Posts Tagged ‘online advertising’

The Dos and Don’ts of Retargeting Campaigns

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

retargeting best practicesA few weeks ago, we defined and explained the different types of retargeting. By the end of the post, you hopefully understood the different ways you can re-engage your website’s visitors and the best situations for using each. In case you forgot:

“What is Retargeting?

Retargeting aims to reconnect a site visitor with your brand, based on their recent online activity. Whether it’s activity on your actual site, or a keyword that is similar to products or services that you provide, various types of retargeting can help to usher potential customers back to your page. Many times this occurs in an automated fashion.

How It Works

By adding a code to your website/URL, retargeting “tags” can be pinned on website visitors with a “cookie” or pixel. Then, they will be shown relevant banners, video ads, or text (which you are able to create) as they continue to browse the web. The ads will promptly remind them of your product or service and redirect them back to your page.”

Retargeting can be a powerful tool, but it’s not foolproof. If implemented incorrectly, instead of bringing back visitors and turning them into conversions, money can be wasted and the brand’s image can be tarnished.

Below is a quick list of dos and don’ts to keep in mind when running retargeting campaigns.

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Introduction to Retargeting & Types of Retargeting

Friday, April 12th, 2013

So you’ve done everything right to get people to your web page, but then what? Are they interested enough to continue to browse for more information, or even make a purchase if that’s the ultimate goal? This is where retargeting makes a valiant appearance to save the day (or at the very least, reengages your customer’s attention). Like any online marketing effort, if done correctly, retargeting can be extremely beneficial and cost effective. If not, you can annoy users, which not only wastes your budget but also damages your brand’s image.

What is Retargeting?

Retargeting aims to reconnect a site visitor with your brand, based on their recent online activity. Whether it’s activity on your actual site, or a keyword that is similar to products or services that you provide, various types of retargeting can help to usher potential customers back to your page. Many times this occurs in an automated fashion.

The goal of all types of retargeting is to keep your brand on top of mind so that site revisits and purchases will occur. (Click to tweet)

It helps businesses to advertise to people who have previously shown interest in your brand or website but have left without reaching your company’s goal for visitors. Whether this is completing a transaction to make a purchase or simply continuing to search for information, retargeting allows your brand to remain top of mind to online visitors after they’ve left your site while also saving on advertising costs and increasing ROI. Furthermore, it is an excellent way to promote a sale, cross-sell existing products and up-sell new ones.

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Insights from ad:tech San Francisco Day 2 Opening Keynote

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

We’re back for Day 2 of ad:tech San Francisco! We had a great time yesterday, and are looking forward to another great day today. Today’s opening keynote was given by the SVP of Advertising at Google, Susan Wojcicki. Her presentation went through the importance of advertising to the internet. She described what digital advertising was in the past, what it is now, and five elements of the future of digital advertising.

Towards the end of the keynote, she was joined by Google’s Vice President of Display Advertising, Neal Mohan. They did a short Q&A, which included a question about Google’s relationship with agencies and how beneficial that relationship can now be.

Once again, we put together a Storify of tweets of our favorite insights from the presentation. For more about our ad:tech experience, you can follow @eZangaInc on Twitter.

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Small Business Spotlight: Hirease

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

small business marketing spotlightWe’re back with another Small Business Spotlight this week, and we have another HR-related company talking to us today. It looks like even though difficulty with social media seems to be a trend, we also see a lot of trends off success with online marketing between the two HR companies we’ve talked to so far. This week, we’re spotlighting Hirease.

The first thing that stood out to me when looking at Hirease’s website was the great content on their blog. As we’ve said before, a business blog is essential to any content marketing strategy. They have great posts based on current events, such as having fun at work on April Fool’s Day and improving employee morale with a March Madness bracket.

So, without further ado, here’s a little more information about Hirease:

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What You Need to Know About the Chameleon Botnet

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

chameleonIf you spend any time on technology and advertising blogs, then you’ve probably heard people talking about a certain chameleon more than usual. No, they’re not talking about a lizard video that went viral (although YouTube does have some awesome videos of them, real or not).

Chameleon is the name given to the latest botnet that has been stealing over 6.2 million dollars per month from advertisers. Click fraud prevention is a high priority at eZanga, so we’d like to give you a run-down of what you should be aware of regarding Chameleon. The more you know, right?

Chameleon bot network basics:

(Information from the Spider.io blog)

  • It seems to only infect Windows PCs using Mozilla 5.0, but the bot browsers disguise themselves as being Internet Explorer 9.0 running on Windows 7.
  • To date, there are over 120,000 IP addresses identified. The details for 5,000 of the most active locations were released last month.
  • It seems to be primarily targeting 202 websites.
  • The botnet was discovered by London-based web analytics company Spider.io on February 28, 2013 and made public March 19, 2013.
  • Average CTR generated by Chameleon: 0.02%
  • Average mouse movement rate: 11%
  • Number of distinct ad-exchange cookies associated with the botnet per month: at least 7 million
  • Average CPM paid by advertisers for ad impressions served to botnet: .69 CPM
  • Proportion of traffic across the target websites that is botnet traffic: 65%

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PPC Advertising for Small Businesses [Infographic]

Friday, March 22nd, 2013

PPC tips for SMBsWhile most large corporations and household names have been advertising online for years by now, a lot of small businesses are just beginning to hop on the bandwagon.

This may be the year that online advertising spend actually overtakes newspaper ad spend. Not investing in it at all is too big of a missed opportunity, especially when your competitors are most likely taking advantage of it.

However, you can’t just set up an AdWords account, throw together a campaign, and expect business to improve. There are best practices you want to stick to, and mistakes to avoid. Otherwise, you won’t see results (obviously).

The folks over at CopperBridge Media put together this infographic that we hope will be helpful to you, whether you’re looking to start PPC for the first time or trying to improve your campaigns.

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Is Microsoft’s Scroogled Campaign a Complete Flop?

Friday, February 15th, 2013

scroogledMicrosoft is putting in every ounce of effort they have left to triumph over the mighty Google. However, are their efforts succeeding? The answer to that is a big, fat N-O.

We first saw the smear campaign against Google back in November for the holiday season. The campaign entitled “Don’t get Scroogled” was an attack promoting Microsoft’s Bing search engine over Google search. The series of advertisements explained to users that Google displays product results based on merchants that pay a fee, meaning that the best prices and/or products can go unseen.

Microsoft’s Bing claims they do not partake in product listing advertising, but simply connect the user with the best, most relevant search results. Senior Director Stefan Weitz of Bing fires a direct attack on Google with this statement:

“Bing Shopping results are high quality and are determined by which products are most relevant to the shopper’s search. Bing results incorporate top deals from merchants across the web and the rankings you see aren’t dependent on which advertisers paid to have their products listed. Bing also provides tools…to help consumers easily find what they’re looking for – and get a great deal without having to dig through a ton of advertisements.”

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5 More Online Advertising Predictions for 2013

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

online advertising predictionsWe may have already made a few predictions for online advertising in 2013, focusing on larger trends that we’ll see this year. We’ve also tried to use our crystal ball on mobile marketing and shared Imforza’s SEO predictions. But this is going to be a big year for online marketing, so it’s not unreasonable to expect that we have a few more hypotheses for the industry this year. So, here are five more predictions for the future of online advertising:

1. Product Listing Ads (PLA’s) will gain popularity

In 2013, e-commerce will rise exponentially and be utilized by all demographics. Therefore, companies need to break through the clutter and rise above their competitors to draw consumers directly to their products/services. At this point, lots of retailers are using PPC, but less are using PLA’s.

Product Listing Ads (PLA’s) are similar to pay per click advertising (PPC). Instead of featuring a text-based ad for your product on a search results page, a picture linking to a product page will be listed on search engines. Once a consumer searches your product or select keywords, the product will appear with the name, photo, price, store name, and most importantly a landing page. PLA’s will get more expensive and competitive, so get in there while you can!

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Making Your Online Marketing Resolutions for 2013

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

A New Year means new beginnings, for both your personal and professional life. At this time of year, we’re all about making goals and plans to better ourselves and our careers. Some people abandon them by the third week of January while others stick with them, but one may argue that it’s the thought and optimism that’s important.

In a way, it’s true. Even if you only work out every day for a few weeks, that’s a lot more than not going at all. The same is true for professional goals, even though there’s more riding on meeting your professional goals. Some action is better than no progress at all, so it’s important to look ahead. Make goals, and try your best.

We want to help. Of course, we can’t tell you what your goals for the year should be; every business is different. But we want to give suggestions for deciding what your resolutions should be. There are also a few things any company should be paying attention to before they get left behind.

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5 Online Advertising Predictions for 2013

Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

Well, it’s certainly been a big year for online advertising. It was used heavily in the presidential election, with funding for online ads growing 251%, praised for its ability to target voters better than traditional ads. Online ad spend continues to grow monumentally, as advertisers begin to spend less on traditional campaigns.

According to MarketingProfs citing ZenithOptimedia, 2013 is expected to be the first year that online ad spend is projected to overtake newspaper advertising.

As online advertising grows, it will evolve. Companies that already invest heavily in online advertising will no longer be able to get by on just being there, since competition will increase. More focus will be on the quality of the ad instead of quantity or placement.

As the industry grows over the next year, here are a few specifics we think we’ll see:

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