Advertisers need to expand their reach if they hope to keep profit margins high enough to continue doing business. This drives much of the innovation one sees in ads themselves, but more often than not reach comes down to expanding potential audience members. Brainstorming and researching new campaigns is expensive, but finding more traffic sources gives you a wider audience to work with. Here are some tips to maximize the reach of your ads.
Move Beyond the Usual Sources
Places like Facebook and Google are good places to start campaigns, but they don’t tend to last well over time. There isn’t a lot of oversight that determines whether views are real or bot-generated. Plus, the audience becomes saturated because the ad network is limited to users of those platforms. Buy-side platforms plugged into sell-side platforms offer a wider range of inventory that is categorized and ready for targeting.
Try Different Channels
Desktop is not the only available avenue to post ads from, but it is one of the largest channels you can work with. Aside from your own testing on desktop, consider switching to mobile channels based on location and immediacy. Video is another avenue that can pay dividends on both desktop and mobile. Video ads tend to hold user attention because they want whatever content comes after the ad, so the extra few seconds is not a large inconvenience.
Layer Your Efforts
The final tip is to layer your efforts. No single strategy reigns supreme, although you will get greater volumes of traffic from some sources over others. The best approach is a combination, complete with several test cases to help expand your campaigns and discover new opportunities.
Bio: Ted Dhanik is a display advertising expert with a passion for digital media. Since the early 2000s, Ted Dhanik has been selling engaging advertising online for established brands. Ted Dhanik is currently CEO of engage:BDR, a digital advertising company based out of Los Angeles.