Display advertising is the biggest source of monetization for many publisher websites.  In an article written by Bloomberg.com’s Brett Pulley, “Revenue at Times Co.’s websites, including NYTimes.com, About.com and Boston.com., increased 20.5 percent to $94.3 million. Internet advertising revenue at the websites increased 19.8 percent to $50.4 million, mainly due to growth in national display advertising, the company said.”

With such a huge impact on the revenue of a news giant like NYTimes, it’d be interesting to see see exactly how people really feel about online advertising.  Check out our infographic below for a visual guide on some of the latest data in the online advertising industry:

Online Advertising and How People Feel About It

Zendesk was chosen as banner ad winner for the month of May based on a crucial element in marketing strategy: a high Return on Investment (ROI). This month’s winner was chosen on a different metric: brand awareness. Brand awareness is imperative in the promotion of a product or service, especially in the early stages as a brand is first introduced. In the long-term, it helps to build and maintain a strong and loyal customer base. Brand awareness is one of the main goals of advertising and can be achieved through ReTargeting, as targeted advertising is delivered to consumers based on their previous internet actions and users can be brought back to the brand, even after they have left the site. June’s banner ad winner, Tungle.me, has been one of the best performing ReTargeting campaigns when it comes to brand awareness. Keep in mind, building brand equity isn’t instantaneous; it takes time, the right message, and requires a strong call to action.

	Patience: Patience is a virtue, so they say – and that applies to reaping the benefits of a good marketing crop as well. Building brand awareness takes time. With time comes the ability to recall and recognize a brand because brand exposure leads to brand awareness. Creating a banner ad that’s effective, such as Tungle.me’s, is important in reminding users to return, keeping the brand at the top of people’s mind. Seeing Tungle.me’s logo, with its clock-like image, reminds me that time-is-ticking—I have meetings that need to be scheduled and Tungle.me can help keep me up-to-date and organized.
	Message: Brand awareness makes it so that customers differentiate your brand from other competitors and remember the product and return to your site. Displaying a short, crisp, and clear message is crucial in marketing your product as it will effectively get the brand across to your audience. The banner ad’s short message “Scheduling Made Easy” reminds one of the ease of setting up an account and managing their schedule. As a member, this is a great subtle reminder of how Tungle.me syncs with my calendar to make scheduling meetings, appointments, calls, and more, easy.
	Call to Action: As discussed in the previous months’ blogs, having a call to action button is a must have in any banner creation. Tungle.me displays a strong “Learn More” call to action at the bottom of the banner. The button, in solid green, contrasts against the purple background, both non-neutral colors, calling attention to the button and enticing the audience to click and soon be on their way towards discovering the ease of scheduling.

Branding is crucial for small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs). Whether it’s the company’s name, logo, or tagline, branding helps position and differentiate SMBs against competitors. However, an SMB can have great brand elements, but if the brand isn’t scaled well, said business will have lots of trouble growing their client base.

A company’s brand serves as a psychological tool that makes its product memorable. A child who sees a splash of orange paint will instantly think ‘Nickelodeon,’ while a silver three-pointed star let’s adults know that they just saw an ad for Mercedes-Benz. But companies like Nickelodeon and Mercedes have been around for decades! How’s an SMB supposed to compete against brands that millions of people notice every day?

Simple – by connecting with its engaged audience!

Social Media:

Social media is a great way to engage with your audience at a low cost. Though there’s one caveat: don’t jump on a social media tactic without having a good strategy. If your audience is more active on Twitter than Facebook, then it doesn’t make sense to do a huge social promotion on Facebook. Also, make sure that all content that you post or tweet is legitimately helpful to your audience – offer deals, strategic advice, and industry insight.

Ad-Targeting:

Big brands are memorable because they advertise everywhere, and spend a lot of money doing so. Adidas pays top dollar to shower YouTube visitors with their impressions. SMBs however don’t have a big enough budget to advertise this way. With ReTargeting, SMBs can show their ads on sites like YouTube for a price point that’s within their budget. This is because ReTargeting only shows ads to the specific users who have visited the SMB’s site, and not to the millions of other people who visit YouTube and wouldn’t even care about the SMB’s brand yet.

Evangelize:

It’s been said that ‘the best products turn users into evangelists.’ Nike puts their swoosh on all of their products, while HootSuite’s owl can be seen on every Facebook post made through that client. Your clients use your product for a reason, so there’s no reason that they wouldn’t want to recommend it to other people who they know would benefit from it. Offering promotions that encourage your clients to evangelize your product is a great way to spread your brand to the right people.

For any company that’s ready to grow, brand scaling is a challenge that can be overcome on a tight budget. Check out our case study on Crowdcast’s use of ReTargeting to overcome this challenge.

Last month, we chose ReTargeter’s first-ever banner ad of the month winner, Dollar Days. The winner’s ad was chosen based on its high Click Through Rate (CTR) and its overall campaign performance. This month, another metric is being used that is powerful in determining the success of a ReTargeting campaign.

When using ReTargeter, having a strong Return On Investment (ROI) is crucial in determining how your company moves forward with its marketing strategies. This month’s winner has been chosen based on this metric. The winner for the best ReTargeting banner ad for the month of May is Zendesk.

So why has Zendesk’s banner ad produced such a high ROI?

• Image: Who wouldn’t love Zendesk’s Buddha-like character – overweight and half-naked, and smiling so big, you can’t help but be reassured that everything’s going to be okay. Equipped with a wireless headset, he looks ready, willing, and more than happy to support customers.
• Background Color: The background shade of olive green exhibits a playfulness and sense of lightheartedness that fits Zendesk’s aura. It’s a company that believes help desk support doesn’t have to be complicated and the use of vibrant colors are in line with this message. The bold green color also allows the white of the font to not fade into the background and the plainness of the text lets you know that Zendesk is all about simplicity. The company name, logo, and catchphrase are clear and easy to see. The sunlight behind the meditating character brings light to the background color as well.
• Catchy Phrase: Sometimes customer support equals questions, complaints and stress. According to this ad campaign, nope, not with Zendesk . “Painless Customer Support?” Yes, please! The Call to Action button, “Instant Karma – Try Now,” emphasizes the theme and adds to the peace you’ll experience by using Zendesk. This ad makes me want to start on the journey to customer support enlightenment…

Stay tuned for next month’s best ReTargeting banner ad of the month!

Imagine being able to show your display advertisements solely to people who have shown interest in your brand.  This is exactly what ReTargeting does.  By having your banner ads follow your users throughout the internet, ReTargeting aims to:

• Increase your brand awareness
• Retain your website’s visitors
• Drive users throughout your conversion funnel

The key beauty to this technology is that it really is only serving banner ads to people who have shown at least some amount of engagement in your brand.  This makes ReTargeting a smarter spend than most other display ad campaigns as it focuses on your brand’s engaged userbase.  Even if other campaigns are demographically targeted, your brand’s ads will be much more memorable to your users if they are being ReTargeted.

A few concerns can arise, however, when your banner ads start following your site’s visitors.

• How do ReTargeted campaigns know who your visitors are?
• Will the ads overbear your users?

The absolute truth is that there is NEVER any transfer of personally identifiable data.  ReTargeting works by having you place one line of code on your site.  When a user visits your site, this single line of code drops a cookie onto the user’s computer, which starts the ReTargeting process and has your ads follow your visitors around the web.  Additionally, companies like ReTargeter follow best practices to make sure that your users never get inundated with your banner ads.

Some high-level ways to utilize this technology:

• In conjunction with any outbound email marketing that you may do, ReTargeting campaigns can place cookies on any user who opens your emails, effectively beginning the ReTargeting process for them.
• Additionally, there is a huge value in utilizing ReTargeting to encourage your users to convert throughout your freemium product’s funnel by displaying banners with different CTAs to people who have converted throughout different stages of your funnel.
• Lastly, you can target the people who have visited a specific product’s page on your site, and target them with ads to encourage them to learn more and purchase your product.  This is great for any company that sees a high amount of shopping cart abandonment for any of their particular products.

The value of advertising to your users via ReTargeting is definitely huge for building brand awareness, retaining visitors, battling shopping cart abandonment, and driving users throughout your conversion funnel.  With all of these benefits being set from ReTargeting, you can be sure that this form of hypertargeting  will deliver a tremendous ROI.

Earlier this month, Ad Age wrote articles about “the best” banner ads, along with tools on how to make them “suck less.” This strikes up an exciting subject—the lost art of banner ad design. To commemorate ads that go above and beyond, I have chosen the best ReTargeting banner for the month of April and will continue to pick a new example every month.

With more than 100 clients and thousands of banner ads, it becomes easier to set apart good banners from mediocre ones. In order to define a “good” banner, I’ve measured banners with an above average Click Through Rate (CTR) and determined which are the most effective, based on their performance all the way down to conversion. Given this analysis, Dollar Days’ banner ad stands out as the best ReTargeting ad for April. So what exactly sets this banner ad apart from others, you ask?

• Appeal – The ad only has a few images, but against the white background, the pictures pop. The company’s logo is appealing itself: the sun, so cool despite being so hot, that it has to put shades on! Likewise, the dollar sign for the “s” is appropriate for what Dollar Days is advertising: Saving “$,” which is clearly conveyed by the images in the middle.
• Clear Call to Action Button – Call to Action is key in receiving a high CTR! Call to action buttons make consumers more inclined to actually click on the banner when they see an impression. Looking at this ad and seeing the “start saving” button (with the arrow - a surprising key competent) makes me want to scroll over and click, so I can get started on saving money right away.
• Concise Message – Many people fail to realize that simplicity in displaying a clear, straight forward message is more than enough to create an effective banner ad. The banner ad was designed in a way that visibly represents the company and what is being advertised. The company’s name is in plain view at the top of the screen with minimal text at the bottom, yet the message is still communicated.

Stay tuned for next month’s Best ReTargeting banner ad! =)