explanation or analysis is beyond the scope the this post. My intention is to let advertisers aware of such relationship.
Ok, Good night!
Chandler