Tips to help you avoid common advertiser mistakes | Mobile Ads

Tips to help you avoid common advertiser mistakes | Mobile Ads

There are a lot of variables for an advertiser to consider when setting up and later evaluating the success of their mobile ad campaign.  We’ve previously published best practices and optimization tips for all advertisers and tips specifically for iPhone advertisers, however we know that managing an effective campaign is an art and a science.  As such we wanted to share a few of the mistakes we’ve seen advertisers make to help you avoid these common pitfalls.

    * Not including branding or a call to action in ad copy. Users who know who you are and what they will need to do once they click on your ad are much more likely to click and then convert into customers.

    * Not changing ad text frequently. Just like you’re more likely to skip through a commercial that you’ve already seen, users are more likely to ignore your ad if the copy is stale.  We recommend closely monitoring reporting and testing changes to your ad text if you see click-through-rates decline.

    * Too few ads. We have found that advertisers who have multiple ads running see higher click-through-rates than those with fewer ads. We recommend starting with a minimum of three to five ads (more is better!) to increase your visibility and allow you to experiment with ad performance levers (e.g., targeting parameters, ad copy, etc).  Monitor the results each ad is driving, adjust your bids to favor those higher performing ads, and tweak your lower performing ads based upon what you’ve learned.

    * Not carefully selecting targeting. Advertisers who do not select targeting with their goals in mind may not drive the results they need from their campaign. To ensure that your ads are shown to the right users, we need you to tell us a little bit about who you’re hoping to reach as you create your ad.  For example, is it important that you reach only users in a certain geographic region?  Or only users on a specific device?  Or are you trying to reach as many users as possible for the lowest price possible?  Be sure to carefully consider the targeting options available when creating your ads and select those most appropriate for your campaign objectives.  Keep in mind that broader targeting selections will result in more traffic and more specific selections will result in less volume but higher qualified traffic.

    * Not optimizing ads. Not optimizing your ads during a campaign may mean missed opportunities for maximized performance.  Even the best ad may see varied performance over time as competition for desired inventory increases, ad copy grows stale, etc.  We recommend actively monitoring ad performance.  This will allow you to determine which ads are performing best, highlight changes in your ads’ performance and identify opportunities to optimize performance by testing levers such as ad text, targeting or bid amount.  As you evaluate different ad text, targeting and bid amounts, you can easily track effectiveness of each by adding a unique ID onto the URL of your landing page for each ad.  For example, if the URL for your landing page is http://www.yoursite.com/advertise you can add a unique ID in order to identify traffic from a specific ad such as http://www.yoursite.com/advertise?ad1

    * Landing pages aren’t optimized for mobile. Sending traffic to your regular website will lead to a less than optimal experience for mobile visitors.  To maximize conversions, you should ensure that your ads are sending mobile traffic, even from the iPhone, to a landing page created and optimized specifically for mobile.  Make sure that your ads and landing page are consistent to reduce user confusion and decrease bounce rates.  Finally ensure that the placement of your call to action, product, or service being promoted is easy to locate on the landing page.  You may even consider including your call to action multiple times (e.g., both above and below the fold).

Don’t let this list of common mistakes give you pause; advertising with Mobile is easy and can be a very cost effective way to drive traffic to your mobile site and acquire new users.  Taking into consideration the suggestions offered above will help you make your campaigns even more successful.