Maximizing Opportunity in Online Performance Marketing Networks

Large online performance marketing networks offer a multitude of channels and pricing models. Finding the right mix is key to maximizing yields for publishers and securing high-quality leads for advertisers. Marketers need strategies for building multi-channel campaigns that effectively leverage the opportunity in a cost-effective way.

There are particularly attractive opportunities for marketers on “hard-toreach” channels (email, display, social media, affiliate networks and more), where traditional search engine advertising has proven less effective. But marketers face three key challenges when moving into performance marketing outside of search engines: Consistently meeting their target ROI. Understanding how to effectively price media buys depending on channel and ad unit (CPC, CPM, CPA, CPL, CPI, revenue share, etc.) Managing media buys efficiently across tens or hundreds of unique segments online.

Planning Multi-channel Campaigns
There are two ways to approach planning a multi-channel campaign:

1. Use an Aggregator Aggregators like Google Adsense, which focuses primarily on contextually- targeted, display inventory, or like Adknowledge, which offers a bid-based platform to access email, display, social media (virtual currency in particular) and affiliate distribution. Both of these example services provide a centralized marketplace (Google Adwords and Adknowledge’s Bidsystem.com) where you can buy all types of ad units on a cost-perclick basis across the Web. A marketer is able to control cost-per-click bids to ensure that target ROI is achieved.
2. Do-it-Yourself This typically requires the marketer to have a great deal of expertise– understanding the best practices inherent in each channel—and can be very time consuming and inefficient.

Objectives
Regardless of which approach is taken, marketers need to be clear about their objectives in order to effectively achieve return-oninvestment:

-Who is the target audience?
-What outcomes are desired? Sales? Lead generation?
-What are the cost-per-acquisition targets?
-What are the revenue goals? How fast must revenues come in? Methodology

Another set of important questions to consider is how objectives will be achieved:

-What specific product or service is being sold?
-What pricing or other incentives are available to use?
-What is the communication idea that will inform all of the messaging?
-What promotional tactics will inspire the clicks that are needed?
-How will a transaction get completed? Online? In-store? By phone?

Understand The Audience
Once you’re clear on your objectives and methodology, it’s important to conduct research to deeply understand your target audience(s). Too many marketers make the mistake of planning for advertising channels rather than the audience they are aiming to reach. Know your audience first and the channel strategy will come into sharper focus. Select the channels that best address specific business barriers and opportunities. This approach will empower you with the best chance of reaching your audience at the right time and place on the Web.

First and foremost, understand your target market segments’ life stage and media habits, environments where they congregate, and their intent (e.g., purchase, research, socialize, etc.):

-Are they consumers of social media?
-Can they be reached via email?
-What is their online activity? Do they use search?
-If so, what do they search for? And what keywords do they use to find it?
-How do they find and get information? Blogs? News sites? Entertainment sites?

Executing Multi-channel Campaigns: Data is Critical
The use of data for effective targeting is critical. Based on your goals and your research planning, make targeting choices that ensure you’ll get in front of the right audience with the right message at just the right time. Leveraging systems like Adknowledge’s Bidsystem. com —which relies on highly advanced predictive analytics to identify the audience segment you’re targeting within each channel —can take a lot of the guess- work out of the equation.

Adknowledge Chief Scientist and Advisor, Usama Fayyad, who formerly ran Data Analytics at Yahoo!, leverages vast stores of information and a proprietary predictive analytics engine and advanced tracking mechanisms, to help us empower marketers with data insights that make their campaigns the most effective possible. Data is what makes performance marketing so revolutionary. Its power becomes apparent especially when campaigns reach the scale and critical mass that is possible only through a robust network.

Therefore, it’s also imperative that you have effective tracking and reporting mechanisms in place. Be sure you’re looking at the performance of each channel along each step of the acquisition funnel. You should be detailed in your tracking so you can show campaign ROI. At a minimum:

-Establish your conversion event
-Set your conversion value
-Create your acquisition funnel Achieving Scale

The most robust networks often function as media marketplaces, bringing together both buyers (advertisers) and sellers (publishers) in a bid-based environment where smart pricing brings value to all parties. Publishers benefit from having their content monetized through a robust portfolio of diverse advertisers and offers. Advertisers benefit by having access to a diverse range of publishers whose quality and convertibility relative to their offer is managed dynamically. Only the most comprehensive networks have the technical expertise to manage the targeting and tracking, compliance methodologies and key performance drivers in real-time to ensure that the right ad reaches the right audience in the right channel. When all of these pieces come together, advertisers are able to reach the scale, efficiency and ROI that exemplifies performance marketing.

In the end, an effective performance marketing campaign should leverage a combination of email, display, social media, search, and affiliate channels. This is the best way to get higher- than-average conversion rates, especially if you’re able to use predictive targeting technologies to reach the right audience with the right message at the exact right time. You’re sure to achieve results far superior to that of traditional marketing or search engine advertising.

Greg Bayer is the general manager of Adknowledge’s Affi liate Division and has over 15 years experience in affiliate marketing and digital media. He has occupied senior positions within Epic Advertising, Sony, Linkshare and barnesandnoble. com and holds a B.A. in English and American Studies from Princeton University.