Campaign optimization

Campaigns are like marriages. Marriages ail from the 7 year itch. The ‘itch’ catches up with campaigns much earlier.

A campaign itch is when performance goes into a decline. Number of clicks and CTRs go into a gentle decline. And consequently, registrations / eCPAs show a downward trend.

Campaign performance is dependent on the following factors -

Inventory

How relevant is the inventory to the type of campaign one is running? If one runs a teeth whitening campaign on inventory which has visitors in the 50 + age bracket, it’s a recipe for disaster. Admittedly many a campaign is Run of Network (RON). Whether a campaign is RON or Run of Site (ROS), its success is going to be measured on an eCPA metric. Even an RON campaign, therefore, has to have a healthy number of ‘relevant’ inventory.

Creative

As a thumb rule, the more the creatives on a campaign, the better the CTR. The possibility of a click on one or two banners is much, much lower than on multiple banners. Visitors to websites often know whether the information they’d be looking for would be. If the banner appears, therefore, in different parts of the website, possibility of the ‘focused’ visitor clicking thru’ would be higher.

Message on the creative

Very obviously, the more catchy the message on the banner, the higher the probability of a click. In this respect a banner ad is no different from an ad appearing in the newspaper, TV etc.

Inspite of taking these and other precautions, campaign performance does drop over time. Reasons for such a dip could be –

Banner Latency

The same banner appearing time and time again, results in banner latency i.e. users getting used to seeing a banner and not clicking thru’. This is especially true of regular visitors to a website.

Keyword latency

Much the same as in banner latency, keyword latency can also result in fall in CTRs. Users find they are not getting the right results with a set of keywords – they therefore start experimenting with new keywords.

Inability to tap into new users

Running the campaign on a set of websites would get results in the short /medium –term. But we must remember that different websites will have a faithful set of visitors. Once the ad has run its useful term on a set of websites, there is a possibility of ennui creeping in – users stop clicking on banners as they have already clicked thru’ anyway.

How does one overcome campaign slowdown and maintain consistent CTR resulting in even eCPA for the customer?

Revamp inventory

Within a certain demographic, there would be a number of websites. And each website, notwithstanding the same visitor profile, would have a different set of ‘loyal’ visitors. By rotating inventory, therefore, the advertiser is able to tap into a newer set of visitors.

Change Banners/Keywords

Banner/keyword latency mentioned earlier in this article can be best addressed by adding new banners/keywords. Campaign CTRs have actually improved by constantly revamping the creatives and keywords.

Optimization of campaigns is ongoing. A constant eye needs to be kept on different elements of campaign performance. By doing so, corrective action can be taken as soon as first signs of slowdown are detected ensuring consistent CTRs. Bottomline? A happy customer who has achieved eCPA goals!