Statistics suggest that native advertising will grow 12.5% YoY in 2023, reaching almost $98.59 billion. The largest share of native ads will be the native social ads on Facebook and Twitter. Therefore, it is imperative for organizations to learn to optimize their native to increase their revenue.

Understanding Native Advertisements

Native ads are advertising that seamlessly blends with the medium it showcases on. Native ads use the same format as the content of the website. For instance, a native ad can be an article on a website that contains editorial content. Native advertising is more user-centric as it does not intrude on the user experience on a particular website. There are three major components of native advertising :

1. Ad Attribution: Since native ads look exactly like the content, they appear on the publisher’s website. Ad attribution helps users distinguish between the content and native ads by attaching a badge to the native ad.
2. Advertiser Elements: These elements depend on the components provided by the advertiser.
3. AdChoices Overlay: This is present in the upper right-hand corner of the native ad. The AdChoices overlay contains a link the advertiser provides to target specific customers.

Methods to Optimize Native Ads

There are several ways to optimize native ads to increase your revenue.

1.     Maximize the Relevance of Your Ads

You want to display the ads that are most relevant to your audiences. For instance, if they are reading a post about wine, they should not get advertisements for bathroom tiles. Non-congruent ads do not lead to high conversion rates and affect your user’s trust. Relevant ads will lead to greater audience trust and higher revenue. 

As such, you must ensure that your ads are relevant to your audiences before placing them on any website. To check relevancy, act as the user of your website. If the ads displayed on the site seem relevant, stick with them. Otherwise, test different ad networks to find the most relevant one.

2. Use a Variety of Ad Networks 

As discussed above, users easily ignore default ad creatives and positions, which leads to fewer clicks on the advertisements and lower revenue. As such, advertisers must create several ads to make their campaign successful. A variety of different ad networks boosts audience engagement.

As your audience notices that you are offering newer and more relevant ads, they will become more interested. If the users have already seen the ad on their Facebook or Instagram, they will ignore your ad. Therefore, ad rotation is an effective technique to keep your readers engaged 

3. Be Honest With Your Readers

Native advertisements are meant to blend in with your website. They are supposed to elevate the users’ experience. Tricking your readers into clicking on these advertisements will backfire on you. Your readers are the lifeline of your website; if you trick them, they will not return to your page. Delineate your native advertisements from your website’s content. 

You don’t want the user’s disappointment and frustration when they click on your link only to discover that it was an advertisement. The ad should not be misrepresented in a way that the user clicks on it unintentionally.

4. Take Advantage of Automation

Leverage automation tools to optimize the ads on your website. For instance, automation through split testing is a great way to increase your native ad revenue. Split testing headlines are a common form of automation. In this, publishers can test two or more headlines through automation. The system automatically chooses the headline that receives the most user engagement and maximum clicks. 

You can also use automation to test font color and style. This will allow you to view metrics that work best for your audiences. 

5. Test Different Ad Layouts 

Like headlines, you can also test different ad layouts with the help of automation. You can find the ideal ad layout or placement that receives the most user engagement. Automation allows you to test pre-defined ad placements, track user behavior for each layout and test different ad units and sizes. Automation has become more robust than ever. Automated systems continuously optimize your website based on user behavior. 

6. Use Content Recommendation Systems 

While in-feed ads work for most websites, adding more story views provides a revenue boost to your website. This additional content may come in the form of widgets that allow users to view related stories or sponsored content. This allows users to redirect to other pages of your website and provides you with additional ad opportunities to generate revenue. By redirecting the traffic to other website pages, you increase user engagement and gain opportunities to earn additional revenue. 

7. Test Different Ad Types 

There are several ad types – CPC, eCPM and CPA. You can test these different ad types to see what works out the best for your website. 

• CPC: Content-heavy websites generally go with the cost-per-click model. The eCPM model may be more relevant to you if you have more images.

• eCPM: This is called earnings per 1000 impressions. This model is ideal for larger websites with a lot of traffic. It is a great way to earn revenue even when the users are not engaging with the content.

• CPA: This is referred to as the cost-per-action model. It is related to affiliate marketing. In this model, you will earn money when a user signs up for a service and provides their information.

Just like other ads, testing is important in native ads to increase your revenue. Optimizing the ad layout should ensure that you are not tricking your users into clicking the advertisements. 

At Publir, we are committed to maximizing the revenue of content creators by offering holistic solutions for AdBlock recovery, ad optimization, subscriptions, merchandising, and fundraising. We use the best practices and automation tools to collect recurring revenue and engage users. Curious about ad optimization? Visit us here or email us at sales@publir.com to get started today.

The post Native Ad Optimization Guide for More Revenue first appeared on Publir.

1. Creating Multi-Channel Ad Optimization Strategies

Modern customers expect their brands to interact with them across various channels. They might start from one channel but continue their conversation on a different one. As such, you must create multi-channel campaigns to increase your chances of getting more customer conversions. Multi-channel optimization strategies include creating a uniform customer acquisition strategy containing different promotional and distribution channels. Creating multi-channel ad optimization campaigns saves time, effort, and costs by reusing media across different channels, allows your brand to reach a wider audience, and offers customers a uniform, seamless experience as they move between the channels. 

Creating a multi-channel experience allows you to create a cohesive brand story across various channels. This means your customers will easily recognize your brand when they see it across various channels. To create and optimize a multi-channel ad campaign, you can do the following – 

• Understand your target audience and their preferred channels 
• Set achievable goals for your ad campaign 
• Figure out your key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress 
• Create coherent brand messaging tailored for each channel
• Measure your performance and track attribution using tools like Google Analytics (GA)

Creating a multi-channel strategy might take a little more time and effort, but it puts you ahead of the competition if you can implement it well. 

2. Track Your Campaigns and Make Real-Time Changes

To have a successful ad campaign, you need to have a strategy in place to measure and track your campaign’s performance. Tracking your KPIs is one way to gain insights into your ad campaigns. Measuring various key indicators help you monitor the performance of your keywords, i.e., if your keywords are not bringing in enough traffic, you can immediately intervene and change them. You can test your campaigns with different content types and media platforms, you can understand which media types are the best for campaigns and which ones boost engagement. There are many tools that allow you to monitor audience behavior and figure out which parts of your campaign your audience is engaging with the most and the least. If you have this information, you can easily make changes to make your advertisements more tailored for your audience groups. Using tools like Adobe Analytics and Google Attribution, you can know how each channel is driving traffic.

Reaching your audience groups using the right channel is critical to successful multi-channel ad optimization campaigns.

3. Align Your Ad Strategy With Your Buyer’s Journey

The most effective ad campaigns focus on customers and not the brand. Thus, your strategy should be catered to the needs and expectations of your audiences. Typically, a buyer goes through three stages before converting into customers. The first stage is awareness, i.e., the customer gets acquainted with the problem/issue your product or service addresses. You can create scenarios and examples that exemplify and acknowledge this problem. Use visuals to grab your audience’s attention. 

The second stage is consideration, i.e., the prospective buyers consider solutions to the problem you have highlighted. At this stage, advertisements that position you as a leader in targeting those problems work the best. Your capability and expertise with that problem must be at the forefront. At this point, you can use various retargeting ads to interact with users who have already engaged with your previous advertisements. Another interesting way is life event targeting, where you run personalized ads based on important life event milestones of your customers (for instance, their graduation or when they are moving to a new place). 

The last stage is making a decision, i.e., the prospective buyer evaluates the best provider to solve the highlighted problem. At this stage, you need to generate content that helps prospects to make their final decision. For successful ad optimization, brands need to consider all three stages and make advertisements relevant to customers at different stages. You need to create content for different audience groups that are at different touchpoints in their purchase journey. Aligning your advertisements to your customer’s purchase journey will optimize your ad campaigns and make them more effective. 

While personalizing your advertisements to your customers and their purchase journeys, you should be mindful of their privacy. They can invest in high-quality first-party data and leverage trusted customer relationships to collect information and provide highly relevant and targeted marketing. You can use various probabilistic models to get the most out of first-party data and understand your customers. 

At Publir, we are committed to maximizing the revenue of content creators by offering holistic solutions for AdBlock recovery, ad optimization, subscriptions, merchandising, and fundraising. We use the best practices and automation tools to collect recurring revenue and engage users. Curious about ad optimization? Visit us here or email us at sales@publir.com to get started today.

The post Best Practices for Ad Optimization first appeared on Publir.

It’s your job to ensure that your ad campaign is unique and engaging, practically begging for your ideal audience to click it.

But how do you make your ad click-worthy? Read on.

Best Strategies to Optimize Your Ads

Fresh Adwords users and seasoned veterans alike sometimes struggle to grasp pay-per-click ad management, ensuring that they get in front of the right consumer at the right time. This increases your sales and lowers the net amount you spend on advertising. While Google ad optimization may seem a pain even for the most seasoned digital marketing professional, if you want to see results, i.e an increase in revenue or even increased engagement for your brand, you will need to get into the game. Thankfully it isn’t as complicated as it sounds. Here are some basic strategies that you can employ to optimize your Ads. 

Optimize Your Keywords

While this may sound simple and obvious, it really goes deeper than surface-level work. Optimizing keywords isn’t restricted to choosing the right ones; it also means removing the non-performing ads. Stop focusing on keywords that aren’t performing well. Throwing more money on ads that didn’t work in the first place. What does an ineffective ad look like? Statistics say that Ads that have a clickthrough rate (CTR) of less than 1% post-optimization are fit for the omission. Real people search for these keywords, so they’ll keep changing, with new keywords always emerging. There are several keyword tools both paid and free that could help you. 

Use Negative Keyword Pruning

You could also explore the practice of negative keyword pruning, which essentially means including terms that prevent your ads from being shown in specific searches. This is a great way to narrow down your audience purely to prospective customers who actually want to work with you. 

Here’s an example: Suppose you are running a business that uses “graphic designer in NYC” as a phrase-match keyword in a campaign to find new customers. A person could also search for “jobs for graphic designers in NYC”, and find your ad. This is a waste, because the searcher is looking to get hired, not hire your services. Adding ‘jobs’ as a negative impact keyword can help you avoid wasted clicks. 

Group Relevant Keywords Together

Another mistake digital marketing executives commonly make is bunching random unrelated keywords together. If you find new keywords, add them to any relevant existing group, and if you don’t currently have a group that’s relevant, start a new group. Ad groups will always have one or two odd keywords that could mushroom into new ad groups, each with its own individual adverts and landing pages. This way could get you a higher quality score, a lower CPC, and higher conversion rates. 

Optimize Your Ad Copy

Copy provides information to consumers, which helps to increase brand awareness and grow the know, like, and trust factor. If your ads are organized into groups, so the copy matches the keywords in the ad group, is already targeting the right customers and showing when your most likely customers will convert. The next step is to write some compelling and optimized copy. 

Testing different ad variations, known as “split testing,” to see what works best is a great place to start. Let us assume you want to test two ad variations, with half your audience viewing each type. Over time, it’s easy to determine which ads have higher CTRs and conversions. There are five main ad components:

• Offer – The most important component, anything less than compelling will drop traffic and conversions. 
• Headline – This has to match what the customer is searching for, and must stand out from the competition. 
• Description Lines – This helps your consumer understand the offer, and tries to encourage them to click more. 
• Display URL – This is your chance to remind customers about your offer, and specify your store/office location, or provide a CTA.
• Ad Extensions – The more extensions that Google can use in the search results, the more space your ad will take up on Google’s first page, thus raising the number of clicks you get.  

Don’t Shy Away From Diving Deep Into Analytics

Data is your friend, especially when you are dealing with online ad optimization. You must link your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account, a simple step that cannot be overlooked. In the analytics pane, visit your ‘Audience’ tab and further dive into ‘In market Segments’. This will give you valuable data like your site visitors demarcated on the basis of what they want. You will also find customers with the highest conversion rates, that you can add to your campaigns for a higher bid adjustment. Market segments is a great way to bid for audiences that may convert.

Keep A Close Watch On Your Competition

In the digital realm, it always helps to see where you stand in the market. Doing some simple tricks like bidding on competitors’ names, or finding out what they are doing using Spyfu or Ispionage, can help you stand out from the crowd and appeal more to prospective clients. Find out what ad campaigns your competitors have had success with and compare those to your own ads. You might be surprised at what you find!

In conclusion, whether you have recently been inducted into the fascinating world of online Ads, or you’ve been managing campaigns for a long time, constantly monitoring them and optimizing them is very important for you to get the most results for the least spends. Adwords campaigns aren’t cheap, and your performance depends a lot on constantly searching for new keywords to bid on. 

Fortunately, Adwords allows you to really dig into your results so you can adjust current and plan future ad campaigns.

Final Thoughts

We recommend spending how much you want, not how much you can. Learn where your margins are maximized, and keep an eye on metrics to have a successfully running ad campaign. Together with Google, there are other untapped platforms where you can unleash the power of Advertising. Read here about how advertising on OTT platforms is all the rage, and how your brand can get visibility as viewership globally increases. 

The post 6 Ways To Optimize Your Ads first appeared on Publir.