Ads sponsored on the Web

Creating promotions on the web is essential to make your services known, increase the performance of your products or promote the spread of a brand.
ADS ads, in all forms, are now the most immediate way to hit any type of target.

Why decide to invest on the web instead of traditional media (newspapers, radio, television, etc.)?
The answer is simple:

• a much more widespread selection of the target to communicate to;
• tracking the outcome of the campaigns and of each individual advertisement;
• the ability to make live changes to a campaign at any time to optimize the result.

Type of ad, budget to invest, chosen target and platform must be defined according to the purpose to be achieved. Sponsored ads, if used correctly, allow you to obtain the best ratio between investment and result.

There are different forms of sponsored ads and they vary first according to the platform you decide to use.
Ads on search engines (Google Ads) and advertising on social networks (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn) are undoubtedly the most used and effective services of the moment.
If you are targeting a sector audience, you could also use advertisements on online portals.

Google allows you to create advertisements that are relevant to the user’s searches on the web.
It places your site at the top of the first page of searches, providing a cost for each click (or impression).

Ads are targeted by geographic area and keywords.
They can be:

• text ads: consisting of a title, text and some links or quick calls to action;
• dynamic text ads: they are similar to text ads, but with the ability to customize some words of the title or text dynamically based on the search made by the user;
• display / video ads: they are images, gifs or videos in different formats, which are usually hosted on portals affiliated with Google. They allow you to hit people even outside the search engine, in different contexts. They usually have a lower cost than text ads, but they are often clicked also by mistake and therefore can increase the abandonment rate to the site.
• remarketing ads (we’ll come back to this later).

Before investing in Google it is necessary to take into account that, compared to other platforms, with this solution you will have the possibility to reach a wider target.
However, the budgets to invest are high and start at a minimum of € 1,000 / 1,500 per month per language or country.
Google also considers the historicity of the ads: the optimization and stabilization of the budget is reached after about 3 months of ads.
It is therefore advisable to plan to keep active campaigns for at least one year.
If you cannot make this type of investment, better then think of other platforms that can still help you achieve the goal, but with lower costs and times!

Starting sponsorships on these platforms is effective in targeting what is called “latent demand”, that is, an audience that does not directly search for your product or service but that, based on clicks and likes, could be interested in the offer.

The creation of social campaigns allows you to reach a very specific target with a low budget.
To obtain effective results it is important to do a good job of commitment and perseverance that goes through these steps:

• Definition of the audience: most social networks allow you to select not only a target by categorizing age, gender, geographical area, but also interests and habits. The more you know your audience, the more you will be able to concentrate the reach of our message and avoid wasting your budget.
• Preparation for creativity: the right images are essential to attract the user. Furthermore, it is necessary to select which type of ad to use (single image, video, carousel) which will be more or less effective based on the user’s response.
• Choice of texts: sentences of the right length with working keywords and emojis can lead to more profitable results. Experimenting, again, is the best solution, since each audience responds differently. What may work for one company may not work for another.
• Goal Setting: It is essential to create specific campaigns for each purpose. Segmenting the ads allows you to collect clearer and more useful results.

Remember to update your ad creative every 10 days. This will give a new boost to campaigns, especially on Facebook and Instagram.
Do not insert text on the images because the display of your banners could be penalized.

Let’s dedicate a short paragraph to remarketing ads.
All sponsorship platforms allow you to activate this type of campaign which, especially in the case of promoting an online store, can be really useful for lowering the conversion cost.

These are full-fledged ads that are only shown to users who have already visited your site or your application, to an audience defined as “hot”.
In two words, these are ads that follow the user in the days following an action.

You will surely have done an online search to plan a trip or to buy a product and to review banners linked to your survey in the following days.
Try to think how many times, precisely because you have viewed these ads, you have then completed a purchase or a reservation! The answer, although subjective, can make you understand how effective they can be, even more so if combined with a discount or promotion code dedicated to the undecided or to those who have already carried out an action previously.

N.B. With the introduction of the new privacy regulations of the new GDPR, the activation of the monitoring scripts necessary to create these dynamic lists of users is subject to explicit consent via cookie banners.

This is the key word!
Promotional campaigns on the web take time to yield effective results.
On average it will take 20 to 40 days to reach a stable conversion result.

Furthermore, the trend of most of the sponsored is never constant, external factors may act that cannot always be predicted or controlled (time of year, current trend, etc.).
There are many things you can test with: change the target, change the ad creative, change the budget or change the type of ad.

Remember: it is always better to duplicate an ad and change it, rather than modify an existing one. This will make it possible for you to compare the results and possibly restore the previous one.

Every self-respecting campaign ends with a report.
The collection of all the data generated by the ads can in fact make us understand the effectiveness or otherwise of a campaign, a platform, a target. The analysis of this information is essential to optimize ads and to be able to modify or confirm a marketing strategy.

We therefore recommend daily ad monitoring, a quick monthly report and a more in-depth report at least every 3 months.

A correct approach also presupposes the check through Google Analytics with particular attention to the abandonment rate, time spent, number of pages viewed per session, conversion rate and (if any) cart abandonment rate.
A correct interpretation of the data comes with experience, but it is certainly from here that we end and start again!