How to get the most out of your digital ad budget this cycle
When you're looking to buy media, it's important to find the right partner who can offer you the best price and reach for your campaigns. That's where VoteMAP comes in - we have the best voter data to match audiences to social media and place programmatic ads across the web and mobile. Our clients receive centralized reporting and conversion analysis in addition to our low CPM and transparent pricing model.
Let's level set by starting with a few definitions of the most critical aspects of digital media placement:
Impressions: Did you see an image ad or video? That's an impression! It generally takes 7 touches to mobilize a voter and digital marketing is no different. One impression = one touch. We can help you get the most out of your budget by ensuring the number of impressions is effectively aligned with the size of your target audience.
CPM: This stands for cost per 1,000 impressions. In other words, how much does it cost to serve 1,000 impressions of your ad? This helps you understand how far your budget will stretch and the potential reach of your campaign.
Match rate: This refers to the percent of users from a voter file or address list that are able to be found and targeted with ads. Typically, campaigns and agencies will use email addresses or phone numbers which are notoriously unreliable in voter files, especially when trying to match to social media. Imagine all of the voters you are missing in your digital ad campaign because you don't have a current email or mobile phone number. This is why at VoteMAP we use Mobile IDs (MAIDs) which match 1:1 across many ad platforms and rely on devices seen at registered households. More people use mobile phones than home internet so with MAIDs you start with the largest audience pool possible.
Reach: This refers to how many of your audience members actually receive your ad. Let's say you have a list of 100,000 voters and you serve 200,000 ads. Without knowing your true reach number, you may assume everyone in your audience received 2 ads but this is not the case. Many times agencies will promise you a certain number of impressions but will serve them as quickly as possible even if that means a small amount of your audience (who are on the internet more frequently) receives nearly all of your impressions leaving most untouched. At VoteMAP we cap the number of ads any device receives in order to improve your reach across your entire audience.
Click-through rate: CTR is the rate at which ads are clicked on as a percentage of ads served. When agencies use poor inventory they will have lower CTRs. This is important because while you may appear to get a cheap price it could be because the inventory isn't very good and users are likely not to engage or even see your ads.
Now empowered with this knowledge, here are a few things to ask your agency or to think about when considering a media buying partner:
1.) What is my CPM cost? Make sure to include any agency fees, data licensing (matching) fees, creative change fees, monthly retainers, etc. VoteMAP uses a transparent pricing model and charges no additional costs beyond the CPM.
2.) Do you have the ability to cap impressions across devices so I maximize my reach? We ensure no impression is wasted by setting parameters that optimize your campaign for maximum reach and engagement.
3) What is your typical click-through-rate? Our CTRs are higher than the industry standard because we monitor each campaign and use every lever at our disposal to improve your ads engagement.
3.) Does my media buyer retain device level data regarding who received and engaged with my ads? At VoteMAP we don't just provide you with analytics, we house the raw data so you can retarget those specific users that engaged with your campaign or remove those that did not.
These are but a few key thoughts to help demystify your digital ad buying experience. Contact us today to learn more about how VoteMAP can help you get the most out of every dollar in your digital ad budget this cycle.
