Nightshift

James Rothwell

So, as Marc says, I am the guy who’s interested in clicks…

I’m also really interested in what happens after the click- as any seasoned online marketer will tell you, this is the true determinant of a successful campaign.

I like to think that we can take a good campaign and makes it better through our optimisation technology. Unfortunately you can never make a bad campaign work, no matter how good the technology is. A favourite but slightly unsavoury phrase about polishing something that is eminently un-polishable springs to mind, but I did not want to start my blogging career with controversy, especially as the blog is in Marc’s name, not mine. So to put it another way “you can’t put lipstick on a pig”. I think that sums it up pretty well.

When it comes to performance marketing, the MSDR offering manages to drive results for hundreds of advertisers across the globe by honing in on the most relevant, and therefore responsive, parts of our audience. But getting those responses is not as easy as it sounds. It has to start with the offer, and whether it’s what the people want.

Appealing or even trick creatives (you’ve seen those fake buttons and fields that dupe users into clicking their cursor onto the ad) can easily encourage clicks, but the offer needs to back up the claims within the banner ad. The “tricked” user incidentally will feel less inclined to do anything beyond that forced click- this is not qualified traffic. An unimpressive landing page, or a convoluted application/buying process for the customer will also lose traffic as quickly as you’ve found it. So end-to-end, the customer experience and exposure to the offer must be carefully considered. It’s amazing how many times this isn’t the case. Having said that, Cost per Action (encompassing all post-click activity: lead, application, download, sale etc.) is a very popular way of doing business for advertisers, representing very low financial risk.

The challenge is that this is at odds with the publisher monetisation model where most audience “owners” consider their traffic to be premium, and of a value higher than the yield that most CPA deals will generate. So there needs to be a compromise and a consultation between the two parties. Expertise on both sides should be applied to ensure success- the advertiser wants results and efficiency, the publisher wants efficiency and yield. So finding these efficiencies together must be paramount to a healthy advertising relationship between media owner, marketer and consumer. Weighing up the offer with the audience, the creative with the target group, and the post click experience with the interested party is all vital to the partnership. Working together on these elements as publisher and advertiser is absolutely key and something we push for as much as possible.