How to Prevent Click Fraud When it comes to business, the old adage "You’ve got to spend money to make money," couldn’t be more true. Aside from the financial outlay to develop your product and manufacture it, and all the overhead that comes with owning a business, you are responsible for marketing your product so the public knows that your product exists. You’ve set aside some marketing dollars to spread awareness and attract people to your brand and your website. You’ve looked into a variety of advertising options, and determined that pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a sound way to spend your marketing budget. After all, you only pay when users click on your ad, so you only pay to advertise to people who are at least mildly interested in what you offer. PPC advertising can provide a healthy return on investment – unless you become the victim of click fraud. By understanding what click fraud is, and being aware of the tools that are available to protect yourself and your investment, PPC can be an excellent choice to market your business. What is click fraud? Click fraud happens when a person or a bot clicks on an ad, button, or hyperlink to trick the platform into thinking there is more interaction than there actually is. With PPC advertising, click fraud can happen for one of two reasons: The website owner who is hosting the ad will click...

Quora Ads: Are They Right For Your Business? When you think of online advertising, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? Google? Facebook? YouTube? If you limit yourself to those digital media giants, you could be missing out on a more targeted market that is reaching 300 million users every month. What Is Quora? And Who Uses It? Quora is a social question-and-answer website, founded in 2009. Over the years, Quora has earned a reputation for crowd-sourcing the best responses to questions based on a Q&A engine of curious and highly engaged users. In June 2017, Quora launched its advertising services, and businesses are seeing significant ROI from advertising on Quora. Why? Quora users are 20% more likely to have authorized a business purchase. They’re 65% more likely to report a college degree. They’re also 37% more likely to be a manager. And they’re 54% more likely to report an annual household income of more than $100K. Even more interesting? 63% of Quora users conduct research before major online purchases. In the United States, Quora users are highly educated and primarily live in West and East Coast metropolitan areas.* With demographics like that, Quora Ads might be the perfect way to connect with your target market. Let’s dig deeper into why Quora makes sense for advertising, explore what advertising options are available, and delve into best practices for running ads on Quora. Quora Ads When you’re ready to launch your first Quora Ad campaign, you’ll be pleasantly...

Rich Media Ads: 6 Steps to Create Them + Brand Examples Recently, I was scrolling online and I came across an ad for Narcos. While I can easily ignore most banner ads online, this one stood out. It included interesting videos and animation. This was a prime example of rich media ads. A rich media ad is an excellent, modern ad format for marketers to consider. In fact, one 2018 study found that rich media ads outperform standard banner ads by 267%. With statistics like that, it's time to consider incorporating these ads into your paid media strategy. Below, let's discuss what rich media ads are and how they're different from other ad formats. Then, we'll review how to create one for your company and look at some examples to inspire your own ad campaigns. Rich media ads usually take much more time, effort, and capital to create. Why? Well, a static ad typically includes only three elements: An image, a CTA, copy. Rich media ads, on the other hand, can incorporate various multimedia elements and allow users to interact in multiple ways. So, why do brands use rich media ads? Well, rich media ads are engaging and dynamic in a way that other ad types aren't. They usually lead to more interaction, increased conversions, and a higher clickthrough rate. Since many people have banner blindness like me, creating an ad that your audience wants to interact with isn't easy. Rich media ads are a great way to create...

6 Types of Advertising Brands Are Investing In This Year And just like that, another year is (almost) in the books. As marketers begin to map out their 2022 marketing plans, it's the perfect time to dust off the crystal ball and predict what will shape the industry over the coming year. There's certainly a lot to consider — the continuing impact of the global pandemic, the massive shift to digital advertising, and the rise of platforms like TikTok — to name a few. Simply put, what worked for your marketing strategy in the past might not fly in 2022. Ready to explore the future of marketing? Let's look at all different types of advertising, and the 6 types brands are investing in this year. 1. Video Advertising As marketers look for innovative ways to engage audiences, video has become an integral part of the conversation. Video advertising uses videos to promote products and services, educate or entertain consumers, and reach new audiences in an engaging way. But let's be honest — video isn't a new, "up-and-coming" strategy. It's here, and its impact is already undeniable. And with the popularity of video-related platforms like YouTube and TikTok, it remains a top priority for marketers. 2. Social Media Advertising It's hard to imagine any company successfully marketing its offerings today without a social media account. With over 4 billion people on social media, it's easy to see why companies gravitate to this medium. Social media advertising serves paid ads...

How Advertisers are Navigating iOS 14's Mobile Tracking Changes It's been several months since Apple's iOS 14 update went into effect and the dust has begun to settle. One of the main questions has been, "How are advertisers handling the mobile tracking changes?" Earlier this year, we talked about how this change could impact advertisers, but now, we want to follow up. Have any new strategies evolved? What have advertisers been doing to reach their target audiences? In this post, we'll discuss how advertisers have navigated the iOS 14 mobile tracking changes and give you a few tips on how to have continued success with social media and online advertising. Wait, what happened with the iOS 14 update? To summarize, at the beginning of 2021 Apple released a new update that would impact the way that advertisers reach their audience. With the iOS 14 update users needed to opt-in, or give permission, to an app to track their activity outside of the platform. So, why were advertisers and marketers concerned? Well, a lot of ad campaigns target audiences based on their behavior online. If an app can't track that information, ads will become less personalized, and in turn, could be less effective. The concern for marketers was that they wouldn't be able to deliver their ads to people based on certain activities, like if they'd visited their website, for example. This meant that ads would likely have smaller audience sizes and less accurate reporting. Additionally, with this update...

What Are Responsive Search Ads and Why Should You Use Them? As a marketer, we've been talking about personalization and responsive advertising for some time now. And that trend isn't going away. In 2019, 72% of display ads were responsive (more than double what they found just two years previous). Additionally, the ways people search are changing. Google found that 15% of search queries every day are new searches they've never seen before. That's why starting June 30, 2022, responsive search ads will be the only search ad type that can be created or edited in Google standard search campaigns. The goal is that this change will help simplify the way you create search ads and make it easier to drive performance. To prepare for this upcoming change, let's discuss what responsive search ads are and the best practices for creating them. The goal is to show a different combination of titles and descriptions for different users depending on their unique queries and search history. Google will alternate between the titles and descriptions, showing 32,760 different versions of the ad. Then, the search engine will find the most effective title and description combination and use it the most often. Responsive search ads are a simple and strategic way to create an effective PPC marketing strategy. You can boost your engagement and reach more potential customers with the most effective version of your ad.   Responsive Search Ads vs. Dynamic Search Ads...

How Consumers Responded to Black Friday Ads in 2021 After 2020, there were big expectations for what 2021 could bring. Some predicted lower Black Friday sales as supply chains struggle to meet demand. Others said 2021 would bring record numbers. As an advertiser, you might want to learn more about growing online purchasing behaviors – and how you can leverage them in 2022. Below, we'll highlight what we learned from polling 300+ consumers after this Black Friday. Then, we'll present a few consumer behavior predictions you'll need to know about when determining your 2022 Black Friday ad strategy. What We Learned About Black Friday Shoppers in 2021 To help marketers discover more about the consumer behaviors behind Black Friday's 2021 results, I surveyed a pool of more than 300 people using Lucid Software. The goal was to learn what led them to engage with or purchase products in Black Friday ads. Here's what we learned from our results. 1. Social media was the leading driver for ad engagement. With Black Friday deals comes an inundation of Black Friday ads throughout all forms of media. It's no surprise that millions of people shopped on Black Friday – but which ad strategies actually led to purchases? When I asked participants, "Did you engage with any online ads or promotions for Black Friday?" 56% said they engaged with one or more ads in some way, while only 26% said they ignored them. We also found that social media was the...

2021 Advertising Stats You Need to Know 2021 was a big year with advertisers, as they managed the remnants of the COVID-19 crisis and pandemic along with growing data privacy concerns. So, how exactly did advertisers fare in terms of strategy, challenges, and ad spend? To help you prepare for your 2022 strategy, we've gathered 27 stats. You'll learn which strategies advertisers are leveraging today, which ones they plan to invest in, and the challenges they faced and may face in 2022. Current Ad Strategies 84% of marketers' companies run marketing campaigns and for 42% of respondents, advertising products is one of their main goals. (HubSpot Blog Research) This year, print advertising was a low priority for marketers, with only 19% of marketers leveraging it. It was also one of the least effective channels for advertisers. (HubSpot Blog Research) Paid social is a top paid channel for marketers. (HubSpot Blog Research) In terms of account-based marketing (ABM), paid ads were one of the top three tactics marketers used, behind creating custom content and identifying target contacts/roles. (HubSpot Blog Research) In 2022, 21% of marketers plan to leverage paid social for the first time. (HubSpot Blog Research) In 2022, around 66% of advertisers plan to respond to data depreciation by 1) learning how to leverage their data in privacy-forward ways, 2) demanding more data transparency from partners, and exploring the adoption and experimentation of artificial intelligence. (Forrester) Advertisers plan to leverage...