The LeadsCon show is fast upon us! We are thrilled about a one-of-a-kind case study panel that we've assembled: our chairman and Chief Strategy Officer Aaron will join Pato Spagnoletto of Yahoo! and Brandon McInnis of American Signature, Inc. ("Value City"), a furniture retailer with $1 billion in annual sales.

If you attend the panel, you'll learn first-hand how Value City used the AdReady-powered "Yahoo! My Display Ads" platform to grow their Web site traffic from 9,000 per month to 60,000, dramatically increasing registrations, pre-approved credit applications, and in-store sales.

Want to learn the secret recipe? Come join us in Vegas!

• Session Title: Self-Service Display – Is the Dawn of A New Era (Finally) Here?
• Day: Tuesday, February 23, 2010
• Time: 4:00pm – 4:30pm

Posted by Justin Baker on Feb 18, 2010   |   Tweet This   |   Email This

Decreased delivery can be a recurring problem with small demographic market areas. If you’re targeting a small DMA with your ads, there are generally just less impressions available—so you need to find a way to bump those impressions up.

One way to combat this issue when using keyword campaigns is to target the campaign to a larger area as a whole, while narrowing down the target via specific keywords. This works on both the state and city level.

For example, if you want to target a campaign to Detroit, Michigan, and are having a difficult time getting delivery, you may want to try geo-targeting the campaign to "Michigan" and adding the keyword "Detroit" to all of your existing keywords.

If you're having difficulty with delivery on the state level with a keyword campaign, consider geo-targeting your campaign to the entire United States (or other geographical area, such as the U.K. or Canada) and then add the name of the state in front of each keyword.

This is generally a very effective tactic for increasing delivery, because display keyword campaigns are contextually based. Your ads will still be served to the proper audience based on those keywords.

If you're an AdReady Premium customer, you'll receive expert help to get even more out of this technique.

Posted by Justin Baker on Feb 04, 2010   |   Tweet This   |   Email This

In the mood for love? This month, your customers might be. We have a lot of holiday-themed creative in our library, and this high-performer is just one example. "Valentine Candy Hearts" has logged over 15 million impressions, with a CTR of 0.23%, and an average CPC of $0.73.

To see this ad—or to find even more proven ads in our collection of 800+ templates—log in to the AdReady platform. For more hands-on help with your creative, check out AdReady Premium.

Posted by Justin Baker on Feb 04, 2010   |   Tweet This   |   Email This

I recently had the privilege of speaking at the Kelsey Group ILM 2009 Conference. During my presentation, I said that I thought online display advertising had the potential to eclipse search in the next five years.

Yes, you read that right. Sure, search advertising is a $10 billion industry, with nearly 1.5 million advertisers. Display advertising is only a $6 billion dollar industry, with about 50,000 advertisers.

But I didn't say that because the conference had an open bar.

I want to follow up on my assertion here, and outline for you why I see that potential—and I welcome any responses. Feel free to tell me if I'm in left field, or on the right track.

So how has search advertising (PPC) become a $10 billion industry anyway? It's simple: search offers predictable results, straight-forward targeting, and clear metrics that demonstrate return on advertising spend (ROAS).

As a result, search ads have become an advertising mainstay. But thanks to advances in technology—like our platform here at AdReady—display can offer those exact same benefits. Even for small- and medium-sized business previously priced out of display advertising.

What's more, display can do things that search can't, like scale well and build a brand.

Most analyst firms believe that search will remain a marketing juggernaut for years to come. For example, Forrester says that U.S. interactive marketing spend is projected to reach $55 billion by 2014, making up 21 percent of all marketing spending. Search marketing will lead the growth, totaling $31.5 billion by 2014, followed by display advertising, which will total $16.9 billion.

So how could display advertising launch a coup d'état and overtake search? Four key areas pique my interest:

1. Cost/Scale: Search can get expensive. Especially if you want a hot keyword. And often, search lacks scale. Search marketing is getting saturated, driving up costs, and driving down overall effectiveness for the mass market. Most search marketers have unspent search budget. They simply can't spend everything they would like to. Display offers a great opportunity to spend that budget. And believe it or not, the best display advertisers are spending more on display than on search, to the tune of 2x to 10x.

2. Market Size: There are nearly 1.5 million search advertisers as compared to approximately 50,000 display advertisers, according to Google. Simply stated: what would the display market look like if it had 500,000 more advertisers?

3. Offline vs. Online: Offline advertising costs still dramatically eclipse both search and display, even as consumers spend more time online and less time with offline media. We're already seeing the transfer of marketing budgets from offline to online (some $144 billion offline according to Interpublic Group media agency Magna), and that will only increase. Search just doesn’t have the scale to accept those budgets.

4. Search/Display Combination: The Atlas Institute reports a 22 percent increase in click-through rate (CTR) when companies run search and display campaigns together. When search and display are combined, they provide a significant lift in onsite engagement, and an increase in online and offline purchasing by consumers exposed to integrated campaigns.

None of the above is a slam dunk for knocking search off its dominant position—but taken together, they highlight some serious potential for making display a much more formidable competitor. Even Eric Schmidt said recently that display and mobile are Google’s two key areas of growth.

No matter what else happens, the market is going to grow dramatically as platforms such as AdReady's continue to evolve—and demonstrate the ability to deliver successful ROAS. A couple years down the road, I believe that a lot of people will be surprised when they see how big a piece of the pie display ends up getting.

What do you think?

Posted by Aaron Finn on Feb 03, 2010   |   Tweet This   |   Email This

We’re happy to announce another great customer on AdReady's list of publishers: Pandora!

Yes, the beloved Internet radio service has joined the likes of Yahoo!, ESPN, the New York Times, and other publishers using AdReady to develop, traffic, and manage display ad campaigns.

Pandora's new service is specifically for SMB clients, and they've created a new sales team focused on this market. The service will use AdReady technology to help SMBs who want to market to Pandora’s 40 million savvy digital-media consumers.

Now even smaller advertisers—like bands, music festivals, colleges, and neighborhood shops—can hit Pandora’s huge and growing audience with targeted display ads.

Great to have you on our team, Pandora! Check out their services for yourself.

Posted by Justin Baker on Feb 01, 2010   |   Tweet This   |   Email This