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Advertisers, Dating traffic, Market trends, Native advertising, Tips

Top Native Ad Tips for online dating offers on Valentine’s Day 2023

Giles Hirst - January 24, 2023

Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and love is in the air! Connecting with others is a basic human need, everywhere you go, whoever you ask – We are social creatures, so from building friendships, to finding true love, this is an important area of our lives. Because a big part of our interactions happen online, the online dating market is incredibly expansive. It caters for every possible human interest and hobby, from sports to music, age groups, ethnicity to religion, there is a dating site for every possible genre.

According to Statista, Revenue in the Online Dating vertical is expected to show an annual growth rate of 9.3%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$4,230m by 2024. User penetration will be 4.9% in 2021 and is expected to hit 5.7% by 2024. The average revenue per user is expected to amount to US$8.76.

One of the best formats to promote dating offers are Native ads, which are ads that have been designed to look exactly like the editorial content of a website they are being placed on. They consist of:

#1 An image which will appear like a content thumbnail e.g. like a video screenshot, article or editorial. The image should be 300x300px.
#2 A short title for a catchy headline (max. 50 characters)
#3 A short description (max. 90 characters) to expand on your catchy title
#4 A Brand name (max. 30 characters) to ensure quality clicks as the end user knows it is an ad.

Once the ads assets are uploaded within your admin panel, the ad becomes fully responsive and can be used on desktop, mobile and tablet ad campaigns. Bidding is CPM and CPC.

Here are the network’s CTRs for native ads, worldwide, by continent.

Are you an advertiser trying to make the most of this ever-growing market with Native ads? At Adnation we have put together a series of tips to help you bring your dating offers to the right audience during Valentine’s Day 2023!

Native Tips to push your online dating offers on Valentine’s Day

Tip! Use psychology: Native ads are perfect for the dating vertical because they look exactly like the editorial content of a website, catering for a very immersive user experience. Getting high CTRs with Native Ads is all about psychology: it’s a matter of getting creative and creating meaningful and engaging content. The Ad’s texts and creatives should capture the viewer’s interest and spark their curiosity. Make an end user want to click on your ad by using images that visually support your title and description.

Tip! Work the creatives: You could spark their curiosity using a question on the title: “Are you single? Find out who wants to meet you!”, use statistics and facts: “9 out of 10 women like flirting”, and similar. Make sure that the image reflects what’s in the text.

Tip! Editorial style landings: The key to converting with native is that your landing page is not as sales oriented. It should be informed to the end user. You could offer tips such as where to go on a first date, questions and conversation tips for a first date, epic dating fails to avoid on your dates. Make sure that the landing page’s text matches the ad’s creative.

TIP! Keep it young: Younger daters are used to apps like TikTok, Instagram, etc, so use similar styles in the creative for your ads such as popular filter types and effects, the same brand colors (not the logos, that is copyright infringement) and fonts for your texts.

TIP! Use emojis: Use lots of emojis and abbreviated expressions such as LOL. You need to talk to your audience in the same language they use within these dating sites, apps and groups, so write your ad’s copy in the same way that they communicate.

TIP! All things Valentine’s: Adapt your marketing creatives to keep them fresh and relevant. Because we are talking about Valentine’s, add Valentine’s Day imagery such as cupids, roses, hearts, and refresh the texts to reflect this Holiday.

TIP! Portray your dating niche: There are so many interests and niches in the dating market. Your creatives should reflect the specific dating niche you are targeting. For instance, if you are advertising offers for a dating site that caters for pet lovers, show it in your creatives and texts. Alos, make sure to apply very adjusted targeting to your specific niche.

TIP! Use dynamic tokens: Use dynamic tokens to change texts within your campaign depending on where your user is based, the device they are using, etc. This is a really useful feature, particularly for GEO targeting and can really help increase conversions. There are options to automatically translate the texts into a selection of different languages. Some tokens could be {country_name}, {region}, {city}, {language_name}, {operating_system}, {device}, {carrier} and {browser}.

TIP! Language Keywords: Keyword insertion language distribution automatically translates the keyword insertion token into the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese depending on location.

TIP! Set up test campaigns: Because Native CPM bids are low, Native is perfect for test campaigns, or why not run a Native campaign in tandem with a push notification ad campaign? Use them to retarget a user who has clicked on a campaign you are running with another ad format.

TIP! Use The Bidder: The Bidder is a Smart Assistant designed to run in the background, learning to help you optimize your campaigns. You can use it to set blocking rules to spruce off underperforming ad zones, and for automatic bidding optimization. That means that you can use the Bidder running in the background, automatically optimizing your campaigns, helping you pick out the best performing zones and giving you the best returns for bids.

TIP! CPC or CPM? When setting up your Native dating campaign, use the CPC bidding model and the Bidder to start with, in order to get RON traffic from across the whole network and CPC is cheaper than Smart CPM to run a test campaign because you only pay for clicks. Over the course of a week or so, the Bidder will automatically identify good converting ad zones for you. Once you have a whitelist of good converting ad zones, you can reduce your costs by switching to Smart CPM and only targeting your whitelist ad zones.

TIP! Use Conversion Tracking: Conversion tracking is an essential part of advertising. By doing conversion tracking, you will be able to see how many sales, leads or installs you are getting from these campaigns and get an accurate picture of the profitability from the traffic. This tool is specifically useful when used along with The Bidder.

TIP! Use Variation Optimization: If you are running CPM campaigns, you can enable Variation Optimization so as to send the majority of traffic to the variation that generates the most conversions to increase the user engagement and improve your exposure. There are 3 algorithms:

#1 Even: Variations that have the same CPM will have traffic evenly distributed between them.
#2 Automatic CTR (Default): Traffic will be distributed between the variations based on their CTR.
#3 Automatic on Conversion Rate: The Advertiser chooses a conversion tracking goal. The variation with the highest conversion rate for that goal will get more traffic.

TIP! Use Landing Page Optimizations: Use our Landing Page algorithms so that the best performing landing page gets the most traffic. Remember that native ads, especially within the dating genre, call for editorial style landings pages, blog style, tips and tricks, etc. To make sure that you are catering to your specific audience, test out different landing styles to see what works best. There are three different algorithms to choose from:

#1 Even: Traffic is spread out evenly between different landing pages, so if you use 4 different landing pages, 25% will be sent to each page.
#2 Fixed: Enables you to define the exact percentage of traffic each landing page will receive, for example, landing page A 10%, landing page B 15%, landing page C 35% and landing page D 40%.
#3 Automatic Optimization: This algorithm, that we have based on the multi-armed bandit algorithm, optimizes traffic distribution based on conversion tracking results. So the landing page that is performing the best will automatically receive most of the traffic, while continuously testing against existing landing pages and any new page that is introduced.

Don’t miss out on the most important day for Dating of the year. Set up your Native campaign now to maximize your ROI. For more information and Tips on Native ads, visit our blog.

News, Ukraine

Give Peace A Chance: AdNation Stands With Ukraine

Giles Hirst - March 4, 2022

Like everyone, we are concerned about what is happening in Ukraine and our goal is to help refugees who are fleeing the country. We are 100% against this war and support Ukraine and everyone living there, under these terrible and ongoing conditions.

Give Peace a Chance Campaign

We have created a global awareness ad campaign to help raise donations for UNICEF Ukraine, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the following additional Official Organizations:

Ukrainian and British Red Cross which use funds for food, medical supplies, shelter and water.

Nova Ukraine, a Ukraine-based non-profit that provides civilians with everything from baby food and hygiene products to clothes and household supplies.

Voices of Children, a charity that focuses on helping children recover from the psychological trauma of war.

Save The Children is raising money for the Ukrainian children who are in grave danger of physical harm, severe emotional distress and displacement.

Doctors Without Borders, whose base in Ukraine provides treatments for a range of regional diseases and medical problems.

And promoting the Change.org petition to Stop The War

Here’s how it works

We are asking all our publishers on our network to donate 1% or more of their traffic for a 300×250 banner spot and Popunder traffic. We have created 4 different banner creatives and a Landing Page with the above donation links so that websites’ end users that click on the banners can donate and sign the petition.

Here are the banner creatives:

Here is the Landing Page:

The banners, popunders and Landing Page are in the following languages: English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Portuguese and Chinese. On 4 March AdNation launched campaigns for the donated ad zones. The Give Peace a Chance campaign will initially run for 7 days.

Please note: AdNation does not support political ads, the sole purpose of this campaign is to raise money for donations to help the soon to be millions of refugees leaving Ukraine.

If you are an AdNation publisher who wants to get involved, please contact your account manager.

Peace for Ukraine! Join us!

Advertisers, Marketing, Native advertising, Offer, Tips, Video advertising

How to get better performance from ad campaigns: 5 campaign optimisation tips

Giles Hirst - December 16, 2021

The big question is always: how to get better performance from ad campaigns? It can be very challenging when it comes to campaign optimization. It raises many issues that you will need to make decisions on after collecting and analyzing campaign data. In fact, data is the key to online marketing and is essential to the success of any ad campaign.

Online marketing has evolved into a massive industry where competition is strong. Additionally, advertising costs have also increased, which has made it more difficult for affiliates to identify the winning campaigns. Big data enables you to create effective marketing strategies that will increase revenue growth and help you identify the most significant variables to decide which campaigns have the potential to generate the most revenue and margins.

How to get better performance from ad campaigns

Once your campaign has generated conversions and shown some profit, it’s time to check its performance. How to get better performance from ad campaigns is all down to the optimization process in order to boost those numbers. Let’s break it down into 5 campaign parts to make it easier to optimize for better perfomance:

Winning the right traffic

Ad formats and creatives

Landing Page/Website Content

Landing page testing

Offer/product

All five parts are important when it comes to optimization, and it is necessary to work with all these aspects together because each one of them works as a gear in the optimization process. Maybe you targeted the wrong audience, or maybe your landing page is not attractive enough to potential customers. Maybe you have done everything perfectly, but the product is no longer interesting to consumers. You will discover these insights when you analyze the generated data. Once you have identified where the problem is, you can determine what campaign optimization needs to be implemented, allowing you to focus on working to get higher revenues.

#1 Winning the right traffic

You need to win traffic from other advertisers to make sure your ad is displayed in the ad zone. The traffic source needs to be of decent quality, which means you need to target websites that contain quality content. Websites that provide a great end user experience with the right balance of ad formats and navigation around the content. The website’s audience should be the most relevant audience that is likely to be interested in your product or service. Take a deeper look at audience targeting. AdNation offers a large range of targeting features including GEO, Language, Device, OS, Browser, Mobile Carrier, IP Range, Site, Contextual, Keyword, Frequency Capping and Day-parting. When setting up your test campaign to generate data before you launch full campaigns it is recommended that you keep the targeting wide, to ensure you generate enough data. Also set up separate test campaigns for different devices, and for mobile set up separate campaigns for iOS and Android. It is recommended to test campaigns for at least a week (including weekends) and set a daily budget of around $50-$100.

Tip! Use our Bidder tool: It lets you reach your desired CPA for test and full campaigns, automatically block non-performing ad zones and win high performing ad zones. It works by automatically adjusting (up/down) your CPM/CPC bids according to your target CPAs and blacklists ad zones that haven’t converted when your maximum test budget is reached. For even further campaign optimization you can also create your own rules to block ad zones based on the rules you set for CTR, Click, Conversion or ROI. You can add as many rules as you like to fine tune the algorithm.

Tip! Use AdNation’s free Conversion Tracking tool to keep an eye on your ROI in real-time. There are many benefits to analyzing conversion tracking data, check out our blog post: 13 Benefits of Conversion Tracking.

Both of these tools are great assets and will guide you in how to get better performance from ad campaigns.

#2 Ad Formats and Creatives

Choosing the right ad formats and creatives can make all the difference in making the user’s click or not. Clicking is how to get better performance from your ad campaigns. So, in this step, you should check and test different creatives and examine if your creatives are appealing enough for your target. If the ad placement or ad format type is the right one. Video ads tend to generate a higher CTR than display ads such as banners, popunders are also a great choice because of their large size. Native is a great way to generate leads because this format is designed to look like the content of a website. Popunders are a large format that gives you plenty of creative space to entice the end user with your product. Popunders can be static images or videos, which are great for product demos of your product and can be very engaging. Direct links have the advantage of not needing a visual, but you need to incorporate the CTA into the text, or use the text more subtly within the content of an article. All of your creative choices that you will test against each other here are one of the keys to knowing how to get better performance from ad campaigns.

#3 Landing page/website content

So clicking helps you get better performance from your ad campaigns, because you have sparked the target consumers interest. However, it is the sales driven landing page or your product page that is the key to getting conversions. Quality content is one of the most important elements of any landing page or product page. This will help your leads convert and purchase. It’s particularly important to write your content according to the benefits of the product, what pain point can it fix for the end user. How much does it cost, rember to include any hidden fees or it will look dishonest. If it is a physical product, how quickly can the end user recieve it and at what cost. Generally, the types of content which drive conversions are:

Blog posts to support the product uses and benefits.
In depth product reviews, links to influecner videos on Youtube can be used as a free marketing tool for you.
Testimonials from users can greatly help as each one discusses the particular need that the product met for them.
Case studies, which are similar to testimonials, but go into greater depth about the product uses and benefits.
Tutorials and guides can be useful because the end user gets insights on how to use the product and they can picture using it in their lives.
Use lots of imagery of the product and people enjoying using it. Static images and videos can convery this for you.

#4 Landing Page testing

After a user has clicked on your ad a link takes them to your Landing Page, here you can explain more about your offer or product, but have you ever identified lots of clicks but few or no conversions? This is a clear sign that something is not working as well as it should be.

In order to get the best performance out of your campaigns, a great strategy is to have several landing pages or pre-landers for the same offer that is being promoted. You can do this by using the Landing Pages tab in the Campaigns tab. Here you can manage all these different URLs so that you can easily add them to campaigns and track their results.

Tip! Use AdNation’s landing page algorithms that work by automating the traffic sent to your landing pages. There are 3 different algorithms:

Even Distribution: Traffic will spread evenly between the different landing pages. For example, if you have two landing pages, the traffic will split by half for each. If there are 3, each will receive 33% of the traffic.
Fixed Share: Using fixed share you can define the exact percentage of traffic each landing page should receive.
Automatic Optimization: The system will assign a bigger share of traffic based on its results. To use this option, you should have created a “Goal” first, which will be factored in when determining which landing page has the best results.

Again, an excellent free tool on AdNations’ platform, automation is a essential in online marketing today, which is how to get better performance from ad campaigns – automatically!

#5 Offer/Product

In the final stage, you should look to see if the offer by itself is good or not. Here, the main thing to do is check to see if you have set the campaign up correctly, so all the information is being tracked well. You can do this with AdNation’s Conversion Tracking tool, or any third party tool like Voluum, Cake, ThriveTracker, etc. Your conversion tracking data and campaign statistics can help you see what needs to be improved and optimized. Giving you detailed control of the numbers regarding how to get better performance from ad campaigns.

Advertisers, Tips, Video advertising

5 reasons to test Outstream video campaigns

Giles Hirst - November 11, 2021

Outstream is a video ad format that can be considered more like a video display ad here are 5 reasons to test Outstream video campaigns!

#1 How the format is viewed by the end user: Think of Outstream video as a display ad that happens to be a video. The Outstream Video ad is shown to an end user during their user journey, as the user scrolls down the page the ad zone pushes the website’s content down and the Outstream ad starts being visible to the user. This really captures the user’s attention giving your video ad a much higher view ratio.

#2 Its great value: Outstream video tends to be less expensive then In-Stream and comes with a choice of bidding options: CPM where you only pay for viewable impressions when the video ad starts playing on the user’s screen, CPC where you pay per user click and CPV where you only pay for video views of 10 seconds and over.

#3 High CTRs: The click rate is higher for Outstream video compared to standard display ads.

Global Banner CTRs: 0.3%
Global Outstream CTRs: 1.2%

#4 It’s a powerful tool for engagement: Video ad formats have the highest CTR because they have the potential to really entertain an end user, much more than a static display image. With video content you can tell a story about your offer to really engage end users, which will make them want to know more by clicking on your video ad.

#5 Great for contextual advertising: Use keyword targeting to reach users who are interested in a particular niche that is related to your offer. Ensure that your video ad’s content relates to the keyword you are targeting because that will bring value to the end user and will generate more clicks for your offer.

Marketing, Publishers, Tips

Using Async ad tags with WordPress

Giles Hirst - October 26, 2021

If you are monetising your content using WordPress, did you know that you can integrate display ad banners using AdNation’s Async ad tags?

4 reasons why you should use Async Tags

1 Your site content will be able to load while the ads are loading. This will increase performance when used on well-optimized sites

2 You to use a single request to get multiple ad zones on the same page. This is more efficient and will lead to a performance increase also

3 Avoids using some outdated JavaScript features which many developers are moving away from

4 Google rankings of sites are partially based on performance, so the performance increase can result in improved Google ranking also

In this tutorial I will show you how to add Asynchronous ad codes to a Page or Post in WordPress.

Method 1 – Standard integration: How to add Async ad codes to a Page/Post

Step 1: Login to your WordPress dashboard.

Step 2: In the navigation menu click the Pages or Posts link, depending which one you want to add content to. For the purpose of this tutorial we clicked Posts.

Step 3: Now, click the page or post that you want to edit.

Step 4: Click on the Convert to HTML button.

Step 5: You will then see the text of the Page or Post and you can enter the HTML. In our example we are adding the Async ad code.

You can also add in keywords for better categorization of your content to attract contextual advertisers, and/or use subIds for better segmentation of your traffic.

Step 6: Click Update to save your changes. Here is what an example looks like:

Method 2 – Using Plugins

Plugins are external integrations which are implemented by 3rd party providers. With this option you would need to check carefully which plugins fit your needs best. You may need to try several until you find the correct one. Additionally, certain cache plugins can affect the ads displaying. We recommend that you only add plugins that come from a reputable source. Below are some links to plugins that are compatible with ExoClick’s system:
Add JavaScript to Entire WordPress Site Using Insert Headers and Footers Plugin
Adding Javascript Code Inside WordPress Posts or Pages Using a Plugin
Code Embed Plugin

Method 3 – Disable WordPress filtering of script tags

With this method you would need to add code to your WordPress files. Here are some links explaining how to do this:
3 ways to insert JavaScript into WordPress pages or posts
Adding JavaScript Code to WordPress Manually Using Code
How to Add Javascript (files or scripts) Without Breaking Your WordPress Site

Congratulations, now you know how to add the Async ad codes to a WordPress Page or Post!

Publishers, SEO, Tips

5 ways to boost your website’s Google rankings

Giles Hirst - October 6, 2021

Having a good ranking with Google SERP can make all the difference between getting daily organic traffic or never having a single visitor to your website. Here are 5 ways to boost your website’s Google rankings.

#1 Create a great user experience

Google’s goal for it’s algorithm is based around providing your website visitor with an optimal experience. If your page is slow to load or difficult to navigate, Google will penalise you. Here’s how to fix that:

Optimize your images by using the smallest file size that delivers the results you want and minimize redirects both internally and in your outgoing links.

Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check that your page has a speed of 80 or higher.

Access the Core Web Vitals Report on your Google Search Console to identify and fix additional issues.

#2 Only publish quality content

To get rewarded by Google, ensure that your content is useful and in-depth. Keywords are not enough, you should also include related terms and subtopics in order to build semantic relationships and rank for keyword clusters. Here are two tools that can help you find related subtopics and will also score your content: Market Muse and Surfer SEO.

#3 Make your content interactive

Written content is important for SEO, but so is engagement. Creating interactive ‘clickable’ content could be to include videos, infographics, audio clips or expandable content. This creates an engaging and captivating experience for site visitors, which Google’s algorithm loves! Just make sure that site speed isn’t affected.

#4 Get some high quality backlinks

High-quality backlinks are an essential element of SEO, so search for high-authority sites where your content might be relevant to visitors and contact the webmaster or page editor. It is important to use Anchor text such as your company name or one of your priority keywords. It is important not to focus on volume, but just a few good links, to be effective.

#5 Use Advanced HTML Tags

Using some advanced HTML Tags can help Google index your content better, which will help your site rank higher. Here are some things to try:

The meta tag: this needs to incorporate the most important keyword and topic while being engaging to readers

Heading tags: Use these strategically and are great for incorporating questions and other long-tail keywords.

Noindex and Nofollow tags: These are great to inform Google that certain pages are not important, so that Google’s crawlers skip content that you consider redundant.

Schema.org: This is a great tool to help Google identify your most important content to display on the SERP.

Try our 5 tips so you can improve your Google SERP and drive quality organic traffic to your website.

Marketing

12 Video advertising tips for a successful campaign

Giles Hirst - September 22, 2021

Video advertising requires a different mind set to banner advertising for example. So to help you achieve success in your video campaigns, here are 12 video advertising tips from setting up your video test campaign to launching your full campaign.

#1 Getting more clicks

Before you begin… There are many factors involved in order to get the end user to click on your video ad and then convert by making a purchase:

The video ad creative

The video texts and CTA

Your Landing Page content and creative

Your pricing

The ease of your payment method(s)

#2 The importance of testing

It is very important you keep your test campaigns running for 7 days including the weekend, don’t give up after 2 days if you have few or no conversions. You need to test for at least a week to collect a decent amount of data. You will then use this valuable data to launch full campaigns.

#3 Create separate test campaigns

Create separate campaigns for In-Stream, Outstream and Slider video ad formats to test which format gives you the best conversions as well as separate campaigns for Mobile and Desktop, due to different performance on various devices and separate campaigns for each category you want to target.

#4 Target RON and Premium Traffic sources

Create separate campaigns for RON (run of network) and Premium. RON is a less expensive traffic source, and each day new traffic sources are added to RON, so it’s a great way to discover new ad zones from which you can create whitelist campaigns.

Premium are verified high quality traffic sites with more stable volumes than RON sites, this source is more expensive than RON.

If you target both RON and Premium together you can waste money on RON campaigns because you are bidding a higher price for the mixed in premium traffic sources. So better to create separate campaigns here also.

#4 Your bidding pricing model

For test campaigns always use Smart CPM, this will help you win bids within your set budget. We also recommend that you use AdNation’s Bidder.

#5 Use AdNation’s Bidder

You can use the Automatic Bidding Optimization tool to automate bids for you and automatically block non performing ad zones. We recommend not to set too many rules, this example is a good starting point for video advertising: Set a Target CPA slightly lower than the actual CPA, for example if the CPA is 2, set your Target CPA at say 1.9, then set your Maximum Test Budget at twice the CPA and don’t use any zone blocking rules. This might seem like a basic algorithm but it is very effective for video advertising.

#6 Use Frequency Capping

Ensure that you enable Frequency Capping, which allows you to restrict the number of times a unique user will see your video ad, to prevent video ad blindness. We recommend 1 time every 24 hours.

#7 A decent test budget

Aim for $50-$100 as a daily test budget, anything less will not get you enough data.

#8 Your traffic delivery mode

Select ‘Distribute throughout the day’ for your test campaigns, again this will help you gather more realistic data.

#9 Targeting tips

For test campaigns keep the Time Schedule field open, if you set specific time periods you will get less traffic, and that traffic will be more competitive/expensive. However make sure you do basic targeting such as OS, device, language, etc, only use targeting that is really necessary. Again this is to collect a good range of data, then after 7 days you can evaluate the performance of your test campaigns. For example, maybe after 7 days you see that your offer is performing really well on Android but not on iOS, so when it comes to launching your main campaigns you can target Android and block iOS. Maybe after testing you get no clicks on a Wednesday evening but lots of clicks on Saturday evening, so when you launch your main campaigns set the Time Schedule to focus more on Saturday.

#10 Use the Landing Page Algorithm tool

Use AdNation’s automated Landing Page Algorithm tool to test out different Landing Pages. Choose between three traffic share algorithms to automate testing your landing pages and see which converts the best. Even spreads out the traffic evenly between LPs, Fixed lets you set percentages of traffic share to LPs and Automatic sends more traffic to the LP that is performing the best.

#11 Keep checking

Don’t just leave your test campaigns to run, keep checking them everyday for any issues, including weekends.

#12 Launch your full campaigns

So now that 7 days have passed, you should have all the data you need to analyse and launch your full campaigns. Just bear in mind a couple of things: If you see that 1 publisher site or 1 ad zone is converting really well for you and therefore you have optimised your campaign accordingly, bear in mind that traffic can change from day to day, so you may have to re optimize your campaign. Be aware of different minimum bids on different ad zones, we recommend that you create different campaigns specifically for ad zones that you are targeting or you could burn money on cheaper ad zones, because you will be paying more for them than they are worth and keep checking those campaigns everyday!

Video advertising is very rewarding because of the high CTRs it generates, but only if you get most or all of the above elements right!

Case study, Native advertising, Publishers

Publisher case study: Optimizing Native advertising zones for increased eCPMs

Giles Hirst - August 19, 2021

Native advertising performs the best for both advertisers and publishers when the Native ad zones appear exactly like the content of a publisher site. Additionally Native can increase conversion rates for advertisers and improve user experience when they display a title and description text and the ad zone is highlighted that it contains ads. For advertisers this generates more qualified clicks and for publishers this increases the value of your Native ad zone leading to higher CPMs and bigger revenues.

AdNation’s Native ad zones are fully editable in your admin panel to ensure that the zones do look exactly like your editorial content. If you are not doing this you are losing out on significant revenue increases.

We carried out a publisher case study comparing Native ad zones that were not optimised to look like editorial content and the results after 10 days of implementing these changes on both the mobile and desktop version of the site.

We looked at: How the Native widget was optimised, CTR change before and after optimisation, CPM change before and after optimisation and Revenue increase before and after optimisation.

Publisher case study

“On the mobile version of my site, originally I was using the 2×2 widget. The images were small and squashed close together. My account manager recommended that I try the 2×1 widget to see if that had a positive change on revenues and to also add in a title text the same font size and color of my site. I enlarged the Native images so that they filled the full screen of the mobile device to make the Native ad zones really stand out. This worked much better on mobile for user experience because the end user scrolls down through the content and the Native ad zones look like highlighted content when compared to the previous four small images I was using. This had a positive effect on both CTR and CPM. “

“On Desktop I was using a 2×2 widget. Because of user experience on desktop I always labeled the section as an ‘Advertisement’ and originally I didn’t include a title and the images were slightly smaller than the content thumbnails on the site. So I changed the thumbnails to the same size as my video thumbnails and added in a title in the same font and colour as the rest of my site. This saw a smaller increase compared to the mobile version, but was still very positive.”

“Here is an overview of how I saw improvements after 10 days of implementing the way I showed my Native ads on mobile and desktop.”

Read our full tutorial for setting up Native Ad Zones to see how you can customize your Native ad zones to boost eCPMs and revenues!

Video advertising

How to convince your boss to use video advertising

Giles Hirst - August 5, 2021

How to convince your boss you need video advertising

4 solid reasons…

If you haven’t tried video advertising to promote your offers yet, here we bring you 4 solid reasons to convince your boss that you need to do it.

#1 Statistics don’t lie

According to industry sources, more and more marketers are using video advertising to drive sales. Check out these statistics:84% of video marketers say video has been effective for generating leads, up 1% from 2020. (Wyzowl)

Video ads are the #1 way consumers discovered a brand they later purchased from. (Animoto)

Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users (WordStream)

70% of businesses say they’re creating more videos now compared to the same time last year. (Animoto)

94% of marketers agree that videos have helped increase user understanding of their product or service. Explainer videos have seen huge success. An overwhelming majority of people (94%) report watching explainer videos to learn more about a product, with 84% being swayed to make a purchase. (Wyzowl)

Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in the text (Insivia)

72% of customers said they would rather learn about a product or service by way of video. In fact, 84% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video (Optinmonster)

Nearly nine out of ten people report wanting to see more videos from brands in 2021, making video an excellent tool for lead generation and brand awareness. (Wyzowl)

#2 Show them the CTRs

AdNation offers 3 different video ad formats:

In-Stream which plays before an end user watches a video on a website, just like Youtube.

Video Slider which slides in from the bottom right of a webpage when it loads making it very eye-catching.

Outstream, which works like a display format and is revealed to the end user as part of their user journey.

Here you can see global CTRs for all three video formats versus display banners on desktop and mobile for a selection of verticals on AdNation’s network:

#3 Video content creation has never been so easy

With the explosion of video content apps like TikTok and Instagram Reels shot by real users, consumers are now accustomed to seeing a video that is not full of high production values. Video ads can now be created using a decent quality mobile phone and can be edited into ads with texts and logos on several cheap apps on mobile or desktop.

Try one of these AdNation recommended video editing platforms, all can produce video ads in just a few minutes:

Clipchamp is a professional video editor that works in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge based on Chromium, it gives you unlimited 1080p exports (Full HD), unlimited cloud storage and unlimited audio stock. The Business account starts from $13 per month.

Shotshack allows you to create 100 videos for $5 with access to free stock photos, videos, graphics and templates.

Creatopy costs $17 a month and also gives you access to free stock photos, videos, graphics and templates.

invideo which costs $360 per year and features quick video templates and a free to use massive video library and easy to use effects.

#4 Using Video as part of a wider marketing mix

Many advertisers use video advertising as part of a wider campaign which can also include using a mix of other formats including Banners and Native. To better track the results of how your video ad is performing let’s look at Attribution. If you are using VAST video ads these metrics can be found out by using custom attribution, and the reason why it’s useful is that you can see how video ads work as a support to your overall sales funnel, and from what we have seen, we estimate that this could be contributing to about 30% of your sales.

Let’s look at two scenarios:

What if a user saw your video ad and didn’t click on it, but later remembered your product and did a type in search in Google – wouldn’t it be good to know that this type in was because the user had previously seen your video ad? Simply add a new pixel conversion tracking goal on your video ad campaign to track the conversions without a click, typically coming for type in and Google search.

What if a user saw your entire video or a high percentage of it and didn’t click, if you track video views with a pixel, you can create a retargeting campaign with Banner/Native ads for the same offer. This will help you to measure the increased conversion rate for users after having seen your video ad. Don’t forget to attribute some value to the video ad campaign based on your attribution model.

Tips!

TIP 1: It is very important you keep your test campaigns running for 7 days including the weekend, don’t give up after 2 days if you have few or no conversions. You need to test for at least a week to collect a decent amount of data. You will then use this valuable data to launch full campaigns.

TIP 2: If you are new to video advertising we highly recommend that you create separate campaigns for In-stream, Video Slider and Outstream, each format performs differently and you should monitor and optimise each campaign separately so that you get specific useful data for each format. Also create separate campaigns for each format on Mobile and Desktop due to the different performance of each format on various devices.

TIP 3: Additionally you could try the CPV (Cost Per View) bidding model that is available only for video formats, which only charges you if the end user watches 10 seconds or more of your video ad.

Conclusion

One final thought, video advertising is the future and more and more advertisers and affiliates are using video ads to really tell a story about their offer/product. Video allows you to show much more about the offer’s benefits, what exactly a consumer can expect to get if they make a purchase, a product tutorial, and more etc. It has never been easier to create video content so it’s time to convince your boss you have the tools to take your media buying to the next level.

Publishers, Tutorial, Video advertising

Video Keyword Tags for Publishers

Giles Hirst - July 29, 2021

AdNation offers 3 different video ad formats for publiahers to monetize: In-Stream, Outstream and Video Slider. Video keyword targeting is especially useful for video ad formats because publishers tend to have lots of video content on their sites covering hundreds of different content genres. Keywords can then be used by an advertiser to target specific video content ad zones with relevant video ads.

Why is video keyword targeting useful?

If you are a publisher using Keywords related to specific content on your website pages and to video content, this will attract advertisers with specific products or video creatives related to the keywords you have added. Advertisers interested in your keywords will be more interested in the ad zone, because their ad will be more contextually interesting to the end user, the advertisers offer will get more qualified clicks which increases the CTR for the ad zone and will bring you a higher eCPM.

How to set up video keyword tags

Simply ad ‘tags’ within your video ad zone’s code. For example, suppose you have video that features funny comedy. This would be ideal for an advertiser who has a humorous ad creative or is pushing a website that sells online jokes and tricks.

To attract these ads you could insert into your video ad zone the tags ‘general’ to show the ad zone is open to all general types of ad creative and ‘humour’ to attract the aforementioned type of advertiser.

The parameter to use for video ad zones is tags.

Here are examples using ExoClick’s three video ad formats:

In-Stream Video VAST – Added &tags=‘general, humour’ (this can also be used for In-video Banner VAST ad zones)

Video Slider – Added tags=‘general, humour’

Outstream Video – Added data-tags=‘general, humour’

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