Media Buying: The 2 Mistakes I’ve Made in CPM Buys

Image credit: Fatheed.

Your CPM rates mean virtually nothing. If you ever negotiate media buys with a website or an advertising agency, you’ll most likely get quoted in CPM rates. For example, you may have a max of $2 CPM (Cost-Per-Milli) set. That means you’ll pay $2 for every 1,000 impressions of your advertisement.

For those of you new to media buying, there are a few things you’ll want to watch out for.

1. Your ad could be shown to the same person multiple times. Each time the ad is shown to the same person, it counts as an impression. You may have agreed to pay up to a $2 CPM, but you may really be paying $2 for 500 people to see your banner twice, or for a bot to see your ads 1,000 times. To avoid this, you’ll want to tell the network to show your ad to unique IPs only or limit display frequency to one impression per visitor per 24 hour period. Also known as frequency capping.
2. In most cases, avoid sites that cycle advertisements. A lot of sites will show an ad for XX seconds and then display another in it’s place and constantly cycle in new ads. This way websites are able to display a lot more impressions of many advertisements and as a result earn more per user for themselves. The bad news for you is that a potential buyer could be reading your display advertisement and then a new advertisement takes its place before your potential buyer is able to click the ad. And in this case, the more competition is bad too.

These are just some of the overlooked mistakes in online CPM advertising. Also, remember to check that your ads will be in the visitors’ eye path with the proper targeting (demographics, interest-based, geographic, etc.).

Most Ambitious Comment Spam – Ever

I’ve decided I need at least two useless post on this blog – so here’s another.

So, on an old auto-blog, I got the following comment (surprisingly, not being stopped by Akismet):

This guy surely has ambition – attending both Princeton and Harvard.

An Actually Useful Recap of Affiliate Summit, Las Vegas

While everyone else decides to post useless pictures from the event, I’ll post about some of the new marketing ideas that I’ve learned.*

Affiliate Summit 2010 had the most useful keynote I’ve ever been to. It was the one by Dr. Robert Cialdini about persuasion.  Since fairly everyone that reads this blog is a direct response advertiser or a performance marketer, scientifically proven persuasion techniques are a must to understand.  If you know what ad copy performs best, you can automatically test that in your advertisements and instantly increase conversions.

Here is what I learned from that keynote:

1. How to gain instant credibility: Admit a fault.  However, you’ll see many marketing “gurus” stating that they’re “coming clean;” this is usually an attempt to admit a fault but it’s so poorly done, it’s not even close to being as effective as it could be.  Cialdini gave a few examples on properly implementing this by mentioning a negative of product/service before the use of “but”:
   • “We’re number 2 but we try harder.” An advertisement by Avis against Hertz.
   • “We’re expensive but we’re worth it.” Makeup ad.
   • “Acai berry will not make you lose weight, but combine it with a colon cleanse…” Okay, that one could be better; I just made it up.

   Learn more about using negatives in copywriting.

2. 6 principles of influence: Here’s a link. Credit: Cakes.

If you’re interested, here is a snippet of the description of the keynote, Influence During Times of Uncertainty:

…Dr. Robert Cialdini briefly reviews six research-based universal principles of influence, but focuses on those principles that are most effective during conditions of uncertainty and that leaders can employ to bring about positive and lasting change among individuals located both inside and outside their organizations.

Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of the ground-breaking book, Influence, and co-author of the New York Times best-seller, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive, is your guide in translating highly relevant but poorly-understood scientific research into practical business applications. His books have sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. Dr. Cialdini is the world’s leading authority on influence and his widely acclaimed studies are highly instructive to those who want to be more influential.

There were actually quite a few other useful things I wrote down, but many are private and I really don’t have the time to organize and post them. Honestly, time’s the reason why I try not to post more than once a month anyway.

Below, are some other posts about ASW10:

• Ad Hustler: Part 1, 2, 3
• Bryn
• Justin Dupre
• Nicky Cakes: Part 1
• Nerdy Affiliate
• PPC.bz
• Riley Pool
• Shoemoney
• Volk

*I actually enjoy to read what others in the industry post.  I just don’t like carrying around a camera – so I don’t have any pictures to post.

The Most Awesome Commercials of 2000-2009*

There’s a post by Jamie Bernard at WalletPop, titled Ad Rant: The 10 Worst Ads of the Decade. Now, calling these ads the worst just because they’re a bit grotesque is quite ridiculous. Excerpt from Bernard’s post:

The decade was awash in such truly awful commercials that we were hard pressed to choose just 10…

If they weren’t so “awful” (Bernard’s wording – not mine) they would have never been noticed.  From a direct response marketer’s point of view, an “awful” ad is an advertisement that’s not noticed and ineffective at driving sales.

Anyway, thanks to Bernard for pointing these ads out. Hopefully, the commercials might give you some ideas for your own campaigns.

*Yeah, these are not the most awesome commercials, but I still needed to pick an effective headline for this post.

Nielsen PRIZM: Extreme Demographic Targeting

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine De Saint-Expiry

The basic premise behind Nielsen’s PRIZM is that similar people live in the same type of neighborhood.  This system groups 62 different neighborhood types.  These neighborhoods types are categorized according to six different aspects (Advertising campaign strategy: A guide to marketing communication plans. By Parente, D. on p. 72):

1. Social rank (income, employment levels, education)
2. Household composition (age, sex, family type, independent/dependent, children)
3. Mobility (length of residency, auto ownership)
4. Ethnicity (race, foreign birth, ancestry, native language)
5. Urbanization (population density, urban, suburban, city, town, rural)
6. Housing (owning/renting, home values, number of stories)

Additionally, these neighborhoods are labeled according to lifestyle preferences.  These preferences extend from favorite television shows and networks, vehicles, magazines, and hobbies.

Now, in order for PRIZM to help you in an online media buying, you’re going to have to get your hands on Nielsen’s PRIZM. The second problem is going to be targeting these demographics online. The easiest way to target these demos at the moment is going to be through zip code targeting.