Relative merits of RON, ROC and ROS targeting

There are different types of targeting that we can adopt in online campaigns –

Run of Network ( RON) where you run the campaign on the entire network

Run of Channel ) ROC) – where the campaign is run in a specific channel , examples being, healthcare, entertainment, technology etc.

Run of Site ( ROS) – where the campaign appears on specific sites only…

It is obviously that costs escalate as you move from RON to ROC to ROS… RON is cheapest because it is across the entire network and to that extent the efficacy of the campaign is dilute

ROC is dearer because it involves running the campaign on websites within a specific channel only

ROS is the costliest because of the fact that ad impressions appear on specific sites only

As an advertiser, I’d have a question – which is the best method of targeting I need to employ? Let’s try to find some answers.

RON – is employed when a product/service being advertised has general relevance across a community of users. And the over-riding objective of the campaign is ‘brand building’ … For example, advertising a new fizzy drink from Pepsi… Could be relevant across a channels. An ROC/ROS campaign in such a scenario simply doesn’t make sense

ROC – is employed when the product service being advertised is relevant only to a specific community. For example, launch of lab testing equipment. Such a campaign would be effective within the Science and technology channel. There is simply no point advertising such product RON as many impressions would be ‘burnt’ inventory

ROS – is employed when you wish to target users of a specific property. For example, I am aware of www.btymplace.com being a hotly marketing property. This property was marketing on its visitor profile –

250k Westminster residents

800k daily Westminster commuters

2 million monthly leisure visitors

500k business travellers

Anyone who was looking to reach out to this demographic would, therefore, find btmyplace an ideal inventory to place their banners on. But such a campaign needs to be sharply focused in terms of creatives and ROIs calculated to a high degree of accuracy. Simply because ROS rates can be anywhere from US $ 10 CPM upwards…

Link Building

As the owner of a website, one is always looking at ways and means of getting website ratings up. Among the various ways of achieving this is ‘link building(LB)’.

Link Building is about creating inbound links to one’s own websites. This can be done by having links on a reciprocal basis i.e. website ‘A’ links to website ’B’ and vice-versa. LB is considered one of the most effective ways of increasing website popularity. The number of sites which link to a particular website is known as link popularity. This helps improve the search engine ranking of a website.

Benefits of Link Building

Increase traffic – By its very nature, LB increases traffic to a website. However clever linking building i.e links with relevant websites has been found to increase sales. For example, the website of an automotive could be linked to the website of an auto racing event

Rating of Website – When links are chosen carefully, this results in high quality incoming links which will ensure the website’s rankings improve considerably. Again , improvement of website rakings will ensure it being thrown up on the first page of a search, if not the occupying the topmost position!

Raising Profile – LB raises the profile of a website i.e. it increases visibility, awareness and credibility of a website. In the example quoted earlier, many visitors to the auto website will link thru’ to the auto racing site. This would raise the profile of this site and very rapidly increase awareness. And a link to a Mercedes website will improve its credibility as well.

Search Engines and LB - LB results is a much wider search engine exposure simply because links would have more keywords, which would result in the website performing well on searches

Search Engine Indexing - LB helps the website getting indexed by search engines resulting in the website performing well on google or yahoo searches

LB is , today, considered a worthwhile investment. In fact, LB as spawned a mini-economy of companies selling links or offering to build links as well.