The online advertising industry is facing more challenges than ever before. While most advertisers are looking for solutions post-campaign launch, we want to share why you should be improving your ads pre-campaign launch.
1. Conversion attribution got harder
In the golden era of Facebook Ads, conversion attribution worked. It depended on the platform’s attribution model, campaign setups, and the marketer’s interpretation. But everything worked.
In April 2021, Apple’s release of iOS 14.5 changed everything. Since then, Apple has been coming up with new privacy features affecting the advertising industry. It made all platforms have to regroup and find solutions. Still now, more than 2 years after, attribution solutions are still not clear.
Direct response advertising campaigns (lead generation, sales, etc) rely on attribution for optimization. For that reason, we can only agree that optimizing your ad campaigns is now the hardest it has been in the last 5 years.
Some platforms are launching server-side solutions. Some others have their own tracking pixels. Platforms like Triple Whale and NorthBeam connect ad accounts and website conversions. No doubt, this can help be very helpful to follow and study your consumer’s path to conversion. But, don’t forget that no tool will tell you exactly what ad made your customer make an action every time.
2. Rising advertising costs
In July 2021, five major social media platforms showed a dramatic increase in advertising costs year-over-year.
- Google and YouTube’s CPM up by 108%
- Facebook ad cost had an 89% increase, while the average CPM was $11
- TikTok’s CPM went up by 92% increase
- Snapchat had “the lowest” 64% increase in CPM
According to the report released by Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce of the United States, e-commerce sales grew 32.4% in 2020 from 2019 thanks to the pandemic.
This event augmented the demand for ad space on platforms like Meta, raising advertising costs. While the first quarters of 2022 seem to have slowed down the growth of e-commerce sales, demand is still high compared to the inventory available.
CPMs are still not only relevant but the key to brand awareness campaigns. They are still the way a lot of platforms charge and sell advertising. Video content seems to be taking over SM platforms. The rise of video creates new and exciting ad placements. But, it decreases inventory for traditional ad formats such as static images and banners.
CPC might be the most undervalued KPI in the current advertisement world. We understand marketers focus on Attribution Models, Return On Ad Spend, Cost per Acquisition, and Long Term Value. But, CPC is critical for every online advertiser. Cost Per Click can make your potential customer journey not profitable right away.
Improving CTR will bring your CPC down every time. You need to optimize your ads to speed up your user’s consideration journey. These will help ad cost increases affects your profitability less.
3. Ads: the most effective audience segmentation tool
There are many ways to segment your audience on advertising platforms. Demographics, geolocalization, loyalty programs, and websites are a few examples. Apple privacy changes, ad blockers, VPNs, and privacy laws made segmentation more difficult. Tracking users’ behavior, collecting interests, and identifying demographics continues to get more complex.
Right now, and in a cookie-less future, the online advertising industry already agrees on one thing:
Ad Creatives are, as they have always been in offline advertising, the ultimate tool for audience segmentation.
4. Noisier platforms
Currently, we seem to be living in the second golden age of online video content. This time, it is vertical, and it’s not on Facebook. It’s on Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and Youtube.
More online videos don’t only affect content planning and content creation. Overstimulation and information overload affect your audience’s attention and ad recall. Flashing lights, music, and literal noise impact your audience when they are online.
Because of this, more than ever, you need to optimize your ads to impact your audience. Make sure they see and recall your brand, message, and/or product.
5. More cost-efficient A/B testing
Considering all the previous factors, it is clear that ad AB testing also needs an upgrade. It’s now more expensive and less accurate. This is the current situation:
- Knowing what ads converted is not always possible.
- You cannot test 10 creatives to find a winner without spending .
- You need better ad creatives to segment your audience.
- You need to make an impact on your audience as soon as possible.
Let’s not forget these classic brand marketer dilemmas. Where should your logo go? Up, down left or right on the ad? Is the logo big enough? You can’t take those decisions using traditional A/B testing tools.
Welcome to Hippoc
At Hippoc, we understand the challenges marketers currently face. That’s why, after over 2 years of work, we developed our Ad Design Booster. We focused on creating a solution to take better, cheaper, and quicker ad design decisions.
Big brands have applied Cognitive Science to marketing and advertising for decades. It was expensive and slow. We use Attention and Recall research to create our proprietary AI. Thanks to Hippoc, the ability to analyze the impact of your ads is now available to anyone, in seconds.
We help you optimize your ads to ensure your audience recalls what you want to tell them. Upload your creatives. Let our AI think. Apply our recommendations. Launch your ads.
