Ad tech is one world of marketing that is constantly changing with native advertisements and factoring a users blindness to those advertisements. so the basic fundamentals of digital advertising are often forgotten in the evolving landscape.
As marketers, we are encompassed by an overwhelming sense of change and its easy to forget how insights connect with our marketing in order to tell us the factors we need to succeed with our marketing.
For reference, we partner with MixRank and WhatRunsWhere. They power most of our ad data, but there are some underlying insights that may be difficult to see regardless, of where you are getting your data from.
What insights can a landing page tell you?
A landing page is a single paged website that takes one to after they click on a link, or for the sake of this post, an advertisement. After we’ve spotted an ad on TrackMaven, we tell you what the top landing page is for that ad. In some instances, if you were to click on a competitors’ ad you can be taken to one of their landing pages as well. Whatever way you way you travel to a landing page, there are still the same insights you can gain that won’t vary through the journey.
1. The Current Offer
The current offer on a landing page is one of the sole reasons why a landing page exists. The marketer using a landing page will focus on the offer they are promoting and this offer is one of the sole reasons why a landing page exists. This offer is showcased on the page and the marketer behind the landing page will have focus points calling for you to do something.
Looking at the current offer on a landing page of a competitor, peer, or provider can show you the content that these individuals are producing. Are they focusing more efforts on Facebook insights? Or are they providing content around lead generation? Or just overall branded materials that talk about themselves?
Going in the direction of the subject matter on the landing page isn’t always advisable because it can be difficult to judge what the overall success of that landing page is. However, the current offer it does provide context into what direction the marketing is taking.
2. Form Questions and Fields
This is a component of a landing page that is more obvious to uncover and something that you could have determined what’s best for your audience. Yet, counting the form fields and seeing what questions on a landing page you’re observing can give something different to try to provide more success. Maybe your competitor has just one field for an email address providing the easiest possible way for a new lead to come in.
Changing the number of form fields and questions is relatively easy. You can then more easily call out what could potentially be more successful for your own landing page.
3. Social Shares
Many times on a landing page there is one stand out Call-To-Action and smaller links or social share buttons as well. When visiting another landing page, unless you are specifically there for that offer, take a look at the social share buttons and the quantity of shares on each. 100,000 pins on Pinterest?! Who knew this offer would gain traction on Pinterest? (Now, you know.)
Social shares, although sometimes can be considered a fluffy metric, give you a quantifiable approach when you are looking at another’s landing page. These shares can give you a metric of how successful the landing page, what channels is this offer working in, and give you guidance in how you can move your own landing page in that direction.
4. Moving Forward With Your Landing Page
While looking at the landing pages of others, you may have to do some sleuthing in order to determine what exactly is going on and how to take those things back into your own strategies. Yet, you can use different tidbits to move forward with your own landing page. Granted, something that works for another landing page may not always work with your landing page; but, these factors lay the groundwork for benchmarks into how you could set up your own landing page.
Do your competitors always have landing pages for their white papers? Or do they only have three fields to fill out opposed to five? What about the layout? Are there social share buttons on the page?
Answering some of these questions by visiting different landing pages from ads can show you the focus and benchmarks as to what is going underneath the advertisement.
What insights can a top traffic/referrer site tell you?
A referrer site or top traffic sources are all places where the advertisement was published and is viewed by a potential audience. This may give you more objective insights into where you should place your ad, different targeted audiences and potential impression numbers on those ads.
1. Estimated Potential Views
Notice a competitor’s display ad is seen on about 50 other sites that you also observe to have high traffic numbers? You assign an estimated amount of impressions to the ad you are looking at by way of where it’s published. However, it is to be advised that this number is estimated and could be far from accurate. It’s a nice way to reference, but the estimated guess shouldn’t be counted on as a solid data metric.
If the ad is pulling traffic from the New York Times, it could have had more impressions than an ad on a smaller media site.
2. Audience
Are your competitor’s ads only shown on sites that sell golf clubs? Or what about just on nutritional sites? You can find small observations about a competitor’s audience that could show you missed opportunities. Clearly because this brand/company is a competitor that they share the same audience as you, but if an their ads are constantly shown in sites that are atypical from the usual this could show a potential opportunity with an audience you never thought about going after with ads.
3. The Ad Publisher
Observing and comparing where your competitors and peers are placing their display/text ads can help you determine where you should place your own ads. Noticing the publisher behind the ads is important as it can help you determine the your placement strategies.
Forewarning, although these are insights, many of these things are more an “educated guesses” and observational insights rather than the hard data. Frankly, it would be creepy if we had the first party data into what is going on in an ad, (i.e. the CPC, CPM, and CTR). Yet, these still provide a more clear background to take to back to your own strategies.