Adadyn conducted research with MORAR to get a better feel for perceptions and actions of digital shoppers. The focus is holiday season, but the lessons are applicable year round.
Consumers don’t hate ads
As much hype as ad blocking technology has received in the last year or so, it does not truly represent the actions of the consumers. Most consumers actually find ads useful if properly targeted. By applying what we know about the users, we can increase the likelihood that they will not just click on the ad, but take action on the site… like buy the products.
More men than women shop online on a Weekly basis
While women are “the shoppers”, men are more likely to shop online on a weekly basis (36% for men, 29% for women.) It is likely that women shop more, but men just avoid the stores by doing more of their shopping online. Whatever the motive, online advertisers should not ignore the preferences men have for online shopping.
Remind shoppers with your ads
Remarketing has been a powerful tool for online advertisers. Once a person has demonstrated interest in your company or products, they become key prospects for ‘closing the sale.’ Go beyond the simple retargeting by tracking the products or services viewed while on your site and use those product images in your ads. While some advertisers may not be able to do a one for one product to ad creation(there are technologies to help), at the very least, categorize your products by associated pages and deliver more relevant ads. These relevant ads are found useful by nearly 70% of users when shopping.
Local still matters for online shoppers
Use geo targeting to create local relevance. Even though people are shopping online, they have a preference for businesses that are nearby (71%). Let them know you are there. For national advertisers, reminding the shoppers of local stores may also help.
Programmatic buying, really?
Yes. The term brings forth images of highly complex algorithms that require PHDs to create, and in many ways it does. But the magic of the tools is that they have made the application of basic programmatic buying available for the masses. This is especially true as you consider the 80/20 rule. Much of the benefits of these highly targeted ads are available with the very basic tools.
Geo targeting is build into nearly every ad platform. It may take a little time to create your targets and ads, but it is worth doing.
Targeting ads based on the content users viewed is also a common feature of many ad platforms. Segment your URLs by content type. The more narrowly you can define these types, the more targeted you can make your ads. Again, this can take a bit of time to setup and manage, but the benefits of doing so can be fantastic, especially when you consider that your potential customer wants to see this.
Take the above and layer on demographics and interest profiles (again, available in some ad platforms) and you can begin to develop highly targeted, effective ads. Many ad platforms will create “like” targets based on your website users, extending the targeting beyond remarketing. These are a bit “black box” and should be tested into cautiously, but it does provide another opportunity for targeting likely prospects.
Do not let the term ‘programmatic buying’ put you back. Take advantage of the low hanging fruit of programmatic now, and over time as the PHDs continue to make the complex simple, expand your access to even more benefits of programmatic buying.