Contextual advertising works, it works for a month, it works for two. And something does not smell like big money. And a hefty stone appears in front of you, and on it is an inscription: “If you optimize advertising, you will receive a large revenue (or maybe a small one). You will increase the advertising budget - the revenue will increase, and the profit - as God sends.
You can cast lots, trust your intuition, or write to the "Battle of Psychics". I trust analytics and numbers more. I'll tell you my shamanic secrets on how to "feel" the effectiveness contextual advertising.
How to measure the effectiveness of contextual advertising
The key indicator for all advertising channels is the cost of purchase or CPO (Cost Per Order). To calculate the purchase price, you need to divide the acquisition costs by the number of paid orders. CPO can be calculated both for the entire site and for each channel separately.
The lower the purchase price, the more effective the channel, campaign or ad group is performing
So that the number of applications received from each channel does not have to be determined by coffee grounds, I recommend that you first, at least a couple of weeks in advance, set up goals in Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics.
And in order to understand how much to lay out "dough" in order to receive one order, you need to calculate how much money it brings on average for the business.
We must also take into account average check, and marginality, and how many percent of the income we are ready to spend on attracting new customers, so that there is still money left for a car for our son and an apartment for our mistress.
It is better, of course, to use the average LTV (Lifetime Value is the profit that we receive from one client for the entire time of cooperation with him). But such statistics have been collected for years, and they are not always available.
Lena, I didn’t understand anything, explain normally!
To make it clearer, I will explain using the example of old business indicators of one of our clients - an agency selling tours in the sanatoriums of the Caucasus and Belokurikha. Website conversion - 2.43%, on average, the agency earned 7,060 rubles from one sale.
Let's define the boundaries of our greed - indicators of the effectiveness of contextual advertising, which we will focus on. In order not to go into debt and loans, you can spend no more than 100% of the income that it theoretically brings to the campaign to attract one lead.
But you have to pay for telephony, pay salaries to employees, and the services of LeadMachine are also not free. And the business owner wants to see profit: the more, the better. With this in mind, we realized that we dream of spending about 20% of the profit on attracting, which is 1,412 rubles per sale or 212 rubles per application (CPOo - the expected sale price and CPLo - the expected lead price).
As a result, we have determined the intervals in which we want to see key indicators.
Expectation and reality
We calculated key indicators: the value we are striving for, and the upper limit from which we must stay away. Now, rather, we open Yandex.Metrika and Google Analytics and consider what the real CPL is equal to.
In Yandex.Metrica, the number of requests for all channels can be viewed in the standard report "Sources, Summary".
In the table that opens, select the goal and see how many applications each channel brought.
Context costs can be viewed in Yandex.Direct advertising services and Google AdWords. We divide the costs by the number of applications and get our real cost per lead. Then we either dance or cry.
If the lead price suits you, in pursuit of profit, just pour more money in advertising budget. But after such manipulations, CPL can also grow up, so you should always keep your finger on the pulse.
If the client is too expensive
If the price of a lead is not satisfactory, or, even worse, it is more than the maximum allowable value, the effectiveness of contextual advertising leaves much to be desired. So you need to dig deeper.
It is better to look at statistics on Yandex.Direct in Metrica. Open the standard reports again, select "Direct, summary" in the sources, specify the desired goal.
Now you know the number of applications for each campaign. Expenses can be viewed in the "Direct - expenses" report, if the integration of the two services is configured correctly, or in "Yandex.Direct".
Google AdWords statistics on the number of requests and costs are best viewed in Google Analytics. To do this, select "Traffic Sources" - "AdWords" - "Campaigns". Previously, two services must be synchronized with each other.
Campaigns where the cost of the application does not suit you can be disabled, checked for errors and optimized.
The effectiveness of contextual advertising in clicks
Another indicator that will help determine the effectiveness of contextual advertising is CPC, or cost per click.
Let's go back to our example. In an ideal world, we spend no more than 212 rubles per application. Website conversion - 2.43%. Those. Approximately every 41st visitor to the site leaves an application. Let's call this indicator n, we will calculate it according to the following formula:
Then the CPC in an ideal world does not exceed 212 / 41 = 5 rubles 17 kopecks. This value can be set in Direct and AdWords, as maximum price clique. But there will be few impressions and clicks, so it is better to gradually increase this parameter until you achieve the desired traffic.
When increasing your maximum cost per click, remember that there is a limit beyond which ruin and poverty can await you. It's easy to calculate:
The effectiveness of contextual advertising in ROI
End-to-end analytics services make all these calculations simple and automated. You understand the costs for each channel and see the revenue, see the return on investment.
If it is not possible to use such a service, simply control the costs and application prices for each channel, compare them with income. How this is done, I tried to explain as simply as possible.
But be prepared that optimizing ads without taking into account ROI for each channel can backfire. In our example, the cost of an order from Yandex.Direct exceeds CPLo by 14%, and orders from Google AdWords by 52%. But AdWords has a higher ROI: we received more profit from this channel for 22 requests than for 23 from Yandex.Direct. So it goes.
In this article, we want to talk about how to properly analyze the effectiveness of contextual advertising. The context is working, the ad is running, the statistics graphs are inexorably going up and you are celebrating victory to yourself, but everything is cut off when the customer calls and says that everything is just awful and he no longer wants to work with you. How to avoid this situation? Patience, my young friend! Now you know everything.
Another important aspect— contextual advertising is too overrated and often problems can lie outside of it: an outdated product, a site that does not convert traffic, poor processing of applications, and so on. Therefore, even if the analysis of the effectiveness of the context in all respects showed a failure, before drawing conclusions, analyze all the other stages of working with the client.
Criteria for evaluating contextual advertising
Let's talk sensibly. What do you think the evaluation criteria contextual advertising can and should be used in reporting and further planning? Contextual advertising, like any other type of advertising, has specific purpose- sell. This is the main and main criterion in the analysis of the effectiveness of contextual advertising. Not CTR or conversion, but the number of new customers. Let you have a cosmic CTR and a stunning conversion, but all this fades if zero stubbornly looms in the purchase column.
The importance of online advertising performance metrics in descending order:
- net profit;
- the number of concluded contracts;
- the number of applications (leads) and calls received;
- site conversion from a visitor to an application;
- average cost per click and number of clicks (traffic);
- the number of keywords in the advertising campaign.
Make a table, enter the above items there and put down a value for each indicator. Moreover, it is not necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of some separate platform (for example, Yandex Direct or Google AdWords), but individual campaigns, ad groups, and even individual ads.
When drawing up a promotion strategy, immediately set yourself a specific goal, either the number of applications from the site, or, even better, sales. And voice your plan and goals to the customer. After all, there may be a reverse situation, when everything works in the best way. Traffic goes to the site, it converts, requests are constantly received, goods are sold, but at the same time the customer is not satisfied, because at some training he was inspired with the idea that the conversion should not be lower than 4%, and for example, you have it 2 .5%, but at the same time cheap traffic and still low cost of leads.
How to calculate the main indicators?
But in order for you to have those numbers and something to talk about, you must first enter your performance metrics and start tracking them.
Target actions:
1. Web analytics and conversions. Set up goals in Yandex Metrics and Google Analytics. This can be a subscription, a download of material, a visit to a specific page, or targeted action on the site.
2. Phone calls. For each advertising source, it is better to use a separate phone number so that you can then determine what works effectively and gives the best qualitative and quantitative indicators. You can also use call tracking.
3. Offline. If the mechanisms of business in your area are arranged in such a way that the client finds information on the site, does not call, but immediately comes to the store to buy, and the seller does not always ask where the buyer came from, then it is reasonable to use promotional codes that give the right to purchase at a discount.
1. CTR. The simplest indicator. We take the number of clicks and divide by the number of ad impressions. With good CTR rates, the cost per click will decrease, and ads will be shown higher and more often.
2. Conversion. Everything here is also painfully familiar - the number of hits from the site must be divided by the number of visitors for a certain time period. To increase this indicator, it is necessary that the landing page contains the same information that is written in the advertisement. If you write in contextual advertising that your product costs 1000 rubles, and entering the site the user sees a figure 3 times more, then the conversion will tend to zero.
3. Client cost. By analogy with the previous paragraph, only now we divide all traffic costs by the number of new customers.
4. ROI- return on investment in advertising. A pure classic of economics. ROI = (Income - cost) / Investment * 100% or Net profit / Investment * 100%. those. how much the money that you invest in advertising pays off.
An example of analyzing the effectiveness of contextual advertising
Given. Construction company"My house". Monthly advertising costs: Yandex Direct - 20,000 rubles, Google AdWords - 22,000 rubles. Plus 10,000 for escort. Promotion period 3 months.
In this way total cost for 3 months\u003d 20000 * 3 + 22000 * 3 + 10000 * 3 \u003d 156,000 rubles.
During this time, Moi Dom concluded 9 contracts with a total value of 21 million rubles and a planned net profit of 3,150,000 rubles.
ROI= 3,150,000 / 156,000 * 100% ~ 2019%. That is, from each invested ruble, the company earns on average 2019 rubles. Such a high rate of profitability is due to the high marginality construction business. In other areas, achieving such ROI is much more difficult.
Using this knowledge, you can increase the effectiveness of any advertising campaign. The main thing is to take the context seriously. Good luck!
There is a huge demand on the market for specialists in setting up contextual advertising. It is understandable - this tool in skillful hands is able to work wonders for business, ensure a stable flow of orders and new customers.
Demand creates supply. True, the proposal is not always of such quality as it should be.
I'll tell you a story from personal experience.
One of my clients had contextual advertising set up. The campaign has been spinning for six months, some pennies are dripping there, but there are no orders. The goods are expensive and not for everyone, of course, no one expected 200 orders a day. But why then advertising, when there is no result at all? Moreover, the managers of the agency, which is engaged in setting up and maintaining, consistently call and ask you not to forget to pay a monthly fee, they promise new goodies. But there are no old buns here either.
He asked to see what and how.
I looked. The campaign is set up according to the principle "let's collect all the keys that come into our heads, and write one ad on this pile - and it will do." Rates are set to minimum. In Google - 15 kopecks, in Yandex - 30. So advertising is inexpensive, really. Only ads are shown on page 4-5, the client's organic site is higher. Negative words? No, we haven't heard.
The first calls went on the second day after the campaign was adjusted.
But this is just one example. In real life, there are hundreds of situations: usually, the business owner is given a report in which there is CTR, spending, but there is not a word about the conversion, the cost of this conversion, the goals achieved. And this is exactly what is important for business in the first place.
Well, you say, what if I don't understand where to look and how to fix it?
And you don't need to. Today I will teach you where to look in analytics systems to understand whether your advertising campaigns are working or not.
Checking through Yandex.Metrica: report on advertising systems
No offense to Google - but I prefer the Yandex analytics system. Simple, clear and user-friendly interface.
I hope you have access to your Metrica? If not, shake the performer. If he doesn’t give access, it’s already a reason to think about his honesty.
If you have access, let's go.
You can already understand something on the summary. Look at the bounce rate - here, really, total score, but if it is above 30-35% - something is wrong with your site (maybe the reason, for example, is a long load). Or with the traffic that is poured on it, but here you still need to understand what kind of source the problem is.
We need to look at the performance of PPC campaigns. To do this, you do not need to go deep into it (this is already the work of an analyst), a standard report will suffice.
Go to Reports - Standard reports - Sources - Advertising systems.
Take a month or a quarter for a period - there is no point in looking at statistics for a day.
We look at the table. Your campaigns in Adwords and Direct are visible here. First of all, pay attention to the bounce rate.
Yandex.Metrica counts a visit as a bounce when the user left the page within 15 seconds (by default). If the bounce rate is more than 30-35% - you lose every third visitor. That is, a third of your budget just goes down the drain. The visitor who clicked on the ad is immediately “turned away” from your site.
The reasons may be different:
What is written in the ad does not fit with the content of the page;
A price is indicated that immediately seems high;
This report will help you understand from which system you are getting more engaged visitors. Look at the browsing depth and time on the site.
Here, for example, Adwords rules (there are reasons for this, but I won’t write a case now).
Now we can check the conversion as well. Choose a target (I hope you have them set up? If not, run to kick your contractor):
For example, I have a goal set to visit a specific page (go to filling out a form after viewing an offer). The table shows the percentage of conversion (Google also rules here), how many achievements of this goal, the percentage of failures (they went to fill in and turned off) and the viewing depth.
I can’t name a universal formula, a “golden indicator” of conversion for each site. Then think for yourself - does it suit you that every third, fifth, tenth visitor to the site calls you?
Do you receive such reports from your contractor? If not, then you already know how to enter and where to look.
Checking through Google.Analytics: where to look and what
Through the Google analytics system, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns in Adwords. To track Yandex.Direct campaigns, you need to make a number of settings, and to be honest, I don’t know if your contractors did it. It's easier for me to follow Yandex.Direct through Yandex.Metrica, to be honest.
In Analytics, you will have enough data from standard reports. Go to Traffic Sources - Adwords.
The Campaigns report allows you to set the desired goal and evaluate the picture based on it - conversion rate, cost per click, bounce rate, goal cost, etc. You can look at all targets at once.
A single page view is considered a bounce in Analytics. Therefore, the percentage can be high - especially if your visitors need to understand everything after viewing the landing page, and they need to make a call to the company.
Report " Keywords» will show which keys are the most effective. You can see cost per click, cost, bounce rate, conversion rate.
And a very interesting report "Search queries" will allow you to understand for which search queries your ad is shown. A lot of trash? This means that your contractor is not working on negative keywords. In theory, he should constantly monitor and add negative keywords (believe me, even after several months of maintenance, there are still similar ones).
Even without going into deep analytics, with the help of standard reports, you, as a business owner, can evaluate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and the work of a contractor.
What if the problem is with the site itself?
You see, what a thing: for some reason, there are often contextologists (especially beginners) who think that the site itself is not their work. They somehow collect the keys, ads and turn on - and there at least dance the elephant. But setting up contextual advertising is much deeper than just riveting ads. Here you also need to prepare the site for promotion: rework the content of the pages (or even create a separate landing page for this task, everything from business and ultimate goal depends), check download speed, adaptability. The contextologist should not only delve into your business, but also work with the developer to prepare the site to receive traffic. If he does not do all this, you should not be surprised that the conversion is low and there are no sales.
Good luck in promotion and honest contractors!
Advertising is a term derived from the Latin word "reklamare" - "to shout or announce loudly" (in Ancient Greece and Rome, announcements were loudly shouted or read out in the squares and in other places where people congregate).
Advertising is interpreted in accordance with federal law about advertising as disseminated in any form, by any means, information about an individual or legal entity, goods, ideas and undertakings ( advertising information), which is intended for an indefinite circle of persons and is designed to form or maintain interest in these individuals, legal entity, products, ideas and endeavors and promote the realization of goods, ideas and endeavors.
Buying on the market is always a choice, and in order for buyers to make it in favor of your business, they should tell them about the merits of your product, convince them of the benefits of buying it, and remind them from time to time. Therefore, advertising should be planned as a continuous process. Advertising, as a rule, accompanies the whole life of a product on the market, and often precedes its appearance.
In recent years, corporate advertising (branded advertising) has been used, which is currently understood as the entire range of advertising that is not related to a specific product, but is designed to improve the company's image.
Brand or corporate advertising can be used to achieve many goals: to inform the public about the company and its activities, to determine the competitive position of the company in the market, to attract qualified specialists, to reflect staff changes, to increase the value of shares, to strengthen the moral standards of employees, and to avoid problems in relations with agents, dealers and customers. Previously, such advertising was designed only to create a good name for the company.
Modern advertising is an integral part of marketing. However, it is difficult to count on success if the advertising is good, but the product does not stand up to competition, has an unacceptable price, the distribution system is weak, the staff of sellers or service personnel small, people do not meet the requirements of the business in terms of qualities, qualifications, and the management of the company is not interested in customer satisfaction with the product and their attitude towards the company after the purchase.
There are two broad areas of advertising research:
Advertising media are studied in terms of their ability to deliver advertising to the target group. The customers of such studies are publishing houses, radio and television companies. They are interested in, for example, the number of readers or viewers, their demographics and social characteristics, differences between their consumers and consumers of other means mass media etc. This information is then presented to businesses that advertise.
Preliminary forecast of success;
A success control designed to investigate whether an advertisement has achieved its goals and what conclusions can be drawn from the advertising campaign.
Since the creation and distribution of advertising is an expensive undertaking, it is necessary to have information about the chances of success even before publication. The starting point is the created advertising medium - an advertisement, a billboard, a poster, etc. Only the relative presence of benefits can be measured, as there are no normative data on the effects of advertising. The disadvantages of this method are that the effect of multiple exposure is not determined and the environment that will surround the advertisement in reality is not taken into account.
Subjective and objective methods of preliminary prediction of success are distinguished.
Subjective methods are divided into:
Survey of experts - the method is not representative of the target group. The consumer may, for example, not understand an advertisement at all that has been approved by experts;
Consumer Survey - there is a risk that new ideas that could attract increased attention will be rejected due to adherence to familiar schemes.
Objective methods can be subdivided (according to the directions of information processing when consumers perceive advertising) into research:
1) the process of perception of information;
2) activation of information;
3) the ability of information to inspire confidence;
4) the degree of understanding of texts.
Advertising will achieve only if the features of the human psyche are taken into account when creating it. The AIDMA model, which implies the following chain “Attention-Interest-Desire-Motive-Action”, is considered to be a generally accepted model of advertising perception.
First of all, advertising must attract the attention of a potential consumer, which can be both arbitrary and involuntary. Further, advertising should arouse the interest of the consumer, influencing his intellect or emotions. If advertising with its emotional side manages to attract attention, then it should interest him with its content, cause one or another reaction, stimulate a certain emotional state.
The impact of advertising depends on the evaluation of the advertised product contained in it, and on the arguments in its favor. If the consumer does not find such an assessment and argumentation, then the influence of advertising is significantly weakened.
Arguments can be divided into objective, logically revealing the essence of the advertised product, its distinctive features, and those that cause certain emotions and associations.
1) Information that the consumer wants to receive and, moreover, even looks for it. It is easy to understand and quickly remembered.
2) Random in this moment information for a person. It is either not remembered at all, or with great difficulty.
3) Information that is unnecessary for a person in general. The consumer does not pay attention to such advertising, and in some cases it can annoy him, for example, when it interrupts the show of a program of interest to him, etc.
Therefore, as soon as a person realizes that the advertised product or service is exactly what he needs, he makes a decision, followed by action.
Objective Methods for Predicting Advertising Success
The very degree of readability of the text, as analysts note, depends on at least three points:
firstly, from the legibility and clarity of the printed text, which must meet the sum of the requirements for the external design of advertising (fonts, punctuation marks, illustrations, etc.);
secondly, on the degree of interest that arises in the reader in the process of reading;
thirdly, on the degree of understanding and persuasiveness of the text.
Whatever advertising text, long or short, it should most fully reflect all the advantages of the product. It should be taken into account that consumers are unlikely to read a series of ads for the same product in the hope of reading something in them that is not yet indicated in others. Therefore, one should always proceed from the fact that an advertisement competes simultaneously with other similar ones.
1. The ability to attract attention. It is very important how much the attention of readers is attracted by the headline, TV viewers by the video sequence, whether the advertisement affects exactly those categories. potential consumers for which it is intended.
2. The strength of the impact on the emotions of advertising consumers: what feelings are born in them under the influence of advertising, how successful is the advertising argument and whether it is presented correctly.
3. The strength of the impact: will the viewer run, for example, after watching the advertisement to buy this product or will he stay in the chair, despite the fact that he liked the advertisement and there is a need to purchase this product.
The advertising development process usually includes two stages. First, a decision is made on the structure of the advertising message, a central thesis (advertising argument) is developed, informing about the most important properties and distinctive features goods, and the form of its presentation. Then proceed directly to the development promotional material: the text and style are developed, suitable words, color scheme and design solution are selected. It should also be borne in mind that, as a rule, advertising is more effective when demand for a product increases than when it falls.
The above functions mainly perform advertising agencies. They work with the firm to develop its advertising plan, including topic selection, distribution media, campaign timing, preparation of the advertising product itself, and other aspects.
The Compagon method is often used to analyze magazine advertising. It consists in the fact that a group of people is invited as if for a survey. They are asked to wait in a room where there are magazines with embedded advertisements to be analyzed. Hidden from people, their behavior is filmed and then analyzed with their consent. So you can find out how many readers and for how long viewed the ad, how they behaved in this case. In conclusion, a survey is conducted to test the degree of memorization of advertising.
Another method of perceptual analysis is to follow a person's gaze with the help of special glasses when viewing an advertisement. At the same time, the paths of sight, points and time of fixation are marked. Data on the fixed advertising elements and their sequence are very important, since information is perceived only during fixation, and its memorization depends on the number of fixation points.
Perception can also be measured with a tachistoscope. If advertising elements, such as the name of a product, are recognizable after a short, instant display, then this is an indicator of their visibility. You can also identify spontaneous impressions, the first phase of the perception process, during which a positive and negative attitude to the subject of advertising is formed.
The study of activation is to determine the strength of emotional impact. To do this, changes in skin resistance are measured under the influence of bioelectric processes caused by various stimuli, which sufficiently reflect the magnitude of the emotional impact, but the type and direction of the emotion are inexplicable using this method. In addition, the results of such tests are strongly influenced by extraneous phenomena: the time of day, the temperature in the room, the stress of waiting for a long time.
To determine the degree of credibility of advertising, you can conduct a survey using the Rating Scale with the statement: "This ad is believable" and with extreme positions: from "very" to "not at all." Respondents should mark the position corresponding to their opinion. Spontaneous agreement or rejection can be determined using a special analyzer that has two buttons “+” for agreement and “-” for rejection, and the respondent must express his attitude immediately after the advertisement is shown, without thinking.
The degree of understanding of the text is checked by eliminating, for example, every fifth word. The more respondents correctly completed the text, the clearer it is considered.
For printed matter coverage includes two components - circulation and degree of transmission (how many times each copy reaches a new reader). For example, one copy of the newspaper “X” is read by about 5 people. In addition, the transmission rate for magazines is much higher than for daily newspapers.
Sincerely, Young Analyst