Advertising has come a long way and the digital age has made
it much easier for companies to sleep at night knowing their marketing dollars are
working for them. With digital advertising, you can track how much you’re
spending per ‘click’, how much traffic is being driven to your site from the
ad, and what that traffic is doing when they get to your site. Furthermore,
digital advertising continues to be one of the best-performing marketing
tactics dollar-for-dollar compared to traditional advertising.
The real advantage of
digital advertising is that you can adjust and optimize your campaign once the
results start coming in.
Where should you invest your advertising dollars? There are
plenty of choices and they all have their appeal and merit. Let’s take a look
at what Sherpa Marketing believes to be 5 of the top online advertising
platforms.
Recently, Sherpa ran a campaign for a client in the
healthcare industry and we tracked the results from each of the platforms we
ran advertisements on. The metrics we’ll be looking at are:
-
Cost per click (CPC)
-
Fee per thousand impressions (CPM)
-
Clickthrough rate (CTR)
We also assigned a score on the visibility of the ad out of
10 possible points. We attempted to capture how likely each impression is to notice
the ad, how prominently is the ad placed, the size of the ad, and whether it
uses strictly text or images.
The Results
Platform
|
CPC
|
CPM
|
CTR
|
Visibility
|
AdWords
|
$1.22
|
$2.32
|
0.19%
|
6
|
LinkedIn Ads
|
$2.23
|
$0.89
|
0.04%
|
2
|
Kijiji
|
$4.00
|
$12.00
|
0.30%
|
7
|
Facebook
|
$0.64
|
$0.22
|
0.03%
|
2
|
WebMD
|
26.64
|
$8.72
|
0.13%
|
10
|
1. Google AdWords
Summary
Far and away the leader in digital advertising, Google is a beast
– and AdWords is Google’s leading revenue generator.
Advantages
-
Advanced conversion tracking available
-
Campaigns optimize to ensure profitability
Disadvantages
-
Text only
-
Can become prohibitively expensive on
competitive keyword phrases
2. Google Image Ads
Summary
Image Ads are ads placed on the Google Display network.
These are websites that have agreed to host ads of a pre-specified size on
their site. Advertisers can target based on the content of the Display Network
Partners’ websites.
Advantages
-
Low-cost
-
Visual (images and video)
Disadvantages
-
Targeting is difficult
3. LinkedIn Ads
Summary
Ads appear along the side of the page as a user navigates
LinkedIn. Ads can be targeted to only display for very specific demographics.
Advantages
-
Highly targeted due to the detail LinkedIn has
about its users (industry, job title, age, etc.)
Disadvantages
-
Minimal visibility (small and off-centre
location)
-
Forced structure to ads – difficult to format
well
4. LinkedIn Sponsored Updates
Summary
A business can make any one of its posts a “sponsored
update”. This will make the ad appear alongside regular content in the newsfeed
of people in the specified target market.
Advantages
-
Highly targeted (same as LinkedIn ads)
-
Highly visible
-
Great location (alongside organic newsfeed
content)
Disadvantages
-
Very expensive
-
Difficult to format
5. Facebook
Summary
The still-leading social media platform offers advertising
options to businesses. Results display along the side of the screen. There is limited
targeting available based on some basic demographics (age, gender, location).
Advantages
-
Low cost
-
Campaigns optimize to ensure profitability
Disadvantages
-
Targeting is fairly weak
-
Weak visibility and resulting clickthrough rate
6. Kijiji
Summary
Kijiji is one of many niche advertising opportunities that
exists if you know where to look. They offer a variety of ways of targeting at
reasonable rates. High visibility of the ads implies that you’re more likely to
get noticed.
Advantages
-
Excellent clickthrough rate
-
Large, flexible locations and sizes
Disadvantages
-
Limited reach
Overall Stats
Results will, of course, vary from campaign to campaign, but
from the campaigns Sherpa has managed, we have made some observations and we
have ranked the platforms according to their ‘normal’ performance in each of
the 4 categories
Rank
|
CPC
|
CPM
|
CTR
|
Visibility
|
1
|
Image Ads
|
Facebook
|
Kijiji
|
LinkedIn Sponsored Update
|
2
|
AdWords
|
LinkedIn Ads
|
LinkedIn Sponsored Update
|
Kijiji
|
3
|
Facebook
|
Image Ads
|
AdWords
|
AdWords
|
4
|
LinkedIn Ads
|
AdWords
|
Image Ads
|
Image Ads
|
5
|
Kijiji
|
LinkedIn Sponsored Update
|
Facebook
|
Facebook
|
6
|
LinkedIn Sponsored Update
|
Kijiji
|
LinkedIn Ads
|
LinkedIn Ads
|
Winners:
CPC: Google AdWords and Image Ads
Impressions: Facebook
Targeting: LinkedIn Sponsored updates
Overall Winner: LinkedIn Sponsored Updates
For delivering the lowest cost per click, Google is still
the best. For getting the most impressions for the cheapest cost, Facebook is
unequalled (though the quality of impressions leaves something to be desired).
For my money, LinkedIn’s ‘Sponsored Updates’ is the winner.
The combination of great visibility, solid clickthrough rates, and unrivalled
targeting means you’ll be truly reaching your target audience and engaging
them.
LinkedIn will only take you so far, however, since it is not
as ubiquitous as Google or even Facebook, and is mostly useful as a B2B play.
Depending on your goals, budget and target market one or more other strategies
may be the best fit.
Also keep in mind that there are many other digital advertising
platforms not discussed that may be worth considering as well. Pinterest and
Instagram, for instance, are two emerging platforms that continue to work their
way into the mix.
Whatever you do, measure, measure, measure!
Or call us for a consultation on which platform is right for
you.