Nov 16, 2023 | Digital Marketing
DX Media Direct has been awarded both the Top Direct Marketing Company and the Top Media Buying and Buying Company in the North Dallas and Fort Worth Texas.
Clutch issued a press release stating, “This is an honor for the top 10% of companies on its platform earning high client satisfaction.”
Clutch, the leading global marketplace of B2B service providers, released its list of 2023 Clutch Champions. This new award is presented to the top 10% of Clutch Global winners, a designation that recognizes business service providers across the world for their industry expertise and ability to deliver exceptional results compared to other companies in their line of service.
Earning a spot among the Clutch Champions is a testament to a company’s unwavering commitment to excellence, supported by specific criteria. To qualify as Clutch Champions, businesses must have acquired new, verified client reviews within the past six months. This distinction sets them apart as the top-rated leaders in their respective service lines for 2023, underscoring their commitment to client satisfaction and the delivery of high-quality services.
“We are excited to introduce the Clutch Champion designation, the newest accolade a provider can achieve on our platform,” said Sonny Ganguly, Clutch CEO. “This honor recognizes outstanding companies that consistently exceed expectations, setting them apart as true leaders in their fields. We are incredibly proud to partner with these providers, and we look forward to achieving even greater heights together.”
Oct 10, 2023 | Advertising How-To, Consumer Behavior, Digital Marketing
There are many ways you can improve the results of your advertising campaign without increasing your investment. In over 30 years of managing advertising campaigns across a diverse set of industries here are some strategies we have found that can dramatically improve your results.
First: Develop more effective creative
Stephan Vogel, Ogilvy & Mather Germany’s chief creative officer says: “Nothing is more efficient than creative advertising. Creative advertising is more memorable, longer lasting, works with less media spending, and builds a fan community…faster.”
According to Nielsen 1, creativity drives 56% of a campaign’s sales ROI, and Google 2 reports that 70% of a campaign’s success is determined by the creative. Notice we did not say develop more expensive creative. Expensive advertising creative does not necessarily translate into more results.
Effective creative has critical elements that create desire and deliver response. One of the keys to creativity that produces results creative content that is solution-based and customer focused. When you show your prospects how you are going to help them solve a problem, save them time or money, or help them achieve their goals, then you have the foundation for solid creative.
Bad creative is vague. Have you ever watched or heard an ad and said to yourself “I have no idea what they are advertising.” That’s because the ad was vague. It did not give you any specifics to hold on to in order to move you from awareness to interest to action.
One way to deliver solution based creative is to have actual customer testimonials speaking about the experience they had and the benefit they received from your product or service. This gives you social proof. Social proof is a phenomenon where people follow and copy the actions of others in order to display accepted or correct behavior, based on the idea of normative social influence. This term was coined by Robert Cialdini, the same author who presented his six principles of persuasion. This helps your potential customer relate to your brand, feel comfortable using your service and sparks emotion. Testimonials are also usually very specific. They tell the before and after story of how your product or service actually delivered.
You also want to make sure your creative gives a call to action. Click here, call now, find out more, save now, act now, sign up here, get free information are just some simple three-word sentences that are powerful response drivers.
Second: Make sure you know your customer
Place your advertising where they watch, listen, read and spend their time. Do you know what motivates your typical customer to purchase? Do you know what they are passionate about or what emotions they are feeling when they are thinking about purchasing your product. Knowing customer motives will help guide both your creative and media decisions. In an article by Wes Morton titled “A marketers guide to modern media consumption by age group,” he gives these insightful and powerful insights.
- Tech adoption happens bottom up, from the youngest to oldest, necessitating new strategies to meet the younger generations where they are.
- As new generations mature into adulthood, their media habits crystalize while their buying power increases. Don’t forget about the wisest and biggest wallets in favor of chasing youth.
- No media really dies. Headlines like these are clickbait. The pie just shifts. Your marketing budget should reflect those consumer shifts.
Gen Z, people aged 12-25, are the socially conscious, woke, TikTok dancers that advertisers can’t talk enough about. This group can be boiled down to four channels: social, streaming TV, streaming music, and video games. That’s where 90% of your budget should go to reach ad land’s most desirable, youngest, and impressionable demographic. For young women, skew to streaming TV; for young men, invest more in video games. Social should be prioritized for each.
Millennials, consumers aged 26-44, embody digital disruption, inheriting their name from the millennia transition and Y2K. With the most dispersed media habits on our list, millennials epitomize the move to digital with the adoption of the internet, iPhone, and social. This shift has caused them to share media habits from both older and younger generations.
Gen X shares distributed media consumption with the millennial audience, albeit skewing toward older media forms like traditional TV. Curiously, Gen X also consumes the least amount of media at roughly eight hours. This generation is most likely to still have their pay TV bundles as well as new streaming TV subscriptions.
Gen X is busy. They are the most likely to be parents (of Gen Alpha) and occupy senior work positions. Although the least covered in advertising trades, they have the highest disposable income of any generation, according to the World Economic Forum.
Boomers love traditional TV. This is your dad who sends you clips from FOX News, CNN or MSNBC on how the country is going to hell. Boomers are the most likely to have pay TV packages, watching roughly 4.5 hours each day, almost 50% of their total media consumption.
When they are not parked in front of the TV, Boomers dabble in social media and streaming TV. All advertising that seeks to reach this audience should have TV buys baked in. The original TV generation are still the OG couch potatoes. They will have the cable plugged in for the foreseeable future but will slowly adopt new media to connect to post awkward comments to their kids and grandkids.
https://www.thedrum.com/profile/creativ-strategies/news/a-guide-to-modern-media-consumption-by-age-group
Jul 6, 2021 | Digital Marketing
Google recently announced that support for third-party cookies in Chrome would be extended until the end of 2023, giving marketers almost a two-year extension from the previous plan to block third-party cookies by early 2022. And Privacy Sandbox initiatives will be delayed while more testing takes place.
While this news extends the uncertainty the digital marketing industry faces, it also provides more time to prepare and build solutions that will work for the future world of digital advertising. Privacy engineering director at Chrome, Vinay Goel, explained in a blog post on the company’s website that “while there’s considerable progress with [the Privacy Sandbox] initiative, it’s become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem to get this right.”
In the post, Goel goes on to say that “We plan to continue to work with the web community to create more private approaches to key areas, including ad measurement, delivering relevant ads and content, and fraud detection.”
This is good news for your ad revenue in 2022 and beyond! The delay gives the digital marketing industry time to adapt and come up with creative solutions that deliver results in a cookie-less tracking realm and to come up with solutions that serve the needs of advertisers while protecting the privacy of internet users. The losers, in the interim, are the internet users, who will be subject to third-party tracking for a little while longer than promised.
These additional months, give the industry the opportunity to hear from more publishers, advertisers, and consumers to consider every angle. As Google considers proposals, they will implement a rigorous testing schedule which includes discussion in open forums as well as open trials followed by feedback consideration, before any rollouts begin.
If you’d like to keep tabs on the status of the Privacy Sandbox initiative, Google has stated that they will provide a detailed and regularly updated schedule on privacysandbox.com to provide greater clarity and ensure that developers and publishers can plan their testing and migration schedules accordingly.
Jun 7, 2021 | CTT / OTT Advertising, Digital Marketing
The 2020 Pandemic drove a dramatic surge in overall media consumption by U.S. viewers. Most of those gains will stick around in 2021, with the exception of traditional TV viewership which is expected to lose all of its 2020 gains, falling below even 2019 levels.
How did the pandemic affect U.S. media consumption in 2020?
A recent report from eMarketer disclosed that U.S. adults increased their time spent consuming media – digital, radio, television, print, and packaged media – by a whopping 58 minutes per day in 2020, setting a new high average of 13 hours, 21 minutes.
While digital media usage, in particular, experienced massive growth, even some traditional media formats – including linear TV and print newspapers – reported growth for the first time in years.
Which media channels will experience continued growth in 2021?
The report found that the increase in overall media consumption will remain relatively steady in 2021. Specifically, U.S. adults are predicted to decrease their time on various media outlets by just 9 minutes per day. The staying power of this level of increased engagement is impressive, especially considering how significant the growth in media consumption was over the pandemic.
Thanks to the rising popularity of OTT video streaming services, time spent on digital media, including connected TV (CTV) devices and internet-connected gaming consoles, will continue to increase in 2021, albeit that growth will progress at a more moderate pace than what was seen in 2020. In fact, U.S. adults will add an average of 9 minutes to their daily digital media viewership, on top of the additional hour they consumed in 2020. Smartphones will dominate the most-watched digital device list, but podcasts and subscription OTT services will also add to their 2020 growth.
Which media outlets will experience a declining viewership in 2021?
On the flip side, usage of traditional media outlets in the U.S. will decrease in 2021 by 5.7% or 18 minutes per day, largely due to the predicted 16-minute drop in linear TV viewership. U.S. adults will also spend less time with radio and print media which will account for the remaining 2-minute drop estimated for 2021.
“Ultimately, 2020 was an anomalous year for TV,” wrote Audrey Shomer, author of the report. “The medium picked up minutes for the first time since 2012, as people spent more time watching TV news about the pandemic, U.S. elections, and social unrest. This year, however, TV will reverse its 2020 growth and fall below 2019 levels.”
In addition, the report predicts that linear TV consumption will continue to contract at a steady rate over the next years with the average U.S. adult watching 15 minutes less in 2022 and another 11 minutes less the year after that. These declines are due to a couple of factors. To begin with, the number of on-demand streaming options continues to rise. Also a factor is the fact that more Americans are cord-cutting, opting out of traditional cable TV services in favor of connected TV devices.
How should companies shift their advertising budgets in light of the coming decline in TV viewership?
Not sure how to pivot to include new OTT and CTV strategies into your current marketing strategy? DX Media is happy to help.
We are experts in this space, offering support for radio and TV advertising, streaming services, as well as social media. We are big enough to offer discounted media, yet still small enough to give you the one-on-one attention you deserve. Although we will help you optimize your CTV and OTT strategy, the customer journey is not linear. That is why we offer support every step of the way, allowing you to maximize results and improve your bottom line. Check out our full range of services. When you partner with us, we’ll help you develop the best plan of action for your business across all media channels.
Ready to get started? Contact us for a free digital consultation today!
Additional Resources:
> Turning Connected TV Viewers Into Customers
> Reach the Streaming Generation With Ads on Connected TV
Jun 3, 2021 | Advertising How-To, Digital Marketing
As the landscape of advertising evolves and expands to include new mediums and digital platforms, the vocabulary used to describe, plan, and measure successful digital advertising campaigns must naturally grow as well. Keep our digital advertising glossary handy to help you understand and speak intelligently in the “language” of digital marketing today.
More helpful articles:
> Direct Response Copywriting
> Will You Survive the Cookie Apocalypse?
Banner Ad
An advertisement on a website with images and text, which can be static or animated, but is not a video.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM)
The amount an advertiser pays per one thousand digital advertising impressions.
Dynamic Cost Per Thousand (dCPM)
The amount an advertiser pays per one thousand digital advertising impressions but is dynamic depending on the value of each impression. Higher quality inventory or more data attached varies the CPM at the impression level (vs having a flat CPM despite the details included).
Cross-Device
Reaching users across all their devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and computers, with advertising.
Lead
A potential customer. In digital advertising, a lead is someone who has provided their information by filling out a form or completing a designated action on a website.
Media Channel
We differentiate between Search, Social, and Programmatic (Display/Mobile/Video/Audio/CTV)
Optimizations
Adjustments made to a campaign to improve the campaign’s efficiency. For example, removing keywords that aren’t generating results, or changing the geotargeting range.
Programmatic Advertising
Buying and selling online ads through an automated platform, using data and algorithms to make decisions about which ads to buy in real-time
Search Advertising
Search advertising allows advertisers to place ads within the search engine results that appear after a user has performed an online search. This tactic is also known as paid search, search engine marketing, SEM, pay-per-click, and PPC. Advertisers are only charged when a user actually clicks on their ad, hence the name pay-per-click.
Share of Voice (SOV)
The relative portion of ad inventory available to a single advertiser within a defined market over a specified period.
Social Media Advertising
Ads that appear on any social media platform, like Facebook or Instagram. These ads are served to a custom audience interested in the products and services provided by the advertiser.
Tactic
For Programmatic this would be Display vs. Video vs. Audio vs. CTV; For Social, it could be Facebook vs. Instagram vs. LinkedIn, etc.
Targeting Terms Behavioral Targeting (BT)
Targeting audiences that have demonstrated an interest in a product or category, either via their web-browsing behavior or another prior action that indicates interest. This data is provided by third-party data providers.
Category Contextual Targeting
A site targeting tactic based on the content. Impressions are served to users on sites and channels with content related to the product or category. Category Contextual targeting is similar to domain targeting but instead of targeting individual domains, you can target whole categories of sites at a time (all sports sites, all health sites, all finance sites, etc.).
Cross-Device Targeting (XD)
The targeting applied goes across devices (mobile, PC, TV, tablet), so you are reaching users regardless of what device they are using. XD added to any other targeting means that targeting is applied across devices (ie XDBT = Cross-Device Behavioral Targeting)
First-Party Targeting / CRM Targeting
Targeting data that is owned by the advertiser. This can be CRM data based on previous marketing efforts, registered clients, subscribed users, etc. This data can then be used to target, exclude, or model from. All first-party data is managed via LiveRamp ensuring that all data/PII is secure and hashed.
Geotargeting (GT)
Reaching users based on their geographic location. Geotargeting is available at several levels: national, state, DMA, zip code, and a radius around a specific location.
Geo Retargeting (GRT)
Reaching users based on geographic locations they have historically visited.
In-App Targeting
Reaching an audience within apps that are contextually relevant to your campaign.
Keyword Contextual (KW)
Impressions served to users while they are on pages with content related to the product or category.
Lookalike Targeting (LAL)
Targeting a new audience that is developed based on data signals, to be similar to an established audience. A lookalike audience can be generated by pixel data (from site traffic or conversion activity) or can be modeled from 1st party CRM data or other shared data files. These lookalike models help to reach users who have similar behavioral and demographic profiles as previous site visitors.
Persona Targeting
Personas are crafted using advanced data science techniques applied across billions of mobile device signals to classify users. A custom app ownership audience can also be built. Personas have the ability to cookie match their mobile audiences, so this can run omni-channel.
Retargeting
Serving an ad to a user after they have visited a website. The user has indicated an interest in that brand but has not yet converted.
Search Retargeting
Targeting users based on their search behavior. The best of both search and display. Serve a display ad to users who have searched relevant keywords – later as they are browsing other sites.
Targeting
Specific parameters used to determine the audience to serve with ads. This is determined by aggregating various attributes, such as geography, demographics, psychographics, web browsing behavior, and past purchases.
Targeting / Sub-Tactic
This details what type of targeting types are happening under each Tactic umbrella. E.g., in a Display campaign we may run 3P Behavioral Targeting, 1st Party CRM Lookalike modeling, Domain Retargeting, and Keyword contextual (or any other targeting type mentioned above)
Third-Party Subtargeting
Targeting data that is purchased from a 3rd party data collector.
Video/Audio Event Retargeting (VRT)
Serving an ad to a user after they have seen/heard a video or audio ad. These ads can track users at the mid-point or completion of an ad and are bucketed into a retargeting pool that can be used across channels.
Conversion
A trackable action on a site such as a form completion, button click, page visit, or order confirmation. Also referred to as activities.
Dynamic Tag
Integrate third-party tools for tracking website activity, enabling the notification of third parties in real-time whenever there’s a conversion.
External ID
In Campaign Manager, an external ID is any ID that you might use outside Campaign Manager 360 for internal reports (this ID is not generated by Campaign Manager 360). You can apply the same external ID to any combination of campaigns or placements or use a unique ID for every campaign and every placement.
Floodlight
Allows you to track and report on conversions in Campaign Manager — the actions of users who visit your site after viewing or clicking on one of your ads — and to set up an audience, which compiles lists of users who’ve performed specific actions on a site, then makes those users available for targeting by subsequent campaigns. Also referred to as an Activity.
Placement ID
Identification number generated when creating placements in Campaign Manager. Located next to Placement Name in the platform.
Placement Tag
A placement tag—sometimes called an ad tag—is code that calls an ad server for ad content when users visit a site. Campaign Manager 360 serves ads when users visit a site with Campaign Manager 360 placement tags. The placement tag instructs the user’s browser to request the ad, and the request often includes information that Campaign Manager 360 can use to decide what kind of ad to send.
Static Tracking Tag
In TTD, this is a small piece of code that allows advertisers to track user behavior on a website and provide information on the effectiveness of an ad campaign. Can be appended as a Dynamic tag in a Campaign Manager Floodlight to enable Third-Party Tracking.
Tracking Pixel
A small piece of code that allows advertisers to track user behavior on a website and provide information on the effectiveness of an ad campaign.
Tracking Tag
A tracking tag is a piece of code added to a website as a way to track that someone landed on a page. In some cases, tracking tags pass on information about what actions a user took on a given page. Tracking tags are not seen by users and are also known as pixels, tracking pixels, retargeting pixels, or conversion pixels.
Universal Pixel
The Trade Desk’s universal pixel collects data on what pages are visited on a website. The universal pixel supports all the functionality of a static tracking tag while also supporting the additional, optional functionality of pixel mappings. In order to create specific page mappings, the pixel must be placed into the shared code (header/footer) of a webpage.
General Advertising Metrics
Click
When a user clicks on an ad.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
The amount of budget spent to acquire one new lead. For example, if an advertiser spends $100 and gets 4 leads, their CPL would be $25. This can also be referred to as a cost per conversion or cost per action (CPA)
Estimated Cost Per Activity (eCPA)
The estimated cost to acquire a site activity based on the pixel activities.
Cost Per Completed View (CPCV)
The cost for a completed view (or audio message) by a user. Video, CTV, and Audio tactics can be planned or measured by CPCV.
Click-through Rate (CTR)
The number of clicks an advertiser receives on their ads per number of impressions. An ad’s CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks an ad received by the number of impressions that were served, then converting it to a percentage.
Full Episode Player (FEP)
Video units played during long-form content (ie a full episode of ‘Friends’) vs a short-form video (ie a two and a half minute news clip). Full episodes can be viewed across any screen (mobile, PC, tablet, TV), but the user has a time investment and high engagement in the program.
Private Market Place (PMP)
This is a video, often Connected TV, pre-negotiated deal with the publisher, network, or content provider to push CTV ads onto higher premium content at a lower price.
Impression
An individual instance of an ad being served. In digital advertising, an impression is measured regardless of whether the user has actually seen or interacted with the ad in any way.
Spend
The spend is the media budget spent so far in the date range selected for a campaign.
May 25, 2021 | CTT / OTT Advertising, Digital Marketing, Direct Response Advertising
If you’re considering using video content in your social media advertising, one of the most important questions is how long does video content last? Will it drive views and sales forever, or is there an expiration date? Here are some of the things you should consider.
Why Video Content?
Simply put, video content is where customers are. Video content will soon make up over 82% of all consumer internet traffic. You can see this by just going around to different social media platforms or news websites. People aren’t posting written content. They’re posting videos. If you want your ad to be seen, you need to be posting videos as well.
How Long is Video Content Effective?
As social media advertising makes more use of video, video is starting to blend in with other forms of advertising as well as all of the other content out there. That means that in many cases you only have a limited amount of time to grab attention with your ad. QuickFrame has released a number of statistics on how video ads perform.
Five Days
Video content is most effective within the first five days of release by all measures. That includes views, conversions, and how many people watched the video to completion. Once you get past the fifth day, the drop in performance is about five percent per day.
Eight Days
The eighth day is when video ads typically start to seriously underperform. Only about two-thirds of users will watch at least 25% of the video. Just 1.5% will watch the entire video.
Fourteen Days
By the second week, most videos have lost effectiveness. Viewership continues to drop by at least 3% per day. Conversions also start to drop. The average conversion rate in the initial days is just 0.32%. By the second week, conversions are nearly zero. That increases the cost of acquisition by 18%.
Three Days
If you’re trying to market an app download, you have even less time. Video audiences are typically willing to download an app within the first three days of an ad. After that, install rates start to drop and are 33% lower by the end of the month. This, in turn, increases your cost per impression.
Do Consumers Become Blind to Video Ads?
One reason that the performance of video content drops off is consumers start to become blind to ads. This comes from both seeing the ad in multiple places as well as from the sheer number of online ads in general.
The average user has eight different social media accounts. Videos may also appear on traditional broadcast TV or in online streaming services. That means that many of your ad impressions could be going to someone who has already seen your ad multiple times. Viewers start to tune out that ad or have already decided not to buy. This also gets them in the habit of tuning out ads in general.
That general ad blindness is also a cause for concern. When video ads were rarer in social media advertising, they were a way to catch attention on their own. Today, you need to find a way to get users to break that habit of automatically clicking past videos.
Are There Privacy Concerns in Video Ads?
One way to combat ad fatigue is by making sure consumers don’t keep seeing the same ad over and over again. Unfortunately for marketers, this type of cross-platform tracking has come under fire from multiple directions. Consumers don’t like the idea of being tracked and install blocking software to keep marketers from identifying them as they move from one platform to the other.
Various levels of government have also passed consumer privacy laws that make tracking impossible without affirmative consent. With consumers not wanting to participate, the costs of compliance can outweigh the potential benefits of leaving tracking in place.
In addition, even seemingly effective tracking campaigns can have hidden challenges. For example, say you are buying a new car. As you visit car review websites and dealership websites, automated marketing campaigns start to show you more ads related to buying a new car no matter what website or social media platform you’re on. If you see a new video about a car you’re considering, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll watch it.
The first problem for marketers is controlling these ads from repeating too many times. If tracking isn’t effective, one solution might be to put out a wider variety of videos to decrease the repetition. The second problem is that online campaigns can’t identify when you’ve gone to a physical dealership to buy or have decided not to buy. The answer to this second challenge is primarily limiting the length of your campaign.
What Exactly Are You Advertising?
How long a video ad will remain effective will depend on exactly what you’re advertising and the goal for your campaign. While many ads expire quickly, it is also possible to develop evergreen videos in certain situations.
For example, say you’re advertising a haunted house on Halloween night. You’ll probably want to start up your ad campaign sometime in October. Exactly when is a balancing act. Start too early and you risk people seeing the ad too many times. Start too late and they may have other plans already. And if you do start early, you have no idea if low conversions are because people aren’t interested or if it’s still too early for them to make plans. No matter what happens, on November 1st, your ad has served its purpose.
Now let’s say you’re advertising for a hardware store. You might have special events, sales, or new product launches that are more timely by nature. These videos will have short expiration dates. Recurring seasonal videos, such as getting ready for summer, might last from year to year. However, you might want to refresh them each year to create more buzz. A type of evergreen content that will be more likely to stick in search engines and continue to drive customers to your store is a how-to series on basic home improvements and repairs.
Conclusion
When you launch video content in your social media advertising, you’re racing against the clock before it loses effectiveness. Exactly how long your video will last depends on your audience, what you’re selling, and the goal for each video.
To learn more about video marketing or to get ideas for a video campaign, talk to DX MediaDirect.
