Advertise Space - Blog Avertising » 2007 » July

-          Use Geo-targeting.  This one is not used enough, but a very easy way to reduce the cost of your ad buy.  Do you want to advertise to all countries in the world?  If not, remove those countries from your ad buy. 
-          Change up your creatives.  This is probably the most effective way to instantly increase the performance of your ad campaign, but sadly not done enough by advertisers.  They will spend $5000 on an ad buy and only $50 on the banner ad for it.  Change up your banners at least one a month.  For  a nice cheap place, check out http://www.20dollarbanners.com
-          Ask for a free bonus.  This is one that I shouldn’t be telling you, because I really don’t want all my clients calling me tomorrow asking for some free stuff, but this is the single cheapest and easiest thing you can do right now for your online ad campaign.  Call up your sales rep and ask if he/she can throw in some additional impressions or another site they have etc.  It doesn’t hurt to ask.
-          Rotate different ads.  Which banner has the best click through rate?  Well if you are only using one banner then you will never know. Why not try 4 different banners in rotation for a few weeks and then go with the one with the best click rate? 
-          Don’t use a frequency cap.  This is probably one of the dumbest things I see advertisers doing all the time.  I want my banner running but I only want it to show up 2 times in 24 hours! Huh?  It is advertising people!  Ever hear the word branding?  Users need to see your ad, and they need to see it quite a few times before they maybe even look at it, let alone click on it.  Ever see a really cool commercial on TV and tell your friends about it like this?
“Hey did you see the ad with the guy who did this and it was really funny?”
“I saw that! “
“What was the commercial for again?”
“I don’t know.  But it was pretty funny eh? “
Why does this happen?  Cause sometimes you need to see the ad a whole bunch of times before you remember what it is actually promoting.  Advertising and more importantly branding is about repetition.  If you want to be top of mind, you have to keep advertising.  How many Coca- Cola ads do you think you have seen in your lifetime?  Probably thousands, so why is coke still trying to get your attention?  It’s not like you don’t already know about them is it…
Advertise. Repeat. Advertise again.