I was delighted to receive a third guest blog post from Ian Poole, editor of Electronics Notes. After a great response from his guest blog posts ‘Does Video Work’ and ‘Secrets of Making a Good Video on a Budget’ , Ian now explores how to cut your banner advertising costs by a factor of ten.
How to Cut Your Banner Advertising Costs by a Factor of Ten
In the electronics industry it is normal to use directly placed banner advertisements to promote your company and message. However, banner advertising traditionally has a relatively high cost, due to the running of publications in a niche industry where the circulation is relatively small.
As a result many companies are turning to other features of advertising, in the form of content and lead generation techniques. But there are also ways of significantly reducing the cost of banner advertising, possibly by a factor of ten or more. This makes banner advertising a really attractive option, and one to investigate.
One option is to use Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords). It is possible to appear on the Google Search pages, and also on the Google Display Network (GDN) as websites that partner with Google allow Google Ads onto their pages.
Using Google Ads, the most common way to target suitable areas is to select keywords, and the ads will appear for searches, or on website pages that include these keywords. The drawback of targeting websites with these keywords is that the ads often appear on totally inappropriate sites, and click-through rates are often of little value.
To solve this problem, there is another option that few people seem to know about. Rather than selecting keywords, it is possible to target a placement – this can be a website or a specific part of a website.
By using this option it is very easy to set up a campaign and manage it yourself. If needed, the ads can be very easily geo-targeted, they can be set to run at given days and times, and they can be changed at will. The results can be seen at any time, making it easy to adjust the campaign for the best results. This is much better than directly placed ads where the publisher has to be contacted and changes made, taking time and effort. This often makes directly placed ads much less attractive.
Finally there is the cost. It is possible to use a cost per click (CTR), or cost per thousand impressions (CPM). Google uses a complex bidding algorithm to determine the cost, but it is possible to set budgets and only spend what you need.
In terms of actual cost when compared to directly placed ads on valued electronic sites, the cost of Google ads is probably around a tenth or less of the cost of directly placed ads. This makes this option well worth considering – in fact it makes it a compelling case.
Recognizing the trend for new advertising avenues to ensure good value for money, at Electronics Notes we have opted to run Google Ads. It is possible to target the site as a placement and we have undertaken work to make the active view view ability figure above that of the industry standard, ensuring that the best value for money is provided. With traffic now around 500 000 page views a month and rising, we have one of the largest figures within the industry. To find out more check out our website.
