Search Engine Marketing and Programmatic Advertising
Planning to aim higher in 2017? So are we.
While we’ve built our reputation and our client’s successes on Optimization and Content, including Local SEO, Review Management and digital foundation fundamentals, one of our highest areas of growth will be in digital advertising.
It’s what we consider the top of the digital marketing pyramid. With the right providers, it’s a pretty good view.
“I’m sure glad New Plains Media made the trip to Kearney. They offered important insights on our Local SEO and website SEO, and helped us find an SEM/AdWords partner that could meet our needs while offering us the best price, performance and reporting on programmatic display campaigns, including micro-proximity and household IP targeting. Even if it’s not more business for them, they care about our overall digital marketing strategy and success.”
–Kyle Means, Marketing Director, University of Nebraska Kearney
There are two main vehicles for digital advertising — search engine advertising (mostly Google’s text-based Adwords) and programmatic advertising (online display ads, mostly divided between Facebook and about every other website).
It will be one of our main topics at next week’s Lunch & Learn on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at PizzaWest. The pizza is on us and space is limited, so register today.
Once the foundation of your digital marketing pyramid is set, you have the tools to see what content drives the most engagement – valuable lessons for what advertising will work best. Take what works with your content and pour fuel on that fire with digital advertising.
Search Engine Marketing – Adwords
Search engine advertising is a pretty straightforward process used to drive your advertising message to the top of a search engine results. Once that fuel is turned off, though, there are no long-term gains earned organically. Remember, organic results can deliver 2-8 times the results of paid advertising in search.
We directly advise clients on Google AdWords Express accounts, the very first starting point for Adwords, but refer a Google Premier Partner for any sizeable budgets or competitive categories. Google Premier Partners earn that badge with certifications and managing sizeable Adwords budgets
2 Most Important Things with Google’s Adwords
Always Own Your Own Adwords Account
One of the biggest violations of Google’s Third-Party Policy we see is when businesses do not own or have access to their own Adwords account. Your account is tied to your business and earns a Quality Score over time with Google – a key part of your reputation and success with Adwords. Plus, if you ever have to change providers, you can take your account and all its history with you. There is no such thing as a “secret Adwords sauce” that would ever prevent your Adwords partner from giving you this.
Always Be Clear on Management Fees and Spends
Adwords partners earn the the bulk of their compensation directly from you in the form of management fees to handle your Adwords account. Typically this ranges from 15%-25% of your advertising spend with Google Adwords. The largest Premier Partners can earn rebates from Google to help supplement management fees. Be sure your Adwords partner is very clear on what part of your budget is management fees and what part is actually spent on Google Adwords.
Our Programmatic Advertising Advantage
Sure, Adwords and search engine marketing (Bing/Yahoo, etc.) can be a good tool to drive traffic to your website from a search engine, but what about the rest of the digital spectrum? What about all those local ads you see on the various news or entertainment websites and apps, the ones that will also follow you around the web?
That’s where programmatic comes in. You’ll find a handy introduction to programmatic here at Marketing Land and a video here at Advertising Age, so we’ll stick to the basics here in contrasting and comparing the search engine vs. programmatic.
The most obvious difference is that programmatic refers almost entirely to display & video ads and covers almost every other online space outside of search, including Facebook, which has few outside partners and basically runs its own programmatic network on its platform. Search engine advertising is almost entirely text based.
Display ads, on the other hand, can be like any other traditional ad buys you’ve made in print or broadcast arenas, only digital. Programmatic buys are designed to boost any business seeking to get their message in front of a specific target any place, any time and on any device and to follow them.
I’m sure you’ve noticed how “the web” is smart enough to feed you ads that best fit your wants, needs and interests. But you probably already understand that it’s not “the web” in play here at all, but marketers who are determined to get their message in the right place.
It wasn’t “the web” who fed me ads for all the sites I visited in doing my holiday shopping, it was advertisers targeting my habits through programmatic advertising where super-sophisticated algorithms make split-second decisions when populating any given website or app you open. Programmatic has challenges of its own – mostly with fraudulent or wasted results due to unscrupulous partners. Especially in the early days of this brokered service, fraud was a major problem The shadier of the agencies and other programmatic brokers were all too happy to sell ads that ended up on fake websites, some of which existed solely as a depository of their ad inventory.
Know Your Programmatic Partner
While programmatic offers the promise of replace people with programming, the underpinnings of the relationships between advertisers, brokers, exchanges and publishers is still based on old-fashioned relationships.
Which can make it difficult for new players without established relationships and partnerships that know how to monitor programmatic campaigns to eliminate waste and fraud.
We stayed away from programmatic until we found the right partner – one of the pioneers in the industry. It’s our advantage, because:
• They generally are exclusive within each major metro market.
• They have deep relationships with the best exchanges and publishers.
• They have proven results from some of the most challenging and demanding clients that we’ve seen in the digital space.
• They can guarantee an industry-leading .1% click-through-rate and above-the-fold placement.
• They will immediately report and compensate any questionable or suspect placements – at their own expense.
• Their reporting is second-to-none, which is important to give you information to help drive campaign adjustments and boost return on investment.
Through The Reader’s sister paper in Louisville, KY, we also personally know the team implementing the most precise level of programmatic targeting – Household IP targeting.
This is not to say that one vehicle is right and the other is wrong. Both have their place in the right marketing budgets. Remember, though, there is no substitute for the foundational first step of getting you found on the web in a high-ranking search placement through even the most basic search engine optimization efforts.
While both drive clicks, they also drive a lot more impressions, which will help earn top of mind awareness and future searches. And both also have risks and pitfalls, especially when it comes to partner selection.
We’d be glad to tell you more about this and other digitals services opportunities at our next Lunch & Learn. Hope to see you next Tuesday!
