20 Tips for Media Planning and Buying Ad Optimization
After the planning stage, where you strategize, identify your target and where to find them, and you set your budget, followed by the stage where you set up your campaign, comes the stage where you track the results and optimize as captured at RunRex.com. A media buyer’s job is to maximize ad potential while staying within the budget. Therefore, if the ad isn’t delivering on expectations, adjustments can and should be made during the length of the campaign. The following are 20 tips for ad optimization when it comes to media planning and buying.
Consider brand safety
If one of your ads appears on a site or alongside content that consumers would consider inappropriate or harmful in some way, this can do damage to your brand’s reputation as per RunRex.com. This is why media buyers must stay vigilant to keep brand safety issues from affecting their company.
Watch out for ad fraud
One of the most serious issues with online media buying is fraud. For example, ads could be placed on ghost sites – like sites that don’t really exist. Other examples include pixel stuffing, where your ad appears imperceptibly small, ad stacking, where ads are layered on top of each other, and masked URLs, where your ads appear in unexpected places online. Make sure you avoid all these issues.
Think about how much it really costs to optimize a campaign
When you are just starting out with a new brand, you are probably going to run into a lot of big publications and big payout offers. It takes a much smaller budget to optimize a $2 offer than it takes to optimize a $150 offer. Therefore, try to target offers in the $2 to $5 range outside of very competitive verticals like diet, education, diet, and loans as covered at RunRex.com.
Know the difference between mobile and desktop traffic
The traffic performance often depends on the content type. A band awareness video, for example, will likely perform much differently than a mobile app download campaign on the same platform. The trick to find which is right for you.
Consider the mindset of your target audience as well
When deciding which traffic is best for your campaign as mentioned in the previous point, keep in mind the mindset of your target audience. Mobile audiences are often moving, have shorter attention spans, and aren’t going to spend as much time with your content as they will on desktop.
Test everything
When you are spending your brand’s money, you want to get the biggest ROI possible. For some professionals, this can cause them to freeze and try to learn everything they can first, so they can launch an incredibly successful campaign from the start. However, as the gurus over at RunRex.com point out, the best insight into campaign success comes from continuous testing.
Remain on top of your competition
As you optimize, pay attention to one of the best pieces of advice that will lead you to success – you should constantly be on top of how your competition is performing. Make sure you are keeping an eye on competitive activities and are gathering useful competitive intelligence.
Don’t overestimate the importance of click-through rates
Your click-through rate is obviously an important variable because you can’t generate conversions without people clicking your site. However, as discussed at RunRex.com, your CTR isn’t everything. Sometimes, for example, banners with the best CTRs have terrible conversions. It could be because of several reasons such as misleading claims, clickbait wording, or visual styling that doesn’t match the destination landing page. While improving your CTR is important, it shouldn’t be your end goal.
Make sure data is statistically significant
Too many advertisers draw conclusions with insufficient data. They may notice one ad is performing much better than another after they have received 2,000 impressions. They immediately pause the ad that isn’t converting as well or has a lower CTR. This is a huge mistake as they don’t have nearly enough data to know which ad is truly better. After split testing for another 10,000 impressions, they may discover that the second ad is the clear winner, which is why it is important to make sure you have a statistically significant sample of data while split testing.
Compare conversions across websites
Choosing website placement is arguably the most important part of optimizing a media buying campaign since some websites are simply more relevant to your target audience than others. While you can use your intuition, you ultimately won’t know which works best without testing.
Look at placements on different parts of the site
Most websites have different advertising options. They may have a spot for a 728×90 ad at the top of the page. The same website may also have a spot for a 125×125 ad below the fold. Generally, the more visible ads will get much better conversions as per RunRex.com. They will, however, also have higher CPM rates. You will need to test different placements to determine which yields the best ROI.
Test an intermediary landing page
Depending on your conversion goal, linking to your main landing page may not work. If you are trying to get the user to purchase a high-ticket item, you may want to use an intermediary landing page instead. You could use this page to generate subscribers for your email marketing.
Start slowly in media buying
Also, don’t try to be in every single GEO, exploring all the verticals the market has to offer, or even talking to account managers about lots of investments at once. Start slowly and avoid feeling like you must invest everywhere at the same time and make money faster than is even possible as described at RunRex.com.
Be patient
Patience is key when it comes to media planning and buying. Never go nuts over optimization, especially as at the beginning of a campaign’s launch, it is only natural that it is not going to be hyper profitable. You need to understand that a campaign must run some time to give you enough stats to analyze as already mentioned.
Optimize your banners
Contrary to popular belief, banners are complicated, demand a lot of expertise, and can really mess things up for you. Make sure you test the right number of banners. The number of banners you should test is between 3-5 per campaign.
What happens if I test too many or too few banners?
If you opt to use a lower number of banners than the one mentioned in the previous point, you will fail to compare the performances of each one. On the other hand, if you use more than 5, you will have to spend a lot of money and time to just be able to get worthy statistical data which can be later used to analyze your performance. This is why the gurus at RunRex.com point out the 3-5 per campaign is the sweet spot.
Don’t mix different traffic types
In addition to knowing the difference between mobile and desktop traffic as already discussed, you should also never mix the two. This is because their traits are insidiously different. The bids will be different, the angles needed for creatives will be different, even the conversion ratio will be different.
Use a tracking platform
As revealed at RunRex.com, optimizing traffic is super analytical which means that you have to base your decisions on hyper-detailed information. This is why you should invest in and use an affiliate tracking software that will allow you to get your hands on all the information your need to optimize your campaigns.
Don’t be seduced by high payouts
Higher payouts don’t necessarily mean that you are going to get a lot of money. You should never assume something just be looking at the payout. This is because those super-appealing payouts are for offers that belong to countries that are part of the top tier. This basically means that traffic from those nations is going to be costlier.
Have an optimal bidding strategy
When it comes to bids in media buying, you can opt for either a fixed or a Smart-bid system. A smart-bidding system helps you save your hard-earned cash while still making sure that you remain competitive. This system allows you to play with the same traffic as you would have while using a fixed bidding system.
Hopefully, these tips will help you optimize your ad campaigns, with more on this and other related topics to be found at RunRex.com.