1. Set Campaign Goals
All successful online marketing programs require answers to a set of fundamental questions about desired audience, action, timing and budget.
Whom do I want to reach?
You might decide that age and gender define your audience (e.g. Females, Age 18-34). Or you might find that income and interest define your audience (Auto Enthusiasts, HHI $100K+). Whether you want to reach a broad or niche group, your target audience should inform your campaign strategy.
Where is my audience?
Obviously, you’ll want to conduct your campaign on sites that “skew” toward your target audience. Stats on audience composition can be found on the profile page for each FM site.
What do I want my audience to do after seeing my ad?
Are you trying to create brand or product awareness? Or is the objective to drive traffic to an e-commerce engine or product page? In either case, you should determine in advance how to measure campaign success.
When do I want to advertise?
Are you promoting an upcoming event? Or are you looking for immediate benefits? FM offers campaign lengths as short as one day or as long as one year.
How much do I want to spend?
The number of impressions you serve will be limited by your campaign budget and timing. You will want to make certain to set campaign goals that can be met with your budget.
In addition, you want to choose sites that are not too large for your budget. A rule of thumb is to choose a site on which you will have at least 10% “share of voice” or “SOV”. Share of voice is the percent of page views on which your ad will run.
Example: If you purchase 5,000 impressions/day on a site with 50,000 daily page views, you will have 10% SOV.
2. Explore Sites
FM-sold properties can be located by topic category or “Federation”, by audience demographics, or by ad parameters.
On the "Explore Sites" page, you might click on the category to the left to narrow your search to a list of sites in that topic. Then you might click on sites in that category to determine if their topics and audiences are good choices for your campaign. If you already know the specific sites on which you want to advertise, simply select them from the dropdown menu at the top of the list.
FM offers online advertising opportunities under the following pricing schemes:
- * Cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM)
- * Sponsorships over a time period
FM offers all larger graphical ads on a cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) basis.
In this scenario, advertising rates are quoted in dollars per 1,000 impressions.
Example: If you purchase an ad at a rate of $20 CPM, you’ll pay $20 for every 1,000 times your ad appears on the site.
FM offers text ads and some graphical 125x125 size ads on a weekly flat rate sponsorship basis.
Under this scheme, your ad will appear every time the page is viewed for the entire 7-day period.
For campaigns less than $10,000 in value, FM accepts payment via PayPal. For larger campaigns, customers should contact orders@federatedmedia.net for assistance.
3. Add Banners
Once your campaign objectives, budgets and audiences are determined, you will need ad “creative” to communicate your message.
“Creative” is the combination of imagery and/or text that makes up the online ad.
If your objectives are to create brand or product awareness or perception, then image ads are strongly recommended. However, if your objective is to describe a specific product feature or application, or communicates an action to be taken by your audience, than either text or image ads can be very effective. Keep in mind that an ad that includes a logo or memorable message generates brand equity even if the ad is not clicked.
Common ad sizes offered by FM:
Graphical banner ads are available in a range sizes and are measured by the number of pixels wide by the number high:
- * Medium Rectangle (300 x 250)
- * Leaderboard (728 x 90)
- * Skyscraper (120 x 600)
- * Square Button (125 x 125)
Text Ads (125 x 125) might consist of: a headline (30 character limit), body (80 characters) and a display URL (30 characters).
Text ads can be created from within FM’s platform. Graphical banner ads can be uploaded to the platform from your PC.
4. Track Performance
Once your campaign “goes live”, you’ll want to track its performance.
Campaign performance is sometimes measured by “impressions” and “clicks”.
Impressions are the number of times your ad appears on the site. Clicks are the number of mouseclicks your ad generated. However, there are several other indicators of campaign success including: increased site traffic, inbound web links, blog posts, comments, newsletter signups and sales.
FM offers an interface that allows advertisers to monitor impressions and clicks by site for each campaign. Click rates depend upon several factors, including: ad size, site location, creative aesthetic, and proper targeting of the ad at the site audience.
Online marketers might expect an ad click rate of somewhere between .02% and .15%.
