1. Test your creative. Even great online media placement can produce poor results if your messaging is off. So before you go big, run split tests of different creative units to find the winner.

2. Leverage ad network pricing and tools. If you go direct to sites, you’ll get offered their premium display inventory at their premium CPM rates. Many ad networks, however, offer the inventory sites that can’t sell on their own at way better rates. Many also offer behavioral and/or contextual targeting to eliminate ad waste by limiting ad delivery to your best prospects.

3. Put CPA in the mix. Are you trying to drive sales or acquire leads? If so, cost-per-action ad networks charge only for results, so there is zero ad waste. They’re a great way to drive incremental sales or leads without risk.

4. Drive traffic to an optimized landing page. If you’re sending the people who click on your ad to your regular website, it’s an invitation to surf around and get lost. Keep this from happening by creating a landing page specifically tied to your ad campaign, and specifically designed to motivate ad clickers to take the desired action.

5. Track your results. One of the greatest advantages of the Internet medium is that it’s measurable. Use this fact to your advantage. Keep close tabs on the results each placement in your campaign generates so you can see what works and what doesn’t. Be sure to consider not just clicks, but also lead/traffic quality.

Mason Wiley is the senior vice president of hydra network.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: ad campaigns, ad networks, clicks, cpa, cpm, creative, Electronic Retailer, hydra network, landing page, mason wiley, media, optimization, web traffic

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Advertising, Marketer, Online, Research, Retailer, Support Services, Web Analytics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.