What has your experience been with Ad networks.

ionicware 12 years ago

We've used just about every major ad network for Ionicware. From Google adwords to Facebook ads to BSA to 7Search and so on.

My personal experience:

Google Adwords
- low conversion
- costly
- Highly targeted

Facebook
- Mostly bot traffic although your analytics software will register a lot more traffic than you actually pay for.
- Traffic (because of above) is very cheap. You can get $0.03 clicks if all you want is traffic by targeting third-world countries.
- Low-medium conversion (depending on ad, we experimented with all kinds of ads and targets and some resulted in very high conversion rate for a period of time then dropped very low).
- Great for branding
- Generating a custom audience (such as your user emails) can help with rebranding and generate substantial repeat business
- You can do the same as above with other audiences by scraping competitor group IDs (this is frowned upon by FB).

Bing/Yahoo Ads
- Low conversion
- Somewhat costly
- They have some odd stuff going on where they restricted our ads for a period of time then unrestricted but then refunded us then charged us and then limited our ads to a specific country, then went into review and was appealed and won but still limited. It still confuses me to this day.

Rebranding (IE: Perfect Audience)
- Cheap
- Medium to high conversion
- Great for branding

7Search
- Cheap
- Low conversion

Bidvertiser
- I'm not sure the clicks are real

Pay Per Social Media Click/Like/Follow/etc
- Mixed results for each campaign. I've seen some campaigns that were "lucky" and had a user tweet a link that had 1,000s of real followers which resulted in many conversions/clicks while I've seen a campaign have a 200,000 follower user tweet a link resulting in no clicks or conversion.

BSA
- Low conversion
- Great for brand building especially on forums

What is your goal when you advertise? Brand building or to create conversions or clicks or likes or follows or something else? Brand building tactics are different than conversion/click tactics. For example, I would create a CPC campaign using my brand logo on Facebook for brand building so that it generates as many impressions as possible without having to pay for the clicks. I'd likely create a CPM campaign with a relevant image to what I'm selling specific to a target group for conversions/clicks.

I agree with your original assessment of banner ads. If you can secure 100% of the top spot (above the fold) you'll get twice as many clicks and conversions than a smaller, lower positioned area.We've used just about every major ad network for Ionicware. From Google adwords to Facebook ads to BSA to 7Search and so on. My personal experience: [B]Google Adwords[/B] - low conversion - costly - Highly targeted [B]Facebook[/B] - Mostly bot traffic although your analytics software will register a lot more traffic than you actually pay for. - Traffic (because of above) is very cheap. You can get $0.03 clicks if all you want is traffic by targeting third-world countries. - Low-medium conversion (depending on ad, we experimented with all kinds of ads and targets and some resulted in very high conversion rate for a period of time then dropped very low). - Great for branding - Generating a custom audience (such as your user emails) can help with rebranding and generate substantial repeat business - You can do the same as above with other audiences by scraping competitor group IDs (this is frowned upon by FB). [B]Bing/Yahoo Ads[/B] - Low conversion - Somewhat costly - They have some odd stuff going on where they restricted our ads for a period of time then unrestricted but then refunded us then charged us and then limited our ads to a specific country, then went into review and was appealed and won but still limited. It still confuses me to this day. [B]Rebranding[/B] (IE: Perfect Audience) - Cheap - Medium to high conversion - Great for branding [B]7Search[/B] - Cheap - Low conversion [B]Bidvertiser[/B] - I'm not sure the clicks are real [B]Pay Per Social Media Click/Like/Follow/etc[/B] - Mixed results for each campaign. I've seen some campaigns that were "lucky" and had a user tweet a link that had 1,000s of real followers which resulted in many conversions/clicks while I've seen a campaign have a 200,000 follower user tweet a link resulting in no clicks or conversion. [B]BSA[/B] - Low conversion - Great for brand building especially on forums What is your goal when you advertise? Brand building or to create conversions or clicks or likes or follows or something else? Brand building tactics are different than conversion/click tactics. For example, I would create a CPC campaign using my brand logo on Facebook for brand building so that it generates as many impressions as possible without having to pay for the clicks. I'd likely create a CPM campaign with a relevant image to what I'm selling specific to a target group for conversions/clicks. I agree with your original assessment of banner ads. If you can secure 100% of the top spot (above the fold) you'll get twice as many clicks and conversions than a smaller, lower positioned area.

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